Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
EDITED BY
ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee
IN COOPERATION WITH
VOLUME CXX
AS IN A MIRROR
JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH
ON KNOWING GOD
AS IN A MIRROR
JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH
ON KNOWING GOD
A DIPTYCH
BY
TRANSLATED BY
DONALD MADER
BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON
2005
Cover illustration: detail from the Issenheim Altarpiece showing John the Baptist at the foot of
the Cross. Muse dUnterlinden F 68000 Colmar. Photo: O. Zimmerman.
BT98.K66 2005
231.0420922dc22
2004057550
ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 90 04 13817 X
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
List of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Chapter 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Knowing God and the way of history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Calvin and Barth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Faith as knowing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4. Bipolarity and conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5. The mirror as an invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
part one
john calvin
the hinge
part two
karl barth
evaluation
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
The rst impetus for this study came quite a time ago. It began when
Dr. H.J. Adriaanse, the co-supervisor for my doctoral studies at Leiden,
invited me to think again of a sequel to my dissertation. This resulted in
a plan to expand the eld of research to the later Barth and to Calvin,
under the title Knowledge of God as Mystery. On the recommenda-
tion of Dr. H.A. Oberman I was able to realise an unforgettable term
of study at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Wiscon-
sin, Madison, WI, USA. Meeting W.J. Courtenay, D.C. Lindberg and
R.M. Kingdon provided me with access to American research on the
background and social context for Calvin which unmistakably left its
mark on this book. In Amsterdam, at the Vrije Universiteit, I was able
to continue the project next to all my other work. I would mention sev-
eral persons here by name who read the manuscript in whole or in part,
in that way playing a signicant role in this book coming into being.
The friendship and regular exchanges with Ren van Woudenberg, in
particular with regard to the epistemology of the hinge section deal-
ing with Kant, was of particularly great value to me. The sections of
the manuscript on dogmatics were read by and discussed with Aad van
Egmond and Dirk van Keulen. I would further mention here Maarten
Aalders, and the conversations with Georg Plasger on Barth interpreta-
tion. It was an enormous support for me to have Dr. C. Augustijn and
Dr. H.A. Oberman both read the section on Calvin and provide me
with their critique of it. That the latter passed away before he could
see the completion of this book saddens me greatly. His reactions were
more than heartening.
A fragment of the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grnewald is
depicted on the cover. A reproduction of this altarpiece hung over
Barths desk. The gure of John the Baptist pointing to the crucied
Christ was for Barth a metaphor for the limited service that theology
can perform. Theology points to the matter that is really paramount; it
does nothing more, and if it does well, nothing less.
xii acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
What is the primary goal of human life? That we know God.1 This
opening sentence of the Geneva Catechism does not represent merely
an age-old vision of human life, but also refers to the mystery that to
this very day is interwoven with Christian belief and is the foundation
for all Christian theology: living has something to do with knowing
God. In our time the answer may appear in other forms, with more
emphasis on being human and humanity, but it has remained like a
hidden magnet under various theological themes. It is however pre-
cisely this answer that has become a problem for present generations,
under the inuence of a culture that is embarrassed about or even
rejects belief in God. What does it really mean to know God? Can we
indeed know God? Where does such knowledge have its foundations,
what nourishes it, and what is it that is ultimately known? And if there
is something like knowledge of God, what does it have to do with being
human, with life, with our actions? These are substantive theological
questions which belong to the eld of reection on Christian dogma.
The direction that this study will go in reecting on these questions is
that of theological history, or historical theology. Theological history (or
historical theology) will be used to treat questions in the eld of Chris-
tian dogmatics. In the light of advancing dierentiation between sys-
tematic and historical disciplines, this is anything but an obvious choice.
On the basis of the experience that such an approach very easily fails
to do justice to at least one of the twoor even bothelements, pro-
ceeding this way can ever generate suspicion. At the same time it must
be said that dogmatic reection is impossible without involving its own
cognoistre Dieu. The Latin version has a somewhat expanded answer: ut Deum, a
quo conditi sunt homines, ipsi noverint. Cf. also the Instruction et confession de Foy (1537),
OS I, 378.
2 chapter one
2 Thus in principle the whole of the content of dogmatics can be included within
the denition of knowledge. God is really the most comprehensive object of Christian
religious knowledge, and thus also of theology. See for instance H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde
Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 2 and W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie Bd. I, Gttin-
gen 1988, 1415; ET, Systematic Theology, Volume I, Grand Rapids/Edinburgh 1992, 45.
3 The choice of the Church as the primary reference point is intended both theolog-
ically and sociologically. This is anything but a denial that alongside it there are audi-
ences of other sorts which can be distinguished, namely society at large and academia.
I merely want to underscore that Christian theology and what it has to say about God
assumes both an historical and a contemporary community. For the distinction of the
three forms of audience, see D. Tracy, The analogical Imagination. Christian Theology and the
Culture of Pluralism, New York 1993, 631.
introduction 3
This study limits itself to two theologians who each has assumed a rep-
resentative place in Reformed Protestantism: John Calvin (15091564)
and Karl Barth (18861968). It can justly be said of both that they made
their choices and presented their vision of human knowledge of God in
an independent manner and in entirely dierent intellectual climates.
This book therefore consists of two parts or panels which, connected by
a hinge, together form a diptych. In the rst panel a sketch is given of
Calvins vision of human knowledge of God. How does man arrive at
knowledge of God, what invites him to faith and how does this knowl-
edge relate to other forms of knowledge and experience? The question
about the way in which knowledge of God is acquired can not how-
ever be separated from the substantive question of what is known of
God. Epistemological questions are connected with the material which
constitutes the theological content. What does man really know about
God and himself ? What can he hope for, what guides his life in the
world, his fears and desires? Arising from the same questions, a sketch
of Barths concept of knowing God appears in the second panel. Karl
Barths theology, since the appearance of his dogmatic work unjustly
termed neo-orthodoxy,4 fully bears the marks of the post-Kantian sit-
uation. Barth lived and worked in a culture and intellectual climate that
stood in the shadow of the Enlightenment. He was part of that intellec-
4 In this compound orthodoxy is viewed as the position that the truth of God
5 See the irate response of R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin. Studies in the
Foundation of a Theological Tradition, New York/Oxford 2000, 187 and idem, After Calvin.
Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63102.
introduction 5
a critic of modernism (for instance K.G. Steck, Karl Barths Absage an die Neuzeit
in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973, 733), as an
exponent of modernism (D. Schellong, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit, ibidem,
34102; T. Rendtor, Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verstndnis der Theologie
Karl Barths und ihre Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien
zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gtersloh 1972, 161181) or of anti-modern modernism
(G. Peiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie. Zu Genese und Kontext eines paradigmatischen
Entwurfs systematischer Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Tbingen 2000, 25), or as post-modern
(G. Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Cambridge 1995; idem, Barth,
Modernity and Postmodernity in: J. Webster [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Karl
Barth, Cambridge 2000, 274295; William. S. Johnson, The Mystery of God. Karl Barth
and te Postmodern Foundations of Theology, Louisville 1997; L. Karelse, Dwalen. Over Mark
C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999). Barth has a very nuanced attitude toward
modernism, in which it is dicult to bring the elements of continuity and discontinuity
together under one term. For a well-considered balance, see D. Korsch Theologie in
der Postmoderne. Der Beitrag Karl Barths in: idem, Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth,
Tbingen 1996, 7492.
6 chapter one
8 Without going into the matter further, following the philosopher Alvin Plantinga
one can term this approach to the guarantee of human knowledge classic foundational
thinking. See A. Plantinga Reason and Belief in God in: A. Plantinga/N. Wolterstor,
Faith and Rationality. Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame/London 1983, 1693 and the
broad exposition of the project of his epistemology in the trilogy Warrant and Proper
Function, New York/Oxford 1993, Warrant: The current Debate, New York/Oxford 1993
and Warranted Christian Belief, New York/Oxford 2000.
9 A. Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdheid, Deel 2. Algemeen deel, Kampen 19092,
193e.v. In the same line H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I, Kampen 19062, 11, 15;
ET: Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I: Prolegomena (ed. by John Bolt, translated by John Vriend),
Grand Rapids 2003, 3842.
8 chapter one
it meant to know has been reduced, and the broader meaning that the
concept of knowledge of God traditionally encompassed now must be
expressed by means of other words.
Distinguished from scientic and instrumental knowledge, there is
also a broader concept of knowing that is possible, one which has its
foundations in the world of experience. According to this epistemology
it is defensible to begin with the multiplicity of sensory and intellectual
capacities. If our faculties are functioning well they produce trustworthy
knowledge. In addition to sense perception we possess memory, we
accept the witness of others, we know the dierence between good
and bad, beautiful and ugly, truth and falsity. In short, in practice
we live with all sorts of knowledge that is the product of capacities
and that we accept in an immediate way, that is to say, without the
intervention of reasoning.10 The experience of the light of the autumn
sun on a hedgerow, the rst notes of Mozarts Requiem, the warmth
of the spring sun on your forehead, the smell of lavender, the taste
of fresh bread, an intensely experienced memory, a strong feeling of
indignation, the testimony of others: all these are examples of primary
experience and forms of knowing that do not fall into the category of
scientic knowledge, but none the less produce knowledge of a sort that
in practice we accept to be trustworthy. Knowing in this primary sense
is being in contact with, spoken to by, conditioned by, in the presence
of, involved with: in other words, relationally dened in a wide sense.
This knowing is a form of contact in which the person who knows rst
is receptive, and then receives and experiences that which transpires.
This sort of knowing also has conceptual and propositional implications
and can become the object of reection; but all these operations are an
abstraction of what presents itself in experience. What is experienced is
more than can be comprehended in words or reection about it. We
could call it a form of relational knowing, in which the person does not
so much become master of the thing known, but is addressed by and
becomes conditioned by it. It is to be emphatically distinguished from
knowledge which has the sole purpose of the transfer of information,
or control.11 In both Calvin and Barth the concept of knowing God
10 See R. van Woudenberg, Plantingas externalisme: waarborg door het naar beho-
Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, Grand Rapids 1979, 30 for instance,
is characteristic.
13 E. Jngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begrndung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im
Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, Tbingen 1977; ET: God as the Mystery of the World.
On the Foundation of the Thology of the Crucied One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism,
Edinburgh 1983.
14 A. Houtepen, God, een open vraag. Theologische perspectieven in een cultuur van agnosme,
Zoetermeer 1997, 330; ET: God: An Open Question, London/New York 2002, 85108,
258. E. Schillebeeckx, Mensen als verhaal van God, Baarn 1989.
15 See for example W. Stoker, Is vragen naar zin vragen naar God? Een godsdienstwijsgerige
10 chapter one
studie over godsdienstige zingeving in haar verhouding tot seculiere zingeving, Zoetermeer 1993; ET:
Is the Quest for Meaning the Quest for God? The Religious Ascription of Meaning in Relation to the
Secular Ascription of Meaning. A Theological Study, Amsterdam 1996.
16 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufstze und Vortrge zur Religionsphilosophie,
Kampen 1995, 44, 261, 300. See also H.J. Adriaanse, H.A. Krop, L. Leertouwer, Het
verschijnsel theologie. Over de wetenschappelijke status van de theologie, Meppel/Amsterdam 1987.
17 Karl Barth, Der Rmerbrief (Erste Fassung) 1919, Hrsg. v. H. Schmidt, Zrich 1985, 3:
19 Cf. N. Wolterstor, Divine Discourse. Philosophical reections on the claim that God speaks,
Cambridge 1995, who opposes the identication of Gods speaking and revelation,
and with the aid of J.L. Austins theory of language acts defends the possibility of
interpreting the Bible in a coherent manner as the speaking of God.
12 chapter one
20 The dogmatic work of G.C. Berkouwer, particularly his Dogmatische Studien, Kam-
pen 19491972; ET: Studies in Dogmatics, Grand Rapids 19521976 documents the at-
tempt to banish objectivism from theology and give the subject his specic place, ori-
ented within concentration on the Gospel.
21 See for example S. McFague, Metaphorical Theology. Models of God in Religious Lan-
guage, London 1983; idem, Models of God. Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age, Lon-
don 1987. E. Jngel, Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwgungen zur theologischen Rele-
vanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie in: idem,
Entsprechungen: GottWahrheitMensch. Theologische Errterungen, Mnchen 1980, 103157.
Idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 357383; ET, 261281.
22 For an approach of this sort, see for instance G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine.
Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia (PA) 1984. For the anthropological
approach to religion as a cultural construct see the frequently cited article by Cliord
Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System in: idem, The Interpretation of Culture, London
1993, 87125.
introduction 13
In this study knowledge of God is not used in the sense that it has as
its primary meaning in scholastic theology, namely Gods knowledge
of Himself. As human knowledge of God, the concept can be pictured
schematically as an ellipse with two foci. The one focus is the acting of
God, and the other the faith of man as answer to that acting. These two
elements, which in dogmatics are generally discussed separately under
the headings of revelation and faith, are taken up together in the one
concept of knowledge of God. By reaching back to the older concept
we make it clear that these two, faith and revelation, belong together
from the very outset, and can not be discussed apart from one another.
The concept of knowledge of God thereby contains within itself the
tension that characterises the relation between God and man. The con-
cept of knowledge of God has not only a propositional, epistemological
presumption, but implies from the outset a bipolarity, namely, the rela-
tion of God and man. It is therefore at the same time a conict-laden
concept. It is not without reason that I have referred already to the
mystical, or better in this connection, the spiritual dimension of the
concept.24 This designation must still be sharpened somewhat, because
the adjectives mystic and spiritual taken in themselves are too pallid
and can easily lead to misunderstandings. They reect too little of the
drama, tension and conict in this relation. If God is known, this takes
place within a damaged world, and this is partly the fault of men who
are at odds with themselves and their world. Knowing God is not a
matter of tranquil reection or serenity, but on the contrary refers to a
confrontation, an invitation to let oneself be dened by a promise, to
respond to an trumpet call, and to do that in the midst of an existence
which is marked by emptiness and a ight from the void. Put in other
words: the concept of knowing God is soteriologically charged, and not
without reason refers to eschatology.
A short tour through the Johannine writings, at rst sight the most
serene documents of the New Testament, will teach that knowing in
this context is absolutely not serene, and has lost all sense of neutrality.
According to these texts, human knowing of God involves not only a
decrease of ignorance. Knowledge and acquisition of knowledge stand
in tension with error and lies. In the Gospel according to John the
The title given to this book picks up on the familiar passage from the
apostle Paul about the limits of knowledge of God in this life, but it
is not restricted to this specic association. In ICor. 13 Paul oers an
assessment of the charismata which are found in the community. He
lists prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge, gnosis. For all of
these ways of knowing and dealing with one another, however, it is
the case that we still see in a mirror, dimly; it is to know in part.
In other words, in this passage the image of the mirror refers to the
restrictions and limitations to which the knowing of God is subject. This
specic meaning was however already in the ancient world embed-
ded in the broader eld of symbolic possibilities to which the natural
phenomenon of visual reection gave rise, namely as a metaphor for
16 chapter one
25 See 2.3.1.
introduction 17
The image of the mirror also fulls a role for Barth, in particular in
the doctrine of the analogia dei, later elaborated into the doctrine of the
analogia relationis. Like Calvin, Barth proceeds from the actual knowa-
bility of God, but knowledge of God is rigidly Christologically dened,
and the pneumatology that we encounter in some breadth in Calvin is
here entirely in the service of Christology. God is knowable through his
revelation in Jesus Christ. In fact this history is the locus of knowability
in which all other elements by which God makes himself known partic-
ipate. At the same time, the manner in which this knowability is pre-
sented reveals the degree to which it is interwoven with the problematic
of modernity. Barths concept of knowing God begins with the realisa-
tion that the word God, as it is used in the Bible and Christian faith,
does not coincide with the fact, with the visible. The word God refers
to the Holy One who distinguishes [Himself] from fate, in that He not
so much is, but rather comes.26 Barths preference for an idealistic struc-
ture of thought, in which God, the origin or the idea, is not considered
to be represented in the factual, but as an object of knowing can only
be gained in a process of critical distancing, is brought into relation
with this preference by Barth himself. Knowledge of God is no longer
derived from the world, nor is it to be directly identied with the text
of the Bible, but can only be conceived as the bestowed participation in
the self-revelation of God in Christ. In the idea of self-revelation what is
characteristic of this concept appears to contrast with Calvins concept,
where the work of the Spirit is conceived more broadly and is not just a
property of Christology. According to Barth knowledge of God is only
conceivable as participation in a movement, an irreducible but never-
theless actual reality of Gods acting and speaking which must always
be reconstituted anew. Only by virtue of this reality and that event can
a part of earthly reality, concretely the man Jesus, become the revela-
tion of Gods acting. It is characteristic of this concept of knowing God
that, as a result of this approach, there is no plausibility whatsoever to
be searched for or to be found for the truth of knowledge of God out-
side of participation in this actual reality of Gods acting. This has led to
the questions and complaints which still pursue Barths theological con-
cept. In the wake of this theology, is knowledge of God not typied by a
certain Docetism, hermetically sealed to the concretely historical? One
does not have to answer this question in the armative to nevertheless
26 K. Barth, Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie in: idem, Theologische Fragen und
JOHN CALVIN
chapter two
WAYS OF KNOWING
2.1. Introduction
two-fold Knowledge of God in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus ecclesiae Genevensis Custos,
Frankfurt a.M/New York 1984, 139.
3 W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin. A sixteenth Century Portrait, New York/Oxford 1988, 153.
4 See, for instance, the letter presenting the Institutes to Francis I, where ignorance
among those disposed to the Gospel in France is given as a reason for writing the
rst edition, OS III, 9: paucissimos autem videbam qui vel modica eius cognitione
rite imbuti essent. and OS III, 15: Quod diu incognita sepultaque latuit, humanae
impietatis crimen est: nunc quum Dei benignitate nobis redditur, saltem postliminii
iure suam antiquitatem recipere debebat.
ways of knowing 23
5 OS III, 11: Tuum autem erit, serenissime Rex, nec aures, nec animum a tam
iusto patrocinio avertere: praesertim ubi de re tanta agitur: nempe quomodo Dei
gloriae sua constet in terris incolumitas, quomodo suam dignitatem Dei veritas retineat,
quomodo regnum Christo sartum tectumque inter nos maneat. Digna res auribus tuis,
digna tua cognitione, digna tuo tribunali. Siquidem et verum Regem haec cogitatio
facit, agnoscere se in regni administratione Dei ministrum. Nec iam regnum ille sed
latrocinium exercet qui non in hoc regnat ut Dei gloriae serviat.
24 chapter two
that nds its apex in personal salvation, but equally involves the public
sphere, as can be seen in the role that the Consistory fullled in the
Genevan community.
By depth I then mean personal spiritual life. This introduction will
direct attention toward both aspects. The breadth of the social rootage
will be discussed in 2.1.2. The nal introductory section (2.1.3) will give
a number of examples of the inseparable connection of religion with a
pure conscience.
The involvement of the knowledge of God with the concrete cir-
cumstances of human life is programmatically expressed in the famous
opening sentence of the Institutes: Our wisdom, in so far as it ought
to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two
parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.6 In this characterisation
of the content of faith, which unmistakably bears traces of the Bibli-
cal humanism of the day and the search for a philosophia christiana as
the true wisdom,7 knowledge of God and human self-knowledge are
directly linked with one another. One cannot be had without the other.
Human religious understanding can be conceived as an ellipse with
two foci, namely the knowledge of God and human self-knowledge.
These two are correlates of one another. In this sense, Calvin enunci-
ates a principle of methodology that will be fruitful everywhere in his
theology: religious knowledge is bipolar. Knowledge of God has conse-
quences for that which men know about themselves. As a man achieves
insight into himself and life, that will have direct consequences for his
knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is anything but theoretical. In
its aim and intent it is practical and, to immediately say the word that
characterises this concept and the spirituality which accompanies it in
its whole height, breadth and depth, it is protable. Calvins theology is
rooted in the humanistic climate shaped by the Renaissance, in which it
is no longer the vita contemplativa, far from the world, which provides the
paradigm for proper life, but existence in the world that functions as
the divine task.8 What we call his theology is anything but a theoretical
activity. It is practical knowledge.
6Inst. 1.1.1.
7F. Wendel, Calvin et lhumanisme, Paris 1976, 7576 points to Ciceros denition
of philosophy which lies behind this, and the handling of this denition by Bud
and Erasmus. See particularly J. Bohatec, Bud und Calvin. Studien zur Gedankenwelt des
franzsischen Frhhumanismus, Graz 1950.
8 See for instance Calvins abundantly clear rejection of monastic life in principle in
Inst. 4.13.16.
ways of knowing 25
9 See L.J. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin, Atlanta 1974, 97134. See also the
study by F.L. Battles, The Piety of John Calvin. An Anthology illustrative of the Spirituality of the
Reformer of Geneva, Pittsburg 1969.
10 Inst. 1.2.1: Pietatem voco coniunctam cum amore Dei reverentiam quam bene-
tradere, quibus formarentur ad veram pietatem qui aliquo religionis studio tanguntur.
See also what Calvin wrote in the Supplex exhortatio ad invictis. Caesarem Carolum Quintum
(1543), preparatory to the religious discussion at Spiers, (CO 6, 484): Certe nihil ab aliis
26 chapter two
M. de Kroon has pointed to another text where for Calvin this point
comes clearly to the fore. In his exegesis of Psalm 97:7 (All worshippers
of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; the
gods bow down before him), he writes, Piety in the true sense of the
word is this: that the true God be worshipped totally and wholly, so that
He alone is exalted and no creature casts a shadow on His majesty.12
Calvin is there anxious that honour which in fact belongs to God not be
paid to people or things. Further along we shall also see again how this
anxiety for the way in which he will speak of the relation between God
and man is characteristic of his theology.13 Neither man, nor a moral
project is the deepest motif of his theology, but a God who inclines
to man. The acknowledgement of this is what piety is about. All else
is subordinate to this practical purpose of piety. This is of paramount
importance for evaluating Calvins theology. What God makes known
of himself does not serve a theoretical or contemplative purpose, but is
practical in import.
A fourth element that surfaces in the denition of piety, and which is
telling for the colour and tone of knowledge of God, is related to this.
I am referring to the verb conciliare, which can have the more neutral
meaning of to bring about, but with regard to human aection can
be translated as arouse or win. It is close to another word which will
play a large role in the knowledge of God, namely the word invitare, or
invite. The words arouse and invite are indicators of a basic line in
Calvins theology which, I would emphasise, is far too little taken into
account in the reception of Calvins thought in dogmatics. According
to Calvin, in many manners, through a colourful palette of means,
God entices, draws, invites and encourages man to acknowledge his
Maker. It must be emphasised that this invitation comes through a
dierimus, sicut dixi,nisi quod nos hominem, inopiae impotentiaeque suae convictum,
melius ad veram humilitatem erudimus, ut abdicata in totum sui ducia in Deum totus
recumbit, item ad gratitudinem, ut Dei benecentiae quidquid habet boni transscribat,
sicut revera ab ipso est.
12 M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn. Reformatorische perspectieven. Teksten en
cer, for whom pietas describes the unity of faith and love. While for Calvin pietas is
focused on God, for Bucer the concept includes the relation to God and to man, thus
faith and ethics. Bucer opposes the Anabaptist tendency to primatise love toward the
neighbour with the unity of faith in the justifying God and love of the neighbour. See
M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn, 92108.
ways of knowing 27
lives, moves and has its being? It is in line with this sort of rigid doc-
trine of providence that Calvin generally has been, and is understood.
In the vehement critique of Bolsec, in the speculative idealist interpre-
tation of the 19th century,14 and down to our own time Calvin is read
through the one lens of God as absolute causality, which threatens to
smother the singularity of the nite world, and thus also the singular-
ity of man. As has already been said, it cannot be denied that in the
conception of God, man and the world that Calvin has, seen from the
perspective of God all things are appointed. Calvin is absolutely con-
vinced of this, and it is his view that God himself, by making known
this part of his Counsel to man, will reveal His faithfulness to the faith-
ful.
Or do we have here two lines that, according to Calvin, cannot
be combined in human thought, while according to the 19th century
speculative-idealist interpretation indeed can be brought together in
the same discourse? Do the invitation to all hearers and the limita-
tions that are given with Gods eternal Counsel contradict one another?
As we have said, Calvin is generally understood only in terms of the
14 Under the inuence of 19th century idealist philosophy, for a long time the theol-
ogy of Calvin was reduced to a system where one central dogma dominated, namely
that of God as absolute causality. See for instance F.C. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen
Dogmengeschichte, Tbingen 1847, 218, Alex. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in
ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformirten Kirche, Erste und zweite Hlfte, Zrich 1854/1856,
(Bd. I, 199) and O. Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus, Bd. 3. Die reformierte Theolo-
gie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung, Gttingen 1926, 166168.
H. Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, Leipzig 1922, pointed to new paths. Accord-
ing to Bauke there are always two antithetical principles that are involved with one
another, in a complexio oppositorum. Beside the doctrine of providence stands individual
responsibility; beside justication stands sanctication. For a survey of the discussion:
P. Jacobs, Prdestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937, 1549. See also
M. de Kroon, De eer van God en het heil van de mens. Bijdrage tot het verstaan van de theologie van
Johannes Calvijn naar zijn Institutie, (Roermond 1968=) Leiden 19962. For a contemporary
deterministic interpretation, see C.H. Pinnock, From Augustine to Arminius. A Pil-
grimage in Theology in: idem, The Grace of God, the Will of Man. A Case for Arminianism,
Grand Rapids 1989, 1530. See also C.H. Pinnock/R.C. Brow, Unbounded love. A Good
News Theology for the 21st Century, Downers Grove, Ill., 1994. The question of to what
extent one can speak of systematic theology with Calvin of course is ultimately depen-
dent on the answer to the question of what is systematic. If the only thing which one
can conceive with the word is the idealist notion of a system, then the answer must be
negative. W.J. Bouwsma (John Calvin, 5) appears devoted to this view of systematic the-
ology. If one considers the Institutes as a well-considered collection of loci communes and
disputationes, and therefore as a genre of its own that must be distinguished from genres
such as the sermon and commentary, the answer will be otherwise. See R.A. Muller,
The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140173.
ways of knowing 29
latter line, and then in such a way that speaking in terms of invita-
tion no longer has any weight. The image of Calvin is still dened by
the idealist interpretation that threatened to conceive the nite as a
manifestation, and therefore as an appearance. It will be made clear in
Chapter 3 that according to Calvin a partial revelation of Gods Coun-
sel does not imply that man has the freedom to take this divine per-
spective as his point of departure and deny human responsibility. The
revelation of Gods preordination is no licence to play human respon-
sibility and Gods Counsel against one another in the space of our
human understanding. Human understanding is fundamentally limited
knowledge. The position of man as creature brings with it that mans
speaking about God must take into account the categorical dierence
between God and man. With Calvin that dierence functions as a reli-
gious given, which makes following through a line of reasoning logically
impossible. He refuses to accept the nal conclusions of an absolute
determinism, namely that God is the creator of evil.15 Precisely because
of this limitation it is not possible to relativise the seriousness of the
invitation and individual responsibility in the light of divine preordi-
nation. What lies within the innity of Gods Counsel actualises itself
in the way of invitation and individual responsibility. In what follows we will
investigate what it means for Calvins theology that he allows both per-
spectives to exist.16 Not only historically, but also with an eye to present-
day systematic reection, it will be productive to pay attention to that
rst line, almost forgotten in a dogmatic perspective: for Calvin, life in
time, in the world of the senses, in everyday experience is full of a God
who seeks, draws and stimulates. Is this something which has become
strange to us, or does Calvins theology here put us precisely onto a
track that has become overgrown and will have to be rediscovered once
again?
Reformed theology, do not accept the religious character of the sovereignty of God
and reduce it to a system of causes and eects that lie on the same plane. Thus for
instance Pinnock, in his eort to do justice to the freedom and subjectivity of man and
the openness of history, arrives at a theology in which the notion of Gods sovereignty
disappears completely into the void. This sort of theology is right to the extent that it
will do justice to human responsibility; it is wrong to the extent that this is done at the
cost of the notion of Gods sovereignty. Karl Barth increasingly wanted to do justice
to both perspectives, that of Gods sovereignty and that of human subjectivity, without
however telescoping them together as factors in one sphere.
16 See P. Jacobs, Prdestination und Verantwortlichkeit, 138139.
30 chapter two
and state Calvin is in no sense modern, but stands entirely in the ideal
of the Middle Ages, of one undivided society. For a long time Calvin
hoped for a renewal of one unbroken church, in which the old unity
between nation and church or between city and church would still be
maintained. As a reformer of the second generation,17 his work and
theology is to be placed in a situation in which the reformation of the
church had for some time been seen as the aair of the cities and their
leaders.18 With regard to the relationship of the church and state, the
reformation of the cities did not deviate from the medieval pattern: the
borders of the state (or rather of the city-state) coincided with those of
the church. Church and civil authorities considered themselves as parts
of the societas christiana, in which both had responsibilities which were
indeed to be distinguished, but in which the realisation that people
belonged to one Christian society was so overwhelming that the civil
authorities felt themselves responsible for the welfare of the church and
the Christian identity of society. Church and government are involved
in the same concern and from that involvement work together con-
stantly. Calvin can call on the government and point out to it its task,
to be concerned with the organisation of church and society and the
purity of doctrine and life.19 In his Institutes Calvin includes public life,
proposs au conseil par les ministres (1537), OS I, 369377. A striking example is Calvins
commentary on the words from Luke 14:23 compelle intrare (compel them to come in),
CO 45, 401: Interea non improbo, quod Augustinus hoc testimonio saepius contra
32 chapter two
Donatistas usus est, ut probaret, piorum principum edictis ad veri Dei cultum et
dei unitatem licite cogi praefractos et rebelles: quia, etsi voluntaria est des, videmus
tamen, iis mediis utiliter domari eorum pervicaciam, qui non nisi coacti parent. For
the whole, see O. Weber, Johannes Calvin, Gestalter der Kirche in: idem, Die Treue
Gottes in der Geschichte. Gesammelte Aufstze II, Gttingen 1968, 118.
20 Inst. 4.20.2: Sin ita est voluntas Dei, nos dum ad veram patriam aspiramus,
peregrinari super terram: eius vero peregrinationis usus talibus subsidiis indiget: qui
ipsa ab homine tollunt, suam illi eripiunt humanitatem.
21 According to H.A. Oberman, Europa aicta: The Reformation of the Refugees,
introduce several points from more recent research into the functioning
of this administrative body into this study, because they throw light on
the social rootage of Calvins theology.22 The Consistory was established
by Calvin in Geneva in 1541. From the Registres of this administrative
body it can be concluded that this ecclesiastical institution in the main
played a role in three ways.
In the rst place, it functioned as an educational institution. We can
hardly imagine today what a staggering loss the withdrawal of episcopal
authority must have been for broad portions of the population in
terms of religious rituals. The search for reformation resulted in a
tremendous reduction in the shaping of their life. Rituals and customs
gave form and oered rootage and guidance to daily life. Henceforth
there could be no appeal to saints in times of need or uncertainty;
there was no longer a sacrament of extreme unction in the last hour
of life; henceforth there were just two sacraments, only the rst of
which could still function as a rite of passage. One lived in a society
without priests, and was driven in the direction of a more personal
form of belief. The Consistory played a considerable role in this process
of interiorisation, even if its remedies for ignorance and superstition
were clumsy and deeply inferior according to todays standards. There
are countless cases known from the rst years in which the Consistory
summoned the citizens to leave behind the old rituals, to no longer
be involved with devotions to Mary, and to learn the Lords Prayer
and Ten Commandments in the vernacular. The people were regularly
reminded to attend the countless preaching services and Bible lectures
that were held in Geneva.
In the second place, the Consistory functioned as a Council for
Arbitration and Reconciliation. In the case of disrupted relationships in
families, or dierences in business relations, people could be summoned
by the Consistory, which then attempted to eect a reconciliation, or
impose a solution.23
state church (January, 1562). He continued to hold to the ideal of the unity of city or
state and church. See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 179184.
22 For years now the leading gure in this research has been R.M. Kingdon of the
University of Wisconsin. For a description of the function of the Consistory from his
hand, see The Geneva Consistory in the time of Calvin in: A. Pettegree/A. Duke/
G. Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 15401620, Cambridge 19962, 2134. See idem, Adul-
tery and Divorce in Calvins Geneva, Cambridge/London 1995, 1030. See also H.A. Speel-
man, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 7279.
23 See the examples that R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce. Where possible
34 chapter two
a reconciliation between the marriage partners was hammered out, often expressly
against the will of the complainant. In several cases a divorce was allowed and a
second marriage permitted. Kingdon believes that in the dissolution of the marriage
between Calvins own brother Antoine and Anne le Fert, the Reformers unswerving
commitment to preserve his own house from any possible scandal and taint played a
decisive role (88, 94). The rst request for a divorce was made as early as 1548 on his
brothers behalf by John Calvin himself. It was only granted in 1557, when he has at the
height of his power.
24 See particularly the description by W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the
had not only a religious signicance, but also immediate social conse-
quences. Anyone excommunicated, or banned from the city, was not
only excluded from an important ritual, but cut o from family, friends
and business.25
47: Car il signie que ceux qui polluent leurs consciences en sabandonnant a mal
ne sont pas dignes destre maintenus en la pure cognoissance de Dieu, mais plutost
meritent destre aveuglez pour estre seduitz par divers erreurs et mensonges.
27 The negative associations of the word astrology as a pseudo-science only date
from a much later time. See the introduction by O. Millet accompanying the Advertisse-
ment.
28 Advertissement, 54.
29 Advertissement, 48: La plus part se sert de la parolle de Dieu seullement pour
avoir de quoy deviser en compagnie; les uns sont menez dambition, les autres en
pensent faire leur prot; il y en a mesmes qui en pensent faire un maquerellage
pur avoir acces aus dames. According to J. Bohatec, Bud und Calvin, 274, Calvins
treatise is a direct response to a text published anonymously in Lyon in 1546, entitled
Advertissement sur les jugemens dAstrologie, a une studieuse Damoyselle. Bohatec names Mellin de
Saint Gelais as the probably author. See also Millets introduction to Calvins treatise,
22.
30 Advertissement, 48: Elle doit estre vive et dune telle ecace quelle transperce les
doeurs pur examiner tout ce qui est dedans lhomme, ouy jusquaux mouelle des os,
comme dit lApostre.
ways of knowing 37
One can nd the same crucial role for the conscience with regard to
the knowledge of God in De Scandalis (1550),31 published in a period in
which the political prospects of the Reformation were frankly poor, as a
result of the Interim. It is a text with a patently obvious polemic ten-
dency, written as an aid for those who were wavering in their attitudes
regarding the Evangelical renewal. In this text Calvin indeed names
the names of a number of freethinkers in the cultural upper crust of
Paris and Strasbourg, such as Agrippa van Nettescheim, Villeneuve,
Etienne Dolet and Franois Rabelais,32 but the treatise is not addressed
to them. They have crossed a critical line. In Calvins view they belong
to a group who have become far too casual in their attitudes toward
God and his Commandments and embody an attitude that has over-
stepped all bounds. Their satiric commentary on parts of Christian
doctrine such as the immortality of the soul and hope for personal eter-
nal life is, to Calvins mind, destructive of faith. Such commentaries
result in inward scepticism, which undermines and drives out all fear
of God Calvin can just hear them thinking: if there is no personal life
extending on into eternity, the fact of the matter is that there is also no
judgement, so why should anyone still be concerned about such things?
In their eyes religion and morality are sheer fabrications, invented to
keep people in check.33 Calvin accuses them of what he elsewhere calls
an Epicurean concept of God: if such a supreme being exists in some
form, then it does not have anything to do personally with mankind.
Calvin mentions the ominous word atheist in this connection. One
can best understand the function of this term by comparing it with the
manner in which anarchist was used around 1900 to stereotype ones
opponents, or the term communist was used in the 20th century. In
any case, it means that those being so labelled were to be considered
a threat to something that is fundamental. In the view of Busson, in
Calvins mouth atheism becomes a collective label for diverse forms of
unbelief or deviant convictions. In some cases it implies the denial of
Gods existence in any form, in others to a form of rationalism, deism
or Averroism.34 What these ideas all have in common is that they lead
to a form of practical atheism. People lose their respect for God, scorn
31 See the introduction and edition by O. Fatio, Des Scandales, Geneve 1984, 8. For
et Renaissance 16 (1954), 273278, who opposes the assertion of L. Febvre in his book Le
38 chapter two
obedience and lose their passion for those things that are of eternal
value. If there is no immortal soul, if man will not always stand before
the face of God Almighty, life in time is stripped of its importance.
According to Calvins deepest conviction, that is the gravest of errors.
As we have said, those being addressed in De Scandalis are not these
atheists; they have already passed the point of no return. The treatise
is directed toward doubters, to those who may indeed have diculty
with some points of doctrine, but who are nevertheless still to be healed,
because their conscience is not yet obstructed.35
One of the stumbling blocks that Calvin takes up is the doctrine of
the incarnation. It is striking that he makes no attempt whatsoever to
clarify or explain this doctrine. In the passage in question we encounter
another strong example of how Calvin deals with what I previously
termed the categorical dierence between God and man. It appears as
if he wants to say that any attempt at explanation rests at its outset on
a false estimate of human capacity to comprehend what he terms doc-
trina caelestis. The incarnation is a mystery which far exceeds human
understanding. Among the causes of the diculty which people have
with this doctrine is that the human mind is incapable of taking it in.
From Gods side there is however no paradox whatsoever. According to
Calvin the real problem lies not at the intellectual level; one must dig
deeper. The problem is spiritual in nature. It becomes visible when men
let their conscience speak. Calvin suggests that the oence with which
the incarnation confronts us lies in human arrogance and the refusal
to accept Gods nearness in the incarnation. God comes too close for
mans taste. Because God descends from his immeasurable heights to
you, would you therefore continue further removed from Him? What
if He had called you up to the inaccessible sanctuaries of the heavens?
How would you have gone to him from such a distance, you who are
oended by his drawing near? According to Calvin, the scoers con-
clude that there is no one more foolish than we, who hope that we shall
be given life out of a dead man, who ask acquittal from a condemned
man, draw the grace of God from a curse, and ee to the gallows as
the only anchor of eternal salvation. By laughing at so much gullibility
on the part of others, they present themselves as being extremely intel-
ligent. There is however something which cannot be found in them,
problme de lincroyance au XVI e sicle, Paris 1942, that the concept cannot be considered as
theoretical atheism because such an idea could not have been conceived in that day.
35 OS II, 172.
ways of knowing 39
36 OS II, 173.
37 OS II, 174: hos sciamus ideo oendi, quia timore Dei vacui, nullum spiritualis
doctrinae gustum habent. Quare ne sit nobis oendiculo ipsorum stupor, sed potius ab
humana Christi natura ad divinam gloriam feramur, quae omnes curiosas questiones in
admirationem convertat: a morte crucis ad gloriosam resurrectionem dirigamur: quae
totum crucis opprobrium deleat: a carnis inrmitate ad potentiam spiritus transeamus,
quae stultas omnes cogitationes absorbeat.
40 chapter two
38 See also Calvins answer to Sadoletus, where he describes something like an ordo
salutis, OS I, 469.
ways of knowing 41
2.2. Accommodation
39 Inst. 3.20.40.
42 chapter two
43 Inst. 2.12.1: Quanvis ab omni labe integer stetisset homo, humilior tamen erat
prie addici audimus, quisquis has metas transilit, stultae curiositati nimis indulget. Inst.
2.12.5: Siquis excipiat, horum nihil obstare quominus idem Christus, qui damnatos
redemit, testari etiam potuerit suum erga salvos et incolumes amorem, eorum carnem
induendo: brevis responsio est, quum pronuntiet Spiritus, aeterno Dei decreto coni-
uncta simul haec duo fuisse, ut eret nobis redemptor Christus, et eiusdem naturae
particeps, fas non esse longius inquirere.
44 chapter two
45 Calvin agrees with the exegesis in the ancient church in which the appearances of
the angel of the Lord (Judges 6:1124; Gen. 32:2930) were appearances of the Word as
the second person of the Trinity. See, for instance, Inst. 1.13.10: Etsi enim nondum erat
carne vestitus, descendit tamen quasi intermedius, ut familiarius ad deles accederet.
E.D. Willis, Calvins Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called Extra Calvinisticum in
Calvins Theology, Leiden 1966, 6971, points to the clarication that Calvin introduced
in his vision of the mediatorship of Christ in answer to the views of F. Stancaro.
According to Stancaro Christ was only mediator by virtue of the human nature that he
assumed in the incarnation. In his Responsum ad Fratres Polonos (1560), CO 9, 338, Calvin
makes it clear that Christs mediatorship also involves the creation and sustaining of
the world. By virtue of this mediatorship in creation the Son is the Head of the Church
from the very beginning, standing above the angels, and is properly named the rstborn
of the whole creation.
46 See Calvins famous formulation in Inst. 2.13.4: etsi in unum personam coaluit
immensa Verbi essentia cum natura hominis, nullam tamen inclusionem ngimus.
Mirabiliter enim e caelo descendit Filius Dei, ut caelum tamen non relinqueret: mirabi-
liter in utero Virginis gestari, in terris versari, et in cruce pendere voluit, ut semper
mundum impleret, sicut ab initio. The study by E.D. Willis cited in note 71 shows
that in light of the history of dogma there is no reason this should be termed the
extra-calvinisticum. The notion that the Logos was active apart from the incarnation
is a component of the established store of traditional doctrine. From the abundance
of material, see for instance Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, 17, John Damascene,
De Fide Orthodoxa, III.7, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.5, a.2. The term
can therefore only be understood as a polemic label that was introduced against the
Reformed position by the Lutheran side in the conict over the nature of Christs
presence in the Supper. The Reformed position is expressed in Question and Answer
48 of the Heidelberg Catechism: Q. But are not the two natures in Christ separated
from each other in this way, if the humanity is not wherever the divinity is? A. Not
at all; for since divinity is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow
that the divinity is indeed beyond the bounds of the humanity which it has assumed,
and is nonetheless ever in that humanity as well, and remains personally united to it.
(trans. A.O. Miller and M.E. Oosterhaven) Since its introduction the term has become
meaningful in the theological debate to the extent that it does refer to the Lutheran
accusation that Calvin does not take the incarnation seriously enough theologically. For
ways of knowing 45
the distinction has its roots in Trinitarian theology, and has major con-
sequences for the whole structure of theology. In Calvin Gods acts are
dierentiated in a Trinitarian manner from the very beginning; that is
to say, what God does is to be resolved into the work of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, in which these three can not be identied with one
another without qualication. With all emphasis on the unity of God,
the work of the Spirit, for instance, has a peculiarity with respect to the
work of the Son, and the work of the Son has characteristic properties
with respect to that of the Father. The eternal Son does not coincide
perfectly with the incarnate Word, and knowledge of God does not
therefore coincide perfectly with knowledge of Jesus Christ as the incar-
nate Word. However much knowledge of God substantively derives the
criterion for its content from Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word, as
the mirror of divine mercy, for Calvin the work of the Spirit forms the
wider horizon in which the work of the Son is situated and the Father
leads his people to renewal and perfection through the Spirit. It is at
this point that later, in our second panel regarding Barths theology, a
variant conguration will be seen. Barth derives all knowledge of God
from the one revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the logos ensarkos, and
sees it as consisting of the disclosure of that which is given in Christ.
The concept of disclosure would not do justice to the peculiarity and
relative originality of the work of the Spirit as conceived by Calvin.
Meanwhile, from the discussion between Calvin and Osiander we
can make out the premise that both share, for all their dierences: God
stands far above man, and cannot be reached from the side of man.
The majesty of God is too high to be scaled up to by mortals, who
creep like worms on the earth.47 God would therefore remain hidden if
He himself had not come towards mortals by various paths and nally
the brightness of Christ had not shown upon us, according to Calvin.48
After all, the dierence between Creator and creature, and between
its signicance in the structure of Calvins theology see H.A. Oberman, Die Extra-
Dimension in der Theologie Calvins in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf,
Gttingen 1986, 253282. According to Jngel, Karl Barths doctrine of the eternal
election of the man Jesus Christ can be seen as a systematic counter-proposal to this
accusation: one can no longer think of the man apart from the Logos incarnatus. See
E. Jngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. Eine
Paraphrase, Tbingen 19763, 96.
47 Inst. 2.6.4.
48 Inst. 3.2.1: Nam quum Deus lucem inaccessam habitet, Christum occurrere
medium necesse est Quia Deus ipse procul absconditus lateret nisi nos irradiaret
fulgor Christi.
46 chapter two
49 Inst. 1.11.3. See also Comm. Isaiah 6:2, CO 36, 128: Duae aliae quibus faciem
tegebant satis indicant ne angelos quidem fulgorem illum Dei sustinere posse, sicque
ipsos perstringi Dei conspectu, ut quum solem splendentem intueri volumus.
50 Comm. on Is. 6:5, CO 36, 131: Itaque priusquam sese nobis patefaciat, non cogi-
tamus nos esse homines, imo nos putamus esse deos: ubi autem apparuit Deus, tunc
incipimus sentire et experiri quales simus. Inde vera humilitas: quae in eo consistit
ut homo nihil amplius sibi arroget, totusque a Deo pendeat. See also Comm. Gen.
32:30, CO 23, 446: Quamdiu praesentem non sentimus Deum, superbe nobis place-
mus. Atque haec imaginaria est vita, quam stulte sibi arrogat caro, ubi deorsum incli-
nat. Fideles autem, dum se illis Deus ostendit, quolibet fumo se magis evanidos esse
sentiunt: denique ut confusa iaceat carnis superbia, ad Deum venire necesse est.
51 Comm. Is. 6:6, CO 36, 131: Videtur enim absurdum ut Dei intuitus vel propin-
quitas vitam auferat, cuius ipse fons et autor est. Respondeo id eri per accidens:
quando id ex nostro vitio, non ex Dei natura accidit. Mors enim est in nobis: eam
non perspicimus, nisi cum vita Dei conferatur.
ways of knowing 47
52 See for example Inst. 1.13.1. See also OS II, 171, CO 5, 181 and CO 7, 149:
Car le Seigneur, sachant bien que, sil parlait nous selon quil convient sa maiest,
nostre intelligence nest point capable datteindre sihaut, saccommode nostre peti-
tesse: et comme une nourisse begaye avec son enfent, aussi il use envers nous dune
facon grossiere de parle, n destre entendu. Celuy donc qui renverse cest ordre, ne
tasche sinon densevelir la la verit de Dieue laquelle ne peut estre congneue, quen la
facon quil la nous al voulu reveler.
48 chapter two
of God counts for Calvin. God is not only elevated; he comes down,
with the crucied Christ as the nadir, down to within the reach of the
senses, and thus into our lives and hearts. He wishes to reach out to his
people in his eacement. The fact is, that mankind must be delivered.
God does that in a way that leads down, and from the depths upward.
This is the way and the movement that forms the structuring principle
of Calvins vision of the Supper.
Accommodation is a central element in Calvins theological epis-
temology. However, for Calvin it is not limited to an epistemological
concept. It is also a concept that is of far-reaching signicance for the
content of his theology. In the following section we will however limit
ourselves for the present to the consequences for Calvins hermeneutic
and his conception of language. That God as the great Orator accom-
modates himself to various times and places53 is even the key to under-
standing the Old Testament, as we will explain in the following section.
torische, macht selig; das letzte macht nur verstndig?55 What is most
remarkable, howeverand I deem this fundamentalis that the pres-
ence of metaphysical elements in Calvins concept of God has not led to
disqualication of revelation in history. He arrives at an extremely var-
ied and well-considered evaluation of anthropomorphisms. Some are
metaphorical, others on the contrary very precise. In Chapter 3 we will
return to this matter. I will here limit myself to the manner in which
accommodation functions as a hermeneutic key for the clarication of
the dierences between the Old and New Testaments.
Accommodation as a means in divine pedagogy is a familiar ele-
ment in the history of Christianity. In the theology of Irenaeus of
Lyons, Origen and Clement of Alexandria accommodation is the key
for the understanding of revelation in the Old Testament. Calvin thus
stands in a long hermeneutic tradition, inaugurated by Philo of Alexan-
dria.56 According to this tradition, the anthropomorphic ways of speak-
ing about and images for God in his relation to Israel are part of an
earlier phase of revelation. Accommodation ts into the childhood of
mankind. In other words, Calvin spiritualises. And yet, with all the cri-
tique that has been passed on this method, a basic assumption that
has come to be of great importance for the high esteem for the Old
Testament and Israel in the Reformed tradition can be seen. The way
in which Israel and the church become acquainted with revelation is
very dierent, but the content of the revelation is the same under both
the old and new covenant, namely community with God.57 In terms of
its substance, the covenant is the same. It is merely that under the old
covenant the church is still in the stage of childhood. The content of
the covenant appears to coincide with land and possessions; the punish-
ments which are threatened are corporal punishments. The ceremonies
under the old dispensation are the primer, as it were, through which the
child is taught the rules. The old dispensation is a veil.58 With Galatians
3:24 in mind, the law and its dispensation are the custodian, literally
our schoolmaster, the tutor who is to lead a young child to adulthood.
55 J.G. Fichte, Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (1806), Fichtes
in Jewish and Christian Thought, New York 1993. For Philo see for instance W. Maas,
Unvernderlichkeit Gottes. Zum Verhltnis von griechisch-philosophischer und christlicher Gotteslehre,
Munich/Paderborn/Vienna 1974, 8799, 116118.
57 Inst. 2.10.2.
58 Inst. 2.11.3; Inst. 2.11.5; Inst. 2.2.13.
50 chapter two
When the content of the covenant between God and man in Christ
comes into being, God speaks at another level, namely to people who
have become adults. Then what is important is no longer the letter, but
the spirit, not bondage but freedom. History is a process of education
and within this process anthropomorphisms have their function.
It will help clarify things to understand which opponents Calvin is
trying to fend o with this vision. He is ghting against millennial-
ist views which had their followers particularly in Anabaptist circles.
In these groups the prophecies about the coming kingdom of peace
and the Day of the Lord were being applied directlyand in Calvins
eyes uncritically. Qualifying these prophetic predictions as anthropo-
morphisms oers the possibility of conceiving them as metaphorical.
On the basis of the New Testament Calvin concludes that what they are
about is not the establishment of peace on earth; the prophecies in fact
involve the eternal kingdom with God. Here the concept of accommo-
dation serves to spiritualise the interpretation of the promises. Accord-
ing to Calvin, the same is true for other anthropomorphic images and
expressions. That God has ears, a nose, eyes and hands must not be
taken literally. It is a way of speaking, a modus loquendi, which is not
adequate to express the spiritual nature of Gods being.
Obviously one can not avoid questions of a substantive theological
nature about the use of this concept of accommodation. How does
Calvin arrive at the criterion for distinguishing real and metaphorical
language? If all revelation given is an accommodation and involves
some degree of metaphor, does this not undermine its trustworthiness
as such? We betray ourselves in such questions. We touch a sore spot,
the raw nerve of contemporary theology, where every mediation, every
embodiment of Gods speaking and disclosure has become the basis for
uncertainty. What does the distinction between real and metaphorical
mean when the Bible speaks of God as the loving Father? Can men
still take that seriously? Or in the end is Gods Counsel all that is left,
like a threatening thunderhead behind which all the sunlight suddenly
disappears? As we have indicated, these questions particularly concern
the content of knowledge of God, and will be taken up in Chapter 3.
Yet it would be good to here note that Calvin was evidently not
conscious of a possible relativisation of all revelation. He does not speak
of this in simple terms, and that in itself is telling. It is at least as
important to know what is not the subject of the debate, as to know
what is being spoken of. He is defending himself against a critique
of an entirely dierent nature, apparently coming from spiritualising
ways of knowing 51
59 According to the publishers of the Opera Selecta, Calvin is reacting against Sebasti-
aan Franck and his Paradoxa, published in 1535. See Inst. 2.11.13. Regarding Franck see
A. Sguenny, Sources du spiritualisme daprs la Chronica de Sebastian Franck in:
M. Lienhard, Les Dissidents du XVI e Sicle entre LHumanisme et le Catholicisme, Baden-Baden
1983, 165174, particularly 169.
