Whether or not humans have free will is something that has captivated theologians, philosophers, and scientists. Is human activity pre-determined by interior and exterior forces? If so, does this mean that we don’t make decisions but instead only appear to chose? If we do have free will how free is it? What role does genetics, environment, and other factors play?
This seems to be an important topic when we discuss the hypothetical question, “Could Jesus have sinned?” The Christian tradition has confessed Christ as sinless as far back as we can tell. Yet people have often wondered what this means for temptation. We are told by the author of the Book of Hebrews that Jesus was tempted in various ways (4.15). We see in the Gospel narratives that he was tempted by Satan himself. Yet, again, Christian insist he was sinless. Jesus always won the battle with temptation.
When we consider the doctrine of the incarnation it complicates things a bit more. Jesus as a sinless human is quite an accomplishment. Jesus as one with God makes us wonder if it was even possible for Jesus to sin and if it was not possible is there any sense in which we can say he was tempted?
Philosophers ask whether or not we can speak of virtue and vice if humans are predetermined to certain actions. This concern applies to Christology because if Jesus could not sin it seems like a farce to speak of him as overcoming temptation.
This brings me back to some of the questions asked above. Let me ask this: Can we speak of Jesus as being tempted, having free will, yet unable to sin because of the “environmental” factor of his oneness with the Father and unity with the Spirit? I know this is a bit of lofty theology, which is rare to this blog, but I thought I’d toss it out there. Can we say that Jesus being constantly in communion with the Father and empowered by the Spirit allowed him to “freely” chose not to sin while also being a reason why we can be assured he would have never sinned.
I know, I know, at the end of the day this is like the questions, “What if Adam and Eve never ate the fruit?” or “What is Christ had not been crucified?” Unless one espouses some form of multiple universe theory where Adam is sinless or Christ lived to die of old age it seems insensible to even ask this question, but I think we ask it because we are trying to better understand the unique claims of the church regarding Jesus and we find this scenario a bit perplexing.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the interchange between Christ’s temptation, his sinlessness, the freedom of his will, and his relationship to the Father and Spirit. Now I state upfront that I confess the sinlessness of Christ along with the historic, catholic church, so while you are free to ask, “What if Jesus did sin?” you know already that I don’t think he did. This thought experiment will be more enjoyable for those who share my confession on this matter.
On another note, Fr. Ted Bobosh is an Orthodox priest whose blog I follow. He wrote a series on this subject that you may find interesting. These are the links to the four posts: “Environmental Clues, Shaping Behavior and Free Will (1)”; “Environmental Clues, Shaping Behavior and Free Will (2)”; “Free Will and Biology (1)”; and “Free Will and Biology (2)”.
the archives near Emmaus 
@BLP: It would be helpful if you could quickly define how you are defining “free will”. It seems to me that you are defining it within the realm of the power of contrary choice. Is that correct?
(sorry for the double “define” there…unintentional)
I left is loosely undefined because to define it may limit possible answers, but your definition works.
You recognized exactly where I was going. I think that one’s definition of free will is going to necessarily determine one’s answer to your question about “the interchange between Christ’s temptation, his sinlessness, the freedom of his will, and his relationship to the Father and Spirit.”
For instance, if free will is the power of contrary choice, and Christ was like us in every way, then he must have had it. This, as you mentioned, creates a tension about whether he was actually able to sin, which then brings up questions about his nature and whether he could actually violate it, which then leads to questions about pollution of the Trinity through the shared nature of the Trinity, and on and on. However, if free will is defined differently (an Augustinian model, for instance), then the exact same tensions do not arise (although others do). Ah, the beauty of theological systems – it seems at times that it’s all about deciding with what tensions one is willing to live.
To answer your question: From my perspective, I think that a will always follows its desires. A free will is one that is opened up to the ability to love God above other desires (this is especially distinct from the definition ‘the power of contrary choice’). Thus, Jesus was actually exercising his free will through his lack of sin. He fully experienced the temptation, but his free will followed God every time – perhaps a temptation to him was the experience of a desire that crept closer to equivalence with his greatest desire: God. Through his lack of sin his relationship was fully maintained within the Trinity, however his human nature was also fully experiencing the temptation.
To be sure, there are tensions within this view as within others, and there is more nuance than stated here, but this is probably sufficient for dialogue. The incarnation is a wonderful mystery to be explored, but one that I don’t think we can ever fully explain. Begin with the paradoxical question of how an incorporeal person who does not exist within time is instantiated into both a body and time, and one already knows that we will never be able to make sense of this in a fully logical manner. Damn our finite minds.
