History of development of Christian Theology...

AS IN A MIRROR

JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH

ON KNOWING GOD

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY

OF

CHRISTIAN TRADITIONSFOUNDED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN †

EDITED BY

ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee

IN COOPERATION WITH

HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge

SCOTT H. HENDRIX, Princeton, New Jersey

BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York

ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen

JOHN VAN ENGEN, Notre Dame, Indiana

VOLUME CXX

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

AS IN A MIRROR


ON KNOWING GOD

AS IN A MIRROR


ON KNOWING GOD

A DIPTYCH

BY

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

TRANSLATED BY

DONALD MADER

BRILLLEIDEN • BOSTON

2005

Cover illustration: detail from the Issenheim Altarpiece showing John the Baptist at the foot ofthe Cross. © Musée d’Unterlinden – F 68000 Colmar. Photo: O. Zimmerman.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kooi, Cornelis van der.

[Als in een spiegel]

As in a mirror : John Calvin and Karl Barth on knowing God : a diptych / by Cornelis

van der Kooi ; translated by Donald Mader.

p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 120)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 90-04-13817-X (hard ; alk. paper)

1. God—Knowableness—History of doctrines. 2. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564—

Contributions in knowableness of God. 3. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968—Contributions in

knowableness of God. I. Title. II. Series.

BT98.K66 2005

231’.042’0922—dc22

2004057550

ISSN 1573-5664ISBN 90 04 13817 X

© Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

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printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiList of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1. Knowing God and the way of history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2. Calvin and Barth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.3. Faith as knowing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.4. Bipolarity and conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141.5. The mirror as an invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

part one

john calvin

Chapter 2. Ways of Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.1.1. Knowledge of God and piety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212.1.2. Rootage in society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

2.2. Accommodation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all

revelation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred

history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482.2.3. Accommodation and language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as

imitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572.3. Inward revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities . . . . . . . . . 632.3.2. Sensus divinitatis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702.3.3. Sensus conscientiae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

2.4. Manifestations in the external world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752.4.1. Stirring the senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

vi contents

2.4.2. A splendid theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 772.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and

Parker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852.5. Appreciation of culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872.6. Scripture as accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 892.7. Knowledge of God as result of Word and Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . 952.8. Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2.8.1. A qualified concept of faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1042.8.2. Unio mystica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1062.8.3. Faith and certainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

2.9. The limits and benefit of knowledge of God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Chapter 3. God: Judge and Father. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1173.1. Utility and the doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1173.2. The anti-speculative tenor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1213.3. Partial knowability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1243.4. Unceasing activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1273.5. Core concepts: loving-kindness, judgement and

righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303.6. Lord of the world: God’s care and goodness in the order

of the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1323.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the

father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1363.8. The absurdity of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383.9. The anchor of God’s unchanging will. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1433.10. Predestination and responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483.11. Father and Lord: love and fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513.12. Knowing in faith, in bits and pieces: predestination. . . . . . . . 158

3.12.1. A center or the core? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1583.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination . . . . . . . . . 1673.12.3. The benefit of the knowledge of predestination . . . . 1703.12.4. God’s will as the farthest horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1743.12.5. God as absolute power? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1763.12.6. Excursus: potentia absoluta et ordinata. A brief

historical overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1773.12.7. Where faith must look .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

3.13. Once again: God as father. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

contents vii

Chapter 4. The Supper and Knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1894.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1894.2. What is a sacrament? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

4.2.1. Only a cognitive advantage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1954.2.2. Sign and thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

4.3. Sacrament as a form of accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2004.4. The meaning of the meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

4.4.1. The family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2024.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The

discussion with the Lutherans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2044.4.3. Flesh and blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

4.5. The Holy Spirit and instrumentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2134.5.1. The Supper as instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2134.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit . 2164.5.3. The way of knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2184.5.4. Experience and tasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

the hinge

Chapter 5. The Turn to the Subject in Kant’s Philosophy . . . . . . . . . 2255.1. A watershed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2255.2. The tradition-critical attitude.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2285.3. For the sake of humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2305.4. The turn to the subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2335.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as

methodological investigation into the conditions ofknowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

5.6. Knowledge as human construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2385.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in

God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2415.8. After Kant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

part two

karl barth

Chapter 6. The Way of Knowing God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2516.1. Introduction: theology and society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2516.2. ‘Not without audacity’: the primacy of revelation . . . . . . . . . . 2586.3. Human knowing of God as theological datum . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

viii contents

6.4. Knowledge of God as event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2636.5. Knowledge of God as participation in God’s

self-knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2656.6. God as the object of knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2666.7. Faith as a form of knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2686.8. The place of the human subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2686.9. Mediation and sacramentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2716.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth . . . . 2746.11. A look back. From impossibility to reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2786.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God? . . . . . . . . 2816.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage

of Marburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2896.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia fidei . . . . . . 2936.15. Faith and certainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3086.16. Natural theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Chapter 7. The Doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3177.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of God’s being. The

anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3177.2. God’s reality: being and act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3227.3. Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3247.4. Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3267.5. Multiplicity and unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3297.6. Revelation as self-revelation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3297.7. Two series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3357.8. The perfections of God’s love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

7.8.1. Grace and holiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3377.8.2. Mercy and righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3397.8.3. Patience and wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

7.9. The perfections of God’s freedom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3487.9.1. Unity and omnipresence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3487.9.2. Constancy and omnipotence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3537.9.3. Eternity and glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . 3637.11. Election as the basic decision of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3657.12. Election as the core issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3687.13. The decretum concretum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3717.14. The critique of Calvin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3817.15. Eternity, time and God’s acting today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

contents ix

Chapter 8. New Space for Human Action: Barth’s View of theSacrament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3878.1. Doctrine of baptism as mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3878.2. Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

8.2.1. Regard for the humanity of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3928.2.2. The one sacrament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3938.2.3. The living Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3958.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

8.3. Baptism with the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3988.4. Baptism with water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4048.5. Directness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4058.6. Baptism with water as answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4078.7. The norm for humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4118.8. The meaning of the term ‘noetic’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

evaluation

Chapter 9. Profit and Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4179.1. Christian theology as a counterproposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4179.2. Knowledge of God and theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4199.3. From cosmological rootage to self-sufficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4269.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation:

guarantee for knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4289.5. The place of the faculties of knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4309.6. The theological element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4339.7. Word and Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4359.8. Lights, lamps and their fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4389.9. The content of knowledge of God: saving proximity . . . . . . . 4429.10. The role of man in knowing God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4469.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a different way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4509.12. As in a mirror… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467Index of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first impetus for this study came quite a time ago. It began whenDr. 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 ina plan to expand the field 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 termof study at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Wiscon-sin, Madison, WI, USA. Meeting W.J. Courtenay, D.C. Lindberg andR.M. Kingdon provided me with access to American research on thebackground and social context for Calvin which unmistakably left itsmark on this book. In Amsterdam, at the Vrije Universiteit, I was ableto 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 significant role in this book coming into being.The friendship and regular exchanges with René van Woudenberg, inparticular with regard to the epistemology of the hinge section deal-ing with Kant, was of particularly great value to me. The sections ofthe manuscript on dogmatics were read by and discussed with Aad vanEgmond and Dirk van Keulen. I would further mention here MaartenAalders, and the conversations with Georg Plasger on Barth interpreta-tion. It was an enormous support for me to have Dr. C. Augustijn andDr. H.A. Oberman both read the section on Calvin and provide mewith their critique of it. That the latter passed away before he couldsee the completion of this book saddens me greatly. His reactions weremore than heartening.

A fragment of the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grünewald isdepicted on the cover. A reproduction of this altarpiece hung overBarth’s desk. The figure of John the Baptist pointing to the crucifiedChrist was for Barth a metaphor for the limited service that theologycan perform. Theology points to the matter that is really paramount; itdoes nothing more, and if it does well, nothing less.

xii acknowledgements

The translation was made possible in part by support from theNetherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the BastiaanHaack Kunneman Foundation of the Free University.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Anfänge I Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie. Teil I: Karl Barth,Heinrich Barth, Emil Brunner, hrsg. von J. Moltmann,München 19774.

CCLS Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Turnholti1953e.v.

CD K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 Volumes, 13 Parts,CO Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed.

W. Baum, E. Cunitz et W. Reuss, Brunsvigae 1863–1900.

EB Evangelische Bekenntnisse. Bekenntnisschriften derReformatoren und neuere Theologische Erklärungen inzwei Bände, Bielefeld 1997.

KD K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, München 1932-Zürich 1967; ET: Church Dogmatics, Edinburgh 1975.

OS Opera Selecta, Ed. P. Barth/W. Niesel, München 1926–1936.

PG Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne,Paris 1857–1866.

PL Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne,Paris 1844–1855.

Römerbrief 1 K. Barth, Der Römerbrief, (Erste Fassung) 1919 (hrsg.von H. Schmidt), Zürich 19853.

Römerbrief 2 K. Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2. Auflage, (München1922=) Zürich 197611; ET: The Epistle to the Romans,tr. by Edwin C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York1968.

STh Sancti Thomae de Aquino Summa Theologiae, Roma1962.

WA D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe,Weimar 1883e.v.

ZdTh Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie

chapter one

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Knowing God and the way of history

‘What is the primary goal of human life? That we know God’.1 Thisopening sentence of the Geneva Catechism does not represent merelyan age-old vision of human life, but also refers to the mystery that tothis very day is interwoven with Christian belief and is the foundationfor all Christian theology: living has something to do with knowingGod. In our time the answer may appear in other forms, with moreemphasis on being human and humanity, but it has remained like ahidden magnet under various theological themes. It is however pre-cisely this answer that has become a problem for present generations,under the influence of a culture that is embarrassed about or evenrejects belief in God. What does it really mean to know God? Can weindeed know God? Where does such knowledge have its foundations,what nourishes it, and what is it that is ultimately known? And if thereis something like knowledge of God, what does it have to do with beinghuman, with life, with our actions? These are substantive theologicalquestions which belong to the field of reflection on Christian dogma.

The direction that this study will go in reflecting on these questions isthat of theological history, or historical theology. Theological history (orhistorical theology) will be used to treat questions in the field of Chris-tian dogmatics. In the light of advancing differentiation 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 failsto do justice to at least one of the two—or even both—elements, pro-ceeding this way can ever generate suspicion. At the same time it mustbe said that dogmatic reflection is impossible without involving its own

1 CO 6, 9–10: ‘Quelle est la principale Fin de la vie humaine?’ L’enfant: ‘C’est decognoistre Dieu’. The Latin version has a somewhat expanded answer: ‘ut Deum, aquo conditi sunt homines, ipsi noverint.’ Cf. also the Instruction et confession de Foy (1537),OS I, 378.

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particular situation in the reflection. That is to say, the reflection cannotbe separated from the Church—and in this case we of course mean theChurch in its ecumenical sense, namely as the community of faith in alltimes and places. If dogmatics can be regarded as the orderly reflectionon the content of Christian knowledge of God,2 then its interrelation-ship with the Church as an historically defined entity is indispensable.That perhaps sounds like a curtailment, as if the message of Christianfaith does not extend to all the world and to all mankind. Our situ-ating of the question is anything but intended to place a limit on thepublic domain of Christian theology. It is indeed necessary however torecognise that Christian belief does come from somewhere, and pointsback to events in history and continues to bear their stamp.3 That inProtestant tradition the Bible, as the Word of God, is regarded as theprimary and decisive source of Christian theology, is something whichwill not be disputed in the following theological-historical arrangement.It is nevertheless important to realise that access to and dealing withthis source is not something that is independent of debates which werecarried on in the past, and just as little from debates that are ongoingwith contemporary culture. Expressed in the language of dogmatic the-ology, with these questions we move within the sphere of the doctrineor the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology. The organisation of this studyincludes an explicit acknowledgement that in our thinking and speak-ing we have been in part shaped and marked by preceding generations,and that with an eye to current theological reflection it is worth theeffort to grapple seriously with what previous generations have thought,experienced and felt in their encounters with the subject that lies beforeus: knowing God.

2 Thus in principle the whole of the content of dogmatics can be included withinthe definition of knowledge. God is really the most comprehensive object of Christianreligious knowledge, and thus also of theology. See for instance H. Bavinck, GereformeerdeDogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 2 and W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie Bd. I, Göttin-gen 1988, 14–15; ET, Systematic Theology, Volume I, Grand Rapids/Edinburgh 1992, 4–5.

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 Godassumes both an historical and a contemporary community. For the distinction of thethree forms of audience, see D. Tracy, The analogical Imagination. Christian Theology and theCulture of Pluralism, New York 1993, 6–31.

introduction 3

1.2. Calvin and Barth

This study limits itself to two theologians who each has assumed a rep-resentative place in Reformed Protestantism: John Calvin (1509–1564)and Karl Barth (1886–1968). It can justly be said of both that they madetheir choices and presented their vision of human knowledge of God inan independent manner and in entirely different intellectual climates.This book therefore consists of two parts or panels which, connected bya hinge, together form a diptych. In the first panel a sketch is given ofCalvin’s vision of human knowledge of God. How does man arrive atknowledge of God, what invites him to faith and how does this knowl-edge relate to other forms of knowledge and experience? The questionabout the way in which knowledge of God is acquired can not how-ever be separated from the substantive question of what is known ofGod. Epistemological questions are connected with the material whichconstitutes the theological content. What does man really know aboutGod and himself ? What can he hope for, what guides his life in theworld, his fears and desires? Arising from the same questions, a sketchof Barth’s concept of knowing God appears in the second panel. KarlBarth’s theology, since the appearance of his dogmatic work unjustlytermed ‘neo-orthodoxy’,4 fully bears the marks of the post-Kantian sit-uation. Barth lived and worked in a culture and intellectual climate thatstood 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 Godmethodically permits itself to be immediately and uninterruptedly present in words anddogmatic concepts—thus knowledge of God is knowledge of eternal truths, authori-tatively proclaimed. Originally the term primarily carried the negative connotation ofauthoritarian belief. See for instance the reaction by P. Wernle to the first edition ofthe Epistle to the Romans: ‘Der Römerbrief in neuer Beleuchtung’ in: Kirchenblatt für diereformierte Schweiz 34 (1919), 163 and Barth’s response to that in the Foreword to therevised edition Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) (München 1922=) Zürich 197611,VI: ‘…das Schreckgespenst einer neuen Orthodoxie …’ (ET: The Epistle to the Romans, trans-lated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York 1968, 3: ‘the appearence ofthe horrible spectre of a new orthodoxy’). Cf. also Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf(1927), hrsg. von G. Sauter, Zürich 1982, 7 en KD I/1, IX; ET: Church DogmaticsI/1, XIV. For the reception in the Anglo-Saxon context, see Bruce L. McCormack,Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936,Oxford 1997, 24–26. See also the reference there to F. Kattenbusch, Die deutsche evange-lische Theologie seit Schleiermacher II, Gießen 1934, 46. The association of Barth’s theologywith repristination and imposed authority received no small impetus from Bonhoeffer’smemorable assessment of Barth’s theology as a form of revelation positivism (letter ofMay 5, 1944).

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tual climate, where the possibility and desirability of believing in Godwas doubted, or forcefully denied.

The arrangement followed has implications for the manner in whichthe context is discussed. Put differently, the manner in which theologi-cal history is handled has considerable limitations. Tracing the factorswhich went into the development of their ideas, seeking out sources andstriking differences from contemporaries, or the course of their owndevelopment is not the intention of this study. Because of the structureof the study the reader can for a moment get the impression that Calvinand Barth were two solitary figures who arrived at their positions suigeneris. I emphasise that this is not my intention. Contemporary theo-logical research makes it clear again and again that Calvin and Barthwere both connected with their contemporaries within a fine-meshednet of existing concepts and forms of exegesis. Where it was possible, Ihave made use of studies that focus on the narrower context, on a detailof the panel, but in general it is the larger field that is of interest in thisbook. The idea of context is thus understood broadly, in the sense of thecultural climate, the whole of the positions and attitudes that permeatethe way we deal with the world, ourselves and God. An awareness ofthe context is of great importance in dogmatic reflection. A direct com-parison between Calvin and Barth is therefore not the intention, andthe annexation of the one for the other even less so.5 Consideration oftheir concepts of knowledge of God takes place precisely in the con-sciousness of their presumptive otherness and strangeness, while theotherness is not so absolute as to exclude the possibility of a fruitfulcomparison. I have tried to do justice to both. The step that has to betaken within dogmatics is the question of what a concept contributes tothe particular reflection at hand.

The two panels are connected by a hinge. The hinge is formed bythe epistemological critique of the Enlightenment, culminating in thethought of Immanuel Kant. The choice for Kantian epistemologicalcritique as the hinge is not intended to suggest that Barth is respondingto Kant in any direct sense. What I do wish to express by this is thatCalvin and Barth each lived in a very particular time, separated by thetime we call the Enlightenment. Calvin is portrayed as a pre-modern

5 See the irate response of R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin. Studies in theFoundation of a Theological Tradition, New York/Oxford 2000, 187 and idem, After Calvin.Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63–102.

introduction 5

thinker,6 and Barth as someone who completely shares in the problemsof modernity.7 The focus on Kant’s epistemological critique functionsas a means to briefly describe the changed constellation of theologyafter Kant.

The intention of this book implies that I will not limit myself purelyto observations and assembling data. In the discussion of the two pan-els the difference in the configuration of the various elements will nec-essarily be dealt with. There are shifts in the role taken by man andin the manner in which God is portrayed. As a viewer of the pan-els, one immediately forms judgements, and the judgement thus doesnot remain neutral. There is profit booked, but also losses. The criti-cal glance is not only cast backwards toward Calvin, but also forwards,toward Barth. Contemporary theology may be closer in time to Barththan to Calvin, but that does not eliminate the possibility that there issomething to be learned from essential components in Calvin, some-thing which has been lost in the more modern panel. Thus material isbrought together for an individual answer to the questions of what it is

6 With this general characterisation of Calvin’s context I am implicitly taking aposition opposed to those classifications which seek to all too easily situate Calvin, ormore broadly, the Reformation, as early-modern, and thereby as a sort of overture formodernism. The collective religious and cultural characteristics of what historiographywith good reason distinguishes as the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Biblical humanismand Reformation are so decisive in comparison to the Enlightenment and modernitywhich flowed from it, that the term pre-modern is fully justified. This leaves intactthe value and necessity of Calvin research differentiating within this wider context. Forthis tendency within current research see particularly the book by R.A. Muller alreadymentioned, The Unaccommodated Calvin.

7 Quite intentionally this characterisation leaves aside the approaches to Barth asa 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, München 1973, 7–33), as anexponent of modernism (D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’, ibidem,34–102; T. Rendtorff, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis der TheologieKarl Barths und ihre Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studienzu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gütersloh 1972, 161–181) or of anti-modern modernism(G. Pfleiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie. Zu Genese und Kontext eines paradigmatischenEntwurfs systematischer Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 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 KarlBarth, Cambridge 2000, 274–295; William. S. Johnson, The Mystery of God. Karl Barthand te Postmodern Foundations of Theology, Louisville 1997; L. Karelse, Dwalen. Over MarkC. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999). Barth has a very nuanced attitude towardmodernism, in which it is difficult to bring the elements of continuity and discontinuitytogether under one term. For a well-considered balance, see D. Korsch ‘Theologie inder Postmoderne. Der Beitrag Karl Barths’ in: idem, Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth,Tübingen 1996, 74–92.

6 chapter one

to know God, where this knowledge comes from, what is to be hopedfor, and what place we are invited to take.

The procedure is that in both panels there is first a general outlinesketched of what contemporary dogmatics would call the doctrine ofrevelation (Chapters 2 and 6). Here one begins to see what the way orways are by which man can obtain knowledge of God. This is followedin each panel by two chapters in which several substantive themes arediscussed. For both Calvin and Barth several subjects from the doctrineof God and the doctrine of the sacraments are successively taken up forexamination (Chapters 3, 4, 7 and 8). The choice of using the doctrinesof God and the sacraments as the basis for sketching the content ofthe theology in both cases is dictated by the hypothesis that these arethe themes which are pre-eminently suited to serve as mirrors of thetheological concept as a whole. After all, in the doctrine of God onefinds reflection on the question of who it is that man is dealing within faith. There lie the roots of any answer to questions about salvation.The themes of providence and election are taken up within this context.I consider the doctrine of the sacraments to be significant because itis in this field that it becomes clear in a concentrated way how manarrives at knowledge of God, what he perceives of God’s salvation, andwhat position he takes with respect to God as an acting person. ForCalvin this is focused on his view of the Supper, for Barth on what heleft behind of his fragment on baptism as KD IV/4. As this differentchoice in rounding off the panels already shows, I have not chosen tomaintain a strict symmetry between the two panels, nor is this strictlynecessary. Rather, it can be defended that the portion of the doctrineof the sacraments in each panel permits itself to be read as a pregnantsummary of the whole vision of the content of any way to knowledgeof God. Moreover, it appears to be precisely the view of baptism andthe Supper that is suitable for catching sight of the division of rolesbetween God and man. In addition, in the case of Barth it makes clearjust how much his view on the place of man as a subject in the God-man relationship evolved.

1.3. Faith as knowing?

Proposing to study Calvin and Barth’s theology from the perspectiveof human knowledge of God is anything but an obvious choice in thepresent cultural climate. Can faith in fact be characterised as a form of

introduction 7

knowing? Doesn’t theology have a lot of explaining to do in that case?Indeed, upon hearing the word ‘knowledge’, many in Western culturalcircles would think first of scientific knowledge. The term knowledgeis in that case reserved for knowledge that derives its claim to truthfrom some form of argumentation from the natural sciences. Onlythat knowledge which fulfils a limited number of criteria from physicalsciences is justified.8 In terms of this approach, knowledge of God fallsout of the boat, because there is no epistemological guarantee that canbe given for it.

Even if one is of the opinion that the concept of knowledge must betaken more broadly than just knowledge in the physical sciences, it isstill clear that the concept of knowledge of God can easily be misunder-stood intellectually or scientifically. Under the influence of intellectualassociations, the concept of knowledge of God as a description of therelation between man and God was pushed to the margins and hasundergone an enormous reduction. That was not just a phenomenonof this century. About a century ago the mystic ring of the concept ofknowing God was again brought to the fore when Abraham Kuypertranslated cognito dei into Dutch as kennisse Gods (which can be under-stood as mystical ‘knowledge from God’ as well as ‘knowledge of God’)instead of simply godskennis (knowledge of God).9 Since the advance ofscience and technology, knowledge has generally been associated withinstrumental knowledge and scientific knowledge. This sort of knowl-edge attempts to make phenomena as clear as possible and to come togrips with them by means of theory and experimentation. Thanks toinstrumental knowledge modern society is able to produce a massiveflood of goods and thus to realise a standard of welfare for at least asegment of humanity the like of which has never been seen in worldhistory. This development however has its darker side. Through thisshift to an instrumental conception of knowledge the content of what

8 Without going into the matter further, following the philosopher Alvin Plantingaone can term this approach to the guarantee of human knowledge classic foundationalthinking. See A. Plantinga ‘Reason and Belief in God’ in: A. Plantinga/N. Wolterstorff,Faith and Rationality. Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame/London 1983, 16–93 and thebroad exposition of the project of his epistemology in the trilogy Warrant and ProperFunction, New York/Oxford 1993, Warrant: The current Debate, New York/Oxford 1993and 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, 38–42.

8 chapter one

it meant to know has been reduced, and the broader meaning that theconcept of knowledge of God traditionally encompassed now must beexpressed by means of other words.

Distinguished from scientific and instrumental knowledge, there isalso a broader concept of knowing that is possible, one which has itsfoundations in the world of experience. According to this epistemologyit is defensible to begin with the multiplicity of sensory and intellectualcapacities. If our faculties are functioning well they produce trustworthyknowledge. In addition to sense perception we possess memory, weaccept the witness of others, we know the difference between goodand bad, beautiful and ugly, truth and falsity. In short, in practicewe live with all sorts of knowledge that is the product of capacitiesand that we accept in an immediate way, that is to say, without theintervention of reasoning.10 The experience of the light of the autumnsun on a hedgerow, the first notes of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’, the warmthof the spring sun on your forehead, the smell of lavender, the tasteof fresh bread, an intensely experienced memory, a strong feeling ofindignation, the testimony of others: all these are examples of primaryexperience and forms of knowing that do not fall into the category ofscientific knowledge, but none the less produce knowledge of a sort thatin practice we accept to be trustworthy. Knowing in this primary senseis being in contact with, spoken to by, conditioned by, in the presenceof, involved with: in other words, relationally defined in a wide sense.This knowing is a form of contact in which the person who knows firstis receptive, and then receives and experiences that which transpires.This sort of knowing also has conceptual and propositional implicationsand can become the object of reflection; but all these operations are anabstraction of what presents itself in experience. What is experienced ismore than can be comprehended in words or reflection about it. Wecould call it a form of relational knowing, in which the person does notso much become master of the thing known, but is addressed by andbecomes conditioned by it. It is to be emphatically distinguished fromknowledge 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, ‘Plantinga’s externalisme: waarborg door het naar beho-ren functioneren van kenvermogens’ in: R. van Woudenberg/B. Cusveller, De kentheorievan Alvin Plantinga, Zoetermeer 1998, 67–82; ET: ‘The Assurance of Faith: A Themein Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemology’, Neue Zeitschrift fürSystematische Theologie 40 (1998), 77–92.

11 See C. van der Kooi, ‘Kennis van belang. Wetenschapsbeoefening in het licht van

introduction 9

is ultimately connected with notions of this sort. In knowing Godthe person who knows is taken up into a relationship, defined by theproximity of God.

It should not be surprising that in contemporary theology there hasbeen an attempt to replace the concept of knowing God with wordsand concepts which lack the intellectual and scientific associations thishas assumed, and which therefore appear to fit better with the pecu-liar character of knowledge in faith. An orientation to the situationof dialogue and the personal encounter has been characteristic of themanner in which revelation and the knowledge acquired through ithave been approached over the last century. In theology influencedby Barth the object of knowledge of God is formulated in terms ofrevelation, Word and being addressed by God in his Word. In somecases, such as E. Brunner and H. Berkhof, the knowledge in faith isexplicitly formulated as knowledge which arises from encounter.12 ForE. Jüngel God is the mystery which reveals itself in the history of JesusChrist. Through this the story, and the narrativity which is connectedwith it, becomes the theological category par excellence for thinkingabout God and His coming.13 In Roman Catholic theology God is oftenspoken of as the hidden perspective that one discovers if one beginswith the whole broad range of fundamental human experiences, theopen places in human existence, and through surprise and amazementcomes out at faith in God, precipitated in myths and stories. The word‘God’ becomes a meaningful word when people dare to let themselvesbe touched by these experiences, which are nothing less than tracesof God and themselves lead to the way to God.14 Among thinkers ofProtestant background this broad approach generally takes the form ofthe question of meaning as the context for the question of God,15 or,

christelijke geloofskennis’ in: J.P. Verhoogt, S. Griffioen en R. Fernhout (red.), Vinden enzoeken. Het bijzondere van de Vrije Universiteit, Kampen 1997, 98–116.

12 H. Berkhof, Christelijk Geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer, Nijkerk 19937, 29; ET:Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, Grand Rapids 1979, 30 for instance,is characteristic.

13 E. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten imStreit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, Tübingen 1977; ET: God as the Mystery of the World.On the Foundation of the Thology of the Crucified 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, 85–108,258. 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

as in Adriaanse, the question of God becomes a perspective which inthe act of thinking steadily recedes further without however disappear-ing. The continuing fruitfulness and blessing of faith in God for life isthereby acknowledged, while at the same time it becomes abundantlyclear that the notion of knowledge is profoundly problematised.16 Unde-niably these approaches offer a subtle tool for catching sight of thatwhich is peculiar to faith, within a context in which religious knowl-edge is no longer rooted in the generally accepted metaphysics of being.What contemporary, Western theology has in common is that over abroad line it has undergone a hermeneutic change of course, or, in thecase of Karl Barth, even himself was instrumental in inaugurating thatdevelopment.17 As we have already said, according to this change ofcourse faith, knowing of God, still can be best compared with the sit-uation of a conversation in which two partners encounter one another,learn to know each other personally. The assumption that revelationcan be reduced to a dialogue continues to make itself felt, even thoughthe conversation takes place via a text, through an experience whichhas become a story.18 The believer is the hearer of the Word. The sensewhich dominates the paradigm of the conversation is therefore hearing,and the content of the divine Word is defined as self-revelation. Onecan ask if this image of a conversation is not all too barren. Particularlyin the literature by Calvin, as we shall see, we are reminded that in theway to faith all the senses are brought into play, and that knowledgeof God can be acquired through more senses than one. Moreover, onebecomes aware of how modern, limited and perhaps also damaging itis when in contemporary theology the concept of self-revelation servesas the only adequate correlate for Christian knowledge of God.

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 theSecular Ascription of Meaning. A Theological Study, Amsterdam 1996.

16 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Religionsphilosophie,Kampen 1995, 44, 261, 300. See also H.J. Adriaanse, H.A. Krop, L. Leertouwer, Hetverschijnsel theologie. Over de wetenschappelijke status van de theologie, Meppel/Amsterdam 1987.

17 Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Erste Fassung) 1919, Hrsg. v. H. Schmidt, Zürich 1985, 3:‘Geschichtsverständnis ist ein fortgesetztes, immer aufrichtigeres und eindringenderesGespräch zwischen der Weisheit von gestern und der Weisheit von morgen, die eineund dieselbe ist.’ Cf. also Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung), (München 1922=), XI: ‘… bisdas Gespräch zwischen Urkunde und Leser ganz auf die Sache … konzentriert ist.’(ET, 7)

18 See W. Stoker/H.M. Vroom, Verhulde waarheid. Over het begrijpen van religieuze teksten,Meinema 2000, 34–51, 86–105.

introduction 11

The foregoing is not intended to suggest an intellectualistic concep-tion of faith. However, the caricature repeatedly arises that knowledgein faith could be resolved into a number of revealed truths or couldbe derived from the highest principle. Now, faith indeed has contentwhich one can also try to express in propositions. It exists precisely inthe consciousness that God has acted and spoken in contingent histor-ical acts and experiences. It is knowledge that refers to the history ofIsrael and Jesus Christ as the history in which God has spoken in wordsand deeds, has addressed man, and through His acting has accom-plished salvation.19 That God in all this also makes Himself known anddoes not withhold Himself is the deepest and most unabandonable coreof belief, which is to be heard in the modern definition of revelationas self-revelation. To what extent the latter concept is pure profit ormay also involve a loss, will be a topic for discussion in the succeedingchapters.

The contingent experiences of God’s dealings are passed on throughhuman testimonies and in this way have defined a community, areassimilated there, and in turn passed on within varying situations. Pre-cisely these varying situations, the debate over God’s acts and speak-ing within the Christian community, and its debate with culture haveassured that Christian doctrine would be created. In the process of testi-fying, retelling, actualising and referring to plausibility there arose whatwe term tradition, a paradosis, was given form in a rite and a cultus,and Christian doctrine took shape as a meta-language in the practiceof faith. In other words, it is impossible to imagine a situation where theinvolvement and activity of the knowing subject is not at both the levelof lived faith, testimony and the cultus, and also at the level of reflectionabout faith.

Particularly the latter, the conviction that the human subject plays anactive and constitutive role in knowledge of God and, with that, also inconfession and doctrine, is both broadly accepted in our post-Kantianculture and to a great extent defines the problem. It raises the questionof the status of dogmatic pronouncements, and in modern theologicalhistory has led to constant scepticism regarding purported objectivism

19 Cf. N. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse. Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks,Cambridge 1995, who opposes the identification of God’s speaking and revelation,and with the aid of J.L. Austin’s theory of language acts defends the possibility ofinterpreting the Bible in a coherent manner as the speaking of God.

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in dogmatics.20 The increasing scientific monopoly on the concept ofknowledge and the wide acknowledgement of the role of the humansubject in the acquisition of knowledge went hand in hand, so that ingeneral the question about the status of religious language, and in par-ticular that of metaphor,21 became a focus of interest. People do not uselanguage only for their dealings with the world. They also use earthlymeans in order to express that which transcends the earthly. Can thatwhich is said in religious language and concepts still be characterisedas knowledge? Can this claim be made? Or, all things considered, isall belief and all theology a human product, an entity of convictions,stories, norms, values and rules that as a cultural construct serves toprovide answers for questions in life and our search for orientation?22 Isman all alone by himself even at the heart of the deepest metaphors heuses? Western theology has been deeply influenced by the agnosticismthat modernity has accepted as its basic attitude.

That knowledge is a ‘success word’ has also, in part, fed into thisdistrust. To know something implies that there is something knownwhich actually exists or works. When the concept of knowing God isused, it means that an implicit claim is being made that God exists,or rather, acts and speaks. We indeed do find that claim with both ofthe theologians discussed here. No matter how different the times inwhich they lived, for both Calvin and Barth the existence of God—or better, the knowability of God—is not open to question. Before aman can pose the question about God’s existence, he has already beentouched by God. Both point to experiences through which it appearsthat man always arrives on the scene too late with his scepticism.By beginning with the concept of knowledge of God, I do not deny

20 The dogmatic work of G.C. Berkouwer, particularly his Dogmatische Studien, Kam-pen 1949–1972; ET: Studies in Dogmatics, Grand Rapids 1952–1976 documents the at-tempt to banish objectivism from theology and give the subject his specific 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. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwägungen zur theologischen Rele-vanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie’ in: idem,Entsprechungen: Gott—Wahrheit—Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen, München 1980, 103–157.Idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 357–383; ET, 261–281.

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 anthropologicalapproach to religion as a cultural construct see the frequently cited article by CliffordGeertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ in: idem, The Interpretation of Culture, London1993, 87–125.

introduction 13

that this assertion is subject to tremendous pressure, at least withinthe agnostic climate of a Western society which, for the rest, in aglobal perspective, geographically and culturally, overrates itself. Thechoice for the concept of knowledge of God is however inspired bythe conviction that the notion of knowledge is something which simplycannot be abandoned by Christian faith. As soon as we accept theidea that man not only thinks, but reflects on what he hears, themetaphor no longer has to be labelled figurative language, but quiteto the contrary it can be said of a metaphor precisely that it suppliesknowledge. If what the sources of Christian faith themselves suggest istrue, namely that faith is called up by acts of God, through His Word,through the coming of God to man, to His world, then the words,stories and songs, and the metaphors that control them live from thatcoming. Knowledge in faith, or knowledge of God, arises where manlets himself be addressed, be determined, responds to God’s addressand approach. The reflection takes place within an already existing webof being addressed by stories, words, songs, images. That means thatfrom the very start revelation has the nature of an appeal, is creativeand performative because it creates a relationship. Knowledge of Godcertainly also implies information, but the informative is ultimatelyembedded in the performative: in the relation, in the appeal. If thatis true, there are good reasons to withstand the agnostic tendency incontemporary theology and, for the sake of internal theological reasonshold fast to the notion of knowledge.23

There are thus substantive reasons for arguing for maintaining theterm ‘knowledge of God’ as a central concept. Where people experi-ence their faith, in praying, singing, meditating, in liturgy, in shapingtheir lives, in taking responsibility for the care of creation, for their soci-ety in a larger or smaller sense, there God and his will to salvation arein one way or another the object of human knowing, however muchhesitancy and how many limitations may accompany it, and a cause foracting. There is no need to speak about it noisily or ceremoniously, as ifGod were something that could be pointed to. Man knows all too wellthat within the Christian tradition itself the knowing of God in this lifeis a knowing in part, thus tentative, and the concepts of Christian doc-trine reminds us that all theology is no more than a map on the way, invia.

23 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 383–408; ET, 281–298.

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1.4. Bipolarity and conflict

In this study knowledge of God is not used in the sense that it has asits primary meaning in scholastic theology, namely God’s knowledgeof Himself. As human knowledge of God, the concept can be picturedschematically as an ellipse with two foci. The one focus is the acting ofGod, and the other the faith of man as answer to that acting. These twoelements, which in dogmatics are generally discussed separately underthe headings of revelation and faith, are taken up together in the oneconcept of knowledge of God. By reaching back to the older conceptwe make it clear that these two, faith and revelation, belong togetherfrom the very outset, and can not be discussed apart from one another.The concept of knowledge of God thereby contains within itself thetension that characterises the relation between God and man. The con-cept of knowledge of God has not only a propositional, epistemologicalpresumption, but implies from the outset a bipolarity, namely, the rela-tion of God and man. It is therefore at the same time a conflict-ladenconcept. It is not without reason that I have referred already to themystical, or better in this connection, the spiritual dimension of theconcept.24 This designation must still be sharpened somewhat, becausethe adjectives mystic and spiritual taken in themselves are too pallidand can easily lead to misunderstandings. They reflect too little of thedrama, tension and conflict in this relation. If God is known, this takesplace within a damaged world, and this is partly the fault of men whoare at odds with themselves and their world. Knowing God is not amatter of tranquil reflection or serenity, but on the contrary refers to aconfrontation, an invitation to let oneself be defined by a promise, torespond to an trumpet call, and to do that in the midst of an existencewhich is marked by emptiness and a flight from the void. Put in otherwords: the concept of knowing God is soteriologically charged, and notwithout reason refers to eschatology.

A short tour through the Johannine writings, at first sight the mostserene documents of the New Testament, will teach that knowing inthis context is absolutely not serene, and has lost all sense of neutrality.According to these texts, human knowing of God involves not only adecrease of ignorance. Knowledge and acquisition of knowledge standin tension with error and lies. In the Gospel according to John the

24 Cf. H. Bavinck, Modernisme en orthodoxie, Kampen 1911, 37.

introduction 15

attitude opposed to light is described as rejection (John 1:10–11), inchapter 3 the ignorance of Nicodemus is a form of error (John 3:10),and in chapter 8 the rejection is characterised as violence and lies(John 8:44). These are indications that in the sphere of faith the themeof human knowledge of God therefore can not be discussed merelyas an epistemological problem. It is a completely theological conceptwithin which the whole relation of man to God is being expressed.Knowing God involves both the affective and the cognitive, but alsoacting. Knowledge of God reveals itself in love, in doing the will ofthe Father (IJohn 3:6, 16). It coincides with the perspectives on beinghuman that in the catechetical tradition were traditionally discussedunder the heads of faith, command and prayer.

The knowledge to which theology refers has to do with engagement,with contact and presence. In short, it is relational knowing, sometimesin a pregnant sense. This view is not limited to the Johannine writings.It is not without reason that the Hebrew word yada is also used forsexual intercourse between a man and woman (see for instance Gen.4:25;; see also Matt. 1:25). Knowledge that really moves one often hasa corporeal basis. It will be seen that particularly Calvin’s theologycontains reminiscences of these sensory dimensions of our knowing.God invites us through concrete, earthly means. No matter how strangethat may sound, we can learn more from Calvin about the interactionof knowledge of God and creation and physicality than we can fromBarth.

1.5. The mirror as an invitation

The title given to this book picks up on the familiar passage from theapostle Paul about the limits of knowledge of God in this life, but itis not restricted to this specific association. In ICor. 13 Paul offers anassessment of the charismata which are found in the community. Helists prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge, gnosis. For all ofthese ways of knowing and dealing with one another, however, it isthe 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 therestrictions and limitations to which the knowing of God is subject. Thisspecific meaning was however already in the ancient world embed-ded in the broader field of symbolic possibilities to which the naturalphenomenon of visual reflection gave rise, namely as a metaphor for

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knowledge. The mirror invites, makes known. This broader meaning,which as it were is presupposed in the use Paul makes of the image, iswhat the title is intended to express.

As a utensil the mirror was also a source of fascination in the ancientworld. One could view an object through its reflection in a mirror. Itwas a form of indirect knowledge. The image is not perfect, as in directobservation. The reflection is the mirror image of the original: what isleft appears to be right, and what is right, left. We should particularlyremember that the antique mirror, as Paul knew it, was very far fromhaving the accuracy of today’s bright and blemish-free glass mirrors.One had only mirrors of beaten and polished metal.25 The image thatwas visible in the mirror was vaguer and subject to deformations bythe unevenness of the surface. It is for this reason that the apostleadds ‘dimly’. A mirror afforded no perfect image; there was indeed animage, but it was vague and freakish. That throws light on the mannerin which the metaphor is used by Paul. What we know of God and Hiskingdom has holes, empty places, things that are really unknown or areknown only in part. This is tentative knowledge. That however doesnot detract from there being enough known, according to Paul, to livewith it. Christian knowledge of God comprises the essentials. and at thesame is limited.

The image of the mirror plays an important, and in part iden-tical role in both Calvin and Barth, but as we will see, they differon one important point. For both there are places, facts or a his-tory which can be pointed to which fulfil the role of a mirror, of anopen invitation to learn to know, to participate. In Calvin’s theologythe metaphor of the mirror stands for a multiplicity of concrete waysthrough which knowledge of God can arise and be nourished. It isan outspoken metaphor which functions positively theologically as anindicator of the range of earthly means with which God, through hisSpirit, draws men to himself. Mirrors are the places where God makesclear what He wills regarding man. God has something in store forman; He made him to be in fellowship with Him. They play an essen-tial role in the trustworthiness of the images and the content withwhich God makes Himself present with man. For Calvin knowledgeof God is not reduced to the singularity of the self-revelation given inChrist.

25 See 2.3.1.

introduction 17

The image of the mirror also fulfils a role for Barth, in particular inthe doctrine of the analogia fidei, later elaborated into the doctrine of theanalogia relationis. Like Calvin, Barth proceeds from the actual knowa-bility of God, but knowledge of God is rigidly Christologically defined,and the pneumatology that we encounter in some breadth in Calvin ishere entirely in the service of Christology. God is knowable through hisrevelation in Jesus Christ. In fact this history is the locus of knowabilityin 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 problematicof modernity. Barth’s 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’ refersto the Holy One who ‘distinguishes [Himself] from fate, in that He notso much is, but rather comes’.26 Barth’s preference for an idealistic struc-ture of thought, in which God, the origin or the idea, is not consideredto be represented in the factual, but as an object of knowing can onlybe gained in a process of critical distancing, is brought into relationwith this preference by Barth himself. Knowledge of God is no longerderived from the world, nor is it to be directly identified with the textof the Bible, but can only be conceived as the bestowed participation inthe self-revelation of God in Christ. In the idea of self-revelation what ischaracteristic of this concept appears to contrast with Calvin’s concept,where the work of the Spirit is conceived more broadly and is not just aproperty of Christology. According to Barth knowledge of God is onlyconceivable as participation in a movement, an irreducible but never-theless actual reality of God’s acting and speaking which must alwaysbe reconstituted anew. Only by virtue of this reality and that event cana part of earthly reality, concretely the man Jesus, become the revela-tion of God’s acting. It is characteristic of this concept of knowing Godthat, as a result of this approach, there is no plausibility whatsoever tobe searched for or to be found for the truth of knowledge of God out-side of participation in this actual reality of God’s acting. This has led tothe questions and complaints which still pursue Barth’s theological con-cept. In the wake of this theology, is knowledge of God not typified by acertain Docetism, hermetically sealed to the concretely historical? Onedoes not have to answer this question in the affirmative to nevertheless

26 K. Barth, ‘Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie’ in: idem, Theologische Fragen undAntworten. Gesammelte Vorträge III, Zürich 1957, 70.

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acknowledge the underlying question as legitimate. In what way is thetruth of God peculiar? What are the supporting elements for a Chris-tian concept of knowledge of God that is characterised by a fundamen-tal openness for perception of reality, and that can become a contribu-tion to discussion about our world and the search for humanity? In thisCalvin and Barth, as representatives of an ecumenical Reformed theol-ogy, both agree that knowledge of God not only concerns the privateaffairs of the individual, but serves a public interest.

part one

JOHN CALVIN

chapter two

WAYS OF KNOWING

2.1. Introduction

2.1.1. Knowledge of God and piety

The face of a theological project is at least as strongly defined by thelines which are not there as by the lines which are deliberately andforcefully introduced. That is true for Calvin’s theology too. One ofthe most obvious differences with contemporary systematic theologi-cal projects is the absence of any separate handling of the doctrine ofrevelation, or the question of the nature and sources of knowledge ofGod. In modern schemes the discussion of this subject precedes all else,and is broadly conceived. Anyone reading Calvin discovers that thissubject has no separate or central place in the whole of his writingsand theology. This should not be surprising. The term revelation onlymade its appearance as a central and fundamental concept that organ-ises and qualifies the whole of theology and all of its sectors when itbecame a point of debate where and if God revealed Himself.1 Thatdoes not deny that Calvin too discusses the question of how man comesto knowledge of God, but the doctrine of revelation and theologicalepistemology as such are not of primary interest to him.2 That is a notunimportant observation, because it gives us insight into the certainties

1 P. Eicher, Offenbarung. Prinzip neuzeitlicher Theologie, Munich 1977, 17–57, distin-guishes among four different functions of the concept of revelation, namely 1) as aqualifier of the content of belief, 2) as legitimator, to the extent that the concept refersto God as the source of authority, 3) as an apologetic category, and 4) as a systematisingand unifying concept for the whole of theological assertions; see also H. Waldenfels,Einführung in die Theologie der Offenbarung, Darmstadt 1996, 83–143. In agreement withW. Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, Grand Rapids, MI, 1991, 194–195), one canargue that the explicit assumption of revelation as a subject in contemporary theologyprimarily serves the function of legitimisation and authorisation. Knowledge of Godwithout any form of authorisation remains a purely human, subjective assertion. Seefurther 9.4.