60 Inst. 2.11.13.
52 chapter two
said that the price which Calvin pays for the concept of accommo-
dation is that something of the clarity of revelation must be surren-
dered, but nothing of its essential content. The substance, the actual
content, of revelation in both the Old and New Testaments is the same.
Or, as formulated by K. Schilder, accommodation aects the revelation
received in such a way that it cannot be said to be perfect, but can still
be said to be pure.61 The anthropomorphisms are means in the hands
of God with which He makes clear what He has to say.
61 K. Schilder, Wat is de hemel, Kampen 19542, 54. See also H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde
Dogmatiek II, 90, 92. Human knowledge of God is not adequate, but is analogical, pure
and trustworthy.
62 Among others, W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 116127, points to these connections.
See further the extensive study by O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. tude de
Rhtorique rforme, Genve 1992.
63 Comm. ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320: sed eloquentiam veram, quae constat prudenti
form, not a more elaborate one, using now this image, and then that
one. But it always searches for a form that is in the service of the powers
of persuasion, persuasio, for the matter involved and the audience being
addressed.64
It is remarkable how greatly Calvins thought regarding Gods way
of approaching man is permeated by rhetoric. The realisation that
God accommodates himself to the measure of man is omnipresent in
it, so to speak. That God expresses himself pro sensus nostri modulo or
has accommodated himself ad sensum nostrum is constantly on his lips.
The consequences of this interweaving of the doctrine of revelation and
rhetoric can hardly be overstated; they extend throughout his theology.
For Calvin the question of how (qualis) God is (we today would say who
God is) often appears to matter less than does sorting out the eects
of certain words and images on man. Theologically his interest lies in
the pragmatic question of the handling of language and images, with
what God seeks to accomplish in man through an image or word.
In terms of language theory, the centre of gravity for his theology lies
in perlocution, the eect intended by the use of certain words. In the
course of the discussion in this rst part, diverse examples of this will be
provided.
It should be clear that this linkage has consequences for a theological
evaluation of both panels of this study. When in a post-Kantian situ-
ation, in which Biblical images and concepts are regarded as human
constructs, the trustworthiness and salutary value of revelation becomes
dependent on the question of whether God is revealing himself, one
can expect little understanding for a concept that structurally places so
much emphasis on the practical eects of words and concepts. Calvin
can stress the metaphors and images of the Scriptures precisely because
he is convinced that they are given by the Holy Spirit and not for-
mulated by the human mind. According to him, it is exactly at those
points in Scripture where the central truths of faith are unfolded for us
that we must make minimal use of our own freedom.65 In fact, we here
64 See for instance Calvins extensive commentary on ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320322.
He exerts himself to show that the apostle does not intend to condemn rhetorical means
in general. On the contrary, the verse gives Calvin the opportunity to pronounce a
eulogy on true eloquence. The power of the Cross would have been buried if Paul
had availed himself of philosophical subtlety (philosophico acumine) and rhetorical artice
(articio dicendi) (320). What is important is that eloquence serves the Gospel in all ways.
65 From a letter to Simon Grynaeus (Nov. 15, 1539), here cited from: Iohannis Calvini
Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T.H.L. Parker, Leiden 1981, 4: deinde ut
54 chapter two
encounter what Protestant theology will later call the truth principle.
Scripture is the revelation of Gods will. That will have great conse-
quences for dealing with the Bible, its words and stories. Knowledge of
God arises when people carefully follow the instructions given by God.
It is not human imagination or construction that takes primacy; the
emphasis is on the Spirit as instructor. In this eld we encounter still
other metaphors. One image which surfaces frequently in Calvin is that
of reins.66 God does not drive with a loose hand or long rein, much less
give free rein. The reins are tight, and train the pious to be attentive.
In his text Contre les libertins Calvin also utters a strong critique of the
handling of the Bible by people such as Quentin, who he terms lib-
ertines. Basing themselves on IICor. 3:6 (for the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life), according to Calvin they permit themselves an expo-
sition of the Scripture that is a hundred times worse than the allegor-
ical exposition of the Papists. The literary means used lead the reader
down the garden path, away from the true intention. Are the injunc-
tions satire, or caricature? The reader no longer knows how to properly
interpret the author; is the author playing the clown, is he being seri-
ous?67 Calvin condemns this game of disguises, because it runs counter
to the order that God has laid down. Certainly when the mysteries of
psalms on the experience of Gods guidance in his own life: CO 31, 20: Deus
tamen arcano providentiae suae fraeno cursum meum alio tandem reexit. Faced with
the precarious situation of the evangelical movement as a result of Interim, he again
used the image of reins: OS II, 192: Hodie cum duro austeroque fraeno nos Dominus
constrictos teneat, videmus ut passim omnes fere lasciviant. See also OS II, 197.
67 Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins, CO 7, 149248, 174. See also the
telling chapter titles Du langage et style de parler quont les Quintinistes (168) and De
la grande malice et impudence quont les Libertins, en se gloriant destre doubles
de cueur et de langue (170). See J. Wirth, Libertins et epicuriens: aspects de
lirreligion en XVIe sicle, Bibliotheque dHumanisme et Renaissance 39 (1977), 601627. As
examples of such spiritualistic exegesis Wirth refers to Agrippas text De nobilitate atque
praecellentia foeminei sexus (1529) and the Problemata of O. Brunfels (1523). With a range of
arguments and examples, Agrippa defends not the inferiority, or even the equality, but
the superiority of woman over man. If in his creative action God progresses from the
lesser to the more perfect, then logic would dictate that the woman is the most perfect
creature. Only in female beauty does the true image of God light up! Moreover, it was
Adam who sinned rst, not Eve. However ne this may sound, according to Calvin it
leaves the reader in fatal confusion. The praise of woman is ambiguous in the extreme,
and in the last analysis the reader does not know if the author really intends to praise
women or if the text is persiage, and the reader is being taken for a ride. See also De
Scandalis, 201.
ways of knowing 55
God are at stake, the Scripture itself must be the rule for exposition. In
the Scripture the Spirit itself is speaking, without indirection. The point
for God, in all his accommodations, is to penetrate the heart of man,
to attract him, to stir him from his lethargy, to invite him to commu-
nity.
It would be too simple and even unjust to dispose of Calvins criti-
cism of literary tools such as persiage and satire as a want of personal
artistry. Anyone hazarding such a judgement shows instantaneously
that they have never read Calvin, or in any case read none of his trea-
tises, where he permits himself more room than he does in, say, his
commentaries. The rhetorical ideal of elegance and eloquence is highly
valued, and it is not without reason that in Calvin studies there has
been so much attention for his use of the rhetorical arts.68 His critique
does not involve satire and persiage as such, but ows from a vision
of the Bible and the instruction given in it. The Bible is a book drafted
by the Spirit, and comprises the doctrine given by the Spirit. Put suc-
cinctly, man should not step in and ddle with it.
What counts systematically is a totally dierent vision of the lan-
guage and words of the Bible. For Calvin biblical anthropomorphism
and analogies are not what they are in post-Kantian theology, namely
creations of men who, in their speaking about what is more than this
world are also connected with this world.69 For him they are creations
of and tools in the hand of God. The place of anthropomorphism
in this concept therefore results in a positive valuation for rhetori-
cal means employed by God.70 Man must adapt himself to the way
and order used by God. Calvins argument for a way of thinking
that lies within the boundaries of revelation is therefore directly linked
with his doctrine of scripture. The message of God enters the under-
standing of man through Scripture. The Bible contains the oracles
of God,71 the instruction from heaven.72 These descriptions begin to
68 See for instance Q. Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism, Chicago 1931,
Bouwsma, John Calvin, 113127. See also R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140
158.
69 See for instance S. McFague, Models of God, 2957.
70 In recent years quite a bit has been written on the signicance of rhetoric for
Calvins context and theology. See W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 14, 113114. See also
S. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, Louisville 1995. See particularly the study already
mentioned, O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. tude de Rhtorique rforme,
Genve 1992.
71 Inst. 1.6.2: oracula Dei.
72 Inst. 1.6.3: caelestis doctrina.
56 chapter two
75 For example, with regard to Agrippa dAubign, see C. Randall Coats, Subverting
1991, 129.
77 Hartvelt, Symboliek, 132.
78 KD II/2, 68; ET, 64.
58 chapter two
seriously theologically than it has generally been. It stands for the indi-
rect means to which God commits himself toward man. As a theolog-
ical concept, the Counsel of God only becomes a relativisation of and
threat to the revelation which is given if it is forgotten that God has com-
mitted Himself to man by means of the mirrors in which he permits Himself to be
known.
The whole of created reality, in all its facets, is a tool in the hands of
God by which He makes himself known to manor better, an invi-
tation to enter into community with God. The word facet is used
here deliberately; it connects with another metaphor which surfaces
frequently in Calvins writings. To describe the forms of divine accom-
modation Calvin uses the metaphor of the mirror. The metaphor is def-
initely not unique to Calvin; it has a long and rich history in epistemol-
ogy, in optics and in literature. Since antiquity the natural phenomenon
of the reection of an object on the surface of water and the mirror as a
utensil have provided a paradigm for understanding what knowledge is
and how it comes to be.79 In the neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition
the nature of knowledge is understood primarily in terms of light and
sight. Knowledge comes into being because an external object through
its eect represents itself to the knowing subject.80 The criterion in both
aesthetics and the artes was that trustworthy knowledge and art were an
imitation of reality. In pre-modern times knowledge was a form of rep-
etition or imitation of the given. The metaphor of the mirror is closely
connected with imitation (imitatio) as an epistemological principle. Just
as the steam engine had a paradigmatic function in the culture of the
18th and 19th century, and the computer at the end of the 20th, the mir-
ror and its optical potential aorded the 16th century the possibility of
visualising what knowledge was and how it arose. In Calvin we nd the
metaphor in connection with knowledge of God. What the use of this
fundamental metaphor implies for Calvins doctrine of revelation will
be summed up in several points in the paragraphs which follow.
79 H. Leisegang, Die Erkenntnis Gottes im Spiegel der Seele und der Natur,
spectivasee D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientic Tra-
dition in Philosophical, Religious and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago
1992, 307315. For Roger Bacons inuential theory of representation, see particularly
K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Founda-
tions of Semantics, 12501345, Leiden 1988, 326.
ways of knowing 59
First and foremost, the metaphor allows us to visualise that God per-
mits himself to be known by indirect means. God makes his will known
with the aid of a selection of means in creation, in which he makes his
own qualities visible, as though in a mirror.
Second, that the various mirrors are places where God becomes per-
ceptible in his works is something that rests on Gods order. The con-
cept of ordo refers back to that which is the subject of the place and
quality of the created thing, namely God. From their inception, the
means of Gods revelation have never been neutral in any sense.
Third, the metaphor makes it clear that the image that is visible is there
because of God, and is not the result of human thought. The image in
a mirror is not the result of mental activity in man himself, or which
he has arrived at by way of an abstract process. God himself sees to
it that something of himself and his works is visible in these mirrors,
and presses himself upon man in his ineluctable majesty. For Calvin the
stress lies upon direct experience, the realisation of Gods presence in
the mirrors He has set up, and less on a process of abstraction through
which man comes to a conclusion about Gods activity. Perhaps, from
a theological-historical perspective, one might say that in this regard
there is a formal similarity between Calvins concept of knowledge of
God and what in late medieval philosophy was termed cognitio intuitiva,
as distinguished from cognitio abstractiva.81 As will be seen in the remain-
81 For the concept cognitio intuitiva, see among others W.J. Courtenay, Schools and
Fourth, for Calvin the metaphor serves to make it clear that the image
that appears in the mirror is always of less quality, less pure than the
object itself. With regard to this, we must remember that in Calvins
time they did not yet know the smooth glass mirror we have today.82
Mirrors were then of hammered metal, and depending on the smooth-
ness of the surface achieved, the image was unclear or vague. Never-
theless Calvin holds fast to the trustworthiness of the mirror image. In
his exegesis of ICorinthians 13:12 he suggests that the mirror lacks only
the precision that characterises direct sight.83 The angels do not need
the aid of mirrors; for them God is already openly present. Mortals
have not yet risen to that height in this life. In comparison with the
conclude that these could indicate something like a tree. I am immediately certain that
there is a tree there. This cognitio intuitiva involves both the receptive capacities of the
soul as well as the intellectual faculties. Cognitio intuitiva is thus knowledge that is caused
by an immediately present object. It aords immediate certainty of the existence of
the object. With cognitio abstractiva, on the other hand, one is speaking of a process
which abstracts from the factual existence of an object. This knowledge is derived from
other objects. According to Torrance, it is this concept of a cognitio intuitiva, in a version
reinterpreted by John Major, that is the foundation of Calvins concept of knowledge of
God. Knowledge of God is not obtained through abstraction, as Aquinas maintained
following Aristotle, nor does it come about because God grants man some form of
cognitio abstractiva during his pilgrimage on earth, which coincides with the revealed
truths established in Scripture and tradition, as argued by Ockham, but it arises from
the intention and inuence of God, who is personally present through his Spirit (see
Torrance, particularly 8486). Torrance demonstrates that there is at least a formal
similarity with Duns Scotus and John Major at important points. However, evidence
is not forthcoming for his condent assertion that Calvin was directly dependent on
Major and Scotus.
82 The technique of making glass mirrors was known in antiquity, but lost until it
was rediscovered at the end of the 12th century. Only in the course of the 16th century
was the glass mirror imported into Western Europe from Venice. It steadily gained
popularity as a mass product. One can assume that Calvin was primarily familiar with
mirrors of cut or polished material. See H. Grabes, The mutable Glass. Mirror-imagery in
titles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, Cambridge 1982, 72.
83 Comm. on ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514: Hanc visionem, aenigmaticam hic appellat
Paulus: non quia dubia sit aut fallax, sed quia minus conspicua est, quam quae olim
extremo die constabit Quare sic habendum est, notitiam Dei, quam nunc ex
Verbo habemus, certam quidem esse et veracem, nihil in ea confusum aut perplexum
aut tenebricosum: sed comparative aenigmaticam nominari, quia procul abest ab illa
perspicua manifestatione quam exspectamus: quia tunc videbimus facie ad faciem.
ways of knowing 61
Fifth, for Calvin the metaphor functions within the eschatological struc-
ture which characterises all human knowledge of God. There is not one
mirror, but many, and all serve to aid the pilgrim on earth in growing in
knowledge and conformity with the image of God, not in one moment,
but in a successive series of moments.85 The diverse mirrors are Gods
aids on the way on earth, the manner in which God brings himself
into our eld of vision and exerts his attraction. They are part of Gods
order of salvation, of the intention that He has for man.86
Sixth, the metaphor illuminates the belief in the divine origin of Scrip-
ture and the assurance of salvation. Although both topics will be dis-
cussed again later in this chapter, an explicit reference is now already in
order: while the mirror and the image that appears in the mirror can be
distinguished logically, in fact both are directly linked with one another.
Scripture is called the mirror in which Christ comes to us.87 One can-
not see the image that appears in the mirror without looking at the
mirror. One does not see the mirror rst, and after that the image. In
the act of seeing, both moments coincide. It therefore does no justice to
Calvins theological epistemology to make a separation between formal
and material belief in scripture.
84 Comm. ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514515: aperta et nuda Dei revelatio in Verbo
(quantum nobis expedit), nec quicquam habet involutum (qualiter ngunt impii )
85 Comm. IICor. 3:18, CO 50, 47: continuo successu
86 If there is anywhere that there is a possibility of placing Calvin against the
background of the theology of the late Middle Ages, then it is at this point, of an express
ordo salutis. Despite all attempts to make direct connections and indicate sources, one
can apparently not get beyond a number of analogies. For a survey see H.A. Oberman,
Initia Calvini. The Matrix of Calvins Reformation, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus
Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994, 117127
on The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit.
87 Inst. 3.2.6. See also Comm. IICor. 3:18, CO 50, 47.
62 chapter two
In short, the metaphor of the mirror provides the key to enter into
Calvins concept of the knowledge of God. In order to learn to know
God and his salvic intent, man must look into the mirrors that are
held up before him by God himself. God engages man through the
mirrors He himself appoints for mans knowledge of God and his
salvation, and forbids man to obtain insight outside of these mirrors.
This draws a line on both sides for knowing and thinking. The one limit
is that man must not neglect the knowledge of God that is given, the
other is that the knowledge of God that is given must not be a reason
for continuing to ask questions out of curiosity. Transgressing this latter
line leads to speculation. Theology moves between these two lines. We
will return to this point again.
What are these mirrors? In a brief compass we will summarise them
here, in order to elaborate them in the following sections. The rst
form of accommodation or mirror is found in the creation of heaven
and earth. God invites man to knowledge of him. To that end he places
the structure of heaven and earth before our eyes, thereby making him-
self visible in a certain manner.88 The cosmos can therefore, with Psalm
104, be called the garment of God, or the mirror in which he made
himself visible.89 But, second, Calvin says that man himself, with his fac-
ulties, is a mirror in which Gods image appears.90 Through the coming
of sin, however, this mirror is not longer adequate for arriving at a su-
cient knowledge of God. The third mirror, the Bible, assumes that role.
The Bible too is a consequence of divine accommodation, a mirror, in
which faith can behold God.91 Or better, to use another optical image,
the Bible is the spectacles through which Gods revelation in creation
becomes visible again.92 In this sense, the Bible fulls an integrating
function. The fourth and highest form of accommodation is the incar-
nation, an idea which Calvin takes over directly from Irenaeus: The
Father, who is boundless in himself, is bounded in the Son, because
he has accommodated himself to our capacity, lest our minds be swal-
88 See his Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 7: Haec ratio est, cur Dominus, ut nos ad
sui notitiam invitet, proponat nobis ante oculos coeli terraeque fabricam, et in ea se
quodammodo conspicuum reddat. Nam aeterna quoque eius divinitas et potentia (ut
inquit Paulus) illic relucent.
89 Comm. Ps. 104:4, CO 32, 86.
90 Inst. 1.15.4.
91 See, for instance, Inst. 3.2.6; see also CO 31, 16.
92 Inst. 1.6.1; Inst. 1.14.1. See also Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 9.
ways of knowing 63
93 Inst. 2.6.4.
64 chapter two
Europe, see W.J. Bouwsma, The Two Faces of Humanism in: idem, A Usable Past.
Essays in European Cultural History, Los Angeles 1990, 1973.
95 Regarding this see E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft
debet; atque animae nomine essentiam immortalem, creatam tamen intelligo, quae
nobilior pars est.
97 For a contemporary analysis of the mystery of the human person, see R. van
Woudenberg, Het mysterie van de identiteit. Een analytisch-wijsgerige studie, Nijmegen 2000.
ways of knowing 65
98 Inst. 1.15.1.
99 Inst. 1.15.5: Quod dicitur inspirasse Deus in faciem hominis spiraculum vitae,
putarunt animam traducem esse substantiae Dei, quasi aliqua immensae divinitatis
portio in hominem uxisset. For Calvins attitude toward the thinking regarding the
soul in spiritualistic circles, see G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, Kirksville (MO),
19923, 899904. The idea of a world-soul appears to have its roots in the Averroism
of Siger of Brabant, and through the Italian Platonism of Pomponazzi to have gained
inuence in free, non-conformist groups.
100 Inst. 1.15.5: Creatio autem non transfusio est, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium.
66 chapter two
that the soul is mortal in nature, because its form is linked to the
material, in this case to the body. According to this idea which achieved
popularity in the Aristotelian climate of Averroism, with the death of
the body the soul dissolves again in the general world-soul.101 In his
text Psychopannuchia Calvin passionately opposed this idea, which had
found a home in Anabaptist circles.102 While the soul may be created,
it is an immortal element. In this text it becomes crystal clear why
Calvin is so attached to this doctrine. The ultimate salvation in the
consummation is at stake. If the soul dies with the body, community
with Christ is broken. It is of eternal importance that the pilgrim on
earth has already entered into the Kingdom of God, shares in the
community with God which lasts for eternity, even if that Kingdom
has not yet been perfected. From the fact that the Kingdom is not yet
in its perfected form one may not conclude that there is no Kingdom.103
101 In De scandalis, OS II, 201 Calvin names Agrippa, Villanovanus (alias Servetus)
and Dolet. See among others G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 900901 and
S. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory. Nature and Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin,
Durham 1991, 20. For this idea of monopsychism, reminiscent of the radical Averroism
of Siger of Brabant, see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 234236.
102 CO 5, 177232. The subjects of the immortality of the soul and the situation
between death and the consummation are central in the Psychopannuchia, a rst version
of which had been written as early as 1534 but which was only published in 1542, as
matters of the rst order. The existential importance of this theme must be said to be
directly linked with the heart of Christian faith, fellowship with Christ. If the soul would
sleep or perish in death, fellowship with Christ would be broken, or at least interrupted.
That was in complete conict with Calvins conviction that in faith and through the
sacraments man, with regard to his soul, was now already together with Christ, and
that this fellowship could not be broken by anything or anyone. Although it cannot
be said of the dead that they are already delivered, they can nevertheless be called
blessed. Thus the situation between death and the general resurrection is characterised
by the eschatological perspective, through the not yet. This looking forward however
takes place in a situation of rest and bliss with God, and the seeing of things that
during their life on earth the faithful only foresaw in hope. Cur enim nondum salvati
dicuntur aut regnum possidere, qui in domino mortui sunt? Quia exspectant, quod
nondum habent, nec nem suae felicitatis attigerunt. Cur nihilominus beati sunt?
Quia et deum agnoscunt sibi propitium et futuram mercedem eminus vident et in
certa expectatione beatae resurrectionis acquiscunt. Quamdiu certe habitamus in hoc
carcere luteo, speramus quae non videmus et preater spem credimus in spem, quod
ait apostolus de Abraham (Rom. 4:18). Ubi autem oculi mentis nostrae, qui nunc
sepulti in hac carne hebetes sunt, absterserint hanc velut lippitudinem, videbimus quae
exspectabamus et in ea requie delectabimur. Quoted from the edition of W. Zimmerli,
Psychopannychia. Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus 13, Leipzig 1932, 81.
103 CO 5, 212: non ideo nunc nullum esse regnum, quia nondum perfectum est. See
also C. van der Kooi, De spanning van het reeds en nog niet bij Calvijn, Kuyper
en Berkouwer in: M.E. Brinkman (ed.), 100 jaar theologie. Aspecten van een eeuw theologie in
de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (18921992), Kampen 1992, 257259.
ways of knowing 67
The soul is the sustaining element of all human faculties, and thus
the bearer of knowledge. What, however, are these faculties? Calvin
exhibits a remarkable reticence toward making an all too specic and
distinct breakdown. With him we nd no extensive discussion of the
relation of the various faculties of the soul. The discussion of the
problem occurs in the context of soteriology, and thus has more to
do with the freedomor absence thereofof man to make use of his
capacities, than with the question of what man might be capable of
in an ideal state. With this qualication, however, one can nevertheless
determine that the most important faculties are those of understanding
and will. Calvin refuses to consider an original opposition or tension
between higher and lower capacities of the soul before the fall. The
conict that takes place within man is a consequence of sin.104 If the fall
had not occurred, will and understanding would have been perfectly
attuned. The inner economy of understanding, will and feelings would
have been an harmonious unity, such as Calvin attempts to derive
from the example of Christ. Understanding steers and gives direction
to the mental faculties. It helps make the distinction between good and
evil, between justice and injustice. Will however is the capacity with
which in fact a choice is made. Every other capacity that is found
in man is resolved into these two faculties. It is not unusual to nd
that, because Calvin speaks of the intellect as the leading part, the
conclusion is drawn that he takes an intellectualistic standpoint in his
vision of humanity. That understanding is the leading part implies
anything but that understanding is determinative. It is leading only
in the sense that it comes rst. According to Calvin, however, the
real decisions are made by the will. That would argue for a more
voluntaristic position.105 This last tallies with the observation that, as
we will soon see, for Calvin understanding, cognitio, includes more than
only intellectual categories.
Calvin classies all forms of perception, sensus, both inward and out-
ward, under understanding, and desire under the will, although he also
says he has no objection to others who arrive at three basic capacities,
namely the senses, understanding and desire.106 We nd the word sensus
used by Calvin to denote the ve senses, and in the phrase sensus com-
munis, which has not yet taken on the later meaning of sound human
understanding (common sense).107 Here sensus communis denotes the
ground for the whole eld of inward and external perception. What is
received in perception is subsequently subject to processing by the cog-
nitive faculties in three steps.108 He further names phantasia as the faculty
that makes the rst distinction, after which follows reason, ratio, which
renders a general judgement, and nally mens, mind, through which a
more rened and dierentiated judgement comes into being. Parallel
with the three cognitive faculties of phantasia, ratio and mens, there are
three corresponding capacities in there will. Will strives to obtain that
on which can produce judgement and feeling. Choler, vis irascendi, draws
to itself that which is supplied by the rst faculty of discrimination and
reason,; then there is desire, vis concupiscendi, which takes to itself what is
oered by perception and phantasia. The degree of caution with which
Calvin presents this further distinction of mental capacities is striking.
Understanding and will are not separated from one another. They are
not faculties which each lead a life apart from the other. Both belong
to the equipment of human reason. Anthropologically, what is most
important for him that in the soul man possesses an immortal, incor-
poreal element which is still involved with the body, through which he
as such is connected with God as the source of life. In short, the facul-
ties of the soul proclaim aloud that something divine is engraven upon
man.109
The soul, as integral for the mental faculties of the human person,
is therefore not linked with the ve senses. One can sense Calvins
admiration for the fact that the reach of human mental capacities far
exceeds the range of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. The soul
106 Inst. 1.15.6. For the whole see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 165166, who
points out that Calvin, despite his refusal to participate in the debate between Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus regarding the designations intellectus appetitivus or appetitus
rationalis, appears to opt for the Scotian position.
107 See H.G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tbingen 19754, 22.
108 For the origin of this triple division, Barth and Niesel refer to the commentary by
Themistius on Aristotles De Anima. See Schreiner, The Theatre of Gods Glory, 141.
109 Inst. 1.15.2: divinum aliquid insculptum ei esse.
ways of knowing 69
transcends the limitations of place and time, to which the senses are
connected. For example, it possesses the capacity to gauge and bridge
distance in the mind, and memory is able to link past and present.
In short, in contrast to the Aristotelian tradition, where the indepen-
dence of the soul is simply not conceivable, on this point Calvin stands
in the Platonist current of thought, where the independent soul is the
foundation of thinking and knowing. The independence of the soul
can especially be seen in the phenomenon of the dream. While the
body shows no sign of activity during sleep, the mind can be highly
active, and even be elsewhere. The fact that man can form a concept
of angels and of the invisible God points to a capacity that cannot be
ascribed to the senses.110 Thus, as an independent substance the soul
or spirit is not to be identied with God, but in relation to the body
is indeed to be labelled as something divine.111 At the same time that
says something about its value and destiny. Calvin exhibits no hesita-
tion at all on this point. The senses of honour and shame are a tangible
proof for everyone that man is born to lead a just and honourable life.
The concept is already founded in the soul of what the really satis-
fying life for man is, namely life lived in relation to God. These are
things which are absque controversia, beyond discussion. In its original and
undamaged state the soul strove for these higher things. Even in the
situation where the soul sits imprisoned in the web of a life turned
away from God, good remnants of this original orientation still exist.112
This conviction that is so essential for the early Renaissance echoes
powerfully through Calvins theology too. The soul is of cosmic signif-
icance and the orientation of its life is denitive for human worth.113
autem pudor, nisi ex honesti respectu? cuius principium et causa est, quod se ad
colendam iustitiam natos esse intelligunt: in quo inclusum est religionis semen. Sicut
autem absque controversia ad caelestis vitae meditationem conditus fuit homo, ita eius
notitiam animae fuisse insculptam certum est. Et sane praecipuo intelligentiae usus
careret homo si sua eum lateret foelicitas: cuius perfectio est cum Deo coniunctum
esse.
113 See Ch. Trinkaus, Renaissance Idea of Mans Dignity in: Idem, The Scope of
Renaissance Humanism, Ann Arbor (MI) 1983, 345. Idem, In Our Image and Likeness.
Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, London 1970, 171321 and 459551.
With Florentine Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Pietro
Pomponazzi human dignity is complementary with the factual misery of the human
condition.
70 chapter two
Calvin may then be known for his negative image of man,114 but one
also nds passages sounding forth the praises of human possibilities.
M.P. Engel explains this contradiction on the basis of the changing per-
spectives of Calvinss theology.115 If it is forgotten who the Giver is of
mans superb potential, then there is reason to speak of the immense
frailty or fragility of human existence. If the divine origin of human-
ity is indeed acknowledged, then there is every reason to challenge the
disparagement of human potential.116 Precisely because man through
his terrestrial existence participates in both the visible and the unseen
world, he can be highly regarded in comparison with other created
beings. In terms of his original nature, man was a being who strove
upward, and theology must not deny the traces of this dynamic and
excellence.
Calvin appeals to the fact that, in a cultural perspective, his view
is anything but isolated. He points out that what he writes about
the soul is also eloquently said by profane writers.117 In his eyes, that
increases its plausibility. In other words, according to Calvin the exis-
tence of an independent, immortal soul is a truth that is also upheld by
non-Christian thinkers. Insights from non-Christian sources and data
derived from Scripture form a perfect unity. In summary, the inward
faculties of thought, will and feeling are explained by Calvin through
the concept of an independent, created, but immortal soul.
114 Inst. 1.13.1. From the majesty of God, man is a worm crawling upon the earth.
If God did not elevate the human soul toward those heights, the spirit in its slowness
would continue to hang back on earth.
115 For the signicance of perspective in Calvins theology, see M.P. Engel, John
36, 7778.
117 Inst. 1.15.2.
ways of knowing 71
118 Inst. 1.3.1: Quendam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divini-
Sin and rebellion against God thus will not silence this capacity for
knowledge. At the same time, Calvin makes it clear that possessing the
sensus divinitatis has no positive eect spiritually. The realisation of God
comes to life in a eld of inuence which carries man away from God
rather than toward Him. Man lives in an attitude that turns aside from
God; his life is ruled by pride and vanity. The blindness toward God
goes together with emptiness, vanitas and restiveness, contumacia. The
realisation of the Godhead therefore becomes a function of an image
of divinity developed by man himself. Calvin is, we can say, well aware
of the creativity inherent to human consciousness. However, accord-
ing to him, this creativity has only negative results. In his imagination
sinful man, caught up in himself, cannot rise above his own measure.
Once again we encounter the familiar concept of accommodation, but
this time as something which is in the hands of man. Accommoda-
tion promptly becomes a mechanism preceded with a minus sign. It is
now man, alienated from God, who has control of things. He designs
an image of God according to the things which he encounters in his
own world. In his creativity man manufactures idols.123 The attitude
verbis explicari non potest, ita nec quam terribilis sit ira iis, quibus incimbit. Vident
praesentem dei omnipotentis gravitatem, quam ut eugiant in mille abyssos se demerg-
ere parati sunt, eugere tamen non possunt.
121 Inst. 1.3.2: aliquem Dei notionem.
122 Inst. 1.3.2.
123 Inst. 1.4.1: Itaque non apprehendunt qualem se oert, sed qualem pro sua temer-
ways of knowing 73
itate fabricati sunt, imaginantur. (Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character
in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has
devised.) See also his Comm. on Rom. 1:22, CO 49, 25: Nemo enim fuit, qui non
voluerit Dei maiestatem sub captum suum includere, ac talem Deum facere, qualem
percipere posset suopte sensu.
124 Inst. 1.4.1: quia sobrietate non contenti, sed plus sibi arrogando quam fas sit,
A rotten spot is a danger to the whole apple and the whole basket. Cf. what Calvin
says in a sermon on Deut. 13, with an eye to the cases against Bolsec and Servetus:
What sort of mercy is it really to want to spare two or three and subsequently suer
cutting the throat of a whole people? Quite the reverse: if they who are found so lawless
are suppressed, no longer allowed the last word, but are destroyed, you see a puried
people and healing of society. CO 27, 268. Calvin acknowledges that Jesus Christ did
not come to establish His kingdom with the sword, but he argues that everyone within
his own calling is required to advance that kingdom. CO 27, 247. CF. also CO 24, 362.
The alienation that we feel from Calvin on this point has less to do with the principle
that not everything can be tolerated in society, as with the decision about what it is
which is intolerable, and the choice of means to accomplish its elimination.
130 Inst. 2.2.22.
ways of knowing 75
1991, 28.
ways of knowing 77
139 According to Bouwsma, John Calvin, 177188, the notion of theatre made it pos-
sible to perceive historical changes and mobility, and the peculiar role of man on the
stage of history. The general repudiation of the stage and theatre is not yet present in
Calvin. He does sharply criticise every form of hypocrisy. Man can play no role oppo-
site God, and cannot make himself up to be what he is not. But that does not prevent
dramatic expression from being powerfully present in the manner in which the history
of the church and faith is perceived. Creation is a stage, God the director, man both the
actors and the audience, life a pilgrimage and heaven the distant fatherland where bliss
awaits.
140 See for instance Inst. 1.5.12 and Inst. 1.6.2.
141 Philip Benedict, Calvinism as a Culture? Preliminary Remarks on Calvinism and
the Visual Arts in: Paul Corby Finney (ed.), Seeing beyond the Word. Visual Arts and the
Calvinist Tradition, Grand Rapids (MI) 1999, 1945. See also in the same collection
Daniel W. Hardy, Calvinism and the Visual Arts: A Theological Introduction, 116,
12. Cf. also William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture. The Protestant Imagi-
nation from Calvin to Edwards, Cambridge 2004, 6289.
142 Inst. 1.11.12.
80 chapter two
does not detract from the fact that Calvins theology includes a high
degree of pictural content. There is a lot to see and experience in the world
and its order. There is a richness and a glory in creation, which man
can ignore only at the cost of the greatest possible ingratitude.
Thus for Calvin there is much to be experienced in the world and
its content. This point touches upon a subject that became the exposed
nerve in theology in the last century, namely the question of natural
theology. What is the place for the appeal to conscience and reference
to natural order in theology, and particularly the theology of revela-
tion? In such an appeal is the worship of God in fact exchanged for
the worship of idols, and is there an attempt to replace Gods free
grace? There are no tensions in Calvins own theology which reect
such questions. He maintains both that the world is Gods creation,
and the radicalness of our alienation from God. I would suggest that
the charged debate about natural theology in recent theological history
reects questions that occupy theology in a culture marked by moder-
nity. Can the proclamation and theology still appeal to the world as
creation? Or, has the inuence of a range of factorsthe epistemologi-
cal critique of Kant, the natural sciences, and later historical sciences
so made reality into something that must be understood in terms of
laws, energies, particles, human actions and thinking that the notion
of a revelation of God in the reality surrounding us has trickled away,
and Christian theology has no other choice than to radically begin with
special revelation?
The question can also be posed in other terms: does man encounter
vague traces of God as Creator before knowing him as Redeemer? Or
do men in fact know Him only as Redeemer, and after that as Cre-
ator? How are these two matters of the knowledge of God related to
each other? We are here faced with a fundamental problem in Chris-
tian theology, which is not only important for doctrine regarding God,
but also for the doctrine of revelation. With Calvin we encounter this
problem when he speaks of the knowledge of God as cognitio duplex. God
reveals himself as Creator and Redeemer. In response to the debate
between Barth and Brunner on the possibility of a natural knowledge
of God, an extensive discussion arose in the 20th century with regard
to the relationship between these two aspects of the knowledge of God
in Calvin.147 The issue in this discussion was what place knowledge of
147 E. Brunner, Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie, Zwischen den Zeiten 7 (1929), 255
276, idem, Die Frage nach dem Anknpfungspunkt als Problem der Theologie,
82 chapter two
Zwischen den Zeiten 10 (1932), 505532 and idem, Natur und Gnade. Zum Gesprch mit Karl
Barth, Tbingen 1934. K. Barth, Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner, Mnchen 1934. The
discussion was continued with some bitterness by G. Gloede, a student of Brunner,
Theologia naturalis bei Calvin, Stuttgart 1935 and P. Brunner, student of K. Barth. For an
extensive discussion and rejection of E. Brunner and G. Gloede see: W. Krusche, Das
Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Gttingen 1957, 6785.
148 Inst. 2.6.1.
149 Inst. 1.5.4.
150 Inst. 1.2.1: si integer stetisset Adam
ways of knowing 83
have subsequently passed from that school directly to eternal life and
perfect bliss.151 Under the factual circumstances of a world fallen into
sin, however, there is what Calvin terms a conditio irrealis. In the intro-
duction to his commentary on Genesis Calvin makes it clear in an
impressive way that Christian knowledge of God does not have its cen-
tral source in the construction of the world, but in the Gospel, where
Christ on the cross is proclaimed to us.152 Notwithstanding all this, one
nds in Calvin an appeal to the universal presence of God and the
ineradicability of a fundamental realisation of God which is entirely
absent from contemporary theology. Is this an inconsistency in Calvin,
or is it precisely typical of his thought? What separates Calvins pre-
modern theology from contemporary theology is that he appeals to
an evidence for which the inward faculty now seems to have disap-
peared. The appeal to Gods evident presence appears to contradict
Calvins assertion that we will nd nothing in the world that draws
us to God, until Christ will have instructed us in his school.153 But
these words do not contradict the appeal to evidence of Gods revela-
tion in nature. Where modern, post-Kantian theology experiences an
absolute opposition, Calvin did not see one. Precisely in the school of
Christ can creation, providence and the hidden work of the Spirit be
called upon. In fact the school of Christ includes classes and grades
where initially a faint notion of God is given, then a more powerful
impression of his majesty and role as judge is imparted, and nally
Christ appears as the image of the loving Father as centre and goal
of the knowledge of God.154 Gods revelation through the inner capac-
ities of the sensus divinitatis and sensus conscientiae and the outward senses
can indeed be repressed, but never entirely eradicated. What can con-
ceptually be described as a continuing eld of tension pushes itself to
the surface in Calvins texts: only someone who himself was strongly
impressed by the givenness and irresistibility of Gods presence could
write about the world around us as he does. When one reads Calvins
151 Inst. 2.6.1.: Erat quidem hic genuinus ordo ut mundi fabrica nobis schola esset ad
visibilium ductu: nec vero aliud restare nisi ut recta nos ad Christum conferamus. Non
igitur ab elementis mundi huius, sed ab evangelio faciendum exordium, quod unum
Christus nobis proponit cum sua cruce, et in eo nos detinet.
153 Ibidem, 10.
154 Calvins exposition of the conversion of Zachaeus in Luke 19, CO 45, 563, oers
155 See R.A. Muller, The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A
Response to T.F. Torrance, Thomist 54 (1990), 685. See also C. Link, Der Horizont der
Pneumatologie bei Calvin und Barth in: H. Scholl (ed.), Karl Barth und Johannes Calvin.
Karl Barths Gttinger Calvin-Vorlesung von 1922, Neukirchen 1995, 2245.
156 Inst. 1.14.21. Calvins unnuanced appeal to nature has nothing to do with the fact
that something escaped the otherwise so sharp eyes of the Reformers, as Karl Barth
ways of knowing 85
remarks in KD II/1, 140; cf. ET, 127 but with another, more subordinate place that the
concept of nature had in the intellectual climate of the day.
157 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvins Theology, New York 1952, 49. Thus
according to Dowey Book I in fact runs through Book II, Chapter 5. On page 46 he
writes: All that he says subsequently lies within the vast background he has given of the
Trinitarian God, his creation of the universe and of man in a state of perfection and
his providential care of that creation. Yet, while this background is a frame of reference
and a presupposition of the redemptive revelationit is not even known apart from
the redemptive revelation which Calvin has yet to discuss. Thus from another point of
view the redemptive revelation is actually the presupposition of the knowledge of the
Creator which in Calvins treatment precedes it.
158 T.H.L. Parker, Calvins Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Grand Rapids 1959, 121:
Dowey takes one methodological distinction made in the word and magnies it into
the leading principle to interpret the whole.
86 chapter two
occupy ourselves with earthly aairs, with the design of society and
lawmaking, he is strikingly positive. Following Aristotle, he identies
man as a social animal, who by nature has the inclination to form
and preserve society. Undeniably in such judgements one encounters
something of the jurist who was educated within a climate shaped by
the Renaissance and Humanism, and within whose purview lie pub-
lic administration and social questions. From a cultural-historical and
social perspective this interest is easy to place. But it is also interest-
ing to inquire about this positive attitude on theological grounds. Pro-
ciency in the matter of earthly aairs can be positively valued precisely
when it is certain that man is blind in the matter of his eternal salvation.
As soon as the relation between God and man enters the discussion,
the soteriological perspective applies and we hear judgements about
man as a whole person. Sin, as loss of original splendour and identity,
has ooded over the human person like a tidal wave and has saturated
him from head to toe.164 The alienation from God aects everything.
Thus even the most ingenious are blinder than moles.165 According
to Calvin the discernment of the greatest philosophers, some of whom
can now and then provide very apt visions of God, resembles that of a
bewildered traveller, who sees the ash of lightning glance far and wide
for a moment, and then vanish into the darkness of the night before he
can advance a single step. So far is such assistance from enabling him
to nd the right path.166
Like his contemporaries, Calvin is surely not sceptical about the
possibilities of the human mind in the public domain. He is certainly
sceptical about mans possibilities for nding a way to God and his
salvation. What he says about culture, man, his skills and his knowledge
is bounded by this distinction. That is the basis of his view of freedom,
that knowledge of God is not anywhere just for the taking, but must
be found in the way which the Spirit points. And which way does
the Spirit point? With apparent pleasure Calvin tells the story of the
philosopher Simonides, whom the tyrant Hiero asked what God is. A
number of times Simonides sought to postpone answering, and nally
Atlanta 1988.
164 see Inst. 2.1.9: Hic tantum breviter attingere volui, totum hominem quasi diluvio
a capite ad pedes sic fuisse obrutum, ut nulla pars a peccato sit immunis. See also
Comm. on Rom. 7:14, CO 49, 128: Tota mens, totum cor, omnes actiones in peccatum
propendeant.
165 Inst. 2.2.18.
166 Inst. 2.2.18.
ways of knowing 89
replied, The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears.167 The
darkness in which man nds himself with regard to heavenly things can
only be removed by the Word of God.
knowledge that fallen man gains from nature. The one school is not
the other. After the fall of Adam, post Adae lapsum, man must receive
knowledge from the instruction God gives by means of verbal revela-
tion. This conviction on Calvins part is only given added strength by
the extensive place that his commentaries and Bible exegesis took in his
lifes work. In the eyes of later generations Calvin may frequently have
been the systematiser, the one who arranged the elements of the Chris-
tian faith and attuned them to one another, but in his own eyes the
Institutes was a manual for students and preachers in their exposition
of Scripture. This manual does not replace the commentary; it does
not replace the sermon; it is a genre of its own. It provides space for
dealing with subjects, loci, and discussions, disputationes, connected with
the knowledge of God granted in Scripture.170 Ultimately, however, it
is about the knowledge of God, about Gods Words and promises that
men learn from Scripture. The superiority of the Bible over every other
means of revelation is not open to discussion; in the Institutes 1.6.1 it is
termed a better aid,171 or concretely, the spectacles with which Gods
manifestations in created reality can be perceived.172 Compared with it,
Gods manifestations in nature are still only general indications. They
are dumb teachers, while in the Scriptures God opens his own holy
mouth. Creation testies that there is a God, in Scriptural revelation He
tells who this is.173 For methodological and didactic reasons Calvin does
not enter into the connection between Scripture and the revelation of
Christ as Mediator in this chapter. The disquisition on Scripture in
the chapter on God the Creator can therefore easily leave the impres-
sion of being a defence of the formal authority of the Bible. This view
however cannot be maintained when one sees to what degree Calvin
already appeals to experience in this context. His exposition of revela-
tion through the Word in Book I of the Institutes is intrinsically linked
with the content that is given in the revelation. The methodological
limitation of Book I to God the Creator can not disguise the fact that
the experience which Calvin assumes of every reader of the Scripture
a book held before him. Only when someone provides him with spectacles is it possible
to distinguish the words and understand what is being said there. See Inst. 1.6.1:
specillis autem interpositis adiuti, distincte legere incipient. See also Argumentum ad
Genesin, CO 23, 10.
173 Inst. 1.6.1.
ways of knowing 91
relates to everything that God has made known through his prophets and
apostles, and just as little can it remain unsaid that this content, as will
appear further on in the Institutes, will nd its culmination in Christ as
the real content of the Gospel.174 We will return to this point later in
this section.
What is the foundation for the authority of Scripture? Does the
Bible have authority on formal and external grounds, or because of its
content relating to faith? Such alternatives, it must be clear, say more
about later discussions than about Calvin, and are too limited. Both
positions are found in Calvin. Scripture has authority because it comes
from God, and it has authority because of its content. In Calvin studies
it is not rare to see the conclusion that there is dissonance in Calvins
doctrines on Scripture. As a matter of fact, this reproach, made by both
Dowey175 and Gerrish176 is once again most curious. It is a theological
judgement at which one might arrive on the basis of a later position,
but which has no historical basis. Calvin would not have recognised
himself for even a second in the conclusion that he considered the
Bible to be external and formal authority! The adjectives external and
formal simply do not square with the manner in which he describes
the experience that he has in his encounter with Scripture, and which
he equally assumes for his readers. In the Scriptures man encounters
the unceasing activity of God, which he, when he looks up from the
page, sees in the world around him and within himself.177 At no point
does Scripture come to man with an authority that is abstracted from
its content. After all, it is God himself who brings his message to man
in these writings, with all their diversity. The paired concepts of formal-
informal and internal-external do not t into Calvins vision of the
manner in which Scripture acquires its authority. Revelation through
174 See at Inst. 3.2.29. See also Argumentum in evangelium Ioannis, Comm. John 14:1, CO
47, 321.
175 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvins Theology, 161162. Dowey writes: We
must conclude, in fact that two interpretations exist side by side in Calvins theology
concerning the object of the knowledge of faith, because he never fully integrated and
related systematically the faithful mans acceptance of the authority of the Bible en bloc
with the faith as directed exclusively toward Christ.
176 It would appear from this statement that B.A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the
New. Essays on the Reformation Heritage, Chicago 1982, 62 also shares this view: Calvin did
not adequately relate his doctrine of faith and his doctrine of authority; for while his
faith was strongly Christocentric, he continued to work with the Bible -in the medieval
fashion- as an external and formal authority.
177 Inst. 1.10.1.
92 chapter two
178 See for instance Comm. on Gen. 28:12, 13, CO 23, 391392.
179 Inst. 4.8.9: certi et authentici Spiritus sancti amanuenses.
180 Inst. 1.6.2: Tandem ut continuo progressu doctrinae veritas seculis omnibus su-
perstes maneret in mundo, eadem oracula quae deposuerat apud Patres, quasi publicis
tabulis consignata esse voluit.
181 Inst. 1.7.4.
182 Inst. 1.6.2; see also Inst. 4.8.9.
183 Comm. IITim. 3:16, CO 52, 383 and IIPeter 1:20, CO 55, 457458.
ways of knowing 93
human factor. Calvin does not deal further with the question of how
this inspiration occurred; he does not elaborate on the method of inspi-
ration. B.B. Wareld has rightly indicated what mattered for Calvin.
While it is true that Calvin did use the term dictate guratively, it
is clear that what he meant to say in doing so was that the result of
the inspiration by the Spirit is a revelation that comes as directly from
God, as if it were a letter being dictated.184 To repeat: in his doctrine
of revelation Calvin gives no explicit attention to the human factor.
All of his attention focuses on the result of revelation, which does not
belie its divine stamp. It is easy to test this proposition. Even in those
cases where, to the modern mind, the human character of Scripture is
abundantly clear (such as in the complaints, lamentations and doubts
in the Psalms), even then it is still Calvins view that these sections came
into being expressly under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That is not
because Calvin had no concept of the psychology of the inner man.
Quite on the contrary. It is, so he says, the Holy Spirit who in the
Psalms portrays the human soul in powerful lines, and who holds a mir-
ror up before the reader, with therein his own spirit and its anatomy.185
The Spirit is the great Psychologist. Still another example: When in
their presentation of the succession of events the evangelists dier from
one another, that is for Calvin no reason to examine their work further
as a human product. It is once again the Holy Spirit who has found the
question of chronology unimportant. What is important is that which is
to be learned from the history.186 Other examples are there for the tak-
ing: the dierence in style among Biblical texts is for Calvin no reason
to look further at the issue of human mediation. He draws from this the
conclusion that the Holy Spirit is the greatest of all rhetoricians. What
can be said here ultimately ts with what was said above in the section
on accommodation and language. The fact that some parts of the Bible
can measure up stylistically with the best of profane Latin literature
demonstrates that the Spirit is indeed a powerful rhetorician. But the
unaected and indeed sometimes uncouth style in which other parts
For the rest, the foregoing makes clear how far Calvins view of
doctrine, doctrina, stands from modern views of dogmatics. For Calvin,
doctrine is instruction given by God. What he tries to do in his Institutes
and his dogmatic tracts is, in his own mind, nothing more than arrange
the given truth, which is clear in itself. He does not view doctrine
as something that is formulated by man on the basis of stories and
histories. Doctrine is not primarily a product of human intellectual
capacities formulated for the sake of preaching or the guidance of the
Christian community. These are views that t with the post-Kantian
situation. In this rst panel doctrine is a part of divine speaking itself.
At the same time it is clear that doctrine is not an end in itself. The
goal of doctrine is that man comes to worship and obedience. Even his
thinking is permeated by Calvins character as a doer.
With the terms Word and Spirit we stand before two key concepts in
Calvins views on the knowledge of God. They can not be separated
from one another, nor can they be resolved into one another. The
intersection here is the Bible, revelation set down in writing. Here there
is already a relation with the work of the Holy Spirit, to the extent
that all revelation through the Word is an act of the Holy Spirit, and
in the sacred volume there is a truth divine.190 Scripture arises from
the Holy Spirit. The Word, heavenly wisdom, as Scripture however
remains an outward entity. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit
does man become inwardly convinced of the truth of the message of
salvation that resounds in this Holy Scripture.191 Knowledge of God
cannot, therefore, be resolved into either Word or Spirit; it arises in the
involvement of the Word and Spirit with each other.192 In short, they
are correlates.
tudinem inter se copulavit: ut solida verbi religio animis nostris insidat, ubi aulget
Spiritus qui nos illic Dei faciem contemplari faciat: ut vicissim nullo hallucinationis tim-
ore Spiritum amplexemur, ubi illum in sua imagine, hoc est in verbo, recognoscimus.
Ita est sane. Non verbum hominibus subitae ostentationis causa in medium protulit
Deus, quod Spiritus sui adventu extemplo aboleret, sed eundem Spiritum cuius vir-
tute verbum administraverat, submisit, qui suum opus ecaci verbi conrmatione
absolveret.
96 chapter two
of him whose word it is.199 Or stronger yet, the basis of trust and con-
dence lies in experience that transcends human reason and conjecture.
In faith there occurs a moment at which trust and certainty come about
in an immediate and intuitive manner, beyond anything that man can
adduce in apologetics. A somewhat longer quotation will not be out of
place:
For though in its own majesty it has enough to command reverence,
nevertheless it then begins to truly touch us when it is sealed in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on
our own judgement nor that of others, that the Scriptures are from God;
but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assuredas
much so as if we beheld the divine image impressed upon itthat it
came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.
We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement,
but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for
us to estimate we feel a divine energy living and breathing in itan
energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly, indeed,
and knowingly, but more vividly and eectually than could be done by
human will or knowledge.200
199 Inst. 1.7.4: Itaque summa Scripturae probatio passim a Dei loquentis persona
sumitur.
