Annual Update

Several things:

1. I completed my MA Thesis and will be defending it on May 21, 2012 at Westminster Seminary, California. The title of my thesis is “De Divinis Nominibus: The Via Negativa in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theodramatik.”

Here is the abstract:

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s controversial doctrine of God’s immutability utilizes a method of analogical predication that seemingly coincides with that of Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Thomas Aquinas; however, Balthasar evidently diverges from these thinkers in significant ways, especially as he develops his trinitarian theology in his Theodramatik. In this thesis, I explore Balthasar’s own theological milieu (specifically, the influence of four thinkers: Henri de Lubac, Erich Przywara, Karl Barth, and Adrienne von Speyr) and its effect upon his interpretation and appropriation of Pseudo-Dionysius and the latter’s most noteworthy western interpreter, St. Thomas Aquinas. The relationship between nature and grace, as well as philosophy and theology are considered inasmuch as they affect Balthasar’s explicitly trinitarian approach to the traditional via negativa. Balthasar’s negative theology is compared with that of Denys as well as Thomas; due to the overtly trinitarian nature of Balthasar’s negative theology, his doctrine of the Trinity as it is put forth in Theodramatik IV and V is compared with St. Thomas’s doctrine in order to highlight how the underlying differences in the respective theologians’ approaches to negative theology affect their divergent approaches to the Trinity. I show how Balthasar’s fundamental decisions with regard to nature and grace (de Lubac), theology and philosophy (Przywara), Christology (Barth), and Trinity (Speyr) in many ways control his interpretation of Dionysius and St. Thomas, and ultimately lead him down a path that is often diametrically opposed to that of the two theologians.

2. I was accepted into two PhD programs for Systematic Theology: Marquette and Catholic University of America. I just heard that I will not be receiving funding for the former, and am still waiting to hear from the latter. Please pray for me.

3. I was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church last week, on the feast day of St. Anselm of Canterbury. I began to seriously consider converting to Catholicism a little less than a year ago and I am glad to finally be able to partake of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. If there’s anyone who still actually reads this blog and if you have questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them (time permitting). I will explain myself in more detail once things have cooled down a bit.

That is all for now.

“. . . to be just able to doubt is no warrant for disbelieving.” -JHN

a generation of wingless chickens

“If you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church, it’s the gas you breathe. . . . I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable. . . . [I]f you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. . . . It is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead.” – Flannery O’Connor.

Dionysius the Areopagite on the Righteousness of God

“It is the righteousness of God which orders everything, setting boundaries, keeping things distinct and unconfused, giving each thing what it inherently deserves. This being so, those who criticize the righteousness of God unwittingly stand condemned for utter unrighteousness. Such people claim that immortality should be given to what is mortal, perfection to what is imperfect, self-movement to those moved from without, immutability to the changing, strength to the weak, eternity to the time-bound, immobility to the mobile, durability to fleeting pleasure. In short, they want everything changed around. What they really should know is that the righteousness of God is truly righteousness in that it gives the appropriate and deserved qualities to everything and that it preserves the nature of each being in its due order and power.” – Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, VIII, 7.

‘To Be or Not To Be’: Martin Heidegger and Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Mystery of Being

[Spring 2011 Paper; Note: I am aware that my critique of Heidegger in this paper is far too simplistic and perhaps even unfair--so please forgive me in advance...]

. . . although he lost his mother in his fourth year, he remembered her afterwards all his life, her face, her caresses, ‘as if she were standing alive before me.’ Such memories can be remembered (everyone knows this) even from an earlier age, even from the age of two, but they only emerge throughout one’s life as specks of light, as it were, against the darkness, as a corner torn from a huge picture, which has all faded and disappeared except for that little corner.[1]

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamzov

I. Introduction

Ever since Nietzsche’s madman proclaimed the death of God, philosophers and theologians alike have had their hands full attempting either to defend or destroy God on this basis.[2] Many who accept Nietzsche’s assessment read his criticism as being one against a strictly metaphysical concept of God rather than against Christianity itself.[3] Along this trajectory, and perhaps most famous among philosophers to appropriate Nietzsche, is Martin Heidegger, who has done more than anyone else to ensure the death of ‘the God of philosophers.’[4]

When asked whether it is “proper to posit Being and God as identical,” Heidegger famously responded:

Being and God are not identical and I would never attempt to think the essence of God by means of Being. . . . If I were yet to write a theology—to which I sometimes feel inclined—then the word Being would not occur in it. Faith does not need the thought of Being. When faith has recourse to this thought, it is no longer faith.[5]

For Heidegger being (philosophy) and God (theology) cannot and should not be spoken in the same breath (unless, of course, one is declaiming their propinquity); thought that seeks to reach to God through being(s) is not theology but is rather onto-theology.[6]

Among the many following Heidegger, Eastern Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras accuses the Western metaphysical tradition, “from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas” of conceptualizing God as simply “the logically necessary first cause of all beings.”[7] According to Yannaras, because “both the ontology and epistemology of the West were built on this logical necessity as a starting point,” Western theology is, therefore, “revealed, not as the interpretation of biblical revelation, but as rationalist (natural) interpretation of biblical teaching about God as the first cause of beings . . .”[8] In Yanarras’ mind, then, not only Western metaphysics, but much of the Western theological tradition as a whole is guilty of onto-theologizing. Such post-Heideggerian attempts to distance oneself from the Western tradition (epitomized by figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, et al.) have become commonplace for many theologians (in the West and the East) who attempt to separate themselves from the ‘all-too-philosophical God’ of Augustine and Thomas as distinguished from the ‘God of Scripture.’[9]

In this context, Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose philosophy is described by his cousin, Peter Henrici, as “expressly and with insistent emphasis . . . a philosophy of being,” appears especially strange.[10] For Balthasar it was not Thomas’ alleged onto-theological guilt that is responsible for both theology’s and philosophy’s (post)modern malaise, but, on the contrary, Scotus’ and Eckhart’s inability to maintain Thomas’ distinctio realis between esse and essentia.[11] Far from being the root of the ontotheological problem, then, Thomas offered the best solution to it.

From this one might assume that Balthasar, as philosophical of a theologian as he was, would have been diametrically opposed to Heidegger given the latter’s disdain for any sort of connection between being and faith; this, however, was not so. “Heidegger’s project,” wrote Balthasar, “is the most fertile one from the point of view of a potential philosophy of glory.”[12] Interestingly enough, Balthasar saw that, “more than anyone else, Thomas Aquinas is in harmony with Heidegger, with whom he shares the insight into the transcendence of Being.”[13] Thus, contrary to Heidegger’s assumption of the necessary contradiction between faith and being, I argue that it was precisely because of Balthasar’s theologically (i.e., Thomistically) informed philosophical emphasis on being that he was able to bypass any sort of ontotheology as well as the ‘forgetfulness of being’—a forgetfulness which ultimately undermined Heidegger’s own project. Balthasar, therefore, was able to retain the ‘sense of wonder’ (θαθμάζειν) before being because he understood, unlike Heidegger, that the ontological difference cannot be reduced in a monistic fashion to das Nichts, but can only be received as a gift from a genuinely transcendent Other.

II. The Parting of the Ways

            To understand why it is that Balthasar’s philosophy is fundamentally considered to be a ‘philosophy of being,’ it is important to grasp his understanding of the history of metaphysics after Aquinas. According to Balthasar, Aquinas, following Pseudo-Dionysius, established “The elevation of God over being,” which prevented pantheism and secured “at the same time for the concept of glory a place in metaphysics.”[14] Though Platonism had also placed the One beyond the Nous, “the sublimity of God was not revealed as absolute freedom, the Godhead was therefore dragged into an unfree dialectic of in-itself and out-of-itself, hidden and revealed, resting and moved.”[15] It was only with Aquinas that being was recognized as something other than God while remaining completely dependent on him. Aidan Nichols comments, “The beauty of finite, dependent being, in Thomas’ thought, reflects the glory of the infinite, subsistent being, from whom it receives all.”[16] To think being for Thomas, therefore, meant simultaneously to think its subsistent source. It was with Thomas’ synthesis in mind that Balthasar could remark, “Without philosophy, there can be no theology,” since the former is inseparable from the latter.[17]

Thomas’ understanding of being, however, could not long be maintained; after only a few decades, philosophy departed from Thomas’ distinctio realis only to adopt an understanding of being which was antithetical to faith. It is this dreary path—beauty’s disconnect from glory, being’s disconnect from God—that Balthasar saw as being responsible for philosophy’s gradual loss at the wonder of being.[18]

According to Balthasar, the pivotal moment came with the rise Averroism, which “purported to be the sole serious and radical interpretation of the sole ‘scientific’ philosopher, Aristotle” and “understood itself to be the attempt to ascertain how far human reason could go in the inquiry into the ultimate grounds of Being when it excluded and dispensed with all revelatory knowledge.”[19] It was only a matter of time before the Bishop of Paris condemned a number of propositions of ‘Averroistic inspiration’ in 1277 drawing a permanent boundary line between philosophy and Christianity. As the boundaries hardened, theology took second place to philosophy. While Christianity was considered to be based upon myths (fabulae), philosophy

identified reality, rationality and necessity, with the result that God must create the world, which exists from eternity, of course in such a way that he produces only the One Being, which is his own likeness, and which he orders by virtue of subordinate causes in a descending scale from himself to the material plane.[20]

In other words, unlike the God of Thomas, “This is a God without freedom, without knowledge of creatures, or a true otherness with respect to the world.”[21] Conceived in this way, philosophy could no longer maintain Thomas’ real distinction. Being, which for Thomas was “beyond all comprehension, as it, in its emergence from God, attains subsistence and self-possession within the finite entities” split into two equally bad paths: being was either formalized into “the comprehensive concept of reason” (Scotus), or identified with God himself (Eckhart).[22]

With Scotus, being encompassed everything, including God, leading to the univocity of being. Far from being ‘open’ in any way toward a transcendent Other, being was made into an empty concept which, containing all, could only be closed off. Only a few steps had to be taken to go from Scotus to “empiricism (Ockham), and from pure theological voluntarism and ‘positionism’ to a positivism which possesses no values, and from there, quite consistently to materialistic atomism.”[23] Nichols writes, “The ‘being’ of Scotus, a neutral essence pervading all distinctions, was consigned to the philosopher that the theologian may be unencumbered in his exploration of a practical faith.”[24] The philosophical realm, separated from the theological realm, ceased to point to a transcendent God. This path leading from Scotus to Ockham to Suarez paved the way for “modern metaphysics from Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz to Kant and Hegel.”[25] Theology and philosophy, faith and being, could now only be thought in opposition to one another.

In contrast to Scotus, Meister Eckhart simply identified being with God. “The assertion ‘God is being,’” wrote Balthasar, “runs through virtually all his works, and the Thomistic mediation of the non-subsistent actus essendi is lost from sight.”[26] The tension in an actualization of non-subsistent being, no longer dependent upon a subsistent, transcendent other, was solved by Scotus through an identification of being with God. From this followed the simple logic: “If God is Being, Not-God is Non-Being.”[27] Being, no longer other than God, either had to be identical to God or simply not be at all. The result? “God begins where the creature ends.”[28] Inevitably, Eckhart’s theology moved toward “the abolition of created natures and their proper operations, towards, in fact, an Indian kind of doctrine that everything is God”—a foreshadow of Hegel and Heidegger. [29] While Scotus separated theology from philosophy, Eckhart confused the two in a way that did irreparable harm to both—since philosophy now was theology, the former could only point to itself rather than to God.

Stephen Wigley offers a helpful summary:

In both instances the delicate balance which sustained Thomas’ ontology is lost. In the one instance being is reduced to a dull and prosaic rationalism in which all sense of wonder and awe is lost; in the other, the sense of being lost in God becomes so all-embracing that any distinction between God and the world disappears.[30]

Ironically, at the end of the day “both models turn into one another—as two forms of a pan-theism of the spirit or of reason,” and it becomes all-too-apparent how this points ahead to modernity.[31]

III: Heidegger: The Way Back

            Despite the fact that Heidegger separated being from faith (“Faith does not need the thought of Being”), he was concerned with being in a way unlike any philosopher since Thomas.[32]  “On the basis of the Greeks’ initial contribution,” wrote Heidegger, “a dogma has developed which not only declares the question about the meaning of being to be superfluous, but sanctions its complete neglect.”[33] Since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have simply assumed what being is (or what is is) with the result that “that which the ancient philosophers found continually disturbing as something obscure and hidden has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such that if anyone continues to ask about it he is charged with an error of method.”[34] In other words, in assuming such familiarity with the question of being Western metaphysics has failed to create a proper distance that allows wonder at being.

As a result of this ‘forgetfulness of being,’ both the answer to the question of being, and the question itself are presently “obscure and without direction.”[35] This, however, will not do. Any philosophy that does not inquire first into being itself cannot truly be called philosophy. As Heidegger put it,

Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted of a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.[36] 

Attempting to fulfill this ‘fundamental task’ ultimately led to the question that drove Heidegger’s thought (and which was, in many ways, so close to Balthasar’s own): “Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?”[37]

As soon as one begins to investigate the meaning of being the ‘ontological difference’ (between being and beings) becomes evident. Even in simple predicative statements, (e.g., “That is a dog.”), it is evident that being (i.e., the ‘is’) cannot be thought of as a ‘thing’ among things (whether present-at-hand or ready-to-hand, Zuhanden and Vorhanden, respectively). Despite the almost embarrassing conspicuity of such an observation, this was precisely what had been continually overlooked by philosophy. “Being,” wrote Heidegger, “has been presupposed in all ontology up till now,” it has always been understood “as a concept at one’s disposal.”[38] Philosophy has forgotten being and has concerned itself solely with beings. By making clear the distinction between ontic questions and the ontological question, Heidegger placed himself in direct opposition to Scotus’ formalization of being. But how to recover the sense of wonder?

“This Being can be covered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and no question arises about it or about its meaning”; however, we are not thereby left utterly hopeless.[39] “What we seek when we inquire into Being,” Heidegger suggested, “is not something entirely unfamiliar, even if at first we cannot grasp it at all.”[40] The very fact that philosophers have assumed being, even in their forgetfulness, shows how primordial it is. Yet, if being is not a thing, how does one approach it? If Heidegger was to avoid the great temptation of treating being as a mere ontic entity, then his investigation would have to endure at least initial, if not perpetual, ambiguity. The question and the answer would be reformulated and pressed again and again—not only in Being and Time but also throughout the rest of Heidegger’s life and writings.[41]

Since there is no direct route to being (such a route would simply lead to another ontic ‘thing’), it is necessary to begin with an ontic entity while continually keeping the ontological difference in mind. Even if he did not finally reach a solution, Heidegger at least began on a path—namely, understanding being through Dasein (‘being there’). This was not an arbitrary choice since Dasein is an entity for which “Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic”; “Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.” [42] But in order to properly understand Dasein, one must not approach it abstractly or treat it as a substance (i.e., as present-at-hand—something Heidegger considered Descartes to be especially guilty of).[43] Dasein does not find itself in a timeless, spaceless place, but ‘in-the-world,’ determined by its past and projected into its future. In order to understand Dasein, one can neither separate it from the ‘world’ it finds itself in, nor its own history.