2 E.A. Dowey, ‘The Structure of Calvin’s Theological Thought as Influenced by the

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that Calvin shared with his times. Of course, it is possible to read anumber of portions of Book I with modern eyes and to scrutinise themin terms of the questions that are discussed as introductory questions inthe prolegomena of later times.3 We can not however overlook the factthat a general introduction of the sort that dogmatics in the modern erafeels is obligatory, is simply not present in an explicit form in Calvin.He does not worry about the question of whether knowledge of Godas such is possible or real. The critical commitment of his theology lieselsewhere, in much more substantive questions, namely who God is forman and what his salvation for man means. It is these substantive ques-tions which interest him more, precisely because their substance, whichshould guide relations with God, in his judgement has been buriedunder a weight of ritual and tradition in the church. A frequently recur-ring description of the situation in the church is ruina. In his eyes, thechurch—or better yet, Christianity—is in a state of decay. That whichpeople know of God and His salvation is hidden and smothered byillegitimate elements, by innovations which deviate from the originaltruth. Therefore, reformation is necessary, because the lack of knowl-edge, the ignorantia, that has gained the upper hand in church and soci-ety can then be combated. Calvin’s sense of his times is characterisedby his assertion that it is only recently that, thanks to the grace of God,insight into the true content of the Gospel has again been gained.4 Hesees his own role lying in propagating and strengthening the rediscov-ered Gospel in the hearts of men and in social institutions. I mentionthese elements because they are of importance in seeing more sharplywhat Calvin is out to accomplish. Pure knowledge of God is important,because only pure knowledge can afford understanding of salvation.

The chance is great that the word ‘pure’ will immediately set offalarm bells. It confirms the image of doctrinal orthodoxy, intellectu-alism and persecution of heretics, in short, of all the notions that thepejorative use of the word Calvinism has powerfully fed. Is the pursuit

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 thefirst edition, OS III, 9: ‘… paucissimos autem videbam qui vel modica eius cognitionerite imbuti essent.’ and OS III, 15: ‘Quod diu incognita sepultaque latuit, humanaeimpietatis crimen est: nunc quum Dei benignitate nobis redditur, saltem postliminiiiure suam antiquitatem recipere debebat.’

ways of knowing 23

of religious purity not inseparably linked with intolerance and inhu-manity, with the fate of Castellio, Bolsec, Gruet, Servetus and so manyothers whose lot was banishment or death? Is not purity a suspect word,because as distant inheritors of the Enlightenment we are firmly con-vinced that nothing in the world can be pure? Anyone who wishes topenetrate this distant, and for contemporary attitudes strange and dep-recated world will have to be open to the possibility that for Calvinthe concept of purity may stand in a broader context than that of doc-trine. What did Calvin have in mind? For him it did indeed mean topurify doctrine or free the church of deeply ingrained but reprehensiblerituals and customs—but it did not mean that exclusively. The word‘purify’ had a much broader and, I would say, both social and spiritualor intellectual meaning. That is to say, knowledge of God touches thefull breadth and depth of life. By breadth I mean the quality of pub-lic life, the quality of society. Religion is not just what it appears to bein modern Western society, namely a matter for individual believers ora congregation on the margins of society. The concern for religion isjust as much a responsibility of the authorities and represents a publicinterest. This ideal of a unified culture, striving for a Christian society,the societas christiana, has become totally alien to us. We associate thatwith an authoritarian culture. This is not to say that the necessity ofa certain social unity or consensus is denied in contemporary publicdebate. Anything but that; but within a situation of plurality and diver-sity of convictions, ‘norms and values’ is the search for unity narroweddown to a search for a common ethos, which is not strictly dependenton a religious source. With Calvin we are still in a climate in whichethos, religion and public interest are directly linked with one another.Merely the fact that Calvin dedicated his Institutes to the king of Franceis an indication that there was a totally different relationship betweenthe church and government. What he writes about the task of the gov-ernment can only confirm this: The worship of God and the Kingdomof Christ should also be given form in social and public life.5 The refor-mation that he had in mind operates not only on the level of doctrine

5 OS III, 11: ‘Tuum autem erit, serenissime Rex, nec aures, nec animum a tamiusto patrocinio avertere: praesertim ubi de re tanta agitur: nempe quomodo Deigloriae 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 cogitatiofacit, agnoscere se in regni administratione Dei ministrum. Nec iam regnum ille sedlatrocinium exercet qui non in hoc regnat ut Dei gloriae serviat.’

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that finds its apex in personal salvation, but equally involves the publicsphere, as can be seen in the role that the Consistory fulfilled in theGenevan community.

By depth I then mean personal spiritual life. This introduction willdirect attention toward both aspects. The breadth of the social rootagewill be discussed in 2.1.2. The final introductory section (2.1.3) will givea number of examples of the inseparable connection of religion with apure conscience.

The involvement of the knowledge of God with the concrete cir-cumstances of human life is programmatically expressed in the famousopening sentence of the Institutes: ‘Our wisdom, in so far as it oughtto be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of twoparts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.’6 In this characterisationof the content of faith, which unmistakably bears traces of the Bibli-cal humanism of the day and the search for a philosophia christiana asthe true wisdom,7 knowledge of God and human self-knowledge aredirectly linked with one another. One cannot be had without the other.Human religious understanding can be conceived as an ellipse withtwo 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 histheology: religious knowledge is bipolar. Knowledge of God has conse-quences for that which men know about themselves. As a man achievesinsight into himself and life, that will have direct consequences for hisknowledge of God. Knowledge of God is anything but theoretical. Inits aim and intent it is practical and, to immediately say the word thatcharacterises this concept and the spirituality which accompanies it inits whole height, breadth and depth, it is profitable. Calvin’s theology isrooted in the humanistic climate shaped by the Renaissance, in which itis no longer the vita contemplativa, far from the world, which provides theparadigm for proper life, but existence in the world that functions asthe divine task.8 What we call his theology is anything but a theoreticalactivity. It is practical knowledge.

6 Inst. 1.1.1.7 F. Wendel, Calvin et l’humanisme, Paris 1976, 75–76 points to Cicero’s definition

of philosophy which lies behind this, and the handling of this definition by Budéand Erasmus. See particularly J. Bohatec, Budé und Calvin. Studien zur Gedankenwelt desfranzösischen Frühhumanismus, Graz 1950.

8 See for instance Calvin’s abundantly clear rejection of monastic life in principle inInst. 4.13.16.

ways of knowing 25

The practical orientation of Calvin’s theology is expressed in a wordthat is related to knowledge of God and that describes the spiritualitywhich is connected with this theology: pietas, devotion.9 The doubleimplications of the concept of pietas have almost been lost to us. Inthe modern vernacular piety has suffered a thoroughgoing reductionto a description of a religious attitude. Piety then refers primarily toourselves, and not to God. Remnants of the original double meaningof the concept can, however, still be found in English in the term‘filial piety’, for piety was not originally focused exclusively on thedivine or sacred, but equally well described what was owed to ourfellowmen. Calvin has deliberately chosen to limit the definition ofpietas. Real knowledge of God results in piety. Piety is no outwardform, no inessential, but has real content. The definition that he givesfor piety is worth citing; it affords access to what Calvin presents asfaith. He writes, ‘By piety I mean that union of reverence and loveto God which the knowledge of his benefits inspires.’10 A couple ofelements in this definition attract our attention. In the first place,it must involve knowledge of God’s benefits, notitia. In other words,piety is not empty; it is paired with knowledge. Next, something isproposed regarding the content of this knowledge. In piety God isknown as the source of all good that mankind meets, both in theworld surrounding him and also in the Bible. Knowledge of God doesnot start at point zero; it is the perception of a source of good, ofsomething positive. Third, the definition makes it clear where suchknowledge must lead, namely to the double reaction of respect (orworship) and love. The worship acknowledges the distance of God andthe majesty of this source of all good; the love of God acknowledgesthe graciousness of the Divinity. As we have said, in the concept ofpietas the practical point of Calvin’s theology becomes visible. It is nolonger a question of doctrine or orthodoxy. Doctrine is in the serviceof a purpose, namely to present man to God in integrity and purity.11

9 See L.J. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin, Atlanta 1974, 97–134. See also thestudy by F.L. Battles, The Piety of John Calvin. An Anthology illustrative of the Spirituality of theReformer of Geneva, Pittsburg 1969.

10 Inst. 1.2.1: ‘Pietatem voco coniunctam cum amore Dei reverentiam quam benefi-ciorum eius notitia conciliat.’

11 See the letter to Francis I, OS I, 9: ‘Tantum erat animus rudimenta quaedamtradere, 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

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M. de Kroon has pointed to another text where for Calvin this pointcomes clearly to the fore. In his exegesis of Psalm 97:7 (‘All worshippersof images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; thegods bow down before him’), he writes, ‘Piety in the true sense of theword is this: that the true God be worshipped totally and wholly, so thatHe 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 bepaid to people or things. Further along we shall also see again how thisanxiety for the way in which he will speak of the relation between Godand man is characteristic of his theology.13 Neither man, nor a moralproject is the deepest motif of his theology, but a God who inclinesto man. The acknowledgement of this is what piety is about. All elseis subordinate to this practical purpose of piety. This is of paramountimportance for evaluating Calvin’s theology. What God makes knownof himself does not serve a theoretical or contemplative purpose, but ispractical in import.

A fourth element that surfaces in the definition of piety, and which istelling 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 neutralmeaning of ‘to bring about’, but with regard to human affection canbe translated as ‘arouse’ or ‘win’. It is close to another word which willplay a large role in the knowledge of God, namely the word invitare, orinvite. The words ‘arouse’ and ‘invite’ are indicators of a basic line inCalvin’s theology which, I would emphasise, is far too little taken intoaccount in the reception of Calvin’s thought in dogmatics. Accordingto Calvin, in many manners, through a colourful palette of means,God entices, draws, invites and encourages man to acknowledge hisMaker. It must be emphasised that this invitation comes through a

differimus, sicut dixi,nisi quod nos hominem, inopiae impotentiaeque suae convictum,melius ad veram humilitatem erudimus, ut abdicata in totum sui fiducia in Deum totusrecumbit, item ad gratitudinem, ut Dei beneficentiae quidquid habet boni transscribat,sicut revera ab ipso est.’

12 M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn. Reformatorische perspectieven. Teksten eninleiding, Zoetermeer 1991, 99.

13 According to M. de Kroon that is the point which distinguishes him from M. Bu-cer, for whom pietas describes the unity of faith and love. While for Calvin pietas isfocused on God, for Bucer the concept includes the relation to God and to man, thusfaith and ethics. Bucer opposes the Anabaptist tendency to primatise love toward theneighbour with the unity of faith in the justifying God and love of the neighbour. SeeM. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn, 92–108.

ways of knowing 27

colourful palette of means. The Scriptures are certainly central to this,but they are not the only means through which God lets himself beknown; the Scripture offers the possibility of giving all sorts of otherexperiences, inward and outward, a place in the contact that Godexercises with them. To use a favourite metaphor of Calvin’s, Godplaces the believer in the school of the Holy Spirit and thus subjectshim to a lifelong learning process that only comes to an end when inthe future life men are united with Christ in a new body. We can callthat eschatological, or better yet, the final orientation of this theology.Or yet again, Calvin’s theological idiom here betrays that it finds itsnourishment in an intellectual climate in which God is experiencedas the One who is actively occupied with mankind, spurring him on,drawing him, constantly training him.

By leading off in this study with the suggestion that for Calvin theworld and Bible function as an open invitation to the knowing ofGod, I am following a path that is not often trodden. The well-wornimage of Calvin’s theology, set in stone once and for all when Hegel’sphilosophy in fact defined the interpretation, is that all things cometogether at one point in Calvin’s theology, namely at the Counsel ofGod as the centre which defines everything and gives all its properplace. Calvin was the man of the system, logic and determinism. Itcannot be denied that Calvin sees no other possibility than to acknowl-edge God as the director, as the sovereign Lord who exercises domin-ion over all things in his sphere, but it is something else to separateand elevate this to the only aspect of Calvin’s peculiar theology. It mustbe admitted that this did not come out of the thin air. Seen histor-ically, in the wake of the arguments between the Remonstrants andthe Counter-Remonstrants, independent consideration of God’s Coun-sel, out of which arise both providence and double predestination, hasbecome definitive for the image of Calvinism internationally. Againstthe background of the way this image was shaped, it may appear tobe an all too easy attempt to save Calvin for ecumenical discussion tonow label invitation the fundamental element in his theology. Is suchlanguage, when it comes from Calvin’s pen, indeed to be taken seri-ously? Or does the invitation evaporate in the light of the Counsel ofGod, to become an empty haze, something that in the end does notmatter conceptually? After all, is the conviction that all things that hap-pen, happen at God’s command, not a part of the knowledge of God’sbenefits? Certainly the things of man and this world are fixed in HisCounsel, and all is decided about doom and salvation, about all that

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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 readthrough the one lens of God as absolute causality, which threatens tosmother the singularity of the finite world, and thus also the singular-ity of man. As has already been said, it cannot be denied that in theconception of God, man and the world that Calvin has, seen from theperspective of God all things are appointed. Calvin is absolutely con-vinced of this, and it is his view that God himself, by making knownthis 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, cannotbe combined in human thought, while according to the 19th centuryspeculative-idealist interpretation indeed can be brought together inthe same discourse? Do the invitation to all hearers and the limita-tions that are given with God’s eternal Counsel contradict one another?As we have said, Calvin is generally understood only in terms of the

14 Under the influence of 19th century idealist philosophy, for a long time the theol-ogy of Calvin was reduced to a system where one central dogma dominated, namelythat of God as absolute causality. See for instance F.C. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichenDogmengeschichte, Tübingen 1847, 218, Alex. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen inihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformirten Kirche, Erste und zweite Hälfte, Zürich 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, Göttingen 1926, 166–168.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 oneanother, in a complexio oppositorum. Beside the doctrine of providence stands individualresponsibility; beside justification stands sanctification. For a survey of the discussion:P. Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937, 15–49. See alsoM. de Kroon, De eer van God en het heil van de mens. Bijdrage tot het verstaan van de theologie vanJohannes 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, 15–30. See also C.H. Pinnock/R.C. Brow, Unbounded love. A GoodNews Theology for the 21st Century, Downers Grove, Ill., 1994. The question of to whatextent 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 onecan conceive with the word is the idealist notion of a system, then the answer must benegative. 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 anddisputationes, and therefore as a genre of its own that must be distinguished from genressuch as the sermon and commentary, the answer will be otherwise. See R.A. Muller,The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140–173.

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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 defined bythe idealist interpretation that threatened to conceive the finite as amanifestation, and therefore as an appearance. It will be made clear inChapter 3 that according to Calvin a partial revelation of God’s 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. Therevelation of God’s preordination is no licence to play human respon-sibility and God’s Counsel against one another in the space of ourhuman understanding. Human understanding is fundamentally limitedknowledge. The position of man as creature brings with it that man’sspeaking about God must take into account the categorical differencebetween God and man. With Calvin that difference functions as a reli-gious given, which makes following through a line of reasoning logicallyimpossible. He refuses to accept the final conclusions of an absolutedeterminism, namely that God is the creator of evil.15 Precisely becauseof this limitation it is not possible to relativise the seriousness of theinvitation and individual responsibility in the light of divine preordi-nation. What lies within the infinity of God’s Counsel actualises itselfin the way of invitation and individual responsibility. In what follows we willinvestigate what it means for Calvin’s theology that he allows both per-spectives to exist.16 Not only historically, but also with an eye to present-day systematic reflection, it will be productive to pay attention to thatfirst line, almost forgotten in a dogmatic perspective: for Calvin, life intime, in the world of the senses, in everyday experience is full of a Godwho seeks, draws and stimulates. Is this something which has becomestrange to us, or does Calvin’s theology here put us precisely onto atrack that has become overgrown and will have to be rediscovered onceagain?

15 It is significant that the critics of ‘determinism’ in Calvin, and more broadly inReformed theology, do not accept the religious character of the sovereignty of Godand reduce it to a system of causes and effects that lie on the same plane. Thus forinstance Pinnock, in his effort to do justice to the freedom and subjectivity of man andthe openness of history, arrives at a theology in which the notion of God’s sovereigntydisappears completely into the void. This sort of theology is right to the extent that itwill do justice to human responsibility; it is wrong to the extent that this is done at thecost of the notion of God’s sovereignty. Karl Barth increasingly wanted to do justiceto both perspectives, that of God’s sovereignty and that of human subjectivity, withouthowever telescoping them together as factors in one sphere.

16 See P. Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit, 138–139.

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2.1.2. Rootage in society

Choosing the concept of knowledge of God is not without risk. In theintroduction we have already discussed a possible intellectual and sci-entific misunderstanding due to the associations that the word ‘knowl-edge’ calls up. Once it has been made clear that knowledge of Godhas its source in the faithful relationship with God, at once the miscon-ception that knowledge of God belongs purely to the inner chamberand personal life threatens. Now, there can be no doubt about it: thepersonal is indeed present. It is one of the characteristics of Calvin’stheology that the point of knowledge of God is focused on the indi-vidual person, on his or her eternal salvation. At the same time theassociation mentioned wrong foots us if we forget that Calvin lived ina society where faith and the church were part of the ferment in soci-ety and played a central role in the public domain. Moreover, Calvinwas not willing to limit the role of religion to the civil well-being ofthe city and society alone. For him, it was ultimately a matter of thespiritual quality of society. His pursuit of pure knowledge of God is atone with his pursuit of reformation in the church and society, and inthis he had in mind not just one city, or a couple of cities, but thewhole of Europe, which threatened to fall to pieces, not through thedivisions that the Reformation as such brought about in Europe, butthrough the lack of spiritual values. He acted as the reorganiser ofthe Genevan society and as an advisor to the city council, which bywithdrawing from episcopal authority and through the disappearanceof the old ecclesiastical structures that followed from this had to dealwith countless new responsibilities in jurisprudence, administration andmorals. Important institutions that previously had seen to educationand the care of the poor and sick, and which in doing so had encour-aged the human qualities of the society, were now left in an adminis-trative and organisational vacuum. Thus thinking and acting were notseparate compartments for Calvin. His theology cannot be separatedfrom a situation in which he bore responsibility for the well-being ofa concrete society. Put more strongly, it is inseparable from a situa-tion in which the issue of reformation was a European affair, and thebreak with the Roman Church was not accepted as anything like afait accompli. It would still be more than a century before the shock ofthe spiritual and political rupture in Europe had been digested some-what and the division took political shape in the Peace of Westphalia(1648). To complicate things still further, in his vision of the church

ways of knowing 31

and state Calvin is in no sense modern, but stands entirely in the idealof the Middle Ages, of one undivided society. For a long time Calvinhoped for a renewal of one unbroken church, in which the old unitybetween nation and church or between city and church would still bemaintained. As a reformer of the second generation,17 his work andtheology is to be placed in a situation in which the reformation of thechurch had for some time been seen as the affair of the cities and theirleaders.18 With regard to the relationship of the church and state, thereformation of the cities did not deviate from the medieval pattern: theborders of the state (or rather of the city-state) coincided with those ofthe church. Church and civil authorities considered themselves as partsof the societas christiana, in which both had responsibilities which wereindeed to be distinguished, but in which the realisation that peoplebelonged to one Christian society was so overwhelming that the civilauthorities felt themselves responsible for the welfare of the church andthe Christian identity of society. Church and government are involvedin 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 thepurity of doctrine and life.19 In his Institutes Calvin includes public life,

17 Historically, Calvin’s theology can be situated at the transition of what Obermantermed the second and third reformation. See H.A. Oberman ‘Calvin’s Legacy. ItsGreatness and Limitations’ in: idem, The two Reformations. The Journey from the last Daystot the new World, New Haven/London 2003, 146–147. The first reformation was thatof Luther and Zwingli, the second that of the cities, and the third reformation wasthat of the refugee movement. This arose because in the ‘Interim’, after the close ofthe Schmalkaldic wars, the terrain won by the evangelical movement was seriouslythreatened. It was a time in which transitions from the old church to the evangelicalmovement and vice versa were still the order of the day, as the example of Louis duTillet shows (on this see for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, Philadelphia 1987,118–120). In short, Calvin’s theology was not born in a situation of academic peace. Thefirst edition of the Institutes was written because he felt the challenge to give orientationto those inclined to the evangelical movement in France, who, in his opinion, foundthemselves in a spiritual vacuum. Many of his writings were in response to concretesituations and are polemic in nature, in which he does his absolute best to win peopleover or defend his rigid and highly controversial policy in matters of organisation andreformation of the society.

18 See H.A. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, Kampen 1994.19 See, for example, the Articles concernant l’organisation de l’église et du culte a Genève,

proposés au conseil par les ministres (1537), OS I, 369–377. A striking example is Calvin’scommentary 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

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governmental authorities and their organisation under those aids thatare necessary for man’s journey to the kingdom of God. The govern-ment and its tools are not to be placed outside of God and his dealingwith mankind, as Anabaptist groups did. Certainly, God’s rule over theinward man, over the soul, is lasting and most important; worldly ruleis however just as much involved in that eschatological salvation, andsubservient to that end. In connection with the role of the governmentand the shaping of public life, Calvin uses the metaphor of peregrina-tio, a journey to a foreign land. The life of a believer is a journey tothe heavenly fatherland. It is Calvin’s conviction that the government,with its institutions, is one of the aids to accomplishing that journeysatisfactorily and preserving humanity.20 The task of government is thusdirectly connected with the objective and accomplishment of all knowl-edge of God: eternal communion with God in the future kingdom. It isclear that criteria can be derived from this purpose by which the gov-ernment can be criticised, and that unity with the government is notto be preserved at all cost. Salvation in Christ is a higher good thanremaining at one with the civitas,21 the civil unit, but this possibility ofcritical distance should not blind us to the principle from which Calvinproceeded totally: namely the linking of church and state, solidaritybetween church and government on the point of the goal of mankind,and the lifestyle which was geared to attaining that goal.

One place where the entwining of the church and civil authoritieswithin the whole of the Christian society can be seen in a strikingway in the Genevan situation is the Consistory. It will be worthwhile to

Donatistas usus est, ut probaret, piorum principum edictis ad veri Dei cultum etfidei unitatem licite cogi praefractos et rebelles: quia, etsi voluntaria est fides, videmustamen, iis mediis utiliter domari eorum pervicaciam, qui non nisi coacti parent.’ Forthe whole, see O. Weber, ‘Johannes Calvin, Gestalter der Kirche’ in: idem, Die TreueGottes in der Geschichte. Gesammelte Aufsätze II, Göttingen 1968, 1–18.

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: quiipsa ab homine tollunt, suam illi eripiunt humanitatem.’

21 According to H.A. Oberman, ‘Europa afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees’,Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992), 91–111, especially 102–105, Calvin can nottherefore be understood in terms of the reformation of the cities, in which civic peaceand unity were more important than maintaining the truth of faith, but must beunderstood in terms of what he calls the ‘reformation of the refugees’. In this Calvinproceeds in a different direction than Zwingli and Bucer before his banishment fromStrasbourg. At the same time one can determine that it was only rather late, and notthen under the force of circumstances, that Calvin became resigned to the unity of thenational church in France being broken and membership being uncoupled from the

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introduce several points from more recent research into the functioningof this administrative body into this study, because they throw light onthe social rootage of Calvin’s theology.22 The Consistory was establishedby Calvin in Geneva in 1541. From the Registres of this administrativebody it can be concluded that this ecclesiastical institution in the mainplayed a role in three ways.

In the first place, it functioned as an educational institution. We canhardly imagine today what a staggering loss the withdrawal of episcopalauthority must have been for broad portions of the population interms of religious rituals. The search for reformation resulted in atremendous reduction in the shaping of their life. Rituals and customsgave form and offered rootage and guidance to daily life. Henceforththere could be no appeal to saints in times of need or uncertainty;there was no longer a sacrament of extreme unction in the last hourof life; henceforth there were just two sacraments, only the first ofwhich could still function as a rite of passage. One lived in a societywithout priests, and was driven in the direction of a more personalform of belief. The Consistory played a considerable role in this processof interiorisation, even if its remedies for ignorance and superstitionwere clumsy and deeply inferior according to today’s standards. Thereare countless cases known from the first years in which the Consistorysummoned the citizens to leave behind the old rituals, to no longerbe involved with devotions to Mary, and to learn the Lord’s Prayerand Ten Commandments in the vernacular. The people were regularlyreminded to attend the countless preaching services and Bible lecturesthat were held in Geneva.

In the second place, the Consistory functioned as a Council forArbitration and Reconciliation. In the case of disrupted relationships infamilies, or differences in business relations, people could be summonedby the Consistory, which then attempted to effect a reconciliation, orimpose a solution.23

state church (January, 1562). He continued to hold to the ideal of the unity of city orstate and church. See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 179–184.

22 For years now the leading figure in this research has been R.M. Kingdon of theUniversity of Wisconsin. For a description of the function of the Consistory from hishand, see ‘The Geneva Consistory in the time of Calvin’ in: A. Pettegree/A. Duke/G. Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620, Cambridge 19962, 21–34. See idem, Adul-tery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva, Cambridge/London 1995, 10–30. See also H.A. Speel-man, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 72–79.

23 See the examples that R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce. Where possible

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The third function was as an ecclesiastical court. Questions of doc-trine or life were brought before the Consistory. When the case wasserious enough that a public punishment was necessary, the matter wasthen handed over to the civil authorities. This last function is the mostfamiliar—and notorious. According to Kingdon, however, the greatinfluence this administrative body projected is to be attributed ratherto the first two functions mentioned.

Among the factors which are indicative of its close interrelationswith the government is its composition. In addition to clergymen theConsistory had a majority of elders, who in fact sat as commissionersand deputies in the church council as representatives of the variouscouncils, and were also so selected that the various neighbourhoodsof the city were represented. It was chaired by one of the syndics, orburgomasters. Although primarily an ecclesiastical organ, where theburgomaster has to set aside his staff and seal, the way that the civilor municipal authorities were woven into it is very clear.

The long conflict between the Consistory and municipal authoritiesregarding the right of excommunication,24 which was only decided inCalvin’s favour in 1555, shows not only that for him the importance ofa sanctified society prevailed over the rights of citizens, but also is fur-ther evidence of the close relationship between church and society. Theconflict also reveals how great the sensitivity on the point of excommu-nication was. The link between faith and society is clearly to be seenwith the Eucharist, or Supper. In this there is no difference from timewhen the church was still under episcopal control. The struggle overthe question of whether excommunication was the prerogative of themunicipal authorities or an ecclesiastical body is precisely reminiscentof the previous era when ecclesiastical courts under the guidance ofepiscopal authority could pronounce excommunication even as a sanc-tion in business conflicts. In the new situation too excommunication

a reconciliation between the marriage partners was hammered out, often expresslyagainst the will of the complainant. In several cases a divorce was allowed and asecond marriage permitted. Kingdon believes that in the dissolution of the marriagebetween Calvin’s own brother Antoine and Anne le Fert, the Reformer’s unswervingcommitment to preserve his own house from any possible scandal and taint played adecisive role (88, 94). The first request for a divorce was made as early as 1548 on hisbrother’s behalf by John Calvin himself. It was only granted in 1557, when he has at theheight of his power.

24 See particularly the description by W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of theGenevan Reformation, Manchester/New York 1994.

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had not only a religious significance, but also immediate social conse-quences. Anyone excommunicated, or banned from the city, was notonly excluded from an important ritual, but cut off from family, friendsand business.25

2.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience

We might summarise the previous section by saying that in Calvin’smodel the growth of human knowledge of God and the life style whichaccompanied it was supported by the civil authorities and social insti-tutions. We now arrive at the second point, namely that of the inwardanchor of knowledge of God, within man. I particularly want to high-light the role that conscience has in the knowledge of God, accord-ing to Calvin. We are not used to that; in the history of philosophythe emphasis has come to be placed on the relative autonomy of faithand morality opposite, or next to, one another. A pluralistic societyfinds it important to emphasise a shared moral framework, apart fromreligious convictions. With Calvin we are still in an entirely differentworld. Conscience is a faculty, but not a faculty which primarily rests inmen themselves. The centre of gravity lies elsewhere and is definedtheocentrically: conscience is an opening by which God approachesman. Listening to the voice of conscience is listening to God. Con-science and God are inseparable. Those who slam the door in theirconscience to the appeal that God makes there, deprive themselves ofthe possibility of seeing the reality of God. To illustrate that it will beworth the trouble of examining two passages in which an explicit con-nection is made between an active conscience and pure knowledge ofGod.

The first passage is taken from the Advertissement contre l’astrologie iudici-aire (1549), a polemic written by Calvin on the improper use of astron-omy. Calvin begins immediately with a warning which still sounds curi-ous to the reader today. He reminds his readers of the words fromITimothy 1:18–19, where Paul impresses upon Timothy to fight thegood fight with faith and a good conscience: ‘By rejecting conscience,certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.’ (RSV) Accordingto Calvin, what Paul intends to say is that those who have besmirchedtheir conscience and given themselves over to evil are not worthy of

25 See R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce, 18–19.

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being preserved in the true knowledge of God. They deserve to beblinded and led astray into diverse errors and lies.26 In short, theone follows from the other. Astrology—or according to modern terms,astronomy27—is used properly so long as it is applied to obtain knowl-edge about the natural order and the way in which God has disposedthe planets and stars to fulfil their task. God has given the sun andmoon to rule the days and nights, months, years and seasons. Naturalastrology has a certain use for agriculture and public life.28 Such usefinds abundant support in Scripture, according to Calvin. There arehowever—so his critique runs—also people who use the Word of Godas social conversation, as a manner of obtaining a personal advantageor—still worse—of gaining access to noble women.29 God will not per-mit such abuses, warns Calvin. God will permit those who give them-selves over to such practices to lapse into the most foolish ideas. Suchpeople call down God’s wrath and punishment upon themselves. Incontrast (citing Heb. 4:12), the Word of God is living and powerful,so that it penetrates to the marrow in order to discern what is withinman.30

The tenor of Calvin’s argument is that on the human side the way topure knowledge of God begins with a clean conscience, or rather withself-examination before the face of God. The first step in that way isthat a man, standing before the tribunal of God, becomes honest and isaware of the need for obedience.

26 J. Calvin, Advertissement contre l’astrologie judiciaire. Crit.ed. by O. Millet, Geneve 1985,47: ‘Car il signifie que ceux qui polluent leurs consciences en s’abandonnant a malne sont pas dignes d’estre maintenus en la pure cognoissance de Dieu, mais plutostmeritent d’estre aveuglez pour estre seduitz par divers erreurs et mensonges.’

27 The negative associations of the word astrology as a pseudo-science only datefrom 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 d’ambition, les autres enpensent faire leur profit; il y en a mesmes qui en pensent faire un maquerellagepur avoir acces aus dames.’ According to J. Bohatec, Budé und Calvin, 274, Calvin’streatise is a direct response to a text published anonymously in Lyon in 1546, entitledAdvertissement sur les jugemens d’Astrologie, a une studieuse Damoyselle. Bohatec names Mellin deSaint Gelais as the probably author. See also Millet’s introduction to Calvin’s treatise,22.

30 Advertissement, 48: ‘Elle doit estre vive et d’une telle efficace qu’elle transperce lesdoeurs pur examiner tout ce qui est dedans l’homme, ouy jusqu’aux mouelle des os,comme dit l’Apostre.’

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One can find the same crucial role for the conscience with regard tothe knowledge of God in De Scandalis (1550),31 published in a period inwhich the political prospects of the Reformation were frankly poor, as aresult 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 attitudesregarding the Evangelical renewal. In this text Calvin indeed namesthe names of a number of freethinkers in the cultural upper crust ofParis and Strasbourg, such as Agrippa van Nettescheim, Villeneuve,Etienne Dolet and François Rabelais,32 but the treatise is not addressedto them. They have crossed a critical line. In Calvin’s view they belongto a group who have become far too casual in their attitudes towardGod and his Commandments and embody an attitude that has over-stepped all bounds. Their satiric commentary on parts of Christiandoctrine such as the immortality of the soul and hope for personal eter-nal life is, to Calvin’s mind, destructive of faith. Such commentariesresult in inward scepticism, which undermines and drives out all fearof God Calvin can just hear them thinking: if there is no personal lifeextending on into eternity, the fact of the matter is that there is also nojudgement, so why should anyone still be concerned about such things?In their eyes religion and morality are sheer fabrications, invented tokeep people in check.33 Calvin accuses them of what he elsewhere callsan Epicurean concept of God: if such a supreme being exists in someform, then it does not have anything to do personally with mankind.Calvin mentions the ominous word ‘atheist’ in this connection. Onecan best understand the function of this term by comparing it with themanner in which ‘anarchist’ was used around 1900 to stereotype one’sopponents, or the term ‘communist’ was used in the 20th century. Inany case, it means that those being so labelled were to be considereda threat to something that is fundamental. In the view of Busson, inCalvin’s mouth atheism becomes a collective label for diverse forms ofunbelief or deviant convictions. In some cases it implies the denial ofGod’s existence in any form, in others to a form of rationalism, deismor Averroism.34 What these ideas all have in common is that they leadto 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. Forthe Latin text see: OS II, 162–240.

32 OS II, 201.33 OS II, 202.34 See H. Busson, ‘Le nom des incrédules au XVIe siècle’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme

et Renaissance 16 (1954), 273–278, who opposes the assertion of L. Febvre in his book Le

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obedience and lose their passion for those things that are of eternalvalue. If there is no immortal soul, if man will not always stand beforethe face of God Almighty, life in time is stripped of its importance.According to Calvin’s 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 treatiseis directed toward doubters, to those who may indeed have difficultywith 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 ofthe incarnation. It is striking that he makes no attempt whatsoever toclarify or explain this doctrine. In the passage in question we encounteranother strong example of how Calvin deals with what I previouslytermed the categorical difference between God and man. It appears asif he wants to say that any attempt at explanation rests at its outset ona false estimate of human capacity to comprehend what he terms ‘doc-trina caelestis’. The incarnation is a mystery which far exceeds humanunderstanding. Among the causes of the difficulty which people havewith this doctrine is that the human mind is incapable of taking it in.From God’s side there is however no paradox whatsoever. According toCalvin the real problem lies not at the intellectual level; one must digdeeper. The problem is spiritual in nature. It becomes visible when menlet their conscience speak. Calvin suggests that the offence with whichthe incarnation confronts us lies in human arrogance and the refusalto accept God’s nearness in the incarnation. God comes too close forman’s taste. ‘Because God descends from his immeasurable heights toyou, would you therefore continue further removed from Him? Whatif 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 areoffended by his drawing near?’ According to Calvin, the scoffers con-clude ‘that there is no one more foolish than we, who hope that we shallbe given life out of a dead man, who ask acquittal from a condemnedman, draw the grace of God from a curse, and flee to the gallows asthe only anchor of eternal salvation.’ By laughing at so much gullibilityon the part of others, they present themselves as being extremely intel-ligent. There is however something which cannot be found in them,

problème de l’incroyance au XVI e siècle, Paris 1942, that the concept cannot be considered astheoretical atheism because such an idea could not have been conceived in that day.

35 OS II, 172.

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‘which is the most important in true wisdom. That is a sense of con-science. What remains of wisdom, of reason, of the capacities for judge-ment, when the conscience is blunted?’36 The stumbling block howeverdisappears when someone descends into themselves and sees their owndeplorable condition. True knowledge of God begins with the realisa-tion of who it is that men are really dealing with, with God himself.A man must first become a fool in his own eyes. In the confrontationwith God men learn humility. Then, when someone sees their ownwretchedness, the realisation of the necessity of a Saviour will grow,someone through whose mediation one can escape eternal death. Only‘then shall the way for them to come to Christ be opened, at the sametime with the possibility for Christ to come to them.’

What is striking about Calvin’s refutation is the emphasis on thenecessity of getting a feeling for the real relationship between God andman. When the realisation of the holiness of God is absent in a man, ifhe has no fear of God, no timor Dei, he will remain stuck at the level ofquestions born of curiosity, which because of sin really do not accom-plish anything. Calvin’s thought has no room for outsiders, spectatorsin the sidelines. ‘We know that they take offence, because they, devoidof fear of God, have no taste whatever for spiritual teachings. There-fore let us, so that their senselessness should not be a stumbling blockfor us, be led from the human nature of Christ to divine glory, whichtransforms all curious questions into reverence. Let us turn from thedeath on the cross to the glorious resurrection, which negates the wholeignominy of the cross. Let us exchange the weakness of the flesh for themight of the Spirit, in which all foolish thoughts are absorbed.’37

We have quoted extensively in the foregoing, because these passagesput us on the track of several basic lines in Calvin’s vision of knowledgeof God.

1. As a means by which the transcendent God can enter our inwardlife, conscience plays a fundamental role. God appeals to us throughconscience. No one can ignore this voice without suffering the conse-

36 OS II, 173.37 OS II, 174: ‘hos sciamus ideo offendi, quia timore Dei vacui, nullum spiritualis

doctrinae gustum habent. Quare ne sit nobis offendiculo ipsorum stupor, sed potius abhumana Christi natura ad divinam gloriam feramur, quae omnes curiosas questiones inadmirationem convertat: a morte crucis ad gloriosam resurrectionem dirigamur: quaetotum crucis opprobrium deleat: a carnis infirmitate ad potentiam spiritus transeamus,quae stultas omnes cogitationes absorbeat.’

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quences. That which presents itself to man in his realisation of goodand evil is precisely nothing other than the voice of God breaking inupon his life. But beginning with conscience does not suppose thatmoral restoration is possible in itself. Conscience confronts man witha gaping chasm, a gulf between them and God. Conscience forces manto consider his turning away from God.

2. Knowledge of God is a way which begins with God making manrestless. This way continues by man, in his misery, grasping the gift thatis offered him in the incarnation and Christ’s death on the cross, andwhich leads to the glory and power of the exalted Christ. Man is borneupward on the way of the knowledge of God. The sursum corda is a partof the movement that the human soul makes under the influence of theSpirit of God. A third characteristic is connected with this:

3. Calvin exhibits no need whatsoever to first speak of Jesus Christand then of conscience. Instead, as far as our understanding reaches,conscience is the unconditional starting point. Conscience is a sourcefor the beginning of knowledge of God. Calvin does not distrust con-science; for him, temporally and theologically, revelation is not imme-diately revelation of Jesus Christ, but revelation of the harsh judgementof God, although this is certainly finally oriented to Christ.38

4. Man’s knowledge of God is not an epistemological or intellectualproblem, but primarily a spiritual problem, and from the outset isdefined soteriologically. That is to say, it cannot be separated from thefact of the relationship in which God and man stand. Man lives in atension between obedience and disobedience, remorse and obduracy,tractability and intractability. This is the spiritual realm in which intel-lectual, conceptual and moral problems take their place. Anyone whoreally becomes concerned with the question of how things are betweenGod and man will take a different attitude with regard to the diffi-culties in understanding the incarnation theologically. The human sit-uation and God’s wrath are the real heavy-weight problems and arethe centre from which intellectual difficulties take their own, albeit sec-ondary place. In short, Calvin has no revelation problem as the centreof his theology. He begins with the religiously, ethically charged reality

38 See also Calvin’s answer to Sadoletus, where he describes something like an ordosalutis, OS I, 469.

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in which man will henceforth find himself. This reality is that of theman alienated from God, who is again sought out by God and enticedto a way in which community with God can again be found. That isthe passion of this thought.

2.2. Accommodation

2.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all revelation

God’s actions are the foundation of all human knowledge of Him.This formulation, when applied to Calvin’s theology, is not untrue,but at the same time is not specific enough. In order to catch sightof the way by which knowledge of God comes into being, we mustpay attention to characteristic words and concepts that are definitivefor its structure. One of the most important words that Calvin uses todescribe God’s action is descendere, coming (or going) down. God’s actis a movement from above to below. We also find the word ascendere,to ascend or mount, directly linked with this. In other words, Calvindescribes God’s acts as movements in space, as a movement from highto low and from low to high. Because by his movement God comescloser to man, to be within the reach of the human capacity to know,knowledge of God arises. Knowledge of God is the result of an actionof God, who through his Spirit, in a multiplicity of ways, will reveal hiswill and intentions to man, stimulate and invite him, instil him withhis presence and bring him into connection with the divine powerfrom on high. The spatiality of this concept is intended literally. Itis intended to focus attention on the distance and difference in placewhich must be bridged. That does not mean that Calvin situates heavenon the utmost edge of the universe and in that way postulates it as alocalisable place. He is well aware of the sense of the word ‘heaven’in many Bible verses. According to his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer,the apposition ‘who art in heaven’ is intended precisely to deny anypossibility of sensory perception. It reminds us that the exaltation ofthe glory of God exceeds any human capacity for understanding.39

That does not detract from the fact that in the concepts of descendingand ascending, space and distance must be understood as real. That

39 Inst. 3.20.40.

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heaven is defined as being a place, and Christ’s ascension by physicalmovement and separation from the earth, are both part of the contentof revelation which is to be taken literally.40 In the chapter concerningthe sacrament of the Supper (Chapter 4), the theological (or moreprecisely, eschatological) tenor of this thinking in terms of space anddistance will once again become clear. Revelation, or rather God’sdeeds, consist of a movement of the Spirit from high to low, andfrom low to high. In faith and in the Supper, the Spirit connects manwith the flesh and blood of Christ, and so opens up participation inrenewed being existence. It is this renewed body and blood of Christthat is localised ‘above’, in heaven, and this is the guarantee andeschatological goal of our renewal. In the following sections of thischapter the various parts of this structure of descent and ascent willbe developed further.

The first movement is that of descent, and the concept of accom-modation fits as part of this descent. Human knowledge of God existsthanks to accommodation.41 Accommodation describes what happensstructurally in this descent. In His coming down, in all his acts andwords, God accommodates himself to our human measure and humancapacity for understanding. We will here discuss further the necessityand form of this accommodation.

For Calvin it is self-evident that in the whole of his dealings withman, God must accommodate himself to man’s measure. The neces-sity for accommodation arises directly from the infinite elevation ofGod above creation.42 There is a fundamental distance which must bebridged. Accommodation therefore implies both the notion of indirect-ness and the tempering of God’s overpowering glory. The necessity ofaccommodation and tempering must be sought not only in the fact thatsinful man has lost the way to God; it is a given that arises from thecategorical difference between Creator and creature. The elevation ofGod above the transient world always makes a certain form of media-

40 See his exposition of Acts 1:11, CO 48, 13.41 For a survey see F.L. Battles, ‘God was Accommodating Himself to Human

Capacity’ in: Donald K. McKim, Readings in Calvin’s Theology, Grand Rapids 1984, 21–42; J. de Jong, Accommodatio Dei. A Theme in K. Schilder’s Theology of Revelation, Kampen1990. The great theological significance of thet concept of accommodation is discussedin D.F. Wright, ‘Calvin’s Accommodating God’, in: W.H. Neuser/B. Armstrong, Calvi-nus Sincerioris Religionis Vindex. Calvin as Protector of the Purer Religion, Kirksville (MO) 1997,3–19.

42 See for instance his commentary on Jeremiah 31:2, CO 38, 660.

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tion necessary. Thus it is not in sin that the necessity of accommoda-tion itself is found. Some form of mediation is always necessary. Calvindoes not speak at length of this, but the matter is clear. It is one ofthe tings taken for granted in his theology: ‘Had man remained freefrom all taint, he was of too humble a condition to penetrate to Godwithout a Mediator.’ This remark comes in the course of the discussionwith Osiander about the necessity of the incarnation.43 Reflecting onLuther’s notion of the justification of the godless, Osiander had arguedthat justification is the result of the indwelling of the divine nature inman. If man is called the image of God, then that must imply his par-ticipation in divine nature in some manner. The next step that Osian-der makes is that he derives the necessity of the incarnation as suchfrom the ontological difference between God and man, and not fromthe fallen state of man. Calvin opposes that second step, but neverthe-less the remark that the distance between God and creature demands amediator or agent comes in this context. How can that be? Is the incar-nation of the eternal Son still to be derived from the distance betweenGod and man? The apparent inconsistency disappears however whenwe take into account that Calvin emphatically distinguishes betweenJesus Christ as the incarnate Word and the eternal Word as agent ofcreation. In his thinking the concept of the mediator has a wider mean-ing and reaches further than the incarnation. When dealing with theincarnation of the eternal Son, the assumption of human nature by thesecond person of the Trinity, Calvin wants to stop at the strict rela-tion that is made in the Bible with deliverance: he refuses a speculativediversion. Anyone who seeks further grounds for the incarnation thanthis soteriological ground, oversteps the bounds set by God.44 To sum-marise, as a theological concept the notion of ‘mediator’ has a widerfunction, and by Calvin is chiefly, but not exclusively connected withthe incarnation, the assumptio carnis. But Christ, as the eternal Son ofGod, also plays a decisive role in God’s dealings with the world outside

43 Inst. 2.12.1: ‘Quanvis ab omni labe integer stetisset homo, humilior tamen erateius conditio quam ut sine Mediatore ad Deum penetraret.’

44 Inst. 2.12.4: ‘Ubi ad opem miseris peccatoribus ferendam Christum divinitus pro-prie addici audimus, quisquis has metas transilit, stultae curiositati nimis indulget.’ Inst.2.12.5: ‘Siquis excipiat, horum nihil obstare quominus idem Christus, qui damnatosredemit, testari etiam potuerit suum erga salvos et incolumes amorem, eorum carneminduendo: brevis responsio est, quum pronuntiet Spiritus, aeterno Dei decreto coni-uncta simul haec duo fuisse, ut fieret nobis redemptor Christus, et eiusdem naturaeparticeps, fas non esse longius inquirere.’

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of the incarnation, extra carnem. As the Son, as the eternal Word, Heis involved with the world as mediator in creation and as sustainer.45

Nor does the incarnation prevent Him as the eternal Son from beingactive extra carnem in certain ways. We here encounter a substantive ele-ment of Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God that is taken up inthe debate between Lutheran and Reformed theologians under a titleprone to lead to misunderstanding, the ‘extra-calvinisticum’, as if thiswere a notion wholly limited to Calvin. I will restrict myself here to twoobservations. First, in light of the history or dogma, Calvin is absolutelynot original on this point. As Willis has demonstrated from an abun-dance of materials, he simply continues a line of thought that has beengenerally accepted since the apologists.46 Next, it must be stated that

45 Calvin agrees with the exegesis in the ancient church in which the appearances ofthe angel of the Lord (Judges 6:11–24; Gen. 32:29–30) were appearances of the Word asthe second person of the Trinity. See, for instance, Inst. 1.13.10: ‘Etsi enim nondum eratcarne vestitus, descendit tamen quasi intermedius, ut familiarius ad fideles accederet.’E.D. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called Extra Calvinisticum inCalvin’s Theology, Leiden 1966, 69–71, points to the clarification that Calvin introducedin 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 heassumed in the incarnation. In his Responsum ad Fratres Polonos (1560), CO 9, 338, Calvinmakes it clear that Christ’s mediatorship also involves the creation and sustaining ofthe world. By virtue of this mediatorship in creation the Son is the Head of the Churchfrom the very beginning, standing above the angels, and is properly named the firstbornof the whole creation.