200 Inst. 1.7.5: Etsi enim reverentiam sua sibi ultro maiestate conciliat, tunc tamen
demum serio nos acit quum per Spiritum obsignata est cordibus nostris. Illius ergo
virtute illuminati, iam non aut nostro, aut aliorum iudicio credimus, a Deo esse Scrip-
turam: sed supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus acsi ipsius
Dei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos uxisse.
Non argumenta, non verisimilitudines quaerimus quibus iudicium nostrum incumbat:
sed ut rei extra aestimandi aleam positae, iudicium ingeniumque nostrum subiicimus
sed quia non dubiam vim numinis illic sentimus vigere ac spirare, qua ad paren-
dum, scientes quidem ac volentes, vividius tamen et ecacius quam pro humana aut
volutate, aut scientia trahimur et accendimur.
201 Inst. 1.7.2.
ways of knowing 99
202 One should carefully note the verbs in Inst. 1.7.5: acere, obsignare, intueri,
the authority of Scripture and certainty regarding the authority of the Scriptures. By
virtue of its inspiration, Scripture bears inspiration in itself; in the light of the Scriptures
the rm belief in this truth, that comes upon man of itself, is derived from the inner
testimony of the Spirit. See S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, Kampen 1918, 133.
205 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek I, 563. For a discussion of oldere Calvin
interpretations on this point, see W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin,
217. See also J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie. De openbarings- en schriftbeschouwing van
Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie, Amsterdam 1968, 494495.
100 chapter two
206 See J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie, 494, and S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,
136.
207 Inst. 1.9.3.
208 See once again the outstanding discussion in S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,
166.
ways of knowing 101
docility in our time into a pejorative term is telling. That was not the
case with Calvin. The Bible is the school in which pure knowledge
about God can be learned. In short, the instruction that is given in rev-
elation and Scripture, the images and metaphors that are used, are not
grounded in human creativity, nor in chance historical circumstances;
they are so intended by God, and deliberately given.
Anyone who allows the foregoing to sink in will perhaps begin to
get a sense of what in the Reformed tradition has come to be termed
the Scripture Principle, and of the tremendous formative power of this
principle. Within the fence of Scripture God has said neither too little
nor too much, but precisely as much as is protable for man. It is a view
which has great consequences for both the borders and the content of
knowledge of God, as we will see in the course of these chapters. Every
deviation from this given content, every innovation is then a change
for the worse. Therefore one does not encounter a positive regard for
history and development in Calvin.213
We will pause for a moment to pose the often-heard question: can
this attitude toward the Bible be described as Biblicism?214 In view of
the short history of this concept it is certainly an anachronism, and an
unfortunate designation.215 Biblicist use of the Bible is associated with
a very simple and direct appeal to the Bible and a rejectionist attitude
toward hermeneutics. It is crystal clear that the term Biblicism cannot
be applied to Calvin in that sense. It is however also understandable
why this term is used in connection with Calvin. It is a later application
by a theology that has made an explicit issue of the humanity of the
Scriptures. In the second panel we therefore nd an entirely dierent
situation. For Karl Barth theology is something that man has to engage
in on his own responsibility, conscious of the humanity of the Scriptures
and in obedience to the Word of God that sounds therein. This making
an issue of the humanity of the Scriptures is not yet present in Calvin.
213 In this Calvin does not deviate from Renaissance culture. See Bouwsma, The
two faces of Humanism, A Usable Past, 37: As the retrospective prex in the familiar
Renaissance vocabulary of amelioration attestsrenascentium, reformatio, restoratio,
resititutio, renovatio, etc.it could only look backward for a better world.
214 For instance, Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, 1920, 4452.
215 The term Biblicism arose in reaction to historical criticism and is generally asso-
ciated with an attitude in which there is hardly any room for a conscious hermeneutic.
Calvin indeed has very much a conscious hermeneutic, and the problem of Scriptural
criticism played no role in his time. It goes without saying that Biblicism is not to be
confused with fundamentalism. See J. Veenhof, Orthodoxie und Fundamentalismus,
Praktische Theologie 29 (1994), 918.
ways of knowing 103
2.8. Faith
suscipimus, nempe Evangelio suo vestitum: quia sicuti in scopum dei nostrae ipse
destinatus est, ita nonnisi praeeunte Evangelio recta ad eum tendemus.
106 chapter two
the Mediator. Further, it must be noted that the death of Jesus on the
cross is the sharpest facet of this mirror. Indeed, from the resurrection it
retrospectively becomes clear that Jesus Christ has assumed the condition
humaine in his death agony, has undergone the punishment which man
deserved, has endured the forces which imprisoned man. There the
chasm is deepest. At that deepest moment it is no longer visible that
Christ is the eternal Son. The pronouncement of Irenaeus that the
divinity of Christ is not active in His suering, but was as it were hidden
and at rest, is assumed by Calvin: the divine powers of Christ were
at that moment concealed.224 The light in this mirror comes from the
resurrection. Only then does the image become visible: Christ, who
takes the place of all, so that all can be included in fellowship with
God.225 In the resurrection God makes visible what really happened
on the cross. Even hereor perhaps precisely hereCalvin does not
shrink from appealing to the dramatic possibilities of the theatre as
a place where the spectators must be touched to the depths of their
hearts: The incomparable goodness of God his made visible before the
whole world in the cross of Christ, as in the most splendid theatre.226
224 Comm. Luke 2:40, CO 45, 104: quatenus salutis nostrae interfuit divinam
suam potentiam quasi occultam tenuit Filius. Et quod dicit Irenaeus, quiescente divini-
tate passum fuisse, non modo de corporali morte interpretor, sed de illo incredibili
animae dolore et cruciatu, qui hanc illi querimonimam expressit, Deus meus, ut quid
me dereliquisti?
225 Inst. 2.12.3.
226 Comm. John 13:31, CO 47, 317: Nam in Christi cruce, quasi in splendidissimo
that the gracious God shows himself in faith as indeed still high and
lifted up,228 further on we read the opposite: We expect salvation from
himnot because he stands aloof from us, but because ingrafting us
into his body he not only makes us partakers of all his benets, but
also of himself If you look to yourself damnation is certain: but
since Christ has been communicated to you with all his benets, so
that all which is his is made yours, you become a member of him, and
hence one with him. His righteousness covers your sinshis salvation
extinguishes your condemnation.229 As Bavinck has rightly observed,230
with these words we have landed in the midst of Calvins concept of
faith: the unio mystica. What Luther called the miraculous exchange231
takes place in the communion between Christ and men. Through faith
Christ takes up his dwelling in man.
That Christ is not external to us, but dwells in us, and not only unites
us to himself by an undivided bond of fellowship, but by a wondrous
communion brings us daily into closer connection, until he becomes
altogether one with us.232
There are several notable points in this important characterisation.
First, the present and eschatological elements of the knowledge of God
coincide. In faith, participation in the new reality is already a reality
now, and at the same time there is the potential for growth. Second,
what faith is about is anchored in the person of Christ. Christ is the
mediating person in whom man is again brought into fellowship with
God. But third and nally, I would call your attention to something
remarkable. The new reality is expressed in terms of corporeality and
growth. These are not the obvious categories of consciousness or of
personal encounter which one would expect to be used in describing
that which is new. The basis of the knowledge of God and its certainty
is not primarily cerebral, but expressly transcends that. The language
of the body has primacy. It is about powers that will be exercised. We
here encounter an element of Calvins view of the knowledge of God
that also permeates his teaching on the Lords Table and gives it its
peculiar colour. This will be discussed further in the fourth chapter.
individuo societatis nexu nobis adhaeret, sed mirabili quadam communione in unum
corpus nobiscum coalescit in dies magis ac magis, donec unum penitus nobiscum at.
108 chapter two
For the rest, fellowship with Christ is not something about which
one can say nothing further. Calvins interest is primarily in the benet
that is found in faith in Christ. Christ and his benets is a typical
expression for Calvin. In fellowship with Christ man shares in the
benets which are contained in Christs person. Here is the one source
from which both justication and sanctication spring. According to
Dee, the terms des, unio mystica and iusticatio can be conceived as
purely logical distinctions within what is ultimately one and the same
reality.233 With Calvin, faith and knowledge of God are not formal
concepts, but are dened precisely in relation to their content. His is
a soteriological understanding of faith and knowledge.
235 Ibidem, Ergo singulare Dei donum utroque modo est des, et quod mens hominis
ad degustandam Dei veritatem pergatur, et quod animus in ea stabilitur. We here
follow R.A. Mullers view, in turn taken over from Stuermann. Animus can be used
as the equivalent of all the mental capacities, but used in connection with the term
mens, animus means all the aective parts of the human mental faculties, or that part
of the human mind that reaches out to that which is known. See R.A. Muller, The
Unaccommodated Calvin, 168.
236 Comm. Eph. 1:13, CO 51, 153: Respondeo, duplicem esse eectum Spiritus in
de, sicuti des duabus praecipue partibus continetur, nam et mentes illuminat, et
animos conrmat. Initium dei, est notitia: consummatio, est xa et stabilis persuasio
quae contrariam dubitationem nullam admittat.
237 Inst. 3.2.34: Quemadmodum ergo nisi Spiritu Dei tracti, accedere ad Christum
nequaquam possumus: ita ubi trahimur, mente et animo evehimur supra nostram ipso-
rum intelligentiam. Nam ab eo illustrata anima novam quasi aciem sumit, qua caelestia
mysteria contempletur, quorum splendore ante in seipsa perstringebatur. Atque ita qui-
dem Spiritus sancti lumine irradiatus hominis intellectus, tum vere demum ea quae ad
regnum Dei pertinent gustare incipit: antea prorsus ad ea delibanda fatuus et insipidus.
238 Inst. 3.2.14: Cognitionem dum vocamus, non intelligimus comprehensionem,
110 chapter two
The knowing comes from contact with a reality that one experiences
rather than understands. According to Calvin, in faith a conviction
of something which men can not understand presents itself. There
arises a degree of conviction and certainty which, he says, exceeds the
certainty that is involved in the knowing of normal human matters. In
this context we again encounter the concept of persuasio, familiar from
rhetoric. The knowledge which arises in faith is a fruit of conviction
by God. God is the rhetorician who inescapably places before us the
truth of salvation. Paul, when he spoke of the height, depth, length and
breadth of the love of God (Eph. 3) wanted to say that in faith we come
into contact with something innite, something which far surpasses all
ordinary understanding.239 The knowledge of which faith speaks, Calvin
says, is therefore more a matter of certainty than of comprehension.240
I would nd that at crucial points in his concept of knowledge of
God Calvin is not the intellectualist that he is so often accused of
being.241 The opposite is rather the case. Aective elements predomi-
nate. The moment of acceptance of the truth of faith is, we read, more
a matter of the heart than the head, of the aection than the intel-
lect.242 Trust, ducia, must not be considered as a closing phase on the
path of faith; on the contrary, it is the supporting element for the cog-
nitive in faith. When the grace of God is presented to our vision, our
truly perceiving its sweetness, and experiencing it in ourselves must
be the inevitable result. Put succinctly, experience surrounds and sur-
passes understanding. The encounter with the goodness of God calls
forth trust and open-heartedness on the part of man.243 In short, faith is
becoming convinced, persuasio, and as such that faith is a point of free-
dom. When the goodness of God is experienced, the freedom arises in
which one can surrender to it. Although the term voluntaristic brings
qualis esse solet earum rerum quae sub humanum sensum cadunt. Adeo enim superior
est, ut mentem hominis seipsam excedere et superare oporteat, quo ad illam pertingat.
Neque etiam ubi pertigit, quod sentit assequitur: sed dum persuasum habet quod
non capit, plus ipsa persuasionis certitudine intelligit quam si humanum aliquid sua
capacitate perspiceret.
239 Ibid.: Voluit enim signicare, modis onmibus innitum esse quod mens nostra
sione contineri.
241 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 171.
242 Inst. 3.2.8.
243 Inst. 3.2.15: Quae audacia nonnisi ex divinae benevolentiae salutisque certa
ducia nascitur.
ways of knowing 111
ones conscience, imposes on man the role of the contrite sinner, making it impossible
in advance to arrive at a moment of integration between role and reality. Spontaneity
112 chapter two
is made very dicult, so that the person is continuously conscious of his or her own
conduct.
247 Inst. 3.2.11.
248 Inst. 3.2.11.
249 Ibid.: Merito tamen dicuntur reprobi Deum credere sibi propitium: quia donum
not only the starting point, but the end point. This does not, however,
detract from the fact that, once having achieved rest, someone is called
to take care in how this status as an adopted child of God works out in
practical terms. These works are, Calvin says, proofs of God dwelling
and reigning in us.252 Thus man is invited to assess his own practice of
life in the light of the work of the Spirit, his unity with Christ given in
faith.
With his invitation to self-examination Calvin indeed stands in a
longer tradition. It is apparent that in his years at the Collge Montaigu
he came into very direct contact with the piety encouraged by Modern
Devotion. This tradition of inwardness is continued in his own con-
cept of the knowledge of God. It is a rich tradition, because it bestows
attention on the way in which man inwardly relates to that which sur-
rounds him. If there is knowledge of God, then there is also something
to be experienced which will work itself out in a persons life, creating
a condence in this contact that is indissoluble. At the same time, in
Reformed Protestantism this tradition has led to the ultra-Reformed
form of spirituality, which is at odds with Calvins own admonition
to see Christ as the mirror of election. The succession can easily be
reversed:253 rst wanting to undergo an inner experience of adoption by
God, and thereafter daring to look to Christ as the image of a merciful
God.
In other words, there is a hidden revelation, a tasting of Gods sal-
vation that is shared only by Gods children. Calvin denies that the
reprobate really embrace Gods eternal will to grace; they remain at
the level of a eeting realisation of it.254 That is the one point of view
that he emphatically maintains, appealing to concrete examples from
the Bible. But now he turns to the other side and oers some pas-
toral commentary with the high adjectives in his denition of faith. In
Calvins theology psychological, pedagogical and theological elements
still form one whole. He says of faith that it is true and certain. But
who experiences that at all times? Calvin realises full well that the ame
of certainty does not always burn bright with believers. He acknowl-
252 Ibidem. See also Comm. IJohn 2:3, CO 55, 311: Tametsi enim suae quisque dei
testimonium habet ab operibus: non tamen sequitur illic fundatam esse, quum posterior
haec probatio instar signi accedat. Certitudo itaque dei in sola Christi gratia residet;
sed pietas en sanctitas vitae veram dem a cta et mortua Dei notitia discernit
253 Cf. R.C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith. Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther
edges that among believers too now and again doubt will arise about
whether this merciful God is for them. But now we suddenly hear that
this doubt should not be considered as a sign of a false faith. To the
vacillating he says that they conne [Gods mercy] within too narrow
limits.255 This grace indeed reaches others, but not themselves. Calvin
refers here to a gure from the Bible, with whom he gladly identies:
David. Contesting is possible, as the Psalms demonstrate, but faith is
not swallowed up in this chasm. As soon as a drop of true faith has
seeped into the heart, Calvin tells us that we begin to behold the face
of God as placid, serene and propitious.256 The eschatological streak
in Calvins theology and spirituality appears clearly with the certainty
of faith. Man is a pilgrim on his journey, and as he travels more closely
approaches Gods countenance. Ignorance yields slowly.257 The believer,
still in the earthly body, is like someone in a dungeon, who sees the
sun enter his prison only through a high window. A sense of limitation
dominates this image. Nevertheless, there is a radiance by which he is
illumined.
Thus, in this existence knowledge of God can only be obtained in
part. In connection with the image of the dungeon, Calvin takes up the
metaphor of the mirror from ICor. 13, to which we already referred.258
The nature of the certainty of faith that is mans share in this life is
related to the fact that man still leads an earthly existence. As we
already saw, according to Calvin corporeality and mundanity imply
imperfection. The human condition means a limitation in respect to
spiritual things, through which it is impossible to fully perceive what
is innite, and through which it becomes necessary that we have to
be taught continually. Life on earth implies a ruditas which makes it
impossible to approach perfection.259
We have previously discussed the eschatological orientation of Cal-
vins theology in this context. It can be seen at countless points in his
commentaries and sermons. It is not without reason that Calvin can so
strongly identify with Biblical gures from the Old testament, who lived
with the promise of fellowship with God through Christ, but had this
fellowship in hope, in spe.260 Faith possesses the content of the promise
in the mode of hope. That did not change with the appearance of
Christ. In a certain sense the believer has indeed passed from death to
life, but it must not be inferred from that that he already possesses the
benets that are contained in Christ. Calvin here reminds his reader of
IJohn 3:2. Although we know that we are Gods children, all is not yet
revealed until we see God as He is. Therefore, although Christ oers
us in the Gospel a perfect fullness of spiritual blessings, fruition remains
in the keeping of hope, until we are divested of corruptible esh, and
transformed into the glory of him who has gone before us.261
In the light of the foregoing, it is understandable why Calvin links
faith and hope so closely with one another. Faith hopes that God will
full the promises, promises that are grasped in hope. According to
Calvin, faith has hope in eternal life as its companion.262
261 Inst. 2.9.3: Quanvis ergo praesentem spiritualium bonorum plenitudinem nobis
in Evangelio Christus oerat, fruitio tamen sub custodia spei semper latet, donec
corruptibili carne exuti, transguremur in eius qui nos praecedit gloriam.
262 Inst. 3.2.42.
116 chapter two
speaks: fellowship with Christ, and the gifts contained in Him. It is God
who, through his Spirit, invites man to begin on this path, and to move
toward ever fuller knowledge. It is a way that lasts a lifetime, a pil-
grims journey that becomes concrete in obedience, in worship, in the
certainty of faith, reverence and love: The knowledge of God which
we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satised with empty
speculation, only utters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove
substantial and fruitful wherever it is duly perceived, and rooted in the
heart.263 This path is not described by Calvin as intellectual acceptance
of truths on the authority of others. By its very nature, knowledge of
God is not limited to the cerebral. On the contrary; what comes from
God does something with man, touches his aective faculties to their
depths and calls forth a diversity of experiences. The Lord is mani-
fested by his perfections. When we feel their power within us, and are
conscious of their benets, the knowledge must impress us more vividly
than if we merely imagined a God whose presence we never felt.264
Knowledge of God does indeed include the intellectual, the concep-
tual, and at the same time is more than understanding. Knowing God
is, at its apex, aective. The Spirit moves soul and senses and opens the
way forward.
1 According to Karl Barth, KD I/1, 248; ET, 236, this distinction is already to
Doctrines regarding God are not known for being the most fascinat-
ing part of dogmatics; they deal with matters which absolutely fail to
touch man in his day to day existence. It appears to be as the adage
which Luther uses in De Servo Arbitrio says: Quae supra nos, nihil ad
nos.2 This maxim, originally attributed to Socrates and included in
Erasmus in his collection of proverbs,3 is used by Luther as a warning
not to become engrossed with the hidden Counsel of God. Only the
deus revelatus, the revealed God, matters for man, not the hidden God,
the deus absconditus. One could say that the traditional curiositas motif
returns in a new shape in Reformation theology.4 In both the adage
cited from Luther, and in Calvins theology one can discern the desire
to concentrate on what really concerns man in his relation to God,
and touches human existence directly. With Calvin, this leads to what
is sometimes is termed his Biblicism: he wishes to strictly limit himself
to that doctrine which God in his wisdom had determined to grant.
Does he succeed in this? What we at least must say is that Calvin had
the intention not to take speculation as a point of departure. To what
degree he really succeeds in this, and to what extent such an enter-
prise is really possible, or even desirable, is another question. In the
second panel we will encounter a view of systematic theology that, seen
in the light of Calvins vision of theology, is much more speculative. On
the one hand it is much more modest in its acknowledgement of the
human status of doctrine; on the other it is more speculative because,
in its conception of fullling a regulative function, it ventures to the
limits of the discussion. That, however, will be dealt with later. I now
will simply note that Calvin, seen subjectively, believed that the eort
to maintain sobriety and moderation was a matter of obedience to the
Gospel. One repeatedly encounters such exhortations to observe limits
as a methodological rule, particularly in the case of doctrines involving
angels and devils. Since the Holy Spirit always instructs us in what is
useful, but altogether omits, or only touches cursorily on matters which
tend little to edication, of all such matters it is our duty to remain in
willing ignorance.5 The word willing reveals where his heart lies. He
2 WA 18, 685.
3 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Adagiorum Chiliades (1536). Ausgewhlte Schriften, hrsg. Von
W. Welzig, Bd. 7, Darmstadt 1972, 414.
4 E.P. Meijering, Calvin wider die Neugierde. Ein Beitrag zum Vergleich zwischen reforma-
torischem und patristischem Denken, Nieuwkoop 1980 and H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam
curiositatem. Ein Kapitel der Theologie zwischen Seelenwinkel und Weltall, Zrich 1974.
5 Inst. 1.14.3.
god: judge and father 119
rebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamus quam
quod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum. Alterum, ut in lectione Scripturae, iis continenter
quaerendis ac meditandis immoremur quae ad aedicationem pertinent: non curiositati
aut rerum inutilium studio indulgeamus. Et quia Dominus non in frivolis questionibus,
sed in solida pietate, timore nominis sui, vera ducia, sanctitatis ociis erudire nos
voluit, in ea scientia acquiescamus.
7 Inst. 1.5.9.
8 8. B.A. Gerrish, Theology within the Limits of Piety Alone: Schleiermacher and
Calvins Notion of God in: idem, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on Reformation
Heritage, Edinburgh 1982, 196207.
9 Inst. 1.10.2.
120 chapter three
10 Inst. 1.5.9: Atque hic rursus observandum est, invitari nos ad Dei notitiam, non
quae inani speculatione contenta in cerebro tantum volitet, sed quae solida futura sit et
fructuosa si rite percipiatur a nobis, radicemque agat in corde. A suis enim virtutibus
manifestatur Dominus: quarum vim quia sentimus intra nos et beneciis fruimur,
vividius multo hac cognitione nos aci necesse est quam si Deum imaginaremur cuius
nullus ad nos sensus perveniret.
11 See also W. Balke, The Word of God and Experientia according to Calvin in:
13 CO 35, 62: Voila donc ceste grandeur de Dieu comme elle doit estre recognue,
cest quil ait toute authorite de faire de nous ce que bon lui semblera.
14 See Bouwsma, John Calvin, 150161, idem, Calvinism as Renaissance Artifact in:
T. George (ed.), John Calvin and the Church. A Prism of Reform, Louisville, Kentucky 1990,
2841.
122 chapter three
15 For an overview of the present state of the matter, see H.A. Oberman, Initia
Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins Reformation in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae
Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (Mi.) 1994, par-
ticularly the section The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit, 117127. The evidence is not
yet present to prove the suggestion of direct dependence upon, for instance, the Sco-
tist inuenced John Major at the Collge de Montaigu, as proposed by K. Reuter,
Das Grundverstndnis der Theologie Calvins unter Einbeziehung ihrer geschichtlichen Abhngigkeiten,
Neukirchen 1963 and by T.F. Torrance, Knowledge of God and Speech about him
according to John Calvin in: idem, Theology in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 7698,
part. 8184. Oberman himself also seems to have become more cautious with regard to
a direct contact between Major and Calvin. See the paper Die Extra-Dimension in
der Theologie Calvins, dating from 1966, in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach
Genf, Gttingen 1986, 275: Wohlmglich hat er [sc. Calvin] unter dem gelehrten
Johannes Major studiert. In his Initia Calvini Oberman limits himself to a clus-
ter of concepts that belong to the Scotist legacy and could in part form a key to the
understanding of Calvins order of salvation. The argument that I make in this study
to understand Calvins theology as a concept in which the invitation of God to man
is central, and the believer is called to hold fast to the mercy of God appearing in the
mirror of Christ, ts into this pattern.
god: judge and father 123
is determined by his will.16 When God and the world could no longer
thought of only in terms of a hierarchy of being, this had consequences
for knowledge of both the natural world, and for knowledge concerning
salvation. To what degree this separation really stimulated freedom for
empirical investigation or formed a condition for the creation of moder-
nity, will not be entered into here. It can however be said that this
emancipation in late-medieval theology led to a reduction in the extent
of theological knowledge accepted on philosophical grounds. Knowl-
edge acquired by speculative means no longer had a place unless it was
conrmed by revelation.17 Church and theology were thrown back on
the revelation of God. Calvins theology, and certainly his doctrines of
God, stand closer to the via moderna than to the via antiqua. As this chap-
ter continues we will again discuss this with the doctrine of election and
Calvins conict with Bolsec in mind.
Calvins remarks concerning limits and useful knowledge are in a pri-
marily theological context. Apparently closely related to Kants adage
sapere aude, in which thinking reects on its own limits and possibili-
ties, in Calvin we nd the phrase nostrum vero est ad sobrietatem sapere.18
The argument for accepting such limits is however fundamentally dif-
ferent. With Calvin it is God who in his word sets a boundary, and not
Moderna. Late medieval prolegomena to early Reformation Thought, Journal for the
History of Ideas 48 (1987), 2340, m.n. 2628. According to a now long outmoded picture
of medieval theology and philosophy, this further distinction led to a skeptical attitude
in philosophy and to deism in theology. Moreover, the development was thought to
have had a direct consequence for the idea of God Almighty as a potentia absoluta
who worked in a capricious and arbitrary manner. Further on in this chapter we
will demonstrate that in his theology Calvin left room for acknowledging that Gods
governance sometimes takes on a form that cannot be reconciled with the confession of
His goodness. At the same time his concepts of providence and election reect the fact
that for his knowledge of God man must keep to what is presented to him in Scripture
and in Christ. In terms of the paired concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, for
his knowledge of God the believer is referred to what God has ordained as the potentia
ordinata.
18 Inst. 1.15.8: it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness.
124 chapter three
19 Inst. 1.13.1.
20 Inst. 1.2.1. See also Inst. 1.10.2.
21 See for example H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods. Een dogmatisch hermeneutische
studie over de antropomorsmen van de Heilige Schrift, Kampen 19693, 111. See also K. Barth,
KD II/1, 208; ET, 185186.
22 KD II/2, 68; ET, 63.
23 G.C. Berkouwer, De Verkiezing Gods, Kampen 1955, 11, 25. ET, Divine Election. Studies
24 M. Weber, Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (19041905)
in: M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung, Hamburg 19754, 122: In
ihrer pathetischen Unmenschlichkeit mute diese Lehre nun fr die Stimmung einer
Generation, die sich ihrer grandiosen Konsequenz ergab, vor allem eine Folge haben:
das Gefhl einer unerhrten inneren Vereinsamung des einzelnen Individuums.
25 See for instance John of Damascus, De orthodoxa de, Liber 1, cap. 4, PG 94, 797.
See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima pars, q1, a.7. The emphasis on
the innite dierence between God and man does not serve here, as we have said,
to undermine the revelation received. It is a distinction that we nd, for instance, in
Thomas Aquinas when he asks of man is able to know God per essentiam. Thomas rejects
this view. God is known by man only in his eects. The names which are applied to him
indeed do refer to his being, and do to that extent predicate God as substantialiter, but
with regard to the modus signicandi.
26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book VII, 1.
27 Inst. 1.2.2: what things are agreeable to his nature.
126 chapter three
28 In Inst. 1.10.2 Calvin lists the qualities of eternity (aeternitas) and self-existence
34 Inst. 3.20.40.
35 See Inst. 1.16.4: Taceo Epicureos (qua peste refertus semper fuit mundus) qui
Deum otiosum inertemque somniant: aliosque nihilo saniores, qui olim commenti sunt
Deum ita dominari supra mediam aeris regionem, ut inferiora fortunae relinqueret;
siquidem adversus tam evidentem insaniam satis clamant mutae ipsae creaturae.
36 In a sermon on Iob 12, CO 33, 588.
37 Inst. 1.16.3.
128 chapter three
tic of Calvins theology and spirituality that this immanent divine work
in our created world is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.38 God is spoken of
as both the innitely high and elevated God, and at the same time as
the God who through his Spirit is the power which sustains and quick-
ens all that exists, deeply engaged with the whole of created reality. The
exaltedness and the indwelling are correlates of one another. In his doc-
trines of the Lords Table Calvin directs his gaze to Christ, who, with
regard to his humanity, is in heaven since his Ascension; but this idea
is borne by the fundamental conviction that man, as a created being,
and all of creation around him, lie within the reach of the immanent
and hidden power of the Holy Spirit. This involvement of Gods acts
through his Spirit takes on ever dierent forms, and can be pictured as
comprising three concentric circles. In the outermost there is the uni-
versal action of Gods Spirit through which He supports the whole of
creation. In the second circle we nd the guidance of God in human
history, and the innermost circle is formed by the very peculiar and
preternatural action of the Spirit, who works only in the believers, or
elect.39 The hidden, bearing power of the Spirit in all creation is so
strong that Calvin is prepared to accept the view that originated with
the Stoics, provided that, as he says, it is interpreted in a god-fearing
manner.40 His objection to the Stoics is not that they say too much,
but rather too little. God is not to be subsumed in nature, but nature
rests on an ordo prescribed by God. Calvin therefore wants absolutely
nothing to do with the idea, much identied with Epicurean philos-
ophy, that Gods capacities now and then go unused. God directs all
things through his providence and arranges all things so that nothing
happens outside of his will.41 God is the moderator and conservator. In a
frequently used metaphor, God is the source of all good things, which
in very diverse ways are directly involved with his work. Calvin uses a
range of verbs for Gods work of maintaining and governing the world.
Gods actions are described with the verbs fovere, sustinere and curare,42
38 Cf. also W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Gttingen 1957,
particularly Chapter 2.
39 See his comm. on Rom. 8:14, CO 49, 147: Caeterum observare convenit, esse
multiplicem Spiritus actionem. Est enim universalis, qua omnes creaturae sustinentur,
ac moventur: sunt et peculiares in hominibus, et illae quidem variae. sed hic sancti-
cationem intelligit, qua non nisi electos suos Dominus dignatur, dum eos sibi in lios
segregat. Cf. also CO 7, 186.
40 Inst. 1.5.5.
41 Inst. 1.16.3.
42 Inst. 1.16.1.
god: judge and father 129
conservare, tolerare, tueri.43 All these verbs express something of Gods solic-
itude. God cares, supports, preserves, protects. Gods activity is focused,
caring activity. That is His way of being Lord. Typical nouns in this
context are also nod, nutus, and rein, fraenum. All things that happen,
happen at His nod. He holds everything and everyone, even the devil,
in his reins.44 Never, on any occasion, is the movement which proceeds
from God general and disordered, as in the case of Pharaohs reac-
tion to the words of Moses.45 God always acts ttingly, and undertakes
focused action.
What man learns of God in all this is thus not simply activity; it
is not an impersonal process. What man learns to know is Gods will
in action. God thus does not reveal his essence, but his will. With this
emphasis on the unceasing activity of God in all things, Calvin does
not deny the existence of secondary causes, but in contrast to the Stoic
and Epicurean world-view, the emphasis unquestionably lies on God
as the one who through his Spirit is constantly, decisively and actively
involved in all that happens.46 Calvin describes a world which is not
deserted by God, no blind process, but a world which has the hidden
work of the Holy Spirit as the peculiar locus of activity in the Triune
being of God to thank for its unity and colourful diversity. This is
the line of Trinitarian theology which, looking back, one can connect
with Cappadocian theology, and, looking forward, one which Jurgen
Moltmann made productive for an ecological doctrine of creation.47
With this, Calvins vision of the relation of God to the world stands in
the tradition of the condemnation of radical Averroism by the Bishop
of Paris, Etienne Tempier, in 1270 and 1277. These articles are generally
regarded as a mirror in which the very fundamental debate between
Christian faith regarding the creation and Aristotelian thought regard-
ing necessity becomes visible. One of the points in that debate was,
for instance, the proposition defended by radical Averroism that the
43 See for instance Inst. 1.2.1: Hoc ita accipio, non solum quod mundum hunc,
ut semel condidit, sic immensa potentia sustineat, sapientia moderetur, bonitate con-
servet, humanum genus praesertim iustitia iudicioque regat, misericordia toleret, prae-
sidio tueatur: sed quia nusquam vel sapientiae ac lucis, vel iustitiae, vel potentiae, vel
rectitudinis, vel syncerae veritatis gutta reperietur quae non ab ipso uat, et cuius ipse
non sit causa.
44 See H.A. Oberman, Calvins Legacy in: idem, The two Reformations, 132. See Inst.
1.14.7.
45 Comm. on Rom. 9:17, CO 49, 184: universali et confuso motu
46 See for instance Inst. 1.16.2.
47 J. Moltmann, Gott in der Schpfung. kologische Schpfungslehre, Gtersloh 19934, 23.
130 chapter three
Calvin describes Gods dealings with and relation to man and the
world with a multitude of words and concepts. In the following para-
graphs I will try to introduce some order into this complexity, using
two mutually connected approaches to do so. We discover the rst
approach by paying attention to the perfections or qualities which char-
acterise Gods actions. The second approach to Calvins image of God
is through the most frequently used images or metaphors. The qualities
and metaphors used are connected with each other, and are claried
precisely in their mutual relationships.
We must say it again: what one does not nd discussed in Calvins
theology is as telling for it as what is found there. One does not
encounter an explicit, elaborated doctrine of God, as one nds in the
manuals of Protestant orthodoxy. Calvin does here and there provide a
48 See for a discussion of this articles a.o. D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western
Science. The European Scientic Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context,
600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago 1992, 234239. Cf. also H.A. Oberman, Via antiqua
and Via Moderna: Late medieval Prolegomena to early Reformation Thought, Journal
of the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 27.
god: judge and father 131
list of qualities,49 nor does he fail to take up the debate with those theo-
logical currents which do not do justice to Gods presence and activity.
In Institutes 1.10.2 we encounter a comparatively extensive discussion of
the question of how the various perfections relate to one another. After
the qualities listed in Exodus 34:6 are cited (eternity and self-existence;
compassion, goodness, mercy, justice, judgement and truth), and ref-
erence is made to the treasury of Psalm 145 as a summary of doc-
trine regarding God, in connection with Jeremiah 9:24 Calvin points
to three concepts that can serve as headings under which to classify
all of the acts of God. These are the concepts of misericordia (mercy or
loving-kindness), iudicium (judgement) and iustitia (righteousness). Gods
loving-kindness accomplishes the salvation of his elect. Judgement is
that action of God which is daily exercised on the wicked, and awaits
them in a severer form, even for eternal destruction. Finally, there
is Gods righteousness, in which he preserves and cherishes those he
has justied. The other qualities, such as truth, power, holiness and
goodness, can be arranged under these three, because, as we are told,
mercy, judgement and righteousness support Gods inviolable truth.
How could one believe in Gods judgement and loving-kindness if his
power and strength were not assumed? It is impossible to imagine
Gods mercy except as a consequence of his goodness. Finally all three
qualities reveal Gods holiness.
In this paragraph from the Institutes, and equally from his exposition
of Psalm 145, it once again becomes very clear that according to Calvin
knowledge of God does not bypass human experience; it is something
that can be experienced here on earth. The knowledge that is set before
our eyes in Scripture, and that which shines in creation too, has a
double purpose. God invites man to respect or fear, and subsequently, to
trust. With these two words, fear and trust, we have the terms in which
Calvin describes the reaction which, on the human side, corresponds
with what God has made known of himself.
The three concepts of mercy, judgement and righteousness can in
turn be connected with various metaphors. That is the second ap-
proach. In the following special attention will be given to the metaphors
of Lord of the world, judge and father. The concepts of judgement and
righteousness fall into the eld of meaning surrounding the metaphor
of Lord of the world. In the judgement that the wicked and unbelievers
49 For instance in Inst. 1.14.21: sapientia, potentia, iustitia, bonitas. See also Inst.
experience, they encounter God in his role as judge. In the care exer-
cised for the faithful in the world, they encounter Gods fatherhood. In
a series of steps I will describe how these qualities become concrete,
and becoming concrete means, among other things, that they are expe-
rienced in a sensory manner.
3.6. Lord of the world: Gods care and goodness in the order of the world
52 Inst. 3.7.1.
53 Inst. 4.20.32.
134 chapter three
tent and Possible Origin in: R.V. Schnucker (Ed.), Calviniana. Ideas and Inuence of Jean
Calvin, Kirksville (MO) 1988, 8183.
57 Aristotle, De generatione II,10, 333b; 11, 338b.
58 See Kaiser, Calvins Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy, 85. Cal-
vin denies the existence of a tenth sphere and does not make notice of a ninth sphere.
god: judge and father 135
such as the cycle of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, and
the form of man as a microcosmos.63
Once again, we underscore the relation between power and care.
In Calvins theology the concept of might does not have the negative
association of the blind exercise of power by a Supreme Being. God
exercises his power with precision and deliberation and is in no way
the neutral Supreme Being of the Enlightenment era.64 Gods might
serves particularly for preserving the structure of the world, the theatre
of his glory. That banishes the idea of neutrality. The power with which
God pushes the seas back into the depths and holds the earth fast and
immovable in the centre of the cosmos assures that life on earth will
be possible for man. From the outset power is under the domination
of Gods goodness, and is conceived in religious-ethical terms. The
reference to a passage in the prophet Isaiah, where the evidences to
Gods might are enumerated, and this summary is to serve as a means
of quickening trust on the part of man.65 Calvin still directly feels that.
3.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the father
63 Inst. 1.5.3.
64 Th. de Boer, De God van de losofen en de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van losoe en
theologie, s Gravenhage 1989, 158.
65 Inst. 3.2.31. See further Comm. on Isa. 40:21, 26, CO 37, 2021, 2425.
god: judge and father 137
the dualism has an eect on the perception of man and his fate. First,
it must be noted that Calvin does not use the term judgement in only
one sense. The concept iudicium is on the one hand used to characterise
the dealings with the damned. Calvin describes Gods dealings with his
children under the central concept of iustitia. In this context, in connec-
tion with atonement, iudicium then emerges again to express Gods deal-
ings with the elect. However, there is a sharp distinction made between
punitive judgements and corrective judgements, or iudicium vindictae and
iudicium castigationis. In the rst case there is real punishment involved,
connected with total rejection. Discipline means something very dif-
ferent, namely correction and admonition. The rst form of judge-
ment is explicitly coupled with God as Judge, and the second with the
Fatherhood of God.66 Therefore, already in this life the damned and
unbelievers must undergo Gods curse and wrath, and their life here
is already the gate to hell. God is the judge and avenger of wrong. In
Calvins eyes this is to be seen many times in history, on occasions such
as Joshuas conquest of Jericho, when the city was laid under a curse,
and all its inhabitants, man and animal alike, were exterminated. The
atrocities committed in the Old Testament are, in this panel, justied
by an appeal to the righteousness of God. God has the right to demand
obedience, and when this is not given, to punish.67 In order to endure
the aictions they will face, Gods childrenthe electhowever must
also undergo discipline, which is a blessing for them. This totally dier-
ent perception of suering that at rst sight may seem to be the same,
can be understood as an logical application of the belief that Christ has
borne the punishment for sins. If Christ has borne Gods wrath over
sin for His children, the suering that still happens to them can never
be accounted as a consequence of Gods wrath. Discipline may then be
experienced as severe, but it is not to death. For Calvin the doctrine
of providence and the doctrine of repentance to life eternal are one
whole.68 He considers the utterances of the prophets where Gods Peo-
66 Inst. 3.4.31: Iudicium unum, docendi causa, vocemus vindictae: alterum, castiga-
tionis Alterum iudicis est, alterum patris Iudex enim quum facinorosum punit,
in ipsum delictum animadvertit, et de facinore ipso poenam expetit. Pater quum lium
severius corrigit, non hoc agit ut vindicet aut mulctet, sed magis ut doceat et cautiorem
in posterum reddat.
67 Comm. Josh. 6:21, CO 25, 469. Cf. also the sermon on IISam. 8:2, Johannes
Calvin, Predigten ber das 2. Buch Samuelis, hrsg. von H. Rckert, (Supplementa Calvinia
6) Neukirchen 19311961, 235238. See also Inst. 2.8.14.
68 Inst. 3.9.
138 chapter three
ple are subject to Gods wrath (for instance Micah 7:9 or Hab. 3:2) as a
manner of speaking which does not say as much about Gods Counsel
as about the manner in which the prophet experiences Gods hand.69
One must conclude that the dualism within Gods Counsel and the
bearing of the punishment for sins by Christ is decisive for the percep-
tion and interpretation of the vicissitudes which happen to a person.
In the theological theory we encounter a duality that runs as a hidden
thread through all history.
Gods care, his wise measures with his children, and his judgement of
the disobedient are far from always visible. Thus the visibility of Gods
rule does not totally dene the picture in the panel of Calvins theology,
although it must be said that Calvin generally sees little ambiguity. At
such moments his thinking shocks us, and we experience the distance
from contemporary theology, which has come to be dominated by the
question of human suering.
There are more than enough examples of passages without ambiva-
lence. They create the impression that Gods fatherly care and righ-
teousness toward the justied in this life is already completely obvious.
God here shows himself an avenger of injustice and a defender of the
innocent.70 When in the course of the narrative of Judah and Tamar
in Genesis 38 the early death of Er is explicitly characterised as the
punishing hand of God, this gives Calvin an opportunity to once again
expound the general rule with regard to Gods governance over the
good and the bad. The death of Er shows how the hand of God rules.
The connection between the event and Gods action is very direct for
Calvinindeed, we must admit, with just as much appeal to other pas-
sages of scripture, all too direct. The conviction that all things have a
purpose, a sometimes hidden but generally undisguised meaning, has
as its down side that everything can be reduced to punishment or dis-
cipline.71 Calvin has great diculty with the mystery of Gods actions.
Anyone who cleaves too closely to Calvin at this point runs extreme
69 Inst. 3.4.32.
70 Inst. 1.5.7. See also Comm. Ps. 107: 1.5.8, CO 32, 136137.
71 Cf. H.J. Selderhuis, God in het midden. Calvijns theologie van de psalmen, Kampen 2000,
130, 304.
god: judge and father 139
you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even within
a high-walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpent
will sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to re, threatens you
with poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your elds, subject to hail,
mildew, drought and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and thereby
famine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which beset
us at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not man
be very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with diculty
draws an anxious and feeble breath, as if a drawn sword were constantly
suspended over his neck?74
It would appear from this quote that anxiety, fear and the experience
of insecurity were not unfamiliar to Calvin, and in contradiction to
the cliched contrast between Calvin and Luther which still surfaces
in Max Weber,75 they are not invented but primarily a matter of his
own life experience. His theology focuses on such experiences, and
owes part of its vitality and continuing worth to this. If faith has
something to do with the lives of esh and blood people, then the
poles of anxiety and desire will take their place in its theology in
a theological shape. It is the task of theology not to silence anxiety
and desire; it will rather bring these fundamental experiences of life
into dialogue with what can be said theologically. Calvins theology
too points us toward the condence in God rooted in Christ, but
nevertheless the shape of this theme in his thinking is so dierent
that in our time it is almost unrecognisable. For him the demand
for a just system in the world and history is not the all-consuming
issue that has become dominant in theology from after the Second
World War. In contemporary theology we nd a powerful tendency
to make the experience of suering mankind the point of departure for
theological knowledge. The focus on the subject has worked itself out in
the focus on the suering subject and his aporetic experience of evil.76
Suering man is the place where knowledge of God and his rejection
of suering and evil is to be won. With Calvin the human subject never
has this central function. The world is more than a man experiences
personally. He has but a limited place in the system of heaven and
earth. Therefore the theological strategy works out entirely dierently,
so to speak. The fragility of life, the constant uncertainty can only be
borne by keeping Gods providence continually before ones eyes. That
74 Inst. 1.17.10.
75 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, 121.
76 A. Houtepen, God een open vraag, 124; ET, 83.
god: judge and father 141
77 Inst. 1.17.11.
78 CO 33, 581582. See also CO 35, 5166.
79 CO 33, 579580, 590.
142 chapter three
80 CO 33, 584: Car il faut que nous recognoissions sa vertu premierement, et puis
que nous adioustions avec sa vertu une telle sagesse que nous ne laccusions point de
tyrannie ne dexcez. Car ce nest point le tout de dire, Il est vray que Dieu gouverne
le monde, et cependant ne murmurions contre lui, que nous ne la accusion piont de
tyrannie ne dexcez.
81 CO 35, 60: Quand nous parlons de sa puissance, ou iustice, ou sagesse, ou bont,
84 Inst. 1.17.7.
85 Inst. 1.16.9.
86 Inst. 1.16.9.
87 E.P. Meijering, Voorbij de vadermoord. Over het christelijk geloof in God, de Schepper,
highness and goodness, with our present outlook on life it has become
a word that calls up associations of lifelessness and inspissation, and
provokes whole-hearted abhorrence. In our climate today change, his-
toricity and vitality are positive concepts, because they give precedence
to possibilities, in place of a xation on the past or givens. In the early
Renaissance culture in which Calvin moved, innovation had a frankly
pejorative implication, and improvement was to be found in rebirth and
reformation, a return to an original situation. The change in the cul-
tural climate which has taken place since then extends over the whole
manner in which we look at and evaluate Calvins premodern thinking
in our time. Questions arise which previously were impossible: if the
constancy of God is so obvious, if regret and contrition are only forms
of anthropomorphic speech, what then are the consequences for other
concepts and images which are also undeniably anthropomorphic, and
appear to have something to say about Gods relation with man? Can
God then still love and have compassion as a father, be moved as a
mother? What does anthropomorphic speech mean for the trustwor-
thiness of the images used? Can not being hurt, not being moved, be
reconciled with loving? What sort of love is it that must be thought of
apart from such aects? Is God still love then, or does this reect more
on the iron Calvin, to use Harnacks stereotype?88 Since the cosmolog-
ical paradigm has been exchanged for a paradigm oriented to modern
psychological insights, in which the capacity for change and relation-
ality are highly valued,89 it has become impossible to iterate Calvins
doctrine of God unchanged.
These matters touch on the next subject that is connected with the
foregoing: human freedom. If everything that happens can be traced
back to Gods unchanging will, what is left of human freedom? Are
we not marionettes with no will of our own, moving across the stage
of the puppet theatre on invisible strings bring pulled from above? In
short, Calvins image of God the Father, who protects and supports his
children, seats them at his table, and urges and trains them to move
forwardimages from life that form a continuous line in his exege-
sis and sermonsappears to be threatened by the notion of Gods
unchangingness. It is quite common to nd the suggestion in theologi-
cal literature that Calvins conception of God as Father or Mother has
a darker ip side, and in view of this, has little true content. The knowl-
edge that the image of God as Father or Mother appears to yield is
immediately undermined because the immutable will of God is con-
cealed behind it.90 Gods real essence would deviate from this image.
We will not try to answer these questions all at one time. If we will
come to some degree of understanding of Calvin, we will rst have to
investigate within what context and with what meaning the invariable
will of God occurs.
Calvins explication of Bible verses which speak of Gods regret and
contrition is well known, not to say notorious. In Genesis 6:6 we read
that God regretted that he had created man, and in ISamuel 15:11 we
hear that the Lord regretted that he had appointed Saul as king. We
can reach for the book of Jonah, where God, through the repentance
of the city of Ninevah, is moved not to execute his judgement on
the city. What does Calvin do with these texts about Gods regret
and compunction? He considers them as gurative language. It is a
way of speaking that is completely accommodated to the manner in
which the course of events could be understood by those who then
heard it. According to Calvin, one must read these texts in the light
of other Bible passages, such as ISamuel 15:29. There one will nd
the key. From these we learn that God knows no regret, because He
is not a man, that he should repent. In his opinion, in this verse
the Holy Spirit does not speak in a metaphorical manner, but absque
gura, and teaches straightforwardly about the invariability of God, His
immutabilitas.91 The talk of regret and compunction, in other words
about an actual response on the part of God, is an accommodation to
the way in which man hears and understands. From mans perspective
it appears as if God has had regrets and changed his mind, but this does
not describe how God is, in se, sed a nobis sentitur. According to Calvin it
is clear as day that God himself is elevated above all emotions, and that
the supposition of a change in the exercise of his will simply cannot be
contemplated. Thinking about Gods sovereignty must rather take as its
starting point a passage such as Isaiah 14:27, where we read For the
LORD of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? And his hand
is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? It will be clear that this
exposition will leave us, with our ideas, in a considerable quandary.
Can one say then that God really responds at all? Put irreverently,
to itself. This concept became denitive for the idea of the impassive-
ness of God. The centre of the universe, on and around the earth, is
controlled by movement, change and transitoriness. There phenomena
eect one another. The further one goes from the earth, the higher into
the heavenly spheres, the more stable Gods creation is and the more
tranquil, orderly and xed. In this model, regret and compunction are
qualities of the terrestrial. They are emotions, aects that belong to the
variability and capriciousness of human nature fallen into sin, through
which people become playthings of their own or others whims.
With the distance of history, we can indeed assess how thoroughly
this cosmological heritage permeated teaching about God. On the
basis of a doctrine of God supported by the geocentric paradigm,
Calvin was certain that God could never be tormented by emotions,
that inconstancy is excluded from God, and that transitoriness and
divine nature are irreconcilable.94 The classical Scriptural proofs of
the changelessness of God, such as Ex. 3:14, Mal. 3:16, Ps. 102:28 and
James 1:17, were interpreted in this light, and other passages that spoke
of variability in God were pushed aside. At this point the legacy of
classical metaphysics hangs over Christian tradition like a shadow, and
we will have to discount change and relation as positive qualities of
Gods being and acts. Yet, for a fair and proper understanding of the
classical concept, it will be necessary to stand by the remarks regarding
the concept of the constancy of God and the existential signicance this
has for faith. Calvin experienced the constancy of God as a reason for
condence in the steadfastness of God in the mist of the uncertainties of
human life. God does not suer from moods. God does not play games
with his children.95
This conviction assures that the history of this concept indeed will
seem chaotic, but in reality all things occur under Gods rule and
governance. In Calvins own idiom, nothing happens except by His
order, or his nod.96 No branch breaks from the tree,97 no tile falls from a
roof,98 no storm arises (Jonah 1:4) except that it comes forth from Gods
will. Calvin is able to cite countless examples of Biblical events that
are to be resolved into Gods initiative and conrm it, because they
arise from His will. Although seen from the human perspective, the
things happen by chance, in reality they happen by Gods counsel and
disposition. Chance is therefore a human explanation, but, according to
Calvin, in the light of Gods divine teaching that must be regarded as a
false understanding.99 But this is a conclusion from a divine perspective,
not the perspective of man. In this distinction we again encounter the
importance of the limits that, in Calvins own conviction, there are
for the human mind. There is a qualitative dierence between Gods
Counsel and the human mind. However highly Calvin may speak of
mental powers, in these things man is still characterised by sluggishness,
weakness and incapacity.100 The conclusion that Calvin draws from
all thisand that is signicantgoes in a dierent direction than we
would expect. His conclusion is not that man loses all his freedom. The
accent lies on the smallness and impotence of man over against the
majesty of God. But the intended reaction is not paralysis, but trust
and security. The message is this: in the chaos of life, frail man may
know himself to be in the hand of God.
The concept of the changelessness of Gods will does not detract from
man being responsible for his own actions. How can that be? Is not the
truth more on the side of the critics who assert that Calvins position is
in fact that of fatalism? To what degree is Calvin bound by the thought
of the Stoic philosophy that we nd in his times? This inuence has
often been adduced in connection with the tremendous tension that this
sort of thinking implies with regard to conceiving freedom of the will.101
99 Inst. 1.16.9: quasi fortuita sunt quae certum est ex Dei voluntate provenire.
100 mentis nostrae tarditas (1559), imbecellitas nostra (1539), Inst. 1.16.9.
101 See for instance D. Nsgen, Calvins Lehre von Gott und ihr Verhltnis zur
a predetermination for evil: In Stoicism, the Deity or divinity does not interfere
with the course of an individual persons life. Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins
Reformation, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor
of Holy Scripture, 120, nt. 22.