As Heidegger investigated Dasein’s ‘being-in-the-world,’ it became evident that, “It is essential to the basic constitution of Dasein that there is constantly something still to be settled.”[44] This “lack of totality,” or “not-yet” (what we might simply call finitude or openness to the future) is fundamental to Dasein’s makeup.[45] This signals something that is impending, namely, death; “Dasein cannot outstrip the possibility of Death”; it is “a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has to take over in every case.”[46] In existing, Dasein is “already thrown into this possibility” which is the source of the moment of anxiety (Angst).[47] In this moment, Dasein can either evade its ownmost possibility (what Heidegger termed ‘falling’), or can, in an ek-static manner, anticipate its ownmost possibility—this latter way of ‘being-in-the-world’ Heidegger called ‘authentic existence.’[48] It is precisely as Dasein authentically faces “the extreme perplexity, the anxiety in which all existence slips away,” that “the question of Being” is finally opened up.[49]

The fact that this “ownmost possibility,” concerns each Dasein’s own death means that here, Dasein “is non-relational”; “all Being-alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with Others, will fail us when our ownmost potentiality-for-Being is the issue.”[50] As Heidegger remarked, “No one can take the Other’s dying away from him. . . . By its very essence, death is in every case mine, in so far as it ‘is’ at all.”[51] It is here, isolated from others (the ‘they’), that “Dasein finds itself face to face with the “nothing” of the possible impossibility of existence.”[52] Put simply, “Anxiety reveals the nothing.”[53] It is this ‘nothing’ that “is manifest in the ground of Dasein,” that allows the “total strangeness of being to overwhelm us . . . and evoke wonder.”[54] But what is the nothing if it is anything at all? “How is it with the nothing?”[55]

IV: Being and Nothingness

When one is confronted with anxiety, beings as a whole slip away, which “implies that we ourselves slip away . . . it is not as though ‘you’ or ‘I’ feel ill at ease; rather, it is this way for some ‘one’”; “pure Da-sein is all that is still there.”[56] That ‘beings as a whole’ slip away is significant since “real difference between Being and beings can come to light only if ‘beings’ are experienced as totality.”[57] Only in this precise moment does the nothing come into play. “This wholly repelling gesture towards beings that are in retreat as a whole . . . is the essence of the nothing: nihilation.”[58]

Nihilation “is neither an annihilation of beings nor does it spring from negation”; rather, it “discloses these beings in their full but heretofore concealed strangeness as what is radically other—with respect to the nothing.”[59] Without the nothing, beings cannot be revealed to Dasein; the wonder that beings are, can only appear in the face of the nothing, since it is only as suspended over the nothing that one realizes the utter contingency of beings.

Paradoxically, then, the nothing, which is not something, is fundamental to being. As Heidegger concluded: “Da-sein means: being held out into the nothing.”[60] As ‘held out into the nothing,’ Dasein is already “beyond beings as a whole,” which means that Dasein is already transcendent (‘finite transcendence’).[61] The act of nihilation that presupposes the nothing (das Nichts nichtet), however, is primal not just to beings, but to the being of beings—it is the source of difference between the two; “In the Being of beings the nihilation of nothing occurs.”[62] What does this mean? It means that the nothing is not the opposite of beings, “but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings.”[63] The difference arising from the act of nihilation indicates a primal nothingness—which turns out to be being itself.

It is precisely at this juncture that Heidegger seems to have lost sight of the mystery of being. Despite the promise of his philosophy in his challenge to Scotus’ notion of being, because he assumed a fundamental disjunction between faith and being, Heidegger ended up with an ontology not too different from Eckhart’s (i.e., ‘God as being’). The ontological difference between being and beings was lost on account of the nothing, “which both generates the distinction and embraces it at the same time.”[64] Here Heidegger’s affirmation of Hegel is notable: “Pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same.”[65] Being itself is ultimately identified with pure nothing—a univocity of non-being, as Connor Cunningham calls it.[66] What is Heidegger’s notion of the nothing but an obverse onto-theology? Instead of identifying being with an absolute something, it is identified with the absolute nothing; the ontological difference is thereby reduced to a final monism.

An inability to maintain any genuine difference becomes apparent in Heidegger’s presentation of the Christian view of the nothing:

Now the nothing becomes the counterconcept to being proper, the summum ens, God as ens increatum. . . . The questions of Being and of the nothing as such are not posed. Therefore no one is bothered by the difficulty that if God creates out of nothing precisely He must be able to relate Himself to the nothing. But if God is God he cannot know the nothing, assuming that the “Absolute” excludes all nothingness.[67]

In Heidegger’s mind, God (the “Absolute”) must either exclude all nothingness (thereby ignoring any difference and ultimately becoming an ontotheology—what Heidegger accused Christianity of) or be identified with it; Heidegger obviously took the latter route. As Balthasar put it, rather than absolutizing being (the ontotheological error), in Heidegger, “The difference between Being and the existent, which is the primary characteristic of createdness, is thereby raised to the status of the absolute, of God.”[68] As a result, Heidegger failed to properly understand the significance of the ontological difference. Refusing to absolutize creaturely difference, Balthasar wrote, “One’s gaze must seek to penetrate beyond the Ontological Difference . . . to the distinction between God and world, in which God is the sole sufficient ground for both Being and the existent in its possession of form.”[69] In other words, for Balthasar the ontological difference points beyond itself to a greater difference rather than to the difference itself.

Though Heidegger’s philosophy did avoid some of the gross errors of an ontotheology, offering a direct challenge to Scotus’ univocal concept of being, his final grounding of being in das Nichts failed to provide any real solution (or more appropriately, any real tension) to the ontological difference. Ultimately, Heidegger’s philosophy is simply another evasion of the question of being—a meontology (from ‘μὴ ὄν,’ not being), an attempt to be without being. Connor Cunningham writes, “Every meontological strategy of escape, going beyond being, repeats the identical logic—which is to smuggle the same words into different letters: being/das Nicht; something/nothing.”[70] The difference between being and beings ultimately remains unthought; the difference literally is the nothing.

Heidegger initially pointed in the right direction; he indicated, contra Scotus, that philosophers and theologians must cease to think of being simply as an existent, as a thing; however, as Balthasar remarked, “the true wonder at the fact that something exists rather than nothing does not run its full course, for it points to a freedom which [Heidegger] does not wish to perceive.”[71] Here is where Heidegger’s ultimate failure lies. Balthasar continued,

Although he grasps, beyond Aristotle, the Thomist distinction between Being and the Existent as a mystery impenetrable to reason, and can from this position accuse both the Greek and the moderns of forgetting Being itself, yet he does not construe this difference in Thomist terms, viz. in the Christian way as a sign of creatureliness, and therefore falls back from this distinction into a (non-Greek, only apparently Presocratic) identity.[72]

Nichols comments further, “Because Heidegger does not construe the ontological difference . . . in a Thomistic way—as the sign par excellence of our creaturehood—his thought can only fall back into a philosophy of identity (between infinite and finite).”[73]

This evasion of the question of being becomes only more evident in Heidegger’s discussion of conscience as call. Heidegger noted that the ‘call of care’ presents something that “we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for nor voluntarily performed, nor have we ever done so.”[74] On the one hand, “the call comes from me,” but on the other, it is, “from beyond me and over me.”[75] Who is the one who calls? “If the interpretation continues in this direction,” argued Heidegger, “one supplies a possessor for the power thus posited, or one takes the power itself as a person who makes himself known—namely God.”[76] But such an explanation, according to Heidegger, cannot be since it assumes the “ontologically guiding thesis that what is . . . must be present-at-hand, and that what does not let itself be Objectively demonstrated as present-at-hand, just is not at all.”[77] In other words, even if the call is not “explicitly performed by me,” this “does not justify seeking the caller in some entity with a character other than that of Dasein.”[78] It is not another entity, rather “the caller is definable in a ‘worldly’ way by nothing at all.”[79]

This final move is nothing but a sleight of hand; a cheap trick on Heidegger’s part to avoid seeing where this residual tension inherent in being had to lead. Heidegger rejected identifying the caller as God on grounds that such a view understood God in an onto-theological manner (‘as present-at-hand’); yet, if being itself is dependent on God without being identified with God (as it is according to Thomas’ distinctio realis) then there is no legitimate reason not to see the call as pointing to something (Plotinus) or someone (Christianity) who truly transcends it.

While an undramatic deus ex machina who simply fills the void of the anonymous caller is certainly unacceptable, Heidegger seems to have thought that his das Nichts offered a viable alternative when, in reality, ‘the nothing’ assumed the same role—the only difference being its mask. As David Bentley Hart notes, “In truth, there is no compelling reason given by Heidegger—however confidently he claimed, and his disciples claim, the contrary—for abandoning the traditional theological understanding of the ontological difference.”[80] At this vital point Heidegger failed to deliver. Balthasar explained, “Where the immanent analogy of Being which pertains between the actus essendi and essentia does not deepen to a transcendental analogy of Being between God and the world, it annuls itself by becoming identity and pays the price.”[81] Despite its strengths, Heidegger’s philosophy must ultimately be judged a failure: “A philosophy which will not firmly answer the question of God one way or the other lacks intellectual courage, and a pragmatic and realistic humanity will pass it by and get on with daily living.”[82]

V: The Miracle of Being

            “If the finite is not the infinite, where does this cleavage originate?” or, more pointedly, “Why are we not God?”[83] This question, in varying forms, is central, not only to Heidegger, but also to philosophy as a whole. Attempts to answer such a question outside of Christian theology, however, leads, time and again, to some form of identity between the finite and infinite.[84] With the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo a new question arises: “if God has no need of this world—yet again, Why does the world exist?”[85] According to Angelo Scola, “For Balthasar this is the most mysterious question touching the whole mystery of being.”[86] At the heart of this question is “That division, the ‘real distinction’ of St. Thomas,” which, according to Balthasar, “is the source of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity”; all philosophies pose “the problem of the Absolute Being, whether one attributes to it a personal character or not.” [87] Therefore, an explication of Balthasar’s understanding of the ontological difference (or Thomas’ version, the distinctio realis) is in order.[88]

For Balthasar, Heidegger’s key question, “Why are there beings rather than nothing?” ultimately fell short in view of the more fundamental question: “Why is there being at all?”[89] While Heidegger was astonished “that an existent being can wonder at Being in its own distinction from Being,” Balthasar went beyond Heidegger and was amazed by fact that “Being as such by itself to the very end ‘causes wonder’, behaving as something to be wondered at, something striking and worthy of wonder.”[90] As Schindler puts it, for Heidegger, “The fundamental difference . . . lies therefore in a certain sense between Being and beings,” rather than “within Being itself,” as was the case with Balthasar.[91]  This latter difference within being implies that “creation cannot close itself in its finiteness,” the very fact of its non-subsistence and non-necessity means that a solution cannot be deduced from being or even the totality of beings; creation must wait, “in the wonder of its being, another who founds it.”[92] The creature cannot resolve this tension by herself because her very nature exists by an act that ‘always already’ precedes her. This is the direction that Heidegger, though perhaps against his own intentions, was initially headed before he so undramatically identified being with the nothing.[93]

While being, for Heidegger, is revealed in the moment of Angst, in the revelation of the nothing, Balthasar saw the horizon of being most fundamentally in an infant’s being “brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother.”[94] Like Heidegger, Balthasar did not seek access to being in the abstract, but began with Dasein.[95] Unlike Heidegger, however, Balthasar did not conceive Dasein’s being as primordially constituted by the nothing over which it is suspended (away from beings as a whole, i.e., the ontic); this ‘ultimate solitude’ that results from “absolutizing one’s own death,” as occurs in Heidegger, “means that authentic transcendence, understood as relationship to the other as other, is in the end an illusion.”[96] Such a conclusion is inevitably the result of beginning with the moment of Angst, which, in terms of phenomenological method, is not appropriate. Balthasar understood being “with what is both historical and a genuine beginning, namely, the fundamental experience of the child.”[97]

Balthasar begins, therefore, with the difference “between a child’s ‘I’ and the ‘other,’ who is initially the mother but implicitly everything else that will be an other to the child.”[98] Balthasar described this moment:

Its ‘I’ awakens in the experience of a ‘Thou’: in its mother’s smile through which it learns that it is contained, affirmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensively encompassing, already actual, sheltering and nourishing.[99]

It is not a withdrawal of beings, but “the experience of being admitted” that constitutes “the very first thing which [the infant] knows in the realm of Being.”[100] Experience of being depends on experience of beings.

The fact that being is revealed in this a priori (‘always already’) difference (i.e., relation) that can only be received as a gift, means that being cannot be sought apart from the ontic; it is precisely here that “the horizon of all unlimited being opens.”[101] The experience of “another entity” is simultaneous with the experience of that other “as part of the whole.”[102] The child awakens “into his own self-consciousness (difference in unity) within the comprehending grace of the mother’s love (unity in difference), which is expressed in her smiling on him.”[103] That an infant encounters being in this relationship means that “difference occurs primordially as positivity; the different is a ‘more’ that is affirmed, rather than a product of loss or a fall (negation).”[104] And since being cannot be known apart from beings, it becomes clear that “Being depends upon the existence of particulars”; “Sein is dependent on Dasein—and so is non-existent in itself.”[105] Thus it is not enough to simply say that “all beings depend on Being since they have or are nothing other than Being,” one must also say that being, “does not itself subsist, and so it needs particular beings ‘in’ which to become actual.”[106] But this also means, “The meaning of difference cannot be determined from within the difference itself . . . all that comes into view at this level is the fact of the difference.”[107] Heidegger stopped at the difference—an inevitable result of closing off being from God. “If the creature . . . looks at itself instead of looking up to God,” wrote Balthasar, “it can consider itself only as having been ejected from being, it interprets its ek-sistence as a being in nothingness, from nothingness, and to nothingness.[108] Because of his understanding of being as dependent on God, Balthasar was able to look beyond the ontological difference in order to understand the difference.

Far from a deus ex machina who comes to provide a quick and easy solution, “almost against our will,” God is brought into the picture

beyond the still conditioned, mutually dependent freedom of the existent with regard to Being and the freedom of Being to shine unconstrainedly as a light within the existent: an unconditioned freedom, or one which is at most one which is conditioned through itself, and which is untouched by nothingness, an actus purus, which is posited in the first instance only in order to preserve the light of openness between Being and the existent as a free and unconstrained light so that the individual entity is not submerged within the exigencies of a process of explication and Being does not lose its freedom in the same ‘Odyssey’ of its cosmic evolution towards itself.[109]

God alone, unaffected by time and nothingness, whom Thomas described as actus purus, is able to safeguard the difference. At the root of this difference, then, there lies a more fundamental difference. “Balthasar does not see the difference merely as a difference between ‘factual’ and ‘self-evident’, between beings and being, between essence and being, but at root as the difference between universal being and God.”[110]

VI: Conclusion: Trinitarian Difference

The polarities and tensions inherent in the ontological difference cannot be ‘resolved’ from within the difference itself; any attempt to do so will inevitably result in identity without difference. What is necessary is an understanding of being that is not closed off to genuine transcendence. Such a philosophy, though insecure in itself, will be “more fruitful, philosophically, than the clean complacency of finished neoscholastic distinctions, which run the danger of hacking off the living sprouts of being.”[111] In the same way that Thomas’ distinctio realis indicates the need of a genuinely transcendent Other without actually identifying that other, so to Heidegger’s ontological difference cannot but remain in tension—and this tension is good since it points beyond being, beings, as well as the difference between the two to an Other who affirms the difference as a positive, as a gift.