Brian L.,
I wish I had more time to respond to this, but I don’t. So instead I will just quote something I have from Torrance, and hopefully come back later to try to develop this a bit futher (esp. as this relates choice and free-will … there is a distinction to be made here). Here’s a bit of what Torrance thought about Jesus’ assumption of a sinful humanity (and what it means for salvation). Btw, I agree (of course) with TFT, and hold that Jesus assumed a sinful humanity, but that by the Spirit immediately sanctified his humanity in order not to sin. Here’s the quote:
PS. Of course Gronewoller is going to give an Augustinian account; would expect nothing less 😉 !
And one more quote (sorry Brian for simply quoting things at this point, but it’s the quicker way for me to do this right now, and I want to contribute something to this important discussion); this one is from Barth, and it also gets at this discussion in a helpful way, and further, it actually dovetails somewhat with what Gronewoller just wrote about freedom for God in Christ. Here’s Barth:
I rather like this!
Brian L., thanks for the link to Fr. Bobosh’s series – Jerry Coyne definitely has hit a new low in the anti-philosophy of quasi-scientific atheism.
Your question in its relation to the incarnation takes in a range of dogma and controversy – and moral philosophy – that make it a difficult one to comment on.
I will say this much – I think the word ‘free’ is not only a descriptor for a will given to God as Brian G. states. I do agree that such a consecrated will is the most free of all, but I also think there is a freedom of will functioning independently of religion where a human person can discriminate and choose between right and wrong without decisive interference from genetics, hormones, or environment and also without incentive from religious rewards and punishments.
But this means that I don’t think a human will ‘always follows its desires’ and that is why I don’t think free will is as simple a matter as Brian G. states – a substitution of higher desire (for God) in the place of lower desires.
What Brian G is talking about I think is a love for God which takes the problem out of the realm of ethics and into the realm of worship and religion and service to God and man – and really and truly makes one free (although it doesn’t guarantee the truth of the God-lover’s theology).
Jesus may well have had the benefit of that kind of love from an early period in his life – but let’s not forget the possibility that he could still be ‘tempted’ by desires to become what the Jews wanted him to be (the ‘Messiah’ that was on everyone’s program card). The stories of his temptations signify this kind of struggle I think.
@Bobby: I love those comments by Torrance and Barth. I need to read more from both of them – I wish that scholars were able to read more outside of their field! For now, I suppose that I’m going to have to find solace in the fact that, although I don’t have the time to read TF, I have met Iain.
@John: It seems as if you are speaking of ‘free’ as it pertains to the will in terms of degree (‘the most free of all’). Is this correct? And, if so, is it correct to say that you think all wills to be free to choose in some way (‘freedom of will functioning independent of religion’), and some wills to also be free to choose God? If this is the case, are there any wills that are not ‘free’, or do they all exist on a positive continuum?
Also, in your final paragraph are you saying that you find a tension between a system of ordered desires/loves and the concept of temptation?
@Bobby: Yes, indeed. I spend too much time reading Augustine.
Brian G, I think human free will can make right choices independently of religion (or before religion) – for example, I would argue that it doesn’t require a divine commandment to establish the truth that theft, adultery, murder are wrong and to be avoided.
But it’s complicated. I hold that this pre-religious freedom is God-given, as a quality of personality that makes all normal-minded persons, including atheists, responsible for their acts.
I think all persons (not just some) are in principle free to choose God – but again it is complicated. There are some atheists who have enclosed themselves in an intellectual prison-house which looks lovely to them from the inside but makes true freedom impossible because they are unable to posit God as a choice.
I don’t understand that last question of yours. Jesus might, on the basis of his mother’s expectations (for example) or his reading of scripture, be inclined to wonder if it were God’s will that he do as much as was in his power to win the Jews as a nation, a whole, instead of as a sorry little remnant. This represents a temptation. In Gethsemane, I see him asking if the path of imprisonment and death which he was contemplating were in fact the best things to consent to at that particular place and time. He must have known that his apostles might have benefitted from more time with him. So he may have been in doubt as to whether another quick departure to the north (as he decided earlier in his career) might again be the way of wisdom. He was free to choose, and I think he chose rightly, in God’s will.
@Brian G: Indeed, one’s understanding of free will is a determining factor to how this question is answered, which is why I couldn’t define it, lest there be no conversation! I like your proposal regarding free will choosing what it desires. This seems to give credence to virtue ethics and Christian concepts of regeneration regarding our own decision making. In other words, people make decisions based on who they are. BUT Adam’s character causes some problems here because Adam was a bit of a blank slate and he chose contrary to his sinlessness.
@Bobby: I agree with Torrance that Christ assumed fallen flesh. I don’t think he was free from sickness, pain, weakness, and the like. It seems that Torrance preserves (rightly) Jesus as free from the action of sinning and I think that is where my question really resides.