102 Inst. 1.17.4.
103 Inst. 1.17.4.
150 chapter three
elds of action which appear to collide with one another, on the one
hand divine Counsel and on the other human responsibility. Because
divine Counsel is unchangeable and lies outside time, logically Calvin
will inevitably have diculties. He must acknowledge that, seen from
the perspective of divine Counsel, freedom of action indeed does not
exist. But it is essential for Calvins theology that precisely at this point,
when he comes to the actions of man and mans responsibility, that
he shifts the perspective. Then we are dealing with a second given
in knowledge of God, namely with the limitation that is imposed on
human knowledge of God, and the mirrors in which God chooses that
his power and will be known. The Bible witnesses to the existence of
Gods unchanging will. But it is not given to man to know how this
unchanging will looks, precisely, and how it relates to human freedom.
At that point Calvin instructs man within the boundaries of his limited
knowledge. Seen from the human perspective there is a double will.
First there is the revealed will of Gods decree. Next, Scripture informs
us of the existence of a comprehensive will of God that determines
all things. But in his revelation God has not permitted us insight into
his will. Man knows only the existence of this comprehensive will. He
knows nothing from the perspective of God; his knowledge is limited to
what is revealed to him. Finally, Calvin argues for living within these set
boundaries in obedience and responsibility.104 In accordance with this
varying perspective, Calvin accepts the distinction between of necessitas
and coactio, necessity and compulsion, from medieval theology. Post
lapsum Adae, human acts are indeed under the necessitas of sin, of a life
that is going the wrong direction. From all sides man is vulnerable to sin
and destruction. That does not however mean that in a psychological
respect one can speak of coactio, compulsion. Enchained by sin, man
is always still called to account in his own responsibility; from the
perspective of psychology there is still voluntariness.105
For the evaluation of the concept of the unchangeable will of God
as the ground of all events, the spiritual prot that according to Calvin
lies there is important. Calvins thinking and feeling is characterised by
the fact that something being xed by Gods will is not in the least to
106 Inst. 2.6.1: sed post defectionem quocunque vertamus oculos, sursum et deorsum
occurit Dei maledictio. Inst. 2.16.1: Quum enim nemo possit in seipsum descendere ac
serio reputare qualis sit, quin Deum sibi iratum infestumque sentiens, necesse habeat
eius placandi modum ac rationem anxie expetere, quod satisfactionem exigit, non
vulgaris requiritur certitudo: quia peccatoribus, donec a reatu soluti fuerint, semper
incumbit ira Dei et maledictio, qui, ut est iustus iudex, non sinit impune legem suam
violari, quin ad vindictam armatus sit.
152 chapter three
quando nos oderat, diligebat. Oderat enim nos, qualies ipse non fecerat: et quia iniq-
uitas nostra opus eius non omni ex parte consumpserat, noverat simul in unoquoque
nostrum et odisse quod feceramus, et amare quod fecerat. Calvin quotes Augustine, In
Johannis Evangelium Tractus 110.6, CCSL 36, 626.
god: judge and father 155
love of God is not the result of Christs suering for sin. Accord-
ing to Calvin, an essential element of Christian knowledge of God
is that the love of God is a disposition that arises from God Him-
self. The love of God the Father is primary, is a prima causa.115 This
remains true despite the fact that in Scripture the obedience of Christ is
termed the merit through which grace is obtained. Christs obedience
is causa secunda or causa propior. What comes rst: Gods grace, or the
merit of Christ? To our ears, speaking about a rst and second cause
very quickly sounds like the distinction between actual and apparent.
The love of God and the way of obedience and the cross are so eas-
ily played against one another. In his explanation of the doubleness,
Calvin however opposes precisely the separation of the two sorts of
cause.
As a rst step in his explanation of the doubleness, Calvin reaches
back to Augustine. Gods grace cannot be regarded as a consequence
of the work of Christ. The fact that the work of Christ can be char-
acterised as meritorious rests on Gods ordinatio.116 With this concept
from the doctrine of grace as it developed in the late middle ages, we
encounter an element that plays a decisive role in Calvins theology
at various points, namely the idea of the self-binding of God. From
his mere good pleasure God has decided that there will be a media-
tor who will purchase salvation for us.117 Two statements that are at
rst sight contradictory thus become possible. The rst is that man
is justied from the sheer mercy of God. The second is that man is
saved by the merit of Christ. These two assertions, Calvin suggests, are
not logically contradictory, if one takes in to account that they each
lie on a dierent level. After all, the meritoriousness of the work of
115 Inst. 2.16.3: Proinde sua dilectione praevenit ac antevertit Deus Pater nostram
in Christo reconciliationem. Cf. his commentary on Jn. 3:16, CO 47, 64: arcanum
amorem quo nos apud se complexus est coelestis Pater, quia ex aeterno eius proposito
manat, omnibus aliis causis superiorem esse.
116 Inst. 2.17.1: Quum ergo conscendimus ad Dei ordinationem, quae prima causa
est: quia mero beneplacito Mediatorem statuit qui nobis salutem acquireret. Atque ita
inscite opponitur Christi meritum misericordiae Dei. Regula enim vulgaris est, quae
subalterna sunt, non pugnare; ideoque nihil obstat quominius gratuita sit hominum
iusticatio ex mera Dei misericordia, et simul interveniat Christi meritum, quod Dei
misericordiae subiicitur.
117 Inst. 2.17.1. In other words, the reception of the human nature of Christ into
the unity of the divine person is the paradigm par excellence for election. Without
antecedent merit, God has chosen this human nature, in order to ll humanity with his
wealth, through his corporality. That is the way of salvation, the arrangement that God
in his grace has chosen.
156 chapter three
salvation, but its consequences. This does not detract from the fact that in Calvins
understanding of man the conscience is an important pedagogical path, along which
God draws the sinner to himself. This however is not yet penance.
125 Inst. 3.11.1.
158 chapter three
life. O. Weber has correctly remarked that in this manner Calvin does
not distinguish himself from a long Western tradition.126
Although faith is focused on Gods mercy, it is still characterised by
a certain doubleness. As Calvin remarks, God has within himself the
honourable qualities of a Lord and a Father. That means that love for
God the Father is constantly characterised by his lordship. The children
of God thus do not obey as servants, that is to say because they cannot
avoid doing so, but in respect. Malachi 1:6 is cited as evidence that
this fear of the Lord is a reverence in which fear and respect come
together. The fact that a believer knows himself to be an adopted child
and subject of pity thus does not detract from the realisation of Gods
majesty. In other words, the man of faith also knows the experience
of trembling, the abyss, although this diers in quality from the fear
that seizes the unbeliever when he is confronted with judgement. In
addition to the timor Dei the believer also knows of Gods mercy, and in
the orientation to that mercy he has the realisation of God as avenger
of all wrong behind him, as it were.
This is clear: Calvin disputes that in faith there is no fear whatsoever.
In doing so, he seems to atly contradict the words of IJohn 4:18,
Perfect love banishes fear. Calvin however boldly declares that this
refers only to the fears of the unbelievers. The unbeliever has an abject
spirit and his only concern is to avoid the wrath of God. The fear
peculiar to faith is that of the child, who suers from it when the
relationship with the father has been disrupted.127
126 Inst. 3.3.89. See the critique of O. Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II, Neukirchen
19775, 394: Der Ton der eschatologischen Freude, der das ganze Neue Testament
durchzieht, der in den gebundenen Formen des Rituals und der Sitte die Ostkirche
so krftig bewegt, is in der auch von Calvin nicht durchbrochenen abendlndischen
Frmmigkeit zu wenig, zu krglich zu vernehmen.
127 Inst. 3.2.27.
god: judge and father 159
son of the Trinity Christ is indeed involved in predestination, but then only as authorem
electionis of the positive pole of predestination, election (Inst. 3.22.7). Calvin appeals to
John 13:18 and John 15:19. Election is not thought through from the incarnation, but
precedes the incarnation in order. Calvin is silent on a role for the Eternal Son in
reprobation. See C. Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth. Oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leer
der verkiezing in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme, s Gravenhage 1987, 3740, who correctly
observes that Calvin, by regarding the double determination for salvation and repro-
bation as the decision of the one God, creates an enormous tension in the doctrine of
160 chapter three
God. With equal justice Graaand remarks that Calvin never works out the implica-
tions of this theologically. Indeed, we are compelled to say, it is precisely characteris-
tic of Calvins concept of knowing God that man never works out certain questions,
respects limits, and turns his gaze on that which Gods actions have produced which is
benecial for him.
131 See particularly the work of R.A. Muller, who in various publications has de-
fended the continuity between Calvin and Beza. See Calvin and the Calvinists:
Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy,
Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995), 345375, and 31 (1996), 125160, now also in: R. Mul-
ler, After Calvin. Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63102;
idem, The Use and Abuse of a Document: Bezas Tabula Praedestinationis, The Bolsec
Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy in: C.R. Trueman/R.S. Clark
(eds.), Protestant Scholasticism. Essays in Reassessment, Carlisle 1999, 3361.
132 Thus Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 9 and 15. A well-known example of this
uidity is the place of the doctrine of providence, which in the 1539 edition Calvin still
discussed in connection with election. In the 1559 edition the doctrine of providence is
placed in Book I, with the doctrines of creation and sustenance. Predestination is not
however placed within the doctrine of God, a step which is though taken by Beza.
god: judge and father 161
most, and with regard to the discussion of election sought to respect the
Biblical-theological connections which he had discerned. It is for this
reason that election is discussed after he has spoken of Gods gesture of
invitation in the creation, of sin, of Christ and of the leading work of
the Holy Spirit. Predestination, Gods decisive Counsel to life or death,
is not the core of his theology, although it is undoubtedly one dening
element.
What are the consequences, however, if the aspect of Gods predeter-
mination is postulated as sharply and radically as Calvin does, without
any inclination to want to mitigate the reprobation or providing more
insight into it? As is known, Calvin was unwilling to suppress the fact
that, according to his conviction, Scripture also taught a negative coun-
terpart to election to life, namely reprobation. What does that mean for
faith? Does the doctrine of double predestination undermine the image
of the well-disposed father? For the reprobate portion of humanity, is
God not a tyrant who mercilessly destines them to remain entrapped
in total misery? One can really not dismiss these questions as ques-
tions which have only arisen in modern times. Therefore we must rst
look back into history. When Jrome Bolsec stood up in the Congrgation
(a public Bible lesson) on October 16, 1551, and attacked the concept
of predestination taught in Geneva because this doctrine would make
God a tyrant or false god like Jupiter, he undeniably laid his nger
on a sore point in Calvinist thinking. R.M. Kingdon has demonstrated
that Bolsecs accusations struck a sympathetic chord with the common
people.133 One can call the charge that with Calvin God becomes the
author of evil an easy clich, which since then has been repeated end-
lessly; the accusation points to an aporia with which everyone is con-
fronted if they wish to maintain both Gods omnipotence and his good-
ness. What were the motives that contributed to Calvin developing this
part of the doctrine as he did? Is it because he feared the response
that Bolsec received from among the common people, and saw sup-
port for the Reformation in the city being threatened?134 Is that why
he attempted to comprehensively explain what he intended? Or can
his harsh attitude against Bolsec be traced back to his personality? Was
there simply something wrong with Calvin as a person, that at deci-
sive moments he lacked humanity, which subsequently was projected
133 R.M. Kingdon, Popular Reactions to the Debate between Bolsec and Calvin in:
W. van t Spijker (Hrsg.), Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag, (Fs. W. Neuser) Kampen 1991, 138145.
134 Kingdon, Popular Reactions, 145.
162 chapter three
in his image of God? Most recently Ph. Holtrop, in his book on the
Bolsec controversy, has ascertained, to his own shock, that the doctri-
nal discussion was not only all tangled up with questions of social and
political power, but that Calvin personally also played a highly dubious
role in the aair. The appearance of Bolsec coincided with a moment
at which Calvinand with him a large number of French refugees in
Genevafound themselves in a threatening situation, in terms of pol-
itics.135 The risk that he would come o the worst against the native
residents of the city and their party, the Libertines, was great. Possibly
it was for this reason that in his trial Bolsec appealed to the magistrate
in order to seek judgement in his favour. Apparently he estimated the
situation as being such that it was denitely not a foregone conclusion
that Calvin and his supporters could be able to maintain their position
in the city. The way in which Calvin handled this situation and dealt
with Bolsec provides an insight into a number of dubious features in
Calvins personality. Although he viewed himself as moderate, in real-
ity his response was bitter, harsh and disproportionate.136 He was com-
pletely convinced that he was in the right and could only understand
Bolsecs diering opinion as a revolt against God. It is understandable
that the list of those who in the name of humanity have appointed
themselves complainants against the man has slowly grown to endless
length, and one is inclined to promptly declare in their favour. That
is all the more so because the negative verdict on Calvins role in the
Bolsec aair is not only a judgement which has been made in retro-
spect, on the basis of modern attitudes toward life. It also nds sup-
port in the reactions of Calvins own contemporaries and supporters:
Bullinger, Viret, Myconius.
The personal element thus certainly played a role, but one does not
do justice to Calvins theology when it is suggested that this is the last
word on the matter. That would be all too easy. As it happens, in his
doctrine of election Calvin is no exception. In its outlines, one nds
135 Ph.C. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551 to 1555. The Statements
of Jerome Bolsec, and the Responses of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and Other Reformed Theolo-
gians Vol.I Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter 1993, 167230, 56. See also W.G. Naphy,
Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation, Manchester/New York 1994, 172:
The lukewarm support that Calvins views received from the Swiss cities must have
undermined his position somewhat.
136 For several instances of Calvins lack of mercy and spitefulness see the study by
W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation and his conclusion
on page 68: Calvin had a particularly unforgiving side to his character. See also
C. Augustijn, Calvijn, Den Haag 1966, 7079.
god: judge and father 163
the same teaching in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and all the major
gures in late medieval theology.137 Moreover, in his doctrine of election
Calvin takes a position that logically follows from his concept of human
knowledge of God.
Why, according to Calvin, does double predestination belong to the
fund of human knowledge of God? How did people come to conceive
election as the heart of the church? It has been correctly noted that
within Reformed Protestantism the doctrine of election has gone from
inheritance to stumbling block, and on to being an article of faith
from the day before yesterday.138 What could the foundation of this
doctrine ever have been? What was at stake here, according to Calvin?
In the past an attempt was made to answer this question by referring
to the horric inequality in opportunities in nature and history. Elec-
tion then becomes a principle that is visible in the whole of life and
which rules all existence.139 Although one also nds in Calvin an appeal
of this sort to the inequality everywhere in life, it cannot be denied
that in Calvin this does not do justice to the soteriological context of
the concept of election. Or put dierently: standing behind the con-
cept, its primary background, is the awesome astonishment that man
is not overtaken by disaster, does not disappear into his own darkness,
but is brought home by God in his love. For a part of the Reformed
world it was G.C. Berkouwer who again underscored the existential
character of election. Election has to do with the acknowledgement
of the supremacy of Gods grace, with the heart of God which seeks
137 See A.D.R. Polman, De praedestinatieleer van Augustinus, Thomas van Aquino en Calvijn,
Franeker 1936, G. Oorthuys, De leer der praedestinatie, Wageningen 1931, P. Jacobs, Prdes-
tination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937.
138 Authors translation from Oberman, De erfenis van Calvijn, 41. Cf. Oberman, Cal-
gehouden, Kampen Tweede Druk z.j., 179181; ET: Lectures on Calvinism, Grand Rapids,
197810, 195197. Here and there in neo-Calvinism one nds others who similarly
begin with inequality. See G.C. Berkhouwers sensitive discussion of the theology of
K. Schilder in Zoeken en Vinden. Herinneringen en ervaringen, Kampen 1989, 263264.
Berkouwer refers to an otherwise undeveloped marginal comment in Schilders Preken,
Vol. I, 81: Heaven cannot be imagined without hell. Election cannot be imagined
without reprobation. Here too day arises with night, and light is linked to darkness.
This is dicult. Yet life is replete with this. This law applies everywhere. Many are
called, few are chosen. One mans death is another mans breath. Darwin: survival of
the ttest. Thousands of blossoms fall o, so that a handful can ripen into fruit. Why?
Millions of living beings are born, only a few continue in life. Berkouwer does not seem
to be aware that these remarks are a direct summary of a passage from H. Bavinck,
Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 417418; ET, 401402.
164 chapter three
ways where, from the human perspective, all ways have been blocked.
Looking toward history, Oberman has tried to anchor election in the
faith experience of a community under the cross. Where the commu-
nity is threatened, where people must ee for the sake of their faith,
living in the diaspora in the midst of a threatening world, and where
their own faith is robbed of all its certainties, there perhaps the realisa-
tion arises again that election has to do with an anchor in God, which
provides comfort. Some understanding for this doctrine can perhaps
also be found in the recognition of the structures of the existence of
refugees in our own time.140 This is the search for an existential con-
text. It is obvious that all these explanations and situations nd their
basis in the manner in which Calvin has written of election as comfort.
It is however also worthwhile to begin with the basis which Calvin him-
self identied. In this one is in no way whatsoever denying the existence
of an existential context, but beginning with that which in any case also
must be said.
The simplest justication for the doctrine of double predestination,
and the one given by Calvin himself, is the following: it is taught by
the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Scripture itself declares he [God] does
not adopt promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some
what he denies to others.141 Key texts for the concept of double elec-
tion are, for instance, Romans 9:18 and 9:22, and Proverbs 16:4. Such
texts are interpreted by Calvin in the light of the double ending of
history. Mankind is divided into two groups: one group predestined
to be damned and one group of persons who will live in communion
with God eternally. On the basis of contemporary insights from Bib-
lical research we can only observe that already, on exegetical grounds
alone, there is no longer any support for Calvins purely individualistic
exegesis of these texts and his undervaluing of the category of covenant.
Calvin did not see that in chapters 911 of Romans election is a cate-
gory of sacred history, and that the question of personal salvation is sub-
ordinate to the question of how God will remain true to his promises
and his covenant. One can conclude that Calvin introduces a symme-
try between election and reprobation that is not expressly present in
Romans 911. He mirrors the positive connection of Gods action in
the election of Jacob with the rejection of Esau as the negative counter-
part of election. For election and reprobation being parallel, he appeals
144 In the second panel, of Barths theology, precisely this unexpectedness is main-
tained by the actuality of Gods Counsel. The fact that all men are chosen for life in
Christ prevents grace from becoming a thing, a decree that has existence apart from
the living God who judges and establishes his justice in the present. That in the recep-
tion of Barths theology grace can indeed become a principle, and thereby an ideology
that in fact crushes the life out of the call to repentance and a change of life, is a fact
that is still too little recognised.
145 See Calvins disapproval in Inst. 3.21.4.
146 According to Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy, 28, in the Bolsec aair Calvin rea-
soned along Scholastic lines. He not only based himself on the covenant and election in
Christ, but strongly posited a causal relation between Gods Counsel and faith. While
in the Institutes he argued from the eects to the cause, in the Bolsec aair he argues
from cause to the eects.
god: judge and father 167
147 Inst. 3.21.1: Quae nobis patefacienda censuit voluntatis suae arcana, ea verbo suo
prodidit. (Those secrets of his will, which he has seen it meet to manifest, are revealed
in his word).
148 For instance in Inst. 3.21.1 and in the Commentary on Rom. 9:14, CO 49, 180.
168 chapter three
asked to take a back seat, yielding to worship. This takes nothing away
from the fact that Calvin rejects every form of Pelagianism in the sal-
vation of man, and arms that God is the highest cause of election
and reprobation. Time and again we see how he believes that this posi-
tion is supported by Scripture. Election and reprobation take place on
the basis of Gods dispensatio,149 ordinatio,150 in arcano Dei consilio.151 Calvin
regards the argument that reprobation is based on Gods foreknowledge
of actions, or that God only permits the fall, as being untenable.152 With
appeals to Scripture, and knowing himself supported by Augustine, the
regular refrain throughout his discussion of the objections is the propo-
sition that it is certain that all things happen through Gods ordinance
and nod.153 To use other terms, there exists a direct causal connection
between Gods double decision and the eternal misery of the repro-
bate on the one hand and the eternal bliss of the elect on the other.
We noted that in this context Calvin, in addition to the more dynamic
terms nutus and ordinatio, also makes use of the term causa from Aris-
totelian metaphysics.154 In the Institutes 3.14.17 Calvin explicitly accepts
these distinctions. The mercy of God is the causa eciens, Christ with
his obedience the causa materialis, faith is the causa formalis or instrumen-
talis. The causa nalis is lastly the manifestation of divine justice and
the praise of his goodness. Contemporary theology rightly questions
whether the causa concept does justice to the nature of Gods actions
and whether as a concept it does not remain inadequate. It would
be well to remember, however, that in the Enlightenment this con-
cept of causality underwent an enormous impoverishment, gradually
being reduced to mechanical causality. Causality was pried away from
Aristotelian metaphysics, and what remained was a systematic relation
of cause and eect.155 With Calvin we encounter a concept of causa-
tion that is much richer in nature. The classic-Aristotelian concept of
causality is characterised by its distinguishing among various aspects or
the necessary foundation for all that happens; see Inst. 3.23.8: Non dubitabo igitur
cum Augustino simpliciter fateri, voluntatem Dei esse rerum necessitatem atque id
necessario futurum esse quod ille voluerit.
153 Inst. 3.23.6: ubi constat ordinatione potius et nutu omnia evenire.
154 Inst. 3.23.8. In his Metaphysics I,iii.1, Aristotle makes distinctions among what have
gone down in philosophy as causa formalis, causa materialis, causa eciens and causa nalis.
155 See for instance G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, Grand Rapids 1960, 188.
god: judge and father 169
principles that all form peculiar approaches to the one reality. It is char-
acteristic of the various sorts of causality that they all describe one and
the same thing from various perspectives. The danger however exists
that the causa eciens will be adjudged as the rst member in a series
of secondary causes which are dependent on the rst in a mechanical-
causal manner. There is then no place left for an acknowledgement of
the peculiarity and relative independence of the other causes. For the
evaluation of Calvins concept of Gods acts this means that no one
aspect may be isolated, but that the unity of actions is assumed. Calvin
knew the various causae and used them as aspects which can be used
to describe the history between God and man.156 To come closer to
Calvins spirituality, it seems to me we must make an important dis-
tinction, which has much to do with the limit of human knowing of
God, namely the distinction between causae remotae and causae propinquae.
Gods predestination is a cause which lies in the area that is inaccessi-
ble to the reach of human investigation; it belongs to the causae remotae.
With regard to reprobation, man rst encounters the nearer causes,
namely his own revolt and apostasy.157 If we look at election to life, then
Gods love is the summa causa, and faith the causa secunda et propior. The
various causes lie at varying levels and can not be played against one
another. In fact, Calvin is speaking of one reality. Gods love, the work
of Christ, and the faith of men, sanctication are not dierent com-
partments existing apart from one another. Gods love is realised in the
work of Christ, and Gods election is realised in faith in Christ. The
faith that takes on visible form in the world has an invisible ground in
Gods eternal Counsel. What men primarily have to deal with are the
causae propinquae.
156 This means that election and reprobation indeed can be described as causa nalis
in order to reveal Gods severity and his compassion, respectively; see for instance
the Comm. on Romans 9:2223, CO 49, 187 and Inst. 3.24.12. In the explication of
Romans 3:22, CO 49, 60, Gods compassion is explicitly termed the causa eciens and
Christ is the materia. In the Comm. on Eph. 1:5, CO 51, 148149 the pleasure of Gods
will is the causa eciens, Christ is causa materialis and the praise of his grace the causa
nalis. A bit later, at Eph. 1:8, CO 51, 150 he calls the preaching of the Gospel the causa
formalis.
157 See Comm. on Romans 9:11, CO 49, 178. See also the treatise against Albertus
The same is thus also true for reprobation. The unbelief of men also
has an origin which reaches back to God. But God may not be termed
unjust. However contradictory it may seem, Calvin thought that on the
basis of revelation both things must be said: In the decision of Gods
own Counsel lay the deepest cause of salvation and doom, while at
the same time revelation forbids the conclusion that God is the author
of sin, or is liable to moral censure.158 The existence of good and evil
alongside one another, of light and dark, of weal and woe, has reasons
that lie in God and which are further unknown to man.
158 Inst. 3.23.8: nihil aliud quam divinae iustitiae, occultae quidem, sed inculpatae,
follow wherever God leads, but also when He makes an end of teaching,
to cease also from wishing to be wise.162
162 Inst. 3.21.3: Permittamus, inquam, Christiano homini, cunctis qui ad eum diri-
guntur Dei sermonibus mentem auresque reserare, modo cum hac temperantia, ut
quum primum Dominus sacrum os clauserit, ille quoque viam sibi ad inquirendum
praecludat. Hic optimus sobrietatis terminus erit, si non modo in discendo praeeuntem
semper sequamur Deum, sed ipso nem docendi faciente, sapere velle desinamus.
163 Inst. 3.21.2; see also Inst. 3.23.8.
164 Inst. 3.21.3: ne modestiae et sobrietatis praetextu bruta inscitia nobis placeat.
165 Inst. 3.21.4.
166 Inst. 3.21.7.
167 Inst. 3.21.7.
god: judge and father 173
Calvin has gone down in the history of theology as the one who
defended the doctrine of double predestination in its most rigid form,
thereby undermining the character of the Gospel as a message of
salvation. Seen from Calvins own position, that is a most curious and
particularly ungracious outcome. The fact is that he precisely did not
want to burrow around in the Counsel of God, did not wish to obscure
the image of God, but intended to x his readers minds on revelation
as it is given, on Christ as the one in whom God comes to meet them
with his salvation. In Him Gods will is revealed.
170 Inst. 3.21.7: Quod ergo Scriptura clare ostendit, dicimus aeterno et immutabili
consilio Deum semel constituisse quos olim semel assumere vellet in salutem, quos
rursum exitio devovere.
171 Inst. 3.21.2. Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 130, 15, 28, CSEL 44, 72, 13.
172 For a careful but nevertheless sure backgrounding on this tradition, see H.A.
Oberman, Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins Reformation in: W.H. Neuser (ed.)
Calvinus sacrae scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994,
113154, particularly 117127.
god: judge and father 175
People who try to understand such irreducible facts could just as well
ask why they were created as men and not as oxen or donkeys. God
could just as easily have made them as dogs. Calvin asks if people
who want to investigate these contingent things might also wish to
allow lower animals to expostulate with God about not having made
them men.173 Things are as they are. Gods right to make a variety
of creatures now transports Calvin to the realm of salvation. Gods
freedom to introduce diversity into creation serves as an argument for
Gods freedom to elect some and reject others. Such an appeal to the
concept of freedom is dangerous because in this context it is not made
clear how Gods freedom diers from arbitrariness. Considering such
statements in isolation, one can easily manage to separate election from
the soteriological context in which the doctrine stands in Calvin, and
make it an independent, controlling principle of the sovereignty of God.
God then becomes a duplicate of the double face of nature. A natural
observation comes to dene the image of God. Above I have referred to
remarks by Kuyper and Schilder which do not escape this danger. That
in the Bible election stands in the context of salvation and redemption
is entirely lost. If we look at the context in which these statements
appear in Calvin, then it is clear that the point of his argument is not so
much the concept of freedom, but the foolishness of some questions.
The farthest horizon of human knowledge of God is Gods will. A
boundary is drawn in the reference to Gods will, which man cannot
pass. It is not possible to ask again why God wills as He does.174 Does
this reference to Gods will as the furthest horizon open the door to
the view that God, at his deepest, is dened by arbitrariness? That is
how Calvin is often understood. I would say this is incorrect, certainly
if one takes him at his own word. Gods will is always governed by
his justice and goodness. One can not search for reasons behind that.
I have previously noted that Calvin fences o reection on Gods
being, and always has the inclination to move immediately through to
questions about the eect that God wishes to produce with man. It is
characteristic of Calvins concept that he makes thinking about God as
prima causa subordinate to the nality of Gods action. It is not without
reason that I previously pointed out the dominance of active verbs such
as invite, awaken and draw. These verbs are more denitive for Calvins
doctrine of God than thinking in terms of primary causality is.175 His
handling of the concept of potentia absoluta also ts within this pattern.
Calvin storms furiously against the idea that God acts as a potentia
absoluta, as absolute power. The reference to Gods will as the furthest
horizon serves to remind us of the categorical dierence between God
and man.
eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit Non ngimus Deum exlegem, qui sibi ipsi
lex est.
god: judge and father 177
his glory, because they bury His truth and justice. Not because God is
subject to law, except to the degree that He is law to himself, but because
between his power and justice there is such an harmony and symmetry
that nothing can come from Him except that it knows measure, law and
rule. And it is certainly necessary that believers acknowledge that the
same One whom they confess as almighty at the same time is the judge
of the world, so that they regard the power as in this sense determined
by justice and equity.178
God does not act arbitrarily. His deeds are always determined by
his justice and goodness, although that is sometimes hidden. Other
passages too where Calvin speaks explicitly of potentia absoluta are of the
same tenor.179 By absolute power Calvin understands an actually used
capability, which stands apart from Gods justice and wisdom.180 Calvin
will have none of this. If that were true, God would indeed be a tyrant,
someone who acts arbitrarily. According to Calvin, to think of God in
that way is the equivalent of blasphemy.
the study of H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. Gabriel Biel and Late
Medieval Nominalism, Cambridge (MA) 1963. For a critical evaluation of the older view
and a reinterpretation, see particularly 3056. Further, I have made extensive use of
W.J. Courtenay, Capacity and Volition. A History of the distinction of Absolute and Ordained
Power, Bergamo 1990, idem, Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion in: Ch. Trinkaus
178 chapter three
and H.A. Oberman (ed.), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion,
Leiden 1974, 2659. Further F. Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order. An Excursion in the
History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz, Ithaca 1984; G. van den Brink, Almighty God. A Study
of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence, Kampen 1993, 6892.
182 Hieronymus, Epist. 22 ad Eustochium, 5, CSEL 54, 150: Audenter loquor: cum
omnia Deus possit, suscitare virginem non potest post ruinam. Valet quidem liberare
de poena, sed non valet coronare corruptam.
183 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 28.
184 Augustine, De natura et gratia, 7.8, CSEL 60, 237 and Contra Gaudentium I, CSEL 53,
233.
god: judge and father 179
them because they are contrary to His nature. Can not must simply be
regarded as does not will to. It is nonsense to think of Gods capacity
apart from his will.
Particularly Anselm is important for the further development of the
classical meaning of the distinction. In his writings he took several steps
that stimulated reection on the capacity of God and suggested that in
God there is an unrealised sphere of potential that is apart from his will.
One of these steps is found in the consideration of the incarnation in
Cur Deus Homo. If Christ has taken on a truly human nature, by virtue of
the communion between the two natures in the divine-human person
He has the communicatio idiomatum, the capacity to do things which are
totally out of keeping with the divine nature, such as to lie and steal.
At this point Anselm applies the distinction between being able to
and willing. God in Christ has well the bald capacity to do all sorts
of things, but on account of his divine nature he does not have the
capacity to want to do them. The step which Anselm takes here is to
think hypothetically about what God might have wanted to do.185
A further step taken by Anselm is the distinction between vari-
ous sorts of necessity. First, there is the distinction between necessitas
antecedens and necessitas consequens. Necessitas antecedens describes the cause
of a particular eect. Necessitas consequens refers to the act as it takes
place or that is a result of an act. The second distinction is related to
this, namely that between an act that is compelled by an external inu-
ence and an action that takes place on the basis of a previous, freely
made act of will which the subject imposes on himself.186 Particularly
this latter distinction was to have immense consequences for thinking
about God, man and the world in terms of covenant. In freedom God
commits himself to act in a certain manner in his creation and in sacred
history. It is in keeping with Gods honour to act in conformity with
that to which he has committed himself in creation and redemption.
To the extent that these actions of God can be described as necessary,
this necessity is characterised by his honour, or, better, by his nobility.
Nearly all the ingredients which would be denitive for the classical
meaning of the distinction are already present with Anselm. The dier-
ence is that Anselm limits himself to Gods freely chosen obligation. In
its classic form the distinction describes the operation of a covenant in
terms of a comprehensive system of causes and eects on the basis of
speaking of Gods power apart from his will and his concrete deeds in
creation and sacred history. Potentia absoluta refers to the whole of pos-
sibilities that initially stood open for God. These possibilities are only
limited by the principium non-contradictionis. God can not will and not-
will at the same time. Potentia ordinata regards Gods power according to
what He has actually done. The adjective absoluta is thus not a state-
ment about a concrete act of God; it is his potentia considerata abstracta.188
We see that it is not the intention of the distinction to make a statement
about what God can and cannot do. The intention is rather to make
a positive statement about his relation to the world. The point of the dis-
tinction is Gods binding himself to the order that He has chosen in creation and
sacred history. Since God in his Counsel has chosen for this world and
this sacred history, he is approachable on that basis. In light of this, the
distinction rst of all says something about the contingency of creation,
as opposed to Graeco-Arabic determinism.189 The present order is a
product of Gods will. It is an order that is not necessary, and not logi-
cally deducible. It is not the only possible order, and it rests positively in
the will of God. The dierence between willing and potential in God is
interpreted as potuit per potentiam, sed non per voluntatem.
This classical form of the dialectic between potentia absoluta and poten-
tia ordinata is not the end of the debate, however. When so much empha-
sis is placed on Gods self-binding to a particular order, and when he
is thought of as the one who has appointed the laws in his creation,
it becomes more dicult to situate miracles within the potentia ordinata.
Moreover, the self-binding of Gods power to particular forms and laws
assumes an element of deliberation in God. This assumption is not easy
to square with Gods immutabilitas.
In the third quarter of the 13th century, under the inuence of a
debate carried on by canon lawyers, still another use of the distinction
emerged. Potentia absoluta was understood by analogy with papal power
and sovereignty. The pope was thought to possess the plenitudo potestatis
with which the status ecclesiae must be maintained. The principal of lex
digna, coming from Roman law, encouraged the opinion that the pope
could act ex ratione ecclesiae.190 Concretely, that meant that the pope could
grant dispensation or could act against rights which had been granted,
when larger interests or the greater good was served by doing so. Then
191 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 101 refers to Ordinatio I. Distinctio 44. Opera
Omnia vol IV, 363369: In omni agente per intellectum et voluntatem, potente confor-
miter agere legi rectae et tamen non necessario conformiter agere legi rectae, est dis-
tinguere potentiam ordinatam a potentia absoluta; et ratio huius est, quia potest agere
conformiter illi legi rectae, et tunc secundum potentiam ordinatam (ordinata enim est
in quantum est principium exsequendi aliqua conformiter legi rectae) et potest agere
praeter illam legem vel contra eam, et in hoc est potentia absoluta, excedens potentiam
ordinatam. Et ideo non tantum in Deo, sed in omni agente liberequi potest agere
secundum dictamen legis rectae et praeter talem legem vel contra eamest distinguere
inter potentiam ordinatam et absolutam; ideo dicunt iuristae quod aliquis hoc potest
facere de facto, hoc est de potentia sua absoluta,vel de iure, hoc est de potentia
ordinata secundum iura. See also Lectura I, 44.
god: judge and father 183
God could have acted dierently. The contingency of the given order
is underscored. After all, certain miracles, such as the three men in
the ery furnace or Elijahs oering on Carmel, demonstrate that the
laws of nature are not necessary laws, but are contingent. Fire does not
always burn human esh, and water and re are not always opposites.
The question of whether the incarnation of the Son could have taken
place in a donkey is not asked because it was a serious possibility, but as
a means of distinguishing the incidental from the essential. It however
creates confusion when Ockham regularly creates the impression of
speaking of actual forms of Divine actions, when he only intends to
speak of the contingency of the world and the order of salvation.
Nevertheless, the operationalising of the term potentia absoluta through
the debate among canon lawyers unquestionably had inuence on the
era after Scotus and Ockham. The literature refers to Gabriel Biel
and Pierre dAilly as examples where potentia absoluta was interpreted
as potentia extraordinaria.192
To return to Calvin. His use of the term potentia absoluta as actually
used powerthus in operationalised formleads one to suspect that
he became acquainted with the concept as it was being used in the
circles of canon lawyers. It is important for Calvin that an absolute
freedom can never, ever be attributed to God in his actions. Both in the
work of creation and in the order of salvation, his actions are always
connected with his wisdom and his goodness. This does not mean, we
would once more emphasise, that man always understands how Gods
action rests in his justice and goodness. The fact that they form the
pillars of Gods action is something that the believer must accept as
an axiomatic point of departure, on the ground of revelation given in
Scripture.
Calvins view of the concept of potentia absoluta also leads one to
suspect that he was not aware of the classic meaning of the paired
concepts potentia absoluta et ordinata. At least he says nothing about them
explicitly. This in no way has to be in conict with the proposition that
both terminologically and in its content Calvins theology is permeated
with the idea of the self-binding of God to a given order. This is
particularly to be seen in the discussion of the work of Christ as a
meritum. In still another manner in our study we also already came
across elements which in terms of their content are related to the
192 See for example van den Brink, Almighty God, 85.
184 chapter three
4.1. Introduction
The preceding two chapters were centrally concerned with the question
of what sources give rise to and support human knowledge of God, and
of what comprises this knowledge of God. This closing chapter in the
rst panel concentrates on what is variously termed the Eucharist, the
Lords Table, or, to use the word Calvin himself used, the Supper or
la cene. The reason is that in the understanding and experience of this
sacrament several characteristic features of Calvins conception of the
knowledge of God become visible. The doctrine of the Supper reveals
in a concentrated manner how Calvin thought about the nature of the
knowledge of God, how it was mediated, and what its most important
content is. The Supper is not only an illustration of Gods invitation
to mankind to enter into communion with Him, but it is also for the
present its apex.
Although the theological perspective will be dominant in this Chap-
ter, it should be noted that this subject is interesting for another reason
as well. One can also point to the wider social function of the Eucharist
or Supper. Together with infant baptism the Supper is one of the rare
rituals that survives, in comparison with the old situation in the church.
In accordance with their nature as public events in religious life they are
moments of direct social and communal importance. Thus the changed
social and religious situation in Geneva and the demand for public obe-
dience to the Word of God somehow had to be expressed surrounding
these rituals. It is therefore not surprising that precisely in relation to
this sacrament a conict with the civil authorities broke out in 1538,
namely over the right to excommunication. It would lead to the ban-
ning of Calvin and Farel from Geneva, a period of absence that would
last until 1541.
The sociological and theological perspectives cannot be separated,
not even in Calvins own theology. It is undeniable that the sacrament
of the Lords Supper occupies a central place in Calvins own life and
190 chapter four
1 See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 8891: Church and par-
ticipation in the Supper are most closely connected with one another. In an organisa-
tional sense, to all intents and purposes the church coincides with the community at the
Lords Table.
2 Christianae Religionis Institutio 1536, Joanne Calvino autore, OS I, 150 en Articles
intentionally or not. See Christian Faith, 348. For a broader discussion in the context
of the doctrine of creation, see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom, Ecumenical Essays
on Creation and Sacrament, Justication and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 5790. For a recent
discussion of ordained ministry as a medium of transmission, see M. Gosker, Het ambt in
de oecumenische discussie. De betekenis van de Lima-ambtstekst voor de voortgang van de oecumene en
192 chapter four
de doorwerking in de Nederlandse SOW-Kerken, Delft, 2000 and E.A.J.G. van der Borght, Het
ambt her-dacht, Zoetermeer 2000.
7 See G.W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europischen Kirchenge-
in: W.H. Neuser/H.J. Selderhuis/W. van t Spijker (ed.), Calvins Books. Festschrift dedicated
to Peter De Klerk on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Heerenveen 1997, 921.
9 For a useful survey see W. Khler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit ber das Abendmahl
the supper and knowledge of god 193
nach seinen politischen und religisen Beziehungen. Bd. 1 und 2, Leipzig 19241953 (=New
York/London 1971).
10 See Inst. 4.17.1. See also OS I, 517, 527.
11 OS I, 527.
194 chapter four
for participation in salvation. The question was only, what role did it
play? Why was this precisely the sticking point? Does this not funda-
mentally call into question the church with its oces, rituals and cere-
monies? The Reformation took leave of a concept in which the ocial
church was self-evidently the embodiment of and dispenser of grace.
The presence of God was no longer congruent with the church and its
sacraments. In that case, are the church and its sacraments not among
those outward things that are of little or subordinate importance? In
this connection I wish to discuss several observations by Graaand so
as to point out some of the ambivalences that particularly dominated
Reformation theology on the church, oces and sacraments.
Graaand has pointed out that formally Calvins discussion of the
content of faith in the Institutes is within the plan of his discussion of
the themes of the Apostles Creed. This coincides with the rst three
books of the Institutes. What follows in Book IV regarding the church,
the sacraments and government is no longer the object of confession.
For Calvin church and covenant fall outside the actual content of faith.
He demonstrates that with Calvin covenant stands in order under pre-
destination. The emphasis on the invisible church as the gathering of
the elect leads to the hollowing out of the concept of covenant as a
primary theological category. Participation in the covenant is still not
participation in eternal salvation. The consequence of all this is a mea-
sured dualism in the view of the church; one unintended eect might
be disregard of the visible church.12 All this critique is just. However, it
appears to me to be incorrect to also suggest on the grounds of this that
the outward means, which are discussed in Book IV, have little weight
theologically. This brings Calvins own theology all too easily under
suspicion of spiritualism. That might be the result in a time in which
interior and exterior, inner experience and world experience are sepa-
rated from one another, or a perspective on their mutual relationships
is no longer acknowledged, but does not apply for Calvins pre-modern
theology. With Calvin there is a theological line that keeps the institu-
tional church and inward and outward communion with Christ close
to one another. In the preceding chapters we have frequently seen how
considerable and fundamental the role is that Calvin grants to external
reality in the way that knowledge of God comes. One might even speak
of a sacramental function of outward, created reality. Outward means
12 C. Graaand, Kinderen van n moeder. Calvijns visie op de kerk volgens zijn Institutie,
13 De externis mediis vel adminiculis, quibus Deus in Christi societatem nos invitat,
et in ea retinet.
14 See Brinkman, Schepping en sacrament. Een oecumenische studie naar de reikwijdte van het
sacrament als heilzaam symbool in een weerbarstige werkelijkheid, Zoetermeer 1991, 4352. Cf. also
M. den Dulk De verzoeking Christus te representeren in: M.E. Brinkman/A. Houte-
pen, Geen kerk zonder bisschop, Utrecht 1997, 115129, which in connection with oce
points to two lines in Calvin: one line in which the oce arises from the commu-
nity, and a line in which the oce is rooted in the hierarchical structure of Gods
governance.
15 Inst. 4.14.18.
196 chapter four
namely that between thing, res, and sign, signum. For instance, words are
signs for the things to which they refer. Signs are also things themselves,
to wit res signicans. There are also, however, things that are not signs,
but simply res. These are eternal things, to which earthly signs refer.
It is necessary for man that there be powerful pointers toward eternal
things, because left to himself he would remain stuck among earthly
or temporal things. Here only the remedy of a given sign, a signum
datum, can help. At this point a distinction that is of eminent impor-
tance within the theological use of semiotics comes into sight, namely
the distinction between the natural sign and the given sign. A fox spoor
is a natural sign that a fox has been at a particular spot. A given sign
involves, for example, a gesture or a facial expression, or is more fre-
quently connected with the sense of hearing.16 Language or the spoken
word is thus the given sign or signum datum par excellence. After all, a
word can be used only as a sign. Apart from that it loses its meaning.
To the extent that signs are involved with the sense of sight, according
to Augustine we can gather them under the broad meaning of word
and language, and speak of visible words, verba visibilia. In Augustines
analysis of the sacrament these general ontological considerations enter
into connections with specic theological matters. A sacrament includes
a natural element and a word which stems from the eld of belief and
revelation. Because the verbum dei is spoken, the sacrament mediates
the enduring things that are of God. Accedit verbum ad elementum et
t sacramentum, etiam ipsum tanquam visibile verbum.17 Thus there
is a distinction made between that which mediates, the sacramentum rei
or the res signicans, and that which is mediated, the res sacramenti. With
regard to sacraments, this also makes clear what they are. The selection
of the element or sign from the created world is certainly not a com-
pletely random choice. According to Calvin it is also a general rule that
there must be a certain resemblance between the sign and thing. For
instance, it is abundantly clear that a tertium comparationis exists between
the water of baptism and the cleansing from sin, or between bread
and wine and the body and blood of Christ as spiritual food for the
soul, which makes the analogy possible.18 The emphasis is not how-
ever on the naturalness of the sign, or with the people who seek a
symbol, but on God as the One who gives it its signicance. It is not
19 Inst. 4.14.18: qui pro suo arbitrio elementis omnibus in obsequium gloriae suae
utatur.
20 Inst. 4.14.19.
21 Inst. 4.14.1: externum esse symbolum, quo benevolentiae erga nos suae pro-
22 In Inst. 4.14.13 he rejects the derivation for the word sacrament that Zwingli
had given in De vera et falsa religione. For Zwingli the sacrament is the battle ag upon
which the soldier swears loyalty to his commander. With it he arms something to
his general. Calvin argues that the Latin writers were no longer aware of this meaning
when they chose the word sacrament. They understood nothing more by it than a
sacred sign, but no longer from the perspective of the soldier who swears his allegiance,
but from the perspective of the commander, who calls up the soldiers to his ranks.
For the rest, Calvin does not consider this etymology decisive. According to him, the
word sacrament is derived from the Greek musterion (Inst. 4.14.2). As the New Testament
uses musterion for a hidden thing that God makes visible to man, so in the sacrament a
hidden thing, Gods goodwill, is made visible.
23 G.P. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus. Een studie over een centraal hoofdstuk uit de avondmaalsleer van
Calvijn, Delft 1960, 115. See also B. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of
John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 127133.
24 See for instance his commentary on John 6:47, CO 47, 151.
the supper and knowledge of god 199
25 Augustine, Homilia in Johannem 13; In Ioh. tract. 80,3, MSL 35, 1840. CSEL 25 I,
512, 19..
26 Inst. 4.14.5.
27 Inst. 4.14.1.
200 chapter four
28 Inst. 4.14.15.
29 Inst. 4.14.8: Nam primum verbo suo nos docet et instituit Dominus: deinde
sacramentis conrmat: postremo sancti sui Spiritus lumine mentibus nostris illucet:
et aditum in corda nostra verbo ac sacramentis aperit, quae alioqui aures duntaxat
percellerent, et oculis observarentur, interiora minime acerent.
30 Inst. 4.14.9: interior ille magister Spiritus cuius unius virtute et corda
32 Inst. 4.14.3.
33 Inst. 4.14.3: quomodo nostrae ignorantiae ac tarditati primum, deinde inrmitati
opus esse Deus providet.
34 Inst. 4.14.3. See also Petit traict de la Saincte cene, OS I, 505, 520.
35 H. Zwingli, Fidei ratio ad Carolum V (1530), Corpus Reformatorum 93 II, 803804.
36 For instance, in connection with infant baptism, see Inst. 4.16.19.
37 Inst. 4.14.10.
38 Inst. 4.14.10.
202 chapter four
means in his dealings with man, and men must accept that.39 One must
not seek to deny the revelation we have been given.
39 It is this element that has gone unnoticed for a long time in the catholic recep-
tion of Calvins theology. See for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, translated by
D. Foxgrover and W. Provo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1987 (= Le jeune Calvin: Gense
et volution de sa vocation rformatrice, Wiesbaden 1966). In this study Ganoczy reaches the
conclusion that in Calvin all emphasis lies on the distinction between the human and
divine, which is expressed in a manifest aversion to linking grace to earthly elements,
237. See however the remarkable retraction in the introduction to the American trans-
lation, 11: We could say today that Calvins pneumatology serves not only to arm
Gods absolute freedom in his saving acts but also to support a dynamic understanding
of the sacraments, which in many ways is quite close to the doctrine of the Eucharist
in the Eastern Churches. It makes possible a theology of epiclesis. The closeness of
Calvins theology to Eastern Orthodoxy is something to which I would subscribe. See
further 4.4.3.
40 OS I, 505506.
the supper and knowledge of god 203
41 OS I, 504.
204 chapter four
becomes painfully clear when one sees the state, according to Calvin, of
the people to whom the invitation comes. Here we should be reminded
of what was said in previous chapters about the function of conscience
in knowledge of God. Calvin proceeds from the idea that the people
who come together for the Supper are people in need, and that they
themselves recognise this need. It is not something they have been
persuaded of; they recognise it as their own world. Anyone who looks
into his or her own heart knows very well that this is a wasted life
and that there is no scrap of righteousness to be found there.42 Nothing
from outside need be called upon to arrive at that judgement; our own
conscience is sucient to remind us that we have fallen into death and
iniquity. In short, if we take our own inner world under consideration,
we see a structure that cannot stand, one rotting away. It is at that
juncture that the Supper holds a mirror up before us, in which there
appears another image, namely that of the crucied Christ.43
4.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The discussion with the Lutherans
The body and blood of Jesus Christ are given to believers by the Holy
Spirit in the bread and wine. What does Calvin mean by this? What
did he want to say in this discussion that was carried on with concepts
derived from Aristotelian metaphysics? First we must note what he
did not intend. He did not intend any view in which the presence of
Christ is given in an immediate way in the elements of bread and wine.
The water of baptism and the bread and wine in the Supper have no
inherent power of their own. The power of the Spirit, everlasting life,
is not inherent in the substance. The eect of the sacrament does not
lie in the performance of the act itself, ex opere operato. Were that so,
sign and thing, signum and res, would be identied with one another in
an improper way, a view that Calvin encounters in Peter Lombard.44
In Calvins concept the bread and the wine that the believer drinks
remain bread and wine, and nothing else.45 The physical element never
receives a power that is inherent to the element. The acting subject
42 OS I, 506.
43 OS I, 504.
44 Inst. 4.14.16. In his research into the theology of the young Calvin, Ganoczy, The
Young Calvin, 168170 comes to the conclusion that Calvin quotes only from the fourth
book of the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, in an extremely selective manner, and with a
declared polemic intention.
45 Inst. 4.17.15.
the supper and knowledge of god 205
remains God, who works through the power of the Spirit. We might
say that with this Calvin maintains the moment of freedom of Gods
act over against any possible form of sacramentalism.
For that reason he disputes both the Roman Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation and the position defended by the Lutherans, usually
denoted as consubstantiation. In Calvins view the words spoken at the
consecration are a magic formula through which the bread and wine
are reputed to be changed with regard to their substance. But also
the view defended by the Lutherans, the doctrine of consubstantiation,
that Christ is physically present in, under and with the elements of
bread and wine, goes too far for him. The body of Christ would thus
become omnipresent, have an ubiquity ascribed to it that supposes
that the nature of that body has undergone a complete alteration.
Because of this supposition he also separates himself from the Lutheran
position. A human body implies spatial limits, and although Jesus after
his resurrection was gloried, that does not alter the fact that Jesus,
according to his corporeal nature, could only be in one place at a time.
According to Luther and his followers, the substance of the bread and
wine remain unchanged, but Christ, according to his corporal nature,
is present in the form of the bread and wine. The capacity to be in an
innite number of places at the same time is ascribed to the human
nature of Christ on the basis of the connection with the divine nature
that there is in the unique person of Jesus Christ.46 It is a development
gibt die schrit umb solcher personlicher einichkeit willen auch der gottheit ales was
der menschheit widderferet und widermb Denn das mstu ia sagen. Die person
(zeige Christum) leidet stirbet. Nu ist die person wahrhaftiger Gott, drumb ists recht
geredt Gottes son leidet The cross invites us to think of Gods nature as involved in
human suering and death. Correctly, theology in our time has attempted to go further
along this path. The question is how this relates to the pathos that we encounter in
Calvin surrounding the distinction between heaven and earth which is never ever given
up. Or do we nd in Calvin himself other notions when the salvation of man is the
issue?
47 OS I, 506.
48 Inst. 4.17.18.
the supper and knowledge of god 207
49 OS I, 144.
50 OS I, 521. Inst. 4.17.19.
51 Inst. 4.17.24 and Inst. 4.17.29.
208 chapter four
everywhere. He says that with each passage the exegete with placid
docility and a spirit of meekness must make an eort to understand
the teachings that come from heaven. We do our best, he says, to
obtain understanding, not only through dutifulness, but also by pre-
cision. Westphal, he thinks, has failed in the latter. The meaning of a
passage is not the rst thing that comes into our mind. Diligent thought
is necessary, and in it we will embrace the meaning that God brings to
us through the Spirit.52 From the heights we attain we look down on
whatever opposition may arise from worldly wisdom.