46 See Calvin’s famous formulation in Inst. 2.13.4: ‘etsi in unum personam coaluitimmensa Verbi essentia cum natura hominis, nullam tamen inclusionem fingimus.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 sempermundum impleret, sicut ab initio.’ The study by E.D. Willis cited in note 71 showsthat in light of the history of dogma there is no reason this should be termed theextra-calvinisticum. The notion that the Logos was active apart from the incarnationis a component of the established store of traditional doctrine. From the abundanceof 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 termcan therefore only be understood as a polemic label that was introduced against theReformed position by the Lutheran side in the conflict over the nature of Christ’spresence in the Supper. The Reformed position is expressed in Question and Answer48 of the Heidelberg Catechism: ‘Q. But are not the two natures in Christ separatedfrom each other in this way, if the humanity is not wherever the divinity is? A. Notat all; for since divinity is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must followthat 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 becomemeaningful in the theological debate to the extent that it does refer to the Lutheranaccusation that Calvin does not take the incarnation seriously enough theologically. For

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the distinction has its roots in Trinitarian theology, and has major con-sequences for the whole structure of theology. In Calvin God’s acts aredifferentiated in a Trinitarian manner from the very beginning; that isto say, what God does is to be resolved into the work of the Father, Sonand Holy Spirit, in which these three can not be identified with oneanother without qualification. With all emphasis on the unity of God,the work of the Spirit, for instance, has a peculiarity with respect to thework of the Son, and the work of the Son has characteristic propertieswith respect to that of the Father. The eternal Son does not coincideperfectly with the incarnate Word, and knowledge of God does nottherefore coincide perfectly with knowledge of Jesus Christ as the incar-nate Word. However much knowledge of God substantively derives thecriterion for its content from Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word, asthe mirror of divine mercy, for Calvin the work of the Spirit forms thewider horizon in which the work of the Son is situated and the Fatherleads his people to renewal and perfection through the Spirit. It is atthis point that later, in our second panel regarding Barth’s theology, avariant configuration will be seen. Barth derives all knowledge of Godfrom the one revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the logos ensarkos, andsees it as consisting of the ‘disclosure’ of that which is given in Christ.The concept of disclosure would not do justice to the peculiarity andrelative originality of the work of the Spirit as conceived by Calvin.

Meanwhile, from the discussion between Calvin and Osiander wecan make out the premise that both share, for all their differences: Godstands 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, whocreep like worms on the earth.’47 God would therefore remain hidden ifHe himself had not come towards mortals by various paths and finallythe brightness of Christ had not shown upon us, according to Calvin.48

After all, the difference between Creator and creature, and between

its significance in the structure of Calvin’s theology see H.A. Oberman, ‘Die “Extra”-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins’ in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf,Göttingen 1986, 253–282. According to Jüngel, Karl Barth’s doctrine of the eternalelection of the man Jesus Christ can be seen as a systematic counter-proposal to thisaccusation: one can no longer think of the man apart from the Logos incarnatus. SeeE. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. EineParaphrase, Tübingen 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 irradiaretfulgor Christi.’

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God’s infinitude and the finiteness of creation, is immeasurably great.The necessity for mitigation applies even within the unseen world ofthe angels around God’s throne. Appealing to Isaiah 6:2, Calvin saysthat as parts of God’s creation, even the angels are not permitted tolook upon Him directly.49

For Calvin, the realisation of an all-excelling majesty of God is nottheory. Although Calvin exercises the utmost restraint in telling abouthimself and his religious experience, his writings nevertheless betray adirect realisation of God’s holy and mighty presence. In every nook andcranny of his work we can find the realisation of his own insignificanceand a majesty of God that shines in the cosmic cogwheels. The awewith which he recounts and evaluates the theophanies described inScripture is typical. In the confrontation with the majesty of God thecreature is deeply convinced of his dependence and fragility.50 For thoseto whom this occurs, this is a shattering experience which they fearthey will not survive. The reason that Calvin adduces for this fear (asin Judges 13:22 and Isaiah 6:5) is interesting, and at first sight appearstotally illogical. God is after all the source of life; why should peoplewho confront the source of life need to fear that they will die? Calvinmakes an important distinction here. He explains that the fear has itsground in something incidental (per accidens), namely the fact since thefall, mankind bears death within himself.51 There is no reason for fearbecause of our created nature as such.

Whatever the case, in order to learn to know God, it is necessarythat God comes down, bends down to man, and accommodates himselfto man’s capacity for comprehension. In his commentaries, and stillmore in his sermons, Calvin never tires of impressing on his audience

49 Inst. 1.11.3. See also Comm. Isaiah 6:2, CO 36, 128: ‘Duae aliae quibus faciemtegebant satis indicant ne angelos quidem fulgorem illum Dei sustinere posse, sicqueipsos 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, tuncincipimus sentire et experiri quales simus. Inde vera humilitas: quae in eo consistitut 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 essesentiunt: 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 fieri per accidens:quando id ex nostro vitio, non ex Dei natura accidit. Mors enim est in nobis: eamnon perspicimus, nisi cum vita Dei conferatur.’

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the fact, the significance of God’s coming down and accommodatinghimself. We here encounter an element that will be deeply definitivefor the configuration of this first panel. It confronts us with a radicaldifference between the mentality of that day and ours. The humanspirit was still considered as lower, dependent and uncertain. We arestill a long way from an attitude toward life founded on the notion ofthe free, autonomous individual who shapes, orders and in that sensecreates the world by his own power and from his own resources. Theimages that Calvin employs leave no doubt about what the real placeand stature of the creature is, seen in the perspective of the relationbetween heaven and earth. One of the fixed stars of Calvin’s symbolicuniverse is the image of the wet nurse suckling a child while speakingbaby talk to the child. God is like that. God addresses us in simple andunaffected language.52 We will perhaps find the physicality of the imagevery appealing in our day, but probably not find the point of the imageso attractive. The point is our stature, and our lack of capacity whencompared with the sublimity of God. What we hear from God is anadapted speech, an address in simple language, as a baby is spoken to.Indeed, the image of the wet nurse and her baby talk is not designedwith the self-confident, autonomous man in mind, and is calculated fora relationship in which man is by far the inferior.

All of God’s self-revelation in creation, in the Scriptures, in JesusChrist and in the sacraments must be understood as a form of accom-modation. The characteristic of revelation is its downward motion. Orput in other terms, God stoops down to such an extent that he deliber-ately places himself at the level where he can be seen and heard byhis creatures. That too is an element which is often forgotten. Notrarely, the figure of accommodation is understood only as a concession,something which really does not fit with the highness of God. It hasbeen part of the established theological and historical repertoire to con-trast Luther and Calvin with reference to this. Luther’s theology then isaccounted as a theology of the Cross. God is present here sub cruce. It ishowever best not to force the issue and act as if only the transcendence

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, s’il parlait à nous selon qu’il convient à sa maiesté,nostre intelligence n’est point capable d’atteindre sihaut, s’accommode à nostre peti-tesse: et comme une nourisse begaye avec son enfent, aussi il use envers nous d’unefacon grossiere de parle, à fin d’estre entendu. Celuy donc qui renverse cest ordre, netasche sinon d’ensevelir la la verité de Dieue laquelle ne peut estre congneue, qu’en lafacon qu’il la nous al voulu reveler.’

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of God counts for Calvin. God is not only elevated; he comes down,with the crucified Christ as the nadir, down to within the reach of thesenses, and thus into our lives and hearts. He wishes to reach out to hispeople in his effacement. 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 principleof Calvin’s vision of the Supper.

Accommodation is a central element in Calvin’s theological epis-temology. However, for Calvin it is not limited to an epistemologicalconcept. It is also a concept that is of far-reaching significance for thecontent of his theology. In the following section we will however limitourselves for the present to the consequences for Calvin’s hermeneuticand 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.

2.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred history

In the past century the concept of accommodation has prompted ques-tions which affect the content of theology. What does it mean for thecontent of religious knowledge? Is it at the cost of content if God makeshimself known under the conditions of this world? Does the reality ofwhat God has to say not suffer under the form of accommodation,under the baby talk? We here encounter the mine field of anthropo-morphic language, which has occupied theology and philosophy sinceantiquity. Only in the very latest theology has this reflection led to arevaluation of the anthropomorphism in the Bible.54 How adequate arethe Biblical concepts actually, when all that God says is accommodatedto the measure of man? Calvin shares with the metaphysical traditionthe realisation that God exceeds all manner of human conception. Onecan ask whether the coalition between the metaphysical tradition andChristian belief does not necessarily lead to a total relativisation of thehistoric and terrene in favour of the eternal. Does this not lead usto Fichte’s adage, ‘Nur das Metyphysische, keineswegs aber das His-

53 Comm. Ex. 31:18, CO 25, 79.54 E. Jüngel, ‘Anthropomorphismus als Grundproblem neuzeitlicher Hermeneutik’

in: idem, Wertlose Wahrheit. Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens, Munich 1990,110–131.

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torische, macht selig; das letzte macht nur verständig’?55 What is mostremarkable, however—and I deem this fundamental—is that the pres-ence of metaphysical elements in Calvin’s concept of God has not led todisqualification of revelation in history. He arrives at an extremely var-ied and well-considered evaluation of anthropomorphisms. Some aremetaphorical, others on the contrary very precise. In Chapter 3 we willreturn to this matter. I will here limit myself to the manner in whichaccommodation functions as a hermeneutic key for the clarification ofthe differences 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 ofLyons, Origen and Clement of Alexandria accommodation is the keyfor the understanding of revelation in the Old Testament. Calvin thusstands 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 anearlier phase of revelation. Accommodation fits into the childhood ofmankind. In other words, Calvin spiritualises. And yet, with all the cri-tique that has been passed on this method, a basic assumption thathas come to be of great importance for the high esteem for the OldTestament and Israel in the Reformed tradition can be seen. The wayin which Israel and the church become acquainted with revelation isvery different, but the content of the revelation is the same under boththe old and new covenant, namely community with God.57 In terms ofits substance, the covenant is the same. It is merely that under the oldcovenant the church is still in the stage of childhood. The content ofthe covenant appears to coincide with land and possessions; the punish-ments which are threatened are corporal punishments. The ceremoniesunder the old dispensation are the primer, as it were, through which thechild is taught the rules. The old dispensation is a veil.58 With Galatians3:24 in mind, the law and its dispensation are the custodian, literallyour 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), FichtesWerke Bd.V, ed. by I.H. Fichte, Berlin 1971, 485.

56 See among others Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God. Divine Accomomodationin Jewish and Christian Thought, New York 1993. For Philo see for instance W. Maas,Unveränderlichkeit Gottes. Zum Verhältnis von griechisch-philosophischer und christlicher Gotteslehre,Munich/Paderborn/Vienna 1974, 87–99, 116–118.

57 Inst. 2.10.2.58 Inst. 2.11.3; Inst. 2.11.5; Inst. 2.2.13.

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When the content of the covenant between God and man in Christcomes into being, God speaks at another level, namely to people whohave become adults. Then what is important is no longer the letter, butthe spirit, not bondage but freedom. History is a process of educationand within this process anthropomorphisms have their function.

It will help clarify things to understand which opponents Calvin istrying to fend off with this vision. He is fighting against millennial-ist views which had their followers particularly in Anabaptist circles.In these groups the prophecies about the coming kingdom of peaceand the Day of the Lord were being applied directly—and in Calvin’seyes uncritically. Qualifying these prophetic predictions as anthropo-morphisms offers the possibility of conceiving them as metaphorical.On the basis of the New Testament Calvin concludes that what they areabout is not the establishment of peace on earth; the prophecies in factinvolve 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 andexpressions. That God has ears, a nose, eyes and hands must not betaken literally. It is a way of speaking, a modus loquendi, which is notadequate to express the spiritual nature of God’s being.

Obviously one can not avoid questions of a substantive theologicalnature about the use of this concept of accommodation. How doesCalvin arrive at the criterion for distinguishing real and metaphoricallanguage? If all revelation given is an accommodation and involvessome degree of metaphor, does this not undermine its trustworthinessas such? We betray ourselves in such questions. We touch a sore spot,the raw nerve of contemporary theology, where every mediation, everyembodiment of God’s speaking and disclosure has become the basis foruncertainty. What does the distinction between real and metaphoricalmean when the Bible speaks of God as the loving Father? Can menstill take that seriously? Or in the end is God’s Counsel all that is left,like a threatening thunderhead behind which all the sunlight suddenlydisappears? As we have indicated, these questions particularly concernthe 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 notconscious of a possible relativisation of all revelation. He does not speakof this in simple terms, and that in itself is telling. It is at least asimportant to know what is not the subject of the debate, as to knowwhat is being spoken of. He is defending himself against a critiqueof an entirely different nature, apparently coming from spiritualising

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circles. Briefly, in the spiritualistic view all the outward manifestationsof the church, its offices and Scripture were fundamentally relativisedas means of divine revelation and sources of authority because Godcould be known by the human soul in a direct manner.59 Truth iseternal and immutable. According to the spiritualistic critique, if onereally took seriously the different manner of revelation in the Old andNew Testament as coming from God, that would indicate mutabilityand inconstancy in God himself. Such inconsistency cannot properly beattributed to God. Calvin’s reply reads that the development in formsof revelation must be considered as being purely of a pedagogic nature.It is a response of God to different times and circumstances, and nota reflection of any inconstancy in God himself, which would indeedbe absurd. In the third chapter we will yet go into that which is atstake existentially with regard to the changelessness of God, not onlyfor Calvin but for the whole of ancient and medieval thought. Theconclusion can here be limited to noting that Calvin appears to bedefending himself against the accusation from some enlightened mindsin his age, namely that his God shows some tendencies to instability. Asan illustration of how he deals with accommodation, there follows herea passage in which he points to the difference in agricultural activitiesin different seasons as an apt comparison.

‘If the husbandman prescribes one set of duties to his household inwinter, and another in summer, we do not therefore charge him withfickleness, or think he deviates from the rules of good husbandry, whichdepends on the regular course of nature. In like manner, if a father of afamily, in educating, governing and managing his children, pursues onecourse in their childhood, another in their adolescence, and anotherin their adulthood, we do not therefore say he is fickle, or abandonshis opinions. Why, then, do we charge God with inconstancy, when hemakes fit and congruous arrangements for diversities of times?’60

In summary: changes in the means of revelation have nothing to dowith God’s own being, but with altered circumstances. Accommodationand anthropomorphism as a form of accommodation within sacred his-tory are related to changing circumstances in human history. It can be

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 seeA. Séguenny, ‘Sources du spiritualisme d’après la “Chronica” de Sebastian Franck’ in:M. Lienhard, Les Dissidents du XVI e Siècle entre L’Humanisme et le Catholicisme, Baden-Baden1983, 165–174, particularly 169.

60 Inst. 2.11.13.

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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 actualcontent, of revelation in both the Old and New Testaments is the same.Or, as formulated by K. Schilder, accommodation affects the revelationreceived in such a way that it cannot be said to be perfect, but can stillbe said to be pure.61 The anthropomorphisms are means in the handsof God with which He makes clear what He has to say.

2.2.3. Accommodation and language

The foregoing turns the spotlight on Calvin’s vision of the language ofthe Bible. This view deserves attention because the differences betweenCalvin’s time and ours are great, and of immediate importance for theconcept of knowledge of God. The images in the Bible are chosen byGod in order for Him to communicate with man through them. Thatmakes anthropomorphic language useful and means that man mustcarefully follow the indications given in Scripture. This does not meanthat Calvin ignores the human nature of language in general or for thehuman input in these Biblical writings. Among the things that revealCalvin’s connections with the humanistic culture which surroundedhim is the way in which he identifies and deals with the theologicalproblem of accommodation as in part a general problem confrontinganyone who wants to communicate something, that is to say, as aproblem of rhetoric. Or, from the opposite angle, one could say thatit is precisely from his familiarity with rhetoric that he is to a largeextent sensitive to this theological problem.62 The realisation of thenecessity of effective communication, or eloquence, was a characteristicof humanistic culture. A speaker must choose a means of expoundinghis subject and a style that is in accordance with that subject and theaudience that he wants to address.63 With such a concept from rhetoric,decorum is necessary. True eloquence, eloquentia, seeks precisely a simpler

61 K. Schilder, Wat is de hemel, Kampen 19542, 54. See also H. Bavinck, GereformeerdeDogmatiek II, 90, 92. Human knowledge of God is not adequate, but is analogical, pureand trustworthy.

62 Among others, W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 116–127, points to these connections.See further the extensive study by O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. Étude deRhétorique réformée, Genève 1992.

63 Comm. ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320: ‘… sed eloquentiam veram, quae constat prudentirerum inventione, dispositione ingeniosa, et elegantia sermonis.’

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form, not a more elaborate one, using now this image, and then thatone. But it always searches for a form that is in the service of the powersof persuasion, persuasio, for the matter involved and the audience beingaddressed.64

It is remarkable how greatly Calvin’s thought regarding God’s wayof approaching man is permeated by rhetoric. The realisation thatGod accommodates himself to the measure of man is omnipresent init, so to speak. That God expresses himself pro sensus nostri modulo orhas accommodated himself ad sensum nostrum is constantly on his lips.The consequences of this interweaving of the doctrine of revelation andrhetoric can hardly be overstated; they extend throughout his theology.For Calvin the question of how (qualis) God is (we today would say whoGod is) often appears to matter less than does sorting out the effectsof certain words and images on man. Theologically his interest lies inthe pragmatic question of the handling of language and images, withwhat God seeks to accomplish in man through an image or word.In terms of language theory, the centre of gravity for his theology liesin perlocution, the effect intended by the use of certain words. In thecourse of the discussion in this first part, diverse examples of this will beprovided.

It should be clear that this linkage has consequences for a theologicalevaluation of both panels of this study. When in a post-Kantian situ-ation, in which Biblical images and concepts are regarded as humanconstructs, the trustworthiness and salutary value of revelation becomesdependent on the question of whether God is revealing himself, onecan expect little understanding for a concept that structurally places somuch emphasis on the practical effects of words and concepts. Calvincan stress the metaphors and images of the Scriptures precisely becausehe 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 thosepoints in Scripture where the central truths of faith are unfolded for usthat we must make minimal use of our own freedom.65 In fact, we here

64 See for instance Calvin’s extensive commentary on ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320–322.He exerts himself to show that the apostle does not intend to condemn rhetorical meansin general. On the contrary, the verse gives Calvin the opportunity to pronounce aeulogy on true eloquence. The power of the Cross would have been buried if Paulhad availed himself of philosophical subtlety (philosophico acumine) and rhetorical artifice(artificio 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 CalviniCommentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T.H.L. Parker, Leiden 1981, 4: ‘deinde ut

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encounter what Protestant theology will later call the truth principle.Scripture is the revelation of God’s will. That will have great conse-quences for dealing with the Bible, its words and stories. Knowledge ofGod arises when people carefully follow the instructions given by God.

It is not human imagination or construction that takes primacy; theemphasis is on the Spirit as instructor. In this field we encounter stillother metaphors. One image which surfaces frequently in Calvin is thatof reins.66 God does not drive with a loose hand or long rein, much lessgive 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 thehandling of the Bible by people such as Quentin, who he terms ‘lib-ertines’. Basing themselves on IICor. 3:6 (‘for the letter kills, but theSpirit 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 readerdown the garden path, away from the true intention. Are the injunc-tions satire, or caricature? The reader no longer knows how to properlyinterpret the author; is the author playing the clown, is he being seri-ous?67 Calvin condemns this game of disguises, because it runs counterto the order that God has laid down. Certainly when the mysteries of

id fiat in Scripturae expositione: in religionis autem dogmatibus, in quibus praecipuevoluit Dominus consentaneas esse suorum mentes, minus sumatur libertatis.’

66 See for example what Calvin wrote in the prologue to his commentary on thepsalms on the experience of God’s guidance in his own life: CO 31, 20: ‘… Deustamen arcano providentiae suae fraeno cursum meum alio tandem reflexit.’ Faced withthe precarious situation of the evangelical movement as a result of Interim, he againused the image of reins: OS II, 192: ‘Hodie cum duro austeroque fraeno nos Dominusconstrictos teneat, videmus ut passim omnes fere lasciviant.’ See also OS II, 197.

67 Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins, CO 7, 149–248, 174. See also thetelling chapter titles ‘Du langage et style de parler qu’ont les Quintinistes’ (168) and ‘Dela grande malice et impudence qu’ont les Libertins, en se glorifiant d’estre doublesde cueur et de langue’ (170). See J. Wirth, ‘“Libertins” et “epicuriens”: aspects del’irreligion en XVIe siècle’, Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 39 (1977), 601–627. Asexamples of such ‘spiritualistic’ exegesis Wirth refers to Agrippa’s text De nobilitate atquepraecellentia foeminei sexus (1529) and the Problemata of O. Brunfels (1523). With a range ofarguments and examples, Agrippa defends not the inferiority, or even the equality, butthe superiority of woman over man. If in his creative action God progresses from thelesser to the more perfect, then logic would dictate that the woman is the most perfectcreature. Only in female beauty does the true image of God light up! Moreover, it wasAdam who sinned first, not Eve. However fine this may sound, according to Calvin itleaves 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 praisewomen or if the text is persiflage, and the reader is being taken for a ride. See also DeScandalis, 201.

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God are at stake, the Scripture itself must be the rule for exposition. Inthe Scripture the Spirit itself is speaking, without indirection. The pointfor 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 Calvin’s criti-cism of literary tools such as persiflage and satire as a want of personalartistry. Anyone hazarding such a judgement shows instantaneouslythat 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, hiscommentaries. The rhetorical ideal of elegance and eloquence is highlyvalued, and it is not without reason that in Calvin studies there hasbeen so much attention for his use of the rhetorical arts.68 His critiquedoes not involve satire and persiflage as such, but flows from a visionof the Bible and the instruction given in it. The Bible is a book draftedby the Spirit, and comprises the doctrine given by the Spirit. Put suc-cinctly, man should not step in and fiddle with it.

What counts systematically is a totally different vision of the lan-guage and words of the Bible. For Calvin biblical anthropomorphismand analogies are not what they are in post-Kantian theology, namelycreations of men who, in their speaking about what is more than thisworld are also connected with this world.69 For him they are creationsof and tools in the hand of God. The place of anthropomorphismin this concept therefore results in a positive valuation for rhetori-cal means employed by God.70 Man must adapt himself to the wayand order used by God. Calvin’s argument for a way of thinkingthat lies within the boundaries of revelation is therefore directly linkedwith his doctrine of scripture. The message of God enters the under-standing of man through Scripture. The Bible contains the ‘oraclesof 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, 113–127. See also R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140–158.

69 See for instance S. McFague, Models of God, 29–57.70 In recent years quite a bit has been written on the significance of rhetoric for

Calvin’s context and theology. See W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 14, 113–114. See alsoS. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, Louisville 1995. See particularly the study alreadymentioned, O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. Étude de Rhétorique réformée,Genève 1992.

71 Inst. 1.6.2: ‘oracula Dei’.72 Inst. 1.6.3: ‘caelestis doctrina’.

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define revelation: revelation is not exclusively, but certainly also themaking known of truths; it has a propositional content. Therefore,according to Calvin, the church has repeatedly gone down the wrongpath when people obstinately sought to add something to the contentof revelation. Calvin’s criticism of the many ceremonies and institutionsof the Roman Church as innovations with regard to doctrine given byGod, and his deathbed entreaty to change nothing both arise from this.The desired purity can only be achieved if everyone carefully holds towhat God Himself has said in Scripture.73

What is the place of man in this concept? What role remains forhim? On the basis of the above, one can conclude that man is the onewho receives, pays careful attention and listens. The relation is that ofteacher and pupil. Calvin seeks to engender in man a concentrationon what God shows, says and offers to him. The roles are fixed. Therole of human subjectivity in the understanding of divine teaching isnot a subject for further reflection. It goes without saying that this isvery different from the manner in which Barth’s theology develops therole of man as the answering subject. The Kantian turn toward thesubject is reflected in a much more individual and independent activityby man. With Calvin there is less room for man as a creative, answeringbeing. The emphasis lies entirely with God. God has accommodatedhimself to our limited measure, and reveals his will to our salvationin a form adapted to our understanding. The church deals carefullywith the knowledge which is given it when it immures itself on twosides, against ignorance, and against speculation. Truth is thereforean approach to the truth supplied by God, an approach made underthe guidance and direction of God; and knowledge of God is thereforethe via media between these two extremes. On the one hand men mustguard against lagging behind the knowledge they are given, and on theother side they must not run out ahead of it.74

It goes without saying that Calvin affords few opportunities for thehuman capacity for invention and imagination with respect to theteachings of God. When it comes to divine revelation, it is other virtuesthat count. Let me emphasise once again: in saying this, I am in no waydenying that many points in Calvin’s writings reveal rhetorical skill,

73 See the example of Ahaz in Inst. 4.10.23. See IIKings 16.74 For an interpretation of Calvin’s theology with the aid of limit theory, see F.L. Bat-

tles, Calculus Fidei—Some Ruminations on the Structure of Calvin’s Theology, Grand Rapids1978.

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creative power and imagination. I am only saying that on theologicalgrounds one should expect no place for invention, imagination andliterary fiction in the theological concept. This has not been without itsconsequences for fiction and literature within the Calvinistic tradition.75

2.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as imitation

From whence does mankind obtain knowledge regarding God’s salva-tion? In a world in which the church is no longer the dispenser of sal-vation, but its role is reduced to a service in which man comes beforethe face of God without human mediation, the question of how thesubject is able to take part in this salvation becomes all the more press-ing. According to G.P. Hartvelt, the deepest intention of the Reforma-tion can be understood as the ‘recovery of the subject’.76 According tohim, the history of both Lutheranism and Calvinism is a great extentdefined by the dynamic of this question. According to the usual inter-pretation the core of Lutheran theology is the preaching, or in termsof content, the justification of sinners, and election takes second placeto this. In Calvinist tradition the emphasis, in terms of content, wasreversed. There too the promises of the gospel were proclaimed in thepreaching, but this salvation was explicitly anchored in the Counselof God. To again cite Hartvelt, ‘there is nothing more solid than theCounsel of God—but nothing more distant, either’.77 This characteri-sation is given particularly with an eye to the development of Calvin-istic thought in the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and can indeed besaid to be characteristic of the image we have of Calvin himself andthe questions addressed to him. When Barth suggests that Calvin’simage of Christ as the mirror of election has hardly any effect onCalvin’s theology and has only a pastoral intention,78 he is moving inthe same line. Should we not take seriously the idea of the mirror asthe place where knowledge of God is obtained, because the locus ofthe decision is the Counsel of God? Is that justified? In this sectionI will argue that the metaphor of the mirror is a structural part ofCalvin’s theological epistemology, and therefore must be taken more

75 For example, with regard to Agrippa d’Aubigné, see C. Randall Coats, Subvertingthe System. D’Aubigné and Calvinism, Kirksville (MO) 1990, 1–24.

76 G.P. Hartvelt, Symboliek. Een beschrijving van kernen van christelijk belijden, Kampen1991, 129.

77 Hartvelt, Symboliek, 132.78 KD II/2, 68; ET, 64.

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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 andthreat 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 beknown.

The whole of created reality, in all its facets, is a tool in the hands ofGod by which He makes himself known to man—or better, an invi-tation to enter into community with God. The word ‘facet’ is usedhere deliberately; it connects with another metaphor which surfacesfrequently in Calvin’s 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 phenomenonof the reflection of an object on the surface of water and the mirror as autensil have provided a paradigm for understanding what knowledge isand how it comes to be.79 In the neo-Platonic and Augustinian traditionthe nature of knowledge is understood primarily in terms of light andsight. Knowledge comes into being because an external object throughits effect represents itself to the knowing subject.80 The criterion in bothaesthetics and the artes was that trustworthy knowledge and art were animitation of reality. In pre-modern times knowledge was a form of rep-etition or imitation of the given. The metaphor of the mirror is closelyconnected with imitation (imitatio) as an epistemological principle. Justas the steam engine had a paradigmatic function in the culture of the18th and 19th century, and the computer at the end of the 20th, the mir-ror and its optical potential afforded the 16th century the possibility ofvisualising what knowledge was and how it arose. In Calvin we find themetaphor in connection with knowledge of God. What the use of thisfundamental metaphor implies for Calvin’s doctrine of revelation willbe summed up in several points in the paragraphs which follow.

79 H. Leisegang, ‘Die Erkenntnis Gottes im Spiegel der Seele und der Natur,’Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 4 (1949), 161–183.

80 For a brief survey of optics in the Middle Ages—or as it was then known, per-spectiva—see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientific Tra-dition in Philosophical, Religious and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago1992, 307–315. For Roger Bacon’s influential theory of representation, see particularlyK.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Founda-tions of Semantics, 1250–1345, Leiden 1988, 3–26.

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First and foremost, the metaphor allows us to visualise that God per-mits himself to be known by indirect means. God makes his will knownwith the aid of a selection of means in creation, in which he makes hisown 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 God’s order. The con-cept of ordo refers back to that which is the subject of the place andquality of the created thing, namely God. From their inception, themeans of God’s revelation have never been neutral in any sense.

Third, the metaphor makes it clear that the image that is visible is therebecause of God, and is not the result of human thought. The image ina mirror is not the result of mental activity in man himself, or whichhe has arrived at by way of an abstract process. God himself sees toit that something of himself and his works is visible in these mirrors,and presses himself upon man in his ineluctable majesty. For Calvin thestress lies upon direct experience, the realisation of God’s presence inthe mirrors He has set up, and less on a process of abstraction throughwhich man comes to a conclusion about God’s activity. Perhaps, froma theological-historical perspective, one might say that in this regardthere is a formal similarity between Calvin’s concept of knowledge ofGod 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 andScholars in Fourteenth-Century England, Princeton 1987, 206–208; K.H. Tachau, Visionand Certitude in the Age of Ockham, 55–84, 113–153 and T.F. Torrance, ‘Knowledge ofGod and Speech about him according to John Calvin’, included in: idem, Theologyin Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 76–98. The term cognitio intuitiva was originatedby Duns Scotus in contradistinction to cognitio abstractiva, in order to resolve a numberof problems for which perspectivism had no solution. It is assumed in Roger Bacon’stheory that the knowing subject obtains knowledge of an object because the objectitself produces figures or forms of itself (species) in the space surrounding it, conceivedof as transparent and mediating material. Through endless multiplication the formis imprinted on the outward senses, becoming visible on the retina. From here theforms are then assimilated by the various inward senses and noetic faculties. Thedifficulty with this theory was that the knowing subject had not been confronted withthe substance of the object itself, but only with its accidental qualities. This being thecase, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the forms that actually go back toan object and those which are purely hallucination or imagination. With the conceptof a cognitio intuitiva, Duns Scotus asserts that there are actually countless moments inwhich we are directly certain of the existence of the known object. The statement ‘Isee a tree’ does not mean that on the basis of the shapes and colours that I see, I

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der of this chapter, knowledge of God is less a matter of abstraction anddemonstration, and more a consequence of immediate impressions, adirect realisation of God’s presence, which is not gained through aninterjacent process of reasoning.

Fourth, for Calvin the metaphor serves to make it clear that the imagethat appears in the mirror is always of less quality, less pure than theobject itself. With regard to this, we must remember that in Calvin’stime 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. Inhis exegesis of ICorinthians 13:12 he suggests that the mirror lacks onlythe precision that characterises direct sight.83 The angels do not needthe aid of mirrors; for them God is already openly present. Mortalshave 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 thatthere is a tree there. This cognitio intuitiva involves both the receptive capacities of thesoul as well as the intellectual faculties. Cognitio intuitiva is thus knowledge that is causedby an immediately present object. It affords immediate certainty of the existence ofthe object. With cognitio abstractiva, on the other hand, one is speaking of a processwhich abstracts from the factual existence of an object. This knowledge is derived fromother objects. According to Torrance, it is this concept of a cognitio intuitiva, in a versionreinterpreted by John Major, that is the foundation of Calvin’s concept of knowledge ofGod. Knowledge of God is not obtained through abstraction, as Aquinas maintainedfollowing Aristotle, nor does it come about because God grants man some form ofcognitio abstractiva during his pilgrimage on earth, which coincides with the revealedtruths established in Scripture and tradition, as argued by Ockham, but it arises fromthe intention and influence of God, who is personally present through his Spirit (seeTorrance, particularly 84–86). Torrance demonstrates that there is at least a formalsimilarity with Duns Scotus and John Major at important points. However, evidenceis not forthcoming for his confident assertion that Calvin was directly dependent onMajor and Scotus.

82 The technique of making glass mirrors was known in antiquity, but lost until itwas rediscovered at the end of the 12th century. Only in the course of the 16th centurywas the glass mirror imported into Western Europe from Venice. It steadily gainedpopularity as a mass product. One can assume that Calvin was primarily familiar withmirrors of cut or polished material. See H. Grabes, The mutable Glass. Mirror-imagery intitles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, Cambridge 1982, 72ff.

83 Comm. on ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514: ‘Hanc visionem, aenigmaticam hic appellatPaulus: non quia dubia sit aut fallax, sed quia minus conspicua est, quam quae olimextremo die constabit … Quare sic habendum est, notitiam Dei, quam nunc exVerbo habemus, certam quidem esse et veracem, nihil in ea confusum aut perplexumaut tenebricosum: sed comparative aenigmaticam nominari, quia procul abest ab illaperspicua manifestatione quam exspectamus: quia tunc videbimus facie ad faciem.’

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state of angels, our knowledge is less clear. Calvin emphatically disputesthe idea that what appears in a mirror is dubious or deceptive. Onlyin comparison with the knowledge that will come in the perfection ofseeing face to face can it be said that the image with which the pilgrimmust make do in this state is dark. The comparison of knowledge ofGod with a mirror image must not be conceived in such a way that it isat the cost of the clarity of the Gospel. Calvin disputes that the revela-tion of God is packaged in other things and must first be distilled fromthem. The revelation God offers in his word is ‘open and bare.’84

Fifth, for Calvin the metaphor functions within the eschatological struc-ture which characterises all human knowledge of God. There is not onemirror, but many, and all serve to aid the pilgrim on earth in growing inknowledge and conformity with the image of God, not in one moment,but in a successive series of moments.85 The diverse mirrors are God’saids on the way on earth, the manner in which God brings himselfinto our field of vision and exerts his attraction. They are part of God’sorder 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 inorder: while the mirror and the image that appears in the mirror can bedistinguished 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 themirror. One does not see the mirror first, and after that the image. Inthe act of seeing, both moments coincide. It therefore does no justice toCalvin’s theological epistemology to make a separation between formaland material belief in scripture.

84 Comm. ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514–515: ‘… aperta et nuda Dei revelatio in Verbo(quantum nobis expedit), nec quicquam habet involutum (qualiter fingunt 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 expressordo salutis. Despite all attempts to make direct connections and indicate sources, onecan apparently not get beyond a number of analogies. For a survey see H.A. Oberman,‘Initia Calvini. The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), CalvinusSacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994, 117–127on ‘The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit’.

87 Inst. 3.2.6. See also Comm. IICor. 3:18, CO 50, 47.

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In short, the metaphor of the mirror provides the key to enter intoCalvin’s concept of the knowledge of God. In order to learn to knowGod and his salvific intent, man must look into the mirrors that areheld up before him by God himself. God engages man through themirrors He himself appoints for man’s knowledge of God and hissalvation, and forbids man to obtain insight outside of these mirrors.This draws a line on both sides for knowing and thinking. The one limitis that man must not neglect the knowledge of God that is given, theother is that the knowledge of God that is given must not be a reasonfor continuing to ask questions out of curiosity. Transgressing this latterline leads to speculation. Theology moves between these two lines. Wewill return to this point again.

What are these mirrors? In a brief compass we will summarise themhere, in order to elaborate them in the following sections. The firstform of accommodation or mirror is found in the creation of heavenand earth. God invites man to knowledge of him. To that end he placesthe structure of heaven and earth before our eyes, thereby making him-self visible in a certain manner.88 The cosmos can therefore, with Psalm104, be called the garment of God, or the mirror in which he madehimself visible.89 But, second, Calvin says that man himself, with his fac-ulties, is a mirror in which God’s image appears.90 Through the comingof sin, however, this mirror is not longer adequate for arriving at a suffi-cient knowledge of God. The third mirror, the Bible, assumes that role.The Bible too is a consequence of divine accommodation, a mirror, inwhich faith can behold God.91 Or better, to use another optical image,the Bible is the spectacles through which God’s revelation in creationbecomes visible again.92 In this sense, the Bible fulfils an integratingfunction. The fourth and highest form of accommodation is the incar-nation, an idea which Calvin takes over directly from Irenaeus: ‘TheFather, who is boundless in himself, is bounded in the Son, becausehe 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 adsui notitiam invitet, proponat nobis ante oculos coeli terraeque fabricam, et in ea sequodammodo conspicuum reddat. Nam aeterna quoque eius divinitas et potentia (utinquit 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.

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lowed up by the immensity of his glory.’93 Finally, the sacraments arealso among the mirrors. They are the apex of what Calvin terms theoutward means through which God comes to the aid of those who stillfind themselves on earth.

It is true for all of the forms of accommodation or mirrors listedthat they must be understood as means through which God, throughthe Spirit, invites mankind to come to himself. The goal is that manbe enticed into entering into communion with God. Calvin’s vision ofthe events of revelation is located within a very broad and dynamicview of the work of the Holy Spirit. At its deepest, knowledge ofGod is possible because God, through his Spirit, becomes presentin his creation in all sorts of diverse ways, and brings man into avital community with Christ. This will be developed further in whatfollows. First, we will discuss the forms of accommodation that wemight characterise as God’s manifestations in the inward life of man.Then we will turn our attention to revelation in creation and thecosmos. These manifestations of God are likewise insufficient to bringman to real knowledge of God. To state it roughly here already: manneeds the spectacles of Scripture to arrive at a saving knowledge ofGod. Ultimately that is still too little, too formally put. Men need theguidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit in order to really discoverwhat is really important and to be led to a mirror where God is reallyto be seen, namely in the face of Christ. Fellowship with God is reachedthrough faith, in the interaction of Word and Spirit. This chapter willthen conclude with a discussion of Calvin’s concept of faith, his view onthe assurance of faith and a provisional exploration of the boundariesof knowledge of God.

2.3. Inward revelation

2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities

In every age, and for every person there are certain unquestioned ver-ities. Such certainties do not have to coincide with those things whichare subconsciously accepted; they can even be contested in their owntime and still belong to what is accepted as entirely self-evident by

93 Inst. 2.6.4.

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some people or some groups because there is also a range of goodreasons which can be adduced for them. For the persons themselvesthey are not a point of discussion. In reading Calvin it is striking howfrequently the expression extra controversiam appears. Certain views orconvictions are beyond dispute. As is often the case, these verities arenot to be traced back to one origin or source. Bouwsma has charac-terised the early-modern culture in which Calvin lived as a culture inwhich, in general, two impulses were at work, namely those of the Stoaand of Augustinianism.94 Each of these is a set of convictions which arenowhere to be found in a pure form, and that sometimes have becomeinextricably intertwined with the content of Christian belief. One ofthese convictions, which Calvin passionately defended and which can-not be traced back to any one single source, is the immortality of thesoul. For him, this doctrine not only has the negative effect of beingan antidote for religious and moral indifference, but also has a posi-tive side, namely lasting community with Christ. In this section I willtherefore discuss the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as some-thing which has great significance for epistemology.95 For Calvin episte-mology lies embedded in classical metaphysics, where the human soulforms the link between the visible world and the divine world. In con-trast to the independence of human knowing in Kant, this epistemol-ogy is still wrapped within an all-inclusive vision of the relationships ofGod, man and the world. The existence of a number of human mentalcapacities which in their marvellous power point to a connection andrelationship with that which is above the world perceived by the senses,with God, is still something which is beyond question.

Calvin is firmly convinced that man comprises a duality-in-unity ofsoul and body, in which the soul must be qualified as the nobler part.96

The soul is the immortal and higher element in man. In contemporaryterms, the soul guarantees the mystery of the identity of the humanperson.97 It is, so to speak, the bridgehead to the higher created world

94 Regarding the different impulses of Stoicism and Augustinianism in early-modernEurope, see W.J. Bouwsma, ‘The Two Faces of Humanism’ in: idem, A Usable Past.Essays in European Cultural History, Los Angeles 1990, 19–73.

95 Regarding this see E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaftder neueren Zeit, Bd.I, Darmstadt 1991 (=19213), 89.

96 Inst. 1.15.2: ‘Porro hominem constare anima et corpore, extra controversiam essedebet; atque animae nomine essentiam immortalem, creatam tamen intelligo, quaenobilior pars est.’

97 For a contemporary analysis of the mystery of the human person, see R. vanWoudenberg, Het mysterie van de identiteit. Een analytisch-wijsgerige studie, Nijmegen 2000.

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of the angels, where immortality reigns. The anthropological dualismwhich we find in Calvin is of immediate importance for epistemology.Man, as he literally says, is formed from the dust of the earth, andthat is immediately a curb on man’s pride. Through its physicality, thatwhich is created has a humble place in the order of created things.98

By virtue of their possessing a soul, however, all people also belongto the world of immortality, in which the angels likewise have a share.After all, the angels were also created, but thanks to their immor-tality stand closer to God. Calvin refers to words from Matt. 22:30:‘For in the resurrection they [men] are like angels in heaven’. Thisdoes not mean that corporeality and physicality are in themselves tobe disdained. In that respect we cannot simply identify Calvin’s viewwith a neo-Platonic devaluation of the material as such. The body isalso created by God. There are numerous passages to be found inCalvin’s writings that reveal that he knew from personal experiencethe joys of life as a created being and of physical pleasure. Even morestrongly, as we will elaborate in Chapter 3, material reality is a dailyevidence of God’s continuing goodness. But nevertheless physicalityoccupies a low position in the hierarchy of being. It belongs to thethings which are perishable. The soul or spirit—Calvin uses the twoterms interchangeably—is the created, immortal part. With this posi-tion Calvin draws a line separating himself from two views which hadconsiderable following in the late Middle Ages. In the conflict withServetus, among other points, Calvin encountered the view that thesoul must be considered as an emanation from the divine Spirit.99 Asmight be expected, Calvin sharply opposed this idea, apparently aris-ing in French and Italian rationalism. The distinction between GodHimself and the human soul must not be blurred. The human soulor spirit is a result of God’s creative action, and not an outpouring ofdivinity. The soul is an incorporeal substance of its own sort, an entityof its own.100 The same rejection is dealt to the idea, labelled Epicurean,

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 divinitatisportio in hominem fluxisset.’ For Calvin’s attitude toward the thinking regarding thesoul in spiritualistic circles, see G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, Kirksville (MO),19923, 899–904. The idea of a world-soul appears to have its roots in the Averroismof Siger of Brabant, and through the Italian Platonism of Pomponazzi to have gainedinfluence in free, non-conformist groups.

100 Inst. 1.15.5: ‘Creatio autem non transfusio est, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium.’

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that the soul is mortal in nature, because its form is linked to thematerial, in this case to the body. According to this idea which achievedpopularity in the Aristotelian climate of Averroism, with the death ofthe body the soul dissolves again in the general world-soul.101 In histext Psychopannuchia Calvin passionately opposed this idea, which hadfound a home in Anabaptist circles.102 While the soul may be created,it is an immortal element. In this text it becomes crystal clear whyCalvin is so attached to this doctrine. The ultimate salvation in theconsummation is at stake. If the soul dies with the body, communitywith Christ is broken. It is of eternal importance that the pilgrim onearth has already entered into the Kingdom of God, shares in thecommunity with God which lasts for eternity, even if that Kingdomhas not yet been perfected. From the fact that the Kingdom is not yetin 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, 900–901 andS. 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 Averroismof Siger of Brabant, see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 234–236.

102 CO 5, 177–232. The subjects of the immortality of the soul and the situationbetween death and the consummation are central in the Psychopannuchia, a first versionof which had been written as early as 1534 but which was only published in 1542, asmatters of the first order. The existential importance of this theme must be said to bedirectly linked with the heart of Christian faith, fellowship with Christ. If the soul wouldsleep or perish in death, fellowship with Christ would be broken, or at least interrupted.That was in complete conflict with Calvin’s conviction that in faith and through thesacraments man, with regard to his soul, was now already together with Christ, andthat this fellowship could not be broken by anything or anyone. Although it cannotbe said of the dead that they are already delivered, they can nevertheless be calledblessed. Thus the situation between death and the general resurrection is characterisedby the eschatological perspective, through the ‘not yet’. This looking forward howevertakes place in a situation of rest and bliss with God, and the seeing of things thatduring their life on earth the faithful only foresaw in hope. ‘Cur enim nondum salvatidicuntur aut regnum possidere, qui in domino mortui sunt? Quia exspectant, quodnondum habent, nec finem suae felicitatis attigerunt. Cur nihilominus beati sunt?Quia et deum agnoscunt sibi propitium et futuram mercedem eminus vident et incerta expectatione beatae resurrectionis acquiscunt. Quamdiu certe habitamus in hoccarcere luteo, speramus quae non videmus et preater spem credimus in spem, quodait apostolus de Abraham (Rom. 4:18). Ubi autem oculi mentis nostrae, qui nuncsepulti in hac carne hebetes sunt, absterserint hanc velut lippitudinem, videbimus quaeexspectabamus 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’. Seealso C. van der Kooi, ‘De spanning van het “reeds” en “nog niet” bij Calvijn, Kuyperen Berkouwer’ in: M.E. Brinkman (ed.), 100 jaar theologie. Aspecten van een eeuw theologie inde Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (1892–1992), Kampen 1992, 257–259.