Brian, thanks for the links to Ted Bobosh, they look interesting. About Free Will and Determinism, there are at least four things that should be considered when examining the theological issues historically.
1. Free Will is not unlimited
2. God possesses Free Will; There is a theological argument for saying man created in his image also does.
3. Free Will does not imply Open Theism (it is a fallacy)
4. God’s perfect foreknowledge does not imply determinism (it is a fallacy)
*Point 1. is justified on at least two grounds; by experience and biblically. My experience tells me that no matter how much I will the desire to fly (without mechanical assistance), I am unable to because my wings were not designed correctly for this ability. Also, the bible makes it clear our ‘sin’ which means ‘missing the mark’ or ‘not obtaining full measure’ limits our ability to exercise will. The question of whether it denies us outright of the use of will will be addressed with 4.
*Point 2. Is (I believe) self evident. That God possesses will is likely not controversial. That man is created in the image of God is biblical [Gen 1:26]. That theological arguments have been built from the aforementioned two facts is self evident.
*Point 3. Open Theists, like Calvinists, believe that “X knows Y to be true implies Y is true”. Like Calvinists, Open theists use this as a premise for further reasoning. If “X knows Y to be true implies Y is true” is fallacious logic any additional logic built on it, is also fallacious.
The difference between Open Theists and Calvinists is that Calvinists are ‘ok’ with God being directly responsible for the control of all things, and thus preserve the idea that God’s foreknowledge is perfect. Open Theists realize that if true, all things must necessarily be determined by God’s foreknowledge making God directly responsible for all things including sin. This makes God completely deterministic, the author of sin, and deprives man of moral accountability which Open Theists reject.
Thus if Calvinistic determinism and/or Open Theism is correct, the dilemma seems to be Is God the ‘author of evil, and man not responsible for what he does’, or ‘is God’s perfect foreknowledge limited by man’s choice. However, this dilemma is only a dilemma if we presuppose the axiom “X knows Y to be true implies Y is true”, but this is a demonstrable fallacy, which will be clearly demonstrated in point 4.
*Point 4. It is a fallacy (fallacy of modal logic again, most misunderstood fallacy!) to argue that God’s foreknowledge of an event makes that event necessary (inevitable).
Confusing the knowledge of some truth condition and the truth condition itself is that fallacy. Like all fallacies, this one is particularly seductive, and authored in a lie.
The fallacy is taking the necessary condition of knowledge to be necessary on its own:
X knows Y to be true -> Y is true
The point is, that just because something is known to be true, doesn’t mean that knowledge itself, makes it true.
As an example, consider standing on the top of a building watching a TV being thrown through a window below; even as an imperfect human with imperfect knowledge of the fate of that TV, foreknowledge that it will smash on the ground is not what makes its eventual smashing necessary.
Here is another example: A flying plane loses all of its engines. An astute witness on the ground sees the plane. Prior to the crash, during the crash and subsequent to the crash the observer believed the plan was going to crash (the belief was so strong the observer was certain, both in the future, present and past tense).
Clearly the observer’s belief did not make the crash necessary at any point in time, beforehand, during and after the fact. Confusing the necessity of belief in X with the necessity of X itself its the fallacy.
Since the premise ‘X knows Y to be true -> Y is true’ contains the obvious fallacy “the knowledge of the truth of Y is being mistaken for the truth of Y” the fallacy is obvious when we are talking about mortals, but whether or not we are talking mortals, the fallacy is still a fallacy because [James 1:17] makes it impossible for God to be either logically incoherent or self-contradictory.
Therefore It is logically consistent for God to have complete knowledge of every event (contingent and necessary) and still not be the cause of it. This means that it is logically consistent for man to be the author of his own fate because of free will (assuming God gives man this freedom), and for God to still have complete and perfect foreknowledge. (In other words, this argument does not necessarily lead to Open Theism)
The argument about God’s foreknowledge comes up frequently in theological discussions simply because far too few theologians are adept enough to recognize it for the fallacy it is.
For those who like logic, here is the structure of the argument:
PROOF
Let P be “X will happen”
Let Q be “God foreknew X would happen”
Q->P “God foreknew X would happen” implies X would happen
But, since Q is knowledge about the truth condition of P we could rewrite Q as:
K(P) thus the argument becomes:
K(P) -> □P (fallacy of modal logic)
But as was shown above, the knowledge of the truth condition of P is not the same as the truth condition of P itself (even for God). Knowledge the plain would crash did not make the plain crash, nor knowledge the TV would fall is not what made the TV fall.
Brian –
Back in October, I posted an article on the topic of Jesus and temptation, of which I asked you to specifically comment on. So, I hate to leave a link, but my thoughts are there – http://bit.ly/zccB5Y.