Calvin felt the accusation of his Lutheran opponents that in his view
the presence of Christ in the Supper evaporated into a notion or a
memory was a total misrepresentation of his position. In the following
section we will return to how he responded conceptually to the spatial
problem that is a given with Ascension. For now it will suce to say
that Calvin to his own conviction confessed nothing other than the real
presence of Christ in the Supper. In the Supper one does not receive
only a share in the Spirit53 or the benets of Christ. Jesus Christ is
material and substance.54 Or put more sharply, what is partaken of is
the esh and blood of Christ. What did Calvin mean by this?
and the Lords Supper in: D. Peterson (ed), The Word became Flesh. Evangelicals and the
Incarnation, Carlisle 2003, 200201.
56 Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 27, refers for instance to J.W. Nevin, The Mystical
Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Philadelphia
1846.
the supper and knowledge of god 209
57 See Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 87. Calvin indisputably wanted to say more than that
in the Supper the faithful have communion with the person of Jesus Christ. Hartvelt,
Verum Corpus, 171, cites Berkouwer as an example of a personalising interpretation. See
G.C. Berkouwer, De sacramenten, Kampen 1954, 305. Berkouwer disputes that for Calvin
it was a matter of esh and blood as an abstraction and interprets this as a metaphor
for the act of reconciliation, ibidem, 307. It is a matter of He himself in his sacrice,
ibidem, 313. I do not dispute that in Calvins view of salvation the act of reconciliation
plays an essential role, but it still appears to me most fundamental that for Calvin the
blood and esh of Christ is a source of divine, everlasting life.
58 Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 184, 194.
59 See for instance his commentary on John 6:53, CO 47, 154: Neque enim de
Coena habetur concio, sed de perpetua communicatione, quae extra Coenae usum
nobis constat and on John 6:54: Et certe ineptum fuisset ac intempestivum, de Coena
nunc disserere, quam nondum instituerat. Ideo de perpetua dei manducatione eum
tractare certum est.
210 chapter four
of this concrete person. God, in his approach to man, takes the road
of incarnation. Man does not have to climb above the clouds. No, the
gate to Gods inner chamber is on earth, in the body of Jesus.60 No one
who disregards Christ as a man shall reach God in Christ.61 Life from
the divine source reaches us in the way of a concrete man.62 Faith must
be gotten from the lowest place that God appoints in his revelation, the
most accessible to sight. That is the concrete Son-become-esh, who
was among us physically. From there faith can ascend to the source, to
God the Father as the source of life.
Third, in connection with the preceding point, the conviction that
the believer is fed with the esh and blood of Christ has immediate
soteriological content. Believers receive the esh and blood of the Cru-
cied.63 Life, you see, is in this esh and blood. It is striking that in his
exegesis of John 6 Calvin constantly links the words caro and vita with
one another. It is according Gods marvellous Will that He reveals life
to us in this esh, in which previously only substance moving to cor-
ruption, materia mortis, was to be found.64 Life, for Calvin, means ever-
lasting life. Salvation is formulated in terms of transient and eternal. In
Calvins exposition in the Institutes we nd conrmation that for Calvin
salvation means sharing in immortality. Not sacrice and satisfaction
but the antitheses transient-everlasting and perishable-imperishable are
dominant. At the Lords Table it is once more, as it were, literally
held under the nose of the mortals that mortal man, doomed to death,
receives a share of heavenly life through faith, as appears from a cru-
cial section like Institutes 4.17.8: in his Word God previously diused
his vigour into all creatures, but man became alienated from God by
sin and lost the communion with life. In order to regain the hope of
est, sed remota et abscondita. Sequitur Filius, quem habemus velut fontem nobis
expositum, et per quem ad nos vita diunditur. Tertia est vita quam nos ab ipso
haurimus.
63 Berkouwer, De sacramenten, 314, refers to Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, Locus de
sacramentis par. 24 Kampen, n.d., where he argues that the communion exercised
is with the corpus crucixum Christi, not with the corpus gloricatum Christi. Kuyper here
appears to proceed from the idea that communion with the gloried Christ would
mean cancelling out the crucixion. That is a distinction that has no foundation in
biblical witness. God has identied himself with the Crucied, and with the Crucied
clad in glory he bestows communion upon the disciples. (John 20:2627).
64 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.
the supper and knowledge of god 211
65 Inst. 4.17.8: At vero, ubi fons ille vitae habitare in carne nostra coepit, iam non
procul nobis absconditus latet, sed coram se participandum exhibet. Quin et ipsam,
in qua residet, carnem vivicam nobis reddit, ut eius participatione ad immortalitatem
pascamur.
66 Inst. 4.17.45.
212 chapter four
67 Calvin quotes Cyrils Expositio in Evangelium Ioh. lib. II, cap. 8, MPG 73, 381382.
In Cyril see also for instance his Quod unus sit Christus, MPG 75, 13601361.
68 Inst. 2.17.25.
69 See Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 215226, wrongly
concludes that for Calvin, in his discussion of the eating of the caro vivica, the vere
homo is breached.
70 Inst. 4.17.3.
the supper and knowledge of god 213
71 Inst. 4.17.12.
214 chapter four
(1549): Did Calvin Compromise? in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor.
Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (MI) 1994, 7290.
75 OS I, 509.
the supper and knowledge of god 215
76 Inst. 4.17.32: Quam tanta virtute tantaque ecacia hic eminere dicimus, ut non
modo indubitatam vitae aeternae duciam animis nostris aerat, sed de carnis etiam
nostrae immortalitate securos nos reddat.
77 See E.D. Willis, Calvins Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called extra calvinis-
ticum in Calvins Theology, Leiden 1966. See also the paper by H.A. Oberman, also from
1966, Die Extra-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins in: idem, Die Reformation. Von
Wittenberg nach Genf, Gttingen 1986, 253282.
78 See Chapter 2, note 46.
79 Inst. 4.17.18.
216 chapter four
80 Inst. 4.17.30: Mediator ergo noster quum totus ubique sit, suis semper adest: et in
Coena speciali modo praesentem se exhibet, sic tamen ut totus adsit, non totum: quia,
ut dictum est, in carne sua caelo comprehenditur donec in iudicium appareat.
81 CO 9, 509: mysticum et incomprehensibilem carnis operationem non prohi-
bodies.84 With the formula used, e carnis suae substantia, Calvin attempts
to build a bridge between the bodily presence of Christ in heaven on
the one hand and the real presence of Christ in the Supper on the
other. How successful is the metaphor of the sun and its warmth? Is
Christ not just as far away as the sun stands above us? Is the knowledge
of Christ not marked by distance? It fed the suspicions of the Lutheran
side if it came down to Christ being far away.
What did Calvin accomplish in a theological sense with the reference
to Ascension and the bridging work of the Spirit? I will attempt to list
several points. First this: these are the conceptual means of his day for
establishing that the believers on earth do not out of their own power
command the life-giving esh and blood of Christ.85 Ascension empha-
sizes the distance from mankind, still pilgrims on this earth, under way.
The work of the Holy Spirit stands for the bridge building, the reacha-
bility on earth. Second, this concept is the means of preserving knowl-
edge of God on earth through its eschatological structure. The gloried
body is not here; the completion has not yet arrived. Through the Spirit
God comes near to his children living in this world with his power to
life, but the presentia realis does not cancel out the state of incompletion.
Within Calvins theology lies a strong sense of the incompleteness of
Gods way with man, of that which is not yet realised. Those who follow
Calvin have the room theologically to say that there is still much that is
not nished in Gods work. God makes life hard for his children with
a range of things that lay claim on their daily existence. There is still a
way to go, the most important is yet to come. Things that cause di-
culty and that stand in shrill contrast to the promises of the Kingdom
do not have to be polished up or ironed out. This theological notion
is important, in part because it can be productive in other dimensions
and relationships. It is of direct importance for pastoral care, for pol-
itics, for what we demand of ourselves and of others. Seen positively,
with Calvin faith has the form of hope. The body of Christ in heaven is
the guarantee of the renewal of man and the world at the end of time.
84 quia nobis sucit Christum e carnis suae substantia vitam in animas nostras
spirare: imo propriam in nos vitam diundere, quamvis in nos non ingrediatur ipsa
Christi caro. Inst. 4.17.32.
85 See O. Weber, Calvins Lehre von der Kirche in: idem, Die Treue Gottes in der
89 Comm. John 6:47, CO 47, 151: Quod quidam ex hoc loco colligunt, credere in
Christum idem esse atque edere Christum vel carnem eius, non satis rmum est. Haec
enim duo inter se tanquam prius et posterius dierunt, sicuti ad Christum venire, et
ipsum bibere. Praecedit enim accessus. Fateor non manducari Christum nisi de: sed
ratio est, quia de eum recipimus ut habitet in nobis simusque eius participes adeoque
unum cum ipso. Quare manducatio eectus est aut opus dei.
90 Cf. also Oberman, Die Reformation, 263.
91 Inst. 4.17.5: sed dum in memoriam revocat, panem vitae esse factum, quo assidue
vescamur, eiusque panis gustum et saporem nobis praebet, ut vim panis illius sentiamus
facit.
92 Inst. 4.17.1 and Inst. 4.17.4: dum ecaciam mortis eius vivo sensu apprehendi-
mus.
93 Inst. 4.17.32. Cf. also Inst. 4.17.10.
94 Inst. 4.17.32: atque, ut apertius dicam, experior magis quam intelligam.
the supper and knowledge of god 221
per Calvin seems to base himself not only on Bible exegesis, but his own
experience also speaks powerfully. Above all, for him knowledge of God
is not limited to what a human being can understand, comprehend or
formulate.
To sum up: In faith there are no inward or outward contradictions.
The Holy Spirit uses external things, the world that comes in through
the senses, for inward purposes, and provides what is there signied, the
life-giving esh of Christ. In this way the soul already receives a share
of coming glory. With regard to the sacraments one may summarise
that the way runs from outward to inward, and from within to above.
God desires that our senses be carried from the elements to on high, to
heaven. In the Supper the believer himself is carried on high. With his
soul already in heaven, he is conveyed into the neighbourhood of the
majesty of God. The dignity is amply enough commended when we
hold, that it is a help by which we may be ingrafted into the body of
Christ, or, already ingrafted, may be more and more united with him,
until the union is completed in heaven.95 In this citation it becomes
clear once again to what extent the knowing of God transcends the
intellectual. Faith has its point of concentration around the Supper
because there, in the midst of the community, what is already the
truth is experienced in faith, and will come to its full unfolding, namely
inclusion in the perfect communion with Christ, in the completion of
all things.
95 Inst. 4.17.33.
THE HINGE
chapter five
5.1. A watershed
In this study, Kants philosophy serves as the hinge between the two
panels of Calvin and Barth. There is a risk involved in proceeding in
this manner, not so much because the interpretation of Kants writings
is a matter better left to philosophers, but because it might easily
be thought that in this study Barths theology is being considered as
a direct and conscious response to Kant. Such a suggestion is not,
however, the intention. Barth was rst and foremost a theologian who
sought to make a contribution to Christian theology in obedience to
revelation. If he was directly responding to someone in a theological-
historical sense, then Schleiermacher would be a better candidate to
serve as the hinge here. The connection between Barth and Kant
is looser, less direct, but not therefore less profound. In making this
choice I arm the widely shared conviction that Kant de facto marks
a watershed in Western theology. Whether this role belongs to him
de iure is another question, which will not be discussed here. I will
limit myself to noting that his thought fulls this role for the main
stream of Western theology. He is a watershed, and indeed in two
senses. First, one can regard his philosophy as a mirror in which a
number of the shifts in the history of thought which are characteristic
of modernity become clearly visible. In his thinking, and in particular
in his epistemology, the turn from a theocentric view of the world to
an anthropocentric point of departure comes to be seen. Knowledge is
henceforth no longer knowledge of the preternatural, of divine truth.
Within modern philosophy knowledge comes to be ever more strictly
regarded as knowledge that is limited to human, earthly things, and
has the status of an object, which does not extend beyond the limited
horizon of human faculties.
The second manner in which Kant is a watershed is connected with
this latter. It concerns theology directly. Modern theology has become
226 chapter five
2 See for instance the analysis by H. Kng, Christianity. Its Essence and History, London
1995, 650770. a) Beginning with man as subject and the development of empirical
research as the entry to the world has led to modern culture being impressed by the
power of instrumental reason. Knowledge is power, according to Bacons maxim. It is no
longer primarily theoria, reection. Like the natural sciences and technology, knowledge
has become a domain of its own. That has made an enormous expansion possible in
the technical and economic sense, and created a new myth which still maintains itself,
even now that the original condence in the omnipotence of reason has evaporated,
namely the myth of growth and progress.
b) As the polar opposite of the ideal of control and unication, modernity is
characterised by a process of constant individualisation of spiritual life. The value of man,
of the individual, was always already there in the Christian concept of creation, but
viewed theologically is a secondary, and not a primary element. Within modernity
regard for the individual as a moral and spiritual being moves up into rst place.
The problem of personal identity and maintaining that personhood over against a
systematic and impersonal world becomes a concern of the rst order.
c) The preceding point is directly linked with the universal perspective of modernity.
The question of identity develops more and more into a question of humanity. The
concept of humanity cannot be viewed in terms of particularity; in principle, humanity
comprises not some men, but all mankind. This cosmopolitan, universal perspective,
the explicit desire for a humanity that reclaims and includes all people, is an essential
element of modernity. It conicts with every view that excludes any particular group of
people for whatever reason.
d) The primacy of the individual has consequences for the relation of the individual
to social institutions and to society as a whole. The primacy of the individual over
against the institutional on the one hand implies a demand for tolerance, but there is
also present at the same time an element that is corrosive to society. Tolerance has its
price. Europe initially had diculty becoming accustomed to the break up of the unity
of society as a religious entity, but since then has embraced with conviction the hard-
won ideal of tolerance as being of paramount importance. The separation of church
and state in the 19th century was the result of this at the political level.
228 chapter five
long run this has had consequences for the place of religion in Western
culture in general, and for Christianity in particular. Increasingly a pro-
nounced agnosticism and secularism has become the mental trademark
of our culture, and knowledge of God has become a problem. Kants
thought serves as a mirror of this development.3
Kant expresses here what was a collective assumption and shared ideal
of a small elite of geographically diuse and, in a social perspective,
very diverse minds: the present era is not a time in which the mind
and humanity already stand high above the landscape like a sun, but
it is indeed a time in which we see the light dawning. It is not an
3 For another point of departure in the case of, for instance, Spinoza, see D. Schel-
long, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und
die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973 or for the point of departure for Descartes, see E. Jngel, Gott
als Geheimnis der Welt, 146167; ET: God as the Mystery of the World, 111126.
4 I. Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklrung? Werke in Sechs Bnden, Bd. VI,
hrsg. Von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19644 =) 1983, 53 (A 481): Aufklrung ist der
Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmndigkeit. Unmndigkeit
ist das Unvermgen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen.
Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmndigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Man-
gel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschlieung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne
Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Ver-
standes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklrung. ET in: Cambridge Edition
of the Works of Immanuel Kant (eds. P. Guyer and A. Wood): Practical Philosophy (translated
and edited by Mary J. Gregor), 17.
the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 229
ple think for themselves, as John Locke and David Hume argued that
they should, and that tradition and authority must be answer to reason.
Only on that condition can religion exist.
The intellectual climate of modernity, with its ideal of autonomy, is
unmistakably anti-traditional. This anti-traditionalism at the same time
applied the axe to something which had been accepted as self-evident
in European culture, namely the role of Christian tradition as the
fundamental source of vitality and truth for the whole culture. However
inadequate, rancorous and malicious the image sometimes was that was
given of the Middle Ages in the time of the Enlightenment, according
to Peter Gay in one regard it was right, namely that the Christian
narrative had been the deepest driving force and ultimate goal of this
civilisation.9 In the era of the Enlightenment and the developments
which followed it, this certainty and its acceptance as natural falls away.
The Christian legacy is more critically received. No longer do people
automatically regard themselves as exponents of this tradition, but see
themselves as emancipated from the religious and metaphysical matrix,
and indeed question the matrix itself.
9 P. Gay, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation. Vol. 1: The Rise of modern Paganism, London
1973, 212.
10 Thus morality, not understanding, is what rst makes us human beings, I. Kant,
the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 231
Der Streit der Fakultten, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd. VI, hrsg. Von W. Weischedel,
Darmstadt (19644=)1983, 344 (A122); ET (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant, Vol. Religion and rational Theology), 291.
11 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bnde, Bd.2, hrsg. von W. Weischedel,
Darmstadt (19565=) 31 (B XXVI); ET: Critique of Pure Reason, tr. and ed. by P. Guyer/
A.W. Wood (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Cambridge
1998, 115.
232 chapter five
How does Kant go about achieving space for the moral order and lim-
iting of the reach of theoretical reason? Let me begin with the famous
sentence from the start of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft: But although
all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that
account all arise from experience.15 One can regard this sentence as
programmatic, because there are echoes in it of both Kants critique
of his predecessors and his own solution. Kant is seeking an answer
for the problem which he sees has been created for epistemology by
the empiricism of Locke and Hume. This problem involves the ques-
tion of how necessary or apodictic knowledge is possible. Kants oth-
erwise very questionable interpretation of Locke is that Locke would
also derive mental concepts from experience, because he encounters
them there.16 Moreover, he reproaches Locke for going far beyond
the boundaries of experience in his use of mental concepts.17 Kants
judgement of Locke is that he opened the gates wide to enthusiasm
because, when once reason does prove to have some competence, he
does not permit it to be limited by any exhortation to moderation.18
22 Cf. P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, London 1973, 423.
23 See P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, 7.
24 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 23 (B XIII); ET, 109: Reason, in order to be taught by
nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which
alone the agreement among appearences can count as laws, and, in the other hand,
the experiments thought out in accordance with these principlesyet in order to be
instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants
to say, but like an appointed judge, who compels witnesses to answer the questions he
puts to them.
236 chapter five
Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft thus fulls the role of a treatise on
method,25 and does not proer itself as a system of knowledge. The
realisation of a boundary for human theoretical knowledge is highly
developed for Kant, but this realisation has primarily a positive, anti-
sceptic intention.
dental discipline, and henceforth occupies itself with the conditions for
human knowing, with the systems and properties of human reason as
such. That is an enormous turnabout. The content of metaphysics is
no longer being, or the highest being, but thought and the knowing of
being.
These conditions for human knowing no longer lie in a world behind
this world. Kant proposes that the conditions belong to the equipage
of man. Authoritative knowledge from the natural sciences can only
be accounted for if we make a distinction between knowledge that we
already possess apriori, and knowledge which is obtained aposteriori.
Apriori knowledge is composed of the concepts and categories with
which the mind works in its operations from the outset. This apriori
knowledgein other words, knowledge which one arrives at apart
from experience, thus in pure formis found in mathematics and
logic. Apriori concepts and categories thus are the apparatus of human
capacity for thought.
Kant also postulates such a constitutive role for time and space,
but now with regard to the faculties of perception. While in the Mid-
dle Ages and Renaissance space and time were conceived as created
qualities that had an objective existence apart from man, in Kants
philosophy they were regarded as being part of the equipage of the
human subject. They are the forms of observation, that is, conditions
that impart structure to the sensory capacities of man. Perception and
thought now mesh with one another and together produce knowledge,
or better, ideas. Kant terms the capacity to produce ideas, thus the
spontaneity of knowledge, understanding. The dierence with Calvin is
palpable. In its constitutive function for perception, human reason has
taken on itself a role that, in Calvins concept, still belonged to God.
For Calvin, God is the One who imposes ordo; for Kant, that is the role
of pure reason.
There is no perception apart from the forms and concepts that
are anchored in the human mind. This last becomes very important.
There is, in other words, no knowledge of things as they are in them-
selves. Kant states in his Prolegomena that the natural sciences can never
permit us know the inward nature of thingsthus, that which is not
phenomenalbut still can serve as the highest ground for explaining
phenomena.28 What we know is the shape of things as that is produced
28 I. Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden knftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten
knnen (1783), Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd.3, hrsg. von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt
238 chapter five
(19565=) 1983, 227 (A 168); ET: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge 2002, 142.
the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 239
Kant?, 17.
240 chapter five
The fundamental problem that this split produces for all speaking
about God, for every presumption to knowing God, is not dicult to
appreciate. The things that we know are of our own design, shaped
by our own mind. Whether reality corresponds to these designs, is
a question that becomes more dicult to answer. The correctness of
our designs is demonstrated as they work, when our knowledge proves
applicable to reality. It is however fundamentally impossible to have
knowledge of that which is found on the other side of our niteness.
That is the epistemological problem that history has created in modern
theology. What was not accepted was the manner in which Kant sought
to resolve the problem: God, soul and immortality as convictions which
are warranted for man on the basis of pure reason. With Kant, the idea
of God is still present as the keystone. The question was, however, how
long thought that simply referred to itself, would still need, and would
still tolerate, being circumscribed in this way.
In knowledge the gap continues to exist between Ding an sich and
phenomenon. The relation between ontology and gnoseology is re-
versed in this concept. The consequences have been gigantic. What
is real is determined in epistemology. The ever-expanding natural sci-
ences provided a model for this turnabout. In his Logik Kant writes of
nature, The whole of nature in general is really nothing but a connec-
tion of appearances according to rules, and ther is no absence of rules
everywhere. If we believe we have found such a thing, than in this case
we can only say that we are not acquainted with the rules.30 In other
words, if reality can be ascribed to particular phenomena depends on
whether they can be thought of in relation. The judgement of reality is
only given then when a phenomenon, with the aid of rules derived from
the mind, can be brought into connection. The judgement of reality is
determined by rules that the mind itself has introduced. That which
cannot be included within this relationship is not known, or does not
exist to be known. Knowledge can only possess the status of certainty if
we have internal access to the conditions under which this knowledge
arises. That this form of foundational thinking has had radical conse-
quences for the epistemological status of knowledge of God is not at all
surprising.
30 I. Kant, Logik, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd. 3, 432 (A1); ET: (The Cambrigde
Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Lectures on Logic, tr. and. ed. by J.M. Young,
Cambridge 1992, 527.
the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 241
ing about and working with it. In thinking itself, he says, there is the
tendency to go beyond all experience, namely the unconditioned, das
Unbedingte.34 There is something in reason itself that seeks this uncondi-
tioned in things in themselves, or in a series of conditions which reason,
by necessity and by right, demands in things in themselves, as required
to complete the series of conditions.35 There is a unity demanded as
a regulative principle for theoretical reason.36 In any case, reason has
the inclination to venture to the farthest bounds of knowledge and to
seek for a unity in which it can nd rest.37 Knowing seeks an idea that
lies on the far side of all transcendent conditions, and this idea must
become the ground of unity. According to Kant, the concept of God is
necessary rst of all as an intelligible ground for the world of our expe-
rience, and then as the highest element behind the eciency of nature,
and nally as the idea of unconditionality, in order to think of all expe-
rience systematically as unity.38 As soon as one begins to regard this
regulative idea or Unbedingte as an object that man can know, as a con-
stitutive principle about which men can form a concept, one falls into
antinomies. The regulative idea is not an object that can be dened
by thought; it is nothing more than a necessary framework that makes
thinking in its unity possible.
Kant himself interpreted the regulative principle of Unbedingte as the
idea of a highest being.39 Within Kantian studies the question is being
asked if within his own philosophy that is really necessary. It is striking
that in interpretations of Kant the necessity of God as a mental concept
can be explicitly denied.40 Once reason had discovered its own role in
the attempt to understand what knowledge is and what humanity is, it
appears that in the long term the concept of God will disappear from
reason as a material or constitutive principle. That is not yet true for
Kant himself. For him, the concept of God as a postulate of practical
reason has the status of objective reality. But that does not detract from
suchung der transzendentalen stetik in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft und ihrer theologischen Konse-
quenz, Wuppertal 1987, 211.
39 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (B 725); ET, 619.
40 Michel, Immanuel Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes, 231. Cf. also W. Stoker,
the fact that in Kant the balance has already shifted. Once reason
perceives its own autonomy, it no longer has to appeal to God, and
this no longer has to very quickly becomes no longer may, and in the
case of Nietzsche even can no longer bear to. Although the logical rule
applies that necessity can no longer be concluded from possibility
e posse consequentia non valetculturally modernity has gone down this
path. In any case Kant ushers in a period in which theological notions
are removed from the sciences. Within the natural sciences there is no
longer any room for a reference to God. The nature of its knowledge
is neutral in the sense that no value judgement can be derived from it,
nor is there any reference possible to another order. General knowledge
and knowledge of God go their separate ways.
Can we then still speak of knowledge of God within Kants phi-
losophy? What does the word God mean when the concept of God
becomes a regulative idea and no longer a constitutive concept? The
manner in which one can still speak about God in Kant reveals the dis-
tance from Calvin. In Calvin readers are tied to the anthropomorphic
image of Gods fatherhood. That is what God desires; that is how He
wishes to be addressed. In the distinction that Kant makes in his Pro-
legomena between the symbolic anthropomorphism he defends and dog-
matic anthropomorphism,41 God himself has become the Unknown.
Only his relation to the world can be spoken about, and then only in
terms of a category that we ourselves employ in our relation to the
world, namely causality.
How does Kants reasoning run? He asks how our reason in its appli-
cation to experience relates to that which this same reason expels to
above experience, transcendental ideas. He then suggests that one can
indeed unite the prohibition against the speculative use of pure reason
with the command to form ideas that provide our knowledge with its
ground and unity, and indeed to do so by limiting itself to the relation of
a highest being to the world. From the world of experience we learn to
know certain relationships, and consider these relationships commen-
surate with the relation of a highest being to the world. Kant terms
this symbolic anthropomorphism, in contrast to dogmatic anthropo-
morphism. Symbolic anthropomorphism makes metaphorical use of a
relationship that we know; dogmatic anthropomorphism presumes to
also know this highest being itself. Kant wants to absolutely avoid the
name in contemporary theology. See for example Th. de Boer, De God van de losofen en
de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van losoe en theologie, s Gravenhage 1989, 105 and
Houtepen, God: an open Question, 360361.
the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 245
45 I. Kant, Kritik der praktische Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd.4, hrsg. von
822 (B 230, A 216). ET in: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant)
Religion and Rational Theology, tr. and ed. by A.W. Wood/ G. di Giovanni, Cambridge
1996, 177.
246 chapter five
52 F.D. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundstzen der evangelischen Kirche
im Zusammenhange dargestellt, Bd.I (hrsg. von M. Redeker), (Berlin 18302=) Berlin 19607,
14.
53 Cf. F. Schleiermacher, ber die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verchtern
(1799), Gttingen 19917, 49: Sie begehrt nicht, das Universum seiner Natur nach
zu bestimmen und zu erklren wie die Metaphysik, sie begehrt nicht, aus Kraft der
Freiheit und der gttlichen Willkr des Menschen es fortzubilden und fertig zu machen
wie die Moral. Ihr Wesen ist weder Denken noch Handeln, sondern Anschauung
und Gefhl. Anschauen will sie das Universum, in seinen eigenen Darstellungen und
Handlungen will sie es andchtig belauschen, von seinen unmittelbaren Einssen will
sie sich in kindlicher Passivitt ergreifen und erfllen lassen.
248 chapter five
54 K. Barth, Der kosmologische Beweis fr das Dasein Gottes, Vortrge und kleine
KARL BARTH
chapter six
1 See for instance the previously mentioned essay by D. Schellong, Karl Barth als
Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen
1973, 34102 en T. Rendtor, Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verstndnis der
Theologie Karl Barths und ihrer Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-
theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gthersloh 1972, 161181.
2 H.J. Pott, Survival in het mensenpark. Over kunst, cyborgs en posthumanisme, Rotterdam
2000, 29.
3 KD I/1, 206239; ET, 198227.
252 chapter six
5 See S. Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and the
History of Theology, University Park (PA), 1998 for an illustration of how Barth found it
necessary to engage in a direct dialogue, in order to work out a thesis by Eberhard
Busch.
6 For the Dutch context, see M.E. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth: dynamo
stance, ts with this.7 It also ts with this strategy that Barth enforces
a strict separation between politics and theology. Sometimes he makes
this separation so rigorously that readers got the impression that theol-
ogy could go its way unperturbed, although the world was ablaze.8 The
reader will nd, however, that he is on the wrong track if he believes
that for Barth theology can be separated from its public function. On
further examination the imperturbability proves to have a clear theo-
logical and strategic reason behind it, as can be seen in Barths response
to Hitlers coming to power. According to Barth, the eort of the Nazi
regime to bring all political, social and ecclesiastical organisations into
line, which was greeted in National Socialist and conservative circles
with their romantic vision of the past as a vitally necessary restoration
of the unity of church and state,9 does not stand by itself. In his eyes
this was merely the rank shoot of a poisonous plant that had for much
longer grown rampantly in Western theology. Barth did not choose to
view the struggle over the churches as an isolated event, but as the
frothing tip of a wave that had travelled much further and was pro-
pelled by hidden forces. He therefore worked on the development of
a theology and Christian doctrine, in the conviction that there would
only be a productive relation between theological positions and con-
temporary situation if this theology provided comprehensive clarica-
tion and had the courage to follow the rhythm of its own objectivity,
7 See, for instance, how already as early as 1919, in the Preface to the rst edition of
The Epistle to the Romans, Barth describes his work as a preliminary undertaking [which
makes] further co-operation necessary, and the characterisation of the church in
KD IV/3 780 (ET, 681) as the provisional representation of the calling of all humanity
as it has taken place in Him. See particularly the study by G. Peiderer, Karl
Barths praktische Theologie, Tbingen 2000, which places Barths theology in the context
of attempts to shape a theological elite, a strong acting subject, which understands
itself and, in doing so, is enabled to discover what the Word of God is within a given
situation (426428). Here with Barth the professionalisation of life, so characteristic of
modernity, the roots of which Max Weber suggested lay in modern Christianity, reaches
Christianity itself (440).
8 The sharpest example of this is Barths response in 1933 when he was asked to
comment on the assumption of power by Hitler. By his own admission the most decisive
thing that he had to say was the simple statement that he would continue his theological
teaching als wre nichts geschehenvielleicht in leise erhhten Ton, aber ohne direkte
BezugnahmenTheologie und nur Theologie zu treiben. Zie K. Barth, Theologische
Existenz Heute (1933). Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Hinrich Stoevesandt,
Mnchen 1984, 26.
9 For the historic context, see L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Die Kirchen zwischen
Anpassung und Widerstand im Dritten Reich, in: W. Hmeier und M. Sthr, Barmer
Theologische Erklrung 19341984. Geschichte, Wirkung, Dezite, Bielefeld 1984, 1129.
the way of knowing god 255
so that it would become clear what the real problems of the day were.10
Focusing on the subject that is central to this chapter, Barths reection
on the theme of knowledge of God, and the accompanying rejection of
natural theology in KD II/1 as the mortal enemy of all Christian the-
ology, must be read as opposition to the acceptance and glorication of
Nazism in Germany. Subsequently, the radical re-evaluation of the doc-
trine of election in KD II/2, which we will discuss in the next chapter,
can not be seen apart from the conviction that God is never a tyrant to
whom mankind essentially does not matter, and who has overseen the
destruction of a part of humanity. In short, on further examination the
impression of timelessness does not appear to tally with the evidence.
According to Barth, theology fulls its task most adequately when it
has the courage to concentrate on Christian doctrine as an unceasing
exercise in listening. Barths presupposition is that the principle of the
primacy of God in his revelation makes it possible to include everything
that happens in the social and political sphere in a constant interaction
between the Word of God and everyday reality.11
The conviction that Barths theology is not a timeless theology, and
thus can not be studied in that way, has become deeply rooted in
Barthian studies of the last decades, in large part through the eorts
of T. Rendtor and F.W. Marquardt, however open to challenge the
remainder of their views may be.12 However, there is still no deni-
tive answer to the question of how the relationship between Barths
theology and its context must be dened. A number of possibilities
or approaches present themselves, through which one can discuss or
expound his theology as an engaged theology involved with its times.13
As was indicated above, the arrangement of a diptych of pre-modern
discussion of the historical and social rootage of Barths theology at the heart of the the-
ological agenda with his study Theologie und Sozialismus: das Beispiel Karl Barths, Munich,
1972. This resulted in a large number of studies that all had Barths relationship with
the history of his time and, in particular, with modernity as their subject. See, among
others, M.E. Brinkman, Karl Barths socialistische stellingname. Over de betekenis van het social-
isme voor zijn theologie, Baarn 1982.
13 See H.J. Adriaanse, Die Barthrezeption in den neuen hermeneutischen Entwick-
studies. One may think of Barths consternation at the identication of the German
cause with Gods purpose at the outbreak of World War I, of his critique of Leonard
Ragaz, who in his eyes identied socialism too closely with the Kingdom of God, and
of the manner in which Hitlers assumption of power was greeted in leadership circles
in Germany as a direct intervention by God, but also of positions in which either
Western capitalism or Eastern European state communism was too directly identied
with the will of God. For a brief and popular overview, see F. Jehle, Lieber unangenehm
laut als angenehm leise. Der Theologe Karl Barth und die Politik 19061968, Zrich 1999 and
T.J. Gorringe, Karl Barth against Hegemony. Christian Theology in Context, Oxford 1999. See
also my Anfngliche Theologie, 6372.
16 K. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme 19381945, Zrich 19853, 5859: Jeder tschechische
Soldat, der streitet und leidet, wird es auch fr unsund, ich sage es heute ohne
Vorbehalt: er wird es auch fr die Kirche Jesu Christi tun, die in dem Dunstkreis der
Hitler und Mussolini nur entweder der Lcherlichkeit oder der Ausrottung verfallen
kann. The exchange of letters is also included in M. Rohkrmer (Hrsg.), Freundschaft
im Widerspruch. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Karl Barth, Josef L. Hromdka und Josef B. Soucek
19351968. Mit einer Einleitung von J.M. Lochman, Zrich 1995, 54; now also included in
K. Barth, Oene Briefe 19351942, 114.
258 chapter six
are his thesis of the primacy of the Word, of Gods immutable subjec-
tivity, and yes, even the prophetic pronouncements of the synod at Bar-
men,17 not equally human acts, the work of man, and therefore subject
to all ambivalence? To ask the question implies the answer. No human
act whatsoever escapes this ambivalence. What can be given concep-
tual form is that ones own words and judgements always remain uid.
Over against the primacy of Gods Word the human subject is con-
stantly made aware of his own secondary position. Man is the one who
is called to obedience, to an attitude of prayer, which results in this
dependence on God.
The concept of this second panel is no less theocentric and no
less focused on culture and society than was the case with Calvin.
It is certainly theocentric in a dierent way, and focuses dierently
on culture and society. Theology is useful and worthwhile when it
confronts the church, the Christian community and, at its deepest, the
world with the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially
changes, all things and everything in all thingsthe fact that God is.18
With this we nd ourselves at the hub, on which, we would emphasise,
all Christian theology turns, and through which its exercise within an
agnostic and anthropocentric cultural climate becomes a astonishing
and at the same time hopeful phenomenon. Audacity is necessary to
look at the world and man, at ourselves and our history, in the light of
a living God.
17 For the text of the Barmen Declaration and a commentary by H. Asmussen, see
EB 2, 255279. Barth very decidedly experienced, and wished to see the Declaration
valued as prophetic speech. In his deepest conviction it regarded it as more than a
Theologenfndlein. See KD II/1, 198; ET, 176: not merely a pretty little discovery of
the theologians.
18 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.
19 Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie in: Karl Barth, Die Theologie und
spraken, Baarn 1977, 210215, according to which Barth thereby exposes the subjectivism
of liberal theology. The appeal to revelation serves as legitimisation for his own religious
thinking. See also B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de
the way of knowing god 261
more into the background in favour of the eort to formulate the per-
spectives in which speaking about God has a chance of really remaining
speaking about God.
In this second panel we will focus on this later phase in Barths the-
ology. A few words will not be out of place regarding the limitations
which accompany this. For the purposes of this investigation, there are
highly defensible reasons for limiting the study to the Kirchliche Dogmatik,
because in this opus magnum Barths concept of knowledge of God is
found in its most mature form. But this context is still too broad, and
therefore two chief points of reference have been chosen. Attention will
be focused on the main outlines of the second part of the KD, Die
Lehre von Gott (KD II/1), where knowledge of God is discussed as
both way and event, and in its content, namely the being of God and
his qualities.23 The investigation continues on into the doctrine of elec-
tion, because it is here that Barths thinking nds its substantive heart
(KD II/1). Barths thinking on baptism (KD IV/4), where the epistemo-
logical implications of Barths doctrine of the prophetic oce of Christ
from KD IV/3 make themselves felt, will be taken as the second point
of reference. However, a discussion of continuity and discontinuity in
Barths development will not be a focus of the study in this second
panel.24 Only where this is useful for a sounder understanding will we
now and then, by way of an excursus, sketch the lines through for the
course of Barths development.
problematiek van de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich
Bonhoeer en Wolfhart Pannenberg, Kampen 1999, 204, which supports Kuitert on this.
23 For a very dierent sort of investigation, where Barth is followed step by step, see
the studies of J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en de geldigheid
van Karl Barths strijd tegen de natuurlijke theologie, Amersfoort 1983 and R. Chia, Revelation
and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, Bern/Berlin 1999.
24 Investigation of the development and phases of Barths theology has become
a genre all of its own within Barth studies. See, among others, I. Spieckermann,
Gotteserkenntnis. Ein Beitrag zur Grundfrage der neuen Theologie Karl Barths, Mnchen 1985;
M. Beintker, Die Dialektik in der dialektischen Theologie Karl Barths. Studien zur Entwicklung
der Barthschen Theologie und zur Vorgeschichte der Kirchlichen Dogmatik, Mnchen 1987; C.
van der Kooi, Anfngliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barths 19091927, Mnchen
1987; H. Anzinger, Glaube und kommunikatieve Praxis. Eine Studie zur vordialektischen Theologie
Karl Barths, Mnchen 1991; J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption
des Neukantianismus im Rmerbrief und ihre Bedeutung fr die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie
Karl Barths, Berlin/New York 1995; Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barths critically realistic
dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 19091936, Oxford 1997.
262 chapter six
25 KD II/1, 1; ET, 3.
the way of knowing god 263
ogy is a form of realism. He asks rst about that which is known, that
which we are in fact confronted with in our knowing, in order to then
pose questions about the possibility that serves as the foundation for our
knowledge.
It is at this point that Barths position is at odds with all positions
which, appealing to Kant, regard it as impossible that God could be
the object of human knowledge. Revelation means that this barrier has
been liftedand is continually being liftedfrom Gods side. Accord-
ing to Barth, the only theologically legitimate question is therefore to
what extent God can be known.26 The question of whether God can
be known is immediately ruled out. This question implies a search
for what has already been found, namely God. In situating itself this
way, Barths theology takes the standpoint of faith. From the outset, the
reader is invited to take his or her place within the circle of faith. Ques-
tions about what constitutes knowledge of God are already entirely
within the movement of the knowledge of God.27 It is understandable
that this starting place for Barths concept makes it attractive for believ-
ing atheists. From this world there is only one way that authoritatively
leads to God. Were it not that they every now and then stumble across
Him, feel themselves forced to call on him, Christian belief would not
be an option. Further along we will still see how Barth does all that he
can to grant human knowledge of God, in all its elements, a conceptual
raison dtre only to the extent that it is supported and guided by Gods
own turn toward man. Without this vital speaking and acting by God,
human knowledge of God is an empty husk, in which there is nothing
to be found. Knowledge of God cannot be summoned up by man; man
nds himself in it, or it is not found at all.
26 KD II/1, 3; ET, 5.
27 By G. Peiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie, 141 formulated as prinzipialisierte
invertierte praktische Transzendentaltheorie.
264 chapter six
28 KD II/1, 40; ET, 3738: In love we are set on the circular course in which ther
is no break, in which we can and shall only go furtherfrom faith to faith, from
knowledge to knowledgenever beginning with ourselves (and that means, with our
own ability for faith and knowledge) but therefore also never ending with ourselves
(and that means, with our inability for faith and knowledge).
29 Cf. J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie, 21.
the way of knowing god 265
sphere which is closed to man as man, but which, once God involves
man in knowing Him, is de facto not closed. This characterisation of
knowledge of God does not infringe on a sphere to which we as men
have no access. On the strength of Gods willingness, in the opposite
perspective one can however say that God breaks in on our sphere.30
Put in other words, knowing God is a grace, is a sui generis event for
which there are no analogies. It is the mystery of divine pleasure, to
which no earthly analogies lend us access. Gods breaking into our
sphere, his choosing to live in unity with the man Jesus, is an act
which is not accessible for us on the basis of any other earthly data.
The accessibility rests, without any restrictions, in Gods own act, and
certainty of it is only to be found in the actual interaction of God
and man. To put it in Barths own words, In it rests the undialectical
certainty of the realisation of the true knowledge of God.31 In short,
if man looks to himself, to the ow of his own thought, to his own
psychological state, then he will nd varying moments of certainty
and uncertainty. In the circle of knowing God, he is summoned to
also look to the other side, to Christ. In that name he stands before
divine pleasure, before grace, that transcends and lls the fragility of
knowledge of God on the human side.
30 KD II/1, 72; ET, 67: We therefore have to go back to a sphere which, since wee
are men and not God, might be entirely closed for us, But in the fullment of the true
knowledge of God, it is not actually closed.
31 KD II/1, 81; ET, 74.
32 KD II/1, 5556; ET, 5152.
33 KD I/1, 315; ET, 299: Revelation in the Bible is not a minus; it is not another over
266 chapter six
himself. If man knows God, God is known entirely, or not at all. In this
movement the emphasis lies therefore on the cognisance of God, as He
exists in the mystery of his threefold being.34 That does not mean that
in the knowing of God there cannot be movement or growth. There
is a movement that leads deeper into the whole of this knowing and is
expressed in the term mystery. The word mystery serves to characterise
the depth and inexhaustibility of this knowing of God.
It should be clear that at this point there is a huge dierence dis-
cernible from Calvins vision of knowledge of God. For Calvin, revela-
tion is a form of accommodated speaking. In his speaking God adapts
himself to man and human measure. For Calvin it is most certainly pos-
sible that God holds certain matters hidden in his Counsel. Accommo-
dation means that revelation is also viewed quantitatively. For Calvin,
revelation is composed of revelations, announcements. If in the second
panel revelation is thematised as self-revelation and knowledge of God
is basically participation in Gods self-knowing, a quantitative view is no
longer possible. Human knowledge of God then always has the quality
of being seized by what God essentially is, and coincides with Him.
This seizure can certainly deepen, but only within the relation of the
participation.
against God. It is the same, the repetition of God. Revelation is indeed Gods predicate,
but in such a way that this predicate is in every way identical with God Himself.
34 KD II/1, 56; ET, 52.
35 KD II/1, 13; ET, 16.
the way of knowing god 267
ble. The reality of religious knowledge stands or falls with the reality of
this appearance of God within the human horizon. If one cannot speak
of observation, perceiving and understanding, the life of the church,
the calling of people to God, their being moved, their protest, their
gratitude and daily prayer are all to be viewed as a dream world, an
illusory world of concepts which correspond to no reality.36 That people
hear about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about grace and truth, of
promises and commandments, that there is something of the nature of
observation, perceiving and understanding on the human side of God
in his works, has its reality in Gods making himself the object of human
knowledge.37 In terms that are reminiscent of the German idealist tradi-
tion, Barth says Only because God posits himself as the object is man
posited as the knower of God.38 The constant dependence of reality
on Gods acts comes across clearly here. Man can only have and know
God as an object that postulates itself.39 The believing subject exists
only in the act of Gods own self-revelation. This is Barths manner
of expressing that faith does not lie within the control of man himself.
If he encounters himself as believing, as knowing, that is a matter of
grace, a transition from non-being to being, the creation of an I that
dares to say yes to a God who gives himself. Once that is said, then it
must follow that God makes himself knowable as an object, to man as
a subject.
In this phase of Barths theology, the acknowledgement that God
makes himself the object of human knowing means a high regard
for indirectness of all knowledge of God. Over against Augustine he
maintains that no one can transcend language, concepts and other
human images.40 God meets man in the midst of this world, as creature.
This means that words, terms, concepts, preaching and ecclesiastical
acts have a legitimate place in Barths concept. He no longer stresses,
as he did in the dialectic phase of his theology, human impotence to
speak Gods Word. In the foreground of his doctrine of God stands
the contention that God himself permits people to speak his Word, gives
them his Erlaubnis.
36 KD II/1, 2; ET, 4.
37 KD II/1, 1; ET, 3.
38 KD II/1, 22; ET, 22.
39 Ibidem: nd so man can only have God as the self-posited object.
40 KD II/1, 911; ET, 1012.
268 chapter six
As was the case in the rst panel, the concept of knowing thus plays
a key role. Because in religious knowledge we are not dealing with
an ordinary object from created reality, but with God, knowledge of
God must be further particularised. Faith is the positive relation of man
toward God, in whom the believer trusts. It is the yes by which a
person acknowledges that he is completely committed and declares that
God is God and He is his God.41 That yes is central to this denition
of faith as the movement of the whole human person. Faith is surrender
of the whole person to God, whose being and holiness is expressed in
the tautology God is God. Along with the term knowing, words such
as love, trust, obey and obligation also belong to the characterisation
of the act of faith. These words can all be used to describe the total
reality of faith. It is, however, characteristic of Barths concept of faith
that, with express reference to Calvin, he makes the concept of knowing
central.42 In fact, the concept of knowing not only makes it possible to
involve all the other concepts mentioned, but more than all else it is
valuable because it guarantees a structure in mans relation to God that
Barth emphatically wishes to retain. The characterisation of faith as an
act of knowing expresses that in his faith man forges a link between
himself and God, but at the same time makes a distinction between
himself and God. In the relation with God, man acknowledges himself
to be the one loved and blessed; he recognises God as the one from
whom this love and blessing comes. Knowing is an act which links and
separates, one in which the duality is not lost in an undierentiated
unity, but which creates association and connection, which nonetheless
respects the peculiarity of each of those linked in it.43
Starting from Gods approach to man implies that a decision has been
taken about the place of the human subject in relation to God. With
the fact that God places himself within the human horizon as an object
44 KD II/1, 5; ET, 7.
45 KD II/1, 5; ET, 7.
46 KD II/1, 6; ET, 7.
47 In retrospect we have to say that the hostility to psychology that is connected
with this has had deep and, where it has taken on an independent existence, damaging
eects in the wider realm of church and theology. If the only thing that be done is
to stake out danger signs around any interest in human experience and psychological
processesin other words, around anything that lies in the horizontal planethis leads
270 chapter six
51 R. Chia, Revelation and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, 104105.
52 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.
53 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.
272 chapter six
with Gods presence, but on the basis of Gods choice and sanctication
his work does indeed take place within this sphere.54
Barth has explicitly further qualied this concreteness of Gods self-
revelation by linking it with two other concepts that are important
within this study, namely sacrament and Christology. Christian knowl-
edge of God is thus given a Christological foundation. Just as in the rst
panel, in the second too there is a deep coherence between thinking
about the sacramental and Christology. The centre and inclusiveness of
the sacramentalilty of Gods act is the human nature of Jesus Christ.
Through union with the Word of God this creature is distinguished and
appointed as the work and symbol of God. In other words, the human
Jesus is localised as the place where Gods condescending to man occurs
pre-eminently. That suggests that it is a unique occurrence, but this is
a uniqueness that corresponding occurrences permit and suppose. The
incarnation, the taking on of the humanity of Jesus by the eternal Word
is indeed, according to Barth, a unique event, but that does not deny
the possibility of continuations of it, proceeding from it as a centre,
moving both forward and backward in time. In his doctrine of God
he explicitly terms the humanity of Jesus the rst sacrament, and as
such the ground of reality and circumscribing concept of a sacramental
repetition. Other sacramental realities are the people Israelthis was
written in 1940!and the church built upon the apostolate. They are
denoted as the created realities that can bear witness to that which was
real in Jesus Christ in a unique sense, namely the unity, or better, the
union of Creator and creature.55 True knowledge of God therefore nds
its origin in this extraordinary act of God. It is explicitly knowledge of
the gracious act of God; it goes without saying that it is dened soteri-
ologically. In this concept revelation is not thought of as a plurality of
parts, but is each time singular and whole, because it is ultimately God
himself who reveals himself as sacred reality.
For a good understanding of Barths concept it is of the utmost
importance to grasp the elementary dierence between revelation and
the means of revelation. In the incarnation a sharp distinction contin-
ues to exist between Jesus humanity as the means and Gods revelation
54 KD II/1, 21; ET, 20: Christian faith as knowledge of the true God lets itself be
included in this area of objectivity, and allows itself to be kept in this area, which in
itself and as such is certainly not identical with the objectivity of God. But in it Gods
work takes place, and hence Gods own objectivity gives itself to be known and is to be
known, and this on the the strength of the choice and sanctication of His free grace.
55 KD II/1, 5859; ET, 54.
the way of knowing god 273
which makes use of this man Jesus. For this Barth reaches for terms
from early Christology, namely the terms anhypostasis and enhypostasis.
The humanity of Jesus is understood anhypostatically. That is to say,
in itself the humanity of Jesus does not reveal God. Only by virtue of
the taking on of the human, the assumptio of Jesus Christ by the eter-
nal Son, thus by virtue of the enhypostasis of the human nature in the
Son, is Jesus the revelation of God.56 Enhypostasis however is conceived
of in as dynamic a manner as possible. It never under any circum-
stances becomes a condition or takes root as nature. In this way Barth
keeps the gap between the man Jesus and his revelation as the Son as
open as possible. The words of ICorinthians 13 about knowing in part
and seeing through a glass darkly are identied by Barth with his pos-
tulating the hiddenness and indirectness of revelation. Even the man
Jesus as such is always enigma as well. If He is not only enigma, if as
enigma He is also illumination, disclosure and communication, then it
is thanks to His unity with the Son of God and therefore in the act
of the revelation of the Son of God and of the faith in Him eected
by the Holy Spirit.57 What Barth wishes to say is clear. One does not
arrive at knowledge of God on the basis of a human and historical
knowledge of Jesus. The earthly Jesus becomes a sacrament of Gods
presence through Gods grace. Historical and literary investigations in
themselves will never lead to faith.
There are indeed some questions that must be raised systematically
about this rigid divisionand indeed separationof domains. The
question which arises in the exposition in KD II/1 is whether the
relationship between Jesus and his revelation as the Son of God is
then completely arbitrary. While there may be no necessary connection
56 Barth used the concepts of enhypostasis and anhypostasis in his own way. In the
early church anhypostasis meant that the man Jesus had no existence apart from the tie
with the Word, the Logos. That did not mean that as a man Jesus would not have had
any individuality; that is not included in the word hypostasis. What the early church did
intend to do with these dual terms was insure the unity of the person of Jesus Christ.
If it is said that Jesus Christ as a unity is a true divine person (unio hypostatica), then
that unity would be threatened if people subsequently spoke of two persons in Jesus
Christ. The doctrine armed that no, this one person had his existence in the Word,
in the second person of the Trinity. Therefore, the point of the concept lay in keeping
together the true God-being and the true man-being of this one person. See A. van de
Beek, De menselijke Persoon van Christus. Een onderzoek aangaande de gedachte van de anhypostasie
van de menselijke natuur van Christus, 4849 and G. Hunsinger, Karl Barths Christology:
its basic Chalcedonian Character in idem, Disruptive Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl
Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 131147.