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The soul is the sustaining element of all human faculties, and thusthe bearer of knowledge. What, however, are these faculties? Calvinexhibits a remarkable reticence toward making an all too specific anddistinct breakdown. With him we find no extensive discussion of therelation of the various faculties of the soul. The discussion of theproblem occurs in the context of soteriology, and thus has more todo with the freedom—or absence thereof—of man to make use of hiscapacities, than with the question of what man might be capable ofin an ideal state. With this qualification, however, one can neverthelessdetermine that the most important faculties are those of understandingand will. Calvin refuses to consider an original opposition or tensionbetween higher and lower capacities of the soul before the fall. Theconflict that takes place within man is a consequence of sin.104 If the fallhad not occurred, will and understanding would have been perfectlyattuned. The inner economy of understanding, will and feelings wouldhave been an harmonious unity, such as Calvin attempts to derivefrom the example of Christ. Understanding steers and gives directionto the mental faculties. It helps make the distinction between good andevil, between justice and injustice. Will however is the capacity withwhich in fact a choice is made. Every other capacity that is foundin man is resolved into these two faculties. It is not unusual to findthat, because Calvin speaks of the intellect as the leading part, theconclusion is drawn that he takes an intellectualistic standpoint in hisvision of humanity. That understanding is the leading part impliesanything but that understanding is determinative. It is leading onlyin the sense that it comes first. According to Calvin, however, thereal decisions are made by the will. That would argue for a morevoluntaristic position.105 This last tallies with the observation that, aswe will soon see, for Calvin understanding, cognitio, includes more thanonly intellectual categories.

104 Inst. 1.15.6–7.105 See Inst. 1.15.7: ‘… quasi animae ducem et gubernatorem’. Cf. Bouwsma, John

Calvin, 101, who is of the opinion that Calvin’s vision of man is intellectualistic. Muller,The Unaccommodated Calvin, 162, points out that intellectualism and voluntarism arewrongly identified with a particular human type. Intellectualism is then associated withthe inclination to want to reason everything out, voluntarism with the inclination tofocus entirely on free will. In a theological-historical perspective, both qualificationsdescribe the relation of God and man in eschatological perfection. If bliss can be char-acterised as a visio beatifica, and is thus a form of seeing, we can speak of intellectualism.If in the consummation the soul devotes itself to God as the highest good, then we canspeak of voluntarism. In this case God is the summum bonum or summum volendum.

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Calvin classifies all forms of perception, sensus, both inward and out-ward, under understanding, and desire under the will, although he alsosays he has no objection to others who arrive at three basic capacities,namely the senses, understanding and desire.106 We find the word sensusused by Calvin to denote the five senses, and in the phrase sensus com-munis, which has not yet taken on the later meaning of sound humanunderstanding (‘common sense’).107 Here sensus communis denotes theground for the whole field of inward and external perception. What isreceived in perception is subsequently subject to processing by the cog-nitive faculties in three steps.108 He further names phantasia as the facultythat makes the first distinction, after which follows reason, ratio, whichrenders a general judgement, and finally mens, mind, through which amore refined and differentiated judgement comes into being. Parallelwith the three cognitive faculties of phantasia, ratio and mens, there arethree corresponding capacities in there will. Will strives to obtain thaton which can produce judgement and feeling. Choler, vis irascendi, drawsto itself that which is supplied by the first faculty of discrimination andreason,; then there is desire, vis concupiscendi, which takes to itself what isoffered by perception and phantasia. The degree of caution with whichCalvin presents this further distinction of mental capacities is striking.Understanding and will are not separated from one another. They arenot faculties which each lead a life apart from the other. Both belongto the equipment of human reason. Anthropologically, what is mostimportant for him that in the soul man possesses an immortal, incor-poreal element which is still involved with the body, through which heas 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 five senses. One can sense Calvin’sadmiration for the fact that the reach of human mental capacities farexceeds the range of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. The soul

106 Inst. 1.15.6. For the whole see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 165–166, whopoints out that Calvin, despite his refusal to participate in the debate between ThomasAquinas and Duns Scotus regarding the designations intellectus appetitivus or appetitusrationalis, appears to opt for the Scotian position.

107 See H.G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen 19754, 22.108 For the origin of this triple division, Barth and Niesel refer to the commentary by

Themistius on Aristotle’s De Anima. See Schreiner, The Theatre of God’s Glory, 141.109 Inst. 1.15.2: ‘divinum aliquid insculptum ei esse.’

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transcends the limitations of place and time, to which the senses areconnected. For example, it possesses the capacity to gauge and bridgedistance 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 standsin the Platonist current of thought, where the independent soul is thefoundation of thinking and knowing. The independence of the soulcan especially be seen in the phenomenon of the dream. While thebody shows no sign of activity during sleep, the mind can be highlyactive, and even be elsewhere. The fact that man can form a conceptof angels and of the invisible God points to a capacity that cannot beascribed to the senses.110 Thus, as an independent substance the soulor spirit is not to be identified with God, but in relation to the bodyis indeed to be labelled as ‘something divine’.111 At the same time thatsays something about its value and destiny. Calvin exhibits no hesita-tion at all on this point. The senses of honour and shame are a tangibleproof 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 arethings which are absque controversia, beyond discussion. In its original andundamaged state the soul strove for these higher things. Even in thesituation where the soul sits imprisoned in the web of a life turnedaway from God, good remnants of this original orientation still exist.112

This conviction that is so essential for the early Renaissance echoespowerfully through Calvin’s theology too. The soul is of cosmic signif-icance and the orientation of its life is definitive for human worth.113

110 Inst. 1.15.2.111 Inst. 1.15.2.112 Inst. 1.15.6: ‘Unde enim tanta famae cura hominibus, nisi ex pudore? unde

autem pudor, nisi ex honesti respectu? cuius principium et causa est, quod se adcolendam iustitiam natos esse intelligunt: in quo inclusum est religionis semen. Sicutautem absque controversia ad caelestis vitae meditationem conditus fuit homo, ita eiusnotitiam animae fuisse insculptam certum est. Et sane praecipuo intelligentiae ususcareret homo si sua eum lateret foelicitas: cuius perfectio est cum Deo coniunctumesse.’

113 See Ch. Trinkaus, ‘Renaissance Idea of Man’s Dignity’ in: Idem, The Scope ofRenaissance Humanism, Ann Arbor (MI) 1983, 345. Idem, In Our Image and Likeness.Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, London 1970, 171–321 and 459–551.With Florentine Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and PietroPomponazzi human dignity is complementary with the factual misery of the humancondition.

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Calvin may then be known for his negative image of man,114 but onealso finds passages sounding forth the praises of human possibilities.M.P. Engel explains this contradiction on the basis of the changing per-spectives of Calvin’ss theology.115 If it is forgotten who the Giver is ofman’s superb potential, then there is reason to speak of the immensefrailty or fragility of human existence. If the divine origin of human-ity is indeed acknowledged, then there is every reason to challenge thedisparagement of human potential.116 Precisely because man throughhis terrestrial existence participates in both the visible and the unseenworld, he can be highly regarded in comparison with other createdbeings. In terms of his original nature, man was a being who stroveupward, and theology must not deny the traces of this dynamic andexcellence.

Calvin appeals to the fact that, in a cultural perspective, his viewis anything but isolated. He points out that what he writes aboutthe soul is also eloquently said by profane writers.117 In his eyes, thatincreases its plausibility. In other words, according to Calvin the exis-tence of an independent, immortal soul is a truth that is also upheld bynon-Christian thinkers. Insights from non-Christian sources and dataderived from Scripture form a perfect unity. In summary, the inwardfaculties of thought, will and feeling are explained by Calvin throughthe concept of an independent, created, but immortal soul.

2.3.2. Sensus divinitatis

The above can serve as background for the two faculties of inwardperception that play a role in knowledge of God coming into being, towit the sensus divinitatis and the sensus conscientiae.

What is the sensus divinitatis? It is beyond question, says Calvin, thatin the human soul there is ‘a certain realisation present of Divinity,and this through natural inspiration.’ In his theology this is a funda-mental anthropological given. It precedes all denial and obfuscation;

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 slownesswould continue to hang back on earth.

115 For the significance of perspective in Calvin’s theology, see M.P. Engel, JohnCalvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, Atlanta 1988.

116 Calvin’s Comm. on Is. 2:22 affords a good example of this dual perspective, CO36, 77–78.

117 Inst. 1.15.2.

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it possesses a facticity that God Himself has deposited in man. Theimportance assumed by the subjectivity of God in the description ofthis faculty is significant. God, we are told, has ‘engraved [this realisa-tion] in the heart of man’. It is not something which can wear away; itis constantly renewed. In images that relate to a most strongly dynamicview of God’s work (see Chapter 3), we are told that God ‘constantlyrenews’ the memory of the Godhead, and ‘constantly sends down newdroplets of it on him’.118 Calvin borrows from Cicero’s De natura deorumthe conviction that this sense of the Godhead is to be found in everynation and tribe, however civilised or uncivilised they may be. Mankindhas thus never been without the realisation of God’s presence. Knowl-edge of God’s existence on the basis of this sensus divinitatis is not theresult of a conclusion which men arrive at after a process of argumen-tation, or the result of the human capacity for abstract thinking. Thesensus divinitatis implies a more or less developed capacity to directlyperceive God’s majesty inwardly. It is a form of knowing that thrustsitself upon us, which can be repressed, but which man can never shakeoff for good. In terms of ‘Reformed epistemology’ the sensus divinitatisbelongs to the ‘design plan’ of man. The knowledge that results from itis not derived, but is ‘basic’, fundamental. For man, who would preferto dismiss the very idea of God, it is an uncomfortable sort of sense.Man can never entirely free himself from the effects of this faculty, nomatter how deep he sinks. The Emperor Caligula is adduced as anillustration:

‘We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled andaudacious contempt for the Deity than Gaius Caligula, and yet noneshowed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was mani-fested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the Godwhom he professedly studied to contemn. You may every day see thesame thing happening with his modern imitators. The most audaciousdespiser of God is most easily disturbed, trembling at the sound of afalling leaf.’119

It is impossible to escape from God’s majesty, either in this life, or in thelife to come. In his Psychopannuchia Calvin makes it clear to the readerthat this is not only a comforting truth, but also one of terror. One

118 Inst. 1.3.1: ‘Quendam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divini-tatis sensum, extra controversiam ponimus: siquidem, nequis ad ignorantiae praetex-tum confugeret, quandam sui numinis intelligentiam universis Deus ipse indidit, cuiusmemoria assidue renovans, novas subinde guttas instillat.’

119 Inst. 1.3.2.

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cannot flee God’s presence, not even if one is prepared to throw himselfinto the deepest abyss.120 Calvin’s theology is thought dominated by thepresence of God. Theologically and spiritually it has no room for atheoretical atheism. All men have indeed some knowledge of God.121

Moreover, while the direct realisation of God can be disrupted, itcannot be destroyed by sin. The noetic effect of sin never goes so farthat this capacity ceases to stir.

‘They all, indeed, look out for hiding-places where they may concealthemselves from the presence of the Lord, and again efface it fromtheir mind; but after all their efforts they remain caught within the net.Though the conviction may occasionally seem to vanish for a moment,it immediately returns, and rushes in with new impetuosity, so that anyrelief from the gnawings of conscience is not unlike the slumber of theintoxicated or insane, who have no quiet rest in sleep, but are continuallyhaunted with dire horrific dreams.’122

Sin and rebellion against God thus will not silence this capacity forknowledge. At the same time, Calvin makes it clear that possessing thesensus divinitatis has no positive effect spiritually. The realisation of Godcomes to life in a field of influence which carries man away from Godrather than toward Him. Man lives in an attitude that turns aside fromGod; his life is ruled by pride and vanity. The blindness toward Godgoes together with emptiness, vanitas and restiveness, contumacia. Therealisation of the Godhead therefore becomes a function of an imageof divinity developed by man himself. Calvin is, we can say, well awareof the creativity inherent to human consciousness. However, accord-ing to him, this creativity has only negative results. In his imaginationsinful man, caught up in himself, cannot rise above his own measure.Once again we encounter the familiar concept of accommodation, butthis time as something which is in the hands of man. Accommoda-tion promptly becomes a mechanism preceded with a minus sign. It isnow man, alienated from God, who has control of things. He designsan image of God according to the things which he encounters in hisown world. In his creativity man ‘manufactures’ idols.123 The attitude

120 Psychopannychia (Zimmerli), 6: ‘Et quemadmodum maiestas dei, quam sit sublimis,verbis explicari non potest, ita nec quam terribilis sit ira iis, quibus incimbit. Videntpraesentem dei omnipotentis gravitatem, quam ut effugiant in mille abyssos se demerg-ere parati sunt, effugere 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 offert, sed qualem pro sua temer-

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of faith is different. There, so to speak, there is no space between theway God presents Himself and the perception of faith. Pure knowl-edge of God comes into being because man follows the instructionsof God and directs his capacity for knowledge in strict obedience tothem. Calvin’s dependence on what Paul wrote to the Romans onthe substitution motif is obvious (Rom. 1:23). The worship of the liv-ing God has made way for that which is not-God. This is not only amatter of ignorance or pure vanity. It has to do with man’s wantingto reach further than the boundaries which are set for him, and pre-cisely through this, dissatisfied with his human measure, man courtsdarkness of his own accord.124 The idolater exhausts himself in allsorts of rituals and ceremonies, but precisely in that misses the holi-ness of life and integrity which are necessary to come before the face ofGod.125

2.3.3. Sensus conscientiae

The second form of inward faculty for perception in Calvin’s conceptis the sensus conscientiae. Of this faculty too it must be said that it ispart of the basic equipment of man, and its results present themselvesdirectly. The only response possible for man is to embrace the results, orrepress them; the capacity cannot be denied as such. In modern termswe would also thus here use the term ‘basic’. The difference from thesensus divinitatis is that here it is not the majesty of God with which manis confronted, but in his conscience he is being summoned before God’scourt. In conscience, then, man stands before God’s judgement seat.Conscience is a powerful evidence of the immortality of the soul, ofthe indissoluble bond between man and God.126 Etymologically Calvinderives the meaning of the term conscience from the word scientia,or knowledge: it is the realisation of divine judgement ‘as a witnessnot permitting them to hide their sins, but bringing them as criminals

itate fabricati sunt, imaginantur’. (‘Hence, they do not conceive of him in the characterin which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness hasdevised.’) See also his Comm. on Rom. 1:22, CO 49, 25: ‘Nemo enim fuit, qui nonvoluerit Dei maiestatem sub captum suum includere, ac talem Deum facere, qualempercipere posset suopte sensu.’

124 Inst. 1.4.1: ‘… quia sobrietate non contenti, sed plus sibi arrogando quam fas sit,tenebras ultro accersunt …’

125 Inst. 1.4.4.126 Inst. 1.15.2.

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before the tribunal of the judge’. Literally it is ‘a kind of middle placebetween God and man, not suffering man to suppress what he knowsin himself ’.127

Conscience is not only the formal potential to distinguish betweengood and evil. It is also the source from which substantive knowledgeof good and evil is drawn. It will be clear that in this Calvin’s appeal toconscience differs radically from that in modern times. Calvin’s appealto conscience is defined by the struggle against what in his eyes wasthe restraint of conscience by the Roman Church. These were rulesand dictates of Pope and tradition which were slipped in between therevealed word of God and man. For him conscience was not a lastsource of appeal which has authority because it is viewed as beinganchored in the integrity of an unique human person. In Calvin there isno place for an appeal to individual conviction and personal consciencein that sense. Appealing to conscience means that there is immediatelya given content, namely the will of God, and that this sets the norm forthe whole of society. Calvin exhibits no doubt about the clarity of thewill of God.128 There is no room for divergent opinions.129

Even as with the sensus divinitatis, here we must ask about the effect.What are the results of the working of this faculty for perception?Conscience marks the human being as a responsible being, and throughthat deprives him of every excuse of ignorance before God. Man isconvicted by the witness of his own conscience.130 Still, Calvin is morepositive about the effects of this capacity than he was about the sensus

127 Inst. 4.10.3.128 It appears to the conscience as the lex naturalis. This lex naturalis is in turn the

foundation for the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commands in turn point forwardto the complete unfolding that God’s will received in the obedience and love of JesusChrist. See I.J. Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, Allison Park (PA) 1992, 68, 101.

129 The collective of society can be corrupted if a pernicious element is tolerated.A rotten spot is a danger to the whole apple and the whole basket. Cf. what Calvinsays 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 suffercutting the throat of a whole people? Quite the reverse: if they who are found so lawlessare suppressed, no longer allowed the last word, but are destroyed, you see a purifiedpeople and healing of society.’ CO 27, 268. Calvin acknowledges that Jesus Christ didnot come to establish His kingdom with the sword, but he argues that everyone withinhis 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 principlethat not everything can be tolerated in society, as with the decision about what it iswhich is intolerable, and the choice of means to accomplish its elimination.

130 Inst. 2.2.22.

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divinitatis. I will return to this later. For now it is sufficient to establishthat the conscience is an irreducible and axiomatic element in thedefinition of man. No one can escape this appeal. ‘The sinner, whentrying to evade the judgement of good and evil implanted in him,is ever and anon dragged forward, and not permitted to wink soeffectually as not to be compelled at times, whether he will or not,to open his eyes.’131 Under the influence of this source of knowledgeof God man is brought under judgement, because the choice betweenobedience and disobedience is a matter that is part of true piety. Truepiety lies within the force field of the choice between obedience anddisobedience.

2.4. Manifestations in the external world

2.4.1. Stirring the senses

A third and important place where God reveals Himself is the externalreality of heaven and earth. Here the outward senses pave the way forknowledge. According to Calvin, contemplating the natural order andwealth with which the created world is endowed automatically forcesone to look up to the Maker of all of this. The good things that mandescries in himself and through which he is surrounded are not of hisown making. Man can follow them, as one follows a stream upwardsto seek out its source, and thus arrives at God.132 Calvin frequentlydescribes God as an architect, a craftsman or an artist, whose workunmistakably bears his signature. One would in these cases be able toqualify knowledge of God as a matter of indirect recognition. WithinCalvin’s thought there is, as we said before, also an other, more directand intuitive knowledge possible, which does indeed arise in connectionwith the senses, but which is not the result of argumentation. Anyonereading Calvin is impressed at the way in which in his experiencethe presence of God and the sparks of his glory can be perceived bythe external senses. The realisation of an ordered cosmos, a heritagefrom the Stoa, and belief in a free, creating God are fused into anindissoluble unity. Modern readers are however warned: the beliefin God the Creator has still by no means eroded into the general

131 Inst. 2.2.22.132 Inst. 1.1.1.

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realisation of ‘something’, a Supreme Being. At no point does thisrealisation of God become general or vague.

All our pores are open, so to speak, and all our senses participatein our encounter with God. God and his acts enter our consciousnessnot only by hearing. A quote from the introduction to his commentaryon the book of Genesis illustrates the sensory nature of our experi-ence of God: ‘With the eyes we see the world, with the feet we walkthe earth, with the hands we touch God’s works in uncounted forms,we breathe in the sweet and pleasant odour of grasses and flowers, weenjoy a multitude of good things; but in all these things of which weobtain knowledge, lies an infinity of divine power, goodness, wisdom,an infinity through which all our perceptions are devoured.’133 The cita-tion reveals the immediacy and tangibility with which the presence ofGod manifests itself, according to Calvin. Smelling, tasting, providingfood for the eyes, the tactile sense of skin and feet: it is all as God haswilled it. In these ways too God approaches man. This is an elementin the image of Calvin which is hardly recognised today, thanks to theoverpainting of later generations who were certain that Calvin was allhead, and no body. The image of Calvin held by modern Protestantismhas no room for this unrestrained enjoyment.134 Indeed, the senses andenjoyment do not stand alone in Calvin. They are in a spiritual forcefield, but that does not stand in the way of the immediacy and sur-prise of the experience of God. In modern terms, the meaning of lifeis astoundingly close at hand: it forces itself on the senses.135 It is liter-ally to be found in experience. With Alston, one could also call this sortof knowledge, which arises in close connection with the senses, indi-rect mystical experience of God.136 In this context the word ‘mystic’ hasnothing to do with a supposed unity between God and man, but is suit-able for indicating the intuitive character of the experience. That seemsto be in conflict with the term ‘indirect’, but this is only apparent. Theexperience is indirect because it arises in the contemplation of evidence.At the same time, the perception of evidence is to be distinguished fromthe experience of God’s presence. That is another word for ‘experimen-

133 Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 6.134 See M. Weber, ‘Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’ Gesam-

melte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Tübingen 1922, 183.135 For the relationship of the senses and the question of meaning, see the fine book

by G. Sauter, Was heißt: nach Sinn fragen, München 1982.136 W.P. Alston, Perceiving God. The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca/ London1991, 28.

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tal Christianity’. There is a congruence of evidence and God’s presencein the service of God’s presence. That is the inner dynamic of this con-gruence. I use the term ‘mystic’ only to indicate that dynamic, by virtueof which God imposes Himself on the senses.

The preceding fixes attention on a fundamental given in Calvin’svision of knowledge in general and knowledge of God in particular. Inhis thinking and world the connection of the senses with knowledgeis still very direct. The senses are in principle direct and trustworthyentries into reality itself, and lead to what one could call experien-tial knowledge of God’s goodness and care. Only in the course of thedevelopment of modernity would the place of sensory perception inthe realisation of knowledge become complicated. The way from sensesto knowledge became longer because such aids as the microscope andtelescope made their appearance, and thus gave shape to the method-ological procedure of the experiment. Knowledge became more andmore the fruit of a rational operation than the direct fruit of the senses.In the long term that led—not only in continental philosophy, but alsoin theology—to the drastic decline in the market value of the senses assources of direct and evidential knowledge. In the course of that devel-opment the role of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge of Godwould also fade in comparison with what we find in Calvin. For him,faith in God the Creator and Maintainer of the world and its orderis not just a logical conclusion; it rests also on the recognition of Hispresence and majesty which forces itself upon man through the senses.

2.4.2. A splendid theatre

What we earlier remarked regarding receptivity is now confirmed inanother manner: here too in the encounter with the majesty of Godin creation, man does not play the role of active subject; the emphasislies on human receptivity. The external structure of the world is aninvitation to the purpose of life, the knowledge of God. It is importantto note that it is inconceivable in Calvin’s theology that someone couldpass over the exterior world as if it was meaningless. Calvin did not livein the modern climate where nature is experienced as dumb, as user-unfriendly, a labyrinth of phenomena that bit by bit must be mappedout until the whole of reality lies open to the all-seeing rational mind.On the contrary, his reality testified on all sides to a connection with itsCreator. In this first panel people were still in a time in which thingswere considered to have an openness to their Maker, a capacity to obey

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God’s command. In the language of medieval theology, the createdworld possessed a potentia oboedentialis. In Calvin this openness comesto the fore in terms of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious working ofGod’s Spirit is the vital ground of being for all that exists. That is allimportant. The realisation that there is a secret working of God in allthings defines his symbolic universe. Reality is the primary handiworkof God. Every element is dependent on Him, a mirror in which theCreator testifies to Himself. Thus, God displays his majesty in theordering of the world, and man is the spectator. God is not far away.He is indeed exalted, but his majesty is perceptible and nearby. TheSpirit is active in the tiniest details. A somewhat longer quote:

‘God has been pleased … so to manifest his perfections in the wholestructure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that wecannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him. Hisessence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending all humanthought, but on each of his works his glory is engraven in characters sobright, so distinct and so illustrious that none, however dull and illiterate,can plead ignorance as their excuse.’137

The visibility and appearance of God’s activity and goodness are strik-ing elements in this first panel. For more than one reason this pre-modern panel saddles us here with suggestions that we find almostentirely strange, with figurations that we find confrontational at theleast. With regard to creation and the natural world, it is not the com-plaint about pain and physical suffering that dominates the image. Wemight expect something of that sort in a time when physical pain, childmortality and economically straitened circumstances ravaged daily exis-tence in untempered intensity. That is not however the dominantthought. What rather manifests itself in Calvin’s writings is surpriseat the wealth of the external world and its essential user-friendliness.Calvin may be known for being severe and austere, but he experi-enced the natural reality which surrounded him as anything but barrenor meagre. Creation is a fine and spacious house, provided and filledwith the most exquisite and at the same time copious furnishings.138

The image lies close to another metaphor, namely that of the the-atre. Bouwsma points out that the 16th century was not just one of theGolden Ages inside the theatre. It also provided theology and preach-ing with a wealth of images and metaphors. The world of the theatre

137 Inst. 1.5.1.138 Inst. 1.14.20.

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included a range of forms, a field of possibilities for picturing man, Godand the world.139 In this case the metaphor offers the opportunity for acomparison of the world with a most glittering theatre, into which manis placed as both actor and audience.140 That implies a high esteem forcreated reality. This cosmos as such is a visible representation of God’sglory. Knowledge of God is in part nourished and constructed via theeyes.

These observations prompt us to see a not unimportant nuance inthe image that the literature has created with regard to Calvin’s atti-tude to the visual arts. It is generally acknowledged that Calvin hadlittle use for the visual arts. Personal disinterest may have played a rolein this; a more important factor in this connection is the criticism ofthe use of images and representations in worship that was expressedacross the whole breadth of the Reformation.141 Images in the church as‘books’ for the laity undermined the instruction that God gives primar-ily through the Word. The language of the second commandment setthe tone: ‘Thou shalt not make for yourself any graven image, or anylikeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or is in the earth beneath,or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them orserve them: for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …’ (Ex. 20:4–5)

In his exposition of these words Calvin makes clear what the inten-tion of the ban on images was. God, in his incorporeality and majesty, ismuch too exalted for men to be able to represent him in stone or wood.Worship of images shifts the attention to the object and thus dishonoursGod’s majesty.142 To this extent it is thus true that in Calvin’s theology

139 According to Bouwsma, John Calvin, 177–188, the notion of theatre made it pos-sible to perceive historical changes and mobility, and the peculiar role of man on thestage of history. The general repudiation of the stage and theatre is not yet present inCalvin. 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 preventdramatic expression from being powerfully present in the manner in which the historyof the church and faith is perceived. Creation is a stage, God the director, man both theactors and the audience, life a pilgrimage and heaven the distant fatherland where blissawaits.

140 See for instance Inst. 1.5.1–2 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 theCalvinist Tradition, Grand Rapids (MI) 1999, 19–45. See also in the same collectionDaniel W. Hardy, ‘Calvinism and the Visual Arts: A Theological Introduction’, 1–16,12. Cf. also William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture. The Protestant Imagi-nation from Calvin to Edwards, Cambridge 2004, 62–89.

142 Inst. 1.11.1–2.

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too the visual in the church service is suppressed in favour of hearingand the Word. ‘Because faith comes by hearing, the beginning of spiri-tual life lies here,’ we read in his commentary to Luke 11:28.143 Calvin’sunderscoring the commentary of Jesus on the anonymous voice fromthe crowd in the same passage is typical. ‘Blessed is the womb that boreyou, and the breasts that you sucked!’ shouts a woman. When Jesusthen answers, ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keepit,’ according to Calvin that is an indirect reprimand. It is by way ofthe word that God indeed opens heavenly treasures to us, and this isthe way through which life eternal must take root in the heart.144 ‘Thekey to the kingdom of heaven is the free acceptance, through God, thatwe receive from his word.’145 To this extent, our view is correct: thesource of knowledge of God is the word, and hearing. But that is notthe whole story. Anyone who wrenches Calvin’s concentration on theBible as the Word to which we must listen from its 16th century contextand brings it over to our culture, has the inclination to all too quicklybypass the sensory web by which knowledge is fed in Calvin. His highesteem for the Word does not permit us to shut our eyes to the extentto which Christian knowledge is fed by all the senses in his theology,and particularly the large role played by sight. Thus the criticism of therole of the visual arts in worship may not result in a general judgementthat the visual plays no role of importance in his theology. Calvin doesnot reject those sources of revelation that appeal to the visual faculties.Visible signs and wonders confirm that which the ear receives, whichmust penetrate to the heart.146 The sobriety of the design of the Calvin-ist worship service must not mislead us, living as we do so much later.It must not be misunderstood rationalistically. The point of his criti-cism of the use of images in the cultus is not that God has nothing toshow us. Anything but! The point is that men must not let their eyerest on things other than those which God places before our eyes. Goddoes indeed give us visible signs of his presence, and signs perceptible tothe other senses. The problem with the visible arises when man beginsto get involved in their design. That is the background of the ban onimages. This point of the knowledge of God, the focus on Christ, thus

143 Comm. Luke 11:27, CO 45, 349: ‘… fides est ex auditu …’144 Comm. Luke 11:27. CO 45, 349. See also Comm. Gen. 28:13, CO 23, 392.145 Comm. Luke 11:27, CO 45, 349: ‘Clavis enim regni coelorum est gratuita Dei

adoptio, quam nos ex verbo concipimus.’146 See for example Comm. Gen. 15:4, CO 23, 210.

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does not detract from the fact that Calvin’s theology includes a highdegree of pictural content. There is a lot to see and experience in the worldand its order. There is a richness and a glory in creation, which mancan ignore only at the cost of the greatest possible ingratitude.

Thus for Calvin there is much to be experienced in the world andits content. This point touches upon a subject that became the exposednerve in theology in the last century, namely the question of naturaltheology. What is the place for the appeal to conscience and referenceto natural order in theology, and particularly the theology of revela-tion? In such an appeal is the worship of God in fact exchanged forthe worship of idols, and is there an attempt to replace God’s freegrace? There are no tensions in Calvin’s own theology which reflectsuch questions. He maintains both that the world is God’s creation,and the radicalness of our alienation from God. I would suggest thatthe charged debate about natural theology in recent theological historyreflects questions that occupy theology in a culture marked by moder-nity. Can the proclamation and theology still appeal to the world ascreation? Or, has the influence of a range of factors—the epistemologi-cal critique of Kant, the natural sciences, and later historical sciences—so made reality into something that must be understood in terms oflaws, energies, particles, human actions and thinking that the notionof a revelation of God in the reality surrounding us has trickled away,and Christian theology has no other choice than to radically begin withspecial revelation?

The question can also be posed in other terms: does man encountervague traces of God as Creator before knowing him as Redeemer? Ordo 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 toeach 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 thisproblem when he speaks of the knowledge of God as cognitio duplex. Godreveals himself as Creator and Redeemer. In response to the debatebetween Barth and Brunner on the possibility of a natural knowledgeof God, an extensive discussion arose in the 20th century with regardto the relationship between these two aspects of the knowledge of Godin 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 “Anknüpfungspunkt” als Problem der Theologie’,

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God outside of Christ—i.e., knowledge based on nature or history—holds for Calvin. Both sides acknowledge that the idea that man canlearn of God from creation, apart from Christ, is problematic. How-ever, the question which is posed for Calvin’s theology in the 20th cen-tury is what place this problematic knowledge occupies. Can it serve asa point of departure for the proclamation of Christian belief ? Or doesCalvin speak of this knowledge of God so negatively that it is entirelyuseless theologically? It is obvious to both schools of expositors that inCalvin’s concept knowledge of God as Redeemer is necessary to recog-nise God’s creative role. Calvin says this clearly: ‘It is certain that afterthe fall of our first parent, no knowledge of God without a Mediatorwas effectual to salvation … It would have been useless, were it notfollowed up by faith, holding forth God to us as a Father in Christ.’148

That however does not remove the ambivalence of Calvin’s view ofthe creation. On the one side he asserts that God objectively manifestshimself in the order of created reality, and on the other denies witheven greater force that these manifestations really produce the spiri-tual fruit for which they were intended. Thus we read that ‘In vain forus, therefore, does Creation exhibit so many bright lamps … but that[men] have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened throughfaith by internal revelation from God.’149 Sin thus has a negative effecton God’s revelation for man. Only because Scripture is added as anaid—or as spectacles—does man again receive sight to see God’s rev-elation in created reality. Laid out schematically, Word and Spirit arethe aids to double knowledge of God, to learning to know God as Cre-ator and Redeemer. True knowledge of God as Creator is not availableoutside Christ. Certainly Calvin is convinced that creation would havebeen a sufficient basis to arrive at true knowledge of God ‘had Adamstood upright’.150 It would have been the natural course of events, weunderstand him to say, for the structure of the world to have served asour school, in which piety would have been taught, so that we might

Zwischen den Zeiten 10 (1932), 505–532 and idem, Natur und Gnade. Zum Gespräch mit KarlBarth, Tübingen 1934. K. Barth, Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner, München 1934. Thediscussion 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 anextensive discussion and rejection of E. Brunner and G. Gloede see: W. Krusche, DasWirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Göttingen 1957, 67–85.

148 Inst. 2.6.1.149 Inst. 1.5.4.150 Inst. 1.2.1: ‘… si integer stetisset Adam …’

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have subsequently passed from that school directly to eternal life andperfect bliss.151 Under the factual circumstances of a world fallen intosin, however, there is what Calvin terms a conditio irrealis. In the intro-duction to his commentary on Genesis Calvin makes it clear in animpressive way that Christian knowledge of God does not have its cen-tral source in the construction of the world, but in the Gospel, whereChrist on the cross is proclaimed to us.152 Notwithstanding all this, onefinds in Calvin an appeal to the universal presence of God and theineradicability of a fundamental realisation of God which is entirelyabsent from contemporary theology. Is this an inconsistency in Calvin,or is it precisely typical of his thought? What separates Calvin’s pre-modern theology from contemporary theology is that he appeals toan evidence for which the inward faculty now seems to have disap-peared. The appeal to God’s evident presence appears to contradictCalvin’s assertion that we ‘will find nothing in the world that drawsus to God, until Christ will have instructed us in his school’.153 Butthese words do not contradict the appeal to evidence of God’s revela-tion in nature. Where modern, post-Kantian theology experiences anabsolute opposition, Calvin did not see one. Precisely in the school ofChrist can creation, providence and the hidden work of the Spirit becalled upon. In fact the school of Christ includes classes and gradeswhere initially a faint notion of God is given, then a more powerfulimpression of his majesty and role as judge is imparted, and finallyChrist appears as the image of the loving Father as centre and goalof the knowledge of God.154 God’s revelation through the inner capac-ities of the sensus divinitatis and sensus conscientiae and the outward sensescan indeed be repressed, but never entirely eradicated. What can con-ceptually be described as a continuing field of tension pushes itself tothe surface in Calvin’s texts: only someone who himself was stronglyimpressed by the givenness and irresistibility of God’s presence couldwrite about the world around us as he does. When one reads Calvin’s

151 Inst. 2.6.1.: ‘Erat quidem hic genuinus ordo ut mundi fabrica nobis schola esset adpietatem discendam: unde ad aeternam vitam et perfectam foelicitatem fieret transitus’.

152 Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 10: ‘Nam ita innuit, frustra Deum quaeri rerumvisibilium ductu: nec vero aliud restare nisi ut recta nos ad Christum conferamus. Nonigitur ab elementis mundi huius, sed ab evangelio faciendum exordium, quod unumChristus nobis proponit cum sua cruce, et in eo nos detinet.’

153 Ibidem, 10.154 Calvin’s exposition of the conversion of Zachaeus in Luke 19, CO 45, 563, offers

a fine example: ‘Sic Dominus saepe, priusquam se hominibus manifestet, coecum illisaffectum inspirat, quo feruntur ad ipsum adhuc latentem et incognitum.’

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descriptions of the creation and becomes acquainted with his admi-ration of the ingenious structure of the cosmic order, one does notreceive the impression that he was hindered by the conviction thatGod’s work is obscured by sin. Calvin counts on the ceaseless, uni-versal activity of God through his Spirit. The revelation of God has ateleological structure which certainly finds its completion in the knowl-edge of Christ, but which is not determined by Christ in all its com-ponents. Expressed conceptually, there is indeed a soteriological Chris-tocentrism, but not of a fundamental Christocentrism.155 In Calvin’sTrinitarian concept the work of the Spirit has its own place in the actsof God, which is certainly involved in Christ, but not congruent withChrist. Only in this way, taking into account the separate work andweight of the Spirit, can we understand how Calvin presents knowledgeof God the Creator to his audience as something over which the speak-ers and hearers must be in agreement.156 Men who open their eyes mustindeed lift their eyes to the Creator of all of this. The ignorant and thelearned alike must admit that the world can not be understood withoutGod.

Remarks on the unproductivity of knowledge derived from natureare thus not the only thing that determines Calvin’s thought and con-cepts. Calvin proceeds from a very differentiated, active presence ofGod, and this must also have a place in our reconstruction of histhought. It can only be understood if one takes into account that, evenin man’s rebellion and estrangement, God continues to invite man anddraw him to Himself in very many ways. The fact that men cannotarrive at a true knowledge of God on the basis of their contemplationof the world remains an undiminished source of amazement for Calvinand internalises the tension that is defined by God’s active presence inthe creation on one hand, and by sin as an intervening factor and thenecessity for the Spirit as a spiritus adoptionis on the other.

155 See R.A. Muller, ‘The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? AResponse to T.F. Torrance’, Thomist 54 (1990), 685. See also C. Link, ‘Der Horizont derPneumatologie bei Calvin und Barth’ in: H. Scholl (ed.), Karl Barth und Johannes Calvin.Karl Barths Göttinger Calvin-Vorlesung von 1922, Neukirchen 1995, 22–45.

156 Inst. 1.14.21. Calvin’s unnuanced appeal to nature has nothing to do with the factthat ‘something escaped the otherwise so sharp eyes of the Reformers’, as Karl Barth

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2.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and Parker

The question regarding the knowledge of God as Creator and theknowledge of God as Redeemer was drawn into the foreground inCalvin studies once again in the 1950s through the previously referredto studies by E.A. Dowey and T.H.L. Parker on knowledge of Godin Calvin. At stake in the discussion was the question of how greatlythe distinction of the duplex cognitio influences Calvin’s thinking in itstotality, and in particular the structure of the Institutes. In the 1559 edi-tion the Institutes, which by that time had grown to 80 chapters, wasdivided into four sections, conforming with the fourfold division of theApostles’ Creed. In agreement with older observations by J. Köstlin,E.A. Dowey suggested that the cognitio duplex nevertheless should beconsidered the true principle behind the design of the Institutes. Thedivision into four parts indeed took place, but the distinction whichis systematically and epistemologically of importance is the point ofview of double knowledge of God.157 Dowey sums up his thesis in theassertion that the duplex cognitio must be considered as a double presup-position. According to Dowey, justice is best done to Calvin’s positivestatements regarding the understandability of God’s self-revelation increation and providence, and alongside them his decisive words on thenecessity of learning to know God through the face of Christ, if oneconsiders them as two perspectives which stand next to one anotherin Calvin in a dialectical duality, which cannot be taken up into onehigher synthesis.

Parker forcefully rejects this.158 He accuses Dowey of reforging thetheme of God’s being as Creator into a general, preparatory chapter, in

remarks in KD II/1, 140; cf. ET, 127 but with another, more subordinate place that theconcept of nature had in the intellectual climate of the day.

157 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, New York 1952, 49. Thusaccording to Dowey Book I in fact runs through Book II, Chapter 5. On page 46 hewrites: ‘All that he says subsequently lies within the vast background he has given of theTrinitarian God, his creation of the universe and of man in a state of perfection andhis providential care of that creation. Yet, while this background is a frame of referenceand a presupposition of the redemptive revelation—it is not even known apart fromthe redemptive revelation which Calvin has yet to discuss. Thus from another point ofview the redemptive revelation is actually the presupposition of the knowledge of theCreator which in Calvin’s treatment precedes it.’

158 T.H.L. Parker, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Grand Rapids 1959, 121:Dowey ‘takes one methodological distinction made in the word and magnifies it intothe leading principle to interpret the whole.’

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the sense of a 17th century prolegomena. Through labelling the knowl-edge that man can gain of God’s being as Creator as insufficient,Dowey would suggest that the effects of the fall to which this knowledgeis subject are much too innocuous. According to Parker, in Calvingeneral ideas of knowledge of God lead only to man not being ableto excuse himself before God.

What are we to conclude about this debate? Aside from its highquality as Calvin studies, after a half century one must admit that itis chiefly significant for the way that modern dogmatic distinctions andsensitivities were so directly applied by both parties. Parker correctlydraws attention to the fact that subject of creation regularly surfacesin Calvin after Book I. It is indeed extreme to split the Institutes intotwo parts on the basis of the methodological distinction of a duplexcognitio. At the same time, it is highly curious and anachronistic whenParker for his part feels the need to declare Calvin somewhat guilty ofinterpretations such as those of Dowey. After all, Calvin does not at allpoints make it entirely clear that Christ is the starting point for everysort of knowledge of God, whether it is of God as Creator or of God asRedeemer.159 The fact that Calvin fails to do so is no slip of the pen, butreveals the importance of this twofold perspective. In the irresolvablemutual involvement of both sorts of knowledge with one another, thedifference between the conditions under which reflection is carriedout on Christian belief in a pre-modern and a post-Kantian contextbecomes clear. Calvin feels no need to emphasise at every moment thattrue knowledge of God is Christologically determined. His theologyreflects the fact that he encountered the self-revealing and manifestingGod everywhere in his world, and the conviction that appealing to thissort of experience continued to have a purpose of its own, even thoughone must the following moment stress that this source of knowledgewas insufficient for faith. Knowledge of God as Creator must also bepurified through Scripture, but the knowledge of this goodness of Godretains its peculiarity alongside the knowledge of God’s mercy in Christ.Calvin did not share the aversion against an appeal to nature or history,issues which became so problematic as sources of knowledge of God inpost-Kantian theology.

159 Parker, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 121.

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2.5. Appreciation of culture

On the basis of the motif of substitution and displacement one mightget the impression that Calvin’s vision of human mental capacities isoverwhelmingly negative. As has already been seen, this impression is,however, inaccurate. Calvin’s negative judgement must be further dif-ferentiated. He explicitly follows Augustine when he says that throughthe fall man has lost his preternatural endowments, and his natural giftsare corrupted. That does not mean that they are entirely eradicated. Asso often, Calvin refers both to Scripture and to experience for the con-firmation of this view.160 In one key passage he writes,

‘We see that there has been implanted in the human mind a certaindesire of investigating truth, to which it never would aspire unless somerelish for truth antecedently existed. There is therefore now in the hu-man mind discernment to this extent, that it is naturally influenced bythe love of truth … Still it is true that this love of truth fails before itreaches its goal, forthwith falling away into vanity … the human mind isunable, from dullness, to pursue the right path of investigation … in thesearch for truth.’161

The human mind has a natural inclination to truth. That is no smallthing. The result of this desire for truth is however dependent on thesort of knowledge that is involved. Elsewhere Calvin makes a clarifyingdistinction in this connection, that is of immediate importance for hisappreciation of science and culture. There are two sorts of knowledge,namely those of terrene and heavenly affairs:

‘By earthly things I mean those which relate not to God and his king-dom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some con-nection with the present life, and are in a manner confined within itsboundaries. By heavenly things I mean the pure knowledge of God,the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenlykingdom. To the former belong the matters of policy and economy, allmechanical arts and liberal studies. To the latter belong the knowledgeof God and of his will, and the means of framing life in accordance withthem.’162

Calvin’s appreciation of culture thus depends to a great extent on theperspective that he chooses.163 With regard to our human capacity to

160 Inst. 2.2.12: ‘experimento sensus communis repugnat.’161 Inst. 2.2.12.162 Inst. 2.2.13.163 See the previously cited book by M.P. Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology,

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occupy ourselves with earthly affairs, with the design of society andlawmaking, he is strikingly positive. Following Aristotle, he identifiesman as a ‘social animal’, who by nature has the inclination to formand preserve society. Undeniably in such judgements one encounterssomething of the jurist who was educated within a climate shaped bythe Renaissance and Humanism, and within whose purview lie pub-lic administration and social questions. From a cultural-historical andsocial perspective this interest is easy to place. But it is also interest-ing to inquire about this positive attitude on theological grounds. Pro-ficiency in the matter of earthly affairs can be positively valued preciselywhen 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 aboutman as a whole person. Sin, as loss of original splendour and identity,has flooded over the human person like a tidal wave and has saturatedhim from head to toe.164 The alienation from God affects everything.Thus even the most ingenious are ‘blinder than moles’.165 Accordingto Calvin the discernment of the greatest philosophers, some of whomcan now and then provide very apt visions of God, ‘resembles that of abewildered traveller, who sees the flash of lightning glance far and widefor a moment, and then vanish into the darkness of the night before hecan advance a single step. So far is such assistance from enabling himto find the right path.’166

Like his contemporaries, Calvin is surely not sceptical about thepossibilities of the human mind in the public domain. He is certainlysceptical about man’s possibilities for finding a way to God and hissalvation. What he says about culture, man, his skills and his knowledgeis 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 mustbe found in the way which the Spirit points. And which way doesthe Spirit point? With apparent pleasure Calvin tells the story of thephilosopher Simonides, whom the tyrant Hiero asked what God is. Anumber of times Simonides sought to postpone answering, and finally

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 alsoComm. on Rom. 7:14, CO 49, 128: ‘Tota mens, totum cor, omnes actiones in peccatumpropendeant.’

165 Inst. 2.2.18.166 Inst. 2.2.18.

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replied, ‘The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears.’167 Thedarkness in which man finds himself with regard to heavenly things canonly be removed by the Word of God.

2.6. Scripture as accommodation

According to Calvin the world of creating and maintaining, howeverpositively he may want to speak of it, is still no longer sufficient to drawman to God. One could say that because of the other direction that thehuman heart has turned, creation no longer has its intended effect asa conduit for God’s revelation. Because of this the place of Scripturemust next be discussed.

Calvin’s doctrine of Scripture has been the subject of fierce discus-sion in Reformed theology over the past century. That should not besurprising. To the extent that the status of the Bible as the Word ofGod has been threatened in theology through the increased consider-ation of its human dimensions, various proposals have been advancedwith respect to the question of how the inspiration of the Bible couldbe further handled. With this the question of Calvin’s position regu-larly arose. Is his doctrine already practically one of verbal inspiration?Or is his doctrine of inspiration best described as mechanical, or is theadjective ‘organic’ to be preferred? For Calvin is the Bible the revela-tion of doctrinal truths, or is it the revelation of the person of Christ?168

Such alternatives, it must emphatically be said, do no justice to Calvin’sviews. As mutually exclusive possibilities these bear the stamp of a laterera. In his theology the concepts mentioned here simply stand nextto one another. That the promise of Christ given in the Gospel is thepoint of revelation169 does not detract from the fact that God inspiredthe whole Bible with all its contents. That God uses men, includingtheir character and talent, does not detract from the fact that everyword of the Bible came into being under direct influence, or even bet-ter, under the ultimate direction of the Holy Spirit. We will go into thismore extensively.