I also did a similar article along the lines of Jesus not knowing everything – http://bit.ly/ywFf6d.
@Scott: I did comment on it!
I’ve enjoyed this post immensely.
It also speaks to the mystery of Incarnation and the Hypostatic Union (just how can Jesus be fully God and fully man if he is exclusively neither?).
This is why the questions is not just some asinine geeky pondering, but one that has implications at the very heart of the Christian faith. I suppose if God wanted to come to us by His Son, Jesus, it wouldn’t have mattered to how he did it. But to maintain consistency with the Gospel, prophecy and the NT writers, it bears importance.
@BLP: I’m not sure I understand why Adam’s sin precludes the idea of ordered desires/loves. I think that within the model it can be argued that, although his will was free to love God from his beginning, he chose to put his desires/loves in the wrong order. (About Adam’s character: I have no new argument here, and it indeed creates a tension within this system depending upon how one defines Adam’s original state. It is interesting that there was an outside evil agent influencing that blank slate, though).
@John: Thanks for your response. That helps me to understand what you are saying much better. I think that we may be working with different paradigms due to our definitions of ‘free will’. My final question was asking if, in what you had written, you were implying that temptation does not exist within a loves/desires model (I apologize for not asking that more clearly).
Brian –
Yeah, I knew you commented. 🙂 But I was also leaving a link to the article as “my response” in connection with your article here. And, I know everyone wants to read my article, so I left it for them too. 🙂
Also, I’d love any thoughts on the second article with the conclusion that Jesus, in his incarnation, did not know everything. But, alas, you be a busy man.
But as a summary to my article on Jesus and temptation, my conclusion is that Jesus had to be able to sin, for I can only conclude that real temptation (instead of pseudo temptation) offers the one being tempted a choice of choosing for or against the temptation. Now, of course, I completely agree he didn’t give in to temptation. But as a real human, if Jesus had no choice with the temptation, then I cannot see it being actual and real temptation.
Of course, this causes a world of difficulty to a more reformed-Calvinistic approach. And I am not disagreeing that God has all things sorted out. But, in the reality of Jesus and his incarnation, becoming a real person like you and I, the choice was there. And he chose against temptation, making him the great and victorious high priest that he is.
There is another way to look at this:
All man are tempted [James 1:14]
Jesus was a man [Matthew 1:18-25][Matt. 4:2][John 4:6]
*Therefore Jesus was tempted [Matt 4;1]
Man’s power by itself is insufficient to overcome temptation [John 6:63][Jer 17:5-9]
Jesus was a man [Matthew 1:18-25][Matt. 4:2][John 4:6]
*Therefore Jesus’ power by itself was insufficient to overcome temptation.
Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit [Luke 4:1]
The Holy Spirit provides sufficient power (to overcome temptation) [Zech 4:6]
*Therefore Jesus full of the Holy Spirit had sufficient power (to overcome temptation)
Man can be full of the Holy Spirit [Eph 5:18]
The Holy Spirit provides sufficient power (to overcome temptation) [Zech 4:6]
*Therefore man full of the Holy Spirit had sufficient power (to overcome temptation).
(As long as the axioms are true (biblical), the logic valid (structurally) than the conclusion must be true)
In all of this talk, we have missed the part about Jesus having the same infinite storehouse of power we have access to through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, if the above logic is true, Jesus was a (limited) man like we are, except that he relied on the Holy Spirit more consistently and more faithfully than we. What separated Jesus from the rest of us was his incredible ability to simply trust God. Sure, as a man Jesus was limited, but because of his completely faith in God the Holy Spirit filled in the gaps.
If we exhibited the same faith, we’d be able to do the same, as evidenced by the fact Peter and Paul both performed miracles.
@James: I’m glad you enjoyed it.
@Brian: I am using Adam as an example of someone whose “perfection” didn’t allow him to chose based upon who he was. Of course, as you note, Satan’s presence can be considered a contributing factor to the change in Adam’s disposition meaning Adam was beginning to change into something worse before he acted on his temptation.
@BLP: Interesting thought. I have always been of the understanding that Adam was different than us (able not to sin), but also similar to us (able to sin). In this model, I think that reordering his loves/desires is one of the possible outflows of his ontology. To accept the ordered desires/loves model, one probably has to commit himself/herself to an understanding of Adam that is similar to this.
As a side note, this view of Adam is actually quite similar to a lot of what Origen speaks about in ‘Peri Archon’ (forgive me for not having citations ATM…my copy is not with me). Origen seems to portray the Christ-mind’s nature as ontologically changed from all others due to its enduring focus on God, as opposed to all other minds that possess and maintain the ability to wander, even though they are not originally created with that intention. Clearly it’s Platonic, but there is an interesting connection there.