57 KD II/1, 61; ET, 56.
274 chapter six
between the earthly actions of Jesus, his historic Gestalt, and who He in
fact is through Gods revelation, his Gehalt, does that at the same time
mean there is no connection whatsoever? Is the means of revelation
only the opportunity for Gods revelation, or, in view of the content of
the revelation, is there in retrospect, is there indeed a connection with
the means of revelation? In terms of Augustines semantics, is there a
connection between Jesus life and actions as signum and the revelation
in this life of the kingdom of God as res, or is the connection entirely
random? Barths use of the image of seeing through a glass darkly
seems to indicate that for him the opacity of the symbol is the only
viewpoint that he will allow in this phase of his theology. He is still
moving along a track that is antithetical to the eort of the Leben Jesu-
Forschung to arrive at a generally accepted appraisal of Jesus on the basis
of historical and psychological investigation. The point of the insistence
that Jesus is a riddle is that historical investigation cannot function as a
basis for faith in Jesus. The only reason why Jesus Christ has theological
signicance and is an object of faith is the act of God in Him, the power
of the Word of God. Within the programme of KD II/1 one can see this
as a means of cutting o every attempt to arrive at natural theology.
It would however bear witness to a certain folly to reject ohand every
inquiry into the relation of this revelation with the actions of Jesus as
the Gospels bear witness to them. The presence of the genre of gospels
as part of the canon testies to the perfect right, indeed the theological
importance, of this inquiry.
of the thought. This is the case with Barth. That is a point which dis-
tinguishes this second panel from the rst. As Barth himself indicates
in 27, under the title The Limits of the Knowledge of God, his the-
ological thinking on the existence and origin of human knowledge of
God takes place between two limits, as it were. The terminus a quo any
time God is spoken of is revelation, God himself, and that is also were
we end up. The terminus ad quem is once again the knowledge of God.
Possible human knowledge of God lies between these two limits. The
section involved has two parts. The rst part deals with the hiddenness
of God as the terminus a quo of all that is said of God. The second part
of this section is entitled The Truthfulness of Human Knowledge of
God. In fact section 27 is once again an exposition of the thesis God is
known through God. The beginning of knowledge of God has its ori-
gin in the recognition that God himself is the subject of this knowledge.
Negatively, this means further emphasis on the proposition that it is
not our own faculties for knowing which are the foundation which sup-
ports knowledge of God. For any evaluation of Barths view of human
capacities this is of great importance. While it is quite true that knowl-
edge of God cannot exist without human faculties, but it does not owe
its existence to these human faculties.58 The emphasis in this concept is
deliberately placed not on our own human capacities, but on the singu-
larity of God as subject. In this concept revelation, Gods own act is the
only element which is acknowledged as basic.
From a general epistemological perspective this exclusive xation on
the element of revelation is to be regarded as inconceivably lopsided.
It can however be understood as a form of theological reductionism in
which only those elements which are constitutive for knowledge of God
as such are acknowledged as fundamental. The concept of the second
panel implicitly recognises that niteness as such, including man with
his faculties, can not produce knowledge of God. God, in his otherness
or his holiness, is hidden from man.
It must however be emphatically stressed that with Barth such an
assessment of niteness is justied indirectly, by theological argument.
The hiddenness of God is not the result of a general ontology. At this
point we see in this second panel an attempt to keep general ontology
and theology strictly separated. Barths concept is an exponent of the
aspiration that welcomes the disjunction of culture and Christian faith
59 For example Augustine, Sermo 117, 3.5: De Deo loquimur, quid mirum, si non
186.
62 KD II/1, 209; ET, 187.
the way of knowing god 277
With his thesis that knowledge of God precedes the question of its pos-
sibility, Barth chooses a position in the debate that dominated theol-
ogy since the Enlightenment and which in part dened his own the-
ological development: how can we think about Gods relation to our
earthly reality? Where do the connections lie, the points of anchorage
that invite us to knowledge of God? Has the world as a mirror become
clouded, or even lost its reective quality all together?
In his dialectic period Barths method of doing theology was still
strongly dominated by the conviction that human words and thoughts
can not make the living God of whom the Bible speaks present. In the
second edition of his Epistle to the Romans Barth characterises revelation
as an impossible possibility.65 The method of his theology is dened by
the human situation, the given world in which God is not immanent.
Time and eternity are characterised as mutually exclusive.66 Seen from
this life, Gods eternity is separated from the nite by a Todeslinie, a
dialectic theology with a number of aporias which were not easy for him to escape,
for instance with regard to the incarnation. That the word became esh (John 1:14)
can, according to the Epistle to the Romans, only be thought of as a crisis and negation
the way of knowing god 279
chasm which cannot be bridged from this side. All religious possibilities
for arriving at God, at sacred reality, die in the no-mans-land that
separates us from Gods eternity. Considered from the reality of this
world, God, revelation, salvation and all words that intentionally refer
to the divine mystery can be termed impossibilities. An example of
Barths early dialectic theology is the 1922 essay Das Wort Gottes als
Aufgabe der Theologie.67 The essay is developed through three theses:
1) As theologians, we ought to speak of God; 2) We are, however,
human and as such cannot speak of God; and 3) We should recognize
both our ought and our cannot and by that recognition give God the
glory. In this panel theologians are not just professional theologians or
clergy. In principle, the term includes anyone wishing to speak of God
and his Word. The rst and second theses are antithetical. The third
does not bring the two preceding thesis into synthesis, but argues that
one must hold fast to both in order to honour God. Only God himself
is able to speak his saving word, the Word of God. Methodologically
and that is what this is aboutthe starting point for his argument is
located in the human situation.68
This methodological point of departure in the human situation is
still the foundation of Barths 1927 Christian Dogmatics. The summons by
Gogarten, Bultmann and others to rene the attention for the human
situation by making it an explicit theme convinced him that this starting
point was precisely a fundamental weakness in his concept. Gogarten
asked for a clear anthropology as the entrance to the theology; Bult-
mann likewise considered Barths analysis of human existence unclear.
For Barth, this criticism was the reason to methodologically no longer
begin the whole project with the human situation. He allowed his con-
cept of knowledge of God to be dened methodologically by the insight
that the truth of God is a concrete fact. Theology has its reality and
possibility in the Gods revelation. Or, in terms he used in his study of
Anselm, in revelation lies an ontic rationality that is reected upon by
a noetic rationality. The ontic precedes the noetic.69 A theology which
acknowledges that permits itself to be guided by this realisation in the
of history (Rmerbrief 2, 5; ET, 2930). In the idea of the analogia dei and enhypostasis
Barth found means for thinking of Gods revelation in a more satisfactory manner.
67 Included in: Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Aufstze, Mnchen 1925,
156178.
68 For a sketch of the development of Barths dialectic, see M. Beintker, Die Dialektik
seines theologischen Programms (1931), hrsg. von E. Jngel und I.U. Dalferth, Zrich 1981,
4952.
70 Fides quaerens intellectum, 55.
71 See for instance Spieckermann, Gotteserkenntnis, 6970, who locates this relinquish-
ment of a synthesis in a letter from Barth to Thurneysen of August 6, 1915. Faith, the
kingdom of God and knowledge of God become realities that one does not simply
experience and have, or make present. See also my Anfngliche Theologie, 71, where
I point to an echo of the lecture Kreigszeit und Gottesreich, given in 1915 but not
preserved.
72 See for instance his Tambach Lecture (1919) Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in:
Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 3369, also included in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfnge der
dialektischen Theologie I, Mnchen 19774, 337.
73 Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in: Anfnge I, 33.
the way of knowing god 281
With Barth, dogmatics is not only a way of checking up on, but also
an exercise in biblical speaking. Exercise is to say that Barth does
not begin from a collection of Bible texts, but in the various parts
of Christian doctrine concentrates on the connections and movements
that are in his view characteristic. This altered view of the relationship
between Bible text and dogmatic discussion comes to the fore in the
way in which Barth goes to work methodologically in his dogmatics.
He begins with relatively short and open statements, which sometimes
serve as the title for sections, and holds them up to the light in the sec-
tions involved. Among the examples of such short statements are his
diverse section titles, such as Gods being in Act, Man before God,
God before Man and Gods Being as Loving in Freedom. They are,
as Welker noted,76 statements that taken by themselves are ambiguous
and incomplete, and not rarely they could be conceived as a question.
They are integral in nature and in the course of the argument are clar-
ied in multiple steps or courses. The clarication is achieved by means
of negations, shifts in stress and distinctions. For example, statements
which are in themselves vague and open become more focused in a
number of steps, and gradually gain denition. It is because of this
manner of working that Barths dogmatic has a relatively high medi-
77 W. Pannenberg, Die Subjektivitt Gottes und die Trinittslehre in: idem, Grund-
fragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufstze, Bd.2, Gttingen 1980, 110. Barths man-
ner of speaking of the Father, Son and Spirit as manners of being would therefore not
do justice to the fact that in the Trinitarian concept of God personality is gained from
the mutual involvement of the persons with each other. The Son is a person because
He surrenders himself to the Father and his mission. The Father is a person because
he identies himself with the Son. The Spirit is once again nothing in himself, but is a
Divine person because in the Spirit the unity of Father and Son works for the renewal
of the world.
78 E. Maurer, Grammatik des biblischen Redens von Gott. Grundlinien der Trini-
transparent until the encounter with God, until the moment at which
the Word of God himself breaks through the human aids.
To what an extent is such an explanation satisfactory? Perhaps we
must conclude that an approach like this from linguistic philosophy
indeed succeeds in turning the spotlight on the function of the doc-
trine of the Trinity for the whole of Barths theology. At the same
time it must be stressed that one turns aside from Barth if one con-
sistently functionalises dogmatic concepts and formulas. They receive
their peculiar content precisely in connection with concrete biblical his-
tory.79
In the meantime, the above will certainly be helpful in understand-
ing that dogmatics for Barth is still something more than a summary
of doctrine. Dogmatics is the systematic self-investigation of the church,
with an eye to the content of what it has to say about God. It is an
activity which, when done, is done on a meta-level. Therefore dogmat-
ics seeks the conditions for the underlying structure for speaking about
God. The relation between dogmatics and what the church has to say
about God can indeed to a certain degree rightfully be seen as the
relation between grammar and language. I say to a certain degree
because this comparison only holds true in limited measure. The fact is
that within dogmatics there are solid statements made which, although
they have a regulative function, are also intended to have substantive
content. This does not detract from the fact that Barths theology to
a great extent rightly leaves a formal impression, and as reection is
intended to have a regulative function in regard to that which is said
about God in the space of the church and in its proclamation. Dog-
matics is no longer, as it was for Calvin, a transcription and ordering
of the content of what God has communicated. It is an arrangement
of perspectives and coordinates which together delineate a eld, in the
condence and with the expectation that God himself as Lord of his
revelation will make himself present, and that entrance to Him will
be opened up through the subjective work of the Holy Spirit. In both
Calvin and Barth, systematic reection is in service of the reading and
79 Perhaps one must say that in the rst parts of the KD Barths thought still
moves strongly from abstract formulations and concepts to biblical history. Later he
thinks more from the concrete history to the concepts, thus preparing the way that
Pannenberg and Moltmann were to go. When in the second part of his doctrine of
reconciliation Barth selects a starting point, he chooses the history of Jesus Christ, thus
choosing a point of departure in the opposition of the Father and Son, it becomes clear
that thinking in terms of the Trinity springs from this history.
284 chapter six
80 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 19161966, Hrsg. von der Karl Barth-For-
schungsstelle an der Universitt Gttingen, Zrich 2000, 8796. Brunner lists four
possibilities: 1. Dogmatik, als Auslegung eines christlichen Bekenntnisses. 2. Biblische
Theologieetwa wie Beck oder Hofmann. 3. Lehre von der christlichen Religion als
Ausschnitt aus der allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft. 4. Spekulative Theologie, die von
vornherein wei, da sie bei christlichen Resultate endet. In his answer Barth responds
with the following possibilities: Loci im Anschlu an den Rmerbrief (Melanchton). 2.
Biblische Theologie la Beck. 3. Spekulative la Biedermann. 4. Scholastische (anstelle
des Petrus Lombardus: Calvins Institutio oder der Katechismus Genevensis 1545). 5.
Prophetische, d.h. selber Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen und unter bestndiger
Kontrolle 1. durch die Bibel, 2. durch das kirchliche Altertum + Reformation einen
selbstgewhlten Weg gehen. 6. Konfessionelle: Sto der Dogmatik ist nun einmal das
Dogma; gibt uns die verglunggte modern-reformierte Kirche kein solches an die Hand,
so stehen wir oenbar wieder am Anfang der reformierten Reformation, haben zu fra-
gen, was dort Dogma war vor den Bekenntnisschriften, kmen also auf das Apostolikum.
Bekenntnisschriften heuristisch zu verwenden. Autoritt der Schrift als des Ursprungs des
ganzen Krams selbstverstndlich. 7. Der helle Unfug: Schleiermacher und, was hinter
ihm kreucht und eucht.
81 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel, 95.
286 chapter six
82 Zie H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven? Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuitspraken,
to orient itself. Or, in other words, the object of reection, God who jus-
ties sinners, at one and the same time determines the way of knowing
and the method that must be chosen theologically in order to do justice
to this object.86 From beginning to end, knowledge of God is a matter
of saving grace; Barth makes this clear in his prolegomenon,87 and it is
this opposition between the general epistemological interest and a the-
ological, soteriological input that is decisive. Thus it is also made clear
that in Barths concept knowledge of God must be discussed entirely
from an inward perspective.
With this Barth took a fundamental position in a discussion between
himself and his friends in dialectical theology that nally lead to the
break-up of their common front, and which became concretely visible
in the cessation of the periodical Zwischen den Zeiten. The forum in which
dogmatics is practised as reection on what the church says regarding
God is not primarily dened by the public fora of the academy, society,
or even the church itself. Faith, and therefore reection on what the
church says, must focus on the reality that has already been given,
and continues to be given, in revelation.88 Dogmatics as a discipline
86 Already in the foreword to the second edition of the Epistle to the Romans Barth
speaks of the Sache that must dene the method. But even earlier, in the preceding
period, we encounter the realisation that the usual methods of reading the Bible are
totally inadequate to do justice to its content. The Bible is not a moral tract, not a book
that one can do justice to through historical methods. The is found something other,
the Word of God.
87 KD I/1, 2; ET, 3. It is surprising and unusual to encounter the word grace
already in the rst pages of the prolegomenon in this dogmatics, and to realise that
this word is not used guratively or as embellishment. Theology, which is characterised
as a measure of the church to meet this double need, is only possible and worthwhile
in the light of justifying grace, which here too can alone make good what man as
such invariably does badly (p. 4 in the English translation). This statement is not an
easy, pious formula. It fundamentally characterises how in this theology all knowing of
God outside of Gods act of salvation has ceased to oer any certainty. If God is to
be known, that is knowledge of salvation, and not knowledge. This reveals how much
the core question in Barth is immediately and completely theological. It is identied
with the justication of sinners. Epistemology is no longer an antechamber to the
doctrine of justication. Or better, the rupture between God and man is so total that
knowledge of this God, because he is a God of redemption, is knowledge of salvation.
We will return to this in a later section on natural theology. I will now limit myself
to the following. Barths immediate stress on the gracious character of knowledge of
God implies a negative judgement on all attempts to search for signs or grounds for
knowledge of God outside this gracious act. Such searching is denial of the real state of
aairs between God and man.
88 KD I/1, 2; ET, 4.
the way of knowing god 289
89 J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianis-
mus im Rmerbrief und ihre Bedeutung fr die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths,
Berlin/New York 1995, 399.
90 Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus, 382383.
91 See also my Anfngliche Theologie, 3638 en 155157.
290 chapter six
92 H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Werke Bd.6. System der Philosophie 1. Teil, hrsg.
von H. Holzhey, (Berlin 19142=) Hildesheim/New York 1977, 82: Dem Denken darf
nur dasjenige als gegeben gelten, was er selbst aufzunden vermag.
93 Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 67.
94 H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens. Werke Bd.7. System der Philosophie 2.Teil, hrsg. von
Vortrge und kleinere Arbeiten (19091914), hrsg. von H.-A. Drewes und H. Stoevesandt,
Zrich 1993, 126138. In his essay he distinguishes between three forms of human
knowing, to wit, theoretical science, ethics and aesthetics. Together they form what is
the way of knowing god 291
theology Barth proceeds from a particular given, namely the fact of the
church and its proclamation. He takes the reality of the proclamation
and doctrine as the matter of theology, in order to theologically dene
reality a posteriori, in a return to God or his Word as the beginning
and source of all knowledge of God. This linkage of the a posteriori
method and objectivism also appears in the way that thinking proceeds
for Cohen. In his critiques he takes as his point of departure the given
science, but scientic objectivity is made dependent on the judgement
of the source. In Barths dogmatic method too, theological objectivity
is only reached in a consistent retrogression toward the divine Word,
judgement and election. The judgement of what is theologically real,
possible and impossible is dependent on and determined by this divine
act, speaking and election. It is only knowable if men participate in
this Word as a vital event. By proceeding in this way, there is no room
left in this concept for nature or history which is encountered outside
of this act and election God. Man, his history, his world, his destiny
are the X that must be dened through an ever rejuvenating return
to the beginning, namely Gods speaking. Barths rejection of natural
theology, his design of a theological view of time, space, man and
history, ows from this.
A second agreement can be noted in the objectivism, and the anti-
subjectivism that accompanies it, which is characteristic of Cohen, and
which we likewise nd as a characteristic of Barths theology. The
objective element, represented theologically in the concept of the Word,
and in his later theology represented by the history of Jesus Christ,
is primary. The work of the Holy Spirit is entirely contained in this
element. Nor does this change as in his later doctrine of reconciliation,
and very strikingly in the doctrine of baptism, Barth emphatically
makes room for man as the answering subject.
Knowledge of God can not be derived from the existence of the world
and given things. With this, the status of universality and rational
demonstrability is lost for ever. In this respect Barth belongs to the
mainstream of post-Kantian theology. But this does not yet mean that
his theology has a sceptical tenor epistemologically. One the contrary,
one must say. The purpose and direction of Gods revelation is that
He himself becomes the object of human knowledge. In his revelation
God permits this, commands it and grants the means.96 For Barth these
three assertions are constituents of the positive proposition that real
and true knowledge of God with reliable content indeed exists. First,
the three all remind us of the fact that God Himself must act and
speak. Human knowledge can be conceived as a cycle that nds its
start in God. God is however not only a point of origin, He is also
the initiator of the movement, through whom the cycle arises and is
sustained. Second, conceptually this is a form of objectivism which is
expressed in the thesis God is known through God.97 As Father, God
is the subject of knowledge of God, and as God the Spirit He is the
movement itself. Any human knowing of God is only conceivable so
far as man is included in this movement. To the extent that through
the work of the Spirit man is made a participant in this movement,
one can speak of real knowledge of God. Third, this position makes
clear what the content of the revelation is. The content of knowledge of
God is nothing other than God Himself . In this denition the Son of
God stands for the content of knowledge of God. What does this mean
for human knowledge of God? Is the subjectivity and activity of man
himself in faith wholly absorbed in an action of God? If one begins by
thinking of the relation of God to man in competitive terms, that could
easily be the conclusion. But that is emphatically not what is intended.
According to Barth, because God appears He creates the subject of
knowledge of God.98 Or perhaps we could express it this way: the eye
of faith, in the sense of the acte through which man discovers God in his
works, is not an extension of other acts of knowing, but is an element
of its own, distinguished from them, in which the person becomes a
subject that once again begins to see and receive, but now dierently.
Jngel has described the characteristic of the experience of faith as an
experience with experience, in which all the experiences acquired, and
experiencing itself, are once again experienced anew, from scratch.99
In the experience with God, man is as it were constituted anew as a
believing subject.
Does not faith in this way take on the form of an esoteric closed
circuit? Is access not denied except to those to whom it is given? Epis-
temologically that conclusion is correct. The movement which Barth is
thinking of with the words knowing God can not be compelled. It rests
upon an encounter brought into being by God, on a moment in which
He comes and makes himself the object of human knowing. The rela-
tion which arises here is therefore not symmetrical. He is the Lord who
in his revelation declares himself as the Lord of mankind. Barth there-
fore guards against conceiving the acts of God and the acts of man, the
work of the Spirit and the human act of knowing, as points on the same
plane. Whether the reality of knowledge of God is closed is however a
dierent question. Would it not be better to term Barths theology an
attempt to point to an open mystery? In that case his theological theory
provides a framework where the reader and hearer have their attention
drawn to a possibility that long ago ceased to be an unactualised possi-
bility, but became a reality that presents itself in the lives of people, in
proclamation, in the work of a comforting mother, in the simplicity of
a childrens song. If that is true, must the congurations of the second
This does not mean that what Barth intended with the dialectic of
unveiling and veiling disappeared from his theology. In Chapter 8 we
will see yet that the point of this is denitive for his doctrine of baptism.
In his theology Barth was in search of the true connection between
Gods revelation and human knowledge of God. That this connection
is there, that there are links made in all sorts of ways, is for him beyond
dispute. That God and man, regarded conceptually, are incongruent
entities, and human knowledge of God is never to be acquired by
way of direct derivation, is likewise beyond doubt. The question that it
comes down to, theologically, is how human knowledge of God relates
to Gods self-unveiling. If, after the autumn of 1915, it was incongruence
which was in the foreground in the theology, now this incongruence
has been absorbed into a thought which henceforth takes its theological
starting point in the recognition that God imparts knowledge, that God
speaks.
Barth analyses at great length what the consequences are once the
veracity of human knowledge of God is recognised. The terms which
emerge here are thankfulness and worship. Both of these are words,
we must rst note, which t with the new paradigm which makes its
appearance with Barth, namely knowledge of God as the result of an
encounter. In his doctrine of God the reality of knowledge of God is
characterised as a spatial confrontation: man stands before God and
God stands before man. When the possibilities of knowing God are
discussed, Barth does not point to anthropological data. It is rather
under the heading of the readiness of God. Only secondarily does it
rest on the readiness of man, but it is clear that Barth considers the
readiness of man as a possibility that only exists within Gods readiness,
and nowhere else.105
Within the question of the truth of knowledge Barth arrives at an
exposition of the implications of his theory of analogy for theological
language. The entrance to human knowing of God lies exclusively in
the free initiative that proceeds from God. From the side of man there
is no analogy which could connect him with the being of God and with
His majesty. Our knowledge rests on a special permission, command
and capacity for such knowledge. God imparts the event of his self-
knowledge. Barth has described this movement as an analogia dei, and
sharply distinguished this analogy from the analogia entis which he nds
in its most acute form in the dogmatic constitution Dei lius of Vatican
I. This constitution takes a position against the denial of the general
knowability of God.106 According to Barths interpretation this consti-
tution makes a distinction between God as principium omnium et nem on
the one side and God as dominum nostrum on the other. This erodes the
unity of God. Knowledge of God is divided up into a knowing that can
be gained outside of revelation, leading to a knowing of God as origin
and goal, and a knowing of God as Father that is gained through rev-
elation. What makes Barths interpretation interesting is not so much
whether he is right or wrong, but his evaluation of this duality in the
knowledge of God. Any form of dierentiation in the ways of knowing
is interpreted by Barth as an attack on the unity of God in his revela-
tion. Once it has been established that Jesus Christ, witnessed to by the
prophets and apostles, is the being of the church and the one Word
of God, then any other sort of knowing is an alien and hostile element
in Christian doctrine.107 The confession that God is one must also be
expressed in the answer to the question of the way of knowing. On the
basis of this principle, there can only be one way to knowing, namely
the self-unveiling which coincides with Christ. Within this concept one
can not give credence to the idea of an initial notion of God, a rst
realisation or trace of his presence or mystery, because from the outset
it is considered a competing approach. Once brought inside the gates
of Christian theology, it will reveal itself as a Trojan horse. The know-
ing of the one true God does not have its origin with man, in his reason
or imagination; it has its origin in an act, a revelation of God. Knowl-
edge of God does not have its ground in a conclusion which is drawn
on the basis of a predicate which can be attributed to both God and
man. According to Barth that is the sin, the mortal sin, of the analogia
entis doctrine: the same concept of being which is attributed to God as a
predicate in a sublime sense is also attributedto be sure, not in equal
measure, but indeed in a similar mannerto the creature. Therefore,
according to Barth, thinking about the relation of God to man becomes
a miscalculated arrogance on the part of man. We will return to this in
(ed. P. Hnermann), Freiburg i.B. 199137, Nr.3004: Eadem sancta mater Ecclesia tenet
et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et nem, naturali humanae rationis lumine
e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse en nr. 3026: Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum,
creatorem en Dominum nostrum per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae
lumine certo cognosci non posse, anathema sit.
107 KD II/1, 87; ET, 80.
the way of knowing god 299
of advent. God is not an unknown X, but he makes himself known. The relation
between x:a is not a static relationship; it is a movement through which it comes to
be known.
114 KD II/1, 255; ET, 226227.
115 KD II/1, 256; ET, 227.
116 KD II/1, 257; ET, 228.
302 chapter six
does Barth intend with this view of language? In the most original
sense language, the words which we apply to him, belongs to God.
If words succeed in expressing who God is and what He does, then
that is because these words are in the truest sense His. What this
concept comes down to, one can note, is a tremendous turn about, a
theological reversal of the concept of language. The assertion that God
is ineable and incomprehensible dominates the pre-modern panel.
God makes himself known in his revelation, and the question of how
this operation relates to God in himself is not a subject for reection.
That is something which is forbidden to man. The recognition that
God is always more than he allows be seen in his working does not
threaten the trustworthiness of his works and promises; that was the
conclusion in Chapter 3, on the basis of the discussion of Calvins
doctrine of God. But we must realise that the proposition Deus semper
maior does not directly result in the view of God as deus absolutus. In
the second panel there is explicit reection on the way in which Gods
working is anchored within his inter-Trinitarian being. Here too there
is a theocentric perspective, but the background against which the
discussion is set has fundamentally changed. If speaking about God
in the pre-modern panel was discussed in terms of accommodated
speech, and with that the stress lay on the limitedness and inadequacy
of human language with respect to divine reality, now human words
and concepts are placed within the perspective of God, who has power
over human language and captures the language again and again, to
prove his power and dominion over it. The point of Barths theology
is the veracity of knowledge of God. In the hinge section on Kant
we noted that God is essentially the unknown, who stands outside of
language and concepts. This dogma of modernity is now powerfully
contradicted in this concept. God is not the ineable; God himself
ultimately speaks in the language of men, takes possession of it, dwells
in human language and words, and can do that because the Word,
which is characteristic of Him, has its deepest being in language, is
communicative. Compared to that, our use of words such as father,
son, love and mother is after the fact.
Barth formulates this in legal terms. In this he reminds us of Calvin.
God has a lawful claim on our language.117 Father, son and love only
receive their true meaning in their application to God, who in his
the Theological Epistemology of Karl Barth in: ZdTh 15 (1999), 7586, part. 8385.
the way of knowing god 305
cious act, and not by virtue of a power residing in the creation itself.121
This permits us to conclude that Barth speaks more negatively about
creation and the world than is necessary within the framework of his
own theology. That critique deserves support. Further on in Barths
doctrine of God, in his discussion of the doctrine of qualities, the out-
lines of his doctrine of creation as the outward ground of the covenant
already become visible. Creation is then no longer alien to grace, and
the possibility arises for a further expansion of the theories on analogy,
as does take place in the doctrines regarding creation.
Despite these possibilities for an immanent critique and emendation,
the function of Barths rejection of intrinsecae as a double signal must
not be underestimated. On the positive side, the rejection of intrinsecae
serves to protect the dialectic of veiling and unveiling. Barth is appre-
hensive about every kind of thought which believes that it can rea-
son back to God from the generally human, from an already present
and transferable identity. Negatively, the rejection is a signal of his
view that theologically there is hardly any place for the notion of the
indwelling of Gods Spirit, for the traces and channels that are instru-
ments of Gods Spirit, for theological perception of horizontal struc-
tures and phenomena that begin to speak precisely in the gospels eld
of inuence. Theologically there is a place for the coming of Gods Spirit,
but in terms of geometry that is a vertical event which eclipses every-
thing which happens on the horizontal axis and stands independent of
it.
Barths interpretation of the metaphor of the mirror in ICorinthians
13 is connected with this. The world is not in itself a mirror, nor is
the life of Jesus a mirror. Earthly things become mirrors at the moment
God is pleased to reveal himself in them. Words such as father, mother,
love, care and punishment become mirrors at the moment they are
overtaken and taken over by Gods deeds. God goes after the reality
which is estranged from Him and brings it again into the domain where
it originally belonged.
Barth has been followed on this point by countless others: there is
no way from our reality to knowledge of God. The world is not a
mirror of Gods goodness and care. This negation, directed by Barth
against every attempt to acquire salvation apart from God, can also
set itself up as an autonomous principle. This can occur, for example,
when the denial that the world as such, in itself is a direct reference
to God is presented as a truth of faith, and the world is regarded
as empty and in itself meaningless for this theological reason. While
Barths thinking was intended to impress upon his public that speaking
of the world as a mirror can never be separated from Gods active work,
imperceptibly the emphasis can shift to the conviction, possibly with a
reference to Nietzsche, that the world is cold, meaningless and God-
forsaken. A theological convictionnamely that saving knowledge of
God is always a work of the Holy Spiritthen keeps company with a
view of nature in which nature is a self-referential reality determined by
patterns, which as such has nothing to do with God.
The barriers thrown up in KD II/1 with respect to the way in which
the natural reality which surrounds us was traditionally brought into
theology reveals Barths own rootage within the post-Kantian tradition.
Reality is only used theologically in strict relation to, and in participa-
tion in the movement of revelation. Only there, where human knowing
participates in the manner in which God makes himself known in sec-
ondary objectivity, can there be theological objectivity. Outside of this
movement there is, theologically speaking, no true knowledge. Thus
one can also understand theoretically why Barth says he feels uneasy
with the strange generality with which the tradition speaks of Gods
relation to the creature. If we dare to speak of God on the basis of
the creation, then, according to him, that is on the basis of an addi-
tional revelation which illuminates it. Barths completely idiosyncratic
and contrary view of what are termed the nature psalms aords a good
illustration of where this theological conviction can lead in exegesis.
For instance, with regard to Psalm 104, he asks how the joy over the
works of creation can be distinguished from the optimism of 18th cen-
tury physio-theology, which collapsed like a house of cards as a result
of the 1754 earthquake in Lisbon. The reading of the nature psalms in
the second panel represents an attitude of mind and mentality that is
more dismayed by the horrors of an earthquake than it is amazed by
a rey. The spectre of Darwin appears on the stage as we hear that
nature yields a spectacle of the struggle of every creature against every
other for mere existence.122 Within this new constellation there is no
intrinsic relation between this, our familiar reality, and God. Where,
asks Barth with an eye to Psalm 104, where does the image of the world
that the psalmist has bear witness as such to an order and harmony in
which one can immediately read the divinity, wisdom and goodness of
the Creator?123 In his view one cannot for a moment read the joy of
Psalm 104 without the eschatological key of Revelation 21:15, Behold,
I make all things new. According to Barth there is only one conclusion
possible: the goodness of creation, its intention, is a divine judgement:
it is good in Gods eyes. Goodness and pleasantness are not qualities of
the creation; their reality lies entirely in Gods judgement. This judge-
ment of God does not for a moment reect things as they are. The
starting point for judging and knowing theologically is the covenant of
grace. Such an evaluation betrays not only the presence of a dierent
mentality, but in terms of theory of knowledge, a neo-Kantian legacy.
Reality as it is perceived by the senses is no longer as such ontologically
dened by its relation to God. It no longer has its existence in a hier-
archy of being, in which this existence as such must be thought to be
dependent on God. There is a relation, but it must time and again be
made by God and be revealed to man through the work of the Spirit.
It is a relation which can only be spoken of theologically in reference
to the extraordinary judgements and acts of God. Thus Barth makes
it clear that creation is a theological concept which is only meaningful
and receives objectivity in the light of Gods particular acts. The con-
cept of creation is never in any way an immanent quality of this world,
and has no continuity within this context.
The dierence from Calvin seems at rst sight only a matter of
degree. For him too the Creator-creature relationship is not something
which proceeds from creation. Calvin conceives God as the highest
active force which, through the hidden operation of the Holy Spirit,
works and supports creation everywhere, at all times. But the dif-
ference is nevertheless fundamental, if one recalls that Barth explic-
itly must postulate what is self-evident in Calvin: for Barth reality
is in itself dumb, meaningless and highly ambiguous. In the second
panel, in contrast to the rst, there is no manner of conceiving Gods
indwelling. Therefore Barth begins with the event of revelation. It is
his conviction that something is read into the nature psalms that is not
present in reality as such. It is an eschatological reading of the world
of creation. Phenomena are in fact seen in the light of the world to
come. The denitive moment that invites us to see the phenomena
as praise of the Creator and as the work of his wisdom is not con-
nected with any element that is intrinsic in that creation, but lies on
the other side of it. God himself must make his works into the content
of his Word and his judgement. Only then does one arrive at knowl-
edge.
One can ask whether, in his battle against natural theology, Barth
has not arrived at a more radical standpoint than was necessary on
the basis of his own theological point of departure. He embraces a
view of life and the world according to which the works of God are
incomprehensible, opaque, indeed dark and strange, in their being
and nature.124 Nature is blind and coarse materiality, and sneers at
man rather than being a smiling source. Speaking theologically, Barth
stresses the absence of God from the world. If phenomena do speak,
they proclaim their own insuciency.
Reality only becomes a mirror to the extent that there is ontologi-
cally an analogia dei.125 The relation that leads to knowledge of God is
a separate event, which indeed takes place in the sphere of creation,
but which is not interwoven with this created reality. The ambiguity of
the world in which we live is thus theologically founded, and the expe-
rience of the world as creation can only be understood as theological
designation.
he points one to the realm of Word and Spirit for the certainty of
faith. One receives certainty of God and his salvation only because the
content of the Gospel is personally impressed on the believers heart.
The element of being convinced, persuasio, and commitment, are the
work of the Holy Spirit. It is also obvious that there is a dierence. For
Calvin human knowledge of God is still supported by a number of self-
evident cultural and intellectual truths. That God exists, that He works,
is so evident in the rst panel that only the malevolent would deny it.
It is part of the colour scheme of the whole painting. With Barth it
is no longer malicious and stubborn folk who deny these self-evident
truths; the unsettling is a subject which becomes a theme within the
discussion of faith itself. Every philosophical support or conrmation
is suspect in advance of being natural theology. The grounds that
faith itself gives on the one side, and the cultural and philosophical
evidences on the other, have been dispersed like a school of sh, and
no longer bear on each other. Is that a purication of faith, or also an
impoverishment?
Barth undoubtedly saw the Entsicherung as a necessary purication.
Purer means that it is now clearer than before what faith ultimately
rests upon, namely on Gods own Word, on Christ. Religious knowl-
edge has its own source and cannot be derived from other evidence
than that which supports faith itself. And yet, as the further develop-
ment of Barths own theology reveals, the question of the universality
of God cannot be suppressed. Even as Christian theology in its modern
form acknowledges that it ultimately lives from Gods own speaking,
from his Word, then one teeters on the edge of esoteric insularity if
one refuses to examine the question of how this Word relates to the
world of experience shared with other human beings. It is not without
reason that the viewpoint of Gods universality has once again been
thought through from various sides, for instance by Pannenberg and
Jngel, the former by demanding that the question of truth be explicitly
taken up by theology, the latter by developing a theological anthro-
pology that can also make meaningful and plausible pronouncements
about mankind outside of faith. Such attempts are theologically linked,
because they take into account the fact that in the Christian creed the
Father of Jesus Christ is the same as God the Creator.
the way of knowing god 311
light of this situation illuminates a tradition that that for more than 200
years now has prepared the destruction of the church.132
As Birkner has convincingly demonstrated, with his pejorative use
of the term natural theology Barth stands in a longer tradition in
which natural theology functioned as a designation for heresy and to
stigmatise those to whose thought it was applied.133 It became a polemic
term and an imputation of theological error. The struggle against the
natural man has a function similar to Calvins struggle against the lack
of pietas, the lack of an adequate life style. While Calvin appeared to
be constantly confounded by the tenacity of human hypocrisy, by the
feigned obedience to God, by the pockets of resistance in the recesses
of the human heart, Barth descries the natural man134 as far as the
eye reaches,135 who refuses to expect everything from God. In KD II/1
the empirical man and the subject living from Gods grace do not
entirely coincide. The incongruence is maintained with regard to the
132 KD II/1, 197; ET, 175. Literal citation from the commentary that was spoken by
Hans Asmussen as explanation with the theses.
133 See H.J. Birkner, Natrliche Theologie und Oenbarungstheologie. Ein theolo-
his essay Welchen Sinn hat es von Gott zu reden in: R. Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen
Bd.I, Tbingen 19727, 2637, he denied the possibility of a separate, material doctrine of
God. For the rest, in both cases there is a deep agreement: God does not permit himself
to be objectied in the same way a normal object in the world is objectied. What
Barth achieves with his doctrine of the Trinity and his discussion of the hiddenness of
God is what Bultmann means by his programme of demythologisation. See E. Jngel,
Gottes Sein ist im Werden, Tbingen 19763, 3334.
2 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.
3 KD II/1, 288291; ET, 257259.
the doctrine of god 319
already been sketched out in the preceding chapter. It must once again
be emphasised that the distinction between the way and content of
knowing God can only be conceived as strictly a matter of logic. The
theme of the way and the theme of the content of knowledge of God
together form an inseparable whole. In this chapter then we will nd
only a shift of the accent within one and the same eld. Attention will
shift to God as the content of human knowledge. Barths concept of
knowing God permits itself to be seen as a circular movement, from
God to God, with man being involved in this movement.
Barths exposition makes it crystal clear that from the start he ies
straight in the face of undeclared or open agnosticism, any suggestion
that there is nothing which can be said about God and His being. In
part as a consequence of the Kantian reconsideration of the bound-
aries of human knowledge, Christian doctrine has been suspected of
reaching beyond its grasp. Does not Christian theology speak about an
order that transcends the limits of time and space? When it speaks of
God and His being does it not assume a reality that in fact means a
duplication of the existing order, a world behind this world? Barth is
well aware of these suspicions, and for his part in fact uses them against
esoteric tendencies.4 The answer in the second panel betrays its moder-
nity by making it clear in many ways that Gods being is not simply a
duplication or extension of earthly reality. God is not an object in the
normal sense of that word.5 But this otherness of God does not detract
from the fact that one must indeed speak of a form of objectivity. Faith
takes on shape because another order that does not coincide with ours
presents itself.
For the rest, it is not only the modern Kantian tradition that assures
that there is an extreme reticence in making pronouncements about
Gods being. We also encountered this reticence in the rst panel.
Calvin takes a stance close to the position that Melanchthon took in his
Loci in 1521, when he argued that men should not seek to understand
the basis of the incarnation, but must have reverence for the blessings
of Christ. We stand before a tension which is not rarely felt to be a
contradiction. Barth says explicitly, with a reference to Melanchthon,
that never on any occasion may investigation, vestigare, be separated
from reverence, adorare. Even if one will investigate the blessings, ben-
ecia, of Christ, there is a chance that the investigation will in fact run
For Barth the Church has wide boundaries, and therefore the possi-
ble partners with whom one can enter into discussion are many. The
source material for a dogmatics as training in listening to God is found
in that which the Church has thought and said, thus in that which
is provided in doctrine and reection on doctrine. But the criterion
remains the Word of God, and thus critique is always possible. The
attention and respect for Protestant orthodoxy thus did not stop Barth
from arguing the thesis with great conviction that Protestant ortho-
doxy was in declinea thesis the eects of which still permeate our
theological-historical conception. In Barths eyes the coalition between
a general ontology and Christian belief had had fatal consequences in
liberal theology, and had its climax and apotheosis in natural theol-
ogy, which asserts that God can be known from nature and history. In
Barths depiction of natural theology, nature and history, or the gener-
ally accessible, becomes the actual gangplank to knowledge of God. But
the presupposition of Barths doctrine of God is the continuing diver-
gence between God and man, which he argues was obscured in 19th
century theology when it accepted there was a demonstrable point of
identity between God and man.8 Barth does not deny that there is such
a point of identity, an element of participation; the critical question is
how this point must be conceived. For Barth, it is a gift, a relation con-
stituted by the act of God, and as such a grace. The situation in which
man is no longer alone, but is confronted by the living God with sal-
vation in his train, does not arise from man. When God comes out to
encounter man, the next step must follow: one can begin to think about
Who shares himself in this revelation.
With this we come to a key element in the theology presented in
the second panel: the relation of Gods revelation and his being. There
must be a distinction between Gods being and his work, between es-
sence and revelationbut they certainly must not be separated. When
in faith people recognise that in Jesus Christ they share in Gods reve-
lation, through the mediation of that name a prospect on Gods being
opens up for them. According to Barth that is not speculation. It might
be termed speculation if there were a gap between being and work, but
one of the pillars of his theology of revelation is precisely that such a
gap does not exist in revelation. In the previous chapter we saw why it
does not exist: namely, because God himself creates an analogy, because
8 See for example Barths critique of Ph. Marheineke in Die protestantische Theologie
im 19.Jahrhundert. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte, Hamburg 19753, 423; ET, 497.
322 chapter seven
in his revelation in Jesus He himself reveals his Lordship, and thus him-
self. Barth does indeed make a distinction between Gods essence and
his revelation, but expressly guards against that essence and revelation
becoming divided into two ontological layers which would be separated
by a gap.9 Barths fundamental assertion is that God is who He is in
his works.10 That opens the possibility for human knowledge of God.
Within the reality of faith as participation in Gods self-knowledge, who
God is can be further particularised on the basis of his works.
The title of the rst section of the chapter in which Barth discusses
the doctrines of God in a narrower sense presents itself rather formally:
The Being of God in Act.11 For the rest, the intention and scope of this
statement is far from modest: it proposes to present a reinterpretation
of what is discussed in traditional theology under the concept of the
being of God. Two terms are brought together with one another here,
which in the history of classical metaphysics represented two unequal
orders, namely being and act. Being refers to the highest being, and as
such the eternal, enduring and foundational. Act refers to the world of
human action, to the imperfect and inconstant. With the Hebrew word
dabar in mind, Barth engages them with one another when he says The
Being of God in Act. Gods being is not a foundational, immovable
being; it is Ereignis, event, and more to the point, the reality of God
himself is the act. In the picture of God it is no longer the foundational
and the immovable that is primary, but God as the acting subject. It is
not without reason that Barth presents his doctrine of God under the
title The Reality of God. The word reality here must be understood
as containing the double meaning, namely as act or deed, and as being.
Act and being are both intended as specications of Gods being. With
respect to God, being and act are not antitheses, and neither one has
any logical priority over the other. This too must be read as critique
of thinking which asserted that one must rst and foremost speak of
God as the immobile mover, as being at rest. Gods being is typied by
acting.
Barths und ihrer Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien
zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gtersloh 1972, 161181 and idem, Karl Barth und die
Neuzeit. Fragen zur Barth-Forschung, Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986), 298314.
324 chapter seven
to God in his Word, and the words will receive their meaning within the
realm of Gods speaking. As the ground of its knowledge, Christian the-
ology has the encounter in revelation through which Gods own being
distinguishes itself as the self-motivated person.13
7.3. Love
The fellowship that he seeks with mankind is not alien to Him, but is
founded in the Divine being itself. Although the word election is not
used in this passage, it is still clear that the will to fellowship with man
ows froth from the depth of divine life itself and therefore is most inti-
mately connected with elements in it, namely with the will to fellowship
or the love that is peculiar to divine being. Put another wayand here
we encounter the central element of the second panelliving in fellow-
ship or love is not incidental for God, but is essential, a characteristic
trait for Him.
What does Barth hope to achieve by postulating the concept of
love in this way? Two points should be listed: First, that the content
of human knowledge of God is determined by God, who in Himself
exists in community and love. God is a God who exists in fellowship,
in love, and therefore seeking fellowship with mankind is not foreign
to Him, or something incidental, but is essential to His being as God.
Later in this chapter we will discuss this further. In this way Barth pre-
vents knowledge of God being threatened by the ultimate mystery of
God, a threat which Barth saw hanging like a dark cloud over patris-
tic, medieval and Reformation theology. One can ask how justied this
charge is, and as a consequence place a question mark after the image
Barth himself so successfully created of his own theology as a libera-
tion from the centuries-long bondage to pagan philosophy. Has there
ever been a time that faith and theology did not avail themselves of
contextual means and were thus free of them? Barth would be the last
to deny this, but in his polemic has not escaped the suggestion that a
pure stance, listening only to revelation, can only be developed through
a fundamentally Christological method.
Second, through the primacy of the characteristic of Gods love,
Barth makes clear that Christian thinking does not conceive God as
a lone, monolithic subject. God has distinctions within Himself, and
the fellowship of Father, Son and Spirit. This builds in a critique from
the very outset against an ideal of existence as a subject that does not
have its existence in analogy with this God. More to the point, Barth
posits that Gods being as a person not only illuminates what being a
person implies for man (a knowing, willing and acting I), but that only
in the love of the God for man does man become a person.17
7.4. Freedom
The second central term with which the doctrine of God is unfolded
is freedom. Barth brings precisely this term, which was of such para-
mount importance as a beckoning ideal and driving force for modern
humanity, into his theology in order to incorporate a number of char-
acteristics that classic theology subsumes under Gods incommunicable
qualities. Dealing with the term freedom after that of love is quite delib-
erate. Freedom qualies Gods love.18
For Barth, freedom is not primarily to be dened negatively. It
is crystal clear how critical Barths attitude on this point is toward
metaphysical doctrines of God, where Gods majesty or exaltation is
articulated primarily in negative terms. In Barths eyes terms such as
aseitas and independentia have a good sense in so far as they indicate
that God is not dened by others. But precisely in their negativity
these terms are too weak, and are incapable of expressing that which
must be expressed. Freedom is a positive concept that refers to the
depth dimension of Gods acting and being. It expresses that what God
does happens out of Himself, has its ground in Him. He is Himself
in his act, and his act arises from the depths of his own being. In
this context Barth refers very concretely to the self-evidence of Gods
existence. In his revelation God himself provides the evidence of his
existence, so that theology can only study this after the fact. Every
time man stands before the reality of God, he perceives the freedom
with which God demonstrates his own existence within the reality
which is distinguished from Him.19 Freedom means that God is the
one who has his origin within himself, each time beginning again
from that same depth and source. What the tradition expressed in the
concepts of sovereignty, exaltation, aseitas, for Barth will be discussed
under the heading of freedom.20 Freedom therefore primarily means
something positive; it is a qualication of Gods love. The positive
thrust of the concept of freedom in the sense of a free choice to
do something has great consequences, and argues against the idea
of independence, independentia. God must not only be unconditioned
but, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can
that God bring forth his own being out of the void, but it is simply the
actual conformation of his being.24
That God begins from himself each time in his act does not say
that God must separate his own being from non-being and needs
a foundation, or that God must realise his own existence. Such an
armation does indeed say that He, because He is who He is, is his
own foundation, causa sui, and with his foundation is also the separation
from what He is not. Formulated in other terms, the being of God is
exalted above the alternative that originates from human experience
of mans own fragility, namely of not-being or being necessary. With
respect to God, man can only takes as his point of departure the
actuality of God, the empirical decision in which God is who He is.25
The location of Gods being as beyond the opposition between the
necessary and not-necessary has great consequences for considering
relationships and aections with regard to God. Traditional doctrines
of God have great diculty ascribing real relationships to God, because
relationships express situations of dependence. For that reason too the
attribution of aections to God was problematic in the rst panel.
By placing Gods own being beyond this opposition, in this panel
the existence of aections in God is something which is no longer
really unthinkable. It is no longer a pudendum. On the contrary, love,
sorrow, being moved, pity and suering are not illegitimate manners
of speaking about God. They have their possibility and reality in God
himself.
We can draw still another conclusion. We men can not reach God
through our concepts, by our thought. The starting point for theology,
for human knowledge of God, is the actual: God, who in His revelation
is who He is. Barth thinks from eternity to time, never the other
way around, not even in his doctrine of election. What then is the
appropriate way to knowledge, which ts with this actuality? It is not
without reason that in this context Barth refers to prayer, to the hearing
of the Word of God, and speaking in Pauline terms, to the struggle
between esh and spirit. Only there can the real contest be won. On
the human side, the primacy of hearing the Word, obedience and
prayer as an answer by man to this Word t with this facticity. The
reality of knowing God thus plays itself out on a eld that dogma
designates as the reality of the Word is that is spoken and heard.
The next major consideration to which Barth turns for the whole of
the doctrine of God is the unity of Gods perfections with his being.
The peculiarity of this approach is that the antithesis between diversity
and unity, which in the tradition led to an assumption of Gods unity
at the expense of diversity, does not hold true for God. God exists in
the multiplicity and wealth of his perfections. Barth explicitly recalls
the dierence of opinion that has existed since 1351 between the West-
ern and Eastern churches on this point. Eastern Orthodoxy, follow-
ing George Palamas and the Hesychasts, teaches that man encounters
Gods actions, with energies that are eternal, uncreated and yet com-
municable to the creature. However, according to Barth, the Hesychas-
tic teaching separates that which cannot be separated. He prefers to
hold fast to the idea that the perfections of God in their multiplicity,
individuality and diversity from each other not only exist because of
Gods relation to the world, but in his own being as the God who loves
in freedom.
This means that in thinking about Gods qualities, multiplicity and
unity must be held together. It is precisely in a coherent unity that the
multiplicity comes to its full expression. This coherence is however no
static unity; it is a concrete unity through the act of God. In Gods
dealings with man, man encounters a unity of act, with ultimately the
one person who in all his acts is himself. Put in other words, there is no
dierence between the questions of who God is and how He is.
what constitutes his self,26 namely his love, his will to fellowship with
man. Self-revelation is therefore much more than an expression of
insights or truths; it is sharing in fellowship with God himself and
thereby sharing with the salvic, good God, above whom no other good
exists. For this reason the content of revelation can not be characterised
in the plural, but in the singular. Knowing God is fellowship with him
as a person.
That is undeniably a shift, we must acknowledge, in comparison with
Calvins substantive denition of knowledge of God. It is a concentra-
tion on the personal, relational element in knowing God. As a concen-
tration it is productive to the extent that it makes it clear that God,
in turning toward man and the world, places himself into relationship.
To the extent that the focus on the singular implies a turn away from
the plural, it is however also possibly a reduction, which runs the risk
of impoverishment. This judgement of the shift deserves further discus-
sion.
The reduction in this second panel becomes obvious if we turn back
to the rst for a moment. In Calvins denition of faith the content of
knowledge of God was at its deepest dened by knowledge of Gods
gracious gifts to man, as bestowed in Christ. That implies plurality.
The believer comes to realise the state of aairs in the visible andto a
modest degreein the unseen world, knowledge of Gods care, of good
and evil, of promises, commandments, of security with God in this life
and the life to come. Calvins concept of faith is not, however, absorbed
into this plurality. Faith is more pointed, focused on Gods will to salva-
tion. In simple terms, communication goes together with information
and these two can not be separated from one another. What God does
in the cosmos, in human history, in dictates of conscience and com-
mandment, in the Bible, in Christ, in the sacraments, clearly has to do
with the triune God who desires to enter into fellowship with strayed
man, to draw him to Himself as an adoptive childbut this is in itself
not be to be characterised as self-revelation. Calvins denition of faith
takes more account of a multiplicity of ways God speaks.
With Calvin facts that point to God in a wider sense also belong to
knowledge of God, thereby forming ways through which God comes to
man, and alongside these, in a closer circle, commandments, precepts,
promises and threats. These are ideas and distinctions which disappear
27 K. Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (19603=) Hamburg 1975, 318
350, esp. 325, 330; ET, 384421, 391, 397. In their thinking, in their perception of the
world, in forming a notion of the world and the multifarious stream of phenomena
in it, men do not stand outside the mystery of reality, but are themselves a part of
the process of the Absolute or the Spirit. Between the human mind and God there
exists an ultimate identity, so that self-condence and condence in God coincide at
their deepest. Hegel sought to reconcile Christianity and culture in his own manner. In
Hegels system, and in the sense of life that bore the stamp of Romanticism, the chasm
that prevailed in Kant between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between the world
of freedom and humanity on the one side and reality as it is perceived in the sciences,
was not acknowledged. Ultimately this reality arises from one source and becomes one
again. Hegel would not accept the unhappy awareness which reason reached after
Kant. Kants fundamental realisation was that human knowledge is still isolated in all
of its constructions of this reality, having no knowledge of the Ding an sich. Although
man is part of a higher order of life, that of practical reason, in a certain sense he
moves around lost in a world which is strange and unknown to him. Hegel thinks from
a dierent view of life, not that of dualism, but of one all-inclusive whole. History is
a holistic process, where contradictions are overcome precisely by historical diversity.