According to Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God, knowledge ofGod acquired on the basis of God’s Word qualitatively far exceeds the

167 Inst. 1.5.12.168 For a discussion see B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism, New York 1931, 60–65.169 Inst. 3.2.29. Calvin literally uses the word scopus.

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knowledge that fallen man gains from nature. The one school is notthe other. After the fall of Adam, post Adae lapsum, man must receiveknowledge from the instruction God gives by means of verbal revela-tion. This conviction on Calvin’s part is only given added strength bythe extensive place that his commentaries and Bible exegesis took in hislife’s work. In the eyes of later generations Calvin may frequently havebeen the systematiser, the one who arranged the elements of the Chris-tian faith and attuned them to one another, but in his own eyes theInstitutes was a manual for students and preachers in their expositionof Scripture. This manual does not replace the commentary; it doesnot replace the sermon; it is a genre of its own. It provides space fordealing with subjects, loci, and discussions, disputationes, connected withthe knowledge of God granted in Scripture.170 Ultimately, however, itis about the knowledge of God, about God’s Words and promises thatmen learn from Scripture. The superiority of the Bible over every othermeans of revelation is not open to discussion; in the Institutes 1.6.1 it istermed ‘a better aid’,171 or concretely, the spectacles with which God’smanifestations in created reality can be perceived.172 Compared with it,God’s manifestations in nature are still only general indications. Theyare ‘dumb teachers’, while in the Scriptures God opens his own holymouth. Creation testifies that there is a God, in Scriptural revelation Hetells who this is.173 For methodological and didactic reasons Calvin doesnot enter into the connection between Scripture and the revelation ofChrist as Mediator in this chapter. The disquisition on Scripture inthe chapter on God the Creator can therefore easily leave the impres-sion of being a defence of the formal authority of the Bible. This viewhowever cannot be maintained when one sees to what degree Calvinalready appeals to experience in this context. His exposition of revela-tion through the Word in Book I of the Institutes is intrinsically linkedwith the content that is given in the revelation. The methodologicallimitation of Book I to God the Creator can not disguise the fact thatthe experience which Calvin assumes of every reader of the Scripture

170 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101–117.171 Inst. 1.6.1: ‘aliud tamen et melius adminiculum accedere necesse est.’172 Calvin uses the image of an old man who can no longer distinguish the letters in

a book held before him. Only when someone provides him with spectacles is it possibleto 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 adGenesin, CO 23, 10.

173 Inst. 1.6.1.

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relates to everything that God has made known through his prophets andapostles, and just as little can it remain unsaid that this content, as willappear further on in the Institutes, will find its culmination in Christ asthe real content of the Gospel.174 We will return to this point later inthis section.

What is the foundation for the authority of Scripture? Does theBible have authority on formal and external grounds, or because of itscontent relating to faith? Such alternatives, it must be clear, say moreabout later discussions than about Calvin, and are too limited. Bothpositions are found in Calvin. Scripture has authority because it comesfrom God, and it has authority because of its content. In Calvin studiesit is not rare to see the conclusion that there is dissonance in Calvin’sdoctrines on Scripture. As a matter of fact, this reproach, made by bothDowey175 and Gerrish176 is once again most curious. It is a theologicaljudgement at which one might arrive on the basis of a later position,but which has no historical basis. Calvin would not have recognisedhimself for even a second in the conclusion that he considered theBible to be external and formal authority! The adjectives ‘external’ and‘formal’ simply do not square with the manner in which he describesthe experience that he has in his encounter with Scripture, and whichhe equally assumes for his readers. In the Scriptures man encountersthe unceasing activity of God, which he, when he looks up from thepage, sees in the world around him and within himself.177 At no pointdoes Scripture come to man with an authority that is abstracted fromits content. After all, it is God himself who brings his message to manin these writings, with all their diversity. The paired concepts of formal-informal and internal-external do not fit into Calvin’s vision of themanner 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, CO47, 321.

175 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 161–162. Dowey writes: ‘Wemust conclude, in fact that two “interpretations” exist side by side in Calvin’s theologyconcerning the object of the knowledge of faith, because he never fully integrated andrelated systematically the faithful man’s acceptance of the authority of the Bible en blocwith the faith as directed exclusively toward Christ.’

176 It would appear from this statement that B.A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and theNew. Essays on the Reformation Heritage, Chicago 1982, 62 also shares this view: ‘Calvin didnot adequately relate his doctrine of faith and his doctrine of authority; for while hisfaith was strongly Christocentric, he continued to work with the Bible -in the medievalfashion- as an external and formal authority’.

177 Inst. 1.10.1.

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the Word is a matter of God’s active instruction, and that instructiontakes place in countless separate events in which God has revealed hiswill.

Calvin makes clear what it is that must be conceived as the initialforms of divine instruction. One must think of visions, of appearances,of voices which confirm the visions, so that at the same time the visionis received the prophet is granted certainty that this was indeed fromGod.178 In this case the Bible writer is conscious of the inspiration,and functions as an amanuensis.179 In short, on the human side of theprocess revelation receptivity is the dominant factor. Calvin’s theologyis governed by an orientation to the object, which means that there ishardly any attention given to the human role.

We also find this object orientation in a different form. In mod-ern theology the distinction between revelation and ‘revelation becomeScripture’ has become increasingly important. We will encounter thispervasively in the second panel. Calvin does indeed know this distinc-tion, but it is characteristic that it plays no significant role in his doc-trine of revelation. There is no gap between God in his revelation andGod who speaks through Scripture. God simply wanted to seal his rev-elations of himself, his oracula, to the Fathers for coming generationsby in effect hanging them up in public, as on a bulletin board.180 Thatpublic notice board is the Bible. Revelation and Scripture coincide inthe Scriptures. The terms employed by Calvin for the content of rev-elation are telling in this connection. The terms ‘heavenly doctrine’,181

‘heavenly wisdom’, oracula Dei,182 and the use of the word dictare183 lackprecisely that which through historical-critical research has come to bethe centre of attention, namely the human factor. The Scriptures asthey lie before us come from God, and in all their parts came intobeing under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. In later theologythis concept is elaborated into the doctrine of verbal inspiration, andwith good reason theologians appealed to Calvin in the process. Thereis however a striking difference, which has to do with attention for the

178 See for instance Comm. on Gen. 28:12, 13, CO 23, 391–392.179 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 publicistabulis 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, 457–458.

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human factor. Calvin does not deal further with the question of howthis inspiration occurred; he does not elaborate on the method of inspi-ration. B.B. Warfield has rightly indicated what mattered for Calvin.While it is true that Calvin did use the term ‘dictate’ figuratively, itis clear that what he meant to say in doing so was that the result ofthe inspiration by the Spirit is a revelation that comes as directly fromGod, as if it were a letter being dictated.184 To repeat: in his doctrineof revelation Calvin gives no explicit attention to the human factor.All of his attention focuses on the result of revelation, which does notbelie its divine stamp. It is easy to test this proposition. Even in thosecases where, to the modern mind, the human character of Scripture isabundantly clear (such as in the complaints, lamentations and doubtsin the Psalms), even then it is still Calvin’s view that these sections cameinto being expressly under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That is notbecause 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 thePsalms 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 intheir presentation of the succession of events the evangelists differ fromone another, that is for Calvin no reason to examine their work furtheras a human product. It is once again the Holy Spirit who has found thequestion of chronology unimportant. What is important is that which isto be learned from the history.186 Other examples are there for the tak-ing: the difference in style among Biblical texts is for Calvin no reasonto look further at the issue of human mediation. He draws from this theconclusion that the Holy Spirit is the greatest of all rhetoricians. Whatcan be said here ultimately fits with what was said above in the sectionon accommodation and language. The fact that some parts of the Biblecan measure up stylistically with the best of profane Latin literaturedemonstrates that the Spirit is indeed a powerful rhetorician. But theunaffected and indeed sometimes uncouth style in which other parts

184 Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism, 62–64.185 CO 31, 16: ‘I’ay accoustumé de nommer ce livre une anatomie de toutes les

parties de l’ame, pource qu’il n’y a affection en l’homme laquelle ne soit yci representeecomme en un miroir. Mesme, pour mieux dire, le S. Esprit a yci pourtrait au viftoutes les douleurs, tristesses, craintes, doutes, esperances, solicitudes, perplexitez, voireiusques aux esmotions confuses desquelles les esprits des hommes ont accoustuméd’estre agitez.’

186 See Argumentum in Evangelium, CO 45, 3–4.

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of the revelation have come to us equally demonstrates what is and isnot a prime concern for the Holy Spirit. Making a literary impressionis not important; what is important is the effect on the listeners. TheSpirit will pierce the heart, penetrate to the very marrow, far surpass-ing the powers of the greatest speakers. Holy Scripture is redolent of‘something divine’.187 In these remarks the emphasis does not line onthe role of the mediator or the mediation, but on the authenticity of themessage. In the Bible men really encounter the message of God.

We now arrive at the following point that is important for the sketchof Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God. Divine revelation throughthe word and sight has a propositional value. It has content. Ultimatelythat is self-evident for Calvin. As the Son is the expression and imageof God, and conversation or speech is the mark of the human mind,revelation thus must have a content which can be described. TheSon is the speech, sermo, of God.188 Instruction and teaching with apropositional content are an integral component of Calvin’s concept ofknowledge of God, although they are not identical with it. Knowledgeof God arises and exists in part in instruction, doctrina. Knowledge ofGod cannot however be reduced to the act of knowing propositionsor to an attitude of submission and acceptance, which always mustbe paired with certain content, with certain truths. This substantivecomponent in Calvin’s concept of faith has already been discussed inthe definition of piety. Unavoidably we here encounter an aspect of theconcept of faith that within the Calvinistic tradition has led to greatemphasis on the formulation of content. Frequently in this traditionthe confidence placed in good formulation and intellectual doctrine hasbeen great—all too great.189 At the same time I will remind readersonce again that Calvin’s concept of faith can in no way be categorisedas intellectualistic. Knowledge lies within much broader connections.The propositional is rooted in and subject to living, active experienceeffected by the Spirit, of which the affective is integrally a part. Thepropositional is an implication of the mystic unity with Christ. We willreturn to that later, in the discussion of the concept of faith.

187 Inst. 1.8.1.188 See Comm. John 1:1, CO 47, 1: ‘Quod Sermonem vocat Dei filium, haec mihi

simplex videtur esse ratio, quia primum aeterna sit Dei sapientia et voluntas, deindeexpressa consilii eius effigies. Nam ut sermo character mentis dicitur in hominibus, itanon inepte transfertur hoc quoque ad Deum …’

189 See also B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin,Minneapolis 1993, 81–82.

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For the rest, the foregoing makes clear how far Calvin’s view ofdoctrine, doctrina, stands from modern views of dogmatics. For Calvin,doctrine is instruction given by God. What he tries to do in his Institutesand his dogmatic tracts is, in his own mind, nothing more than arrangethe given truth, which is clear in itself. He does not view doctrineas something that is formulated by man on the basis of stories andhistories. Doctrine is not primarily a product of human intellectualcapacities formulated for the sake of preaching or the guidance of theChristian community. These are views that fit with the post-Kantiansituation. In this first panel doctrine is a part of divine speaking itself.At the same time it is clear that doctrine is not an end in itself. Thegoal of doctrine is that man comes to worship and obedience. Even histhinking is permeated by Calvin’s character as a doer.

2.7. Knowledge of God as result of Word and Spirit

With the terms Word and Spirit we stand before two key concepts inCalvin’s views on the knowledge of God. They can not be separatedfrom one another, nor can they be resolved into one another. Theintersection here is the Bible, revelation set down in writing. Here thereis already a relation with the work of the Holy Spirit, to the extentthat 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 fromthe Holy Spirit. The Word, heavenly wisdom, as Scripture howeverremains an outward entity. Only through the work of the Holy Spiritdoes man become inwardly convinced of the truth of the message ofsalvation that resounds in this Holy Scripture.191 Knowledge of Godcannot, therefore, be resolved into either Word or Spirit; it arises in theinvolvement of the Word and Spirit with each other.192 In short, theyare correlates.

190 Inst. 1.8.1: ‘divinum quiddam spirare sacras Scripturas.’191 Inst. 2.5.5.192 Inst. 1.9.3: ‘Mutuo enim quodam nexu Dominus verbi Spiritusque sui certi-

tudinem inter se copulavit: ut solida verbi religio animis nostris insidat, ubi affulgetSpiritus 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 protulitDeus, quod Spiritus sui adventu extemplo aboleret, sed eundem Spiritum cuius vir-tute verbum administraverat, submisit, qui suum opus efficaci verbi confirmationeabsolveret.’

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With this correlation of Word and Spirit Calvin takes an intermedi-ate position between the Roman Church and contemporary spiritual-istic currents. He emphatically defends the primacy of Scripture overagainst oral tradition. Calvin considered the primacy of ecclesiasticaltradition as an usurpation and unnecessary expansion. God has madeenough known in his Word for us to live and to organise the church.Biblical authors are cited as critical authorities against ecclesiasticaldoctrine and practice.193 That is an important point of difference incomparison with pre-Reformation theology. The authority of the Bibleis distinguished from the authority of the hierarchic church. It is notself-evident that divine truth coincides with an institution. One couldrespond that in the situation of Geneva the authority of Scripture infact corresponded with the exposition and authority of Calvin, and thatthis distinction thus could not have meant all that much. There willalways be people who speak in the name of God. The obvious conclu-sion that little has therefore changed is, though, only partially true. Itis valid to the extent that in the concrete situation of Geneva Calvin’sdominance was indisputable. But strikingly enough, there was at thesame time a change in the view of authority. No longer were antiquityor tradition decisive arguments. Against Sadoleto Calvin argues thatan appeal to Scripture has more weight than an appeal to tradition orantiquity. In other words, the authority of Scripture is not dependanton the church, despite the famous words of Augustine that he wouldnot have believed the Gospel if the authority of the church had not ledhim to that. Calvin denies that the authority of the church is the foun-dation for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. According tohim, Augustine meant that the moral authority of the church was forhim the impetus for turning to Christ.194

The second front that Calvin has in mind with these terms is thespiritualistic disparagement of the concrete text of the Bible.195 Earlierin this chapter we briefly mentioned IICor. 3:6; among the spiritualiststhe text of the Bible was the dead letter and the Bible was seen assubordinate to the immediate revelation of the Spirit. In Calvin’s eyesthis is an improper devaluation of Scripture as divine revelation. Forhis defence he reaches back to the premise that the words of Scripture

193 See A. Ganoczy/S. Scheld, Die Hermeneutik Calvins. Geistesgeschichtliche Voraussetzungenund Grundzüge, Wiesbaden 1983, 11–15.

194 Inst. 1.7.3.195 Inst. 1.9.2.

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speak in clear and ordinary language. There is a clarity that stands inshrill contrast to the randomness at which one arrives as a result of theallegorical exegesis of the spiritualists. On both fronts Calvin maintainsthat God works through Word and Spirit. The Spirit binds itself to theconcrete text of the Bible, although this does not mean, as this wasinterpreted against Rahtmann by the later Lutherans, that the work ofthe Spirit is wholly absorbed in the Word. The Bible as the Word ofGod proceeds from the work of the Spirit, and continues in union withthe Spirit, but in involvement with the Word the Spirit does not ceaseto exercise its own identity. The Bible cannot be understood by manexcept by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Further in this section wewill return once again to how far-reaching, but also how productive itis to think about knowledge of God from a correlation of Word andSpirit.

First however we must return to the historical context of Calvin’sregard for the Bible. The issue here is not the question of the human-ity of the Scriptures, but the question of where its authority ultimatelyrests: in the authority of the church, or in an individual, inner revela-tion? Against opponents who in his eyes undermined the authority ofScripture for various reasons, Calvin argued that there were enoughgrounds why the Scriptures themselves commanded respect.196 He didnot hesitate to employ the usual apologetic arguments against scep-tics: the Bible contains the ground of its authority within itself, in themajesty which is manifest in these writings.197 At the same time heemphasises that the question of the authority and trustworthiness ofthe Bible at its deepest cannot be decided in this way. The solid cer-tainty in the hearts of the patriarchs that they were dealing with Godhimself in the revelation which had been bestowed upon them can,we are told, only be traced back to God himself. The certainty thatis obtained in encounters with the divine Word exceeds any derivedfrom human thought and opinions. Scripture is, at its heart, autopis-tos.198 It is worth the effort to see just what Calvin says here. In theScripture he experiences God as an active, working person. The high-est proof for the theopneustie of Scripture is derived ‘from the character

196 Inst. 1.7.4.197 Inst. 1.8.2. Calvin lists, for example, the antiquity of the Bible texts, the miracles

which attest to the truth of the proclamation, the fulfillment of prophecies, the provi-dential preservation of the books of the Bible, and the unanimous feeling of the churchregarding the truth of Scripture.

198 Inst. 1.7.5.

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of him whose word it is’.199 Or stronger yet, the basis of trust and confi-dence lies in experience that transcends human reason and conjecture.In faith there occurs a moment at which trust and certainty come aboutin an immediate and intuitive manner, beyond anything that man canadduce in apologetics. A somewhat longer quotation will not be out ofplace:

‘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 heartsby the Holy Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either onour own judgement nor that of others, that the Scriptures are from God;but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assured—asmuch so as if we beheld the divine image impressed upon it—that itcame 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 forus to estimate … we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—anenergy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly, indeed,and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done byhuman will or knowledge.’200

What is striking in this citation is that Calvin draws a contrast betweena conclusion in the basis of human judgements and arguments on theone hand, and the certainty from the majesty of Scripture on the other.Certainty arises as a consequence of the experience of divine activity.The certainty that the faithful have regarding divine origin of Scrip-tures is compared by Calvin with the manner in which we are imme-diately certain of the difference between black and white. It is beyondall doubt.201 It is knowledge which imposes itself without the interven-tion of reasoning or argumentation. In Calvin’s discussion the decisivefactor is that man is subject to an energy, carried along by the force of

199 Inst. 1.7.4: ‘Itaque summa Scripturae probatio passim a Dei loquentis personasumitur.’

200 Inst. 1.7.5: ‘Etsi enim reverentiam sua sibi ultro maiestate conciliat, tunc tamendemum serio nos afficit quum per Spiritum obsignata est cordibus nostris. Illius ergovirtute illuminati, iam non aut nostro, aut aliorum iudicio credimus, a Deo esse Scrip-turam: sed supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus acsi ipsiusDei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse.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 efficacius quam pro humana autvolutate, aut scientia trahimur et accendimur.’

201 Inst. 1.7.2.

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God’s activity; in short, human receptivity is key in this discussion.202

H. Bavinck correctly and keenly formulates it that Christian theologytakes the believing subject as its point of departure.203 That is alreadytrue for Calvin when he finally points to the inner testimony of theHoly Spirit. It is however important to see how many, and what termsare used to specify the reality of this subject. Man is the one who in thedepths of his being hears, perceives, receives, is carried along, affectivelymoved through what is heard.

The answer to the question of how the believer can be certain of theauthority of Scripture is in fact found in the foregoing. The battlefrontthat Calvin has in mind is not that of historical criticism, although in hisimmediate environment there were sceptical voices to be heard whichasked how people could be historically certain that Moses and theprophets had spoken for God. His remarks are directed against the viewthat the acknowledgement of the authority of the Bible depends on thejudgement of the church. In the encounter with Scripture there is anexperience that exceeds all argumentation. From the human side, thisacknowledgement is however the consequence of the inner testimony ofthe Spirit. The Spirit brings a believer to the certainty of the majesty ofthis Word, but this certainty must be distinguished from the truth thatthe Spirit binds upon the heart of man.204

In Book I of the Institutes Calvin discusses the subject of the testimonyof the Holy Spirit extensively in connection with the authority of theBible. For that reason Bavinck has accused Calvin and his followers ofstanding at the beginning of a tradition in which the inward testimonyof the Spirit is involved exclusively with the authority of Scripture, andis too little related to the significance for faith and the life of faith asa whole.205 Is Bavinck right? S.P. Dee and J. Veenhof have correctlypointed out that at least in the Institutes the inward testimony of the

202 One should carefully note the verbs in Inst. 1.7.5: afficere, obsignare, intueri,subicere, sentire, vigere, spirare, trahere, accendere.

203 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I, Kampen 19062, 603–604; ET, 564.204 In Reformed orthodoxy this difference is formulated as the difference between

the authority of Scripture and certainty regarding the authority of the Scriptures. Byvirtue of its inspiration, Scripture bears inspiration in itself; in the light of the Scripturesthe firm belief in this truth, that comes upon man of itself, is derived from the innertestimony of the Spirit. See S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, Kampen 1918, 133.

205 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek I, 563ff. For a discussion of oldere Calvininterpretations 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 vanHerman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie, Amsterdam 1968, 494–495.

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Holy Spirit is also discussed in relation to the question of the certaintyof salvation.206 The impression that the authority of the Bible takes ona formal character with Calvin arose chiefly when people reduced himto the author of only one text, the Institutes. Anyone reading the Institutesin relation to his sermons and commentaries will presently come to thediscovery that the work of the Spirit, the Spirit as teacher, is a constantin Calvin’s thinking. The testimony of the Spirit is linked with all of thecontent of faith, and with the course of a life of faith itself. KnowingGod is not just parroting the Bible; it is a learning process under theactive tuition of the Holy Spirit. It is therefore a distortion to appealto Calvin for the distinction between formal and material authority. Forhim, belief in the divinity of Scripture is inseparable from the encounterwith God, who speaks as a person in these texts. To replace that witha reference to the activity of the Spirit, who confirms the truth of thesetexts in the heart of the faithful, is to go too far. Calvin’s position iscompletely pneumatological. God speaks in these texts, shows his face,opens his mouth,207 and gives his adoptive children certainty about thistruth. In order to have a correct picture, one must also bring in howCalvin thinks about the certainty of faith and, last but not least, howthis testimony evidently functions in his commentaries—thus not apartfrom the content of God’s instruction. The way in which Calvin speaksabout the Scripture is identical to the way in which he speaks in BookIII of the Institutes with regard to the certainty of salvation. The thingswhich are expounded in Book I with respect to the whole of Scriptureas a source of knowledge of God return in connection with the pointof faith. Further, one can recall what was said previously in connectionwith the metaphor of the mirror. When Calvin says that Scripture isthe mirror in which we recognise Christ, this image itself makes anydistinction between formal and material faith in the Scriptures impos-sible. In one and the same act of looking into the mirror one also per-ceives the image in the mirror.208 We therefore find that there is goodreason to reject the opposition that is implied in the paired concepts offormal and material authority. The way in which Calvin discusses theauthority of Scripture in Book I of the Institutes shows that this authority

206 See J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie, 494, and S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,136ff.

207 Inst. 1.9.3.208 See once again the outstanding discussion in S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,166.

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comes to light in experience, and that it is confirmed by the Spirit inthat experience. It is not an a priori authority. In creation, in the per-ceived order of things, in conscience and finally in the Scripture Godshows his face to man. Scripture acquires its authority, and certaintygrows, in the course of God’s dealings with man.209 Calvin arrives at hischaracterisation of the authority of Scripture and its certainty preciselythrough the indissoluble relation between Word and Spirit. The Biblehas authority because it, in all its parts, stands in the dynamic sphere ofinfluence of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Of course there are obvious differences in the present debate onthe Bible and certainty. While in contemporary biblical scholarship theemphasis has come to lie on the historical process through which theBible took shape, and with that on the human form in which revelationcomes to us, in Calvin one finds hardly any specific attention for therole of the human subject in the Bible’s coming into being. To be sure,he acknowledges that the personality and origins of the writers playeda fundamental role in the language and style they employed. He has noproblem pointing to certain faults. This is all possible, though, becausethe human character of the Bible is not yet a charged issue. Howevermuch Calvin may stresses that God makes use of the services of menin his revelation, nowhere does he imply that the human subject shouldreceive an independent place in his theology as an active and shapingsubject. The roles are fixed. The centre of gravity lies with God as sub-ject of revelation, and man is the one who listens and gives heed to it.

The division of roles between God and man works through into themetaphors that characterise the way the Bible is to be seen. The rev-elation in the Old Testament is termed the ‘fencing in’ which wouldprevent the Jewish people perishing like the heathen nations.210 Themetaphor of the school, so beloved by Calvin, also fits in this context.The believer must be a pupil of the Holy Scriptures. This is not a classin which the students do experiments and make discoveries for them-selves; they are there to listen attentively. Man must be prepared tolearn.211 All the way through to Calvin’s own biographical notes at thebeginning of his commentary on the Psalms we encounter the wordthat describes this readiness to learn: docilitas.212 The development of

209 Dee refers to Comm. Acts 17:11, CO 48, 401.210 Inst. 1.6.1.211 Inst. 1.6.2.212 CO 31, 21.

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docility in our time into a pejorative term is telling. That was not thecase with Calvin. The Bible is the school in which pure knowledgeabout God can be learned. In short, the instruction that is given in rev-elation and Scripture, the images and metaphors that are used, are notgrounded 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 toget a sense of what in the Reformed tradition has come to be termedthe Scripture Principle, and of the tremendous formative power of thisprinciple. Within the ‘fence’ of Scripture God has said neither too littlenor too much, but precisely as much as is profitable for man. It is a viewwhich has great consequences for both the borders and the content ofknowledge of God, as we will see in the course of these chapters. Everydeviation from this given content, every innovation is then a changefor the worse. Therefore one does not encounter a positive regard forhistory and development in Calvin.213

We will pause for a moment to pose the often-heard question: canthis attitude toward the Bible be described as Biblicism?214 In view ofthe short history of this concept it is certainly an anachronism, and anunfortunate designation.215 Biblicist use of the Bible is associated witha very simple and direct appeal to the Bible and a rejectionist attitudetoward hermeneutics. It is crystal clear that the term Biblicism cannotbe applied to Calvin in that sense. It is however also understandablewhy this term is used in connection with Calvin. It is a later applicationby a theology that has made an explicit issue of the humanity of theScriptures. In the second panel we therefore find an entirely differentsituation. For Karl Barth theology is something that man has to engagein on his own responsibility, conscious of the humanity of the Scripturesand in obedience to the Word of God that sounds therein. This makingan 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, ‘Thetwo faces of Humanism’, A Usable Past, 37: ‘As the retrospective prefix in the familiarRenaissance vocabulary of amelioration attests—renascentium, reformatio, restoratio,resititutio, renovatio, etc.—it could only look backward for a better world.’

214 For instance, Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, 19–20, 44–52.215 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 Scripturalcriticism played no role in his time. It goes without saying that Biblicism is not to beconfused with fundamentalism. See J. Veenhof, ‘Orthodoxie und Fundamentalismus’,Praktische Theologie 29 (1994), 9–18.

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Everything in the Bible is worth study because God has consciouslyprovided it for us. The Bible must be taken seriously and obeyed asthe revelation bestowed by God. In part this forms the background forCalvin’s preference for a short and sober exegesis of the Bible. In orderto make progress in knowing God, the line must be kept short and taut.It is in this context that the famous words come: omnis recta Dei cognitioab oboedentia nascitur.216 Right knowledge of God is born of obedience.

In our contemporary Western society the idea of obedience cancount on being received with a large dose of distrust. The extermina-tion camps of the Second World War would not have been conceivablewithout an underlying system that was kept going in part by a cultureof obedience. The anti-authoritarian experiments of the 1960s and theuncertainty on the part of the generation of parents in the last fewdecades not only reveal how difficult it is to unite freedom and restric-tions, but also something of a collective trauma surrounding this con-cept. When training in obedience is uncoupled from the simultaneousshaping of personal, unrelinquishable responsibility of the individual,an essential element of humanity is undermined. In this respect onemust also find that the Reformation, with its Scripture Principle, fun-damentally uncoupled authority from the church as institution. Calvindoes not deny that God works via means, and thus also through men.Yet in relation to the preceding situation something has changed in theplace of the church. Its divine authority is no longer direct, but deriva-tive, and that opens the door to discussion on the place of the church.

What does it mean that this concept of obedience surfaces in Calvin’sdiscussion of the way to knowledge of God? It stands within the contextof the invitation to follow the direction that the Spirit points out tofaith in the Scripture. Concretely, that way leads to Christ. Obedienceobtains for the living word of God, through which men come furtherthan the confusing knowledge on the basis of nature, and further thanthe barricade that the church erected in her cults and ceremonies.217

That is the context within which one must understand Calvin’s remarkson obedience. But at the same time it is clear that the subjectivityof man is poorly developed in this concept. It is a curtailment andlimitation if the role of man is discussed only in terms of obedienceand the space given to the creature in his answer to God.

216 Inst. 1.6.2.217 Ibid.: ‘aures tamen praecipue arrigere convenit ad verbum, ut melius proficiat.’

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2.8. Faith

2.8.1. A qualified concept of faith

In the preceding section Calvin’s concept of faith was discussed implic-itly. It is time to make this explicit. A beginning can be found in Calvin’s‘full definition of faith’:

‘It is a firm and certain knowledge of the divine favour toward us,founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to ourminds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.’218

Each aspect of this well-considered definition deserves special attention.First of all, it strikes us that the concept of faith is, from its inception,a theological, content-filled definition. It is not limited to a formaldefinition. Faith is defined by its content, namely God’s ‘divine favourtowards us’. Second, it is to be noted that the object of faith does notsimply coincide with God. It is, rather, God’s favour, founded in thepromise given in Christ. Faith has as its object Him who is sent by Godand the gifts bestowed in his person.

The focus on the person Jesus Christ has a polemic point, or so itwould appear in the discussion of the concept of faith. The disputeconcerns the concept of implicit faith, fides implicita. One may considerthis concept as a theological solution to a pastoral problem which hadarisen for the church in the preceding centuries, with the Christianisa-tion of Europe. This concept opens the way to argue that the benightedfolk by implication receive eternal salvation by submitting to the cultusand rites of the church, even if they have only a very limited or dis-torted understanding of the truths of salvation. Calvin has no sympathywith this. Perhaps the fact that he himself was part of a culture in whichthe standards for development and civilisation among the bourgeoisiehad risen sharply played a part in this.219 In any case, he can not see theidea of ‘implicit faith’ as other than a legitimisation for gross ignoranceand lack of knowledge. It conflicts with the attempt to reform the wholeof society. Faith does not reside in ignorance, but in knowledge.

The sharpening that Calvin introduces in his concept of faith how-ever goes still a step further. Faith does not focus on God as such, buton the will of God. The object of faith is in fact that God, for the sake

218 Inst. 3.2.7.219 H.A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought,

Philadelphia 1981, 6.

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of reconciliation, is our merciful Father, and that Christ is given to usfor righteousness, sanctification and life.220 Calvin is conscious that he ishereby stipulating the concept of faith theologically. He acknowledgesthat in Biblical texts the concept of faith is also used in a much moregeneral sense. Still he quite deliberately chooses for a pointed conceptof faith that is defined by the concept of revelation. The content of faithis not just the conviction that God exists, and just as little, how God is,as He is in himself. Faith focuses on how God is as he is toward man, or, toput it differently, on God’s will.221

Yet this too is not sufficient, and further specification is necessary.According to Calvin, the focus of faith is not just any expression ofGod’s will. Nor can that be the case. When Adam heard from Godthat he would suffer death, or when Cain heard the curse pronouncedon him, those were indeed expressions of God’s will, but at the sametime they are things at which man can only turn away. Faith is nota formal concept, but is from the very outset a concept guided andfilled by the revelation of God’s mercy. Man will not rely upon cursesand threats, although they be expressions of God’s will; at such pointsthe threatened conscience finds no rest. Faith does not focus simplyon God’s will, but on His favour and mercy.222 In this context Calvincalls on the concept of scopus, which can perhaps best be translatedas the target or point of faith. Christ is the point of faith, and thispoint determines the direction of gaze. Faith then is only invited andquickened when man has learned that there is salvation to be foundwith God. Man learns this by looking to Christ and the good news hebrings. ‘The true knowledge of Christ consists in receiving him as he isoffered by the Father—namely, as invested with his Gospel. For, as heis appointed as the end of our faith, so we cannot directly tend towardshim except under the guidance of the Gospel.’223 According to Calvin,in the incarnation of the eternal Son we have the deepest momentof God’s descent toward us. This is the closest point where God hasshown himself in our reality as in a mirror, namely in the figure of

220 Inst. 3.2.2.221 Inst. 3.2.6: ‘Neque enim unum id in fidei intelligentia agitur, ut Deum esse

noverimus, sed etiam, imo hoc praecipue, ut qua sit erga nos voluntate, intelligamus.Neque enim scire quis in se sit, tantum nostra refert, sed qualis esse nobis velit.’

222 Inst. 3.2.29.223 Inst. 3.2.6: ‘Haec igitur vera est Christi cognitio, si eum qualis offertur a Patre

suscipimus, nempe Evangelio suo vestitum: quia sicuti in scopum fidei nostrae ipsedestinatus est, ita nonnisi praeeunte Evangelio recta ad eum tendemus.’

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the Mediator. Further, it must be noted that the death of Jesus on thecross is the sharpest facet of this mirror. Indeed, from the resurrection itretrospectively becomes clear that Jesus Christ has assumed the conditionhumaine in his death agony, has undergone the punishment which mandeserved, has endured the forces which imprisoned man. There thechasm is deepest. At that deepest moment it is no longer visible thatChrist is the eternal Son. The pronouncement of Irenaeus that thedivinity of Christ is not active in His suffering, but was as it were hiddenand at rest, is assumed by Calvin: the divine powers of Christ wereat that moment concealed.224 The light in this mirror comes from theresurrection. Only then does the image become visible: Christ, whotakes the place of all, so that all can be included in fellowship withGod.225 In the resurrection God makes visible what really happenedon the cross. Even here—or perhaps precisely here—Calvin does notshrink from appealing to the dramatic possibilities of the theatre asa place where the spectators must be touched to the depths of theirhearts: ‘The incomparable goodness of God his made visible before thewhole world in the cross of Christ, as in the most splendid theatre’.226

2.8.2. Unio mystica

In the definition that Calvin gives for faith in Institutes 3.2.7, it becomesclear that the content of the knowledge involved in faith is anchored inChrist’s promise of the grace of God and that this knowledge is plantedin the believer through the Holy Spirit. The reference to the work ofthe Spirit is essential: ‘So long as we are without Christ and separatedfrom him, nothing which he suffered and did for the salvation of thehuman race is of the least benefit to us’.227 In Calvin’s characterisationof the experience of faith we encounter both the experience of thedistance from God as well as God’s closeness. However, the experienceof proximity and community is decisive. While we in one place read

224 Comm. Luke 2:40, CO 45, 104: ‘… quatenus salutis nostrae interfuit divinamsuam potentiam quasi occultam tenuit Filius. Et quod dicit Irenaeus, quiescente divini-tate passum fuisse, non modo de corporali morte interpretor, sed de illo incredibilianimae dolore et cruciatu, qui hanc illi querimonimam expressit, Deus meus, ut quidme dereliquisti?’

225 Inst. 2.12.3.226 Comm. John 13:31, CO 47, 317: ‘Nam in Christi cruce, quasi in splendidissimo

theatro incomparabilis Dei bonitas toti mundo spectata fuit.’227 Inst. 3.1.1.

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that the gracious God shows himself in faith as indeed still ‘high andlifted up’,228 further on we read the opposite: ‘We expect salvation fromhim—not because he stands aloof from us, but because ingrafting usinto his body he not only makes us partakers of all his benefits, butalso of himself … If you look to yourself damnation is certain: butsince Christ has been communicated to you with all his benefits, sothat all which is his is made yours, you become a member of him, andhence one with him. His righteousness covers your sins—his salvationextinguishes your condemnation’.229 As Bavinck has rightly observed,230

with these words we have landed in the midst of Calvin’s concept offaith: the unio mystica. What Luther called the miraculous exchange231

takes place in the communion between Christ and men. Through faithChrist takes up his dwelling in man.

‘That Christ is not external to us, but dwells in us, and not only unitesus to himself by an undivided bond of fellowship, but by a wondrouscommunion brings us daily into closer connection, until he becomesaltogether one with us.’232

There are several notable points in this important characterisation.First, the present and eschatological elements of the knowledge of Godcoincide. In faith, participation in the new reality is already a realitynow, 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 themediating person in whom man is again brought into fellowship withGod. But third and finally, I would call your attention to somethingremarkable. The new reality is expressed in terms of corporeality andgrowth. These are not the obvious categories of consciousness or ofpersonal encounter which one would expect to be used in describingthat which is new. The basis of the knowledge of God and its certaintyis not primarily cerebral, but expressly transcends that. The languageof the body has primacy. It is about powers that will be exercised. Wehere encounter an element of Calvin’s view of the knowledge of Godthat also permeates his teaching on the Lord’s Table and gives it itspeculiar colour. This will be discussed further in the fourth chapter.

228 Inst. 3.2.19.229 Inst. 3.2.24.230 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek III, Kampen 19102, 594.231 M. Luther, WA 40 I, 443.232 Inst. 3.2.24; ‘quia Christus non extra nos est, sed in nobis habitat: nec solum

individuo societatis nexu nobis adhaeret, sed mirabili quadam communione in unumcorpus nobiscum coalescit in dies magis ac magis, donec unum penitus nobiscum fiat’.

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For the rest, fellowship with Christ is not something about whichone can say nothing further. Calvin’s interest is primarily in the benefitthat is found in faith in Christ. ‘Christ and his benefits’ is a typicalexpression for Calvin. In fellowship with Christ man shares in thebenefits which are contained in Christ’s person. Here is the one sourcefrom which both justification and sanctification spring. According toDee, the terms fides, unio mystica and iustificatio can be conceived aspurely logical distinctions within what is ultimately one and the samereality.233 With Calvin, faith and knowledge of God are not formalconcepts, but are defined precisely in relation to their content. His isa soteriological understanding of faith and knowledge.

2.8.3. Faith and certainty

In the preceding the work of the Spirit has been discussed several times.The Spirit binds us with Christ, at the same time making man certainof his own connection with Christ. But what kind of certainty andconfidence is that which marks the knowledge vested in faith? We willenter into that question in this section.

The work of the Spirit is the foundation for various aspects andphases in the way faith proceeds. ‘For the Spirit does not merely orig-inate faith, but gradually increases it, until by its means he conductsus into the heavenly kingdom,’ we are told.234 It is characteristic thatCalvin, within the context of this pronouncement about knowledge ofGod’s election, contrasts the word that he uses to indicate the mind orunderstanding, mens, with the Holy Spirit. The mind (or understand-ing) is termed blind, stubborn, inclined to vanity. The human mindmay have originally been inclined to God, but once imprisoned in thesphere of sin this capacity or keenness appears to be lost. That withwhich man is equipped is simply inadequate; it has become blunt, lacksacuteness. Therefore faith must come in the form of a gift. Calvin dis-tinguishes steps or aspects in the work of the Spirit. The first aspect isilluminatio, enlightenment of the understanding. In illumination by theHoly Spirit, man receives a new power of sight, as it were, aciem. Thesecond step is that the heart (or better, the soul), animus, here seen ina more limited definition as the seat of the human affections and emo-

233 Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, 190–194.234 Inst. 3.2.33.

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tions, is confirmed in the truth as something which applies to it.235 Theone work of the Spirit thus has a double effect, on understanding andheart, intellectual and affective.236 In evaluating Calvin’s view of knowl-edge of God, it is important to note that this work of the Spirit, bothin illumination of the understanding and the confirmation of this in theheart, are both discussed in terms of experience.

‘As we cannot possibly come to Christ unless drawn by the Spirit, sowhen we are drawn we are in both mind and spirit exalted far above ourown understanding. For the soul, when illuminated by him, receives asit were a new eye, enabling it to contemplate heavenly mysteries, by thesplendour of which it was previously dazzled. And thus, indeed, it is onlywhen the human intellect is irradiated by the light of the Holy Spirit thatit begins to have a taste of those things which pertain to the kingdomof God; previously it was too stupid and senseless to have any relish forthem.’237

Human understanding itself is weak and incapable of grasping thepromises of the Gospel of on its own. Therefore it is first necessarythat God through his Spirit makes these promises seen. In the midstof the discussion of the concept of faith and the certainty of faith, itbecomes clear that it is not the concept of cognitio which must be used tounderstand that knowledge which man can attain on his own initiative.Man can attain knowledge of created reality through his faculties forperception. The knowledge toward which faith is oriented howevertranscends created reality. The knowing that is involved in faith is notsimply a matter of comprehending, comprehensio, but rather of ‘tasting’.238

235 Ibidem, ‘Ergo singulare Dei donum utroque modo est fides, et quod mens hominisad degustandam Dei veritatem pergatur, et quod animus in ea stabilitur.’ We herefollow R.A. Muller’s view, in turn taken over from Stuermann. Animus can be usedas the equivalent of all the mental capacities, but used in connection with the termmens, animus means all the affective parts of the human mental faculties, or that partof the human mind that reaches out to that which is known. See R.A. Muller, TheUnaccommodated Calvin, 168.

236 Comm. Eph. 1:13, CO 51, 153: ‘Respondeo, duplicem esse effectum Spiritus infide, sicuti fides duabus praecipue partibus continetur, nam et mentes illuminat, etanimos confirmat. Initium fidei, est notitia: consummatio, est fixa et stabilis persuasioquae contrariam dubitationem nullam admittat.’

237 Inst. 3.2.34: ‘Quemadmodum ergo nisi Spiritu Dei tracti, accedere ad Christumnequaquam possumus: ita ubi trahimur, mente et animo evehimur supra nostram ipso-rum intelligentiam. Nam ab eo illustrata anima novam quasi aciem sumit, qua caelestiamysteria contempletur, quorum splendore ante in seipsa perstringebatur. Atque ita qui-dem Spiritus sancti lumine irradiatus hominis intellectus, tum vere demum ea quae adregnum Dei pertinent gustare incipit: antea prorsus ad ea delibanda fatuus et insipidus.’

238 Inst. 3.2.14: ‘Cognitionem dum vocamus, non intelligimus comprehensionem,

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The knowing comes from contact with a reality that one experiencesrather than understands. According to Calvin, in faith a convictionof something which men can not understand presents itself. Therearises a degree of conviction and certainty which, he says, exceeds thecertainty that is involved in the knowing of normal human matters. Inthis context we again encounter the concept of persuasio, familiar fromrhetoric. The knowledge which arises in faith is a fruit of convictionby God. God is the rhetorician who inescapably places before us thetruth of salvation. Paul, when he spoke of the height, depth, length andbreadth of the love of God (Eph. 3) wanted to say that in faith we comeinto contact with something infinite, something which far surpasses allordinary understanding.239 The knowledge of which faith speaks, Calvinsays, is therefore more a matter of certainty than of comprehension.240

I would find that at crucial points in his concept of knowledge ofGod Calvin is not the intellectualist that he is so often accused ofbeing.241 The opposite is rather the case. Affective elements predomi-nate. The moment of acceptance of the truth of faith is, we read, ‘morea matter of the heart than the head, of the affection than the intel-lect’.242 Trust, fiducia, must not be considered as a closing phase on thepath 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’ mustbe the inevitable result. Put succinctly, experience surrounds and sur-passes understanding. The encounter with the goodness of God callsforth trust and open-heartedness on the part of man.243 In short, faith isbecoming convinced, persuasio, and as such that faith is a point of free-dom. When the goodness of God is experienced, the freedom arises inwhich one can surrender to it. Although the term ‘voluntaristic’ brings

qualis esse solet earum rerum quae sub humanum sensum cadunt. Adeo enim superiorest, ut mentem hominis seipsam excedere et superare oporteat, quo ad illam pertingat.Neque etiam ubi pertigit, quod sentit assequitur: sed dum persuasum habet quodnon capit, plus ipsa persuasionis certitudine intelligit quam si humanum aliquid suacapacitate perspiceret.’

239 Ibid.: ‘Voluit enim significare, modis onmibus infinitum esse quod mens nostrafide complectitur, et genus hoc cognitionis esse omni intelligentia longe sublimius.’

240 Inst. 3.2.14: ‘Unde statuimus, fidei notitiam certitudine magis quam apprehen-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

fiducia nascitur.’

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with it the danger of easily becoming associated with decisionism andtherefore must be employed cautiously, the fact that the affective ele-ment is the keynote in Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God andin that sense is definitive, still points in that direction. God is known asthe source of all good.

Faith has as its object something which exceeds all intellectual con-cepts, in the sense of comprehension. It encompasses the whole humanperson, with all his intellectual and affective faculties, and his will. Thisdoes not, however, cancel out the idea of knowledge. Rather, it is knowl-edge of and contact with a reality that men cannot comprehend, butfreely acknowledge.

The knowledge involved in faith thus implies a realisation of personalinvolvement in the truths of salvation. This therefore implies a critiqueon the late medieval distinction between fides formata and fides informis.Faith is never a matter of intellectual affirmation alone; it is, from theoutset, more a matter of the heart than the head, more of the affectivefaculties than understanding. The Spirit is directly present as a witnessthat man is adopted as a child of God.244

Calvin’s discussion of the certainty of faith has moments of greatbeauty. At the same time it must be noted that with his great attentionfor the inwardness of faith and for self-investigation, Calvin sometimesfinds himself on thin ice. The journey inward here also serves thedistinction between true and false faith. Calvin explicitly mentionsforms of faith in which faith remains superficial. He lists the parable ofthe sower (Luke 8:6) and Simon Magus (Acts 8:93). In these cases faithmeans that persons are in some way impressed, in the same way onemight be impressed by a masterpiece.245 The impression is temporary,and does not take root in the heart. Does Calvin’s theology, in whichman is turned back upon his own capacity to distinguish betweentrue and false faith, between the work of the Spirit in believers andunbelievers, not very vulnerable, or outright dangerous? In Calvin’s callto self-examination, does man not become both the protagonist and hisown audience, and is he not asked to assume an impossible distancefrom himself in order to see what is real and what is hypocrisy?246

244 Inst. 3.2.8.245 Inst. 3.2.10.246 Bouwsma, John Calvin, 180 offers the critique that Calvin, in the call to examine

one’s conscience, imposes on man the role of the contrite sinner, making it impossiblein advance to arrive at a moment of integration between role and reality. Spontaneity

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Election is the background for Calvin’s exposition of true faith; Howcould it be otherwise?247 Calvin distinguishes two sorts of operationsby the Spirit. The operation of the Spirit in the reprobate is calledthe inferior Spiritus operatio, which nevertheless exhibits considerable sim-ilarity with the operation in believers. For a time the reprobate canbe subject to almost the same feeling as the elect, ‘that even in theirown judgement there is no difference between them’.248 God can infuseunbelievers with his grace, so far as ‘his goodness can be felt withoutthe Spirit of adoption’. In his concept Calvin does have the theologicalcategory of temporary faith, which must not be identified with the con-fidence on the grounds of which the believer says ‘Abba, father’ (Gal.4:6).