Of course, “a human reason which makes itself absolute,” will never receive such a solution.[112] And philosophy in itself can never reach this Other by its own will. The radical contingency of being means that the one upon whom being depends is not bound by necessity to reveal himself. Philosophy’s fundamental stance apart from God, therefore, can only be openness. Yet it is in the revelation of the Triune God in Christ, that the ontological difference finally finds justification. As Henrici explains,

In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because he is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity. And if it is necessary to suppose the Other, the Word, the Son, in God, then the otherness of the creation is not a fall, a disgrace, but an image of God, even as it is not God.[113]

The basis for the ontological difference between being and beings rests in an eternal difference between the persons of the Godhead revealed in the loving kenosis of the Son; this difference between the persons is not characterized by violence and suspicion, as it is so often in modern and postmodern philosophy, but rather, it is characterized by love.[114]

It is therefore not in Angst but in love that the meaning of being is revealed. Thus as Scola explains, “In God, the other is allowed to be. There is a being-other which does not eliminate the unity of the divine Being.”[115] Yet since this ultimate justification of difference cannot be deduced from within being, but, just as the gift of being itself, must be given from without, it is entirely God’s prerogative to reveal this. “Everything is decided by the question of whether God has spoken to men . . . or whether the Absolute remains the silence beyond all worldly words.”[116] In light of the nature of being as gift, it is left to the creature to receive in wonder at the gift; yet this wonder at being points analogically (or, since it can only be received, catalogically) to the greater wonder of God’s glory in Christ. In light of Balthasar’s appreciation and emphasis on the wonder of being it is fitting to conclude with a quotation that displays even greater wonder at the revelation of God’s love—of being found:

Being Found stands so much higher over Seeking (revelation over myth, theology over philosophy), it has so overtaken Seeking with its light and overshadowed it into insignificance and triviality . . . , that the stage of Seeking seems dispensable to those who have been found.[117]

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[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), p.18.

[2] Cf., Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), pp. 181-82.

[3] Pascal’s well-known saying is typically cited here: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars . . .” Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings trans. Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 172, 178. Most prominent among those who argue for the death of the strictly metaphysical concept of God is Jean-Luc Marion. Cf., Jean-Luc Marion, Idol and the Distance: Five Studies trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001) and God Without Being: Hors-Texte trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

[4] Far from a being a critic of God, according to Heidegger, Nietzsche is “the last German philosopher who sought God with a passion and pain,” Discours du Rectorat, p. 12, quoted in Jean-Luc Marion, Idol and the Distance, 36. Also cf. Heidegger’s four-volume work, Nietzsche trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991, 1984, 1987, 1982, respectively). Though it does not affect the content of this paper, it should be noted that most scholars consider Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche to be innacurate; Nietzsche’s will to power, for instance, “is not primarily a metaphysical principle, as Heidegger supposes,” Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4^th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 420. Balthasar also notes that, “Löwith has correctly shown that Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche is questionable and, if one looks to the final form taken by Nietzsche as a whole, mistaken,” The Glory of the Lord: V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age ed. Brian McNeil C. R. V., John Riches trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil C. R. V., John Sayward, Rowan Williams (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) p. 433 n.28.

[5] Quoted in Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 61.

[6] The term ‘onto-theology,’ coined by Immanuel Kant, was made popular by Heidegger. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 584). Merold Westphal, pointing out the ambiguity of the term, highlights what exactly is at stake: the problem of an onto-theology is more the “how rather than the what of our God-talk,” the attempt, “to imprison theological discourse within a primacy of theoretical reason under the rule of the principle of sufficient reason.” in Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), pp. 22-23. Joeri Schrijvers defines it a bit differently: “In general, the ontotheological endeavour seeks an ultimate reason that can account for the totality of beings. Its point of departure – beings – forbids that ontotheology encounters anything other, at the end of the chain of beings, than a being. Proceeding from the finite to the infinite, ontotheology’s obsession with objects decides in advance how God will enter philosophical discourse.” In “On Doing Theology ‘After’ Ontotheology: Notes on a French Debate,” New Blackfriars 87 (2006), pp. 302-303. Both understandings of ontotheology are relevant to this paper.

[7] Christ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite ed. Andrew Louth, trans. Haralambos Ventis (London, New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), p. 43.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Though not directly influenced by Heidegger, such an attitude marks Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 211. Moltmann, in a typically dismissive attitude towards classical theology, writes that for Thomas, “God is then not thought for his own sake but for the sake of something else, for the sake of finite being.”

It is also possible to understand Karl Barth’s allergy to the analogia entis in this regard. See John Betz’ article where he describes the “secret alliance” between Heidegger and Barth. According to Betz, “both were contending . . . against the ‘domestication of transcendence’, i.e., the codification into manageable presence of what was no longer allowed to be absent (or in Barth’s case sovereign), whether at the hands of ex opere operato or ‘onto-theology,’” “Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part One),” Modern Theology 21/3 (2005), p. 369.

Kevin L. Hughes defends Bonaventure from similar attacks in his article, “Remember Bonaventure? (Onto)Theology and Ecstasy,” Modern Theology 19/4 (October, 2003): pp. 529-545. Hughes writes, “One would not like to be accused of being an onto-theologian in the presence of one’s peers. However, we seem to feel quite comfortable attributing this unspeakable sin to those who have gone before us—Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Origen, Plotinus, Augustine, Maimonides, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz . . . the list could go on” (p. 529).

[10] Peter Henrici, S. J., “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 164.

[11] Balthasar, Metaphysics in the Modern Age: pp. 9-48.

[12] Ibid., p. 449. David C. Schindler comments, “Balthasar’s engagement with the mystery of being is in dialogue primarily with Hegel, Heidegger, and Aquinas, although directly behind Aquinas stands the mighty figure of Dionysius the Areopagite.” Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), p. 28.

[13] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, 434.

[14] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity ed. John Riches trans. Brian McNeil C. R. V., Andrew Louth, John Saward, Rowan Williams, Oliver Davies (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), p. 375.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Aidan Nichols, O. P., The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998), p. 142.

[17] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: I: The Truth of the World trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), p. 7.

[18] Cf., Metaphysics in the Modern Age, pp. 9-47.

[19] Ibid., p. 10.

[20] Ibid., pp. 10-11.

[21] Ibid., p. 11.

[22] Ibid., p. 12.

[23] Ibid., p. 21.

[24] The Word Has Been Abroad, p. 147.

[25] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 25. It is only from within this univocal concept of being that Molinism can emerge, “in which the creature attains an ultimate particularity and freedom which is independent of the will of God” (p. 28). Even Heidegger saw that Descartes “is always far behind the Schoolmen” in working out the question of analogical predication. Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008), p. 126.

[26] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 31. Balthasar described Eckhart’s case as “an originally very pure Christian piety . . . in an unsuitable garment that ill fits the body.” Against Eckhart’s own intentions, his “most daring conceptions,” lead to “a legacy with consequences beyond measure” (p. 30). Balthasar’s treatment of Meister Eckhart is, like almost everything Balthasar treated, nuanced and complex, but for the sake of the topic I will highlight only aspects that I consider pertinent.

[27] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 42.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid., p. 45.

[30] Stephen Wigley, Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s Guide (London: T & T Clark: 2010), p. 59.

[31] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 13-14.

[32] According to Heidegger’s own history of the concept of Being, he himself did not consider Thomas to have sufficiently grasped the crux of the issue. Heidegger wrote, “In medieval ontology this problem was widely discussed, especially in the Thomist and Scotist schools, without reaching clarity as to principles.” Being and Time, p. 22. However, Heidegger did credit Aquinas with following Aristotle in recognizing Dasein’s ontico-ontological priority (even if this may not have led to a genuine grasping of Dasein’s ontological structure (cf. Being and Time, p. 34). Balthasar argued that Heidegger misunderstands Thomas: Speaking of Thomas’ distinction between the actus essendi and essentiae, he wrote, “This mode of thought does not, as Heidegger says, reduce the difference ‘to a mere distinction, to the potency of our intellects’—that only happens when a pedantic scholasticism turns the mystery into a ‘real distinction’ etc. But for Thomas this structure remains the sign of the indeterminate non-absoluteness, speaking in Christian terms, of creatureliness,” Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 446. Heidegger’s misreading of Thomas was due to the former’s inability to think difference, as I hope to make clear.

[33] Being and Time, p. 21.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid., p. 24.

[36] Ibid., p. 31.

[37] “What Is Metaphysics?” in Basic Writings ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008), p. 111.

[38] Being and Time, p. 27.

[39] Ibid., p. 59.

[40] Ibid., p. 25.

[41] Cf. Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp.113-80. One also finds the ultimate unanswerability to the question of Being, at least in Being and Time, in Heidegger’s constant return to the beginning. “We cannot ever ‘avoid’ a ‘circular’ proof in the existential analytic, because such an analytic does not do any proving at all by the rules of the ‘logic of consistency’” (Being and Time, p. 363).

[42] Being and Time, p. 32.

[43] Cf. Ibid., pp.130-33.

[44] Ibid., p. 279.

[45] Cf. Ibid., p. 286.

[46] Ibid., p. 294.

[47] Ibid., p. 295.

[48] For more on ‘falling’ and ‘authentic existence,’ cf. Ibid., pp. 303-307.

[49] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 432.

[50] Being and Time, p. 308.

[51] Ibid., p. 284.

[52] Ibid., p. 310.

[53] “What Is Metaphysics?,” p. 101.

[54] Ibid., p. 109.

[55] Ibid., p. 101.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 297.

[58] “What is Metaphysics?,” p. 103.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ibid., p. 104.

[63] Ibid., p. 108.

[64] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 447.

[65] “What Is Metaphysics?,” p. 108.

[66] Connor Cunningham, “The Difference of Theology and Some Philosophies of Nothing,” Modern Theology 17/3 (2001), p. 302.

[67] “What Is Metaphysics?,” pp. 107-108.

[68] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 447. Emphasis added.

[69] Ibid., p. 624.

[70] “The Difference of Theology,” pp. 306-307.

[71] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 448.

[72] Ibid.

[73] The Word Has Been Abroad, p. 174.

[74] Being and Time, p. 320.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Ibid., pp. 320-21.

[79] Ibid., p. 321.

[80] Beauty of the Infinite, p. 214.

[81] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 449.

[82] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 450.

[83] Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 23.

[84] In fact, David Bentley Hart is perhaps right to argue that Heidegger’s claim “that in discriminating between the spheres of faith and critical reflection he is not placing them in rivalry to one another, or granting one priority over the other . . . is manifestly a lie: the philosopher, for example, is able to see that the theologian’s special language of sin falls under the more original, ontological determination of Dasein’s guilt (Schuld), and thus the analysis of guilt can clarify and correct the concept of sin, but never the reverse; after all, Heidegger assures us, ‘there is no such thing as a Christian philosophy,” The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 216. John R. Betz argues similarly, “Heidegger’s own philosophy is a secularization of it [analogia entis] and, more generally, a secularization of theology—hence the ‘advent’ of Being; hence the poet as the ‘shepherd’ who awaits the advent of Being; hence the kenosis of Being in beings, etc., etc,” in “Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part Two),” Modern Theology 22/1 (2006), pp. 16-17.

[85] Theological Style, p. 23.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Hans Urs von Balthasar, “A Résumé of My Thought,” Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 1.

[88] As David C. Schindler notes, “though the meaning of ‘difference’ here is clearly indebted in different ways to both Aquinas and Heidegger, it does not line up cleanly with the thought and terminology of either one,” Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 36.

[89] Cf. Ibid., p. 34.

[90] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, pp. 614-15.

[91] Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 34.

[92] Wolfgang Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 175.

[93] Cf. Hart, Beauty of the Infinite, p. 132: “The truth of being is the whole of being, in its event, groundless, and so in its every detail revelatory of the light that grants it. Heidegger himself, ever the creature of his early theological teaching, came close to realizing this, in his attempts to deliver the language of truth from the confines of every form of positivism, or analytic mastery, or propositional reductionism; but ultimately he proved too forgetful of the radical question of beauty that Christian thought had raised, and so retreated back again along the tenebrous woodland paths of ontological necessity, in search of the “how it is” of the event rather than the “that it is” of the world, seeking a clearing where it never had been (nor ever could be) found.”

[94] “Résumé,” p. 3. According to David C. Schindler this is Balthasar’s “most fundamental insight . . . that affects everything else,” Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 37.

[95] “Balthasar . . . makes a case not simply for a metaphysics in the conventional sense, but for a meta-anthropology that takes man in his freedom as the key to understanding being—without, however, slipping into an anthropological reduction,” Martin Bieler, “Future of the Philosophy of Being,” p. 472, quoted in Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 259.

[96] Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 302.

[97] Ibid., p. 38.

[98] Ibid., p. 36.

[99] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 616.

[100] Ibid..

[101] “Résumé,” p. 3.

[102] Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and Rahner,” The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar ed. John Riches (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1986), p. 21.

[103] Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 37.

[104] Ibid., p. 38.

[105] Ibid.

[106] Ibid., pp. 41-42.

[107] Ibid., p. 43.

[108] The Truth of the World, p. 267.

[109] Metaphysics in the Modern Age, p. 636.

[110] Henrici, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” p. 165.

[111] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor trans. Brian E. Daley, S. J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 65.

[112] “Résumé,” p. 5.

[113] Ibid.

[114] Cf. Being and Time, p. 359. According to Heidegger existential analysis must be characterized by violence in order to uncover Being. “Dasein’s kind of Being thus demands that any ontological Interpretation which sets itself the goal of exhibiting the phenomena in their primordiality, should capture the Being of this entity, in spite of this entity’s own tendency to cover things up. Existential analysis, therefore, constantly has the character of doing violence [Gewaltsamkeit], whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness.”

[115] Theological Style, p. 62.

[116] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christlich Meditieren, p. 7 quoted in Raymond Gawronski, Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter between East and West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 221.

[117] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Spiritus Creator. Skizzen zur Theologie III, p. 282, quoted in Raymond Gawronski, Word and Silence, p. 86.