@Brian L.,
I’m glad you found Torrance’s point helpful. I think thinking this salvifically (and I mean anthropology), which means Christically definitely needs to be our starting point on this question. For the eternal Word, the Son to become humanity, and if this becoming means that he came to ‘save’ us; then this presupposes that he enter into the same skin we currently inhabit which is sinful. Of course, this does not require that he be a sinner himself; in fact as the Savior and the Son, by the Spirit, he sanctifies his assumed humanity for us—which becomes the ontological basis for salvation for all of humanity, mediated through his for us. This is why Torrance presses his ontological theory of the atonement (e.g. that salvation began at Christmas, found penultimate reality at the cross, resurrection, and ascension, and current priestly ministry of the Jesus Heb 7; and will find ultimate reality at the second advent and consummation of all things in Christ Rom 8.). Anyway, I’m rabbit trailing, but this is where TFT’s thinking leads to. And coupling this with Barth’s comments; Jesus’ human freedom of the will demonstrates that true human freedom is not a generic deliberative Libertarian freedom, but it is a freedom for God, and his ways for us. So this conception, and the one that Brian G. is alluding to also (and I think what the Apostle Paul articulates as well, in Rom 6–8), reorients the usual question on free will and choice through framing it in christological and doctrine of God questions; in other words, it no longer remains a generic (natural theology) philosophical question, but one that is framed through a thick dogmatic (Christian Theology) order of things. In other words, there ought to be a Christian specification of this question from the get go; instead of the usual kind of dualistic frame through which these questions are often asked (I don’t mean you Brian L), as if we question God, as a distinct abstracted humanity from God; we can’t do this in light of the Incarnation and the hypostatic union of God and humanity in Christ. We must ask these kinds of questions as if the God-man relation has become inseparably united, as it has, in the man from Nazareth. In other words, questions like these ought to flow from Christology prior to anthropology—yet, usually, this is reversed, it seems.
@Bobby:
I admit I was a little lost on the Barth quote since I assume it demands a larger context. Can you unpack what he means by “freedom for God”. That is the one part where I am unsure of the meaning.
@Brian,
I think “freedom for God” simply presumes that all things have been opened up toward God through Christ’s choice on behalf of humanity. In other words, to be free means to live from the freedom that God has imbued upon creation; a freedom that only finds register in him. From what I know of Barth, what he is getting at is that genuine human freedom is only actualised through the freedom of becoming where humanities’ raison d’être terminates; viz. in the freedom that God has in his own life. So to have an autonomous human freedom, means to be opened up to what God’s intention for human freedom has always already been; a freedom that participates in the freedom that God has in and for himself, and then for us in the telos (Col 1) of recreation, in Christ. So what it truly means to be human can only be realized in Christ’s humanity for us (for Barth and TFT); and what it means to be truly human, and becoming, is to be opened up to God as participants in his life. I think the binary of this, for Barth (and I know TFT) is not a legitimate category for consideration; and I mean the negative questions that classic free will questions presuppose. Like logical-causal (cause and effect) questions; like ‘if humanity is now opened up to God in Christ, and this signifies an autonomous human freedom; then why don’t all people actualise this freedom by responding to God in faith and belief?’ I don’t think these kinds of metaphysically causal questions are credible questions for either Barth or TFT, because they are the kinds of questions that are imposed upon God, and thus are not the kind demanded from God’s Self-revelation of himself in Christ. So, that’s why I would say that both Barth and TFT’s approach to questions like this are principally Christian; and why other ways of getting at these kinds of questions are classically Christian (the ‘classically’ playing to the force that classical theism [the synthesis of Thomism or Aristotelianism or even Scotism with Christian Theology] has upon the methodology and metaphysics of classically Christian questions). [This is a little more constructive than simply answering how Barth would answer this, but I think it is proximate with the ethos of what Barth might say]
I just think Barth’s methodology is different than classical Theology, and thus the order of the way he asks and answers questions is going to be different; which will have an impact on what he considers to be legitimate questions in the first place (his reification of election is the classic example of this kind of theologizing and methodology).
@Bobby :
I confess that I struggle to get my mind wrapped around these concepts. This is likely because I think through one of the various other paradigms you mentioned. For example, when I think of human identity I agree that Christ is the example of ideal humanity, but I want to know what this means for Jesus when he “decides” to do this or that in a way that can be understood if I were speaking to someone about neuroscience or a student in a human anthropology class at PSU. I don’t know that I understand Barth all that well or if his answer, while likely relevant, would be communicable to many.