In terms borrowed from the hinge section on Kant, in Hegels philosophy the turn to
the subject becomes even more profound. Thinking of historic reason is identied with
the way of the divine Spirit itself. According to Barth, in Hegel culture was liberated
once and for all from the power of the church. Barth felt that in his philosophy Hegel
had been better able to defend and actualise the general truth that is locked up within
Christian doctrine than was possible for Christian dogmatics. Thus, in his eyes, Hegel
was the philosopher who avowed openly that knowledge which really matters and is
universally valid, divine truth, is identical with the human self.
332 chapter seven
this attitude of condence over into the eld of theology. The Word
which resounds in the Bible and is heard in faith is the Word of God
himself. In the Word, in revelation, God makes himself known. That
is to say, the ridgepole of theological thought is the condence that
in the Word men are encountering God himself as the subject and
content.
As has been said, in terms of intellectual history the thesis of the self-
revelation of God is unthinkable without the background of modern
subject thinking. In modernity the notion of the subject, in connection
with the concept of the person, has assumed primacy, a position that
until then had been occupied by the concept of substance. The subject
is the creating principle that realises itself in its acting and shapes a
culture. At the end of a long development, the concept of substance
is slowly dissolved in and superseded by the concept of the subject
as a fundamental notion.28 Barths theology in the second panel is an
example of this development.
The increasing emphasis on the individual as a unique person is
illustrated in the relation between the artist and his artwork. In me-
dieval art the artist was in the background. He or she is hidden behind
the artwork, or is wholly unknown. Since the Renaissance the accent
has no longer been exclusively on the work of art, on the product, but
more and more on the maker, the craftsman or artist in the foreground.
Within some branches of handicraft the craftsman or woman has been
renamed an artist. Art has freed itself from ordinary life. Notions such
as authenticity, originality and genius are typically Romantic concepts
which, via idealism, have lodged themselves in the centre of modern
views of life. The artist is no longer anonymous, behind his or her work,
Gesammelte Aufstze Bd. 2, Gttingen 1980, 8095. The denition of person, as it is found
in Boethius, still testies to the prevalence of the concept of substance. A person is an
individual substance (persona rationalis naturae individua substantia). Under the inuence of
the Trinitarian and Christological debates the term hupostasis, person, gradually comes
to be used more independently as a concept for which relationality is constitutive. With
Richard of St. Victor this relationality and autonomy are conrmed in the denition of
the divine persons: the persons possess an incommunicabilis existentia through their relation
to one another. With that, according to Pannenberg, the step is taken that is analysed
by Hegel, but that he essentially does not go beyond. The relation to the other is
constitutive for the person. However, with Hegel the concept of substance is included
in, and, with that, replaced by the concept of the subject. The primary function that
was accorded to substance in the Aristotelian doctrine of categories is now taken over
by the concept of the subject.
the doctrine of god 333
but signs the work, and defends his or her authorship as a personal
expression. The work is something from his or her self. Rather than a
beautiful specimen of skill, it has become art. The artwork is part of
the way of the subject, and is therefore his or her unalienable mental
property.
Earlier in this section the critique was already raised that the concept
of self-revelation runs the risk of resulting is a certain impoverishment.
It was rst substantiated by noting that in comparison to the concept
of revelation in Calvin there is historically a reduction. It is however
also necessary to indicate the risk entailed by an unthinking use of the
concept of self-revelation in the current system. The point is not to
dispute the proposition that in its focus and intention revelation has
to do with God and with his intention to bring us into his salvic
presence, but to note that the modern identication of revelation with
self-revelation reduces the perspective on the ways in which God in fact
moves in his turn toward man. Already in the Bible we see that not all
the speaking, commands and acts of God can immediately be labelled
as self-revelation. The person of the Revelator is not in the foreground
in all forms of His speaking and acting. When in the Bible there is
the gift of the Law, when Israel gains experience with judgement and
Gods absence, when harvests and seasons are received as a grace,
when prophets bring their message to man in the name of God, men
encounter the acts of God in diverse forms. But not all these things
are immediately understandable as revelations that give us knowledge
of God himself. In the course of coming to know God and the history
of Gods dealings with man, for a long time human knowledge is in
fact focused on knowledge of Gods will, his commands. The content
of Gods speaking is not primarily God himself, but rather how man is
to act. These forms of Gods speaking are indeed connected with who
God is, but that connection frequently remains in the background. One
can rightly speak of self-revelation only when this connection between
the variety of Gods speaking and God in Himself is thematised. The
revelation of the Name of God in Exodus 3, the numerous I am
pronouncements and other statements in the Gospel of John29 and
in his epistles that concern the identity of Jesus Christ, where the
connection and identication is made explicit, can rightly be termed
self-revelation. It is not without reason that it is precisely in the latter
second panel one can conceive knowledge of God as a ray of light that
penetrates from above to below through the one centre, Jesus Christ,
so that one can follow the light in two directions, namely upwards and
downwards. For Barth too knowledge of God is bipolar. Who God is
becomes knowable through Gods self-revelation, and it also becomes
clear who we are and what this world is. The question of how God is
immanent is no longer a matter of satisfying curiosity, of our curiositas.
It has an eminently practical signicance. If one cannot take as ones
starting point that God in his own inner life is the same as He permits
himself to be known in the history of Jesus Christ, then we are groping
around in the dark. The light runs from above to below through the
centre; clear colours predominating on both sides.
In the following two sections (7.8 and 7.9) I provide a surveyalbeit
very summaryof several elements of Barths doctrine of the perfec-
tions of God. What is oered is neither comprehensive nor simple. It
is an exercise in which several points of Barths reinterpretation of the
doctrine of God are taken up. In this manner some insight is given into
the development that led to the rearrangement of the qualities in KD
II/1. These sections are not of the greatest importance in the whole of
this study; they are a interlude which can perhaps be skipped by the
reader who wishes to move directly ahead to what can be considered
the heart of Barths doctrine of God, namely his doctrine of election
(7.107.15).
Sensibility, feelings and emotion all have their being in God himself,
arise out of the depths of his own divine life, and are not just sum-
moned up by a force outside Him.40 That is the rst point. To that it
must be added, that this being touched and moved does not take place
in powerlessness; it is a matter of strength. According to Barth, that is
where the dierence with man lies. A man can be so aected that he
sinks under the experience. Being too sensitive involves risks, which are
met by the human mind by defensive responses and isolation. Among
human beings, being excessively sensitive can lead to the destruction
of the self. Is that not the case for God? In this respect there must be
a distinction between God and man. God possesses the capacity for
sympathy, sympathy in the highest sense of syn-pathos or suering with.
He can therefore expose himself without risk. For him it is a matter of
capacity.
The preceding can be understood as an attempt to put paid to the
image of God as the Great Outsider. That is the practical intent of the
proposition that revelation is self-revelation and the ecumenical Trin-
ity has its basis in the immanent Trinity. These theologoumena are
the theological means for conceiving Gods real involvement. In short,
we nd here in the doctrine of revelation the building blocks for the
theopaschitic position. God does not remain detached from suering,
but is involved in it in an original mannerand can, through the life
and death of the Son, become involved in a new manner in that which
would otherwise be foreign to Him. Before we have called down wrath
upon ourselves, we have already encountered God, who permits him-
self to be touched by human resistance.41 In practical terms that means
that the summons arises from this theology to stop regarding the suf-
fering that men bear as divine, eternal or inescapable. Because human
suering becomes involved with the inner life of God himself, at the
conceptual level Barth accomplishes a relativisation of the absolute-
ness and immutable blackness of all human darkness. Before man tastes
and experiences this darknessincluding the darkness they themselves
causeGod, in his heart, has already been touched by their plight.42
40 KD II/1, 416; ET, 370: The aection of God is dierent from all creaturely
Can one label this idealism? Are we dealing with a position that does
not take evil and suering seriously enough, theologically? Or should
we esteem this position as a genuine Christian protest against our con-
temporary culture, which permits itself to be crushed under its own
experience of suering?
It is also worth noting the development of the term righteousness
and the polemic Barth repeatedly entered into with Ritschl. Gods
righteousness is dened as a further qualication of Gods love. His
righteousness is the perfection with which He accomplishes his search
for fellowship with man in a way that is worthy of Himself. God
retains his dignity in his love.43 The impression from the rst panel is
that Gods righteousness remains rather separate from his mercy. The
connection between the two qualities is not visible there. The notion
of judgement, punishment and wrath thereby becomes autonomous,
creating a certain doubleness in the image of God. Barth has tried to
understand Gods righteousness and judgement in light of His mercy.
As a consequence of this, however, the notions of wrath, judgement and
acquittal do not disappear as terms which no longer really have a place
in a humane theology, and of which any humanely conceived theology
should be ashamed. For Barth Ritschls theology is the paradigm of
such a theology, tailored to human measure.44
For the rest it is however fascinating to see in how many respects
Barth is connected with Ritschl. Both are undeniably heirs of the
Enlightenment in a religiously dened ethos. Both proceed from the
unity of mankind and could not accept there being an ultimate twofold
division of humanity. The Enlightenment has a universalistic perspec-
tive in the search for the humanum, for meaning and the potentiality of
life for all without distinctions of race or class. It accepts the equal-
ity of all men as its basic principle. This realisation of unity, which
in Calvins theology and culture still obtained for only certain areas,
namely within the sphere of creation, the law and civil authority, where
all fall under the same regimen of God the Creator and sustainer, in
post-Kantian theology expands to become dominant in the doctrines
of salvation and God as well. The doubleness that is an intrinsic com-
ponent of Calvins theology, namely that by decisions in Gods Counsel
men are consigned to one of two groups, to wit the elect or repro-
bate, and that, corresponding to this, two sorts of outcomes are possible
for human existence, namely being denitively taken in or denitively
cast away, contrasts sharply with the most fundamental realisation that
modernity has made its own. All men are one before God, including in
the intention for their salvation. The same unity that governs the realm
of creation, also governs the order of salvation. Perhaps we must say
that the Enlightenment, with its vision of lasting peace and prosperity
for all, was the catalyst for the universal perspective on salvation that
permeates the theology of the second panel. Both Ritschl and Barth
are in their every atom a part of an intellectual culture that no longer
has any inner capacity to think in terms of a double outcome for his-
tory. Even those forms of contemporary orthodox Protestant theology
where it is the custom to buttress arguments by direct appeal to Scrip-
ture are slowly losing their capacity to think in any other way than that
salvation for all is the one aim and purpose of God.45
There is however a profound dierence in the way in which Ritschl
and Barth approach a solution to this problem. While Ritschl drops
the idea of a wrathful judgement and sentence or permits it to evapo-
rate in the light of Gods mercy and reconciliation, Barth attempts to
hold the two together by plotting out the way in which Gods mercy
develops toward its goal. In his discussion of the crucixion of Christ
Barth can even say, The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is that
there Gods condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, really
smiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel.46 The
righteousness of God can indeed properly be considered as a iustitia dis-
tributiva. Man is there confronted with Gods verdict. He has forfeited
his life, stands in that judgement stripped bare before God, all his fail-
ings revealed.47 Gods mercy is not something alongside and apart from
his righteousness, but it is precisely as the righteous God that He exer-
cises mercy. He gives justice, absolves those who cannot clear them-
selves. Thus one cannot do without reward, punishment and judge-
ment. Barth too does not see a double outcome for history,48 but that
can only be the case if the Biblical relationship of this judgement with
45 A good example is J. Bonda, The One Purpose of God. An Answer to the Doctrine of eternal
Punishment, Grand Rapids 1998. Cf. also the remarkable debate between D. Edwards
and J. Stott in: D.L. Edwards/J. Stott, Essentials. A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue, London
1988, 312319.
46 KD II/1, 446; ET, 396.
47 KD II/1, 434; ET, 386.
48 KD II/1, 441; ET, 392393.
the doctrine of god 343
49 KD II/1, 449; ET, 399: It consists in an alienation from God, a rebellion against
Him, which ought to be punished in a way, which involves our total destruction, and
which apart from our annihilation can be punished only by God Himself taking our
place, and in His Son taking to Himself and bearing and suering the punishment.
That is what is costs God to be righteous without annihilating us. The opposition to
Him in which we nd ourselves is so great that it can be overcome and rendered
harmless to ourselves only by God and indeed only by His entering Himself into this
opposition and bearing all the pain of it. And KD II/1, 450; ET, 400: Because He was
God Himself, He could subject Himself to the severity of God. And because He was
God Himself He did not have to succumb to the severity of God.
344 chapter seven
53 KD II/1, 461; ET, 410. In fact, Barth has here entered into the subject of the
doctrine of the convergence of all things, which he will discuss in KD III/3, 102175;
ET, 90154.
54 See note 12.
the doctrine of god 347
The patience that God exercises therefore serves not only for mans
salvation. This might be called a theocentric motif. Barth makes clear
that the progression of time has its ground in God himself. God is
the principle source of the latitude in which time develops, in his
patience moves in ways that are tting for Him and which do jus-
tice to Him. Barth expresses this in rather abstract and Platonic lan-
guage. The progression of time means time for eternity. What he
means by that is that God does not will that his acts should run out
into nothingness, that his words be spoken to no eect. The contin-
uance is for the satisfaction of God himself. It is not surprising that
Barth should cite Isaiah 55:1011: the Word which proceeds from Gods
mouth shall not return to him without result. It shall not return to
me fruitless, without accomplishing its purpose. God gives himself time
and space to do what He wills to do with his creature. For his own
sake Gods word is spoken eectively, and only then, once it is said
that this is tting for God, can it also be said that this is done for
the sake of man.55 Gods honour implies the salvation of man. Against
the background of the beginning of the Second World War Barth in
this way provides a vision of history which is completely theological,
and is reminiscent of the theocentric perspective of the rst panel.
The intention of God, and not the human experience of nonsense,
senselessness, power run amok, must be denitive and dominant in all
thought.
Within this context of the patience of God Barth also then speaks of
time: Gods yes to himself happens in such a manner that He also says
yes to man. Because we are taken up in the will of God, we are given
time. For the sake of Jesus Christ there is time for the multitude. That
also denes the concept of time. Our time is participation in Gods
time. The meaning of time is the active patience of God, through which
he calls us to active participation, to assent. Anyone seeking a meaning
for time outside of this denition of time as time for repentance, assent
to God, in fact ignores Gods turn to mankind, and there is nothing else
left then but to see the patience of God as a cruel game, unworthy of
Him.56
57 Barth in his own way participated in the consciousness that the god of the
philosophers is other than that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To what degree theology
is really able to go its own way in the freedom of the Gospel is a question in itself. It
says something about the self-understanding of dogmatics that it will go this direction.
For the rest, we have noted that in his concept of knowing God Barth is linked into
his historical context in all sorts of ways. At the same time, his theology is precisely of
paradigmatic value in the second panel because he reminds theology that it has its own
sources for knowing Godalbeit that it does not have them, but must listen to them
each time anew.
58 KD II, 507; ET, 450.
the doctrine of god 349
qualication of the rst being,59 but as being linked with Gods love.
Gods unity then becomes His trustworthiness, His faithfulness and
delity.60 The unity of God therefore does not mean that God is a
unique or single. His unity reveals itself precisely in the history of Jesus
Christ. In this event, not only caused by God but also identical with his
being and act, He reveals himself and He becomes known as the One.
Unity thus is not in conict with Trinity, but the confession of the unity
of God is a description of the concrete unity of God in this history. The
New Testament can speak of the one God in the same breath with faith
in the one Lord Jesus Christ (cf. ICor. 8:6 and ITim. 2:5).
The term omnipresence is linked with the unity of God. Omnipres-
ence is among the qualities of Gods freedom because by virtue of this
perfection He can be close to his creation. Barth develops this con-
cept by presenting an analysis of the spatiality that is a factor with the
concept of omnipresence, and then interpreting the term of love in spa-
tial categories. Barth tells us that Gods omnipresence in fact means
the confession of Gods capacity for proximity.61 Because God incorpo-
rates proximity into his own being, He can be close to his creature. For
the spatiality of creation this means that there is no remoteness that is
not without Gods proximity. Because this creation is Gods creation,
there must already be a basis in God for the notions of remoteness and
proximity. In God himself, however, remoteness and proximity are one.
Things that are next to one another in creation, or far apart, are one
for Him. There is no distance or proximity that is without His prox-
imity. What Barth produces here is an analysis of spatiality which in its
highest sense can be ascribed to God. In fact it is literally speculation,
a reection based on something known to us, being attributed to God
himself. God is able to be present with the other, indeed with everything
that is other. God does not coincide with the other; but He is nearby.
Gods capacity for proximity is at its deepest founded in the theology of
the Trinity. In the event of Father, Son and Spirit love is dened as a
59 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvtern zu Karl Barth, 186 draws attention to a theo-
logical-historical idealisation on the part of Barth. Since Augustine the simplicitas Dei
had metaphysical foundations; according to Barth that was not the case in the earliest
Church. According to Meijering, that is an idealisation which has no historical founda-
tion. The earliest Church too, when dealing with polytheism and Marcionism, always
defended the unity of God with rational arguments.
60 KD II/1, 516; ET, 458.
61 KD II/1, 519; ET, 461.
350 chapter seven
unity of remoteness and nearness.62 God not only exists, but co-exists in
His Three-in-One being. Presence is dened as being together within a
distance.63
In an extensive excursus Barth corrects Protestant orthodoxy when
it makes Gods omnipresence and eternity derivatives of his innity.
The boundaries of time and space that apply for man do not apply to
God, and thus man arrived at aeternitas and ubiquitas. Barths response
is that in this way Gods being is again discussed in terms of human
limitation, that is to say, in terms of a problematic within creation. In
this manner eternity and omnipresence threaten to become only nega-
tions, namely timelessness and non-spatiality. It is this sort of abstract
thinking about God that Barth criticises in Schleiermachers denition
of eternity and omnipresence. For Schleiermacher God is absolutely
timeless (non-spatial) divine causality.64 That is saying too little, or even
false. Space and time as categories can not be handled in parallel with
one another. Gods omnipresence is primarily a quality of Gods love.
In contrast, unlike Schleiermacher Barth predicates Gods eternity as a
perfection of Gods freedom, a perfection that expresses his sovereignty
and permanence. Gods acting, internally and externally, has an abid-
ing quality, and in analogy with this quality for his external operation
God creates what we call time.65 Thus, for Barth time becomes predi-
cated as the form of creation through which it becomes the scene of the
acts of divine freedom. Precisely for this reason, creation is not eternal.
Otherwise it could be no arena for the acts of Gods freedom.
Barth will not say this latter about Gods omnipresence. Omnipres-
ence too falls under the perfections of Gods freedom for Barth, but
a further specication is necessary. Gods omnipresence is a perfection
of the freedom at work in His love. Because this freedom works itself
out in love inwardly and externally, in his external work God creates
space. This space is the form of creation by virtue of which creation, as
a reality which diers from God, can be an object of Gods love.
Let us pause for a moment with this analysis. It is, as I said already,
literally speculation, reection, in which love is interpreted in terms of
spatiality. Here we already nd a preguration of Barths later doctrine
of creation in nuce. Creation is the outward basis of the covenant, and
The third decision that Barth takes in his discussion of the concept
of power is the most important, because it formulates his critique of the
development of the power concept. The thesis runs that Gods power
is not exhausted in his works. As usual, Barth chooses his direction
by entering into discussion with Protestant orthodoxy and reinterpret-
ing the denitions found there. He upbraids Polanus for identifying
Gods omnipotence with his omnicausality. In so doing, omnipotence
becomes a concept that is applicable in the realm of Gods opera ad
extra. In Quenstedts denition the potentia Dei is the principium exsequens
operationum divinarum. Polanus still distinguishes himself from this posi-
tively by speaking yet of a potentia personalis in addition to the omnipo-
tence of God, thus of a power which prevails outside of the Trinity.
Barths critical point is clear: by connecting omnipotence with Gods
external works orthodoxy has contributed to power being considered
as the characterisation of the highest world principle. In other words,
orthodoxy is in part responsible for Gods omnipotence being labelled
a might that has its place in his acting toward the world, in creation. In
Barths view, with Schleiermacher this results in God vanishing as the
dening subject, and becoming instead the concept of might. That is a
tremendous reduction. Causality now becomes the only, real and com-
prehensive description of Gods power. Gods capacity is exhausted in
Gods actual willing. Nature, that which is, henceforth coincides with
Gods power. Barth descries a development which had become the
dominant view in liberal theology, namely that Gods omnipotence and
omnicausality were congruent qualities.
It is precisely at this point in the second panel that the guration
is readjusted. Nature, that which is, the sum total of actuality, is not
identical with Gods omnipotence. Certainly, God is the cause of all
things. Let there be no misunderstanding that Gods knowing and
willing must be discussed as part of the concept of omnipotence. His
omnipotence is not however exhausted by his omnicausality. Gods
acting and his being are not exhausted by what is. That would rob
Him of his freedom. The liberal identication of omnipotence and
omnicausality makes a fatal reversal possible. It becomes possible to
simply interpret all power that man encounters as Gods will. This
view leads to an apotheosis of history, nature, and of man himself.72
God becomes an exponent of history and nature, and that is precisely
reverse is also true: On the other hand, that it is genuine human self-determination
does not alter the fact that it is completely under Gods foreordination and does not in
any way include a foreordination of God by men (KD II/1, 660; ET, 586).
78 Cf. the quotation from Augustine: Nec dubitandum est, deum facere bene etiam
sinendo eri quaecunque unt male. Non enim hoc nisi iusto iudicio sinit; et profecto
bonum est omne, quod iustum est. Augustine, Enchiridion 96, CCSL 46, 99100.
79 KD II/1, 672; ET, 596.
the doctrine of god 359
God runs through his reection on the concept of eternity: the concept
must be freed from its Babylonian captivity to the absolute confronta-
tion between time and eternity.80 Seen from a certain perspective, eter-
nity can well be viewed as non-temporality. But this non-temporality is
related to the fact that in time past, present and future are separated
and pull apart from one another. The characteristic of duration that
eludes them is precisely what accrues to God. Thus, as pure duration,
God is free in his acting, constant and trustworthy. Eternity is there-
fore the principle of Gods inherent unity, uniqueness and simplicity.
That this eternity must not be dened primarily in contrast to time, but
rather says something positive about the wealth of life that is peculiar
to God, can also be seen in Boethiuss famous denition: Aeternitas est
interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. Gods eternity is
a perfect and at the same time consummate quality of unlimited life.
It is His principle of abundance, through which he can relate precisely
to our time, and underpin the separate times. Again, the reversal of
perspective is applied: God in himself is the foundation for time. If in
Barths early theology the pregnant confrontation between time and
eternity was in the foreground and revelation was only conceivable
as a cancelling out of time, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik the opposition is
replaced by something which underlies and connects. Therefore Barth
can also say, God has time for us. In Gods self-revelation time partici-
pates in divine duration, in the abundance of Gods time at the moment
of the revelation. The analogical form prevails. Thus there also remains
a dierence between Gods time and our time, but human time is not
cancelled out, but rather receives a foundation and is brought to per-
fection.
Barth has a Trinitarian foundation for eternity. God the Father is the
source, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father
and Son. That implies a unity of movement. Next, in the incarnation
God not only gives time as the form of our existence, but God also
takes time: He becomes time.81 He permits created time to become the
form of his eternity.
The lines which Barth later develops in his doctrine of reconciliation
become visible here in this movement. Because God himself becomes
creaturemanin his Son, He does not cease to exist in His glory,
but at the same time He humbles himself. However, for man this move-
ment, which has its ground in God himself, means an opposite move-
ment of elevation. Barth therefore terms the incarnation a fullling
and surpassing of creation (English, 616). Time is elevated to a form of
Gods eternity. The eternal God is clothed in time. Here too, I would
once again note, it is no longer distance, but similarity, analogy, which
prevails. Who God is, is made clear in time by his revelation. The Eter-
nal is able to make time a form of his presence and in doing so exalts it.
The dierences from the rst panel are obvious. Accommodation as
the possibility for human knowledge of God is an adjustment to the
low state of man. In view of Calvins emphasis on the majesty of God,
accommodation has always also had the smack of condescension to lost
mankind. With Barth the accent lies elsewhere. For him too revelation
is a matter of grace from beginning to end, of benevolence, and here
too the incarnation can be termed an estrangement with regard to
Gods own being. This however does not detract from the fact that
Barths concept tends rst of all to understand revelation in time as
something which is in keeping with Gods nature, something which
does not run counter to but which tallies with Gods being. In being
gracious God does something that is most deeply characteristic of Him,
which has always been present in his own being. God is so powerful
that He is able to do this.
Thus eternity is no longer to be understood in opposition to time,
but in Christ, in the incarnation, where God becomes the mystery
of time. Time and space are not the forms in which in which man
regards and shapes the world, but lie within God as structures of
his omnipresence and eternity. Time is not alien to Him. With Kant
time and space were anthropologised; Barth responds by theologising
them, understanding them as forms within God. Thus this concept
fundamentally yields a positive relation between Gods eternity and our
time. If God, in his unlimited life, did not embrace our time on all
sidesthus before and behind, above and belowthen, Barth tells us,
this reality would be a dream, a reverie or a nightmare.82
Finally, a few words about the nal term, the glory of God. If in
the second panel there is anywhere that the meaning of creation is
discussed, as opposed to our experience of emptiness and absurdity,
it is on the basis of this perfection. The glory of God, Barth tells us,
is His competence as the omnipresent to exercise His omnipotence.
83 Cf. also KD I/2, 342; ET, 313; Faith in the New Testament sense does not mean
merely the superseding but the abolishing of mans self-determination. It means that
mans self-determination is co-ordinated into the order of the divine perdertermina-
tion.
84 KD I/2, 290; ET, 266.
85 KD II/1, 731; ET, 648.
362 chapter seven
those elements in life which correspond with Gods acts that God is
gloried, and only in those elements; then and only then is this exis-
tence a mirror. The dierences from the rst panel are considerable.
There, in the light of revelation the whole of reality is intended to
glorify God. As God is known, man begins to share in God and the
whole of creation again begins to shine. Therefore the whole of cre-
ation can again become a mirror of God going his way.86 But, we
must acknowledge, it is always the eeting, pale movement of a shadow,
which man can not grasp. Human existence is only the mirror of God
in this movement, in the living connection that God creates between
himself and things. For Barth it has ceased to be self-evident that cre-
ation is a mirror. He makes no appeal to evidences of God. It is an
image that is only true to the extent that Gods claim is heard. Jesus
Christ is the centre and compendium of this history. Reality is involved
in a series of reections or corresponding actions. In his doctrine of
creation Barth develops this still further. The relation of the Father to
the Son in the Spirit nds an analogy in Gods covenant with man,
and this relation is the found of the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is
this reality of a relation within Gods own being that is repeated as
an analogia relationis in countless refractions and is reected in a mul-
titude of relations: man and wife, parent and child, man and fellow-
man.87
In the concept in the second panel, man as homo faber is not fated to
unemployment. The modern view of man as an active, acting being,
who does not act under compulsion or as a slave to another, but acts
in freedom in such a way that it gives shape to his own individuality,
is not swept away. Rather, it is taken up into a larger context of Gods
work, Gods self-determination. It is Gods choice to live in relation
to man, in delity to and in solidarity with the human creature. That
creates the horizon for the content of the human self. It is the identity of
man, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to live in fellowship with the eternally
abundant God. Thus there is a space indicated where man can learn
to know himself better than he can understand himself outside of
it.
86 KD II/1, 760; ET, 674675: In this sense the way and thatre of the glorication
of god is neither more nor less than the total existence of the creature who knows God
and oers Him his life-obedience.
87 KD III/2, 261263; ET, 219220.
the doctrine of god 363
Who is God, with whom man is dealing? The discussion of Gods per-
fections served as a rst round in answering this question; the discus-
sion of the doctrine of election will be the occasion for a second round
toward an answer. For Barth, the doctrine of God ows out into the
doctrine of election, which is in its turn the core of the doctrine of rec-
onciliation. As compared with the dogmatic tradition, Barth takes the
far-reaching step of no longer dividing reection on Gods being and
on His acting into two separate compartments, instead considering the
one as an extension of the other. Being and revelation do not coincide,
because it must be assumed that God, by his nature, is not obliged to
reveal himself. Once God has decided to reveal himself, this revelation
takes the believer entirely into the mystery of Gods being. For Barth,
Gods actingconcretely the acting in election in the history of Jesus of
Nazarethis the window through which one can look into the heart of
God. As a result, as compared with the rst panel, in Barths theology
the concept of election has moved up to a place within the actual doc-
trine of God. Election describes not only Gods action toward man, but
also his own being. We could also put that dierently: the positioning
of the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God is theologically
the conceptual model for breaking the centrality of the human subject.
After the turn to the subject, the only possibility left appeared to be to
discuss God as an element within the human horizon. By making the
doctrine of election the spearhead of the doctrine of God, a reversal
takes place. Man and his world receive their place and meaning con-
ceptually within Gods horizon.88
Barth never avoided making use of the word election theologically. In
his early theology the word however does not function as a description
of the content of revelation, but of the nature and manner of revelation.
Election and rejection are the designations for the two categories into
which man comes in the light of revelation. In the second edition of his
Epistle to the Romans man is empiricallythus according to the visible
ordernever more than Esau, that is to say, the rejected, someone
to whom God says no. In the light of revelation the same man can
however become Jacob, the child of election, over whom the light of
Gods love and eternal life shines, although this is never directly visible,
88 Cf. Jngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden,Tbingen 19763, 45; ET, 4647.
364 chapter seven
but at the most being perceptible as the yes that lies hidden behind
the visible no. Election and rejection in this way coincide with the
actual reality in faith of man himself. In the rst parts of the Kirchliche
Dogmatik election also functions as an element of Gods call, without
that expressly referring to an eternal ground in God himself.89 That
changes in the doctrine of God. In KD II/1 election refers to a content
in God himself.90
In this process, in the second volume of his doctrine of God (KD II/2)
Barth develops, of all things, precisely the concept that in theological
history had been associated with an arbitrary and tyrannical God,
with the threat of destruction and inhumanity and with the tragedy
of Reformed theology,91 into the concept that serves as the summary
of the Gospel. The formulation of the Leitsatz for 32 permits no
possible mistake about it. It is a clarion call: The doctrine of election
is the sum of the Gospel because of all the words that can be said
or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too
the One who loves in freedom.92 What Barth wants to achieve is that
the word election become a concept of salvation without any darker
associations.93 He accomplishes this by exercising a sharp critique on
the Biblical exegesis of preceding theology. For a moment I would recall
the undervaluation of the covenant in Calvin, how the covenant is
there termed something in the middle and all the drama of sacred
history which is unfolded in Romans 911 is reduced to a decision
about the salvation of individuals. Barths critique is as follows: there
has been too little awareness in the tradition that in Scripture election
is a category of sacred history, which must be wholly understood in light
of the relation of God with his people. The core of this history is the
yes that speaks to this people, and through this people to the nations.
The key to the exposition of the sections of the Bible that provided
the traditional Biblical basis for the doctrine of predestination is Gods
choosing for a relation with his people, their choice for discipleship or
other, and Gods choosing to permit them to share in the messianic
future. It is from this perspective that chapters 911 of the epistle of the
Romans must be read. In these chapters Gods election and rejection
89 See also McCormack, Karl Barths critically realistic dialectical Theology, 456.
90 KD II/1, 308; ET, 274.
91 C. Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 593f.
92 KD II/2, 1; ET, 3.
93 KD II/2, 1213; ET, 1314.
the doctrine of god 365
are in the service of his intention to salvation. For Barth this point
Gods intention for salvation for all mankindis the reason to take
election as the concept in which numerous threads of his theology come
together and become interwoven. In this concept election has a topical
function.94 Within his dogmatic concept the doctrine of election forms
the transition and threshold from Gods own being to his works. As
such, Gods election belongs in both subsets. Election is the core of the
doctrine of reconciliation, which follows on the doctrine of God, but at
the same time this election is part of Gods free self-determination.
It is important to note that as much as possible it is not the noun
election that Barth employs, instead constantly using the active verb.
Barth speaks of Gods electing and willing. It is not a decision, a
will, a choice that is central, but the emphasis lies on the acting, the
movement: God is the One who himself chooses, wills. Pointing back to
the acting of God in this way is characteristic. In faith, in our existence
in the world, we are not dealing with a decision, with an intention
that, once taken, becomes a self-standing entity apart from the living
God. Strictly speaking, there is no decision that one can take from the
press like a printed decree; one is dealing with the living God in his
willing and decreeing. We see again what we have already noted: the
reality to which dogmatics refers is a movement, an event, the acting
of God. Human knowledge of God can therefore only be the result of
this acting and willing of God, which becomes knowable in the history
of the one person Jesus Christ. There, in a real sense, one sees into the
heart of God.
Barth calls this willing and deciding of God the primal history or pri-
mal fact.95 The term Urgeschichte had previously played a prominent role
in Barths theological development. He derived the concept from the
posthumous work of Fr. Overbeck, for whom Urgeschichte stood for a
dening phase in the life of a people or movement, which none the less
remains shrouded in darkness.96 Barth took up the concept in the sec-
ond edition of his Epistle to the Romans to denote the incomprehensibil-
97 KD II/2, 6; ET, 7.
98 KD II/2, 53; ET, 51.
99 KD II/2, 55; ET, 52.
100 KD II/2, 10; ET, 11.
the doctrine of god 367
Jesus Christ is the electing God and He is the elect man.103 His doc-
trine of election is comprised of the further development of these two
propositions.
that revealed in these happenings and under this name. For in these happenings and
under this name He has revealed Himself.
103 KD II/2, 63; ET, 58.
104 KD II/2, 111; ET, 103.
105 KD II/2, 5; ET, 5.
106 KD II/2, 124; ET, 116.
107 KD II/2, 11; ET, 12.
the doctrine of god 369
decisive lines are drawn for man and his destiny. God chooses to exist
in proximity to mankind, and man is thereby the one for whom the
proximity of this God has become the denitive factor.
We will have to develop these brief pointers further. First, with regard
to God: in Jesus Christ it becomes clear who God is and what He is
like, to the very remotest corners of His being. That God chooses for
man, turns His face toward him and seeks his life, is not a movement
or decision that comes from God the Father alone. It is a decision,
work that is attributed to the Father, Son and Spirit.108 Barth attempts
to carry the Trinitarian perspective through to its extreme. The Son
is not only the object of election. From one perspective it can appear
that one must speak of the Son primarily in passive terms. It is indeed
the case that the Son is elected through the Father to exist in unity
with and in the same form as mankind. But the Son himself and the
Spirit are also involved in this choosing. The term which here indicates
the nature of the connection and structure of the relation of God in
his acting to the man Jesus, and in Jesus to the whole of creation, is
Entsprechung, analogy or correspondence. The movement in which the
Son of God himself becomes a co-subject of the choice to exist in unity
with the man Jesus corresponds to the obedience of Jesus Christ. Or,
going the other direction, the choice of the eternal Son himself reects
Jesus obedience and the commitment of his life.109
Then the second proposition must be developed: Jesus Christ is
elected man.110 Calling upon Ephesians 1:4 and John 1:12, Barth rst
argues, quite in line with tradition, that in the electing of the man
Jesus we see what election is at its deepest. Because God through his
Word decided to live in unity with this man, He shows what grace
is, what impartation is to living, to glorication. In terms of content,
electing means that God makes the life of the creature his own life, or
metaphorically, God makes himself Father and man his child. This is
yet too weakly expressed in words such as goodness and mercy; this
is self-surrender. God gives himself in the fellowship. The most radical
change that all of this brings with it for the second panel is the breadth
of election. Gods decision does not involve an abstract entity such as
humanity, mankind, or individuals as exemplars of mankind, but in the
person of Jesus involves all the fellow men of this man. The electing of
that man ultimately stands all alone in a cosmic void and in complete,
bleak abandonmentand Barth himself had such dreamsgoes hand
in hand with this on the theological level.112 The history of Jesus shows
that man has a place with God, that being human is from the very
outset being together with God. Third, the human subject does not dis-
appear if Gods Lordship is acknowledged. The alternative between life
as a design and life as subjection is a false choice.
112 It is not purely as a matter of biographical interest that we refer to Barths dreams
here. Eberhard Busch tells of a dream from the last year of Barths life: Eines Morgens
traf ich Karl Barth niedergeschlagen an. Aber was ist Ihnen denn zugestoen? fragte
ich. Er sagte: Denken Sie, ich hatte heute nacht einen argen Traum. Mir trumte, da
mich eine Stimme ansprach: Willst du einmal die Hlle sehen? und ich antwortete
noch wohlgelaunt: Doch, das mchte ich gern einmal sehen; das hat mich schon lang
interessiert. Da nete sich vor mir ein Fenster, und ich sah hinaus in eine endlose
Wste, deren Anblick Mark und Bein erschtterte; und mittendrin sa steineinsam ein
einziger Mensch. Da schlo ich das Fenster, und die Stimme sprach: Und das droht
dir!. Ich sagte etwas leichthin: Ein Traum er wehrte dem heftig: O nein, Trume
sind in der Regel ernst zu nehmen. Er schwieg eine geraume Weile und fuhr dann
zgernd fort: Und da gibt es noch Leute, die mir vorwerfen, bei mir fehle das Wissen
um solche abgrndige Bedrohung. Ich wei nur zu gut davon. Aber was bleibt mir
gerade darum anderes brig, als alles darauf zu setzen: Gott schwrt bein seinem
Leben, da er dich nicht verlt? Cited with W. Schildmann, Was sind das fr Zeichen?
Karl Barths Trume im Kontext von Leben und Lehre, Mnchen 1991, 168.
113 KD II/2, 172173; Cf. the english translation 159, which by mistake reads decre-
its mundanity, at the same time arises from and is grounded in the life
of God himself. It is therefore this particular history, this concrete per-
son, who becomes the centre for telling the story, thinking, doing, hop-
ing and expecting. That is how one can characterise Barths concept
of the decretum concretum. The speaking of the Church does not begin
with an elusive above; the above makes itself known in the below, in
the history of Jesus Christ. The a priori starting point that Barth once
postulated outside of time in the concept of Ursprung, enters the world
of time and space, in a concrete human history. In the early Barth the
eye of faith is drawn to a point which itself no longer belongs to time
or space; in the later Barth of the doctrine of election Gods eternal,
sovereign Counsel coincides with a history in space and time. After
the doctrine of election Barth will increasingly formulate his a priori in
terms of the history of Jesus Christ, the living person himself.
We must underscore that particularity continues to belong to the
vexing, surprising and provocative points of Christian belief. When
matters concern us, there are references to a specic people, Israel,
and a specic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and his history. Does Chris-
tian faith then have nothing more to oer, something that is closer, that
happened yesterday? The concretely historical, that took place some-
where in time and space, which we know about through stories and
texts, is the point of departure for thinking and speaking. For Kant Jesus
was the exemplary gure for a moral ideal; with Hegel the concretely
historical is taken up and elevated in the concept; with Barth the con-
cretely historical is no longer something which must be transcended: it
is the origin and criterion.
Barth expresses the shift in perspective which the appearance of this
point of departure brings with it by proposing that this starting point in
the decretum concretum makes possible and activates human knowing and
questioning.115 In his view, confrontation with a decretum absolutum as the
nal limit of belief and thought strikes us dumb. One can only ee into
ethics or mysticism. Not-knowing is then the highest attainable. When
however we have God and his will before us in concreto in Jesus Christ
and his history, all knowing is a further occasion for new, and this time
more specic questions. The believer does not silence questions, but
is prepared to pose all questions anew in the light of this answer, and
thus bring the space he or she inhabits, personally or collectively, into
116 KD II/2, 174; ET, 160: Genuine and open questioning begins with the knowledge
of the mystery of the election of Jesus Christ, for in this mystery we are confronted
with an authority concerning which we cannot teach ourselves but must let ourselves
be taught, and are taught, and can expect continually to be taught.
117 The word mysterion appears at various places in the Bible, indicating something
which was hidden and has now been brought to light. It can be applied to the Kingdom
(Mark 4:11) or Gods Counsel (ICor. 2:7, Col. 1:27, Eph. 3:4). In all cases mysterion
is not the event of revelation itself, but refers primarily to the content of revelation.
It is indeed however constitutive for the Biblical concept that at a certain time this
content is unveiled through Gods gracious act. One does not come to see the content
without being aware of Gods absolute power. The content of the knowing is not
without a certain nature of knowing. It is in this more general sense, as a term for
the relation between content and way in knowing God, that the term has taken root in
contemporary theology. See, for instance, the title of E. Jngels book Gott als Geheimnis
der Welt.
374 chapter seven
theologie in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, edited by D. van
Keulen and C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 923.
the doctrine of god 375
with the opposing force. The opposing force of sin is therefore not just
something that has its claims on earth, here below. It has an eect that
reaches to the very being of God.
The dierences with the rst panel of Calvins theology become very
manifest at this point. With Calvin all emphasis lies on the proposition
that the divine and human must remain separated. In his discussion
of the ignorance of Christ, in the portrayal of his fear and of his
death, the divinity of Christ is regarded as in abeyance or hidden.122
For Calvin too the crucied Christ is the most profound point of Gods
mercy, but Christ bears sin and its punishment according to his human
nature. With the suering of Christ, Calvin emphasises the dierence
between the two natures. At this very crucial point Barth follows not
Calvin, but Luther,123 thereby becoming an important marker in the
present orientation to the Cross as the origin and criterion for Christian
thinking about God.124 In this, Barths doctrine of God marks what may
well be termed the great substantive dierence between the rst and
second panel: the involvement of God in this world is not primarily
understood in terms of creation theology and pneumatology, but begins
from Christology, from the Cross and resurrection as the places where
God decides about man and Himself.
Gods choosing is conceived as a double predestination. Election and
rejection, yes and no, do not however involve groups of men, nor are
they qualities of Gods revelation; they refer to the content of salvation,
namely God who in his Son brings down the judgement on Himself
and thus precisely through the judgement maintains the fellowship and
gives Himself. In Barths words, God himself tasted damnation, death
and hell.125 It is still more radical when we read that the incarnation of
God can mean nothing other than that He declared Himself guilty
of the contradiction against Himself in which man was involved.126
From such formulations one might conclude that in this concept God
122 For the abeyance, see for instance Comm. ad Matth. 24:36; for being hidden or
Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 288.
124 One of course thinks of the theology of E. Jngel, Vom Tod des lebendigen
Gottes. Ein Plakat, in: idem, Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Bemerkungen, Mnchen
1972, 105125 and J. Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, Mnchen 1972. See also A. van
Egmond, De lijdende God in de britse theologie van de negentiende eeuw. De bijdrage van Newman,
Maurice, McLeod Campbell en Gore aan de christelijke theopaschitische traditie, Amsterdam 1986.
125 KD II/2, 179; ET, 164.
126 KD II/2, 179; ET, 164.
376 chapter seven
declares himself responsible for the situation of man, and that God
nds himself at fault for the failure of the project of man and creation.
This idea, which can take root if the theodicy question dominates the
discussion of the question of God,127 is not however to be found in
Barth. He places the stress on the voluntary solidarity with which God
declares himself guilty. It is assumed guilt, suering born in solidarity,
which is the result of the decision of election taken in full freedom.
By now it should be clear that with questions of this sort we nd
ourselves in the centre of the themes that one deals with in every
concept of Christian theology. How should we conceive Gods relation
to human failure, human sin, human suering? How does the decision
to create man and the world relate to the fact that man as creature
chooses his own way, to mans freedom, that he can turn away from
God? How does Gods plan for salvation relate to human obstinacy,
to the closed nature of the vicious circles of evil? These are the great
themes that man can indeed push around conceptually, but which can
never be pushed away. Nor can one escape from the problem by not
attributing the quality of power to God. Recent theological history
teaches that man loses the concept of God if power is not in some way
predicated to His acting, if one denies that He is Lord over time and
space. That is not the case in either of the panels here. Gods Lordship
denes the colour scheme for both Calvin and Barth. In both we
nd substantive lines that point in the direction of supralapsarianism.
It is necessary to spend a few words going into the debate between
infralapsarians and supralapsarians.
Although from a distance the conict between infralapsarianism and
supralapsarianism may largely seem a case of theological fatuity and
inanity, examined more closely it is one of the battles in which funda-
mental judgements occur that have direct connections with the ques-
tion of the boundaries of knowledge of God and spirituality. It is a
dierence in emphasis which transcends pure curiosity. In infralapsar-
ianism election has more the nature of a response to the fall, of an
action towards restoration. Creation, as a work of God, has greater
independence. The spotlight is on the seriousness of sin, its absurdity
and the deep lostness of the sinner. According to infralapsarianism the
127 This is the direction taken by A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart
van de theologie, Kampen 1998, 155157; ET: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology
(Studies in Reformed Theology. Supplements I), translated by P.O. Postma, Zoetermeer
2004, 168169.
the doctrine of god 377
from the consequences of seeing all things in life, all decisions, as being
under the sovereignty of God, under his dominion. Anyone who will
not accept that inevitably arrives at a form of Pelagianism, in which
Gods majesty is reduced or where in one way or another, precisely in
the eort to safeguard God from every form of responsibility for evil,
a form of dualism is created.132 In that case, the remedy for defending
Gods moral inviolability is worse than the disease.
Barths theology teaches that creation and the fall can not be spoken
about other than from the perspective of deliverance. Anyone propos-
ing to consider sin, the alienation of the world and the riddle it is,
apart from the God who comes to meet us in Christ, is thinking in the
abstract. According to Barth double predestination means that all peo-
ple, as fellowmen of the man Jesus, as people under sin, are intended
to become witnesses to His glory. The centre of gravity and core of this
theology does not lie in the decision to create. Creation is not the last
of Gods deeds. It has in it the potential for the fall, and is therefore
not the highest achievable. This dierence in the place and content of
the concept of creation was among the issues which Barth himself in
discussion with Brunner pointed to as noteworthy dierences between
Lutheran and Reformed thought.133 Lutheran theology can still think of
grace as restitutio ad integrum, restoration of an original and sinless con-
dition; in agreement with the old Augustinian line of thought, in the
Reformed doctrine of a creation covenant with Adam and Eve the idea
of the surplus of the eschaton, and with it the eschatological tenor, is
132 Calvin and Barth are both theologians for whom the theological perspective of
the glory of God predominates. God is gloried in the salvation of his children. Calvin
felt he had to speak of the extent of election to life in a restrictive sense, and therefore
his theology appears so much more inhumane. Within dogmatic reection however it
is advisable to be careful with such judgements, which can result is a feeling of moral
superiority. Even within the perspective of universal salvation in Barths theology the
questions are no less serious, human existence no less enigmatic, and the dark place no
less dark! Barth also must give a place to the darkness that pervades life, to the reality of
sin, alienation, suering, pain for what will not be fullled, was cut short, never came to
be. Within his unitary perspective he postulates the darkness in the idea of the Nichtige,
which is connected with Gods positive creative will under a negative portent. But his
locating evil and sin in this way and dening it as the impossible and unreal as opposed
to the reality of grace shows that Christian theology cannot avoid giving a place to sin
and evil in some way or another.
133 See Karl Barth/Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 19161966, hrsg. von E. Busch, Zrich
2000, 135141. Cf. also Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, 616; ET: In the Beginning.
Foundations of Creation Theology, ed. by John Bolt and trans. by John Vriend, Grand
Rapids 1999, 208.
the doctrine of god 379
rience or see them as questions,140 says less about Calvin than it does
about the changed cultural and intellectual constellation in the second
panel. This is not to say that the identication of revelation with self-
revelation in the second panel is wholly and totally a matter of changes
in intellectual history involving culture and mentality. The development
of the concept of revelation as self-revelation can also be connected
with essential notions in the Old and New Testaments themselves. It
is easy to defend the proposition that the altered constellation in intel-
lectual history awakened a sensitivity which enabled theologians to see
essential elements in Scripture and think through their implications. In
the Christian tradition we have been taught to speak of God as a per-
son. He is no it; He is approachable, we can call upon Him, and in
this encounter man, for his part, also becomes more and more a per-
son.
In the second panel the nal horizon for theological knowledge no
longer coincides with the will of God, but is the person of God, His
self-gift in Jesus Christ. Barth attempt to prevent that the will of God
remain an abstract entity. Jesus Chris is not only the application in
the search function for man seeking salvation, but is also the content
of this salvation. The will of God as the last horizon increasingly
coincides with a concrete name, and a concrete history: Jesus Christ.
Only by reading this story and taking it seriously theologically as the
history in which the depths of God as a person speak to us, will all
anxious doubt be banished. In this history, above and below, eternity
and time coincide through Gods grace.141 The question of whether life
will ultimately still end in darkness, is merely a bad dream in which
man is unwanted and left behind alone in a bleak cosmos, is answered
by pointing to that which came close to us in our reality.
For the rest, the concretising of Gods will does not mean that the
distinction between Gods eternal will and the decision of predestina-
tion falls away. Barth emphatically retains this distinction conceptually,
because only in this way can the freedom of God be preserved. If the
distinction was not there, God would be absorbed into his relation to
man and the world. The dierence from the rst panel is however that
Barth focuses this eternal will most precisely on the life story of Jesus
Christ. This story provides perspective and insight into the sovereignty
and glory that God has in himself.142 The agreement with the tradition
is that Barth wants to hold fast to the unsearchable majesty of divine
good-pleasure. But he deviates from the same tradition by not consid-
ering this eternal will as an obscurity into which we cannot see. On the
contrary, we can indeed see into it, we understand Barth to say. Gods
eternal will is transparent in the history of Jesus Christ. It has taken
concrete form there, and come to dwell among us.
It will be clear that in the above the relation of time and eternity has
been a constantly recurring theme. It is necessary here to briey reach
back to what was previously said about God as the Eternal One. For
the concept of eternity it is essential that Gods being Lord of time
is expressed. The words vorzeitlich, berzeitlich and nachzeitlich indicate in
spatial terms that God transcends in all possible ways the time which is
familiar to us, is involved with the forms of our existence, encompasses
themin short, is Lord of Time. For Barth eternity is not primarily
a concept related to time; it is rst and foremost a characterisation
and indication of Gods majesty and sovereignty over the forms of our
existence. That means, therefore, that any concept in which time and
eternity are discussed as opposites to one another will from its inception
fail to engage what is being said here. Barths actualism means that in
Gods acting in time and space man encounters the dominion over our
time and space that is peculiar to God. The fact that in the history
of Jesus Christ Gods eternal will is made visible and comes about
does not however imply that earthly history is only the performance
of a scenario that is decided somewhere else. Barth terms that a deistic
misconception. In deism the acting of God is something that precedes
history, and not something which denes it in the here and now. The
latter is however precisely what Barth wishes to express in his actualism:
at every instant God is involved in every moment of time as the living,
the choosing and judging One. In every moment of temporal existence
we stand before the God who chooses, determines, surrounds and call
us, and who precisely in that calling and determining summons man
143 KD II/2, 170, 200201; ET, 157, 182183. A good illustration is found in the words
of O. Noordmans: Eternity is precisely the string that drives the arrow of deliverance
on to its target. Gods eternal decision is taken at the last moment. See O. Noordmans,
Het koninkrijk der hemelen, (Nijkerk 1949, 110=) Verzamelde Werken II, Kampen 1979, 493.
144 KD II/2, 207214; ET, 188194.
145 See Karl Barth, Rmerbrief 2, 331332; ET, 346348.
386 chapter seven
ability of God is made dependent on speakability. See Jngel, God as Mystery of the
World, 300.
chapter eight
1 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Das christliche Leben (Fragment). Die Taufe als Begrndung
title Das Christliche Leben. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Fragmente aus dem Nachla. Vorlesungen
19591961, Zrich 1976.