St. Thomas on the Flesh of Christ

“The Flesh of Christ is capable of accomplishing many things in many ways insofar as it is united to the Word and to the Spirit. [. . .] If we abstract divinity and the Holy Spirit, this Flesh is no more powerful than any other flesh; but if the Spirit and divinity are present, this Flesh is capable of accomplishing many things because it makes those who take it live in Christ; in fact, it is through the Spirit of charity that man lives in God. [. . .] If you attribute this effect of the Flesh to the Spirit, and to the divinity united to the Flesh, then it procures eternal life, as we see in Galatians 5:25: If we live in the Spirit, let us walk also in the Spirit. And this is why Christ adds: The words which I have spoken to you are Spirit and life (Jn 6:64). We must therefore refer them to the Spirit united to the Flesh; and understood thus, they are life, which is to say, the life of the soul. For in the same way as the body lives by a bodily life through a bodily spirit, so the soul lives by a spiritual life through the Holy Spirit: Send forth your Spirit and they will be created (Ps 103:30).” – St. Thomas Aquinas, In Joannem 6:64 (#993).

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: Speeches on Christianity to Its Neoplatonic Despisers

“What is red does not have to be white. What is not a horse is not necessarily a human.”

[Pseudo-Dionysius, Epistle 6, 1077A]

I. Introduction

In both East and West, arguably few figures are as controversial as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. As early as 532 AD, even before it was revealed to be pseudonymous, authorship of the Corpus Dionysiacum (herafter, CD) was looked upon with suspicion by Hypatius of Ephesus who considered it to be a forgery. In fact, Hypatius’ argument is but a foretaste of controversy that would surround the Dionysian corpus for the rest of the church’s history:

Those testimonies which you say are of the blessed Dionysius, how can you prove that they are authentic, as you claim? For if they are in fact by him, they would not have escaped the notice of blessed Cyril. Why do I speak of the blessed Cyril, when the blessed Athanasius, if in fact he had thought them to be by Dionysius, would have offered these same testimonies concerning the consubstantial Trinity before all others at the council of Nicea against Arius’ blasphemies of the diverse substance. But if none of the ancients made mention of them, I simply do not know how you can prove that they were written by Dionysius.[1]

Since Hypatius, theologians and philosophers from East and West, Christian and non-Christian alike, have either condemned or praised Pseudo-Denys for his genius. Pseudo-Denys and his writings have been described by various thinkers with a number of contradictory labels: Christian, Neoplatonist, Procline, Monophysite, Chalcedonean, Gnostic, agnostic, mystical, rationalist, apophatic, ontotheological, Derridean, Heideggerian, postmodern, etc. It has become almost impossible to identify the roots of Dionysius’ thinking, much less his actual identity.

So much ink has been spilled over Dionysius’ heritage and legacy that few have risen to question the general approach to the CD.[2] Much like modern quests for the historical Jesus, investigations into a history behind the text seem to overlook the ‘canonical’ situation of the text itself.[3] As Sarah Coakley puts it, “The modern quest for Dionysian ‘authenticity’ (Platonism versus Christianity) has bracketed the possibility of such a natural convergence of the ‘unknown God’ with Pauline Christianity.”[4] I argue that the writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite must be, albeit somewhat artificially, situated within the biblical realm (i.e., in front of the Areopagus) in order to be understood properly and not taken as a theology proper (which, for example, attempts to use Dionysius’ authority to implicitly argue for or against a particular christology). This way avoids imputing higher ambitions to the author of the CD than are actually present; more specifically, by understanding the Dionysian writings within their fictitious context, they can be understood as further explications of what the apostle Paul meant when he spoke of the ‘unknown God’ in Acts 17 (and Romans 1).

II. The Quest for the Historical Denys
(Or: Will the Real Pseudo-Dionysius of Areopagite Please Stand Up?)

. . . he charges me with making unholy use of Greek things to attack the Greeks. It would be more correct to say to him in reply that it is the Greeks who make unholy use of godly things to attack God. They try to banish divine reverence by means of the very wisdom which God has given them.

[Pseudo-Dionysius, Epistle 7, 1080AB.]

The critical attitude evinced in Hypatius of Ephesus above is encountered more forcefully in the Reformers. The revelation of Dionysius’ pseudonymity by Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus of Rotterdam, among others, “rendered the Dionysian tradition irrelevant to the burning debate about Church authority.”[5] Luther wrote that Denys “hardly shows any signs of solid learning,” and “If one were to read and judge without prejudice, is not everything in it his own fancy and very much like a dream?”[6] In fact, not only did Luther consider Pseudo-Dionysius to be a terrible theologian, “he is downright dangerous, for he is more of a Platonist than a Christian.”[7] Finally, stating an opinion shared by all the Reformers, Luther wrote, “Let us rather hear Paul, that we may learn Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is the way, the life, and the truth; he is the ladder by which we come to the Father.”[8]

Similarly, Calvin, though more cautious than Luther (as is typical), argued that the Areopagite’s “shrewd and subtle disquisitions in his Celestial Hierarchy . . . are merely idle talk,” and such “nugatory wisdom” should be put aside for the “simple doctrine of Scripture.”[9] For Calvin, Pseudo-Dionysius epitomized the speculative theology of the ‘schoolmen.’ Like Luther, Calvin saw that in contrast to Pseudo-Denys the apostle Paul offered a safer alternative: the latter, “though he was carried to the third heaven, so far from delivering any thing of the kind, positively declares, that it was not lawful for man to speak the secrets which he had seen.”[10] In line with Calvin’s assessment, the protestant scholastic, Francis Turretin dedicated an entire question (spanning about five pages) to the “hierarchies of Dionysius.”[11] After proving that “the name ‘Areopagite’ is falsely given,” Turretin concluded, “These things savor of Platonism and not of Paulinism.”[12] According to Froehlich, “the new dating almost universally accepted in Protestant circles, opened the way for a more historical though often polemical approach to the enigmatic texts.”[13] Thus, for Protestants, the dubious authorship as well as the explicitly platonic strands going through Dionysius’ writings rendered him almost absolutely unacceptable as a theologian. As Douglas Farrow put it more recently, “the Dionysian Jesus is more akin to the cosmic Christ of Origen than to that of Irenaeus.”[14]

Surprisingly, the Reformers are not alone in their suspicion. Some theologians within the Eastern tradition have also expressed skepticism towards the Dionysian legacy. According to John Meyendorff, one of the most vocal Eastern Orthodox critics, the Areopagite’s conception of the Church is “clearly dominated by the Platonic opposition between the sensible and the intelligible.”[15] Examining Dionysius’ definition of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Meyendorff writes, “Dionysius remains fundamentally a prisoner of the sense-mind dichotomy, and . . . he lacks the philosophical means to express the realities linked with the incarnation.”[16] In similar fashion, Kenneth Paul Wesche writes, “Although Ps.-Dionysius offers a profound spiritual vision, we cannot share that his chief inspiration was the Christian faith.”[17] For both the Reformers and certain Eastern theologians, then, far from helping Christianity, Pseudo-Dionysius harmed it by smuggling foreign (specifically Neoplatonic) elements into Christian theology and, therefore, cannot be trusted.

Such a bleak painting of the reception of the CD within the history of the Church without mention of Denys’ enthusiastic supporters would be inaccurate to say the least. Much to the dismay of critics, “The theology of the Areopagite was seen and used for a thousand years and longer as one of the basic forms of the Church’s theology.”[18] Even for the above-mentioned Hypatius of Ephesus, despite suspicions regarding the authorship of the CD, “His statements are directed against its historicity, not its orthodoxy.”[19] In fact, “Representatives of just about every major Christological party in the early sixth century at some point appealed to the authority of Dionysius.”[20] As Christian Schäfer describes, more than the author’s “hagionym and alleged Apostolic discipleship . . . it was foremost and above all the philosophical and theological content of the writings that rendered it immune to all criticism concerning its dubious authorship and origin.”[21] Despite the initial darkness surrounding the Pseudo-Areopagite’s real identity, then, his philosophy and theology eventually caused him to gain a strong foothold in the church’s theology.[22]

What to make of this mixed Dionysian legacy? On the one hand are those who argue, with Luther and the Reformers, that Pseudo-Dionysius is ‘more of a Platonist than a Christian,’ compromising the Christian faith in order to appeal to philosophy, and, therefore, should be rejected and ignored. On the other hand are the more optimistic supporters who argue that, far from platonizing Christianity, “it was a matter of the convictions expressed through language and by means of whatever methods were to hand.”[23] From this latter perspective Denys was not a Neoplatonist wolf in sheep’s clothing, but a Christian expressing the truth of Christianity in Neoplatonic garb—spolia Aegyptiorum. As Hans Urs von Balthasar says, “Denys therefore does not want to borrow, but rather to return what has been borrowed from its true owner.”[24]

Though the question of Pseudo-Dionysius’ Neoplatonic philosophy is certainly not unimportant, it seems that a different approach to the corpus might render new light to an old (and often tiring) discussion. Rather than begin another quest, Schäfer is right to recommend, “we should rather interpret the Areopagitic writings according to the fictitious, yet openly programmatic claims of their author.”[25]

III. “To an Unknown God”

And such a one, precisely because he neither sees him nor knows him, truly arrives at that which is beyond all seeing and knowledge. Knowing exactly this, that he is beyond everything perceived and conceived, he cries out with the prophet, “Knowledge of you is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.”

[Pseudo-Dionysius, Epistle 5, 1073A.]

            Common to most criticisms of the substance of Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings is the relative independence of his theology from the fundamental Christian event: the Incarnation. This criticism is visible in Luther and the Reformers, as well as modern Eastern Orthodox theologians. For instance, Kenneth Paul Wesche, arguing that ‘gnosis’ is the central element of Denys’ thought, writes, “Dionysius’ vision finally renders superfluous the Incarnation of Christ.”[26] Similarly, Meyendorff refers to “the symbolic Gnosticism of pseudo-Dionysius,” responsible for Denys’ Incarnational negligence, as one of his unfortunate legacies.[27] For the two Eastern Orthodox theologians, the paucity of explicit reference to the Incarnation in the CD is to be attributed to the Areopagite’s inability to make room for it due to his pre-formed Neoplatonic ‘system.’

Such approaches fail, however, inasmuch as they overlook the ‘canonical’ context of Dionysius’ writings.[28] A quick look over Paul’s speech to the Athenians (Acts 17:22-32) reveals that a great bulk of it consists in explicating this ‘unknown God’ apart from the Incarnation (mentioned finally in v. 31). One might similarly understand Dionysius’ explication of God who is ‘beyond being’ (an unmistakably Neoplatonic idea). Denys asks, “If God cannot be grasped by mind or sense-perception, if he is not a particular being, how do we know him?”[29]  This is the fundamental aporia that philosophy finds itself in. How does one understand a God who ‘made the world and everything in it’ (and in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’—immanence) and therefore is beyond all things since he does not need anything nor is served by human hands (transcendence). To wonder why the incarnation does not enter at this undoubtedly philosophical point and find fault is to fault Paul himself. Such an approach mistakes Denys’ primary aim: to establish first the utter transcendence of the God who immanently upholds all things. It is only when the Incarnation is an incarnation of this God who is ‘beyond being’ that the gospel can be properly understood.

Though a bit childish, it may help the reader to imagine stepping into the shoes of Dionysius the Areopagite of the biblical narrative. It would be fundamentally misguided for a Greek standing at the Areopagus, knowing nothing of Christianity, to inquire into the ‘real identity’ (or referent) of the altar to the ‘unknown god.’ The Neoplatonic elements within Denys’ theology function similarly.[30] Inasmuch as Pseudo-Denys utilizes Neoplatonic philosophy in an apophatic fashion (i.e., ‘to an unknown God’), he is simply imitating Paul at the Areopagus. Thus, the Incarnation is not reduced to an accidental element in Dionysius’ thought. It is precisely for the sake of the Incarnation that Denys emphasizes the ‘unknowability’ of God—in order not to identify an ontic idol with the God in Christ.[31] He does not mention Jesus Christ after the fact in order to maintain the outward ‘Christianness’ of his otherwise purely Neoplatonic philosophy (assuming that the two are at odds) as Wesche and Meyendorff assume. Marion argues, “To suppose that manifestation coincides with obscurity in Denys because, as is too often repeated, the Christ occupies only a secondary, superficial role, would here be a misinterpretation.”[32] Rather than confusing manifestation with obscurity (better termed ‘hiddenness’ here), Denys expresses the latter for the sake of the former. But such a manifestation does not and cannot finally come from Neoplatonic philosophy (or any philosophy at all for that matter), but from God’s revelation in Christ.

The question to be asked, then, is not whether Denys’ theological ‘system’ is built on the Incarnation (this is what Meyendorff and Wesche want to know), but whether his philosophical ‘altar’ is sufficiently apophatic (i.e., is this an altar ‘to an unknown god’?).

IV: True Philosophy

This knowledge of beings, which he rightly calls philosophy and which the divine Paul described as the ‘wisdom of God,’ should have led true philosophers to be uplifted to him who is the Cause not only of all beings but also of the very knowledge which one can have of these beings.

[Pseudo-Dionysius, Epistle 7, 1080B]

To ask about Denys’ philosophical altar assumes that he has one, and if he does, it cannot be a purely ‘Christian’ one since the Athenians lacked such a thing (otherwise why would Paul need to evangelize to them in the first place!).[33] As Schäfer argues,

. . . there is no doubt, according to the claimed authorship of the Areopagite, that the author of DN speaks as though revealing (the processional essence of) the “unknown God” of Greek—Platonic—philosophy to cultivate Greeks, just as Paul ventured to do in Athens (Acts 17:18-33) and before “certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics” (Acts 17:18).[34]

This leads to a point touched upon throughout this paper: Pseudo-Dionysius’ philosophy is undeniably Neoplatonic; more specifically, his philosophy closely follows that of Proclus.[35] As Hankey describes: “Dionysius not only shares vocabulary with the Neoplatonists, he lifts long passages from them.”[36]

This, however, is not problematic. Denys’ dependence on Procline Neoplatonism doesn’t necessarily entail an anti-Christian philosophy, nor does it entail philosophy’s identity with Christianity.[37] As Schäfer describes, “It seems as though Dionysius’ thinking is an exemplary exercise (and a rather accomplished one, I might add) of how, according to the Apostle’s preaching in Rom 1:19f., Greek thought could have achieved true knowledge of the true God had it not gone astray.”[38] In other words, Denys’ work functions as something of a ‘natural theology’ after the vein of Paul at Areopagus. Again, Schäfer helpfully observes, “In Dionysius, everything seems ‘archetypal,’ not singularly unique or non-recurring. In a certain way, however, this is exactly the ‘Pauline’ grounds on which the teaching of the Areopagite stands.”[39]

Once Denys is read in his ‘canonical’ context, it makes little sense to judge the form of his thought by theological standards lying outside of the Areopagus.[40] It is from this angle that one can understand Pseudo-Dionysius when he writes, “As for the love of Christ for humanity, the Word of God, I believe, uses this term to hint that the transcendent has put aside its own hiddenness and has revealed itself to us by becoming a human being.”[41] Or again, “ . . . and though himself beyond being, he took upon himself the being of humans.”[42] It is precisely the God ‘beyond being,’ the ‘unknown God,’ who has condescended to man and become a man. The Incarnation may not form the center of the Areopagite’s theology in a way like Barth, but this does not mean that the Incarnation does not ‘fit.’ In one sense, the Incarnation qua revelation can never ‘fit’ into a philosophy but must be given to it. This is precisely what occurs in Denys’ thinking. For Denys, “that tremendous ascending movement of negation . . . is kindled only—and ever more brightly—by God’s movement of descent as he imparts himself in manifestations.”[43] The unknown god cannot itself reveal the God beyond being, but it does bring one to the point of unknowing darkness, the place where only the Father of Jesus Christ can say, “Let light shine out of darkness” (2 Cor. 4:6).