With his discussion of the experience of the Spirit of God by thesetwo different groups, Calvin works himself into a tight corner theologi-cally and pastorally. For the reprobate the discernment of grace is noth-ing other than confused, muddled, a shadow of what is the lot of thebelievers. Nevertheless he acknowledges that God is also experiencedby them as a reconciling God. They too ‘accept the gift of reconcilia-tion, although confusedly and without due discernment’.249 The differ-ence is that the reprobate never reach that full effect and fruition withwhich God endows the elect.250 All told, we must say that Calvin, withhis call for self-examination (seipsos excutere), has laid the foundations fora tradition in which the turn inward plays a great—not to say all toogreat—role that is at odds with that other line of thought according towhich the apprehensive conscience must be directed toward Christ asthe mirror of God’s fatherly love and favour. For salvation it is not onlynecessary that Christ has died for sinners in general, but also to knowthat one has a share in that grace oneself. This certainty can be con-firmed again through the testimony of a good conscience.251 To fairlyjudge what Calvin had in mind, it is necessary to keep this successionstrictly in mind. When it comes to the foundation of salvation, faithfocuses only on the goodness of God, on the promises. This goodness is

is made very difficult, so that the person is continuously conscious of his or her ownconduct.

247 Inst. 3.2.11.248 Inst. 3.2.11.249 Ibid.: ‘Merito tamen dicuntur reprobi Deum credere sibi propitium: quia donum

reconciliationis, licet confuse nec satis distincte, suscipiunt.’250 Inst. 3.2.11.251 Inst. 3.14.18.

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not only the starting point, but the end point. This does not, however,detract from the fact that, once having achieved rest, someone is calledto take care in how this status as an adopted child of God works out inpractical terms. These works are, Calvin says, ‘proofs of God dwellingand reigning in us’.252 Thus man is invited to assess his own practice oflife in the light of the work of the Spirit, his unity with Christ given infaith.

With his invitation to self-examination Calvin indeed stands in alonger tradition. It is apparent that in his years at the Collège Montaiguhe came into very direct contact with the piety encouraged by ModernDevotion. This tradition of inwardness is continued in his own con-cept of the knowledge of God. It is a rich tradition, because it bestowsattention on the way in which man inwardly relates to that which sur-rounds him. If there is knowledge of God, then there is also somethingto be experienced which will work itself out in a person’s life, creatinga confidence in this contact that is indissoluble. At the same time, inReformed Protestantism this tradition has led to the ultra-Reformedform of spirituality, which is at odds with Calvin’s own admonitionto see Christ as the mirror of election. The succession can easily bereversed:253 first wanting to undergo an inner experience of adoption byGod, and thereafter daring to look to Christ as the image of a mercifulGod.

In other words, there is a hidden revelation, a tasting of God’s sal-vation that is shared only by God’s children. Calvin denies that thereprobate really embrace God’s eternal will to grace; they remain atthe level of a fleeting realisation of it.254 That is the one point of viewthat he emphatically maintains, appealing to concrete examples fromthe Bible. But now he turns to the other side and offers some pas-toral commentary with the high adjectives in his definition of faith. InCalvin’s theology psychological, pedagogical and theological elementsstill form one whole. He says of faith that it is ‘true’ and ‘certain’. Butwho experiences that at all times? Calvin realises full well that the flameof 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 fideitestimonium habet ab operibus: non tamen sequitur illic fundatam esse, quum posteriorhaec probatio instar signi accedat. Certitudo itaque fidei in sola Christi gratia residet;sed pietas en sanctitas vitae veram fidem a ficta et mortua Dei notitia discernit …’

253 Cf. R.C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith. Conscience in the Theology of Martin Lutherand John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 222.

254 Inst. 3.2.12.

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edges that among believers too now and again doubt will arise aboutwhether this merciful God is for them. But now we suddenly hear thatthis doubt should not be considered as a sign of a false faith. To thevacillating he says that they ‘confine [God’s mercy] within too narrowlimits’.255 This grace indeed reaches others, but not themselves. Calvinrefers here to a figure from the Bible, with whom he gladly identifies:David. Contesting is possible, as the Psalms demonstrate, but faith isnot swallowed up in this chasm. As soon as a drop of true faith hasseeped into the heart, Calvin tells us that we begin to behold the faceof God as placid, serene and propitious.256 The eschatological streakin Calvin’s theology and spirituality appears clearly with the certaintyof faith. Man is a pilgrim on his journey, and as he travels more closelyapproaches God’s countenance. Ignorance yields slowly.257 The believer,still in the earthly body, is like someone in a dungeon, who sees thesun enter his prison only through a high window. A sense of limitationdominates this image. Nevertheless, there is a radiance by which he isillumined.

Thus, in this existence knowledge of God can only be obtained inpart. In connection with the image of the dungeon, Calvin takes up themetaphor of the mirror from ICor. 13, to which we already referred.258

The nature of the certainty of faith that is man’s share in this life isrelated to the fact that man still leads an earthly existence. As wealready saw, according to Calvin corporeality and mundanity implyimperfection. The human condition means a limitation in respect tospiritual things, through which it is impossible to fully perceive whatis infinite, and through which it becomes necessary that we have tobe taught continually. Life on earth implies a ruditas which makes itimpossible to approach perfection.259

We have previously discussed the eschatological orientation of Cal-vin’s theology in this context. It can be seen at countless points in hiscommentaries and sermons. It is not without reason that Calvin can sostrongly identify with Biblical figures from the Old testament, who livedwith the promise of fellowship with God through Christ, but had thisfellowship in hope, in spe.260 Faith possesses the content of the promise

255 Inst. 3.2.15.256 Inst. 3.2.19.257 Comm. in epistolam Pauli Ad Romanos, 26.258 Inst. 3.2.20.259 Inst. 3.2.20.260 Inst. 2.10.11.

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in the mode of hope. That did not change with the appearance ofChrist. In a certain sense the believer has indeed passed from death tolife, but it must not be inferred from that that he already possesses thebenefits that are contained in Christ. Calvin here reminds his reader ofIJohn 3:2. Although we know that we are God’s children, all is not yetrevealed until we see God as He is. ‘Therefore, although Christ offersus in the Gospel a perfect fullness of spiritual blessings, fruition remainsin the keeping of hope, until we are divested of corruptible flesh, andtransformed into the glory of him who has gone before us.’261

In the light of the foregoing, it is understandable why Calvin linksfaith and hope so closely with one another. Faith hopes that God willfulfil the promises, promises that are grasped in hope. According toCalvin, faith has hope in eternal life as its companion.262

2.9. The limits and benefit of knowledge of God

Finally, at the end of this chapter on Calvin’s doctrine of revelation, Iwant to indicate one striking feature which has major consequences forthe content of the knowledge of God. Human knowledge in faith is alimited knowledge. In the preceding sections we discussed the functionof the metaphor of the mirror. God reveals himself in various mirrors,which each have different qualities. The mirrors in which God makeshimself known—the natural order, Scripture, Jesus Christ—have bothnegative and positive functions. Positively, this means that God willbind his creations to the revelation given. Only by concentration onthese mirrors will meaningful knowledge to be obtained. Negatively thismeans that man must not attempt to go beyond the mirrors given him.Man must not desire to contemplate God outside of the ways in whichGod offers himself.

We can now summarise: according to Calvin, knowing God is fromthe outset a practical matter, focused directly on the human beingas an individual person. It begins with man permitting himself to beaddressed in conscience, in his encounter with the natural world, inhis inner life, in the Word, and most important at the point where God

261 Inst. 2.9.3: ‘Quanvis ergo praesentem spiritualium bonorum plenitudinem nobisin Evangelio Christus offerat, fruitio tamen sub custodia spei semper latet, doneccorruptibili carne exuti, transfiguremur in eius qui nos praecedit gloriam.’

262 Inst. 3.2.42.

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speaks: fellowship with Christ, and the gifts contained in Him. It is Godwho, through his Spirit, invites man to begin on this path, and to movetoward ever fuller knowledge. It is a way that lasts a lifetime, a pil-grim’s journey that becomes concrete in obedience, in worship, in thecertainty of faith, reverence and love: ‘The knowledge of God whichwe are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satisfied with emptyspeculation, only flutters in the brain, but a knowledge which will provesubstantial and fruitful wherever it is duly perceived, and rooted in theheart.’263 This path is not described by Calvin as intellectual acceptanceof truths on the authority of others. By its very nature, knowledge ofGod is not limited to the cerebral. On the contrary; what comes fromGod does something with man, touches his affective faculties to theirdepths and calls forth a diversity of experiences. ‘The Lord is mani-fested by his perfections. When we feel their power within us, and areconscious of their benefits, the knowledge must impress us more vividlythan 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 Godis, at its apex, affective. The Spirit moves soul and senses and opens theway forward.

263 Inst. 1.5.9.264 Ibidem.

chapter three

GOD: JUDGE AND FATHER

3.1. Utility and the doctrine of God

The previous chapter describes how man arrives conceptually at knowl-edge of God, and directly connected with that, what the nature of thatknowledge is. Answering the question of the way to acquire knowl-edge of God did not appear easily possible without giving a provi-sional answer to the question of the content of that knowledge. Implic-itly it appears that the distinction which entered the conceptual sys-tem of Protestant orthodoxy in the early 17th century, namely the dis-tinction between fides qua and fides quae, between the act of faith andthe content of faith, must be regarded as inadequate.1 The miscon-ception that faith as an attitude, as an act, can be separated fromthe content of faith very quickly arises. In the previous chapter itwas absolutely clear that Calvin’s concept of faith, or, to be moreprecise, his concept of knowing God, can not be separated from thecontent, namely Christ and all the good things that the believer cancount on in fellowship with this Lord. In the context of fellowshipwith Christ, knowing has the connotation of sealing, that is to say,it engages the heart, the intellect is grounded in the affective, satu-rated in trust. This chapter is a further elaboration of the content, orthe contents, of human knowledge of God. What are the features ofGod as he appears in the mirror of Calvin’s theology? What are themost important metaphors and images, and how do they relate to oneanother? Is there actually a dark and threatening side to Calvin’s imageof God?

1 According to Karl Barth, KD I/1, 248; ET, 236, this distinction is already tobe found in Augustine, De Trinitate XIII, 2, 5, but it apparently only came to beemployed as a methodological distinction with J. Gerhard in his Loci theologiae (1610).From that time the concept has been part of the standard armamentarium of dog-matics, though not without risk. Barth correctly notes that the distinction indicatesthe ‘dialectic’ between faith and the object of faith, but contributes nothing to furtherreflection.

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Doctrines regarding God are not known for being the most fascinat-ing part of dogmatics; they deal with matters which absolutely fail totouch man in his day to day existence. It appears to be as the adagewhich Luther uses in De Servo Arbitrio says: ‘Quae supra nos, nihil adnos.’2 This maxim, originally attributed to Socrates and included inErasmus in his collection of proverbs,3 is used by Luther as a warningnot to become engrossed with the hidden Counsel of God. Only thedeus revelatus, the revealed God, matters for man, not the hidden God,the deus absconditus. One could say that the traditional curiositas motifreturns in a new shape in Reformation theology.4 In both the adagecited from Luther, and in Calvin’s theology one can discern the desireto concentrate on what really concerns man in his relation to God,and touches human existence directly. With Calvin, this leads to whatis sometimes is termed his Biblicism: he wishes to strictly limit himselfto 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 hadthe intention not to take speculation as a point of departure. To whatdegree he really succeeds in this, and to what extent such an enter-prise is really possible, or even desirable, is another question. In thesecond panel we will encounter a view of systematic theology that, seenin the light of Calvin’s vision of theology, is much more speculative. Onthe one hand it is much more modest in its acknowledgement of thehuman status of doctrine; on the other it is more speculative because,in its conception of fulfilling a regulative function, it ventures to thelimits of the discussion. That, however, will be dealt with later. I nowwill simply note that Calvin, seen subjectively, believed that the effortto maintain sobriety and moderation was a matter of obedience to theGospel. One repeatedly encounters such exhortations to observe limitsas a methodological rule, particularly in the case of doctrines involvingangels and devils. ‘Since the Holy Spirit always instructs us in what isuseful, but altogether omits, or only touches cursorily on matters whichtend little to edification, of all such matters it is our duty to remain inwilling ignorance.’5 The word ‘willing’ reveals where his heart lies. He

2 WA 18, 685.3 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Adagiorum Chiliades (1536). Ausgewählte 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 vanamcuriositatem. Ein Kapitel der Theologie zwischen Seelenwinkel und Weltall, Zürich 1974.

5 Inst. 1.14.3.

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prefers to stay away from questions which it is not given to man to beable to answer, and is, we must say, correspondingly angry when in thepolemics on double predestination logical consequences were imputedto his position which he himself did not wish to draw.

This call for discretion and the acknowledgement of limits doesnot stand by itself. The determination of limits is not a goal in itself,nor an expression of a general timidity, but is directly linked with thepractical and spiritual utility of the content of faith. Knowledge must beuseful, we hear time and again. Knowing must result in advancement,in worship of and life with God.6 In a manner which is reminiscentof the first edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, Calvin states thatman only seeks God in the proper way when he curbs his curiosityand worships rather than investigates God’s being. The correct path forknowledge of God is to see Him in his works, in which he approachesman, reveals and in a certain manner shares Himself.7

The relation between knowledge of God and experience is so strongin Calvin that in contemporary Calvin studies a direct line is indeeddrawn from Calvin to Schleiermacher.8 In one of the few places in theInstitutes where what are termed the ‘perfections’ of God are discussed,he says for instance that knowledge of God consists more in ‘a vividactual impression than empty lofty speculation’.9 The context makesclear what Calvin here views as being involved in the ‘impression’. First,discussing Exodus 34:6, he says that the Bible is the mirror in whichGod shows his image to man in the clearest way. Next he asserts thatall these qualities of God can also be experienced in the created world.That is an assertion which may strike us as very strange, accustomed aswe are to thinking of things in an instrumental, and sometimes natu-ralistic manner. Can man indeed really experience God’s perfections inthe physical world which surrounds us? According to Calvin, we can.

6 Inst. 1.14.4: ‘… tenendam esse unam modestiae et sobrietatis regulam, ne derebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamus quamquod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum. Alterum, ut in lectione Scripturae, iis continenterquaerendis ac meditandis immoremur quae ad aedificationem pertinent: non curiositatiaut rerum inutilium studio indulgeamus. Et quia Dominus non in frivolis questionibus,sed in solida pietate, timore nominis sui, vera fiducia, sanctitatis officiis erudire nosvoluit, in ea scientia acquiescamus.’

7 Inst. 1.5.9.8 8. B.A. Gerrish, ‘Theology within the Limits of Piety Alone: Schleiermacher and

Calvin’s Notion of God’ in: idem, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on ReformationHeritage, Edinburgh 1982, 196–207.

9 Inst. 1.10.2.

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The qualities listed in Exodus do not involve only a propositional truthdelivered to us, but are confirmed in the experience that the believergains from human experience and the world, from nature and history.10

With experience as his teacher (experientia magistra), man once again dis-covers the definitive features in the portrait of God.11

Subsequently, for Calvin it is simply not understandable that thatwhich is said about God should leave man unmoved. Anyone whocomes into contact with God also encounters himself. Repeatedly wecome upon the methodological principle of bipolarity to which wealready referred in the previous chapter. Both the terms with whichGod’s qualities are characterised (goodness, wisdom, righteousness,judgement and mercy), and the images or metaphors which refer toGod as a person (source, judge, Lord and Father), can be considered asone focus in an ellipse. To that corresponds the second focus, namelythe answer and attitude on the human side.

Knowledge of God is thus useful knowledge. But what is useful? Theanswer to the question of whether something is useful depends greatlyon culture. Use is a qualification derived from a fundamental systemwith its acknowledged norms and values. If that fundamental system isan anthropology which supposes that relation to God is by definitionnot part of being human, then it at the same time decides that Godis unnecessary or even undesirable. It will become clear that the basic,theocratic system which Calvin had in mind is fundamentally differentfrom a basic system that threatens to reduce utility to economic value.For Calvin, that which does justice to the correct relation betweenGod and man, or which promotes fellowship between man and God,and which motivates man to obedience and worship is useful.12 Forinstance, in Calvin’s second sermon on Job 33 we can hear that which

10 Inst. 1.5.9: ‘Atque hic rursus observandum est, invitari nos ad Dei notitiam, nonquae inani speculatione contenta in cerebro tantum volitet, sed quae solida futura sit etfructuosa si rite percipiatur a nobis, radicemque agat in corde. A suis enim virtutibusmanifestatur Dominus: quarum vim quia sentimus intra nos et beneficiis fruimur,vividius multo hac cognitione nos affici necesse est quam si Deum imaginaremur cuiusnullus ad nos sensus perveniret.’

11 See also W. Balke, ‘The Word of God and Experientia according to Calvin’ in:W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Ecclesiae Doctor, Kampen 1980, 19–31.

12 Inst. 1.5.9: ‘Unde intelligimus hanc esse rectissimam Dei quaerendi viam et aptis-simum ordinem: non ut audaci curiositate penetrare tentemus ad excutiendam eiusessentiam, quae adoranda potius est, quam scrupulosius disquirenda: sed ut illum insuis operibus contemplemur quibus se propinquum nobis familiaremque reddit, ac quo-dammodo communicat.’


is understood as useful in the first panel of this study. At verse 12(‘God is greater than man’), Calvin notes that it is not sufficient toconfess that God is almighty, that He has made the world and thatHe guides things and holds them in his hand. Those are only confessionsvolages, empty words. These confessions are of no use to us if we donot move beyond them. According to this sermon it is a matter of hisconfession regarding God having an immediate effect on the mannerin which a person relates to God. Thus, on the human side God’smajesty translates into awe and obedience. If we declare God good, inwhatever He does with us, then we accept his will, and we confess hisrighteousness. If that has a real, practical significance, then we maintainthat God never subjects us to anything unjustified or without reason.13

Yet Calvin’s conviction that all that happens is in one way or anotherwilled by God and has a purpose and sense, also has its shadow side,which we would rather not accept. This shadow side is that Calvin hasthe inclination to seek an apparent reason for everything that occurs.Disasters, illnesses, adversity, good fortune: everything is immediatelytranslated into punishment, or discipline, or blessing or undeservedgrace. We will return to this further in this chapter (3.8).

This constant focus on the practical use of the knowledge connectedwith faith is linked with another aspect of this concept, namely the anti-speculative tenor. The anti-speculative tenor and the usus motif are likethe head and tail of a coin.

3.2. The anti-speculative tenor

What is the background of this anti-speculative trait in Calvin’sthought? Precisely this theme invites consideration in a theological-his-torical context. Bouwsma points out that the focus on experience anduseful knowledge in Calvin’s thought fits well in the anti-speculativemood of the Renaissance.14 His explicit anti-speculative statements canbe understood against the background of the diverse impulses in theintellectual climate in which Calvin developed and played a role. For

13 CO 35, 62: ‘Voila donc ceste grandeur de Dieu comme elle doit estre recognue,c’est qu’il ait toute authorite de faire de nous ce que bon lui semblera.’

14 See Bouwsma, John Calvin, 150–161, idem, ‘Calvinism as Renaissance Artifact’ in:T. George (ed.), John Calvin and the Church. A Prism of Reform, Louisville, Kentucky 1990,28–41.

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instance, in the sphere of French humanism in which he moved, thecritique of speculative knowledge, devoid of any practical benefits, waswidely shared. In this connection it is also useful to place Calvin’s think-ing against the background of the spiritual and philosophical-theologi-cal legacy of Scotism and Modern Devotion. He came in contact withboth as a student at Collège de Montaigu. But precise lines of influencecan hardly be proven. Several decades of research into late medievalbackgrounds for Calvin have indeed produced a mass of suggestions,but little concrete evidence of direct influences.15 That does not detractfrom the fact that one can say there is in fact a congruence of convic-tions, and that particularly impulses surface that are to be associatedwith the via moderna. Behind the distinction between the via antiqua andvia moderna as differing directions in the late-medieval debate stands thereconsideration of the relation between God and the world. Charac-teristic of the via moderna, as opposed to the via antiqua, is the idea thatthe relation between God and the world should no longer be thoughtof in terms of necessity. The theology of Thomas Aquinas and Anselmis still dominated by a powerful trust in the possibility of ratio, thought,penetrating the truth of God’s existence and essence on the basis ofthe created world. Or, going in the other direction, conclusions basedon a consideration of God as the highest being, of drawing conclusionsin a deterministic manner regarding nature and sacred history, the viamoderna gives way to a view in which the relation of God to the world

15 For an overview of the present state of the matter, see H.A. Oberman, ‘InitiaCalvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus SacraeScripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (Mi.) 1994, par-ticularly the section ‘The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit’, 117–127. The evidence is notyet present to prove the suggestion of direct dependence upon, for instance, the Sco-tist influenced John Major at the Collège de Montaigu, as proposed by K. Reuter,Das Grundverständnis der Theologie Calvins unter Einbeziehung ihrer geschichtlichen Abhängigkeiten,Neukirchen 1963 and by T.F. Torrance, ‘Knowledge of God and Speech about himaccording to John Calvin’ in: idem, Theology in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 76–98,part. 81–84. Oberman himself also seems to have become more cautious with regard toa direct contact between Major and Calvin. See the paper ‘Die “Extra”-Dimension inder Theologie Calvins’, dating from 1966, in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nachGenf, Göttingen 1986, 275: ‘Wohlmöglich hat er [sc. Calvin] … unter dem gelehrtenJohannes 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 theunderstanding of Calvin’s order of salvation. The argument that I make in this studyto understand Calvin’s theology as a concept in which the invitation of God to manis central, and the believer is called to hold fast to the mercy of God appearing in themirror of Christ, fits into this pattern.


is determined by his will.16 When God and the world could no longerthought of only in terms of a hierarchy of being, this had consequencesfor knowledge of both the natural world, and for knowledge concerningsalvation. To what degree this separation really stimulated freedom forempirical investigation or formed a condition for the creation of moder-nity, will not be entered into here. It can however be said that thisemancipation in late-medieval theology led to a reduction in the extentof theological knowledge accepted on philosophical grounds. Knowl-edge acquired by speculative means no longer had a place unless it wasconfirmed by revelation.17 Church and theology were thrown back onthe revelation of God. Calvin’s theology, and certainly his doctrines ofGod, 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 andCalvin’s conflict with Bolsec in mind.

Calvin’s remarks concerning limits and useful knowledge are in a pri-marily theological context. Apparently closely related to Kant’s adagesapere aude, in which thinking reflects on its own limits and possibili-ties, in Calvin we find 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

16 According to Terminist logic, linguistic structures are human constructs whichonly acquire their meaning within a certain context. According to the dominant viewin modalist logic, such linguistic structures belonged to the nature of things. Terministlogic leads to a different view of Aristotelian categories. Only substance and qualityare still considered as res permanentes; quantity, relation, movement, place and time aredescriptions of a situation in which quality and substance find themselves. A universalconcept, for instance the term ‘rational being’ in the sentence ‘Socrates is an rationalbeing’, refers to nothing which exists outside of the concrete individual, in this caseSocrates. See W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars, 198–201.

17 For this development, see, among others, H.A. Oberman, ‘Via Antiqua and ViaModerna. Late medieval prolegomena to early Reformation Thought’, Journal for theHistory of Ideas 48 (1987), 23–40, m.n. 26–28. According to a now long outmoded pictureof medieval theology and philosophy, this further distinction led to a skeptical attitudein philosophy and to fideism in theology. Moreover, the development was thought tohave had a direct consequence for the idea of God Almighty as a potentia absolutawho worked in a capricious and arbitrary manner. Further on in this chapter wewill demonstrate that in his theology Calvin left room for acknowledging that God’sgovernance sometimes takes on a form that cannot be reconciled with the confession ofHis goodness. At the same time his concepts of providence and election reflect the factthat for his knowledge of God man must keep to what is presented to him in Scriptureand in Christ. In terms of the paired concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, forhis knowledge of God the believer is referred to what God has ordained as the potentiaordinata.

18 Inst. 1.15.8: ‘it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness’.

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man who is to reflect on the boundaries of his own possibilities. Godtreats sparingly of his essence to keep us within the bounds of soberness,Calvin writes at the beginning of the chapter on the Trinity. The thingswhich God indeed says are useful, because they indicate a boundary,and indicate man’s proper place.19 In short, for Calvin the resistance tospeculation does not spring primarily from a general, epistemological-theoretical concern, but is immediately religious in its basis.

The idea of a boundary has, as we have previously noted, a doublefunction. On the one hand a border is something man should not wishto transgress; on the other hand the border encloses that which canindeed be known about God. Or put in other terms, with the metaphorwhich was discussed in the second chapter, the boundary is formed bythe multiplicity of mirrors in which God himself appears and can beseen by man, and reaches in this existence. To what degree does Godmake himself knowable?

3.3. Partial knowability

How much does man actually know of God? A distinction frequentlymade by Calvin in connection with the content of human knowledgeof God is that God has not revealed what He is (quid sit), but onlywhat He is like towards us (qualis sit).20 In recent dogmatics this dis-tinction has been interpreted from various angles in such a way as toopen the door for the idea that there is still something more real hid-den behind the revelation given.21 In his doctrine of election Karl Barthexpresses the fear that referring to Christ as the speculum electonis hasmore a pastoral significance than that it must be taken seriously theo-logically. The real electing God is after all hidden behind this mirror,and that is threatening.22 In this connection Berkouwer has spoken of ashadow that lay over the doctrine of election,23 and this characterisationpales in comparison with the crushing diagnosis pronounced by Max

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 antropomorfismen van de Heilige Schrift, Kampen 19693, 111. See also K. Barth,KD II/1, 208; ET, 185–186.

22 KD II/2, 68; ET, 63.23 G.C. Berkouwer, De Verkiezing Gods, Kampen 1955, 11, 25. ET, Divine Election. Studies

in Dogmatics, trans. by Hugo Bekker, Grand Rapids, 1960, 12, 25.


Weber: pathetischer Unmenschlichkeit.24 Later in this chapter, in connectionwith the doctrine of election, we will return to this question. However, itmay serve as a warning for us, living in a different cultural and theolog-ical landscape, that Calvin absolutely does not appear to be consciousof the possibility that the discrepancy between what of God’s Counselwhich is concealed from human knowledge and what has been givento man in revelation could be interpreted in terms of real and unreal.The distinction serves primarily to bar speculation about God, outsideof his own self-revelation. With this negative attitude in regard to thequestion of whether we can know what God is, Calvin stands in a longand much-frequented tradition.25 The background is in part formed bythe tradition of Aristotelian teaching on categories. It is fundamentalfor every being that it is a substance, something. The remaining cat-egories answer questions about all sorts of aspects of that being: forinstance, quantity, quality, its relation to other beings, the place that itassumes. The first and most important category is that of substance,that which makes a thing a particular thing. It is a question of whatsomething is, and what defines its individuality.26 That which can beanswered with regard to created things is not able to be determinedwith relation to God, namely quidditas. Nor, we are given to understandby Calvin, is this something which concerns man. What does matter forhuman knowledge of God is what God has thought it fitting to revealof himself, quid eius naturae conveniat scire,27 how He is disposed to andconducts himself toward man and his world. Calvin’s interest lies morewith God’s acts than with God’s essence. It is therefore striking that theexplicit discussion of the doctrine of God remains limited. In the rela-tively little that Calvin does say on the subject, Ex. 3:13, where God’s

24 M. Weber, ‘Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’ (1904–1905)in: M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung, Hamburg 19754, 122: ‘Inihrer pathetischen Unmenschlichkeit mußte diese Lehre nun für die Stimmung einerGeneration, die sich ihrer grandiosen Konsequenz ergab, vor allem eine Folge haben:das Gefühl einer unerhörten inneren Vereinsamung des einzelnen Individuums.’

25 See for instance John of Damascus, De orthodoxa fide, Liber 1, cap. 4, PG 94, 797.See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima pars, q1, a.7. The emphasis onthe infinite difference between God and man does not serve here, as we have said,to undermine the revelation received. It is a distinction that we find, for instance, inThomas Aquinas when he asks of man is able to know God per essentiam. Thomas rejectsthis view. God is known by man only in his effects. The names which are applied to himindeed do refer to his being, and do to that extent predicate God as substantialiter, butwith regard to the modus significandi.

26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book VII, 1.27 Inst. 1.2.2: ‘what things are agreeable to his nature’.

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holiness and majesty are prominent, takes a prominent place.28 Thisholiness and majesty is precisely, however, that which eludes humanunderstanding. Regarding God’s essentia, his essence, it can be said thatit is incomprehensible (incomprehensibilis) and infinite (immensa).29 Thereis good reason not to take the word incomprehensible in an abso-lute sense. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean denyingevery possibility of knowledge of God, and that is obviously not Calvin’sintention. In his exegesis of the vision accompanying the call of Isaiah,the point of the distinction between who God is in himself and who Heis as he reveals himself is not that God might be other than in his reve-lation. The point is that in his majesty and glory God utterly surpasseshuman measure. God as it were doses out the appearance of his gloryso that it is not overwhelming for angels and men. Human knowledgeof God is a matter of ‘tasting’, ‘touching upon’. It is thus certainly theintention that men, like the angels, each behold the majesty of God andtake it in, but each within their own sphere and only to the extent thatGod manifests his majesty.30

In the previous chapter there were frequent references to the impor-tance of classic cosmology in Calvin’s thought. It is also importantwithin the context of the doctrine of God, and particularly for therecognition of God’s sublimity. Astronomy functions here as the par-adigm of scientific knowledge. The knowing soul measures the heavens,counts the stars, establishes their magnitude, their distance, observesthe faster or slower speed of rotation, and calculates the deviation.31

The distances are as it were compassed by the tape measure of thespirit. If this encompassing activity of the soul is considered as knowl-edge, we can understand why Calvin calls the being of God incom-prehensible. It is after all literally immeasurable and is not embracedby any limits.32 In the encounter with God, man learns to know Godas infinitely exalted above every measure.33 The realisation of God’smajesty and sublimity is a fundamental and first fact in the content ofrevelation.

28 In Inst. 1.10.2 Calvin lists the qualities of eternity (aeternitas) and ‘self-existence’(autousia), to be understood in the sense of aseitas. We do not find the term aseitas.

29 Inst. 1.11.3 and 4. See also Inst. 1.13.1: ‘spiritualis’.30 Comm. Jes. 6:1, CO 36, 128. Cf. also Calvin’s Comm. to 1 Joh. 3:2, CO 55, 330.31 Inst. 1.15.2.32 It is said of God’s Spirit in Inst. 1.13.14, ‘Iam hoc ipso creaturarum numero

eximitur, quod nullis circunscribitur finibus’.33 Inst. 1.13.1.


3.4. Unceasing activity

While the sublimity of God may have a prominent place in Calvin’sdoctrine of God, this means anything but that man can learn nothingmore of Him. It is also clear that one can in no way reduce Calvin’simage of God to mechanistic causality. That idea rests on a mani-fest misconception, apparently determined by the stubbornly persistentperception of a speculative idealistic reading of Calvin, that his think-ing about God is reducible to the force of the principle of causality.The opposite is the case. Calvin needs a multiplicity of verbs to do jus-tice to God’s many sorts of activity. One does not persist with such asuperfluity if there is no reason to do so. That God is the Living Onedoes not receive from Calvin a concentrated discussion of one para-graph, such as is usual in a more scholastic treatment, but fans out overa broad field. God is active and involved in many ways. The reader ofCalvin’s texts is impressed by the many-faceted work and engagementof God. God is the one through whom the Spirit is ceaselessly active.The particular victim of Calvin’s onslaught is the Epicurean idea of adeus otiosus, a God who withdraws into the heavens and whose workremains limited to the creation of the world,34 or who, self-fulfilled, lim-its himself to the higher reaches of the spheres.35 God, Calvin says, doesnot withdraw to some distant corner.36 His power is ‘vigilant, effica-cious, energetic and ever active’.37 Therefore man should not supposeGod’s power as only the prime movement in an otherwise automaticand blind succession of movements, ‘as in ordering a stream to keepwithin the channel once prescribed for it’. Thus there is in no way aprocess closed to outside influence; God’s power is an active regulatinginfluence and is involved with each separate moment of a process orhappening. In order to remain in the picture, He guides not only a boil-ing mass of water or a burst of energy, but each drop, at every moment.Thus God is not only the prima causa which stands at the beginning ofa series of events; through the hidden working of his Spirit He equallyis involved in the second and every subsequent cause. It is characteris-

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 suntDeum 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.

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tic of Calvin’s theology and spirituality that this immanent divine workin our created world is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.38 God is spoken ofas both the infinitely high and elevated God, and at the same time asthe God who through his Spirit is the power which sustains and quick-ens all that exists, deeply engaged with the whole of created reality. Theexaltedness and the indwelling are correlates of one another. In his doc-trines of the Lord’s Table Calvin directs his gaze to Christ, who, withregard to his humanity, is in heaven since his Ascension; but this ideais borne by the fundamental conviction that man, as a created being,and all of creation around him, lie within the reach of the immanentand hidden power of the Holy Spirit. This involvement of God’s actsthrough his Spirit takes on ever different forms, and can be pictured ascomprising three concentric circles. In the outermost there is the uni-versal action of God’s Spirit through which He supports the whole ofcreation. In the second circle we find the guidance of God in humanhistory, and the innermost circle is formed by the very peculiar andpreternatural action of the Spirit, who works only in the believers, orelect.39 The hidden, bearing power of the Spirit in all creation is sostrong that Calvin is prepared to accept the view that originated withthe Stoics, provided that, as he says, it is interpreted in a god-fearingmanner.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 naturerests on an ordo prescribed by God. Calvin therefore wants absolutelynothing to do with the idea, much identified with Epicurean philos-ophy, that God’s capacities now and then go unused. God directs allthings through his providence and arranges all things so that nothinghappens outside of his will.41 God is the moderator and conservator. In afrequently used metaphor, God is the source of all good things, whichin very diverse ways are directly involved with his work. Calvin uses arange of verbs for God’s work of maintaining and governing the world.God’s actions are described with the verbs fovere, sustinere and curare,42

38 Cf. also W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Göttingen 1957,particularly Chapter 2.

39 See his comm. on Rom. 8:14, CO 49, 147: ‘Caeterum observare convenit, essemultiplicem Spiritus actionem. Est enim universalis, qua omnes creaturae sustinentur,ac moventur: sunt et peculiares in hominibus, et illae quidem variae. sed hic sanctifi-cationem intelligit, qua non nisi electos suos Dominus dignatur, dum eos sibi in filiossegregat.’ Cf. also CO 7, 186.

40 Inst. 1.5.5.41 Inst. 1.16.3.42 Inst. 1.16.1.


conservare, tolerare, tueri.43 All these verbs express something of God’s solic-itude. God cares, supports, preserves, protects. God’s activity is focused,caring activity. That is His way of being Lord. Typical nouns in thiscontext 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 proceedsfrom God general and disordered, as in the case of Pharaoh’s reac-tion to the words of Moses.45 God always acts fittingly, and undertakesfocused action.

What man learns of God in all this is thus not simply activity; itis not an impersonal process. What man learns to know is God’s willin action. God thus does not reveal his essence, but his will. With thisemphasis on the unceasing activity of God in all things, Calvin doesnot deny the existence of secondary causes, but in contrast to the Stoicand Epicurean world-view, the emphasis unquestionably lies on Godas the one who through his Spirit is constantly, decisively and activelyinvolved in all that happens.46 Calvin describes a world which is notdeserted by God, no blind process, but a world which has the hiddenwork of the Holy Spirit as the peculiar locus of activity in the Triunebeing of God to thank for its unity and colourful diversity. This isthe line of Trinitarian theology which, looking back, one can connectwith Cappadocian theology, and, looking forward, one which JurgenMoltmann made productive for an ecological doctrine of creation.47

With this, Calvin’s vision of the relation of God to the world stands inthe tradition of the condemnation of radical Averroism by the Bishopof Paris, Etienne Tempier, in 1270 and 1277. These articles are generallyregarded as a mirror in which the very fundamental debate betweenChristian 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, velrectitudinis, vel syncerae veritatis gutta reperietur quae non ab ipso fluat, et cuius ipsenon sit causa.’

44 See H.A. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s 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 Schöpfung. Ökologische Schöpfungslehre, Gütersloh 19934, 23.

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world must be considered eternal. Another sharply debated subject wasthe immortality of the personal soul. According to Averroism, that wasunthinkable. If the material is the individualising principle, and thesoul the form, at death the individual soul dissolves into the world-soul. Over against these views the Paris articles defended the proposi-tion that the given order within which we live stems from the will ofGod. The power of God cannot be limited to that which is conceivableaccording to Aristotelian principles. A large number of the propositionstherefore are aimed against things that are impossible according to thisAristotelianism. Concretely they oppose any limitation on the freedomof God’s action. In this content, the autonomy of the causae secundae istherefore explicitly disputed.48 This is the line in which we also suc-cinctly find Calvin: God, through the Holy Spirit, is involved with allthings in various ways. He is actively at work in the natural world, inthe course of history, and to a particular degree there where the centreof his exertions lie, where man enters into fellowship with God throughChrist.

3.5. Core concepts: loving-kindness, judgement and righteousness

Calvin describes God’s dealings with and relation to man and theworld with a multitude of words and concepts. In the following para-graphs I will try to introduce some order into this complexity, usingtwo mutually connected approaches to do so. We discover the firstapproach by paying attention to the perfections or qualities which char-acterise God’s actions. The second approach to Calvin’s image of Godis through the most frequently used images or metaphors. The qualitiesand metaphors used are connected with each other, and are clarifiedprecisely in their mutual relationships.

We must say it again: what one does not find discussed in Calvin’stheology is as telling for it as what is found there. One does notencounter an explicit, elaborated doctrine of God, as one finds in themanuals 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 WesternScience. The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context,600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago 1992, 234–239. Cf. also H.A. Oberman, ‘Via antiquaand Via Moderna: Late medieval Prolegomena to early Reformation Thought’, Journalof the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 27.


list of qualities,49 nor does he fail to take up the debate with those theo-logical currents which do not do justice to God’s presence and activity.In Institutes 1.10.2 we encounter a comparatively extensive discussion ofthe question of how the various perfections relate to one another. Afterthe 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 pointsto three concepts that can serve as headings under which to classifyall of the acts of God. These are the concepts of misericordia (mercy orloving-kindness), iudicium (judgement) and iustitia (righteousness). God’sloving-kindness accomplishes the salvation of his elect. Judgement isthat action of God ‘which is daily exercised on the wicked, and awaitsthem in a severer form, even for eternal destruction’. Finally, thereis God’s righteousness, in which he preserves and cherishes those hehas justified. The other qualities, such as truth, power, holiness andgoodness, can be arranged under these three, because, as we are told,mercy, judgement and righteousness support God’s inviolable truth.How could one believe in God’s judgement and loving-kindness if hispower and strength were not assumed? It is impossible to imagineGod’s mercy except as a consequence of his goodness. Finally all threequalities reveal God’s holiness.

In this paragraph from the Institutes, and equally from his expositionof Psalm 145, it once again becomes very clear that according to Calvinknowledge of God does not bypass human experience; it is somethingthat can be experienced here on earth. The knowledge that is set beforeour eyes in Scripture, and that which shines in creation too, has adouble purpose. God invites man to respect or fear, and subsequently, totrust. With these two words, fear and trust, we have the terms in whichCalvin describes the reaction which, on the human side, correspondswith what God has made known of himself.

The three concepts of mercy, judgement and righteousness can inturn be connected with various metaphors. That is the second ap-proach. In the following special attention will be given to the metaphorsof Lord of the world, judge and father. The concepts of judgement andrighteousness fall into the field of meaning surrounding the metaphorof 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.1.1.1. and Inst. 3.20.41.

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experience, they encounter God in his role as judge. In the care exer-cised for the faithful in the world, they encounter God’s fatherhood. Ina 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: God’s care and goodness in the order of the world

Calvin’s thought is permeated by an idea that has ebbed away as one ofthe certainties of life in the centuries after the Enlightenment, namelythat man and the world belong inalienably to God. He is the Creatorof this world, and as such the world is his property, literally his domain.He is the only one with sovereignty over it. All authority, that of monar-chs, that of the church, of parents and patrons, is therefore derived fromthe authority of God. It is not without reason then that in the Frenchtranslation the title of the first book of the Institutes calls God Createur, etsouverain Gouverneur du monde. In the introduction to the Ten Command-ments we read that God claims for himself the authority and right togovern.50 It is his by right, and therefore all men, the godless and believ-ers alike, must deal with him. It also means that from the outset thereis an asymmetry in the relation between God and man. It is not a rela-tion with equal partners. That idea is completely foreign to Calvin. Themajesty of God, his exaltation, is so great that he owes nothing to anyof his creations.51 In theory, God is not beholden to us in any way. Thecompetencies of the two parties are therefore incommensurate. Thisidea perhaps sounds repugnant. Does God then have no obligations tohis creation? Should God not be responsible for his creation? But thesequestions already betray the modern reversal of perspective in whichman summons God to judgement, rather than the other way around.In the following sections on election and damnation I will return to this.

From the manner in which Calvin describes God’s providing forthis world, or better, His care for his creation, it seems clear thataccording to him it is inconceivable that man could ever bring Godto the bar, as if man had a right to anything. The primary relationbetween the Creator and the creation makes that impossible. Therefore

50 Inst. 2.8.13: ‘potestatem ac ius imperii vendicat.’51 Comm. on Rom. 9.15, CO 49, 181: ‘Hoc autem oraculo declaravit Dominus, se

nemini mortalium esse debitorem.’


as he develops his arguments regarding Christian life and ethics, wefind Calvin repeating the dictum nostri non sumus, sed Domini time aftertime.52 Nor can unbelievers ever escape from God’s oversight, thoughthere is no comfort for them in this. To their eyes He appears only asa harsh judge. For modern readers, for whom as outsiders it is hardlypossible to understand what Calvin experienced of God and the world,this discourse is brimming with pitfalls. Terms such as ‘property’ and‘Lord’ provoke distrust in a context where the inalienable rights of theindividual have found their way into constitutions and human rightstreaties. Words like this seem to assail the dignity of man. This makes itall the more important to investigate what meaning these concepts hadfor Calvin.

First and foremost, it must be remarked that God’s being as Lord ofthe world must in no sense be confused with a despotism. Calvin knewwell that earthly lords could reveal themselves to be despots, but theseare excesses and deformations of the ruler who should be caring forhis subjects justly, with moderation and leniency. It has already beennoted that it is not by accident that the Institutes are preceded by aletter of dedication to a monarch, Francis I. This ends with a criticalexposition of the office of the government and on the subjection of allgovernmental powers to God. ‘The Lord is the King of kings’.53 Theaversion to the idea that God is a Lord who rules arbitrarily or whoallows himself to be led by his whims will occupy us again later in thesections regarding God’s absolute power (3.12.5–6). In the preceding wehave already however established that God’s being as Lord becomesconcrete first and foremost in providence. God’s caring dealings withbelievers indeed take on a form that encompasses the lives of all men,and the whole of creation. It becomes concrete in what Calvin callsgeneral grace, and which embraces all life on earth.

It is characteristic of Calvin’s world of faith that in support of God’sgoodness and care he does not appeal just to Bible passages. God’sgoodness and providence is not just a theologoumenon that one candiscover only from Scripture; Calvin’s premise is that it is confirmedin everyday experience. It is clear that at this point we encounter anunbridgeable chasm which has opened between Calvin’s times and ourmodern sense of life, and that a direct appeal to Calvin is impossi-ble without explicitly reminding ourselves of our altered relation to the

52 Inst. 3.7.1.53 Inst. 4.20.32.

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world around us. In today’s dogmatics God’s being as Creator is a con-fession which goes ‘contrary to what can be seen and experienced’.54

That was not the case in Calvin’s world. For Calvin, God’s being Cre-ator and God’s providence have an inherent plausibility. The perfec-tions of God’s goodness and care shine forth in the structure of theworld, and are confirmed in Scripture.

Of what is Calvin thinking with regard to this visibility? What doeshe have in mind? In particular, we must think of the order of theuniverse. In the preceding chapter we have already cited his statementthat man cannot open his eyes without seeing the hand of God theCraftsman in the ordering of the world.55 According to the geocentricpicture of the cosmos current in Calvin’s time, constructed accordingto Aristotelian concepts, the earth had its place at the centre of theuniverse. Around the earth were to be found the spheres, nine or tenin total.56 Seven spheres were counted for the moon, the sun, and thefive planets then known, and the eighth was for the stars, which had apermanent place in the vault of heaven. Some argued the existence ofa ninth sphere, which explained the tremors of the eighth sphere, and atenth sphere which was identified with the waters above the heavens.The cosmos was thus an inner space encapsulated by the vaults ofheaven. That which was between the sphere of the moon and the earthwas the sublunary or terrestrial realm, and shared in the susceptibilityand instability that is characteristic of the earth. According to theAristotelian view, the turning or rotation of the outermost sphere wasperpetuated by the nearness of God in the void behind the heavens.57

As the primum mobile, the outermost sphere imparts its movement to thespheres within it. Brought into motion by this first impulse, the spheresmove around the earth with great regularity and serenity. The closerone comes to the outmost sphere, the greater the tranquillity and orderof the rotation is.