So let me try something of a case study : When Jesus decided to not go to a feast in Jerusalem until his brothers had already left I may talk to someone about the neuropsychology of human decision making, how Jesus’ person and character had been formed to open him to the voice of the Spirit, how the outside influence of the Spirit provides an environmental influence on Jesus that overpowers the taunts of his brothers, how Jesus being born into flesh contaminated by human sin causes a pull the other direction that would be similar to the genetic presuppositions we all face, and so forth and so on.
If I understand Barth he would not want to venture into framing the discussion this way. He would instead speak of Jesus not going to Jerusalem because of the will of the Father and his existence as the ideal human demands that he wills toward what God wills or something like that. Is that correct? Is the major difference between how one allows the discussion to be framed? And do they necessarily oppose each other (or could they be complementary, yet diverse approaches to discussing the incarnation, depending on the audience)?
Brian,
1) I floated my reply to you at my blog to see if any of the Barth scholars I know would give it a pass for being what Barth might say in response to your question for clarification. And my friend, Travis McMaken (WTM) a newly minted Barth scholar gave it a passing grade. So that at least makes me feel good about my representation of Barth (my proclivity, some times, is to read Torrance into Barth, and I don’t want to do that too much—even though they overlap quite substantially on many points).
2) My point on various methodologies and approaches has more to do with theological approaches V. the kind of case study you have presented. I think Barth would frame the discussion of not going to Jerusalem because of Jesus’ love and obedience for the Father’s will (Barth emphasizes that there is only one will in God and not two as classical Calvinism often does), and that Barth sees the concrete acts of salvation history (in the history of Israel and the Covenant, and then in the incarnate life of Christ) as the acts of God’s life in becoming what he has elected for himself (i.e. to not be God without us). So there is ample room, in Barth, and even require room to think God from what we might call the acts of salvation history in its totality.
I actually think the space you’re looking for, and space that I think is in Barth, is concursus Dei; God’s providential presence in the unfolding of his creative acts in salvation history (which is just history simpliciter really). This provides a mechanism wherein God is providentially present with creation, and sovereign over his creation; but at the same time present alongside of his creation in a way that sets up creation to actually realize the full potential of its createdness (Torrance talks about creation having a contingent independent createdness V. God’s non-contingent independed non-createdness as Creator—I bring this up just to note a “way” for maybe trying to understand how concursus Dei might function for Barth within the God-world Creator-creature relation). So, with all of that, I would say that concursus Dei, for Barth, would allow the kind of appeal to neuropsychology, for example, that your case study might want to make. Or, that there is room in Barth’s conceiving to appeal to the contingent independent creaturely categories that neuropsychology (as an observational/natural emperical science) might provide for those interested in such things. But I don’t think that Barth would allow for a naked usage or unqualified usage of neuroscience, for example, to get at theological truths; meaning that neuroscience, for example, has a contingent reality about it; such that its ability to provide commentary, itself, must terminate once again on the theo-logic that is demanded by Christ’s life as the primary interpreter of God’s life for us (and insofar as neuropsychology might impinge or hybrid christologically reality, which is ‘Revealed reality’, then Barth would not be happy with that).
I guess, Brian, at the end of the day; Barth is not interested in apologetics as Christian witness, and so his mood would probably be at odds with approaches that think from something akin to natural theological method. He might be open, like I said, to neuroscience in some instances, but I think he wouldn’t want to ultimately use it to engage students at PSU; he would appeal to the strangeness and foolishness of the Gospel instead … and probably leave it at that.
@Brian G.,
That’s sweet that you got to meet Ian. I have had some correspondence with Alan Torrance, so there 😉 .
@Bobby :
I’ve struggled to make sense of Barth. Obviously there seems to be quality ideas embedded in his writings because many people come to conclusions based on their reading of Barth that seem worth pursuing. Whenever I’ve tried to read him a bit here and a bit there emerges as insightful, but I get lost in the wordiness of it all.
I find value in the angle from Barth that you present, but I am not willing to follow the line that it is the final or only way of speaking to a matter. I fear it could ghettoize Christian doctrine making it another form of “Christianese” that while more respectable that other forms is no less foreign to most people. I understand it is inevitable that we Christians bring our own language to dialogues, but it seems like for many Barthians there is no willingness to find where our language meets that of others.
The very Apostle Paul who spoke first of the foolishness of the cross is depicted in the Book of Acts as being familiar with the jargon of his pagan audience and I think this depiction is presented positively since the author shows that some did follow Paul to hear more. If Barth leaves room for this type of apologetic as you say than I find agreement with him there. If there is no room for the apology or translating the gospel into the language of those around us then I disagree. This doesn’t mean we demand a “naked” use as you rightly challenge, but a new form of communicating. Even our most sanctified theological speech can be hindered by the German, French, or English package within which we deliver it. Sometimes connecting Christology to various areas of philosophy and science allows it to be repackaged for a different audience, especially one not familiar with Christian speech.