V. Conclusion

Placing Pseudo-Denys within his ‘canonical context’ only solves the formal problem of how to approach the CD—it continues to leave unanswered questions regarding the content (though it does have a tremendous impact on how one views the content). This paper dealt primarily with the Divine Names and Epistles of the CD, while the Celestial Hierarchy and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy remain to be discussed at greater length.[44] It is my hope that a ‘canonical’ approach will enable a less polemical, and more charitable understanding of Pseudo-Dionysius than various attempts to get ‘behind the text’ in order to figure out whether it is Proclus or Paul who is speaking through Denys. Schäfer offers a helpful summary:

. . . it should be clear that the author of the CD never claims to be Paul himself. There have been many pseudo-Pauline writings in the fifth and sixth century, but whoever wrote the treatise DN did not claim to speak in Paul’s name. He deliberately wanted to be regarded and read as the mouthpiece of Dionysius the Areopagite, i.e., as a learned Greek educated in and highly influenced by Hellenic philosophy, and as someone who received Christian faith from the Apostle Paul.[45]

It is fitting to conclude with a statement from the Areopagite himself: “As far as I am concerned I have never spoken out against Greeks or any others. In my view, good men are satisfied to know and to proclaim as well as they can the truth itself as it really is.”[46]

---

[1] Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998),18.

[2] There are, recently, a few notable exceptions; cf. Charles M. Stang, “Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym,” Modern Theology Vol. 24 no. 4 (October, 2008), 541-555, as well as Christian Schäfer, Philosophy of Dionysius, 163-73.

[3] Obviously, I use the term ‘canonical’ in an extremely loose sense without conferring (or intending to confer) any canonical authority to the Dionysian text. My concern is more in terms of methodological approach of situating the text itself. In this approach I am inspired by Brevard Childs and Hans Frei; that is, the fundamental question to understanding the Dionysian text is not meant to be figured out through historical research into the actual author of the text or his historical circumstances (though these are important in understanding the formation of the text), rather one should approach the text as if the same Dionysius from Acts 17 had written it. The question to understanding the text is not “Who is the historical Pseudo-Dionysius?” but “What does an explication of the ‘unknown God’ mean within Greek philosophy?” or “How does Greek thought reveal the ‘eternal power and divine nature’ of God described in Romans 1:20?” Viewed in this way, the parallels between Procline Neoplatonism and the CD make much more sense. Cf. Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974).

[4] Sarah Coakley, “Introduction—Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite,” Modern Theology Vol 24 no. 4 (October, 2008), 535.

[5] Karlfried Froehlich, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,” in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works trans. Colm Luibheld and Paul Rorem (New York, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987), 40.

[6] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Jarislav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (eds) (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, and Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1955-1986), 36:109 = Dr. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883-1993), 6:562 quoted in Piotr J. Malysz, “Luther and Dionysius: Beyond Mere Negations,” Modern Theology Vol. 24 no. 4 (October, 2008), 680.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1. 14. 4.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology trans. George Musgrave Giger ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1992) 1:551-555.

[12] Elenctic Theology, 552, 554.

[13] “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation,” 46.

[14] Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Signficance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids: MI, Eerdmans, 1999), 135.

[15] John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought trans. Yves Dubois (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 102.

[16] Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 103.

[17] Kenneth Paul Wesche, “Christological Doctrine and Liturgical Interpretation in Pseudo-Dionysius,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly Vol. 33 (1989), 54.

[18] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, Vol. 2 of The Glory of the Lord trans. Andrew Louth, Francis McDonagh, Brian McNeil C. R. V. ed. John Riches (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2006), 207.

[19] John of Scythopolis, 18.

[20] John of Scythopolis, 19.

[21] Christian Schäfer, The Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite: An Introduction to the Structure and the Content of the Treatise On the Divine Names, Vol. 99 of Philosophia Antiqua: A Series of Studies on Ancient Philosophy (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006), 13-14.

[22] As the abundance of commentaries on the CD shows: Maximus the Confessor, John Scotus Eriugena, John Scythopolis, Hugo of St. Victor, John Saracenus, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Dionysius the Carthusian, Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas Cabasilas, and others commented on Denys’ writings.

[23] Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1989), 24.

[24] Clerical Styles, 208.

[25] Philosophy of Dionysius, 170. In answer to the two above mentioned options, however, I would answer that Pseudo-Denys’ Neoplatonsim (and it most certainly follows Procline Neoplatonism) is not opposed to the Christian conception of transcendence, as I hope will become clear.

[26] “Christological Doctrine,” 63-64.

[27] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 119, emphasis added.

Both Wesche and Meyendorff base their arguments, to a degree, on Denys’ alleged Platonic dichotomy between spirit and matter. This, however, is too simplistic and fails to understand nuances, not only in Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings, but also within Procline Neopalatonism. Proclus, who is followed by Denys here, “differs from Plotinus by expressly rejecting the doctrine that evil is matter and that, as matter, it is necessary. . . . To say, as Plotinus does, both that matter is evil and that it proceeds from the Good leads to absurdity . . . Proclus further argues that matter, precisely in that it is a necessary aspect of the sensible cosmos, cannot be evil,” Eric D. Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007), 56. Pseudo-Dionysius writes, “There is no truth in the common assertion that evil is inherent in matter qua matter, since matter too has a share in the cosmos in beauty and form” (Divine Names, 729A).

It is not the purpose of this paper to deal with Wesche’s and Meyendorff’s particular criticisms of Denys, but it is fitting to answer a recurring critique from both theologians; namely, that of Denys’ ‘symbolism.’ For Wesche, “Symbolism is the means of attaining gnosis, ‘anagogy’ or contemplation is the method, and ‘gnosis’ is the goal” (“Christological Doctrine,” 54). Meyendorff writes, “The bread and wine are for the Areopagite nothing but ‘the sacred symbols by which Christ signifies and communicates himself’” (Christ in Eastern, 106, emphasis added). These superficial criticisms simply assume that ‘symbol’ is meant in a sort of proto-Zwinglian way (not to mention Wesche’s shallow criticism of Denys on the mere basis of the word, ‘gnosis,’ without attempting to understand whether such a word implies Gnosticism); however, σύμβολα does not carry the negative connotations that Wesche and Meyendorff assume it does. Perl writes, “A philosophical examination of Dionysius’ theory of symbols shows that being as such, not merely in its sensible aspect, is symbolic, and that there can be no non-symbolic knowledge of God” (Theophany, 101). This means that the symbolic does not refer merely to sensible appearance or presentation that can be easily detached from the res but something much more fundamental. The same sort of shallow argumentation characterizes Meyendorff’s criticism of individualism, Gnosticism, and ‘static’ hierarchy in Denys’ writings. The appearance of certain ‘bad’ words, regardless of their respective contextual meanings, is enough to convict Denys of Gnostic or Origenistic tendencies.

Cf. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “The Reception of Dionysius in Twentieth-Century Eastern Orthodoxy,” Modern Theology Vol. 24 no.4 (October, 2008): 707-23. Gavrilyuk’s article is a fascinating overview of how Denys was received by modern Eastern Orthodox thinkers (such as Wesche, Meyendorff, Lossky, Yannaras, et al.). Gavrilyuk describes how “Most of the influential Orthodox interpreters of Dionysius located the CD within the framework of larger master narratives. . . . In the process, Dionysian theology has been used as a historical source as well as a polemical weapon” (708).

[28] See n.27 for why the arguments also fail on the historical-philosophical level.

[29] DN, 869C.

[30] See Perl, The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite, 2: “The study of Dionysius by Christian theologians has tended to fall into a pattern of accusation and exculpation: some contend that he is fundamentally Neoplatonic and therefore not truly Christian, while others attempt to vindicate his Christianity by showing that he is not really Neoplatonic. The prevailing assumption on both sides is that Neoplatonism is a Bad Thing and is fundamentally incompatible with authentic Christianity. Both sides tend to share a somewhat simplistic and philosophically unsophisticated conception of Neoplatonism, and, indeed, a somewhat narrow and monolithic view of what counts as authentic Christianity. Such approaches preclude a genuinely philosophical understanding both of non-Christian Neoplatonism and Dionysius.”

[31] Precisely for this reason Pseudo-Dionysius has been utilized by Jean-Luc Marion and Christos Yannaras. Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001): 139-95, and Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite trans. Haralambos Ventis (London: T & T Clark, 2005). See also William J. Hankey, “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism in Contemporary Christian Dionysian Polemic: Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa versus Vladimir Lossky and Jean-Luc Marion,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82:4.(2008). Hankey, like Perl argues for a more nuanced understanding of Neoplatonism. Hankey writes, “What blinds [modern theologians] is a sectarian religious narrowness which belongs to their determination either to free their religion from Hellenic philosophy, or to have it generate its own metaphysics, or, stranger yet, to do both! At the very point when our historical researches make us endlessly aware of the inescapable interpenetration of religion and philosophy, our philosophy and theology fail us” (9).

In reference to n.30, Marion would fall into the category of those who see Denys’ theology as ‘overcoming’ Neoplatonism—in other words, Marion erroneously assumes that there is an overcoming that must take place. Hankey lists three characteristics of Marion’s false opposition of Christianity and Neoplatonism (that Marion shares with Vladimir Lossky): “1) they involve generalized assertions about Hellenism and Neoplatonism without providing textual comparisons between Dionysius and Proclus or engagement with the deep and extensive Neoplatonic scholarship, 2) Neoplatonism is presented as if it had no other relation to the Principle than that of an intellectual quest for conceptual objects, 3) the positions of Damascius and Proclus are ascribed to Dionysius, and, what all three would in fact oppose, is hung round the neck of the Neoplatonists” (12).

[32] The Idol and Distance, 157.

[33] I put ‘Christian’ in inverted commas since the distinction between a Christian and non-Christian philosophy would not have made much sense to Denys or the ancient and medieval world in general. As Hankey writes, “Nothing is more foreign to the ancient and medievals than Pascal’s positing of two gods, one of revelation, another of the philosophers,” “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism,” 11. Understanding this is particularly difficult for those who automatically assume a necessary separation (and often blatant opposition) between philosophy and theology. As Hankey puts it, “With quasi-positivist Anglo-American philosophy, on one side, and Heidegger dominating the other, there has never been a century less equipped to understand the relation of philosophy and revelation” (9).

[34] Philosophy of Dionysius, 126-27.

[35] Procline and Plotinian Neoplatonism should not be confused. Cf. n.27 for one major difference between Plotinus and Proclus: namely, their respective views on evil and matter.

[36] “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism,” 11.

[37] This is not to suggest that Denys’ work is merely Procline Neoplatonism, but that the influence is readily apparent and undeniable. No doubt, Denys did not accept everything as Proclus had understood it. Christian Schäfer has demonstrated how the pattern of μονή (rest/halt), πρόοδος (procession), and ἐπιστροφή (return) are shifted in Denys’ thought to πρόοδος, μονή, and ἐπιστροφή. This subtle change in placement of μονή emphasizes creation qua creation as it proceeds from God and returns to God. Schäfer describes: “It is by speaking about God’s ineffable Goodness that Creation is understood. This understanding of the world is opened and made possible by the acknowledgement of the utter impossibility of grasping God’s essence and the introspectively illuminated existential claims of God’s loving quoad nos, or ‘concern-to-us.’ This quoad nos, once acknowledged as God’s concern for every created being, generates an individual understanding of every being’s origin, essence, and destiny, and consequently, a primordial understanding of the entire ontological process, from and toward God,” Philosophy of Dionysius, 120.

[38] Philosophy of Dionysius, 126.

[39] Philosophy of Dionysius, 157.

[40] This is not to suggest that the content of Pseudo-Denys’ thought cannot be judged. Indeed it can, and should be, but it must first be understood and approached from this ‘canonically-informed’ angle. Meyendorff and Wesche’s criticism about the Denys’ system leaving no real place for the incarnation is a judgment that is first based upon a misunderstanding of the form of Denys’ thought—which ultimately distorts how they understand the content.

[41] Epistle 3, 1069B.

[42] Epistle 4, 1072B.

[43] Balthasar, Clerical Styles, 165.

[44] For the Reformers, the latter two writings seem to have been the most problematic. For many it represented the height of medieval scholastic speculation (the question of the number of angels that can dance on a pin comes to mind). Yet it is helpful to note that angelology in medieval thought cannot simply be looked upon as celestial speculation, but is a more abstract ontological method. As Eric Perl describes: “Intellection, as the highest mode of consciousness, is thus the higher mode of life and being. Angels, as intellects, therefore possess in a higher way all the perfections of lesser beings. This accounts for what may seem to be Dionysius’ excessive, not to say obsessive, interest in angels, not only in the Celestial Hierarchy but also in the Divine Names and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Angels are not merely the highest in a univocal series of beings; rather, they are beings in the fullest, most complete, and therefore paradigmatic sense. . . . Angelology becomes ontology,” Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius, 70.

[45] Schäfer, Philosophy of Dionysius, 128.

[46] Epistle 7, 1077B.

The God of Love

“Even when a man is said to be in another’s good graces, it is understood that there is something in him pleasing to the other; even as anyone is said to have God’s grace–with this difference, that what is pleasing to a man in another is presupposed to his love, but whatever is pleasing to God in a man is caused by the Divine love…” (ST I-II. 110, i, a.1)

Considering ‘How He is Not’: Divine Simplicity in the Summa Theologiae

[Fall 2010: Aquinas Paper]:

Considering ‘How He is Not’: Divine Simplicity in the Summa Theologiae

“Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.”[1]

I. Introduction

In the third question of his Summa Theologiae, ‘Of the Simplicity of God,’ Aquinas discusses, in an almost exclusively philosophical way, the manner of God’s existence. For those afraid that medieval scholasticism utilized a static, Aristotelian philosophy, independent of special revelation to construct a doctrine of God (often pejoratively referred to as ‘classical theism’), reading the first several questions of the Summa will probably not do much to allay such fears.[2] Suspicions of a ‘natural theology’ seem to find further confirmation when Aquinas, rather than cite Scripture, argues for divine simplicity based upon God as “absolute form,” or “absolute being.”[3] Is the great Angelic Doctor of the Catholic Church guilty of building a theological tower of Babel? A superficial reading of the Summa might lead one to such a conclusion. A careful reading, however, reveals that such an accusation can hardly be sustained.