Calvin’s own picture of the universe is in general agreement withthe usual medieval concept.58 There is at least one point at which it

54 H. Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 152; Christian Faith, 149.55 See Inst. 1.5.1.56 C.B. Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Its ex-

tent and Possible Origin’ in: R.V. Schnucker (Ed.), Calviniana. Ideas and Influence of JeanCalvin, Kirksville (MO) 1988, 81–83.

57 Aristotle, De generatione II,10, 333b; 11, 338b.58 See Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy’, 85. Cal-

vin denies the existence of a tenth sphere and does not make notice of a ninth sphere.


deviates, and that he brings explicitly in connection with God’s specialprovidence. According to Aristotelian science, as the first mover Godexercises his influence by means of an impulse that moves from theoutermost spheres inward. The influence is thus mediated by interme-diate causes, causae secundae. At this point Calvin strikes out in a dif-ferent direction, and argues that God, in his work of sustaining andmaintaining, is not bound to intermediate causes, but can intervenedirectly. He avows that it can be seen from all manner of things thatthere is a direct influence that runs counter to the regular course ofnature or which bypasses it. One example he gives is that the earthis not covered by water, as could be expected from the principles ofAristotelian science. The sublunary realm is constructed of four ele-ments, namely earth, water, air and fire. It is the quality of these ele-ments that each has its natural place in the sublunary realm. As theheaviest element, earth is the lowest, above which comes the lighterelement of water, followed by air, and finally fire, as the lightest ele-ment and therefore the highest, to be found on the upper margin ofthe sublunary sphere. The moon is made of fiery matter, although thestrength of its light is not so great that it can do without the aid of thesun.59 Calvin does not appear to have been aware of other explanationsfor why the oceans do not cover the land.60 It is precisely God’s spe-cial providence that is expressed in the marvellous fact that the watersare limited to the seas and do not spill over the land.61 Calvin experi-enced the boundary between the sea and land as a fragile order, whichcan only be explained by appealing to God’s guiding and protectivehand.

Another evidence of God’s goodness is the constancy of the earth.The fact that it occupies the centre of the universe, in a position of rest,is frankly to be termed marvellous. While the earth is surrounded bylighter and inconstant elements, and is subject to the influence of therotation of the heavenly spheres, it nevertheless remains anchored fastin the centre. That is an inexplicable miracle. In this too Calvin seesthe good providence of God.62 Thus there could be still more exampleslisted in which God’s visible power is made to serve his care for man,

59 See Comm. Gen. 1:15, CO 23, 21–22.60 Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding’, 81.61 Comm. on Ps. 104:5, CO 32, 86 and on Gen. 1:9, CO 23, 19. See also Inst. 1.5.6.62 See Comm. Ps. 93:1, CO 32, 16–17 and Inst. 1.5.5.

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such as the cycle of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, andthe form of man as a microcosmos.63

Once again, we underscore the relation between power and care.In Calvin’s theology the concept of might does not have the negativeassociation of the blind exercise of power by a Supreme Being. Godexercises his power with precision and deliberation and is in no waythe neutral Supreme Being of the Enlightenment era.64 God’s mightserves particularly for preserving the structure of the world, the theatreof his glory. That banishes the idea of neutrality. The power with whichGod pushes the seas back into the depths and holds the earth fast andimmovable in the centre of the cosmos assures that life on earth willbe possible for man. From the outset power is under the dominationof God’s goodness, and is conceived in religious-ethical terms. Thereference to a passage in the prophet Isaiah, where the evidences toGod’s might are enumerated, and this summary is to serve as a meansof 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

In the preceding we have given several examples of natural instancesin which Calvin sees God’s goodness exemplified. Can Calvin alsobring the life histories of people into this context? Part of the intel-lectual baggage that modern readers bring with them is the idea thatCalvin teaches a rigid form of providence. The question is how thislooks and if it can still be recognised. We immediately encounter twoseries of images and terms that describe the relation of God’s actionin history with various groups of men. These are the images of Godas Father and Judge, and the terms righteousness and judgement, oriustitia and iudicium. Indisputably these terms correlate with the dualitywhich, according to Calvin, is perceptible in historical reality and thathas its deepest roots in the hidden Counsel of God, in the double deci-sion of election and damnation. I will not discuss Calvin’s doctrine ofpredestination here yet, but first limit myself to the question of how thisdualism works out in the doctrine of providence. Or to put it differently,

63 Inst. 1.5.3.64 Th. de Boer, De God van de filosofen en de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van filosofie en

theologie, ’s Gravenhage 1989, 158.65 Inst. 3.2.31. See further Comm. on Isa. 40:21, 26, CO 37, 20–21, 24–25.


the dualism has an effect on the perception of man and his fate. First,it must be noted that Calvin does not use the term judgement in onlyone sense. The concept iudicium is on the one hand used to characterisethe dealings with the damned. Calvin describes God’s dealings with hischildren under the central concept of iustitia. In this context, in connec-tion with atonement, iudicium then emerges again to express God’s deal-ings with the elect. However, there is a sharp distinction made betweenpunitive judgements and corrective judgements, or iudicium vindictae andiudicium castigationis. In the first case there is real punishment involved,connected with total rejection. Discipline means something very dif-ferent, namely correction and admonition. The first form of judge-ment is explicitly coupled with God as Judge, and the second with theFatherhood of God.66 Therefore, already in this life the damned andunbelievers must undergo God’s curse and wrath, and their life hereis already the gate to hell. God is the judge and avenger of wrong. InCalvin’s eyes this is to be seen many times in history, on occasions suchas Joshua’s conquest of Jericho, when the city was laid under a curse,and all its inhabitants, man and animal alike, were exterminated. Theatrocities committed in the Old Testament are, in this panel, justifiedby an appeal to the righteousness of God. God has the right to demandobedience, and when this is not given, to punish.67 In order to endurethe afflictions they will face, God’s children—the elect—however mustalso undergo discipline, which is a blessing for them. This totally differ-ent perception of suffering that at first sight may seem to be the same,can be understood as an logical application of the belief that Christ hasborne the punishment for sins. If Christ has borne God’s wrath oversin for His children, the suffering that still happens to them can neverbe accounted as a consequence of God’s wrath. Discipline may then beexperienced as severe, but it is not to death. For Calvin the doctrineof providence and the doctrine of ‘repentance to life eternal’ are onewhole.68 He considers the utterances of the prophets where God’s 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 filiumseverius corrigit, non hoc agit ut vindicet aut mulctet, sed magis ut doceat et cautioremin posterum reddat.’

67 Comm. Josh. 6:21, CO 25, 469. Cf. also the sermon on IISam. 8:2, JohannesCalvin, Predigten über das 2. Buch Samuelis, hrsg. von H. Rückert, (Supplementa Calvinia6) Neukirchen 1931–1961, 235–238. See also Inst. 2.8.14.

68 Inst. 3.9.

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ple are subject to God’s wrath (for instance Micah 7:9 or Hab. 3:2) as amanner of speaking which does not say as much about God’s Counselas about the manner in which the prophet experiences God’s hand.69

One must conclude that the dualism within God’s Counsel and thebearing 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 hiddenthread through all history.

3.8. The absurdity of life

God’s care, his wise measures with his children, and his judgement ofthe disobedient are far from always visible. Thus the visibility of God’srule does not totally define the picture in the panel of Calvin’s theology,although it must be said that Calvin generally sees little ambiguity. Atsuch moments his thinking shocks us, and we experience the distancefrom contemporary theology, which has come to be dominated by thequestion of human suffering.

There are more than enough examples of passages without ambiva-lence. They create the impression that God’s fatherly care and righ-teousness toward the justified in this life is already completely obvious.God here shows himself an avenger of injustice and a defender of theinnocent.70 When in the course of the narrative of Judah and Tamarin Genesis 38 the early death of Er is explicitly characterised as thepunishing hand of God, this gives Calvin an opportunity to once againexpound the general rule with regard to God’s governance over thegood and the bad. The death of Er shows how the hand of God rules.The connection between the event and God’s action is very direct forCalvin—indeed, we must admit, with just as much appeal to other pas-sages of scripture, all too direct. The conviction that all things have apurpose, a sometimes hidden but generally undisguised meaning, hasas its down side that everything can be reduced to punishment or dis-cipline.71 Calvin has great difficulty with the mystery of God’s 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, 136–137.71 Cf. H.J. Selderhuis, God in het midden. Calvijns theologie van de psalmen, Kampen 2000,

130, 304.


risks from the perspective of pastoral theology. The conviction thateverything which happens has a certain utility, is ordained by God witha specific goal, is dangerous because it is accompanied with the ideathat man can generally discover what the purpose of these things is, forwhat use they were intended. In this Calvin’s theology is inclined to aclosedness that leaves no room for the acknowledgement of the absurd,for the experience that things happen which we, for the sake of Christ,can not and will not identify with God.

For the rest, Calvin acknowledges that God’s just governance is farfrom always obvious, because the punishments and rewards are notalways immediately dealt out. When it comes to God’s policy in history,he leaves space for that which is not yet understood, but not for theabsurd. Calvin does say that the immediate interventions on the partof God were more visible in the time of the law than after Christ. Inthe new dispensation it is no longer fitting that man be seized by thefear of immediate death. When men who live an ungodly life live longand prosper, this is however in no way a reason to doubt that Godwill execute his judgements. Nor does their execution always happenin the same manner.72 Moreover, the revelation of the judgement of thegodless and of provision for the elect can be pushed forward to theconsummation.73

But this is not the total picture. There are passages in which Calvindwells extensively on the total opacity of life, which means that doubtcan strike regarding the goodness and regularity of God’s rule. We findsections that strike us as modern in their trembling at the randomnessof life.

‘Innumerable are the ills which beset human life, and present death inas many different forms. Not to go beyond ourselves, since the body isa receptacle, nay, the nurse of a thousand diseases, a man cannot movewithout carrying along with him many forms of destruction. His life isin a manner interwoven with death. For what else can be said whereheat and cold bring equal danger? Then, in what direction soever youturn, all surrounding objects not only may do harm, but almost openlythreaten and seem to present immediate death. Go on board a ship, andyou are but a plank’s breadth from death. Mount a horse, the stumblingfoot endangers your life. Walk along the streets, and every tile upon theroofs is a source of danger. If a sharp instrument is in your hand, orthat of a friend, the possible harm is manifest. All the savage beasts

72 Comm. Gen. 38:7, CO 23.73 Inst. 1.5.7; Inst. 3.9.6.

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you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even withina high-walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpentwill sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to fire, threatens youwith poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your fields, subject to hail,mildew, drought and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and therebyfamine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which besetus at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not manbe very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with difficultydraws an anxious and feeble breath, as if a drawn sword were constantlysuspended over his neck?’74

It would appear from this quote that anxiety, fear and the experienceof insecurity were not unfamiliar to Calvin, and in contradiction tothe cliched contrast between Calvin and Luther which still surfacesin Max Weber,75 they are not invented but primarily a matter of hisown life experience. His theology focuses on such experiences, andowes part of its vitality and continuing worth to this. If faith hassomething to do with the lives of flesh and blood people, then thepoles of anxiety and desire will take their place in its theology ina theological shape. It is the task of theology not to silence anxietyand desire; it will rather bring these fundamental experiences of lifeinto dialogue with what can be said theologically. Calvin’s theologytoo points us toward the confidence in God rooted in Christ, butnevertheless the shape of this theme in his thinking is so differentthat in our time it is almost unrecognisable. For him the demandfor a just system in the world and history is not the all-consumingissue that has become dominant in theology from after the SecondWorld War. In contemporary theology we find a powerful tendencyto make the experience of suffering mankind the point of departure fortheological knowledge. The focus on the subject has worked itself out inthe focus on the suffering subject and his aporetic experience of evil.76

Suffering man is the place where knowledge of God and his rejectionof suffering and evil is to be won. With Calvin the human subject neverhas this central function. The world is more than a man experiencespersonally. He has but a limited place in the system of heaven andearth. Therefore the theological strategy works out entirely differently,so to speak. The fragility of life, the constant uncertainty can only beborne by keeping God’s providence continually before one’s eyes. That

74 Inst. 1.17.10.75 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, 121.76 A. Houtepen, God een open vraag, 124; ET, 83.


means that invariability, changelessness, steadfastness receive a positivevalue. For Calvin providence is not an equivalent of a blind fate, but itis the care of a heavenly Father who never lets fall that which he takesinto his hands.77 The issue is not so much the mystery of God’s actions,as that man might be dealing with a blind fate. That would be trulydreadful.

In Calvin’s sermons on the book of Job we also find countless pas-sages which touch upon the terror and absurdity of life. Obviously thesubject matter of this book provides an opportunity for this, but read-ing several sermons brings home how deeply Calvin himself is involvedwith the topic. It is true, he says, that world history offers a confusedprospect. To be sure, man can sometimes see the good sense in whathappens, and in so doing endorse that God in his deeds is guided bydeliberation, wisdom and prudence. Sometimes He blinds those whosuppress the truth, and his vengeance is evident. But so often too thisclarity is absent, and neither the reason nor the purpose of God’sactions is apparent.78 At this point Calvin comes up with the idea ofa double wisdom of God. That is to say, from the perspective of Godthe wisdom with which God rules is indeed one, but from the perspec-tive of man one must speak of two sorts of wisdom. The one sort is thatwhich God has taught in His Word; the other wisdom includes thatwhich God has kept to himself. But it is with this wisdom that he rulesthe world. When tyrants rule, villainous men lead astray, the spirits ofthe one group proceed to destruction and others are saved, then thatis all the wisdom of the incomprehensible Counsel of God. When weask about the reasons for all of this, an abyss opens up into which allof our senses are plunged.79 Calvin takes into account a fundamentalnot-knowing.

What it all comes down to, according to him, is that man, in hisdesire to reconcile the events of the world with God’s goodness, isable to stop, and not accuse God of arbitrariness and tyranny. Lim-ited insight into the righteousness of God’s rule must on man’s sidecorrespond to the acknowledgement of our own insignificance and lim-itation. Calvin refers here to a discipline for faith. Faith acknowledgesfirst the goodness of God, and then acknowledges that there is a wis-dom bound up with this goodness that makes it impossible to accuse

77 Inst. 1.17.11.78 CO 33, 581–582. See also CO 35, 51–66.79 CO 33, 579–580, 590.

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God of excessive use of his power or of tyranny.80 It cannot be doubtedthat Calvin is reticent in making statements about God’s being. Butone thing is absolutely certain for him: God is not morally reprehensi-ble. God’s might, wisdom and righteousness are inseparably linked withone another.81

The acknowledgement of God’s majesty and his infinite elevationover man has the consequence that as a matter of principle room mustbe left for the respectful acknowledgement that there are spaces inGod’s Counsel to which man has no access. In short, human knowledgeof God is literally a knowing in part. With Calvin we indeed findthe attempt to find explanations for most experiences of calamity andsuffering, but even he falters. Suffering is explicable in so far as it isa punishment of the godless, or a pedagogical measure for the pious.There remain cases that cannot be explained, and that cannot beexplained with an appeal to God’s wisdom and goodness.

The practical orientation of Calvin’s theology becomes visible whenhe in his sermons time and time again impresses upon his hearers theuse of this doctrine. The sense in the disasters suffered is, accordingto Calvin, that man learns to exercise patience and humble himselfunder the hand of God.82 The majesty and inscrutability of manyof God’s judgements make man conscious of his low standing overagainst God. This nurtures respect, the recognition of the place thatthe human being takes in the face of realities of life, be they delightfulor disconcerting. The disasters in our lives throw us back upon Godhimself, who preserves his children through the salvation of Christ. Andthen the refrain sounds: Puis qu’ainsi est donc remettons nous en la protectionde nostre Dieu. When that is the case, let us then place ourselves underthe protection of our God.83

80 CO 33, 584: ‘Car il faut que nous recognoissions sa vertu premierement, et puisque nous adioustions avec sa vertu une telle sagesse que nous ne l’accusions point detyrannie ne d’excez. Car ce n’est point le tout de dire, Il est vray que Dieu gouvernele monde, et cependant ne murmurions contre lui, que nous ne la accusion piont detyrannie ne dexcez’.

81 CO 35, 60: ‘Quand nous parlons de sa puissance, ou iustice, ou sagesse, ou bonté,nou parlons de lui-mesme: ce sont choses inseparables, et qui ne se peuvent pointdiscerner de son essence, c’est à dire pour en estre ostees. Car elles sont tellementconiointes, que l’une ne peut estre sans l’autre’.

82 CO 35, 9–10.83 CO 33, 592.


3.9. The anchor of God’s unchanging will

It is perhaps difficult if not impossible for the modern reader of Calvin’stheology to empathise with the foregoing, but the conclusion is inescap-able: in the panel on Calvin’s theology the knowledge that all thingscome forth from God’s hand is a source of comfort. In their need andmisery, God’s children do not fall into the hands of God’s adversary, thedevil. As fragile creatures they do not fall into an unfathomably deepravine, but live and have their being within the reach of God.84 Whatovercomes them will ultimately appear to have been for the good. Thatis comfort in the maelstrom of events.

When God’s good care is not however visible, it is all the more anoccasion to hold fast to the teaching of Scripture that God controlseverything in the life of man. That means that man is dealing withGod’s will in all that occurs and all that happens to him.85 In this lineof thought we encounter the concept of providence, though indeed ina hard form. God’s foresight does not mean only that God knows whatwill happen before the fact, but expressly also that all things in onemanner or another flow directly from his will, and are ordained byHim.86 That is, God’s decrees in his providence are unchanging, andseen from his Counsel all things are fixed.

We here run up against those elements in Calvin’s theology that arealways connected with the darker side of his theology, because theynot rarely have led to ‘fatalistic consequences and misunderstandings’,87

namely, the doctrine of the decrees of God, and particularly provi-dence and election. What does the changelessness of God’s Counselmean? It is necessary here to say something, because there are few con-cepts that have so changed complexion through changes in attitudestoward life, that call up such a different constellation of associations,that they really can only be misunderstood. In the spiritual climate inwhich Calvin lived, God’s unchangeableness was nothing less than hisfidelity. God is not capricious, not an uncertain beacon. Changeless-ness is an unadulterated positive quality of God. From being a termwith a positive meaning, eminently suitable for describing God in his

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,

Kampen 1998, 96.

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highness and goodness, with our present outlook on life it has becomea word that calls up associations of lifelessness and inspissation, andprovokes whole-hearted abhorrence. In our climate today change, his-toricity and vitality are positive concepts, because they give precedenceto possibilities, in place of a fixation on the past or givens. In the earlyRenaissance culture in which Calvin moved, innovation had a franklypejorative implication, and improvement was to be found in rebirth andreformation, a return to an original situation. The change in the cul-tural climate which has taken place since then extends over the wholemanner in which we look at and evaluate Calvin’s premodern thinkingin our time. Questions arise which previously were impossible: if theconstancy of God is so obvious, if regret and contrition are only formsof anthropomorphic speech, what then are the consequences for otherconcepts and images which are also undeniably anthropomorphic, andappear to have something to say about God’s relation with man? CanGod then still love and have compassion as a father, be moved as amother? What does anthropomorphic speech mean for the trustwor-thiness of the images used? Can not being hurt, not being moved, bereconciled with loving? What sort of love is it that must be thought ofapart from such affects? Is God still love then, or does this reflect moreon the ‘iron Calvin’, to use Harnack’s stereotype?88 Since the cosmolog-ical paradigm has been exchanged for a paradigm oriented to modernpsychological insights, in which the capacity for change and relation-ality are highly valued,89 it has become impossible to iterate Calvin’sdoctrine of God unchanged.

These matters touch on the next subject that is connected with theforegoing: human freedom. If everything that happens can be tracedback to God’s unchanging will, what is left of human freedom? Arewe not marionettes with no will of our own, moving across the stageof the puppet theatre on invisible strings bring pulled from above? Inshort, Calvin’s image of God the Father, who protects and supports hischildren, seats them at his table, and urges and trains them to moveforward—images from life that form a continuous line in his exege-sis and sermons—appears to be threatened by the notion of God’sunchangingness. It is quite common to find the suggestion in theologi-cal literature that Calvin’s conception of God as Father or Mother has

88 A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte Bd.3, Tübingen 19325, 773.89 For the change in paradigms and the tension between classic theism and modern

positions, see H. Jansen, Relationality and the Concept of God, Amsterdam 1995.


a darker flip 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 isimmediately undermined because the immutable will of God is con-cealed behind it.90 God’s real essence would deviate from this image.We will not try to answer these questions all at one time. If we willcome to some degree of understanding of Calvin, we will first have toinvestigate within what context and with what meaning the invariablewill of God occurs.

Calvin’s explication of Bible verses which speak of God’s regret andcontrition is well known, not to say notorious. In Genesis 6:6 we readthat God regretted that he had created man, and in ISamuel 15:11 wehear that the Lord regretted that he had appointed Saul as king. Wecan reach for the book of Jonah, where God, through the repentanceof the city of Ninevah, is moved not to execute his judgement onthe city. What does Calvin do with these texts about God’s regretand compunction? He considers them as figurative language. It is away of speaking that is completely accommodated to the manner inwhich the course of events could be understood by those who thenheard it. According to Calvin, one must read these texts in the lightof other Bible passages, such as ISamuel 15:29. There one will findthe key. From these we learn that God knows no regret, ‘because Heis not a man, that he should repent’. In his opinion, in this versethe Holy Spirit does not speak in a metaphorical manner, but absquefigura, and teaches straightforwardly about the invariability of God, Hisimmutabilitas.91 The talk of regret and compunction, in other wordsabout an actual response on the part of God, is an accommodation tothe way in which man hears and understands. From man’s perspectiveit appears as if God has had regrets and changed his mind, but this doesnot describe how God is, in se, sed a nobis sentitur. According to Calvin itis clear as day that God himself is elevated above all emotions, and thatthe supposition of a change in the exercise of his will simply cannot becontemplated. Thinking about God’s sovereignty must rather take as itsstarting point a passage such as Isaiah 14:27, where we read ‘For theLORD of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? And his handis stretched out, and who shall turn it back?’ It will be clear that thisexposition will leave us, with our ideas, in a considerable quandary.Can one say then that God really responds at all? Put irreverently,

90 H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods, 111.91 Inst. 1.17.12.

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can prayer be anything more than speaking back to an automatedanswering machine, the message in which was recorded long ago?

As we have said before, the reason why Calvin has so little hesita-tion about rejecting the attribution of feelings, regret and compunctionto God as figurative language has become foreign to us. According tothe attitudes of that day, the feelings in question are human, charac-teristic of terrestrial life. There is a great difference between the heav-enly spheres and existence in the lower spheres. Inconstancy, ignorance,error and impotence rule the sublunary sphere. This cosmological her-itage, already described, plays a powerful role in Calvin’s vision of manand his regard for the perfections of God. From pre-Socratic philoso-phy on, in Plato and particularly after Aristotle, metaphysics or think-ing about the highest existence was deeply influenced by the horizonof contemporary cosmology.92 God as the immobile prime mover is thescientific explanation for the regular, steady rotation of the first heaven.In the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, immutability is the quality of thehighest, divine being. Earthly things are compounded, and thus divis-ible. The wholeness of an earthly object can be sundered by externaleffects. Since Parmenides it was accepted that existence itself is eternal,and therefore imperishable, unfaltering and without purpose, homoge-nous and therefore invariable.93 These ideas were taken up into Chris-tian doctrines regarding God, and deeply influenced the interpretationof Bible passages such as Psalms 102:12–13 and Psalm 103:15–18. Theunchanging nature of God, his immutabilitas, was taught because it hadto be denied that the being of God is divisible, as are things in ourworld. Being compounded is a characteristic of the material world, andis a mark of weakness. God is the One who is perfect in himself. Forclassic doctrines of God the category of relation is therefore problem-atic in light of this perfection, because it is associated with dependence.With regard to divine being, relation as a category is illusory. In thedeepest sense, God has no relations. God is sufficient in himself. Rela-tions are only real for earthly things, because they are dependent onone another in all sorts of ways, are affected by and are connected withone another.

For classic thought the highest being is indivisible and in that senseinvariable. Nothing from outside it can impinge upon this being. Thatis, the divine being is a being that is not subject to effects external

92 W. Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, 59.93 W. Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, 35–39.


to itself. This concept became definitive for the idea of the impassive-ness of God. The centre of the universe, on and around the earth, iscontrolled by movement, change and transitoriness. There phenomenaeffect one another. The further one goes from the earth, the higher intothe heavenly spheres, the more stable God’s creation is and the moretranquil, orderly and fixed. In this model, regret and compunction arequalities of the terrestrial. They are emotions, affects that belong to thevariability and capriciousness of human nature fallen into sin, throughwhich people become playthings of their own or other’s whims.

With the distance of history, we can indeed assess how thoroughlythis cosmological heritage permeated teaching about God. On thebasis 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 anddivine nature are irreconcilable.94 The classical Scriptural proofs ofthe changelessness of God, such as Ex. 3:14, Mal. 3:16, Ps. 102:28 andJames 1:17, were interpreted in this light, and other passages that spokeof variability in God were pushed aside. At this point the legacy ofclassical metaphysics hangs over Christian tradition like a shadow, andwe will have to discount change and relation as positive qualities ofGod’s being and acts. Yet, for a fair and proper understanding of theclassical concept, it will be necessary to stand by the remarks regardingthe concept of the constancy of God and the existential significance thishas for faith. Calvin experienced the constancy of God as a reason forconfidence in the steadfastness of God in the mist of the uncertainties ofhuman life. God does not suffer from moods. God does not play gameswith his children.95

This conviction assures that the history of this concept indeed willseem chaotic, but in reality all things occur under God’s rule andgovernance. In Calvin’s own idiom, nothing happens except by Hisorder, or his nod.96 No branch breaks from the tree,97 no tile falls from aroof,98 no storm arises (Jonah 1:4) except that it comes forth from God’swill. Calvin is able to cite countless examples of Biblical events thatare to be resolved into God’s initiative and confirm it, because they

94 See his exegesis of Ex. 3:14, CO 24, 43–44.95 Inst. 1.17.1.96 Cf. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Legacy’, in: idem, The two Reformations, 132.97 Inst. 1.16.6.98 Inst. 1.17.10.

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arise from His will. Although seen from the human perspective, thethings happen by chance, in reality they happen by God’s counsel anddisposition. Chance is therefore a human explanation, but, according toCalvin, in the light of God’s divine teaching that must be regarded as afalse understanding.99 But this is a conclusion from a divine perspective,not the perspective of man. In this distinction we again encounter theimportance of the limits that, in Calvin’s own conviction, there arefor the human mind. There is a qualitative difference between God’sCounsel and the human mind. However highly Calvin may speak ofmental powers, in these things man is still characterised by sluggishness,weakness and incapacity.100 The conclusion that Calvin draws fromall this—and that is significant—goes in a different direction than wewould expect. His conclusion is not that man loses all his freedom. Theaccent lies on the smallness and impotence of man over against themajesty of God. But the intended reaction is not paralysis, but trustand security. The message is this: in the chaos of life, frail man mayknow himself to be in the hand of God.

3.10. Predestination and responsibility

The concept of the changelessness of God’s will does not detract fromman being responsible for his own actions. How can that be? Is not thetruth more on the side of the critics who assert that Calvin’s position isin fact that of fatalism? To what degree is Calvin bound by the thoughtof the Stoic philosophy that we find in his times? This influence hasoften been adduced in connection with the tremendous tension that thissort 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. Nösgen, ‘Calvins Lehre von Gott und ihr Verhältnis zur

Gotteslehre anderer Reformatoren’, Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 23 (1912), 690–747, whoCalvin’s concept of providence qualifies as a ‘mechanisches ablaufendes Geschehen’(702). Cf. more recently A. Ganoczy/S. Scheld, Herrschaft—Tugend—Vorsehung. Hermeneu-tische Deutung und Veröffentlichung handschriftlicher Annotationen Calvins zu sieben Senecatragödienund der Pharsalia Lucans, Wiesbaden 1982, 46–53. I quite deliberately speak, followingW.J. Bouwsma, of a Stoic impulse, because this in fact leaves room for other influences,such as Augustinianism. For this see W.J. Bouwsma, ‘The two faces of Humanism:Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought’, in: idem, A Usuable Past. Essaysin European Cultural History, Berkeley 1990, 19–74. See also H.A. Oberman’s critiqueof the suggestions of Ganoczy and Scheld that under Stoic influence Calvin teaches


We would do well to remember that this is a problem that also ledto fierce controversy in Calvin’s own day. The serious problems whicharose in Geneva surrounding Bolsec had to do with this.

It is not easy to do justice to Calvin in the matter of whether histheology results in fatalism. It is significant however that when thisconclusion was drawn, he always reacted against it fiercely. All thingsare indeed fixed in God’s Counsel, and the idea that the course ofall things is established does resemble the concept of fatalism, butCalvin disputes the conclusion that in this manner man is completelydeprived of his responsibility. The distinction which he makes againand again in the matter of human knowledge of divine things is thatthe heavenly and terrestrial must not be confused with each other.God’s merciful and just actions are in a sphere which may not beplayed against the sphere of human responsibility. He is convincedthat the Scripture teaches us that, too. With a conviction equal tothat with which he argues the decisive role of the will of God, he alsoopposes resignation and passivity as attitudes on the human side. Hederives his argument from concrete Biblical examples. Again, althoughGod sends illness, man must resist sickness and death with might andmain, when there are means to do so.102 After all, man does not knowwhat the purport of God’s will is in this concrete case; he knows onlythat things are ordered according to God’s will. His own acts musthowever be determined by taking active responsibility for the situation.God’s purpose will be fulfilled in the way of human obedience andreadiness for action. According to Calvin, they are fools who do notsee that the means of deliverance and relief that we are given comejust as much from God, and His purpose will be fulfilled in that way.In other words, no conclusion regarding the outcome of any specificsituation may be drawn from the fact that God’s will is definitive inall things. God’s deepest Counsel is never known from factuality assuch, is never ‘nakedly’ obvious, but, says Calvin, by employing means,assumes a visible form.103 In short, the doctrine of divine providencedoes not mean that man is relieved of responsibility. There are two

a predetermination for evil: In Stoicism, the Deity or divinity does not interferewith the course of an individual person’s life. ‘Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’sReformation’, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessorof Holy Scripture, 120, nt. 22.

102 Inst. 1.17.4.103 Inst. 1.17.4.

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fields of action which appear to collide with one another, on the onehand divine Counsel and on the other human responsibility. Becausedivine Counsel is unchangeable and lies outside time, logically Calvinwill inevitably have difficulties. He must acknowledge that, seen fromthe perspective of divine Counsel, freedom of action indeed does notexist. But it is essential for Calvin’s theology that precisely at this point,when he comes to the actions of man and man’s responsibility, thathe shifts the perspective. Then we are dealing with a second givenin knowledge of God, namely with the limitation that is imposed onhuman knowledge of God, and the mirrors in which God chooses thathis power and will be known. The Bible witnesses to the existence ofGod’s unchanging will. But it is not given to man to know how thisunchanging will looks, precisely, and how it relates to human freedom.At that point Calvin instructs man within the boundaries of his limitedknowledge. Seen from the human perspective there is a double will.First there is the revealed will of God’s decree. Next, Scripture informsus of the existence of a comprehensive will of God that determinesall things. But in his revelation God has not permitted us insight intohis will. Man knows only the existence of this comprehensive will. Heknows nothing from the perspective of God; his knowledge is limited towhat is revealed to him. Finally, Calvin argues for living within these setboundaries in obedience and responsibility.104 In accordance with thisvarying perspective, Calvin accepts the distinction between of necessitasand coactio, necessity and compulsion, from medieval theology. Postlapsum Adae, human acts are indeed under the necessitas of sin, of a lifethat is going the wrong direction. From all sides man is vulnerable to sinand destruction. That does not however mean that in a psychologicalrespect one can speak of coactio, compulsion. Enchained by sin, manis always still called to account in his own responsibility; from theperspective of psychology there is still voluntariness.105

For the evaluation of the concept of the unchangeable will of Godas the ground of all events, the spiritual profit that according to Calvinlies there is important. Calvin’s thinking and feeling is characterised bythe fact that something being fixed by God’s will is not in the least to

104 Inst. 1.17.3–5.105 Inst. 2.3.5. See J. Bohatec, ‘Calvins Vorsehungslehre’ in: J. Bohatec (Hrsg.), Calvin-

studien. Festschrift zum 400. Geburtstage Johann Calvins, Leipzig 1909, 339. See also K. Reu-ter, Das Grundverständnis Calvins, 157ff. and F. Wendel, Calvin. Sources et évolution de sa penséereligieuse, Paris 1950, 141.


be connected with fatalism and paralysis. The spiritual profit is thatthe faithful know that in all things which happen to them, they haveto do with nothing other than with the grace and correcting hand ofthe Living God, and not with blind fate. In Calvin’s view of life, theconstancy of God does not have the negative freight that it has takenon in our time. God’s changelessness is a beacon or anchor in the midstof an uncertain and constantly changing sea. We will return to this inconnection with the doctrine of election.

3.11. Father and Lord: love and fear

According to Calvin, the manners in which we know God are sharplydivergent. God’s authority and the ways he exercises his power havea different form for believers and non-believers, for those who turntoward Him in reverence and for those who refuse the relationship.Toward believers He exercises his caring justice, while the reprobateencounter his wrath and judgement. It is now time to turn our atten-tion to the third main concept that we noted earlier: mercy, miseri-cordia. The corresponding metaphor for God in this case is also Godthe Father. The fact that fatherhood is the controlling metaphor withinCalvin’s concept of God does not exclude that believers, on their wayto Christ, also come to know of God in his role of judge. As soon asman descends into himself and his conscience is summoned before thetribunal of God, according to Calvin he encounters God as Judge andAvenger. Wherever man may turn his gaze, above or below, after thefall he encounters the curse against him.106 But that image of God dom-inates where Christ is not known. Outside of Christ, man does not getbeyond it.

For the believer God has another face. In Christ, God’s countenanceis full of grace and kindness. He appears as Father. Only in faith inChrist does one get sight of salvation, of eternal security with God.We must remember here that which was said in the previous chapter

106 Inst. 2.6.1: ‘sed post defectionem quocunque vertamus oculos, sursum et deorsumoccurit Dei maledictio.’ Inst. 2.16.1: ‘Quum enim nemo possit in seipsum descendere acserio reputare qualis sit, quin Deum sibi iratum infestumque sentiens, necesse habeateius placandi modum ac rationem anxie expetere, quod satisfactionem exigit, nonvulgaris requiritur certitudo: quia peccatoribus, donec a reatu soluti fuerint, semperincumbit ira Dei et maledictio, qui, ut est iustus iudex, non sinit impune legem suamviolari, quin ad vindictam armatus sit.’

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about the specificity of Calvin’s concept of faith. Faith is that manclings to the ‘fatherly mercies of God toward us’.107 Revelation in Christbrings into coherence the two aspects in which God is known. God’sdisclosure in Christ makes it possible to acknowledge him at the sametime as creator and sustainer of life and as liberator and deliverer.Human knowledge of God is therefore a cognitio duplex. Put otherwise, inChrist man learns to know God as Lord of the world and as a mercifulFather.108 Calvin explicitly opposes the idea that God becomes mercifuland kind after Christ has borne divine wrath for sin. God himself is infact the primary source for the whole of the way that God goes in hissalvation. The exposition of Romans 5:10 is instructive with regard tohis doctrine of God and soteriology. How is it possible that the sameGod ‘whose benevolence and fatherly love’ we embrace in Christ109

in this verse is pictured as the enemy of man? Do wrath and lovecoexist next to each other? The manner in which Calvin resolves thisis characteristic. First the reader is reminded of the didactic intentionthat the Spirit has in stating it in this manner. The wrath of God evenappears to evaporate into an anthropomorphism, into the ‘locutiones adsensum nostrum … accommodatae’,110 through which believers are made tounderstand the miserable situation from which they are saved. Throughappearing as their enemy, God wishes to achieve an effect in man,namely an intense desire to seize with both hands what God offershim, and deep thankfulness for the gift given. In short, the manner inwhich Scripture speaks is a way of speaking which is adapted to humancapacities, so that we can understand how things are with man outsideof Christ.111

But, what is our situation now? Is the Biblical testimony about God’swrath then false? Does this language correspond to something reallyin God? It is as if the lines of Calvin’s theology become blurred whenthe human eye seeks what is taking place within God. Only when thegaze is once again directed on the mirror, where God shows his faceand to which he has tied man for his knowledge of God, does theeye once again discover certainty and definition. Wrath is describedas a response to man. ‘All of us have that within us which deserves

107 Catechismus Ecclesiae Genevensis, OS II, 92.108 Inst. 2.6.1.109 Inst. 2.16.2.110 Inst. 2.16.2.111 Inst. 2.16.2.


the hatred of God’, writes Calvin. God finds in us enough to deservehis wrath.112 In his commentary on Romans 1:18 Calvin writes thatin the Scripture wrath is a anthropomorphic manner of speaking ofvengeance, ‘because God, when he engaged in punishing, to our con-ception shows the face of a wrathful man. With this word therefore[Paul] does not in any way designate a disposition on the part of God; itis only related to the perception of the sinner who is being punished.’113

Wrath as an actual conduct only befits a man who has lost control ofhis emotions and is dependent on his environment. It is characteristicof Calvin that, both in the case of God’s wrath and God’s love, he doesnot ask after what corresponds to wrath and love in God’s own being.He stops where we would want to continue questioning, and wherecontemporary theology, in its initiative of self-revelation, actually doescontinue to question. In the exposition of IJohn 4:8 (‘for God is love’)Calvin writes first that ‘God’s nature is to love man’. Because God isthe source of love, and all love comes from God, He is called love andlight. As soon as a statement about God’s essence seems to be made,immediately there appears to be something which must be corrected,through shifting attention to the way in which God desires to be experi-enced. ‘Thus nothing is being said of the essence of God, but he is onlyteaching about how we experience Him.’ Such a displacement marksthis concept. The attention is shifted to what God wishes to accomplishin man. God desires that we become new creations and that we becomesimilar to Him.

Indisputably, here Calvin will not inquire further, and he refuses tofurther define the relation of wrath and love. There are spaces in God’sCounsel to which the creature finds the door shut. In his disclosure,God keeps a part of his Counsel hidden. For Calvin, secrecy doesnot have the role that it would later come to have in the theology ofBarth, namely as a quality of God’s revelation. It simply means thatGod withholds a part of his Counsel from man. For the believers it istrue, however, that under sin they lived with God’s wrath and at thesame time were living in God’s love. To put it in the words of Augus-tine, ‘thus in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when hehated us.’114 There are thus two elements in God, which in his concept

112 Inst. 2.16.3.113 Comm. Rom. 1:18, CO 49, 22–23.114 Inst. 2.16.4: ‘Habebat itaque ille erga nos charitatem, etiam quum inimicitias

adversus eum exercentes operaremur iniquitatem. Proinde miro en divino modo et

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cannot be reduced to or connected with one another. God must con-demn sin because he is the highest righteousness, summa iustitia. At thesame time he loves sinners ‘according to his pleasure’. There are twoelements in God, righteousness and love. The reprobate encounter therighteousness, the elect children his righteousness and his love. Unde-niably this doubleness has major consequences, which, considering thepresent state of affairs in investigations of the Biblical concept of God’sjustice, we no longer want to accept, and that in Barth’s theology aretherefore related to each other.

Yet, as is evident from the quote from Augustine, according to Calvintoo the two qualities have something to do with one another. There isa coherence in God, although Calvin neither can nor desires to makethe nature of this coherence more clear. It is of the greatest importanceto pause at this point—and not only for theological-historical reasons.We here encounter a structure—or better yet, a rule—for speakingtheologically that is still of the utmost importance. For its speakingabout God, Christian theology should take seriously the way that Godhas gone in Christ, and not take as its point of departure an elementthat lies behind that. What is involved here is the question of whetherwhat is really to be said of God lies behind Christ and the concreteevents of his life. As has already been said, Calvin’s theology is open tocriticism from various sides on precisely this point. Barth presumes thatin speaking of Christ as the mirror of election the real decisive momentlies in God’s decision, and that Christ is the more or less technicalmeans by which this decision is carried out. Then there is no longeran intrinsic connection between God’s Counsel and Christ. In his owntime Calvin was challenged by Laelio Sozino to distinguish betweenGod’s decision and the way of Christ. Sozino proposed that speaking ofthe love of God as the source of human justification made it impossibleto still speak of Christ’s suffering as being meritorious. The death ofChrist as meritorious would be in conflict with the assertion that Godredeems as a result of His love.

Calvin’s answer to Sozino demonstrates how deeply he wanted tohold together what was separated by Sozino. He impresses upon hisaudience—that is to say, on potential readers of Scripture—that the

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 unoquoquenostrum et odisse quod feceramus, et amare quod fecerat.’ Calvin quotes Augustine, InJohannis Evangelium Tractus 110.6, CCSL 36, 626.


love of God is not the result of Christ’s suffering for sin. Accord-ing to Calvin, an essential element of Christian knowledge of Godis 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 Thisremains true despite the fact that in Scripture the obedience of Christ istermed the merit through which grace is obtained. Christ’s obedienceis causa secunda or causa propior. What comes first: God’s grace, or themerit of Christ? To our ears, speaking about a first and second causevery 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 ofcause.

As a first step in his explanation of the doubleness, Calvin reachesback to Augustine. God’s grace cannot be regarded as a consequenceof the work of Christ. The fact that the work of Christ can be char-acterised as meritorious rests on God’s ordinatio.116 With this conceptfrom the doctrine of grace as it developed in the late middle ages, weencounter an element that plays a decisive role in Calvin’s theologyat various points, namely the idea of the self-binding of God. Fromhis mere good pleasure God has decided that there will be a media-tor who will purchase salvation for us.117 Two statements that are atfirst sight contradictory thus become possible. The first is that manis justified from the sheer mercy of God. The second is that man issaved by the merit of Christ. These two assertions, Calvin suggests, arenot logically contradictory, if one takes in to account that they eachlie on a different level. After all, the meritoriousness of the work of

115 Inst. 2.16.3: ‘Proinde sua dilectione praevenit ac antevertit Deus Pater nostramin Christo reconciliationem.’ Cf. his commentary on Jn. 3:16, CO 47, 64: ‘arcanumamorem quo nos apud se complexus est coelestis Pater, quia ex aeterno eius propositomanat, omnibus aliis causis superiorem esse.’

116 Inst. 2.17.1: ‘Quum ergo conscendimus ad Dei ordinationem, quae prima causaest: quia mero beneplacito Mediatorem statuit qui nobis salutem acquireret. Atque itainscite opponitur Christi meritum misericordiae Dei. Regula enim vulgaris est, quaesubalterna sunt, non pugnare; ideoque nihil obstat quominius gratuita sit hominumiustificatio ex mera Dei misericordia, et simul interveniat Christi meritum, quod Deimisericordiae subiicitur.’

117 Inst. 2.17.1. In other words, the reception of the human nature of Christ intothe unity of the divine person is the paradigm par excellence for election. Withoutantecedent merit, God has chosen this human nature, in order to fill humanity with hiswealth, through his corporality. That is the way of salvation, the arrangement that Godin his grace has chosen.

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Christ rests upon an order of salvation which God himself ordained.Calling upon John 3:16, Calvin terms God’s love the first and highestcause of salvation, and Christ the second or further cause. It is how-ever incorrect to draw the conclusion on these grounds that Christ isonly the formal cause of salvation.118 Why? Because in many placesScripture says more. With reference to IJohn 4:10, Col. 1:20 and IICor.5:19, Calvin states that the substance of our salvation—that on whichman can draw—must be sought in Christ. One cannot separate causaprima and causa secunda as actual cause and proximate means; the vari-ous causes are aspects of the one event that man is faced with in God’srevelation. When one separates God’s love from the way and the per-son in which this love became concrete, one wrenches apart that whichcan not be disjoined. Laelio Sozino confronted Calvin with the argu-ment that God’s love does not permit speaking of Christ’s obedience asa merit, and at a later date Barth accused Calvin that in his theologyspeaking about Christ as the mirror of election is an unstable basis fortrust in God, because for Calvin Christ is ‘merely’ the means of elec-tion. Both have overlooked the fact that we may not play a prima causaand causa secunda against each other. Both causae are aspects enablingus to comprehend the one event of God’s salvation and do justice toit.

Believers encounter God’s love and righteousness. Thus here the twoconcepts describing the attitude toward God the Father in the life of thebeliever correspond. To remind ourselves, these two aforementionedconcepts are fear and trust.119 Knowing God in Christ leads to a doubleeffect. Believers know God as Father, but this Father is at the same timeLord, and deserves respect. In order to roughly sketch the content ofthe knowledge of God, something must be briefly said with regard tothe relationship of faith, atonement and justification.

At this point we can reach back to the concept of faith. The object offaith is not the commandments or announcements of punishment. Thereal scopus of faith is God’s loving-kindness.120 Those who are unitedwith Christ through the power of the Spirit know Him not merely

118 Inst. 2.17.2. See also commentary on Jn 3:16, CO 47, 64.119 Inst. 1.10.2.120 Inst. 3.2.29: ‘… sed misericordiae promissionem fidei in proprium scopum desti-

namus. Quemadmodum iudicem et ultorem scelerum Deum debent quidem agnoscerefideles, et tamen in eius clementiam proprie intuentur: quando talis considerandus illisdescribitur qui benevolus sit et misericors, procul ira, multus bonitate, suavis universis,super omnia opera sua misericordiam suam effundens.’


as a strict judge. ‘In Christ his countenance beams forth full of graceand gentleness towards poor unworthy sinners.’121 But this faith, theintercourse of God with man, has a dynamic, an irreversible direction.The believer knows God as Lord and realises that outside of Christthis lordship of God takes the form of judgement. Within the sphereof influence of God’s Spirit, faith holds fast to the image that prevailsthere: God as the merciful father, who invites his children to come tohim and in Christ gives them a share in his benefits. Or, followingIsaiah 49:15: God’s love goes beyond the love of a mother. If a motherwill not forget her children, how much more will God keep man in Hisheart.122 There is yet something more that lies behind the metaphorof a mother, but this analogans is not of lesser import than the familiarelements of the analogy. God’s love goes deeper, compared to the loveof a mother or a father.