388 chapter eight
vated by the fact that Barth once again rearmed his reputation as
an enfant terrible in the ecclesiastical and theological establishment by
his rejection of infant baptism. It had been common knowledge for
many years that Barth was extremely critical of infant baptism; he had
already previously expressed himself on the subject in a document from
1943.3 At that time he had already connected the retention of infant
baptismand particularly the fact that it appeared to be a topic on
which no discussion was possiblewith the stubborn refusal to recog-
nise that Christianity had ceased to be the corpus christianum, and accept
the sociological consequences of the new minority situation.4 That he
later, in the present fragment from 1967, characterised infant baptism
as an abuse5 and once again vehemently rejected the custom, was thus
nothing new. As he had done in 1943, he suggests that the retention and
defence of infant baptism, even in liberal theological circles where peo-
ple acknowledged that the exegetical basis for infant baptism was shaky
and open to dispute, had more to do with the fear of a sociological and
social horror vacui than with faith. Infant baptism belongs too much to
the structural pillars of a church for which the totality of the population
was identical with the totality of its members, with a state church or a
national church, than people would dare to admit.6
Although the continued debate on infant baptism is one of the in-
triguing elements in this fragment, the importance of this text, which
was in fact the capstone of the KD, is theological in nature. The struc-
turing lines of Barths theology are radicalised in a direction which has
left the theology which came after him with great questions. Is the
rejection of the sacramental principle indeed the nal consequence of
this theology? Is it even perhaps the nal consequence of the Reforma-
tion, in which all knowledge of God depends on the Word, and this
Word is characterised by discontinuity with respect to historical and
7 D. Schellong, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong,
Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973, 72: Ich bin der Meinung, da KD IV/4
die Probe aufs Exempel ist, oder man begrien hat oder wenigstens ahnt, was in der
theologischen Arbeit Karl Barths passiert und intendiert ist, welcher Weg es ist, den er
suchte. Es geht um die Absage an das Verwirklichen und Haben des Gttlichenum
die Absage an die Vergegenwrtigung des Heilsgeschehens, wie man spter zu sagen
liebte und damit Neo-Orthodoxie trieb.
8 For all practical purposes, these two theses appear in a report of Barths Novem-
ber, 1915, lecture in Basel, Kriegszeit und Gottesreich, that P. Wernle wrote to
M. Rade. According to Wernle Barth described the Christians consciousness in faith as
follows: 1. die Welt bleibt Welt, vom Teufel regiert, alle Versuche in allen verschieden-
sten Richtungen, etwas zu bessern & helfen, sind wertlos & folglos, 2. Gott ist Gott, das
Reich Gottes mu kommen, dann wird alles anders, 3. was haben wir zu thun, an Jesus
Christus zu glauben & zu harren auf das Gottesreich. See F.W. Kantzenbach, Zwis-
chen Leonard Ragaz und Karl Barth. Die Beurteilung des 1.Weltkrieges in den Briefen
des Basler Theologen Paul Wernle an Martin Rade, ZSK 71 (1977), 393417, 406. See
for a discussion my Anfngliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barth (19091927),
Mnchen 1987, 7172.
390 chapter eight
Catholicity of Christianity and the Church, trans. by John Bolt, Calvin Theological
Journal 27 (1992), 220251.
barths view of the sacrament 391
8.2. Developments
or with the Son of God who is also the Son of Man. Within his concept
of knowledge of God, in which the primacy continues to lie with God
as subject, Barth attempts to expound the revelation as concrete history,
the history of Jesus Christ, which must be understood as the way of the
Son of God into the far country14 and as the exaltation of the Son of
Man.15 Theological thought remains the ontological ground for faith,
in an analogy for which no analogue can be identied in our world:
the unio hypostatica as the assuming and assumption of human nature
into unity with the Son of God is an event which is self-evident and
unparalleled.16
The development in Barths view of the sacraments runs parallel
with his recognition of the humanity of Jesus. Baptism and the Supper
are sacraments analogous to the anhypostasis of the man Jesus. For all
practical purposes, the only place for that which is human is as an
exponent of the event of revelation. The sacraments are human actions,
which by virtue of Gods free and electing act can become a means for
His revelation.
of the self-witness and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Risen One is
present as a force in history, and makes all things testify to Him. With
his power He is assured of a response, He opens a way with peoples
and nations. Particularly in KD IV/3 this aspect is worked out in length
under the heading of the prophetic oce of Jesus Christ. This section
is therefore important for Barths later theological epistemology. God
makes his sovereign way through history in Christ as the Living One.
Jesus as Prophet proclaims Himself and His own history. Sovereignly,
he comes nearby, creates the link.
Barth described the content of the history for which the name of
Jesus Christ stands as being a double movement. He makes creative
use of two doctrines distinguished by Protestant orthodoxy, namely the
doctrines of the oces of Christ and of the estates of Christ. According
to the doctrine of oces, one can regard the work of Christ under the
three oces of prophet, priest and king; according to the doctrine of
estates, Jesus moves from the state of humility to a state of exaltation.19
Barth interprets the doctrines of estates and oces together, in terms of
each other. The priestly oce of Christ is connected with his state of
humility, and the oce of king with the state of exaltation. By sending
the Son into the world below, God does something with himself and
to himself. He enters the depths, the Lord becomes Servant (KD IV/1).
At the same time this history can also be regarded as an exaltation for
man. What seen from the perspective of God is a road to the depths,
for man it reveals itself in the opposite direction, namely a road to the
heights: in the life of Jesus the outline of the royal man becomes visible
(KD IV/2). Debasement and exaltation are both poles through which
the history can be characterised. In addition, according to Barth in KD
IV/3, there is a third aspect which can be distinguished in this history.
The history of Jesus Christ nds its perfection, its peculiarity and its
divine glory in the fact that He reveals Himself and makes Himself
known.20 Independent of the question of whether this revelation will be
understood and accepted by man subjectively or noetically, it is true of
the history of Jesus Christ that it is in and of itself a communicative
and transeunt event.21 This history is not only light, it is in itself a
355403: locus XVIII, De ocio Iesu Christi mediatorio en locus XIX, De Iesu Christi
statu exinanitionis et exaltationis.
20 KD IV/3, 6; ET, 8.
21 KD IV/3, 7; ET, 8.
barths view of the sacrament 395
source of light. Put in other words, what Barth in this third part of the
doctrine of reconciliation says under the heading of the prophetic oce
of Christ touches directly on the question of the way to knowing God:
reconciliation is not a closed event, but a history which opens out from
within itself, which shares itself. Reconciliation, the signicance of Jesus
Christ, does not still have to be applied; every application exists by
virtue of the fact that Jesus Christ himself is the Living One who opens
up the signicance of reconciliation. What does Barth do with this?
In the following sub-section two manners in which Barth develops this
self-disclosure will de discussed.
Welt in: H. Berkhof/H.J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre, Zrich 1978, 36, 48, Zurich
1978, 36, 48, is inclined to this view. Berkhof rightly points to remarks in the fragments
from the years 19591961 published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jngel, Das Christliche Leben,
197 on God being objectively known in the world. This concession, which sounds
so much like Calvin, regarding objective acquaintance with God in the world and
subjective ignorance of Him as a result of human slowness and fault, does not receive
any theological development.
396 chapter eight
29 The role of G.C. Berkouwers critique appears to have played in this connection
is remarkable. In his book De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth, Kampen 1954,
(ET 1956) Berkouwer had accused Barth of turning grace into a principle. According to
Berkouwer, for Barth grace had become so much the basis for all thinking that it in fact
had led to a speculation about grace, eternity and sin. Berkouwers accusation was that
Barth actually taught the resurrection of all things, and had trivialised the seriousness
of sin and evil. In his reply Barth shows that this had hit home, and at the same time
protests that it is a misunderstanding to say that in his thought grace has to do with
a principle, and not a living Person. See KD IV/3, 198206; ET, 173180. See also
the discussion with the Tbinger Stiftlern in: Karl Barth, Gesprche 19641968, Zrich
1997, 80: Ich habe es ja nicht umsonst als einen Kampf beschrieben, aber -als einen
siegreichen Kampf.
30 KD IV/3, 33; ET, 32.
398 chapter eight
35 KD IV/4, 4; ET, 4.
36 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
37 KD IV/4, 12; ET, 11.
38 KD IV/4, 4; ET, 4.
barths view of the sacrament 401
by God the Father in the resurrection of Jesus, for faith they have come
to be understood as the history of Gods acting and being. This history
is the complete representation of the new being, because He is the
one within time who answered the faithfulness of God in all places
with his human faithfulness. That new being is the divine truth for all
people, apart from the question of whether these people acknowledge
and accept it in their own life.41 This new being is the objective reality
that can be characterised as Christ pro nobis. Baptism with the Spirit
implies a second step, namely the explicit acknowledgement from the
side of man that the new being which has come into existence in Jesus
Christ denes our lives. Barth characterises a Christian as a man from
whom it is not hidden that his own history took place along with the
history of Jesus Christ as the decisive event which establishes his life
as a Christian. He himself in the midst of all other men can see himself
as one of those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what He
did.42
It is of fundamental importance here to realise the universal import
of the history of Jesus Christ. Barth does not say that man potentially
has a share in this history. Mans participation is a fact, a situation
brought about by God. However, through baptism with the Spirit,
that which from the perspective of God we have pro nobis, is now an
event in us, in nobis. In an event faith becomes an actuality within
man, a turning of the heart through which man becomes a believer,
becomes an empirical subject of faith.43 In his discussion of baptism
with the Spirit Barth in fact reaches back to what he had written in
the preceding sections on the doctrine of reconciliation with regard to
the ontological connection between Jesus Christ on the one side and
all other human beings on the other. When God sends his Son, he
objectively alters the situation of being human. Barths interpretation
of the incarnation continues to make itself felt. The primary meaning
of the incarnation is not assumptio hominis, but assumptio humanae naturae.
The Son does not primarily take on the shape of a man, but of that
which is human, of humanitas.44 It is the possibilities and givens that are
inherent in our being human, in our humanitas, that God accepts in
Christ. The early Church expressed this in the term anhypostasis. What
In his Small Catechism Luther makes a very immediate connection between baptism
barths view of the sacrament 405
8.5. Directness
The question arises of what Barth had in mind with his pronouncement
that Jesus Christ acts directly in baptism with the Spirit. Does he mean
and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death
and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and
promises of God declare (I, Baptism, II). In the Reformed tradition the Heidelberg
Catechism follows the line of Calvins view of the sacraments by explicitly denying
that the reception of the sacrament would be identical with the forgiveness of sins
or participation in Christ. In baptism man is reminded and assured that the one
sacrice of Christ on the cross avails for [him] (Q. 69). See Dr. Martin Luthers Small
Catechism (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1943), 16, and the Heidelberg Catechism, trans.
Miller/Oosterhaven, as it appears in The Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America (New
York: Reformed Church in America, 1968), 475.
49 See for example M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation
ther of the work of salvation nor the Word of salvation.51 The cen-
tral concepts are Selbstbezeugung and Selbstmitteilung (translated as self-
attestation and self-impartation). Unmittelbar therefore does not mean
that Barth denies witness and service by men. The immediacy of which
Barth speaks, one can interpret, implies that he no longer wishes to
give human service the theological qualication of a medium through
which God makes Himself present in a hidden manner. Assistance is not
representation. The concept of representation disappears. The intercourse
between God and man has the form of directness, in which the earthly
factors no longer are qualied theologically as representation, but at
the most as assistance and reference. One can regard this as relieving
the human actors. Human actions no longer have to represent. Oces
and the sacrament lose their nimbus. Thus the direction of our ques-
tion will also have to be reversed. Does Barth still oer the conceptual
possibility of thinking of condescension? Are there still sucient possi-
bilities oered here to draw attention to Gods using various means to
make Himself known, and taking persons into service as assistants?
posited, this must not be construed as His sole causality.54 The concept of
partner implies that there is room for real intercourse between God and
man, and for a real answer. Through the power of the Holy Spirit the
history of Jesus Christ, which is revealed in the resurrection, is manifest
for a particular individual. Barth rejects the objection that Gods omni-
causality and the freedom of man are irreconcilable. A contradistinc-
tion of this sort betrays a way of thinking which places God and man
on the same plane, thereby making them competitors. If one begins
with Gods omnicausality, then there would be no room left for human
freedom. If one begins with the assumption of human freedom, Gods
omnicausality can not be maintained. In both cases, Gods omnicausal-
ity and the freedom of man are absolutely antithetical, and become
abstractions which then can not tolerate each others existence. But this
is thinking from outside. One only obtains insight into their polarity
and mutual relationship by taking up the insiders perspective of faith.
It is the same point of departure that Barth takes in his actualism, by
which the extremes of both determinism and a complete historisation
are avoided in the doctrine of election. Dogmatic reection has to pro-
ceed from the meeting between God and man in Jesus Christ. Such
reection must follow what is seen by the eye of faith in this encounter,
namely God as the partner who appears within the horizon of man as
the other partner in the covenant.55
Barth has blocked every idea of a mediating function for baptism
with water. The acting subject in baptism by water is the community
of Christ, which by its administration of baptism acknowledges that
the baptismal candidate is someone who knows Jesus Christ.56 The
candidate is also present in this event as subject, because he or she
approaches and wishes to be baptised. In short, baptism is only con-
ceivable as adult baptism. The ambiguity that is characteristic of the
sacramental acts in Calvin and that is anchored in the classic doctrine
of the sacraments is renounced in favour of man as subject. Baptism
is an act of obedience, a rst act with which the baptisand acknowl-
edges that he or she wishes to respond to the history of Jesus Christ.
As such, baptism is the beginning of ethics, and as such is also still an
integral part of the doctrine of reconciliation.57 In receiving baptism,
the candidate assents to the decision of God about his or her life, with
its judgement and grace.
Barth founds the dichotomy and distinction between God and man
Christologically. In his judgement, the baptismal commission in Mat-
thew 28:19 is in fact an extrapolation of Jesus own baptism by John
the Baptist. Barth here adopts as his view an interpretation of the
passage in question which is defended in Biblical studies by form-
historical arguments. What is remarkable though is that he transposes
this literary-historical judgement into a dogmatic argument without fur-
ther discussion. For the rest, this form-critical manner of dealing with
the baptismal commission is perfectly congruent with Barths vision of
the resurrection. According to Barth, the resurrection adds nothing; it
is the revelation or unveiling of the meaning of Jesus life. But to return
to baptism: in this way baptism is anchored in the acting of Jesus. Jesus
own entry into the water of the Jordan is an act of obedience, by which
the man Jesus places himself under the command of God.58 In the way
which he goes he confesses his sins. In this way Jesus applies Gods
command to himself and thereby is exemplary for every human being.
Baptism is not performed on the basis of the consideration that it is
a means of salvation, a medium salutis,59 but because it is commanded
by God, ex necessitate praecepti.60 In the same way that Jesus testies to
his obedience to God by his baptism by John, accepting Gods service
and thereby fullling the covenant between God and man, so Christian
baptism is to be understood as the step by which a person acknowl-
edges living this new life, within the space of this history. In this way
the community follows in the way that the Messiah himself went, tak-
ing up the command of God, acknowledging His judgement and grace.
Barth no longer wants to understand the phrase in the name of
Jesus, which frequently occurs in the New Testament in connection
with baptism, as having sacramental implications. He suggests that
this phrase does not have to be expounded sacramentally, and can
simply mean to baptise with the name of Jesus in mind. With this
exposition he creates room for his own non-sacramental interpretation.
The baptismal formula is not an invocation, but a summons to the
believer. It is of great importance to Barth that baptismand, we
might add, also the Supperbe qualied as an act of man. These
actions are not channels of Christs gracious work, are no longer forms
of the Word. Christ is not the subject of these actions; in baptism as
an act of obedience man opens himself up and begins on the way to
the Kingdom of God, or better, he opens himself up within the new
existence brought about by Jesus Christ. Human subjectivity, mans
obedience and answer have their place within the realm created and
controlled by God. It is one event with two subjects. This is a vision
in which the things of this world do not take place outside of God. All
disorder and horrors in history may not in themselves be viewed as if
they were the only reality to be taken seriously. They must be seen in
the light of God, who has come close to all men in the history of Jesus
Christ. The worst thing that the Christian community can do is to live
in denial of this new being. Faith means regarding and accepting the
whole of human life, the darker sides no less than the bright spots, in
the light of Gods approach in Christ.
Can one accept this emphasis on man as the acting subject in the
sacrament without adopting Barths rejection of the sacramentality of
baptism and the Supper? In a critical sense, opposing Barth, the fol-
lowing could be said: If God reaches us by various means, through the
power of the Spirit, through historical mediation, then the sacraments,
in all their sensoriality and corporeity, could also be regarded as means
through which we are given a share in something that is not other than
that which we share in the proclamation and in faith. In the hearing
of the Gospel, in Baptism and the Supper, the community lets itself
be involved in that history of which Jesus Christ himself is the subject.
That which was said in the rst panel can here be critically advanced
against Barth. In the sacrament, as a condensed and sensory mediation
of the story, we do not come in contact with anything other than the
history of Jesus Christ, nor do we stand before a repetition or actuali-
sation of the salvation event, but, to use Jngels formulation, we come
in contact with the same thing in a dierent way.61 The notion of the
sacramental has to do with the fact that Gods approach embraces and
touches our spatial and temporal, physical existence. Should this not
mean that a doctrine of the sacraments must have its place within pneu-
matology, and cannot be developed without consideration of anthropo-
logical notions?
61 E. Jngel, Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verstndnisses der Taufe in: idem,
Barth-Studien, 310.
barths view of the sacrament 411
In connection with the place that Barth wants to create in his late the-
ology for man as subject, it is important to yet discuss the meaning of
the term noetic. As was said above, in his doctrine of reconciliation
Barth speaks of the ontological connection of Christ with all mankind.
The dierence between believers and non-believers is that the former
have knowledge of this connection and the second group do not yet
know of this correspondence. What they lack is not the real proximity
to Christ. That is the hidden secret of every child of man. Jesus Christ
as the great Yes of the goodness of God62 is the One through which
every man is made a christianus designatus or christianus in spe.63 What is
lacking is knowledge of the correspondence. But what is knowledge?
Just how much territory does the intellectual-sounding word noetic
cover? Does it cover the necessity and evangelical demand for a per-
sonal answer?
First, it must be noted that the term noetic ts with the proposition
that all salvation is given in Jesus Christ. All newness is contained in his
history; nothing of substance has to be added. The work of the Spirit is
not creative, but it unveils and implements. Pneumatology falls within
the circle of Christology, or coincides with it. In those cases where a
certain peculiarity is ascribed to the work of the Spirit and it is thought
of as the wider perimeter of the acting of God, as is the case in Calvin,
the term noetic is insucient. Next, in Barths case it will be well for
us to not dene the term noetic too statically. As was the case for
Calvin, it is also true for Barths theology that for him knowing is more
than just an intellectual matter. Learning to know oneself in connec-
tion with Jesus Christ and discovering that ones own existence plays
itself out in the proximity of the living Christ is indeed a dangerous
implications as man, and let it resonate against the walls of ones own
life. Learning to know is making the rst steps on a way; it is a battle,
even though in the light of the priority of grace it is a battle lled with
the expectation of victory.67
One of the most obvious dierences between the pre-modern and post-
Kantian panels involves the relation between faith and theology, or, in
the language of this investigation, the relation between knowledge of
God and theology. The manner in which a distinction is made in the
second panel between the act of knowing God on the one hand and
confession and dogmatic reection on the other diers radically from
the rst panel. In this case, that means that the relation is regarded as
qualitatively dierent. In the rst panel what we now would call dog-
matics or dogma is indeed present, but as a human activity it regards itself
very dierently, and much more modestly. That perhaps sounds strange
and implausible, because at the mention of church dogma and con-
fession one today thinks immediately of authority and imposed belief.
With their incredible arrogance, doctrine and confession are superior
to faith. Still, it is true and worth the eort to recall what was said in
Chapter 6 about the dierence in the self-image of doctrine and reec-
tion on doctrine. For Calvin, dogma, doctrina, is not a human given, not
doctrine; it is divine teaching. It denitely does not include all that is
present in Gods thinking and willing; it is a deliberately limited but
adequate selection of that which man must know to serve God, obtain
blessing and live in a manner worthy of Him.3 Doctrine is not intended
to know all things; it is intended to produce to the right attitude in
man, a sincere disposition toward God. Man can closely follow what
God has to say in revelation in Scripture itself. The discussion of the
doctrine of election in the rst panel aorded a striking example of this
idea. To our mind, Calvin may have gone much too far by mirroring
election in a negative decision which runs parallel to it, reprobation,
but in his own view he was only providing a rational arrangement of
Biblical data, a deduction which one simply could not avoid. If we our-
selves no longer make such deductions, honesty compels us to say that
this is something which was not decided merely on the basis of altered
insights from Biblical studies. It is true that the discussion of election
and reprobation in Romans 911 are categories in sacred history. It is
true that the announcements of judgement and damnation as found in
Matthew 22:114 can not be uncoupled from the situation of preaching,
debate, threat and denial. But all these altered insights are not enough.
They are themselves already a sign that more is going on. The path
from the Bible text to doctrine has for us become longer, more indirect.
The character of the text as a human, historical product is prominently
in the foreground. How the earthly, the human, can be a vehicle for
Gods speaking, an instrument in His hands, is raised for discussion in
the second panel. Barth provided an answer for this which gradually
became still more radical. Must we follow him in this radicality, and
is his position perhaps the most extreme consequence of the Reforma-
tion choosing the free grace of God as its starting point?4 These are
questions which not only continue to make Barths theology interesting
for interconfessional discussion, but also point back to the fundamental
questions for all Christian theology within the oecumene.
As we have said, theology in the second panel begins from a sharp
distinction between the reality of knowing God on the one side and
the reality of human words, texts and reection on the other. The
realisation that knowledge of God is absolutely not self-evident runs
like a thread through this thinking. Already in his early theology Barth
cites Ecclesiastes 5:2: God is in heaven, and thou upon the earth.5
What we encountered in the fragment on baptism (KD IV/4) is a
variant of the same theme: Gods grace is an incommensurable element
that cannot be coordinated.6 The uniqueness and complete originality
of the acting of God with respect to man recurs everywhere in the
theological structure in the concept. This peculiarity does not preclude
the presence of God and the reality of intercourse between God and
man, any more than it supports an agnostic vision. The structure
of the theological concept is already in itself a continual reminder:
God as the object of human knowing is never negotiable, never at
our disposal, never capable of being built into structures of wood,
stone, language, liturgy, sacraments. His presence remains His deed,
His holiness continues to be guarded by His mystery. Knowledge of
God is a reality, a movement, the secret of Gods own dealings, and
as such does not permit itself to be xed in words. Theology and
preaching can point to that mystery and bear witness to it; they do
not have the power in themselves to make it present or demonstrate it.
4 Zie H.U. von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Olten
1951, 32: Wir mssen Karl Barth zum Partner whlen, weil in ihm zum erstenmal der
echte Protestantismus eine -seine- vllig konsequente Gestalt gefunden hat.
5 Rmerbrief 2, XIII; ET, 10.
6 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
profit and loss 421
It is not without reason that the pointing nger of John the Baptist on
the Isenheim altarpiece, focusing attention on the suering Christ, is
the model for the relation that Barth conceives between theology and
knowledge of God. Biblical texts testify to Gods dealings with man, and
dogmatics also in its way points to this acting of God. In all its elements
the reality of these dealings, of knowing God, remains a matter of grace
and a gift. Barths doctrine of the Trinity in KD I/1, the doctrine of
the analogia dei in KD II/1 and the doctrine of election in KD II/2 are
three attempts to point, from dierent vantage points, to the always
elusive mystery of the relation initiated and constructed by God, to a
becoming attentive to God who seizes man and the world for Himself
in Christ. Dogmatic reection must keep space open for this living
reality. That is the anti-agnostic import of this theology. Theology no
longer pretends to be a demonstration of this reality; it intends to be
of service to faith and proclamation by providing a listening exercise in
reection, assuming an attitude toward the Bible that makes it possible
to hear the Word in the dialogue with the texts. That is prot.
I would wish to emphasise that in the presence of this second panel it
is dicult to accept a view of dogmatics that isolates only one function
that was very prominent in the rst panel, namely a summary of all
that God had made known about things visible and invisible. The
function of ordering material, of distinguishing and connecting the
content of belief, remains indispensable. But Christian doctrine and
dogmatics as reection on the body of belief is more than a classical
garden where the paths and beds are laid out neatly and need only
be raked and weeded by future generations. The word dogmatics and
the adjective dogmatic still call up such associations. Barths concept
of theology is modern in that it emphatically places the human and
subservient nature of dogmatic reection front and centre. Reection
on faithand what is dogmatics other than thinking about faith in
a more or less orderly way?has to serve the knowing of God, to
be useful to the relation between God and man, to equip people to
name the experiences in their lives, and to bring these into connection
with the story of God. That can not happen without all the great
themes coming into play, being examined again with regard to their
content and eloquence. But doctrine, and reection on doctrine, do not
have the function of binding the individual believer; their function is
to point the way for people, to provide words and concepts that can
help them unlock and name their own experience, and invite them to
mindfulness. In this there is a parallel between Kant and Barth. The
422 chapter nine
8 Cf. L. Karelse, Dwalen. Over Mark C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999, 71, 106.
9 Used in this sense by W.S. Johnson, The Mystery of God, 184191. G. Ward baptises
the meaning that Lyotard assigned to the term postmodernism and applies it critically
to Barth. See Barth, Modernity and Postmodernity in: J. Webster (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Barth, 276, 291 (= K. Barths Postmodernism, ZdTh 14[1998], 35,
49): But postmodernism concerns that which Lyotard terms the unpresentable, the
repressed, the forgotten other scene that modernity both needs and negates in what
Barth will call its will for form, its absolutisms, its rational utopias That which
comes before, constitutes the other scene of and follows after the modern. In fact,
this statement pitches Christianity outside the stories of premodernity, modernity
and postmodernity. Christianity transcends our history-making with its epochs and
periodizations. In this way the concept is placed in the service of an indeed very
idiosyncratic supra-historical interpretation.
10 See 8.5.
424 chapter nine
392: This stance before God, without any mechanism, without arrangement, without
solemn intermedium, gives Reformed life its characteristic seriousness. God is close by,
because it is above all the work of the Holy Spirit that is in the foreground. For the
whole argument see A. van der Kooi, Het Heilige en de Heilige Geest bij Noordmans. Een
schets van zijn pneumatologisch ontwerp, Kampen 1992.
profit and loss 425
The means through which God speaks and the mirrors of His reve-
lation are in direct relation to His acts. God instructs man through a
range of means, among which Scripture as his Word takes rst place.
Scripture came into being under the direct auspices of the Holy Spirit,
and Gods will is made public in it. For Calvin Scripture is indeed the
criterion for knowledge of God, but not the only place where God lets
himself be known. Under the guidance of the Spirit the whole of the
world that surrounds us becomes an instrument of Gods dealings with
man. The heavens, the rmament, birds, sh, the scent of owers, these
are the decor of the theatre in which Adam found himself. The natural
world is not regarded as a product which came into being as part of
an unimaginably long, mysterious and unrened evolutionary process,
as the result of an interaction of energies, forces and chance. Scripture
is not the fruit of human reection, not designed by a group or peo-
ple which wished to promote its collective interest, but is the deliberate
creation of the Spirit. Monarchs are given to rule and care for peo-
ples and men; parents are given to care for and raise up their children;
and all other groups have their place, and according to their respon-
sibilities are to be mirrors of Gods goodness and care. In its every
corner this world bears the stamp of divine intention and providence.
The sheen of Gods favour and goodness lies over ordinary life.12 Here
everyday living is still traditionally a part of a hierarchy of life, sacra-
mental.
How should be regard this? Is not Calvin too harmonious here, too
hierarchical, and has his experience of life not become alien to us for
precisely these reasons? Or, on the contrary, does his hierarchically
structured theology not preserve for us the realisation of the goodness
of God that one can encounter, precisely in the ordinary, the given?
How dierent is Barth on this point! Barths preference for idealism
above realism, noted in the introduction, is signicant: there is no
direct access to the reality of God. His theology is dominated by a
fault line, by discontinuity. Knowing God consists of breaking with
the ordinary, familiar, human. Making the dierence between God
and man an explicit theme however also presents an opportunity to
integrate an insight into this concept that must be called modern, par
excellence: namely the human character of all religion. No one would
12 It may be that a compelling connection between the Dutch masters of the 17th
century and this idea cannot be conrmed, but it did create the conditions under which
ordinary life in its splendour and beauty could become the subject of attention.
426 chapter nine
want to retreat from that insight. Nor would I deny the risk. Making
a theme of the human nature of knowledge of God can call up the
suggestion that there is no real reference in the whole of being who
speaks and lets Himself be known. In this constellation, it can be readily
understood why the concept of revelation has acquired such a key
function in post-Kantian theology. That there is really something like
human knowledge of God, nds its theological anchor in the concept of
revelation becoming a theme. We will return to this shortly.
13 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufstze und Vortrge zur Religionsphilosophie,
15 It is widely recognised that it would be incorrect to say that Barth puts paid to
every form of ontology. Ill will toward ontology as such is simply not a part of this
concept. Exactly when theology focuses on the concrete history of God with Israel and
Jesus Christ for its knowledge of God, exactly when the object of theology thereby
is the Word or story that God himself speaks in this history, it becomes possible to
discover the ontological implications in this way of thinking, which itself leads to a new
perception of reality. For such an attempt see I.U. Dalferth, Existenz Gottes und christlicher
Glaube. Skizzen zu einer eschatologischen Ontologie, Mnchen 1984.
428 chapter nine
16 See Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfnge der dialektischen
Theologie, Teil I, Mnchen (Kaiser) 19774, 337, for example. 4: Christ der Retter ist
dasonst wre die Frage nicht da, die der heimliche Sinn all der Bewegungen unserer
Zeit ist
17 For example W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie. Bd. I, 142; ET, 127.
profit and loss 429
ment that something comes from above.18 The distance that has grown
up in the culture of the Enlightenment with regard to all appeals to
divine authority, and that was also posited as such in Barths concept,
echoes through this aphorism. But does it get us anywhere? Applied
consistently, it ultimately becomes meaningless and negates all religion,
all aection, all life. It is a screw that ultimately turns but no longer
holds. Even if one sustains an approach from history and comparative
religion, based on texts and experience, for as long as possible, one
must at some moment ask the question of their truth content. At some
point one nds oneself facing the question of whether god is the prod-
uct of mans creative faculties, of religious need, or whether there is
a real referent.19 The word revelation is, so to speak, the other side
of the coin of feeling spoken to. In his concept of knowing God Barth
took this step in all its radicality: knowledge of God is only true and real
under the assumption that God himself is speaking, comes, makes Him-
self present in all sorts of ways, reveals Himself and in this way makes
Himself the object of human knowing. Where theology methodologi-
cally evades or refuses this step, it changes into the study of religion,
literature or culture,20 and theology disappears as an entity. The prot
of Barths doctrine of revelation is that it works out this circle of faith,
18 H.M Kuitert, Zonder geloof vaart niemand wel. Een plaatsbepaling van christendom en kerk,
Baarn 1974, 28. Thus Kuitert began a long search which has run through a series of
books, each of which begins in the eld of the history of religions and ends in the eld
of Christian doctrine. In the repetition however it also becomes clear that in fact each
time two books are being written which are published inside one cover, namely one
on history of religion and one on dogma, in which the assertions that are made in the
dogmatic section are no less reections of subjective belief than what Barth is accused
of. In a recent book, Over religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars, Baarn 2000, 188 he
arrives at the experience of feeling himself spoken to as the core and germ of Christian
faith.
19 See Houtepen, God, een open vraag, 24; ET, 10.
20 I will add a critical observation to this: theology which follows the example
of Cliord Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York 1973 and
G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia
1984, in taking the nature of Christian faith as a cultural-liturgical phenomenon as
its starting point, is in danger of becoming totally uninteresting theologically. An
approach of this sort regards religionand Christian religionprimarily as a human
construction, and undoubtedly this perspective leads to a multitude of valuable insights
regarding the anthropological and cultural function of religion. Christian faith aords,
as do other philosophies and religions, an orientation in life and possibilities for action,
and can therefore be studied meaningfully under this aspect. Such an approach can
also however ignore the most fundamental assertion of Christian belief, namely that
the rite, the prayer, the act at their deepest honour God and do justice to Him. In a
culture where the attempt is made to dene and understand all phenomena exclusively
430 chapter nine
in terms of human actions and capacities, theology, should it join in this point of
departure, is doomed to speak of God only between inverted commas.
21 See A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, New York/Oxford 2000.
profit and loss 431
22 For a development of this, see C. van der Kooi, The Assurance of Faith: A
25 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
26 KD I/1, 52; ET, 52: Proclamation is human speech in and by which God Himself
speaks like a king through the mout of his herald, and which is meant to be heard and
accepted as speech in and by which God Himself speaks
434 chapter nine
27 See Oberman, Calvins Legacy, 125134; Selderhuis, God in het midden, 2348. See
also A.J. Jelsma, De ziel van Calvijn, Kampen 1998, who for the rest does not escape an
extremely pedantic tone. For a critical consideration of the literary basis for Bouwsmas
thesis, see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 7998.
profit and loss 435
With the paired concepts Word and Spirit, derived from Calvins theol-
ogy, I take up two words with which some justice may be done to the
way to knowing God and its actual intertwinement with human experi-
ence. The linking of these two concepts goes farther toward expressing
the historic involvement of Gods turn toward man, and the diversity
and plurality of various forms of revelation which arise from it, than
does the single concept of self-revelation. The dominant position of the
29 See the work of H.C.I. Andriessen, Volwassenheid in perspectief. Inleiding tot de psy-
chologie van de volwassen levensloop, Nijmegen 1984, idem, Oorspronkelijk bestaan. Geestelijke
begeleiding in onze tijd, Baarn 1996. A. Lanser-van der Velde, Geloven leren. Een theoretisch en
empirisch onderzoek naar wederkerig geloofsleren, Kampen 2000, 206208.
438 chapter nine
to be given up. But this criterion is far from saying all there is to be said
about the ways and places where man learns to know God. This is the
question about the universality of Gods revelation.
through. In the world reconciled by God through Jesus Christ, there is,
as we quoted earlier, no one abandoned to themselves, to a profaneness
outside Gods dispensation.33
Barths acknowledgement of universality is nothing new. In his ear-
lier theology too Barth ventured to trace personal questions about
the meaning of life and the social dynamics of the search for justice,
peace, political equality and personal happiness to God and Christ, by
considering them as the unseen source and motor of these questions.
That he withdrew from this position after the end of the 1920s, in the
course of the debate over natural theology, almost goes without saying.
Strategically, he no longer had room for it. The Church instructs the
world, not the other way around. Only after the Second World War,
in his doctrine of creation, is the attempt made to bring all sorts of
general anthropological phenomena back into theology through Chris-
tology. The various relations and arrangements in which man lives
man/woman, parent/child, fellow menare understood through the
analogia relationis. In the light of revelation they become mirrors of the
way in which God relates to Himself within His own divine being, and
has a place for the other within Himself. Berkhof correctly suggested
that Barth also wanted to give all these things, which for him had
become places where divine light was found, a place in his theology.
Speaking theologically, the work of the Spirit in creation and history
is indeed involved with Christology, but does not wholly coincide with
it. In fact a certain instruction of the Church by the world also does
exist, and it is not only the opposite that is the case.34 Theologically
this openness and acknowledgement does not lead to a relativisation of
the criterion that the Church was given in the history of Jesus Christ.
It does however throw light on the relation of pneumatology, the doc-
trine of creation, and Christology. To the very end Barth structured
his thought so that theologically seen, all knowledge of God is derived
from revelation in Christ. He had no intention of retreating even a step
from the Barmen confession. Pneumatology is entirely comprehended
in Christology. There is thus no room any more for a relatively inde-
pendent place for the work of the Spirit, for an appeal to an order
given in creation, as we saw that in Calvin. As we have said, it becomes
clear in Barths own theological development that the comprehensive
35 See for example J.C. Adonis, The role of Abraham Kuyper in South Africa. A
Critical Historical Evaluation, in: C. van der Kooi/J. de Bruijn, Kuyper Reconsidered.
Aspects of his Life and Work, Amsterdam 1999, 259273.
36 See C. van der Kooi/A. van Egmond, Het beroep op scheppingsordeningen. Een
wisselend getijde in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, bezorgd door
D. van Keulen/C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 157172; ET, The appeal to creation
ordinances: a changing tide, in: REC Theological Forum 21/4 (December 1993), 1325.
37 That in the Old Testament the theme of creation has a certain autonomy along-
side the motifs of exodus and liberation has been defended again for Biblical studies by
G. von Rad, Weisheit in Israel, Neukirchen 1970, 189239. See also J. Barr, The Concept of
Biblical Theology, 468496.
442 chapter nine
What is prot, and what loss, with regard to the content of knowledge
of God? In both the rst and second panel Christian knowledge of God
has its substantive criterion in the history of Jesus Christ. For Calvin the
promises that are contained in Jesus Christ, in his life and his death on
the cross, form the content of faith. The believer is invited to behold
Gods will and plan in this very limited mirror. The source of saving
knowledge is in this way precisely localised: namely, the countenance
of Christ. Particularly in the Cross of Christ Gods majesty shines forth
the most, because it is here that it becomes clear that He desires to save
sinners fallen into distress. One of the most signicant images in the
rst panel is that of the Father with his adopted children. Outside of the
Scripture and outside of Christ the world is alternatively a spectacle of
retribution and obscure injustice, and a theatre of tender and wonderful
care. But all these notions, of a strict judge and a caring king, undergo
a reguration when one has once learned to know Gods compassion
38 See, for instance, for the Old Testament, W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old
and mercy in the face of Christ. As the sources of knowledge about his
salvation, Calvin wanted to pin the believer to Scripture and Christ as
the mirrors which the Spirit held up for man. The possibility that the
Counsel of God which lay behind them would become a threat would
only arise when the Bible lost its status of evident divinity. The binding
to the Biblical promises as mirrors of Gods mercy would then lose their
its anchor.
In the foregoing we have given one of the reasons why the concept
of double predestination could undergo such fundamental correction
in the second panel. Calvins view imposed a premature limitation on
the seeking love that is held up to us by Scripture in the actions of
Jesus and in his resurrection as the rstborn of all creation. Like the
theology of his time, Calvin did not see that in the Bible election
is rst and foremost a category of sacred history. Election describes
the way that God goes about searching for and recovering man. In
this regard, the second panel of Barths theology represents a prot
which can not be abandoned. As an extension of Barths reading of
scripture we can say that God chooses for men, chooses for them in
order to involve them in the things of His kingdom in the interplay
of Word and Spirit. He invites them to this, urges them to this, and
men stand under judgement if they turn aside. The word election
means that God in his own proximity makes room for man and the
world. The relation between God and man can therefore be formally
expressed as a creative proximity which realises itself in various forms
of acting which are to be ascribed to the Father, Son and Spirit. In
Christ as the Son the nearness of the one God becomes concrete in
deliverance and liberation; in the Father the acting of the one God
become concrete in creation and sustaining; in the Spirit the work of
the one God becomes concrete as renewal and sanctication. Barth
wanted to read Gods choice for man in terms of the history of Jesus
Christ. The relation to the man Jesus is thus a part of the manner in
which God elects to be God. With it Gods salvation is promised to
man, the history of Jesus Christ becomes a symbol and sacrament of
Gods choosing fellowship. At the same time, something is said about
God. There is no longer anything that can be said about God outside
of the history of Jesus, outside of his Cross, outside of the threat of death
and ultimate abandonment. Such a change of tracks, as compared
with the rst panel, has abundant consequences, both for thinking
about God and for thinking about man. I will enumerate several plus-
points.
444 chapter nine
2. At the same time, the opposite must also be said. It is Gods choice
not to will Himself without man. It is His choice not to will Himself
without the consent of man. God exposes Himself and His love to con-
sent by man, to rejection. In the doctrine of God it will have to be
made clear that He is not an apathetic God, but that in the incarna-
tion as the deepest point of identication with the human condition,
with His resurrection, God exposes Himself to rejection and defensive
gestures by creation. If there is something in the abundance of His life
that God may not be denied, it is the highest sensitivity. That means
the possibility of injury, of suering in God.
The decisions in God about man, about his salvation, death and life
fall ultimately in the order of Gods eternity. In this choice Calvin and
Barth stand side by side, and we stand before the spiritual and theo-
logical core of Reformed theology. However much accent may fall on
further human responsibility, on renewal of life and the appeal to man
to respond to Gods invitation, it remains a problem for contempo-
rary theology as well how one can reconcile the subjectivity of God
and the subjectivity of man without conceiving them as competing, in
other words without the alternatives of determinism and historicising.
Once one premises the primacy of eternity over time, are mans actions
not then determined, and does the order of time and history still have
any weight? At a conceptual level, how can one keep human history
and responsibility from being trivialised? And, from the other side, how
can one prevent God from being trivialised? Or must we leave things
with the observation that there are limits to our knowledge of God
and our thinking about God? Of course the latter is true. The terms
infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism were mentioned several times
in preceding chapters. They are terms that theology has left to gather
dust. Yet, like pales sticking out of the sand, they remind us of a ten-
sion that seems to be inherent in the spirituality of Reformed theology,
namely the refusal to either trivialise Gods sovereignty and gracious
supremacy, or to dispose of human responsibility. The historic debate
between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism confronts us with the
limits that we would rather avoid, but in fact always run up against.
Barth sought to avoid the trivialising of the order of time by terming
the decision for electing a decretum concretissimum. The eternal decision
of God to live in fellowship with man is taken with an eye to a histor-
ically dened person, the man Jesus Christ. Eternity is not primarily
a concept of duration; it is primarily the designation for the order of
Gods life and acting. Behind the words decretum concretissimum we hear
again how Barth wished to think of God and His plans, proceeding
from Jesus Christ and his history. There the order of Gods sovereignty
and human history coincide, and that co-incidence must be the point of
departure and criterion for Christian theology. This Name and this his-
tory are the counterweight that is necessary to prevent human history
from become nothing more than a projection screen for an eternally
446 chapter nine
If we compare the rst and second panels with regard to the role of the
human subject, the dierences are immediately obvious. With Calvin
the metaphors expressing mans relation to the Holy Spirit are those
of the school and pupil. A pupil deserves to pay careful attention to
the material which is oered him. Man remains to the end of his days
in the school of the Holy Spirit, who teaches and instructs him. At
this point we touch another metaphor that is of great importance in
Calvin, namely that of man as the alien, the pilgrim passing through a
strange land. Here, unquestionably, lies a dynamic, eschatological fea-
ture in Calvins concept of knowing God. God showers his creatures
with countless signs of His providence. Moreover, in the sacraments this
care and grace is once more impressed upon man, by tangible means,
not that this stop with the symbols, but that they might be mindful of
the promise of solidarity with Christ and everlasting life in God. The
purpose of these accommodations is that man now already reaches out
for a life in perfect union with Christ in Gods glory. In the fellow-
ship with Christ which is now already a hidden reality man is called to
consecrate himself and practice a life that corresponds to that high pur-
pose. In Calvins theology the person who knows God himself comes to
renewed activity, to deeds of thanksgiving. Sanctication and progress
thereby become one of the key elements in Calvins thought. Yet it is
unmistakable that the role of man is worked out in a dierent manner
profit and loss 447
in the second panel, namely through the modern ideal of human self-
determination. The larger place which the Enlightenment demanded
for the human subject is for Barth no misfortune, the eects of which
must be rectied as quickly as possible. The place which is given to
man as subject should be entered on the prot side of the ledger. There
is increasing space given in Barths concept for man as an answering
being. In the rst two volumes of KD, in the development of the concept
of revelation, the stress lies on the majesty of God, on Gods sovereignty.
In that period Barths theology maintained something of a barrage that
was to constantly remind its readers that man always, in various ways,
had to deal with God as Lord in His turning toward man. The change
that was already evident in KD II/1, the rst volume of the doctrine
of God, to electing as a movement that was ontologically decisive both
for God Himself and for man, made it increasingly possible to develop
the aspect of the humanity of God. The locus of knowledge of God is
specied as the history of Jesus Christ, in which the concrete human
person of Jesus Christ is distinguished from the Father, and is involved
with Him. Characteristic of this new accent is that anhypostasis now no
longer serves to disqualify every form on inquiry into the life of the
earthly Jesusin other words, every form of manifestation in history
as theologically unprotable. It can be asked how the assumptio carnis
the assumption of what man is, of the condition humainetakes form in
this one person. In Barths later theology the unio naturarum or the unio
hypostatica no longer mean that the life of the man Jesus is merely an
enigma. Gods special relation with this man does not elbow out what
happens in time and space, but creates room for it. All the theological
constructions within Barths concept, such as the Trinity and election,
that are used to impress upon us that in His plans and intentions God
is not the dupe of our history, change in colour to concepts that remind
us that God does not cease to seek man in his acting and aspirations
and refuses to permit him to become the victim of his own conduct.
Two terms dene the image of the new man in Barths concept: self-
determination and analogy (or correspondence). Self-determination is
the formal concept under which man with all his capacities is under-
stood; the concept of correspondence or analogy provides it its substan-
tive content. Man and his capacities do not go by the wayside in grace,
but are redened.39 Man is called to give an answer in his actions that
39 In KD 1/1, 213; ET, 204 the experience that man becomes a participant under
the inuence of the Word is interpreted with the concept of self-determination. All
448 chapter nine
agrees or corresponds with the choice for life that was made by God
in His electing. The gure of analogy comes increasingly to the fore in
Barths theology as a productive category for understanding the rela-
tion between divine and human acting.40 In this way it becomes clear
that ethics is not a second eld which lies next to dogmatics, but rather
occupies the same space. In terms of structure, Barth has given shape
to this insight by closing his doctrine of God, his doctrine of creation
and his doctrine of reconciliation each with a section on ethics.
In this study the altered position of man became visible in the doc-
trine of baptism. As we already said earlier, the desacramentalisation
of baptism and the Supper was intended to give full measure to the
answer from man, to his acting. Barth wished to distinguish more
sharply than was possible in the traditional concept of the sacraments
between the acting of man and the acting of God. Unquestionably this
contains elements which connect with modern attitudes toward life. But
in this counterproposal man does not realise himself in a vacuum. He
is already in fellowship; the decision has already been made about him,
and about his destiny. The sharp distinction in Barth between Gods
work and mans work is the result of the Christological concentration,
through which the singularity and immediacy of Christ, the Word and
the Spirit are powerfully emphasised over against the human work of
testimony, proclamation, baptism and the Supper. The destiny of being
man is known, namely existence in fellowship with God and his salva-
tion, which means in fellowship with Jesus Christ. This in turn means
that in this fellowship direction is given to self-determination.
Can we take over this linkage with the principle of subjectivity just
like that? I would make two observations, the rst positive, the second
critical. The continuing positive feature in the concept is rst of all that
man is regarded as actor. In a culture in which man as a responsi-
ble actor appears to be losing ground against the background of eco-
nomic and social processes, technological advances and communities
in change, an emphasis on the responsibility of man is quite necessary.
Furthermore, we have already established that Barth has blunted the
human capacities together form the possibility for self-determination. In faith this self-
determination is redened once again, namely by the Word.
40 See particularly the work of E. Jngel, in particular his essay Die Mglichkeit
theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zum
Analogieverstndnis Karl Barths in: idem, Barth-Studien, Mnchen 1982, 210245. Cf.
also H. Veldhuis, Een verzegeld boek. Het natuurbegrip in de theologie van J.G. Hamann (1730
1788), Dordrecht 1990, 347350.
profit and loss 449
has the potestas, the power is His, and when man takes this in, it is clear
that the freedom of man is not adequately conceived if it is thought
of as only formal freedom of choice. Man becomes free when he goes
in the ways that are already represented in the history of Jesus Christ.
Man is free when his decisions bring him to the ways that correspond
with the lines that were already set out by God himself in Jesus Christ.
early Church these acts had a place in connection with the account of
Jesus death and resurrection. The theological justication and found-
ing of these acts as meaningful acts lies in that connection. They have
their place in church life primarily with the salvation that was a gift in
Christ and the promise of His kingdom in mind.43
Next, in the connection that is made in the actions of baptism and
the Supper between ambivalent signs or symbols on the one hand
and the history of Jesus Christ on the other, the symbol begins to
speak a language that it does not possess of itself. That is the decisive,
theological justication for these actions. They are actions in which an
appeal is made to the senses as ways to knowledge, to contact. In the
Supper the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste are brought into
service. In baptism by immersion it is particularly the sense of touch
which plays a role, alongside hearing and sight. It is characteristic
of these ritual actions that created elements are taken into service
by the story. They interpret the history of Jesus Christ. The reverse
is also true. In the Pauline letters we see that Gods acting in the
Cross and resurrection interprets these rituals and thus protects against
sacramental misunderstanding.44 A mutual hermeneutic involvement
arises between story or word on the one side and the symbol on the
other. In the dynamic between word and symbol Gods acting is made
known, man is brought into the presence of God and his acting, and
man commits himself to that acting by letting himself be baptised and
by participating in the Supper. Created elements here full the role of
symbols, of visible words that refer to the thing, to Gods judging and
life-giving proximity. The content of the sacraments, the thing before
which we stand, does not dier from that which is received in faith. In
the sacramental mediation man comes in touch with the same thing,
but the same thing in a dierent way. Precisely the sacraments in all
the sacraments are already well under way as a response to the BEM Report of
the World Council of Churches and the reactions which followed it. See Baptism,
Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111), Geneva 1982; Baptism, Eucharist
and Ministry 19821990. Report on the Process and Responses (Faith and Order Paper No.
149), Geneva 1990. For a similar broad treatment of the concept of the sacraments,
see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament.
Justication and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999.
44 See the extensive note by E. Jngel, Barth-Studien, 285287. See also at greater
length the article Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verstndnisses der Taufe, in: Barth-
Studien, 295314.
profit and loss 453
9.12. As in a mirror
There is one nal step. That God lets Himself be known and therefore
men can know God, is a vulnerable proposition. It is not vulnerable
because something could go wrong with the epistemological status of
knowledge of God. The warrant for belief in God and the epistemo-
logical grounds for defending it have gained rather than lost ground in
recent years. When I speak of it being vulnerable, I just as little have
in mind the implausibility of belief in God in Western culture. That
is indeed manifest in important sectors of these cultural circles and it
forces adherents of faith to adjust, willingly or unwillingly, to status as
a minority. However dicult that is, however much theologians, church
members and people in social organisations often still act and think as
though they are a majority, from the desire to occupy the cultural mid-
dle (or the illusion that they still do so), these are only side issues. The
vulnerability that I have in mind has internal grounds. It is felt within
the knowledge of God; it has to do with the fact that the promise of the
perfect unveiling of Gods majesty and mercy is still outstanding. The
concept of self-revelation expresses that in the appearance of Christ one
is encountering God Himself. This does not exclude the incomplete-
ness of knowing, the enigmas and things not yet understood, as this so
pointedly is expressed in the image of the mirror in I. Cor. 13:12. Put in
another way, Christian knowledge of God is vulnerable because it is a
form of Christian hope. In this context vulnerability is not so much a
sign of weakness, but is a sensitivity, a new attitude of discernment. In
the mirror of the history of Christ, it appears that man and the world
are not abandoned. Nourished by this hope, faith does not remain by
itself, but reaches out. In Christian hope men reach out to the coming
of Him who already came in Christ. That hope would not exist if God,
through His Spirit, had not already reached man through his Word,
through a multiplicity of ways and means. The hope would be extin-
guished if mankind was not still constantly being invited and reached
by Gods Spirit as the great bridge builder, the pontifex maximus, and in
response, began moving toward the future.
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