It must be admitted from the outset that Thomas’s entire section on divine simplicity is, in fact, almost entirely philosophical—and he would not have denied this. In fact, in the preceding section Thomas responds to the objection that, “It is an article of faith that God exists,” by arguing that, “The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles.”[4] However, despite the fact that philosophy plays an important role in question three (and in the Summa as a whole), the conclusion cannot be drawn from this that Aquinas sought to circumvent divine revelation. In this paper I argue that Aquinas’s use of philosophy in his doctrine of divine simplicity, rather than inordinately displace divine revelation, serves to limit the role of natural revelation in a manner appropriate to “the higher worth of its subject-matter;” for Aquinas, philosophy is merely a tool to be used in order to “discriminate sense from nonsense,” providing the grammar for theology.[5]

II. Ancillae Theologiae

It is helpful that Aquinas himself begins the Summa by asking, “Whether, besides philosophy, any further doctrine is required?”[6] As one might expect, he answers the question positively, stating that, “it is useful that besides philosophical science there should be other knowledge—i.e., inspired of God.”[7] Evidently, for Thomas, natural revelation, in itself, is not enough to know who God is—something “besides philosophical science” is necessary.[8] Thus, Thomas at least appears to grant divine revelation a distinct place in theology.

Yet, the fact that ‘other knowledge,’ than philosophy is necessary, does not cause Thomas to do away with philosophy altogether. “Although arguments from human reason cannot avail to prove what must be received on faith,” writes Aquinas, “nevertheless this doctrine argues from articles of faith to other truths.”[9] Moreover, “sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason.”[10] Even with a strong distinction between natural and divine revelation, philosophy continues to hold an important place.

This is the case for two reasons: first, because “Every truth by whomsoever spoken is from the Holy Ghost as bestowing the natural light,” meaning that natural revelation (i.e., philosophy) is also from God.[11] And, second, because of “the defect of our intelligence, which is more easily led by what is known through natural reason.”[12] In other words, for Thomas, as for the majority of the Christian tradition, divine revelation presupposes natural revelation; grace and nature are not inherently at odds with one another, but “natural reason should minister to faith.”[13] Aquinas provides an apt summary of this in his discussion on “whether without grace man may know any truth”:

Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. But he does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpass his natural knowledge.[14]

Thus, in terms of knowledge of God, though philosophy (a natural light) may not be sufficient to know those things surpassing natural knowledge, it remains a useful tool to know “the truth in all things;” and inasmuch as grace is not competing with nature, there is a sense in which philosophy, because it pertains to the the human ratio, plays a necessary role in theology—man, after all, is distinguished from the rest of creation as the imago Dei by his rational faculty.[15]

So far, in his discussion on philosophy, there is nothing in Thomas to suggest a diminution of the centrality of divine revelation. As long as Aquinas does not use natural revelation or reason to attempt to prove or reach things that are exclusively revealed by divine revelation (the ‘magisterial’ use of reason), he remains clear of any charge of a natural theology. In many ways, Thomas can be viewed as following Romans 1:20, utilizing philosophy as the ‘handmaiden of theology’ (ancilla theologiae).[16]

Up until his section on divine simplicity, all Aquinas has done is show that, “because we do not know the essence of God,” the proposition “God exists” is not self-evident.[17] In a subtle but crucial move, Thomas distinguishes between what is traditionally understood simply as ‘being’ into God’s esse (act-of-being) and his ens (being/essence) and begins from God’s existence (esse) rather than God’s essence.[18] According to Thomas, though the proposition ‘God exists’ is not self-evident, it can be demonstrated through God’s effects. To suggest that by this Aquinas is making any conclusive statements about what this God is (i.e., his essence) is unfounded; we cannot know this being who is actus purus.[19] In reply to an objection he states that, “from [the effects] we cannot perfectly know God as He is in His essence.”[20] In other words, what can be proved from nature is not what God is but only that God is. Even after Aquinas’s well-known ‘five ways’ in question two of the Prima Pars, the Angelic Doctor seems not to have crossed any inappropriate boundary between divine and natural revelation.

III. The Simplicity of God

Having demonstrated that God exists in his five ways, Thomas proceeds to explicate the doctrine of divine simplicity. From the introduction of this section, it is readily apparent that Aquinas’s project here is largely apophatic, rather than cataphatic; “The question of [God’s] essence follows on the question of [His] existence.”[21] Only after the negative consideration of “how He is not” in question three is the reader able to move on to the more positive consideration of “How He is known by us” and “How He is named”—issues that are not addressed in any substantial manner until questions twelve and thirteen, respectively.[22]

The task at hand, then, is to figure out ‘how God is not,’ and this is where divine simplicity enters. The way that Aquinas demonstrates God’s simplicity is, “by denying [God] whatever is opposed to the idea of Him, viz. composition, motion, and the like.”[23] Aquinas is able to draw certain conclusions regarding the ways in which God does not exist based upon the understanding of God as first mover. As Brian Davies notes, “An effect, for Aquinas, flows from its cause (rather than from something else) because the cause is a thing of a certain kind with a definite way of being or working.”[24] Simply put, as Thomas works from effects to the first efficient cause, “to which everyone gives the name of God,” he is able to exclude certain manners in which God does not exist (‘how he is not’).[25]

Thomas begins the section on simplicity with a fairly basic question: “Whether God is a body?” Though his ‘sed contra’ is a citation of John 4:24, his expanded argument consists strictly of philosophical reasoning. His ‘three ways’ of explaining why God cannot be a body are based wholly upon his ‘five ways’ in question two.[26] God, as the first mover, cannot be a body because bodies are always moved by something else; since this first mover must be a being-in-act (actus purus) it is impossible for him to have any potentiality (which bodies naturally have); finally, since God, as the most noble being is not dependent on anything for animation except himself (whereas bodies are dependent on the soul), he cannot be a body. The same effects from nature that ground Thomas’s demonstration that God is, also ground his way of understanding ‘how God is not.’

Using the same logic for the remaining questions, Aquinas is able to exclude other ways in which God cannot exist. Because Aquinas neither assumes nor intends to show who or what God is in this section (or the previous one upon which it is based), Aquinas’s explanation of divine simplicity cannot be understood as being anything more than a working out of the logical consequences of the fact that God exists; how God is not, is informed by the fact that He is, not what He is. Definition of the essence of God remains out of the discussion thus far.

Though some statements made in question three, leading up to article seven are more positive than others, all should ultimately be understood to be negative statements about God. Man is composed of form and matter, God is not; man’s essence is different from his nature, God’s essence is not; man’s essence is different from his existence, God’s existence is not; man is contained in a genus, God is not; man contains accidents, God does not; man is composite, God is not. It is after all this that Aquinas can quote Augustine who unequivocally states, “God is truly and absolutely simple.”[27]

IV. Theo-logos: Speaking about the Simple God

Without any substantial recourse to Divine revelation, Aquinas has so far demonstrated that God is and, as a result, how God is not, leading up to the affirmation of God’s simplicity. Again, Aquinas has not yet attempted to answer the question of what God is (quid est). Despite the modesty of the doctrine, it has major implications for the rest of theology; because God is simple the way one speaks and thinks of God—‘the grammar’—must constantly be held in check.

At this point less, not more, can be said about God. Rather than construct a way to God, Aquinas uses philosophy to raze any existing edifices. If anything is known, it is precisely that there is not much (or nothing at all, for that matter) that can actually be said directly about God’s essence. Human speech is shown to be inadequate when referring to this simple God.

Divine simplicity means that God exists in a qualitatively different manner from any creature; it means, “There can be no touching Him . . . nor any other union with Him by mingling part by part.”[28] If God is not a body, then things cannot be predicated of him the same way they are predicated of corporeal beings.[29] If God is not composed of matter and form but is self-subsisting, then his ‘individuality’ must be conceived in a qualitatively different manner than that of creatures.[30] If God’s essence is his nature, predications made of God cannot be understood to mean that God is somehow ‘composed’ of varying attributes, but it becomes necessary to speak of God by “using concrete nouns to signify his subsistence, because with us only those things subsist which are composite,” but also to “use abstract nouns to signify His simplicity.”[31] Moreover, because God is perfect and his effects “do not imitate Him perfectly, but only as far as they are able,” his simplicity “can only be represented by divers things.”[32] The doctrine of simplicity, reveals how not to speak about God. Rather than garner any false confidence or illusion that one can know what God is, the doctrine of divine simplicity is a reminder of the utter inadequacy of human speech to predicate anything about God univocally.

At the most basic level, divine simplicity shows that this God who is, is totaliter aliter. Whereas creatures must be actualized in order to be, God’s very essence is being-in-act; creatures have existence from God, while God simply is esse (to-be) itself. Such a doctrine makes evident that human predication of God may be true, but human language only gets at truth about God in a very indirect and imperfect manner.[33] The doctrine prevents the theologian from reducing God to a being who is only quantitatively different from man (otherwise know as an onto-theology); it helps one distinguish between the res significanta and the modus significandi. God, who is signified in speech must always be distinguished from the way or manner in which we signify him.[34] In other words, humans cannot predicate anything univocally of God.

Only after a proper understanding of God’s simplicity can the theologian begin to speak in a manner appropriate to theology’s subject matter, whose “essence is above all that we understand about God and signify in word.”[35] What Thomas O’ Meara says regarding the five ways applies to Aquinas’s doctrine of divine simplicity:

Aquinas did not reject or confuse [divine and natural revelation], nor did he let revelation and metaphysics compete with each other. So those preliminary proofs are at best pointers towards a being utterly unlike ourselves and yet whose faint traces we see in that mysterious being’s work.[36]

Through the right use of philosophy, Aquinas gives us a self-consciously indirect way to use language to speak of the unknowable God.

In question three, the various objections raised are highly informative as to how divine simplicity functions practically. For example, all three objections to article one (“whether God is a body”) explicitly take their cue from the biblical text. The logic is quite simple: “Scripture attributes corporeal parts to God,” (the objector refers to Job 40:4, Psalm 33:16, and Psalm 117:16), “Therefore God is a body.”[37] According to Thomas, such a reading of Scripture betrays an ignorance of how one ought not speak of the simple God. “Corporeal parts,” responds Aquinas, “are attributed to God in Scripture on account of his actions . . . not sensibly.”[38] What Aquinas means when he calls natural knowledge a ‘preamble’ to faith becomes clearer here. If God is the first efficient cause, if he is actus purus, then he cannot be moved by anything else, he cannot have any potentiality or composition. Attributes and bodily actions must be understood as being predicated of this God in an entirely different manner (i.e., analogically) than the way they are predicated of corporeal creatures who are composed of both actuality and potentiality, whose essences are the result of a prior act.

In an objection to article two, “Whether God is composed of matter and form,” this ‘philosophical grammar’ can be seen at work again. Against the commonplace argument that since “anger, joy and the like . . . are attributed to God in Scripture,” God must experience such things as creatures do, Aquinas says that these passions are attributed to God, “on account of a similitude of effect. . . God’s punishment is metaphorically spoken of as His anger.”[39] Because of Aquinas’s understanding of how God is not, he is able to make sense of Scripture, to make sense of what would otherwise be nonsense.[40]

The entire Summa is informed in a very fundamental way by divine simplicity. This is evinced as early as question one. In article nine Thomas asks, “Whether Holy Scripture should use metaphor?” Since “Holy Writ” concerns itself with “divine and spiritual truths by means of comparisons with material things,” it is necessary to use metaphors since God’s manner of existing is totally different from the creature’s way of existing.[41] Though he has not said so explicitly, it is because God is simple (res significata) that it becomes necessary to speak in an often less-than-literalistic way (modus significandi) about him.

When it comes to speaking less indirectly (more felicitous than saying ‘more directly’!) about God in question thirteen, “the names of God,” the doctrine of simplicity continues to play a central role. To the question, “Whether a name can be given to God?” Aquinas answers in the affirmative, but not without serious qualification. “As God is simple, and subsisting,” explains Aquinas, “we attribute to Him abstract names to signify His simplicity, and concrete names to signify His substance and perfection, although both these kinds of names fail to express His mode of being.”[42] Even in our naming God, “we can only describe Him as far as we understand Him.”[43] Even when more positive things are predicated of God, they continue to describe God in a roundabout way.

The value of Aquinas’s doctrine (especially for modern theology) comes out in the final article of question three, “Whether God enters into composition of other things.”[44] Here Aquinas addresses those who affirm, “that God is the world-soul . . . the soul of the highest heaven,” others who say, “that God is the formal principle of all things,” and still others who teach “that God was primary matter.”[45] By understanding the way in which God does not exist, Aquinas can argue against any sort of pantheistic (in many respects, Hegelian) understanding of God. “It is not possible,” writes Aquinas, “for God to enter into composition of anything, either as a formal or a material principle.”[46] This is because “God is the first efficient cause.” As the first efficient cause, God cannot be, in any way, potential; he is actus purus. God must be simple. This informs our way of understanding God’s interaction with the world as its first cause. Rather than reduce God to merely a qualitatively distinct being as many are prone to do, Aquinas is able to develop a robust method of reading and understanding the biblical narrative that does not distort, but preserves God’s otherness.

V. Conclusion

I have shown that Aquinas’s heavy reliance on metaphysics to develop his doctrine of simplicity has not compromised the importance of divine revelation. On the contrary, Aquinas’s doctrine of divine simplicity, and the evident role that philosophy plays in it, serves to highlight a necessary distance between God and the creature that is manifest in nature. By beginning with existence, rather than essence, Thomas has barred the way to get to God’s essence from his effects. Divine simplicity does not say what God’s essence is, but pushes against any overconfident rationalism, showing that nothing can be spoken of God directly. Thus, the best way of understanding Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity is not as a positive stand-alone doctrine, but primarily as a boundary or as a ‘philosophical grammar’ providing a way to speak about the God “whose essence is beyond all we understand.”

---

[1] 1a. 3. Introduction.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), by the same author, The Trinity and the Kingdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Clark Pinnock, The Most Moved Mover (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001).

[3] 1a. 3. 7. In question three as a whole (containing eight articles), I counted fifteen explicit references to scripture, only three of which were Thomas’s own answers (this means that twelve of the fifteen references were made in the objections and not by Thomas directly). While the number of references to scripture does not necessarily speak positively or negatively as to how biblical Thomas’s understanding of simplicity is, it does seem to indicate something of his reliance on Scripture at this point.
With regard to natural theology, I do not mean by it natural revelation, but a theology that seeks to attain access to God in a mode other than, or independent from God’s divine revelation in Christ. Aquinas makes much use of natural revelation, but this is different from a natural theology. In this essay I use ‘natural revelation,’ philosophy, and metaphysics in a somewhat interchangeable fashion.

[4] 1a. 2. 2 ad. 1. Emphasis mine.

[5] ST, 1a. 1. 5. David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 69. I am heavily guided by David Burrell’s work on Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity. Cf. chapters 2-5, “The Unknown,” where Burrell writes, “My contention is that he [Aquinas] is engaged in the metalinguistic project of mapping out the grammar appropriate in divinis” (pp. 16-17).