@Brian,
To be honest, I’ve been trying to read Barth’s CD IV recently, and it is easy to get bogged down (at least for me) with him. I much prefer his Gottingen Dogmatic stuff—and individual books from him—to reading his CD (which can be laborious). I am a Torrancean and not a Barthian, though, and so that’s where my deference for Barth always comes to the fore (given the relationship between the two).
I think it is ironic that you think Barth could ghettoize Christian doctrine, since that would be an impulse that Barth himself would be seeking to undo through providing a theological methodology that is, in principle, Christian. In other words, I think Barth would argue that it is any other approach—natural theology—that ghettoizes Christianity holding that there is any other way to God but through Christ (i.e. other ways based upon an abstracting approach, or more plainly, foundationalism). This would, I think for Barth, collapse God’s Word into the ghettos of man’s making, and thus so intertwine God’s Word with man’s (apart from the God-man) that God’s Word would no longer have the capacity to speak into “our ghettos” afresh and anew; like John Webster writes of Barth:
[A] large part of Barth’s distaste is his sense that the ethics of liberal Protestantism could not be extricated from a certain kind of cultural confidence: ‘[H]ere was … a human culture building itself up in orderly fashion in politics, economics, and science, theoretical and applied, progressing steadily along its whole front, interpreted and ennobled by art, and through its morality and religion reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.’ The ethical question, on such an account, is no longer disruptive; it has ‘an almost perfectly obvious answer’, so that, in effect, the moral life becomes too easy, a matter of the simple task of following Jesus.
Within this ethos, Barth also discerns a moral anthropology with which he is distinctly ill-at-ease. He unearths in the received Protestant moral culture a notion of moral subjectivity (ultimately Kantian in origin), according to which ‘[t]he moral personality is the author both of the conduct with which the ethical question is concerned and of the question itself. Barth’s point is not simply that such an anthropology lacks serious consideration of human corruption, but something more complex. He is beginning to unearth the way in which this picture of human subjectivity as it were projects the moral self into a neutral space, from which it can survey the ethical question ‘from the viewpoint of spectators’. This notion Barth reads as a kind of absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness’. And it is precisely this — the image of moral reason as a secure centre of value, omnicompetent in its judgements — that the ethical question interrogates. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 35-6]
So my sense is that Barth and his theological methodology (there are definitely other expressions of his method, like in Torrance, Yoder, Frei, Webster, et al) actually serve as the antidote to a ghettoizing trajectory because he provides for a theological order that allows God’s Word to speak to us freshly and in our particular historical milieus (whatever era or culture) by seeing God’s Word as both apocalyptic (in-breaking on our particular situations in the world), and ‘Event’ (the becoming aspect of God’s being).
As far as your concern on Christian speech; I don’t have any problems with plundering the Egyptians or Babylonians for their signs and symbols (language) in order to communicate the Gospel afresh and anew, in fact I am sure that Barth’s methodology provides the most robustly Christian way of engaging in such a communicative process by emphasizing that the Word has the capacity to speak fresh and new into our various global contexts.
Last point, coming back to Webster; I think, in the last paragraph from him, that he hits on an important point in re. to your fear about the ghetto. I think that, often, the Gospel is held captive by systems of belief that are in themselves, definitionally, absolutizing. So in order to be extricated from our systems we need to be opened up to God’s Word, and God’s concepts that the Gospel, unique to itself (I mean there is no analogy to it in the world, it brings its own set of concepts and trajectories), needs to be allowed to be strange, foreign, and disruptive to our regular normal daily lives. If this requires some committed explanation and time in order for people to understand then I think that that’s what is required of us as Evangelists. I just think Barth, while a theologian of his own time, was able to provide new theological ground; such that he provides a fruitful footing, in principle, for being extricated from our mundane systems of thought, with the capacity of realizing that the Gospel and the God that we serve is both other worldly and yet, by his choice, concretely present through the Gospel in our lives in the here and now.
Sorry for the length of this, Brian.
@Bobby: Nice!
Coming from a different tradition/viewpoint that Christ was/is not the son of God, nor even a God, but a ‘plain human being’ the accomplishments and life, for me at least, become truly amazing. As a deity on the planet I find his story completely uninspiring and problematic in perpetuating impossible ideas onto a frail human being prone to various whims and desires. Yet looking at the story without the identification with deity, and without the heavy emphasis of obedience to such might then result in eternal hellfire otherwise, it transforms into a very passionate, that is a ‘human’ story. To me the best Christian story told was the amazing movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” and the implication of the dream sequence that Christ had while in the delirium of death.