[6] 1a. 1. 1.

[7] Ibid.

[8] ­Ibid

[9] 1a. 1. 8 ad. 1.

[10] 1a. 1. 8 ad. 2.

[11] 1a2ae. 109. 1 ad. 1.

[12] 1a. 1. 5 ad. 2.

[13] 1a. 1. 8 ad. 2. Reformed theology, however, though not pitting grace against nature, would not say that grace perfects nature, but that it heals/restores nature. Inasmuch as grace is not inherently at odds with nature (e.g., Anabaptists, certain forms of Dialectical theology), one can affirm what Thomas says concerning divine simplicity and the role of reason in theology, although at times Thomas seems not to emphasize enough the noetic effects of the fall.

[14] 1a2ae. 109. 1.

[15] 1a. 93. 6. “While in all creatures there is some kind of likeness to God, in rational creature alone we find a likeness of image as we have explained above.”

[16] 1a. 2. 2. Cf. 1a. 1. 5. Where Thomas writes that “Other sciences are called the handmaidens of this one.”
Here Etienne Gilson is worth quoting in full: “St. Thomas certainly concedes us a certain knowledge of God, a knowledge of what St. Paul calls in his Epistle to the Romans the invisibilia Dei. But we must see where this stops. First of all, if in this text it were a question of a knowledge of God Himself, St. Paul would not say invisibilia but invisible, for God is one, His essence is one, as the blessed see Him, but as we do not see Him. St. Paul’s words in no way lead us to qualify the statement that we cannot know the divine essence. All St. Paul concedes us is a knowledge of the invisibilia, that is, of several aspects of God, several ways of looking at Him (rationes) which we designate by names borrowed from his effects, and which we attribute to God.” The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas trans. L. K. Shook, C. S. B. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 107-108.

[17] 1a. 2. 1.

[18] For the importance of this distinction cf. Gilson, Christian Philosophy, 29-45; Burrell, Aquinas, 7-8; Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 31-33, 54-57. The fruit of Thomas’s emphasis on existence, according to Gilson, “was the complete renovation of the problem of the existence of God” (45).

[19] Gilson, 44.

[20] 1a. 2. 2 ad. 3. Cf., Contra Gentiles, 1, 14 (2), Where Thomas writes, “For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not” (emphasis mine).

[21] 1a. 2. 2 ad. 2. Emphasis mine.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Thought of Thomas, 62.

[25] 1a. 2. 2.

[26] 1a. 2. 3.

[27] 1a. 3. 7. 2-7.

[28] 1a. 3. 8.

[29] 1a. 3. 1 ad. 3.

[30] 1a. 3. 2 ad. 3.

[31] 1a. 3. 3 ad. 1.

[32] 1a. 3. 3 ad. 2.

[33] By ‘imperfect’ I am not saying that human knowledge or speech about God is inherently sinful or corrupt. Rather I am saying that because it is creaturely, human knowledge/speech is inherently finite.

[34] Cf. David Burrell, Aquinas, 3-11.

[35] 1a. 13. 1 ad. 1.

[36] Thomas Aquinas: Theologian (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 91.

[37] 1a. 3. 1.

[38] 1a. 3. 1 ad. 3.

[39] 1a. 3. 2 ad. 2.

[40] Cf. 1a. 1. 9.

[41] 1a. 1. 9.

[42] 1a. 13. 1 ad. 2.

[43] 1a. 13. 1 ad. 3.

[44] 1a. 3. 8.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

“God’s Speaking Is in His Speech-Acts”

[another paper from Fall 2009]:

God’s Speaking Is in His Speech-Acts

In his famous lectures on Evangelical theology, Barth begins with the forceful assertion that, “the God of the Gospel rejects any connection with a theology that has become paralyzed and static.”[1] Even through such a brief statement, the sort of theology that Barth sought to produce, as well as the theology he avoided is fairly evident. One need not look hard to find an example of what Barth had in mind when he spoke of a ‘paralyzed’ and ‘static’ theology. Only two decades later Carl Henry would publish his massive six-volume work on revelation with Barth’s theology clearly in his purview.[2] The views of Karl Barth and Carl Henry are notable for several reasons. First, both theologians sought to espouse a high view of Scripture in relation to revelation. [3] Second, each accused the other’s doctrine of revelation as being a low and even dangerous doctrine.[4] Finally, from a historically Reformed perspective, the tension between the two at this particular juncture is somewhat puzzling since, traditionally, Reformed dogmatics has unequivocally confessed both the perfection of Scripture as God’s Word (with Henry), as well as the saving action of God in and through His Word (with Barth).[5] Confronted with Barth and Henry, there is a great danger of being forced into a false ‘either/or’ situation. Though Barth’s theology has repeatedly come under fire from conservative Evangelicals, Henry’s critique of Barth reveals his own, ultimately dissatisfying, understanding of revelation—an alternative to Barth’s reductionism we must be careful to avoid. [6] Henry’s view is summarized in his statement that, “The only significant view of revelation is rational-verbal revelation . . . revelation in propositional form.”[7] While Barth claims that, “Truth is not what we say about God, but what He does and will do and has done,”[8] tracing revelation to God’s subjective act as speaker, Henry emphasizes the objectivity and ‘given-ness’ of God’s revelation so much that he seems to neglect the God who gives it.[9] Borrowing categories from speech-act theory, this paper will argue that at the end of the day those witnessing the debate are presented with a false choice between Barth’s actualism and Henry’s propositionalism.[10] The traditional Reformed understanding of revelation offers an alternative to both Barth (who tends to deverbalize the Word: God’s speaking is independent of his words in Scripture) and Henry (who tends to depersonalize the Word: Scripture’s speaking is independent of God’s present act), which upholds the possibility and perfection of God’s written Word (locutionary act) while simultaneously guarding the freedom of God as he curses and promises (various illocutionary stances—more than merely asserting propositional truths) as well as hardens and regenerates through his living and active Word (perlocutionary effect).[11]

William Willimon accurately sums up Barth’s view of revelation when he says that, “Nothing can be called ‘revelation’ until it acts upon me to bring me into communion with God,” Willimon continues that, “Christianity is not a set of abstract intellectual propositions; it is an event of faith and relationship to Christ.”[12] For Barth revelation cannot be identified with anything humanly, anything which we can master or have—not even Holy Scripture. As Trevor Hart puts it, the occurrence of revelation “will necessarily be one in which God takes objects, events, words, ideas and other this-worldly entities and bestows upon them a capacity which in and of themselves they do not possess.”[13] Barth’s reticence towards identifying God’s Word with Scripture is, however, somewhat understandable in light of the theological climate in which Barth’s theological convictions arose. Richard Burnett describes the way many of Barth’s liberal contemporaries studied Scripture:

For the majority of Barth’s contemporaries, to be ‘scientific’ was to be objective, and to be objective meant, above all, to face a given object of investigation as an unbiased observer. Unbiased interpretation meant allowing “facts to speak for themselves,” as it were, and only by impartial analysis was this thought to be possible. In short, the “non-participatory, distancing of oneself” was thought to be a condition for the possibility of genuinely scientific interpretation.[14]

Rather than studying Scripture with expectation that God himself speaks, many theological liberals duct-taped God’s mouth and sought to build an “objective” ramp to God. To this Barth said, “No!” It is impossible for man to reach God. According to Barth, “Something has to come down from above,” God must speak to us. This clarifies Barth’s ‘Nein!’ to Brunner with regard to natural revelation.[15] To tie God’s revelation to anything natural, even Holy Scripture (i.e., the word of man), is to build a two-way bridge.[16] Barth feared that if revelation is not an act of God, but something given, then man could ascend just as easily as God descended. According to George Hunsinger, for Barth, “The incapacity of human language in itself and as such is what separates Barth’s view from literalism [which] tends to assume that human language is intrinsically capable of referring to God.”[17] In other words, for Barth, to directly equate Scripture (human words) with the ‘Word of God’ would necessarily be to deny that Scripture is God’s revelation (since God must always be subject, even when he is object).[18] “Of God,” says Barth, “it is impossible to speak, because He is neither a natural nor a spiritual object. If we speak of Him, we are no longer speaking of Him.”[19]

Though we may disagree with many of Barth’s assumptions regarding revelation, when it comes to propositionalists like Henry, we find ourselves siding with Barth, understanding that to limit God’s Word to timeless propositions may very well imply that God only gives information about himself and salvation, without actually accomplishing anything—leaving it up to man to figure out what to do with a book filled with static, timeless facts.[20] According to Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Henry “argued that God’s word should be equated with the revealed propositions of the Bible, objective truths stated in conceptual and verbal form. On this view, theology’s task is to systematize the information conveyed through biblical propositions.”[21] What is strange is that here, Henry, a conservative Evangelical, shares so much with the theological liberals whom both Barth and Henry so vehemently opposed. Like Henry, the liberals viewed Scripture as “a source or a repository of historical, cultural, psychological content on the one hand and theological content on the other.” The subject matter of Scripture was something that “one could somehow work or build up to . . . it could be deduced, inferred and then be added on to . . .” [22] Liberal New Testament scholar, Paul Wernle is nearly indistinguishable from Henry when he says that, “The most important and positive task of the study of theology is the contemplation of religion in its factuality.”[23] The facts of God completely overshadow the fact that God still speaks. The sense of God’s ‘disruptive’ and active grace, something so central to Barth’s theology, seems strangely absent in Henry’s view of revelation. Rather than rest content with an idea of revelation as being a mere compilation of propositional statements Barth says that, “ God speaking personally as the subject, God as the author, God not only giving authentic information about himself but himself speaking about himself. This is what makes scripture the Word of God.”[24] For Barth, “God cannot be communicated as information that people lack,”[25] the focus cannot be so much on the record of timeless propositions God has given, but that “The Word creates the fact that we hear the Word,” [26] that God’s Word “creates human hearers for itself.” [27] From one angle there seems to be much similarity between what Barth is saying here and what the Canons of Dort say with regard to regeneration by the word, that it

. . . is evidently a supernatural work, most powerful, and at the same time most delightful, astonishing, mysterious, and ineffable; not inferior in efficacy to creation or the resurrection from the dead, . . . so that all in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly, ineffably, and effectually regenerated, and do actually believe.[28]

Here it is God who, acting as subject through his Word, accomplishes the work of regeneration in his hearer. Likewise, the Belgic Confession, in speaking of true knowledge of God, points to the work of God through his Word stating that, “the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him,”[29] and also that true faith, “being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Spirit regenerates him and makes him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin.”[30] Far from pointing the sinner merely to a summation of propositionally true statements in Scripture, the Reformed confessions point to the work of the God in and through his Word (the perlocutionary effect).

Unlike Barth, however, the Reformed confessions are not averse to, and see no contradiction in, confessing the perfection of Scripture. In fact, several articles earlier the Belgic Confession is able to state that “the doctrine [of Scripture] is most perfect and complete in all respects,”[31] a confession that would seem to support Henry’s view of revelation as doctrines or propositions. Oddly, it seems that both Barth and Henry find isolated statements to appeal to in the Reformed confessions. The question naturally arises as to why the authors of the Reformed confession were unable to see the seemingly obvious tension (perhaps even contradiction—if it were up to Barth or Henry) of their statements which both Barth and Henry found impossible to overcome. Were the Reformed orthodox unaware that they could not have both a perfect Scripture as well as a God who speaks (rendering mere propositional statements insufficient)? Or is it perhaps the case that these questions need to be turned to Barth and Henry? Is it necessary that we choose between Barth who claims that, “What makes scripture holy scripture is not the correctness of the prophetic and apostolic statements and thoughts about God but the I-Thou encounter, person to person, about which these thoughts and statements tell us,” that “ . . . only in full action is revelation revelation,”[32] and Henry who approvingly quotes Gordon Clark who says, “the Bible is composed of propositions. These give information about God and his dealings with men. . . . They are given to us as true, as truths, as the objects of knowledge.”[33] Against both Barth and Henry we must put our foot down and say, “Nein!” siding instead with our Reformed forebears. In fact, we quote Barth himself who says that, “The Bible is God’s Word to the extent that God causes it to be His Word, to the extent that He speaks through it,”[34] and precisely because of this fact we unequivocally confess that the Bible is the Word of God, because God has authorized and deputized it to be his speech-act.

As is apparent by now, there is something that Barth and Henry share against the Reformed confessions. Namely, each theologian seeks to reduce revelation to a single aspect of what the Reformed fathers considered to be necessary parts of a broader, more robust doctrine of revelation. Though Barth rightly reacts against a view that reduces revelation to God’s locutionary acts, Barth finds solace in an equally unfaithful extreme of reducing revelation to God’s illocutionary stance and perlocutionary effect (which are conflated in Barth) of judging and saving man.[35] Because the Word creates its own hearers, when faith and obedience are not present in those who hear Scripture being read or preached, this is, according to Barth, because God has not really spoken, because Scripture has not ‘become the Word of God.’ Elsewhere Barth claims that, “Verbal inspiration does not mean the infallibility of the biblical word in its linguistic, historical and theological character as a human word. It means that the fallible and faulty human word is as such used by God and has to be received and heard in spite of its human fallibility.”[36] Scripture and proclamation (human words imperfect and inherently fallible) only become God’s Word when its hearers are “determined by the Word of God in their existence, i.e., in the totality of their self-determination.” Only when this “relation of acknowledgement”[37] between the hearer and the Word is present can it be said that God has spoken. Barth assumes that there is only one illocutionary stance and perlocutionary effect when God speaks.

Against this tendency to reduce God’s speech-acts to a single perlocutionary effect, the Reformed sided with Origen’s dictum that, “the sun, by one and the same power of its heat, melts wax indeed, but dries up and hardens mud.”[38] Along similar lines Herman Bavinck, a more recent Reformed theologian wrote that, “The gospel exerts its effect even in those who are lost; to them it is a reason for their falling, an offense and foolishness, a stone over which they stumble, a fragrance from death to death. . . . it is always efficacious; it is never powerless. If it does not raise people up, it strikes them down.”[39] That some do not have a ‘relation of acknowledgement’ through the hearing of the Word does not mean that the Word is not, or has not become, God’s Word, but that God does various things in various ways through his Word. As we have seen earlier, Carl Henry restricts the definition of revelation to static, verbal-rational propositions, so as to guard God’s Word from being contingent on its effects upon its hearers. But Barth, assuming with Henry that the Word can only do one thing, restricts revelation to its ‘successful’ communication. According to Vanhoozer, “Barth has confused or conflated inspiration and illumination, hence collapsing the origin (and being) of Scripture into its reception (‘to be is to be received’!).”[40]

By maintaining a broader understanding of revelation (a broader range of illocutionary stances, as well as perlocutionary effects of God’s Word) as well as keeping the entire speech-act in view, the Reformed orthodox were able to confess the perfection of Scripture, while maintaining the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s active work through the Word in order for it to have its effect. When there is no apparent effect, it is not the case that the Word of God is not really present (as Barth maintains) or that it is independent of its effects on its hearers (Henry), but that the Spirit does not merely work in one way. This is why the Second Helvetic Confession is able to confess that, “the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of men,” and also “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”[41] For the authors of the confession the canonical Word, and the preached Word cannot be separated from God’s perlocutionary effects. They state that, “Inward illumination does not eliminate external preaching”[42] since the one who illuminates acts through the preached Word (which is dependent on the canonical Scriptures) and not apart from it. In his Institutes, Calvin says, “The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted.”[43] To put it simply, to deverbalize the Word, as Barth does—by making a distinction between the locutionary content (Scripture) and the illocutionary stance and perlocutionary force (God’s active work)—is to depersonalize it since, ordinarily, there is no perlocutionary effect (regenerating as well as hardening) apart from the locutionary act (Scriptures and proclamation).[44] There are places where Barth seems to admit as much when he says that “Not the Church, but scripture as God’s Word, has true and definitive authority. Not the individual, but again scripture as God’s Word, has true and definitive freedom.”[45] Yet the presence of an assumed dichotomy between Scripture and the Word of God (as if scripture could not be God’s Word!) is what cuts ties between Barth and traditional Reformed orthodoxy.

The force driving Barth to distinguish between Scripture and God’s Word is perhaps the same force driving Henry to univocally equate God’s Word with the propositional revelation of Scripture. At heart, both view Scripture’s relation to God ontologically.[46] That is, there are no categories for thinking of Scripture outside of ontological terms. For Barth and Henry, Scripture must either be divine or human without any tertium quid. However, this is not a problem if we refuse to view God’s speech-act as a substance, and instead think of it in terms of a speech-act of God.[47] Then we will not be forced to make an unbiblical separation as Barth has, or confuse the divine and human in Scripture, as Henry seems to have done. The Eastern distinction between God’s essence and his energies is helpful here.[48] If we view God’s speech act as something that is neither a human nor a divine thing (i.e., not an essence) but rather a divine act (energy) through authorized humans, there is no need to worry, with Barth, about divinizing human words, or ‘objectifying’ God’s revelation (something Henry is guilty of). Bruce McCormack summarizes Barth’s problem with static, objective revelation, and, in doing so, reveals the underlying assumptions Barth holds of Scripture as being caught in an either/or situation between being of human or divine essence:

If the word inspiration were tied to a fixed state of affairs—something alleged to be true of the Bible apart from the relation to God that it acquires through God’s use of it—then what one would really be saying is that the Bible has the Word of God as its predicate. But the Word of God is God, and God cannot be made the predicate of anything creaturely.[49]

He then proceeds to quote Barth himself who says, “God is not an attribute of something else, even if this something else is the Bible.”[50] But this idea of making the Word of God “the predicate of anything creaturely” is a non-issue if we consider Scripture to be God’s speech-act, God’s energeia, rather than in terms of essence. When viewed as a speech-act it makes no sense to even suggest that Scripture’s inspiration could be thought “apart from its relation to God,” the speaker. The locutionary act as well as the illocutionary stance presuppose a speaker (even if this speaker authorizes/deputizes others to deliver his message) and, going back to Reformed tradition, the perlocutionary effect is affected by the Holy Spirit, but not independently from the rest of the speech-act. This means that the locutionary act, illocutionary stance, and perlocutionary effect cannot be separated without seriously distorting God’s Word.

Though in ordinary human use of language, the perlocutionary effect is often outside of the speaker’s control this is not the case with God’s Word. In the book of Isaiah God says that His Word “shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11). In light of this, we see an important link between what God says (the locutionary content), and what his Words accomplish (the perlocutionary effect). As soon as the third verse of the book of Genesis we see God speaking, “Let there be light.” Here is a locutionary act, with the illocutionary force of commanding, and without any need to look to another verse, we find immediately following, “and there was light.” The content of God’s locutionary act, what God says, cannot be separated from the illocutionary stance, what he is doing, or from the perlocutionary effect, what he accomplishes. Holding to the perfection of Scripture is necessarily tied to holding to God’s subjectivity as a perfect God in the perlocutionary effects.

Another instance of this can be seen in Ezekiel 37 where God commands the prophet to preach to a valley of dry bones. This example is notable because it is closer to how we understand God’s Word, namely, as mediated through other men (either in Scripture or preaching). In the narrative God commands Ezekiel to preach, giving him specific words (an indication that the content is not insignificant to the speech-act). The locutionary content is given, “Dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD” (vv. 4-6). Here the illocutionary force can also be said to be commanding, and the perlocutionary effect is that the dead bones rise and do all that is indicated in the locutionary content. Again, the perlocutionary effect is directly related to the locutionary content. What God spoke through the prophet is just what is accomplished.

Far from asserting mere propositions about God, or being an event of God’s revealing himself, God does many things through his Words. Among other things he promises, commands, warns, undertakes, condemns, asserts, etc. Because the speaker acts according to and through what is spoken, who is speaking and what is spoken cannot be understood apart from one another. Here we may agree with Barth that, “to receive revelation is to be addressed by God.”[51] In his promising, commanding, etc. God, the subject, is dealing with us and we are dealing with God. However, the danger of considering God’s revelation as true “apart from the relation to God that it acquires through God’s use of it”[52] vanishes when we think of revelation in terms of God’s speech-act. To deal with God’s speech-act, regardless of his illocutionary stance, requires that the hearer necessarily deal with the God who speaks, but this also includes dealing with what he speaks as well.

Because the locutionary content is directly tied to the rest of the speech-act, it is absurd to suggest separating Scripture from God’s Word. We must affirm the perfections of Scripture (the spoken Word), not because God only reveals himself in propositional statements, but because God’s illocutionary stances as well as his perlocutionary effects cannot be separated from the propositional content of the locutionary acts. Vanhoozer helpfully summarizes Wolterstorff’s critique of Barth that, “the connection between the Bible and God’s revelation in Jesus Christ depends not upon speech acts, but upon an act without speech.”[53] The disconnect in Barth’s theology, as well as Henry’s, between God’s acts and his speech is highly problematic and is likely a part of the reason why neither theologian has been willing to fully embrace traditional Reformed orthodoxy. Wolterstorff takes notice of Barth as the theologian of the Word of God, and even recognizes that, at times, he comes close to recognizing a more robust view of speech-acts, but in the end Wolterstorff summarizes Barth’s view as such: “God speaks in Jesus Christ, and only there; then on multiple occasions, God activates, ratifies, and fulfills in us what God says in Jesus Christ.”[54] What is speech without the spoken word? Barth claims the speaker and Henry claims the speech, but how can we have either without simultaneously hearing both?

In the end, we are not given a false choice to decide between Barth’s God who is subject, and Henry’s true Word of God. Rather we hearken back to our Reformed fathers and embrace a God who has truly spoken (Deus dixit!) and continues to speak and act through his Word. The God who created the world by his Word, who in the person of Jesus Christ raised the dead, cast out demons, and healed the sick, continues to work for us and in us through his Word. What he has said and what he continues to say confronts us in the Holy Scriptures and the preached Word; not because these become God’s Word or because they are divine things conceived apart from God, but because God has accommodated himself to us and speaks to us. It is only because Scripture is God’s Word. As Herman Bavinck puts it, “always and everywhere the word of God is a power of God, a sword of the Spirit. ‘The Holy Spirit is always present with that word.’”[55]

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[1] Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1964) 7.

[2] God, Revelation, and Authority, 6 vols. (Waco, TX: Word, 1976-83). The interaction between Henry and Frei is also telling, cf., George Hunsinger, “What Can Evangelicals and Postliberals Learn From Each Other?: The Carl Henry/Hans Frei Exchange reconsidered” Pro Ecclesia 5, no. 2 (1996): 161-182. Also see Vanhoozer’s comment in “A Person of the Book?: Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation,” in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences, ed. Sung Wook Chung (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 38, where he notes: “The voice to which Henry reacted was Frei’s, but the spirit was Barth’s.”

[3] Despite some accusations of Barth’s being a closet liberal, others criticized Barth as being a closet fundamentalist. Mark D. Thompson gives an anecdote: “In a colloquium in 1955 he was asked precisely this: ‘What differentiates your understanding of the Word of God from that of a fundamentalist?’ He replied, “For me the Word of God is a happening, not a thing. Therefore the Bible must become the Word of God, and it does this through the work of the Spirit.’” J. D. Godsey (ed.), Karl Barth’s Table Talk (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963), 26, quoted in “Barth’s Doctrine of Scripture,” in Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques, ed. David Gibson and Daniel Strange (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 191.

[4] As far as I know, Barth never directly interacted with Henry’s view of revelation. However, Henry’s view is typical of the view Barth protested against. Cf., Christoph Schwöbel’s chapter “Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 28, where Schwöbel cites Heinrich Scholz as a foil to Barth’s view of revelation. Scholz held that if theology was to be held as a science it must “be expressed in propositions which make truth-claims; that it have coherence which defines the extension of a science; and that it have controllability: there must be criteria to test the truth-claims of scientific propositions.” This sounds identical to Henry’s view of how theology is to be done.

[5] See Belgic Confession, Article 7; Heidelberg Catechism Q. 83; Canons of Dort Second Head, Article 5; Third and Fourth Heads Articles 6-14.

[6] Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority. See also Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “A Person of the Book?”

[7] Henry quotes Gordon Clark approvingly, “ . . . evangelical Protestants champion ‘a verbal, propositional revelation of fixed truth from God . . . only by accepting rationally comprehensible information on God’s authority can we hope to have a sound philosophy and a true religion.’” (Religion, Reason and Revelation, p. 87). In God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 3, p. 430.

[8] Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 6^th ed. trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford: OUP, 1968), 301.

[9] Barth says, “When we do not think of revelation as [full action], that is, one person speaking and another spoken to, God revealing himself to us and we to whom he reveals himself; when revelation is seen from the standpoint of the noninvolved spectator, then it amounts to nonrevelation. . . . To receive revelation is to be addressed by God.” Göttingen Dogmatics, 58.

[10] For speech-act theory see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (Oxford: OUP, 1976), and John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: CUP, 1970). George Hunsinger defines Barth’s actualism as his thinking “primarily in terms of events and relationships rather than monadic or self-contained substances.” in How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology (Oxford: OUP, 1991), 30-32.

[11] The distinction between Barth and Henry as the one deverbalizing and the other depersonalizing can be found in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, 45.

[12] Karl Barth and William H. Willimon, The Early Preaching of Karl Barth, trans. John E. Wilson (Louisville: WJK, 2009), 33. See also Trevor Hart, “The Word, the Words and the Witness: Proclamation as Divine and Human Reality in the Theology of Karl Barth,” in Tyndale Bulletin 46, no. 1 (1995): 81-102.

[13] “Revelation” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 46.

[14] Richard E. Burnett, Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis: The Hermeneutical Principles of the Römerbrief Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 96.

[15] Karl Barth, Homiletics trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Louisville: WJK, 1991), 125.

[16] See Karl Barth, “The Task of the Ministry,” in The Word of God and the Word of Man, 183-217(Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978).

[17] George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth, 43.

[18] CD I/1, p. 375-84, where Barth says that, “God is the One who reveals Himself.” And also, “He who makes Himself ours in His revelation is really God.”

[19] Karl Barth, CD I/2, 750.

[20] For precisely this reason, Timothy Ward wisely cautions against giving inerrancy a central place because by so doing “we are taking just one aspect of Scripture’s content, its propositional statements and building our doctrine of Scripture on it. The core of our doctrine of Scripture is then likely to down play what is in fact the fundamental characteristic of Scripture, which is the fact that through its words God performs acts of revelation and redemption. It will seem to others that we believe (and we ourselves may also come to believe) that the most important characteristic of Scripture is its propositional statements.” In Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God (Downers Grove, IL:IVP, 2009), 135-36. This displacing of God’s action through Scripture seems to be what occurs in Carl Henry’s propositional view of revelation.

[21] The Drama of Doctrine, 45.

[22] Richard E. Burnett, Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis, 85-6.

[23] Paul Wernle, Einführung in das Theologische Studium (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921), 35-36, from Richard E. Burnett, Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis, 133.

[24] Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics ed. Hannelotte Reiffen, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 57.

[25] William H. Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 100.

[26] CD I/2, p.247

[27] Karl Barth, Homiletics, 57.

[28] Canons of Dort, Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine, Article 12. Emphasis added.

[29] Belgic Confession, Article 22.

[30] Ibid., Article 24.

[31] Ibid., Article 7. Emphasis added.

[32] Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 58.

[33] Gordon Clark, Barth’s Theological Method, 150. in Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 3, 228.

[34] CD I/1, p. 117.

[35] See Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, 65-68. See also Göttingen Dogmatics, 402, where Barth says that, “Because God reveals himself as the one who commands and determines, because in his almightiness he meets us spiritually as the one who wills and not just as the one who acts, not merely in an event but in speech, in a Word that is both imperative and powerful, we cannot reverse the statement that God is life or that God is might; we cannot understand him unrestrictedly by the way of eminence; we cannot put him under a law or an idea.”

[36] CD I/2, p. 533.

[37] Ibid., 214.

[38] Origen, De Principiis 3.1.11

[39] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 458-59.

[40] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “A Person of the Book?” 55.

[41] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 1. Emphasis added. Barth quotes the Second Helvetic Confession in Göttingen Dogmatics, 32, but goes on to say that “the Logos takes human shape in spoken human words” which seems to echo his later statement that revelation is always “a becoming open.” Göttingen Dogmatics, 58. See also Bruce L. McCormack, “The Being of Holy Scripture Is in Becoming: Karl Barth in Conversation with American Evangelical Criticism,” Evangelicals & Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics Edited by Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguelez, and Dennis L. Okholm, 55-75 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004). In Evangelical Theology, 170, Barth notes that the Second Helvetic Confession, “does not suggest an identification when it states in the second section of the first paragraph Praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei.”

[42] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 1.

[43] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, xii, 4.

[44] Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 1., “At the same time we recognize that God can illuminate whom and when he will, even without the external ministry, for that is in his power; but we speak of the usual way of instructing men, delivered unto us from God, both by commandment and examples.”

[45] Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 229.

[46] See George Hunsinger, “Beyond Literalism and Expressivism: Karl Barth’s Hermeneutical Realism” in Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, 210-225(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).

[47] See Kevin J. Vanhoozer “God’s Mighty Speech-Acts: The Doctrine of Scripture Today,” in A Pathway into the Holy Scripture, ed. Philip E. Satterthwaite and David F. Wright, 143-181 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

[48] See Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2007, 211-15. See also, Göttingen Dogmatics, 437, where Barth makes the unexpected statement that, “Again, we are to think of God’s omnipresence not as adiastasia but as energeia.” It would have been nice if Barth followed this distinction through to his doctrine of Scripture.

[49] Bruce L. McCormack, “The Being of Holy Scripture Is in Becoming.” P. 70.

[50] CD I/2, 513.

[51] Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 58.

[52] Bruce L. McCormack, “The Being of Holy Scripture Is in Becoming,” 70.

[53] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “A Person of the Book?” 55.

[54] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: CUP, 1995) 73.

[55] Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, 459.