@Eddie:
I think the Christian doctrine of the kenosis (or emptying) of Christ counters what you suggest. We don’t think Christ’s deity minimizes his humanity one iota. Rather, deity is limited to real human existence. Sure, it causes some dilemmas like the one proposed here, but it doesn’t equate to a man who was not a real human or some sort of theophany parading around as if he were like us.
I admit that I may just not be seeing things clearly at all.
If the counter is that Christ had a kenosis, emptying himself up to God’s will, then the question is how does one that is also God (or an aspect of God) empty itself of itself in order to be filled with itself? Again, my apologies if I am just not getting it.
The problem is the transcendent nature of divinity. How can a transcendent divinity be present in earthy form and yet still be transcendent. This seems, to me, like a religious version of Descartes’ dualism between mind and body, a position believed by many today to be a false dichotomy. Taking instead a pantheist view, instead of the Platonic view, the issue disappears. But then again so does the religion itself. So it presents a problem. I see no workaround for it other than to denote the whole thing a ‘mystery’ and let it go at that.
@Eddie:
I admit that I don’t know that there is much one can say about the incarnation other than how it “works” is mysterious. As I understand it the Christian doctrine of God proposes that somehow the Logos of God (though one with the Father retaining divine status) was limited in the incarnation like any man. In other words, even his miracles were the result of the work of the Spirit upon him just as if Peter or Paul did a miracle. That doesn’t mean he status as the God-Man was the same as every man, but his practical ontology was. Of course, this doesn’t make it any easier to comprehend!
@Eddie: I think that the difficulty in understanding the incarnation goes beyond the issue of transcendence as you have presented it. It is not only difficult to think of a transcendent being having incarnated himself within a bound space (as you are presenting), you also have to think about what to do with a being that exists outside of time taking form within our chronological progression. These are difficult questions that, honestly, even the best theologians and philosophers, as you hinted at, have to categorize as ‘mystery’.
In terms of the issue of kenosis, it may help to bring a few other things into the conversation here. First, the 4th c. conciliary debates – Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) – and the surrounding dialogues are where you can find the most detailed discussion concerning the Trinity (helpful for the ‘how does one that is also God (or an aspect of God) empty itself of itself in order to be filled with itself?’ question). Of course, both Eastern and Western Christian traditions understand the Trinity to be three distinct persons sharing one nature. However, in the West we tend to understand the nature as a piece of pie that can be broken up (depending on how this is instantiated, it can be extremely flawed since it essentially draws a circle around a transcendent nature which, of course, cannot be encircled). The East tends to see the nature differently, perhaps as more of a ‘predicate’ – love, justice, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. You have probably read some authors concerning apophasis, such as Plato, Plotinus, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, etc., who explore the difficulties of applying language to the divine nature. I think that most theologians recognize this and understand that any Trinitarian description is going to be incomplete. So, even this description is necessarily flawed. However, I think that it helps us to understand an aspect of your question. If the nature is better understood as a predicate, then kenosis was a self-emptying of certain aspects of his nature within time: omnipotence and omnipresence seem apt here.
Second, Christology is discussed in its greatest depth in the 5th c. dialogue between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius, as well as the Council of Chalcedon (451). Here it is understood that, whereas the Trinity has three persons with one nature, Christ is one person with two natures. His divine nature was held together to his human nature with something they decided to call a ‘hypostatic union’ (again, as with all things attempting to describe divinity, mystery is ascribed). This phrase also was used to describe the Trinity. This is why the phrase ‘fully God and fully man’ is ascribed to Christ. This understanding does away with Platonic duality. The kenosis, of course, would have dealt with his divine nature. However, the emptying doesn’t mean that he wasn’t at the same time completely divine. It just meant that aspects of his divine nature were suspended, without any ontological change (because the Son cannot change). Thus, most Christological theologians (at least historically) will tell you that the Christ was at the same time fully the Son of God (transcendent member of the Trinity) and at the same time fully Jesus (a human with every aspect of a human nature).
Of course, with all of this there is a degree of mystery employed where logic can no longer bring together Scriptural claims (How can God be one and three? How can Christ be man and God?). I hope that Christians freely admit the mysterious aspect of the incarnation when speaking with you.
Also, as an aside, there is no fully logical system. All thought contains preconditions. Plato’s epistemology is based upon his belief in the pre-incarnate flight of the soul. Descartes’ system of indubitable truth assumes that objectivity is possible and can be attained by a finite mind. And so on, and so on. A belief that all religions are the same because they share common traits assumes that similar expressions point to similar content (something that Hume would probably use his billiard ball example to speak against – we are simply observing effects, but cannot properly see what is really happening). Anyhow, I hope that this is somewhat helpful.