This knowledge does not however lead to stasis; it leads man onceagain into the midst of life and into himself. Calvin speaks of a doublegrace that is received in faith.123 On the one side there is the regen-eration that takes a concrete form in penance; on the other side thechild of God receives forgiveness of sin.124 Christian life can be typifiedfrom this origin and by this dual process. It is characteristic of Calvin’sdynamic of knowing God that immediately after his discussion of theconcept of faith he next speaks of repentance. In this way every chanceis removed that the believer who is preserved for justification in faithmight therefore be careless in regard to renewal of life.125 Faith sets inmotion a process of life-long regeneration, a rebirth which for Calvinis not limited to one single moment. One might say that life with theSpirit opens a moment with him in which man particularly gets insightinto the depths and chasms of his own life. That is rebirth. Knowledgeof God in Christ implies a continual participation in forgiveness, and atthe same time a renewal that is characterised by the concepts of mortifi-catio and vivificatio. The manner in which Calvin works this out howeverreveals that mortificatio is really a designation in which he includes new

121 Inst. 2.7.8.122 CO 37, 204.123 Inst. 3.3.19; Inst. 3.11.1.124 Neither penance, nor the simultaneous mortificatio and vivificatio, are conditions for

salvation, but its consequences. This does not detract from the fact that in Calvin’sunderstanding of man the conscience is an important pedagogical path, along whichGod draws the sinner to himself. This however is not yet penance.

125 Inst. 3.11.1.

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life. O. Weber has correctly remarked that in this manner Calvin doesnot distinguish himself from a long Western tradition.126

Although faith is focused on God’s mercy, it is still characterised bya certain doubleness. As Calvin remarks, God has within himself thehonourable qualities of a Lord and a Father. That means that love forGod the Father is constantly characterised by his lordship. The childrenof God thus do not obey as servants, that is to say because they cannotavoid doing so, but in respect. Malachi 1:6 is cited as evidence thatthis fear of the Lord is a reverence in which fear and respect cometogether. The fact that a believer knows himself to be an adopted childand subject of pity thus does not detract from the realisation of God’smajesty. In other words, the man of faith also knows the experienceof trembling, the abyss, although this differs in quality from the fearthat seizes the unbeliever when he is confronted with judgement. Inaddition to the timor Dei the believer also knows of God’s mercy, and inthe orientation to that mercy he has the realisation of God as avengerof 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 flatly contradict the words of IJohn 4:18,‘Perfect love banishes fear.’ Calvin however boldly declares that thisrefers only to the fears of the unbelievers. The unbeliever has an abjectspirit and his only concern is to avoid the wrath of God. The fearpeculiar to faith is that of the child, who suffers from it when therelationship with the father has been disrupted.127

3.12. Knowing in faith, in bits and pieces: predestination

3.12.1. A center or the core?

In the foregoing various essentials have already been discussed: inCalvin’s thought, one essential part of the knowing involved in faith isthe acknowledgement that all things, including the answer that peoplegive to invitation which God extends to them, are anchored in God’s

126 Inst. 3.3.8–9. See the critique of O. Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II, Neukirchen19775, 394: ‘Der Ton der eschatologischen Freude, der das ganze Neue Testamentdurchzieht, der in den gebundenen Formen des Rituals und der Sitte die Ostkircheso kräftig bewegt, is in der auch von Calvin nicht durchbrochenen abendländischenFrömmigkeit zu wenig, zu kärglich zu vernehmen.’

127 Inst. 3.2.27.


Counsel. In other words, it is time to take up explicitly the doctrineof election. If ever a doctrine has become notorious, if ever a personhas become identified with and vilified for a doctrine, if a movementnamed for that person has ever become isolated through a doctrine,128

then that has been Calvin and his doctrine of predestination.It is as simple to describe the content of Calvin’s doctrine of predes-

tination and to reject it on the basis of the insights of modern Biblicalstudies as it is problematic to determine the place of the doctrine in thewhole of his thinking. Responding to the question of what is at stakeexistentially with this doctrine of knowing in faith is the most difficultand at the same time most theologically rewarding direction. One canrefer to the definition in the Institutes for a characterisation. There weread,

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which hedetermined with himself whatever he wished to happen to every man. Allare not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life,others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been createdfor one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to lifeor to death.129

What strikes one first in this definition is the parallelism. Eternal salva-tion and damnation are bound up together. A second striking elementis that the subject of election is singular: God. It is not clear from thisdefinition to what degree Christ plays a role in the decision for salvationor damnation, and one can affirm that Calvin offers no more clarity onthis elsewhere in his writings.130 It is exactly this which has played alarge role in the critique of his doctrine of election.

128 Cf. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Heritage’, The two Reformations, 156.129 Inst. 3.21.5: ‘Predestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se

constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enim pari conditionecreantur omnes: sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaqueprout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam vel ad mortem praedes-tinatum dicimus.’

130 When Calvin speaks of God, he is thinking of the Triune God. As the second per-son of the Trinity Christ is indeed involved in predestination, but then only as authoremelectionis of the positive pole of predestination, election (Inst. 3.22.7). Calvin appeals toJohn 13:18 and John 15:19. Election is not thought through from the incarnation, butprecedes the incarnation in order. Calvin is silent on a role for the Eternal Son inreprobation. See C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth. Oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leerder verkiezing in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme, ’s Gravenhage 1987, 37–40, who correctlyobserves 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

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What place does election have? In the previous chapter I maintainedthat it is not correct to reduce Calvin’s theology to a doctrine of doublepredestination. The invitation which God extends is primary, the mir-ror of his grace that he holds up before the hearers of the Word. Theattempt has been made many times in research to sharply distinguishCalvin’s thinking from that of his successors, where the discussion of theloci is much less soteriologically ordered, and more logical-deductive.While it is doubtful how much of a sharp distinction it is possible tomake between Calvin and his follower Beza,131 the fact is that on thispoint Calvin’s theology has ‘a certain fluidity’.132 As is known, in thefinal edition of the Institutes Calvin discusses predestination only in thethird Book, after having discussed the new life that comes to man ina two-fold manner in regeneration and justification, and after prayerhas been discussed. But what importance should we attribute to thisplacement? It would be improper to conclude on this basis, that elec-tion only has a subordinate place. In handling the Bolsec affair, in theaftermath of this affair and the elaboration that he subsequently gaveto the doctrine of double predestination, it is clear that with this doc-trine we are indeed dealing with a core of Calvin’s thought. It is equallyimpossible, however, to conclude on the basis of the teleological struc-ture of Calvin’s theology that the most important issues come at theend. Such a conclusion is based on the idea that systematic perspec-tives play a decisive role in Calvin’s concept of knowing God. That isnot the case. Calvin desired to be a Biblical theologian first and fore-

God. With equal justice Graafland remarks that Calvin never works out the implica-tions of this theologically. Indeed, we are compelled to say, it is precisely characteris-tic of Calvin’s concept of knowing God that man never works out certain questions,respects limits, and turns his gaze on that which God’s actions have produced which isbeneficial 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), 345–375, and 31 (1996), 125–160, now also in: R. Mul-ler, After Calvin. Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63–102;idem, ‘The Use and Abuse of a Document: Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis, The BolsecControversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy’ in: C.R. Trueman/R.S. Clark(eds.), Protestant Scholasticism. Essays in Reassessment, Carlisle 1999, 33–61.

132 Thus Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 9 and 15. A well-known example of thisfluidity is the place of the doctrine of providence, which in the 1539 edition Calvin stilldiscussed in connection with election. In the 1559 edition the doctrine of providence isplaced in Book I, with the doctrines of creation and sustenance. Predestination is nothowever placed within the doctrine of God, a step which is though taken by Beza.


most, and with regard to the discussion of election sought to respect theBiblical-theological connections which he had discerned. It is for thisreason that election is discussed after he has spoken of God’s gesture ofinvitation in the creation, of sin, of Christ and of the ‘leading’ work ofthe Holy Spirit. Predestination, God’s decisive Counsel to life or death,is not the core of his theology, although it is undoubtedly one definingelement.

What are the consequences, however, if the aspect of God’s predeter-mination is postulated as sharply and radically as Calvin does, withoutany inclination to want to mitigate the reprobation or providing moreinsight into it? As is known, Calvin was unwilling to suppress the factthat, according to his conviction, Scripture also taught a negative coun-terpart to election to life, namely reprobation. What does that mean forfaith? Does the doctrine of double predestination undermine the imageof the well-disposed father? For the reprobate portion of humanity, isGod not a tyrant who mercilessly destines them to remain entrappedin total misery? One can really not dismiss these questions as ques-tions which have only arisen in modern times. Therefore we must firstlook back into history. When Jérome Bolsec stood up in the Congrégation(a public Bible lesson) on October 16, 1551, and attacked the conceptof predestination taught in Geneva because this doctrine would makeGod a tyrant or false god like Jupiter, he undeniably laid his fingeron a sore point in Calvinist thinking. R.M. Kingdon has demonstratedthat Bolsec’s accusations struck a sympathetic chord with the commonpeople.133 One can call the charge that with Calvin God becomes theauthor of evil an easy cliché, 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 God’s omnipotence and his good-ness. What were the motives that contributed to Calvin developing thispart of the doctrine as he did? Is it because he feared the responsethat Bolsec received from among the common people, and saw sup-port for the Reformation in the city being threatened?134 Is that whyhe attempted to comprehensively explain what he intended? Or canhis harsh attitude against Bolsec be traced back to his personality? Wasthere 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, 138–145.

134 Kingdon, ‘Popular Reactions’, 145.

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in his image of God? Most recently Ph. Holtrop, in his book on theBolsec controversy, has ascertained, to his own shock, that the doctri-nal discussion was not only all tangled up with questions of social andpolitical power, but that Calvin personally also played a highly dubiousrole in the affair. The appearance of Bolsec coincided with a momentat which Calvin—and with him a large number of French refugees inGeneva—found themselves in a threatening situation, in terms of pol-itics.135 The risk that he would come off the worst against the nativeresidents of the city and their party, the Libertines, was great. Possiblyit was for this reason that in his trial Bolsec appealed to the magistratein order to seek judgement in his favour. Apparently he estimated thesituation as being such that it was definitely not a foregone conclusionthat Calvin and his supporters could be able to maintain their positionin the city. The way in which Calvin handled this situation and dealtwith Bolsec provides an insight into a number of dubious features inCalvin’s 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 understandBolsec’s differing opinion as a revolt against God. It is understandablethat the list of those who in the name of humanity have appointedthemselves complainants against the man has slowly grown to endlesslength, and one is inclined to promptly declare in their favour. Thatis all the more so because the negative verdict on Calvin’s role in theBolsec affair is not only a judgement which has been made in retro-spect, on the basis of modern attitudes toward life. It also finds sup-port in the reactions of Calvin’s own contemporaries and supporters:Bullinger, Viret, Myconius.

The personal element thus certainly played a role, but one does notdo justice to Calvin’s theology when it is suggested that this is the lastword on the matter. That would be all too easy. As it happens, in hisdoctrine of election Calvin is no exception. In its outlines, one finds

135 Ph.C. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551 to 1555. The Statementsof Jerome Bolsec, and the Responses of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and Other Reformed Theolo-gians Vol.I Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter 1993, 167–230, 56. See also W.G. Naphy,Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation, Manchester/New York 1994, 172:‘The lukewarm support that Calvin’s views received from the Swiss cities must haveundermined his position somewhat.’

136 For several instances of Calvin’s lack of mercy and spitefulness see the study byW.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation and his conclusionon page 68: ‘Calvin had a particularly unforgiving side to his character.’ See alsoC. Augustijn, Calvijn, Den Haag 1966, 70–79.


the same teaching in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and all the majorfigures in late medieval theology.137 Moreover, in his doctrine of electionCalvin takes a position that logically follows from his concept of humanknowledge of God.

Why, according to Calvin, does double predestination belong to thefund of human knowledge of God? How did people come to conceiveelection as the heart of the church? It has been correctly noted thatwithin Reformed Protestantism the doctrine of election has gone from‘inheritance to stumbling block’, and on to being ‘an article of faithfrom the day before yesterday’.138 What could the foundation of thisdoctrine ever have been? What was at stake here, according to Calvin?In the past an attempt was made to answer this question by referringto the horrific inequality in opportunities in nature and history. Elec-tion then becomes a principle that is visible in the whole of life andwhich rules all existence.139 Although one also finds in Calvin an appealof this sort to the inequality everywhere in life, it cannot be deniedthat in Calvin this does not do justice to the soteriological context ofthe concept of election. Or put differently: standing behind the con-cept, its primary background, is the awesome astonishment that manis 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 Reformedworld it was G.C. Berkouwer who again underscored the existentialcharacter of election. Election has to do with the acknowledgementof the supremacy of God’s 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, Prädes-tination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937.

138 Author’s translation from Oberman, De erfenis van Calvijn, 41. Cf. Oberman, ‘Cal-vin’s Legacy’, The two Reformations, 156.

139 See A. Kuyper, Het Calvinisme. Zes Stone-Lezingen in october 1898 te Princeton (N.-J)gehouden, Kampen Tweede Druk z.j., 179–181; ET: Lectures on Calvinism, Grand Rapids,197810, 195–197. Here and there in neo-Calvinism one finds others who similarlybegin with inequality. See G.C. Berkhouwer’s sensitive discussion of the theology ofK. Schilder in Zoeken en Vinden. Herinneringen en ervaringen, Kampen 1989, 263–264.Berkouwer refers to an otherwise undeveloped marginal comment in Schilder’s Preken,Vol. I, 81: ‘Heaven cannot be imagined without hell. Election cannot be imaginedwithout reprobation. Here too day arises with night, and light is linked to darkness.This is difficult. Yet life is replete with this. This law applies everywhere. Many arecalled, few are chosen. One man’s death is another man’s breath. Darwin: survival ofthe fittest. Thousands of blossoms fall off, so that a handful can ripen into fruit. Why?Millions of living beings are born, only a few continue in life.’ Berkouwer does not seemto be aware that these remarks are a direct summary of a passage from H. Bavinck,Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 417–418; ET, 401–402.

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ways where, from the human perspective, all ways have been blocked.Looking toward history, Oberman has tried to anchor election in thefaith experience of a community under the cross. Where the commu-nity is threatened, where people must flee for the sake of their faith,living in the diaspora in the midst of a threatening world, and wheretheir 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, whichprovides comfort. Some understanding for this doctrine can perhapsalso be found in the ‘recognition of the structures of the existence ofrefugees in our own time’.140 This is the search for an existential con-text. It is obvious that all these explanations and situations find theirbasis 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 identified. In this one is in no way whatsoever denying the existenceof an existential context, but beginning with that which in any case alsomust be said.

The simplest justification for the doctrine of double predestination,and the one given by Calvin himself, is the following: it is taught bythe Holy Spirit in Scripture. Scripture itself declares ‘he [God] doesnot adopt promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to somewhat 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. Suchtexts are interpreted by Calvin in the light of the double ending ofhistory. Mankind is divided into two groups: one group predestinedto be damned and one group of persons who will live in communionwith God eternally. On the basis of contemporary insights from Bib-lical research we can only observe that already, on exegetical groundsalone, there is no longer any support for Calvin’s purely individualisticexegesis of these texts and his undervaluing of the category of covenant.Calvin did not see that in chapters 9–11 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 promisesand his covenant. One can conclude that Calvin introduces a symme-try between election and reprobation that is not expressly present inRomans 9–11. He mirrors the positive connection of God’s action inthe election of Jacob with the rejection of Esau as the negative counter-part of election. For election and reprobation being parallel, he appeals

140 Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Legacy’. The two Reformations, 160.141 Inst. 3.21.1.


to the omnipotence of God, by virtue of which all things ultimatelyproceed from the Counsel of God. It is in this context that the remarkabout a decretum horribile, a terrible decision, comes.142 In retrospect wemust say that Calvin’s concept of the omnipotence of God has led to aparalleling that finds no support in the text itself.

The second reason that Calvin adduces for this element of Christianknowledge of God is that it fits perfectly with the experience thatthe Church has gained from its preaching of the Word of God. TheGospel does not find the same positive reception from all. But thatis still putting too fine a gloss on it. Calvin makes no secret that heproceeds from the idea that the number of the elect will only be small.He believes he reads this in Paul when in Romans 11:5 the latter speaksof the remnant saved for God. Moreover, this word from Scripture isconfirmed by daily experience, ‘because experience shows that of thegeneral body many fall away and are lost, so that in the end a smallportion only remains’.143 Experience supports what Scripture teaches.

The third point is the argument that Calvin always advances as themost important point in favour of this doctrine. Election functions asthe anchor of salvation. Salvation, becoming a child of God, is notanchored in one’s own good works; the foundation of salvation is inGod himself. God is not obliged to grant participation in salvation.Status as a child of God is not conferred on the basis of merit, butpurely because God wills this salvation for believers. With Calvin,election has to do with the surprise that one is safe with God, isultimately secure. That is the heart of the doctrine. If one wishes tosense something of that surprise in faith, then it is advisable to readthe commentary of Ephesians 1:4–5, for instance, and not the Institutes.There Calvin comes closer to the sense. In this section he speaksexpressly of the call with which the community, the hearers of theWord, are confronted. ‘If it is asked what is the cause of God callingus to participate in the Gospel, why He daily invests us with so manyblessings, why He opens heaven for us, then we must always return tothis fundamental point: because He has chosen us, before the worldwas made.’ Thus he does not speak of election apart from faith, butalways after the hearing of the good news, after men have accepted theinvitation of Christ. That men belong to God’s family, have a seat at histable, share in the communion of the body of Christ, arises out of God’s

142 Inst. 4.23.7.143 Inst. 3.21.7. Cf. also Inst. 3.24.12.

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high prerogative. It does not happen on the basis of good works orprospective good works; it comes forth from God himself. The mannerin which Calvin speaks of this in his exegetical work radiates a senseof surprise, relief, not that of disputatio, as in the Institutes. In Calvin’sdoctrine of election the element of the unexpectedness of God’s graceis magnified and maintained in a manner that makes it impossible toideologise this grace, in the way that this is at least present as a risk inthe development of Barth’s doctrine of election.144

According to Calvin election to life has a parallel in a decision toreprobation. What reasons does he adduce for this? Here too Calvin’sreading of Scripture plays a large role. Thus in Scripture God himselfteaches man about the existence of double predestination. That doesnot mean, however, that God has given man unlimited access to hisCounsel and has thrown open all its spaces to inspection. There arematters of his Counsel that God has revealed in Scripture, and mat-ters that he has not revealed. According to this concept, the doctrineof double predestination is among those matters that God has madeknown for a very specific purpose. Therefore Calvin had no sympathywhatsoever for the standpoint of the preachers in Bern, who in theirresponse to the questions asked in 1551 about the Bolsec affair con-tended that one would do better to refrain from discussion of this mat-ter, because it would agitate the common people.145 What it came downto is that Calvin did not want to introduce any distinction betweenwhat theologians said among themselves and what they would bringup in the presence of the laity.146 The theological reason that Calvinholds fast to his view that one must not refrain from speaking of dou-ble predestination is that God himself has willed that these things fromhis holy Counsel be made known to people. In the preceding chap-

144 In the second panel, of Barth’s theology, precisely this unexpectedness is main-tained by the ‘actuality’ of God’s Counsel. The fact that all men are chosen for life inChrist prevents grace from becoming a thing, a decree that has existence apart fromthe living God who judges and establishes his justice in the present. That in the recep-tion of Barth’s theology grace can indeed become a principle, and thereby an ideologythat in fact crushes the life out of the call to repentance and a change of life, is a factthat is still too little recognised.

145 See Calvin’s disapproval in Inst. 3.21.4.146 According to Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy, 28, in the Bolsec affair Calvin rea-

soned along Scholastic lines. He not only based himself on the covenant and election inChrist, but strongly posited a causal relation between God’s Counsel and faith. Whilein the Institutes he argued from the effects to the cause, in the Bolsec affair he arguesfrom cause to the effects.


ter I sought to make clear how greatly Calvin’s doctrine of Scripturewas determined by that idea that God, through his Spirit, is the actingSubject of Scripture. The fact that God made use of human writersdoes not define his vision of Scripture. Those things which appear inthe Bible are precisely what God considers good and useful for man toknow. They all belong, without distinction, to the doctrina, to the teach-ing which does not come from man, but comes to us from God. One ofthe hidden things of his will that He wished to reveal is the existence ofa double predestination.147 The making known of this secret in no waymeans, now that God has revealed one element from the secret things,that suddenly all secrets will be revealed. It is just as little permitted thatman can just do what he likes with the revelation. Revealed truths mustbe handled carefully.

It is a matter of historical fairness to take Calvin at his own wordon this point. Even if one is of the opinion that he too easily dismissedBolsec’s conclusions, it is precisely then that the protest that Calvin reg-istered must be taken up as a signal that he wished to deal with revealedtruth differently here. Calvin saw absolutely nothing of his own posi-tions in Bolsec’s accusations that in the doctrine of predestination Godwas turned into a tyrant and the author of sin. He was so vehementprecisely because conclusions were being foisted upon him that he didnot wish to draw. In his view he stopped short of the line of revealedknowledge of God, while his opponents sought to draw him over thatboundary.

3.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination

It is in the very important introductory paragraph to the doctrine ofelection in the third book of the Institutes that Calvin famously uses theterm labyrinth in connection with this doctrine.148 One might be of theopinion that, now that the double decision regarding eternal salvationand reprobation has been disclosed, all locks and bolts slid back, allis now freely accessible and every possible conclusion could be drawn.We have noted already that this is in no way the case. The warningagainst curiosity comes in this context, and rational consideration is

147 Inst. 3.21.1: ‘Quae nobis patefacienda censuit voluntatis suae arcana, ea verbo suoprodidit.’ (‘Those secrets of his will, which he has seen it meet to manifest, are revealedin his word’).

148 For instance in Inst. 3.21.1 and in the Commentary on Rom. 9:14, CO 49, 180.

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asked to take a back seat, yielding to worship. This takes nothing awayfrom the fact that Calvin rejects every form of Pelagianism in the sal-vation of man, and affirms that God is the highest cause of electionand reprobation. Time and again we see how he believes that this posi-tion is supported by Scripture. Election and reprobation take place onthe basis of God’s dispensatio,149 ordinatio,150 in arcano Dei consilio.151 Calvinregards the argument that reprobation is based on God’s foreknowledgeof actions, or that God only permits the fall, as being untenable.152 Withappeals to Scripture, and knowing himself supported by Augustine, theregular refrain throughout his discussion of the objections is the propo-sition that it is certain that all things happen through God’s ‘ordinanceand nod’.153 To use other terms, there exists a direct causal connectionbetween God’s 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 dynamicterms nutus and ordinatio, also makes use of the term causa from Aris-totelian metaphysics.154 In the Institutes 3.14.17 Calvin explicitly acceptsthese distinctions. The mercy of God is the causa efficiens, Christ withhis obedience the causa materialis, faith is the causa formalis or instrumen-talis. The causa finalis is lastly the manifestation of divine justice andthe praise of his goodness. Contemporary theology rightly questionswhether the causa concept does justice to the nature of God’s actionsand whether as a concept it does not remain inadequate. It wouldbe well to remember, however, that in the Enlightenment this con-cept of causality underwent an enormous impoverishment, graduallybeing reduced to mechanical causality. Causality was pried away fromAristotelian metaphysics, and what remained was a systematic relationof cause and effect.155 With Calvin we encounter a concept of causa-tion that is much richer in nature. The classic-Aristotelian concept ofcausality is characterised by its distinguishing among various aspects or

149 Inst. 3.23.8.150 Inst. 3.23. 8–9.151 Inst. 3.23.4.152 Calvin’s tone is very definite in designating God’s election and reprobation as

the necessary foundation for all that happens; see Inst. 3.23.8: ‘Non dubitabo igiturcum Augustino simpliciter fateri, voluntatem Dei esse rerum necessitatem atque idnecessario 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 efficiens and causa finalis.155 See for instance G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, Grand Rapids 1960, 188.


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 andthe same thing from various perspectives. The danger however existsthat the causa efficiens will be adjudged as the first member in a seriesof secondary causes which are dependent on the first in a mechanical-causal manner. There is then no place left for an acknowledgement ofthe peculiarity and relative independence of the other causes. For theevaluation of Calvin’s concept of God’s acts this means that no oneaspect may be isolated, but that the unity of actions is assumed. Calvinknew the various causae and used them as aspects which can be usedto describe the history between God and man.156 To come closer toCalvin’s spirituality, it seems to me we must make an important dis-tinction, which has much to do with the limit of human knowing ofGod, namely the distinction between causae remotae and causae propinquae.God’s 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 first encounters the nearer causes,namely his own revolt and apostasy.157 If we look at election to life, thenGod’s love is the summa causa, and faith the causa secunda et propior. Thevarious causes lie at varying levels and can not be played against oneanother. In fact, Calvin is speaking of one reality. God’s love, the workof Christ, and the faith of men, sanctification are not different com-partments existing apart from one another. God’s love is realised in thework of Christ, and God’s election is realised in faith in Christ. Thefaith that takes on visible form in the world has an invisible ground inGod’s eternal Counsel. What men primarily have to deal with are thecausae propinquae.

156 This means that election and reprobation indeed can be described as causa finalisin order to reveal God’s severity and his compassion, respectively; see for instancethe Comm. on Romans 9:22–23, CO 49, 187 and Inst. 3.24.12. In the explication ofRomans 3:22, CO 49, 60, God’s compassion is explicitly termed the causa efficiens andChrist is the materia. In the Comm. on Eph. 1:5, CO 51, 148–149 the pleasure of God’swill is the causa efficiens, Christ is causa materialis and the praise of his grace the causafinalis. A bit later, at Eph. 1:8, CO 51, 150 he calls the preaching of the Gospel the causaformalis.

157 See Comm. on Romans 9:11, CO 49, 178. See also the treatise against AlbertusPhigius, De aeterna praedestinatione CO 8, 296. See also Comm. on Romans 9:22, CO49, 187: ‘… causam in aeterno ac inexplicabili Dei consilio absconditam esse: cuiusiustitiam adorare magis quam scrutari conveniat.’ What would later be called thesupralapsarian perspective thus lies further away, in a region that is closed for humaninvestigation. What man does have to deal with are the things of this life and the appealthat is heard there by the providence of God.

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The same is thus also true for reprobation. The unbelief of men alsohas an origin which reaches back to God. But God may not be termedunjust. However contradictory it may seem, Calvin thought that on thebasis of revelation both things must be said: In the decision of God’sown Counsel lay the deepest cause of salvation and doom, while atthe same time revelation forbids the conclusion that God is the authorof sin, or is liable to moral censure.158 The existence of good and evilalongside one another, of light and dark, of weal and woe, has reasonsthat lie in God and which are further unknown to man.

3.12.3. The benefit of the knowledge of predestination

Why has God made these secrets known? Calvin remains true to hisconviction of the usefulness of all revealed knowledge of God. Thisconviction has an axiomatic significance in his theology. Thus somehowthe principle applies here that knowing God and knowing ourselves arecorrelates. Doctrine is not complete if it remains exterior, like a dropleton a window; it must penetrate and only then finds its purpose in thefitting response on the part of man.

What are the benefits? In the first place, knowledge that human sal-vation is founded in God’s election affords certainty. Certainty? Indeed,one would not suspect this after so many centuries of individuals insome Reformed Protestant circles wrestling with the question of wheth-er they are really children of God. Yet Calvin connects election withcertainty. It however becomes somewhat clearer when one takes intoaccount the forum that Calvin had to deal with. The anchor for cer-tainty of salvation does not lie in works or in personal sanctity; theanchor of eternal salvation lies in God’s own decision. But it is notwithout reason that in the Institutes this decision is discussed after therealisation of community between God and man in Jesus Christ istreated. The inward work of the Holy Spirit, through which Christ isno longer at a distance but in whom the believer grows together withChrist, is the mystery of faith. That is in the foreground. That thiswork of the Spirit has its foundation in the election to life, and thatthere is even a double predestination whereby some are chosen for life

158 Inst. 3.23.8: ‘nihil aliud quam divinae iustitiae, occultae quidem, sed inculpatae,dispensatio … sic ex Dei praedestinatione pendet eorum perditio, ut causa et materiain ipsis reperiatur … Cadit igitur homo, Dei providentia sic ordinante: sed suo vitiocadit.’


and others rejected, is the mysterious background of an experiencedfact that, according to Calvin’s firmest conviction, is entirely palpable.The teaching of the Spirit in Scripture is confirmed in everyday experi-ence. Remarkably enough, Calvin begins his treatment of the doctrineof predestination precisely with this reference to experience. Preachingis received very differently by various persons; the effect can be diamet-rically opposite. The depth of divine rule is revealed in this experiencedfact.159 The ordo cognoscendi, the way of knowing of faith, is paramount inCalvin’s treatment—that is to say, first the divine mercy that is revealedin Christ, and then the background of this faith in the decision of divineCounsel, the ordo essendi. As opposed to the late medieval doctrine ofgrace, in which merit played a fundamental role, Calvin has, as he seesit, adduced a stronger basis.

Calvin proposes thankfulness as a second practical purpose of thedoctrine. Election points to God’s free mercy, and this evokes thank-fulness from the side of man. In this way God is glorified. It is notwithout reason that in connection with God’s eternal Counsel we hearthe phrase that is also typical of Calvin’s concept of knowing God: it isfitting to praise God’s judgement, rather than to interrogate it.160 As athird point Calvin lists humility. Man must learn to know his place inrelation to God. He is being trained in humility and submission.

Once one has taken cognisance of these three practical effects, itcan then be understood why Calvin reacted furiously to the suggestionthat it is better to hold one’s peace about the doctrine of election. Ifelection were not to be spoken of, according to Calvin then on thecontrary the honour of God would be disparaged and the faithfulwould not be stimulated to thankfulness and meekness. In this case manis being wiser than God, who indeed thinks it useful to reveal this secret.Calvin’s ‘Biblicism’ is here of decisive importance. He labels the adviceof the Bern clergy to practice reticence in speaking of predestination ashuman pride.161 No concession is possible. Calvin indicates where theboundary between speaking and remaining silent lies for him:

Let us, I say, allow the Christian to unlock his mind and ears to all thewords of God which are addressed to him, provided he do it with thismoderation—viz. that whenever the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, he alsodesists from inquiry. The best rule of sobriety is, not only in learning to

159 Inst. 3.21.1.160 Comm. Romans 9:22, CO 49, 187.161 Inst. 3.21.4.

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follow wherever God leads, but also when He makes an end of teaching,to cease also from wishing to be wise.162

It is characteristic of Calvin’s position that, with Deuteronomy 29:29 inmind, he seeks a via media with regard to predestination. At one extremeis an excessive curiosity, in which man wants to know more than whatGod has disclosed in his Word. On this side the limit is formed by adocta ignorantia, a not-knowing that is precisely the fruit of revelation.163

The emphasis however comes to lie on the second boundary thatCalvin wants to avoid, namely that ‘lest under the pretence of modestyand sobriety we be satisfied with a brutish ignorance’.164 This ignoranceis in fact ingratitude with regard to that which God has disclosed.165

In the above we have once again discovered the three fundamentalconcepts that qualify human knowledge of God. Man is certain of hissalvation, not on the basis of works, but on the basis of God’s mercy, hismisericordia. Further, in this earthly existence he practices humility andthankfulness.

Anchoring salvation in election in Calvin’s theology indisputably hasconsequences for the place which the concept of covenant will assume.Covenant is subordinated to election. The particularity of God’s gra-cious acts is indeed reflected in the covenant with the people of Israel,but that does not mean that all who belong to that nation have theSpirit of regeneration bestowed upon them.166 God’s gracious actionis focused on single individuals. For Calvin the covenant is a functionof election. The election of the one nation of Israel out of the manynations reflects the splendour of election, which takes place not on thebasis of merit, but purely on the basis of mercy. In other words, thefreedom of God’s grace and turning toward man becomes visible in themirror of the covenant.167

Thus all this means that far from everything is decided about theeternal salvation of those who are included in this covenant. Esau was

162 Inst. 3.21.3: ‘Permittamus, inquam, Christiano homini, cunctis qui ad eum diri-guntur Dei sermonibus mentem auresque reserare, modo cum hac temperantia, utquum primum Dominus sacrum os clauserit, ille quoque viam sibi ad inquirendumpraecludat. Hic optimus sobrietatis terminus erit, si non modo in discendo praeeuntemsemper sequamur Deum, sed ipso finem 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.


part of the covenant, but in no way belongs to the elect. Salvation isindeed offered by the covenant, but that is not to say that God sealsall for salvation.168 The invitation of a whole people into the covenantis followed by a second act of God in which he elects a part of thatpeople in a special, or indeed active, manner. The first or generalelection is, Calvin literally says, a sort of ‘middle ground’169 betweenthe rejection of the human race and the election of a small numberof sinners. There is, we must conclude, still a large gap between God’sinvitation to and offer of salvation, and actual, personal participationin salvation. We undeniably there encounter the tension that lies withinCalvin’s doctrine of God and that he, as we previously observed, doesnot attempt to resolve. He only points his readers toward a way ofdealing with it.

Calvin saw clearly that people can easily blunder in the discussionof God’s rule in election and rejection. Those who will know toomuch, who are led on by their curiosity, will, he contends, end upin questions and observations that are ridiculous and arouse mockery.He will therefore teach his readers to respect the limits of Scripture.There are questions which can be asked, and questions which mustnot be asked. As was said earlier, one can object that Calvin him-self does not abide by that principle when he characterises reproba-tion as the necessary counterpart to election. His exegesis of Scrip-ture is here crucially defined and distorted by a vision of omnipo-tence and election that can not be defended. Calvin did not see thatin the Bible election is a category of sacred history that describes themanner of God’s mighty acts. For him, following the tradition inau-gurated by Augustine, election has become a category of the Coun-sel of God, in which decisions are made about the eternal salvationand damnation of separate individuals. It is not just the indefensibil-ity of his exegesis of Romans 9–11 that has meant that Calvin’s the-ology is no longer followed on this point. In our second panel, inthe description of Barth’s theology, we will see how deeply changingviews of the Bible and the relation between the Bible and systematicreflection have had their effects there too. That God’s acts in the his-tory of Israel and in Christ are unconditional acts for good, in thesecond panel will be seen to be a compass for the reading of Scrip-ture.

168 Inst. 3.21.7.169 Inst. 3.21.7: ‘… medium quiddam …’

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Calvin has gone down in the history of theology as the one whodefended the doctrine of double predestination in its most rigid form,thereby undermining the character of the Gospel as a message ofsalvation. Seen from Calvin’s own position, that is a most curious andparticularly ungracious outcome. The fact is that he precisely did notwant to burrow around in the Counsel of God, did not wish to obscurethe image of God, but intended to fix his reader’s minds on revelationas it is given, on Christ as the one in whom God comes to meet themwith his salvation. In Him God’s will is revealed.

3.12.4. God’s will as the farthest horizon

That Calvin felt himself provoked by the accusations that his doctrineof predestination cast a shadow over the image of God as a lovingfather is understandable not only psychologically, but theologically. Godhimself revealed that man’s eternal salvation depends on a decision inGod’s hidden and immutable Counsel.170 If anyone subsequently askswhat the reason of this decision was, what the reasons are which guidedGod’s will, then he will receive no answer. God’s will is the final point towhich knowledge in faith, instructed by Scripture, can go back. In thismatter the believer will have to live with a docta ignorantia, as Calvin,following Augustine, termed it171 The final thing we can know, theextreme of human knowledge, is the will of God.

The reference to the will of God immediately calls up the questionof what it means if Calvin’s doctrine of God is termed voluntaristicand is situated within the channel of Scotism.172 Is God’s freedom tobe distinguished from arbitrariness? Undeniably there are statements tobe found in Calvin that appear to give cause for the negative picturethat is given in the older manuals of the voluntarism of late medievaltheology. We are told in the discussion of predestination that there is nosense in asking why God entered into covenant with Abraham and hisdescendants. Calvin dismisses such questions with the requisite irony.

170 Inst. 3.21.7: ‘Quod ergo Scriptura clare ostendit, dicimus aeterno et immutabiliconsilio Deum semel constituisse quos olim semel assumere vellet in salutem, quosrursum 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 Calvin’s Reformation’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.)Calvinus sacrae scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994,113–154, particularly 117–127.


People who try to understand such irreducible facts could just as wellask why they were created as men and not as oxen or donkeys. Godcould just as easily have made them as dogs. Calvin asks if peoplewho want to investigate these contingent things might also wish toallow lower animals to expostulate with God about not having madethem men.173 Things are as they are. God’s right to make a varietyof creatures now transports Calvin to the realm of salvation. God’sfreedom to introduce diversity into creation serves as an argument forGod’s freedom to elect some and reject others. Such an appeal to theconcept of freedom is dangerous because in this context it is not madeclear how God’s freedom differs from arbitrariness. Considering suchstatements in isolation, one can easily manage to separate election fromthe soteriological context in which the doctrine stands in Calvin, andmake it an independent, controlling principle of the sovereignty of God.God then becomes a duplicate of the double face of nature. A naturalobservation comes to define the image of God. Above I have referred toremarks by Kuyper and Schilder which do not escape this danger. Thatin the Bible election stands in the context of salvation and redemptionis entirely lost. If we look at the context in which these statementsappear in Calvin, then it is clear that the point of his argument is not somuch the concept of freedom, but the foolishness of some questions.The farthest horizon of human knowledge of God is God’s will. Aboundary is drawn in the reference to God’s will, which man cannotpass. It is not possible to ask again why God wills as He does.174 Doesthis reference to God’s will as the furthest horizon open the door tothe view that God, at his deepest, is defined by arbitrariness? That ishow Calvin is often understood. I would say this is incorrect, certainlyif one takes him at his own word. God’s will is always governed byhis justice and goodness. One can not search for reasons behind that.I have previously noted that Calvin fences off reflection on God’sbeing, and always has the inclination to move immediately through toquestions about the effect that God wishes to produce with man. It ischaracteristic of Calvin’s concept that he makes thinking about God asprima causa subordinate to the finality of God’s action. It is not without

173 Inst. 3.22.1.174 Inst. 3.23.2: ‘Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult,

eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit. Ubi ergo quaeritur cur ita fecerit Dominus,respondendum est, Quia voluit.’ The publishers of the OS refer to Augustine, De Genesicontra Manichaeos I 2, 4 MSL 34, 175.

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reason that I previously pointed out the dominance of active verbs suchas invite, awaken and draw. These verbs are more definitive for Calvin’sdoctrine of God than thinking in terms of primary causality is.175 Hishandling of the concept of potentia absoluta also fits within this pattern.Calvin storms furiously against the idea that God acts as a potentiaabsoluta, as absolute power. The reference to God’s will as the furthesthorizon serves to remind us of the categorical difference between Godand man.

3.12.5. God as absolute power?

Is God’s will identified with caprice? In his actions is God a powerstanding above the law? Calvin thoroughly realised that this idea couldeasily take root.176 Yet everything indicates that he did not wish to godown this road. Already, in section 3.8, it was mentioned that Calvinstrongly militated against the idea that God might be a despotic powerwho wielded his might arbitrarily. The first thing to which faith clingsis the goodness of God, his grace and justice. God’s power is notseparated from justice, but is always its norm and exponent. ‘We donot imagine God to be lawless. He is a law to himself.’177

What does Calvin mean by this? There are various places in hisworks where he explicitly speaks negatively about the concept of abso-lute power, potentia absoluta or puissance absoluë. It appears to be a termwhich has frankly objectionable connotations for Calvin. What didCalvin have in mind when he rejected this term?

In the treatise De aeterna praedestinatione (1552) we find an example. Hethere disputes the papales theologastri, according to whom one can ascribeabsolute power to God. A more extensive citation is in order here:

It would be easier to wrench light away from warmth, or to separatewarmth from fire, than to divorce God’s power from his justice. Thuslet these monstrous speculations be far from pious minds, that Godcan do more than is fitting, or that He carries out something withoutmeasure and without reason. And I do not accept this as illusion, thatGod, because he is free of law, is free of reproach, whatever He does.Those who place God outside the law rob Him of the greatest part of

175 See Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini’, 126.176 Inst. 3.23.4.177 Inst. 3.23.2: ‘Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult,

eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit … Non fingimus Deum exlegem, qui sibi ipsilex est’.


his glory, because they bury His truth and justice. Not because God issubject to law, except to the degree that He is law to himself, but becausebetween his power and justice there is such an harmony and symmetrythat nothing can come from Him except that it knows measure, law andrule. And it is certainly necessary that believers acknowledge that thesame One whom they confess as almighty at the same time is the judgeof the world, so that they regard the power as in this sense determinedby justice and equity.178

God does not act arbitrarily. His deeds are always determined byhis justice and goodness, although that is sometimes hidden. Otherpassages too where Calvin speaks explicitly of potentia absoluta are of thesame tenor.179 By absolute power Calvin understands an actually usedcapability, which stands apart from God’s justice and wisdom.180 Calvinwill 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 inthat way is the equivalent of blasphemy.

3.12.6. Excursus: potentia absoluta et ordinata. A brief historical overview

In the following I will place Calvin’s negative statements regarding Godas potentia absoluta within the context of late medieval discussions onGod’s power. The term potentia absoluta refers to a discussion that wascarried on since Augustine about the relation between God’s powerand his will, and which resulted in a distinction between absolute andordained power. In the later middle ages, under the influence of theuse of these terms in canon law, this distinction led to the view that thehighest authority, that is to say the pope, can act according to powersthat are not bound by any law or regulation. It will be clear that inthis context freedom rapidly takes on overtones of arbitrariness. Onthe basis of recent studies I will here present a brief survey in order tosituate Calvin’s ideas.181

178 CO 8, 361. Cf. also CO 8, 310: ‘nihil esse in Deo inordinatum’.179 See Comm. Isa. 23:9, CO 36, 391; and Altera Responsio de occulta Dei providentia, CO9, 288. One will also find frequent examples in the sermons on Job, for example CO35, 60 (‘puissance absoluë’) and CO 33, 584 (‘puissance tyrannique’).

180 Inst. 1. 17.2 and Inst. 3.23.2.181 For the view of the relation between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, see

the study of H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. Gabriel Biel and LateMedieval Nominalism, Cambridge (MA) 1963. For a critical evaluation of the older viewand a reinterpretation, see particularly 30–56. Further, I have made extensive use ofW.J. Courtenay, Capacity and Volition. A History of the distinction of Absolute and OrdainedPower, Bergamo 1990, idem, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’ in: Ch. Trinkaus

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A good place to begin in order to understand what the distinctionwas originally about is the famous table conversation between PeterDamian and abbot Desiderius at the abbey of Monte Cassino in 1067.The subject of the conversation was the manner in which a citationfrom Jerome should be interpreted, in which he asserted that God,although he could do anything, could not undo the loss of virginity.182

Although the question can be so conceived that the problem of therelation between the natural order and a supernatural interventionbecomes the nub, the discussion between Peter Damien and Desideriusfocused on the first aspect, namely the question of in what sense itmay be said that God cannot do a thing. Desiderius defended the viewthat God’s omnipotence cannot be understood as the capacity to doanything whatsoever. Discussions about God’s power apart from hiswill are senseless. Pronouncements about what God can not do simplymean that God does not will doing this. Damian thought this positionunsatisfactory. It would mean that God’s power is limited by his will.According to Damian, God is able to do more than He in fact wills.Outside of what God actually does, there lies a field of possibilities thatare open to Him.

The questions which were raised in that conversation were not new;they have their background in Augustinian tradition. Already in Augus-tine one finds the distinction that God can do more than He wills.Potuit, sed noluit, as he put it. It is true for God: ‘poterat per potentiam,sed non poterat per iustitiam’.183 Divine will can, for unsearchable reasons,choose not to do a thing which from our perspective would seem tofit better with God’s goodness, although it does not tally with what isright. An example given by Augustine is the fall of Adam. It wouldappear in keeping with God’s goodness if he had prevented the fall ofAdam; he has however, for inscrutable reasons, chosen not to do that.184

For other things which He cannot do, it is the case that He can not do

and H.A. Oberman (ed.), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion,Leiden 1974, 26–59. Further F. Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order. An Excursion in theHistory of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz, Ithaca 1984; G. van den Brink, Almighty God. A Studyof the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence, Kampen 1993, 68–92.

182 Hieronymus, Epist. 22 ad Eustochium, 5, CSEL 54, 150: ‘Audenter loquor: cumomnia Deus possit, suscitare virginem non potest post ruinam. Valet quidem liberarede 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.


them because they are contrary to His nature. ‘Can not’ must simply beregarded as ‘does not will to’. It is nonsense to think of God’s capacityapart from his will.

Particularly Anselm is important for the further development of theclassical meaning of the distinction. In his writings he took several stepsthat stimulated reflection on the capacity of God and suggested that inGod 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 inCur Deus Homo. If Christ has taken on a truly human nature, by virtue ofthe communion between the two natures in the divine-human personHe has the communicatio idiomatum, the capacity to do things which aretotally out of keeping with the divine nature, such as to lie and steal.At this point Anselm applies the distinction between being able toand willing. God in Christ has well the ‘bald’ capacity to do all sortsof things, but on account of his divine nature he does not have thecapacity to want to do them. The step which Anselm takes here is tothink 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 necessitasantecedens and necessitas consequens. Necessitas antecedens describes the causeof a particular effect. Necessitas consequens refers to the act as it takesplace or that is a result of an act. The second distinction is related tothis, namely that between an act that is compelled by an external influ-ence and an action that takes place on the basis of a previous, freelymade act of will which the subject imposes on himself.186 Particularlythis latter distinction was to have immense consequences for thinkingabout God, man and the world in terms of covenant. In freedom Godcommits himself to act in a certain manner in his creation and in sacredhistory. It is in keeping with God’s honour to act in conformity withthat 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 definitive for the classicalmeaning of the distinction are already present with Anselm. The differ-ence is that Anselm limits himself to God’s freely chosen obligation. Inits classic form the distinction describes the operation of a covenant interms of a comprehensive system of causes and effects on the basis of

185 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 33.186 Cf. Cur Deus homo, II 5.

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attributed value. The second difference is that while Anselm’s thinkingabout God’s capacity apart from his will has only a hypothetical value,in the classic form that capacity is considered as a real, continuing,although often unused potential.

For the subsequent debate it was important that more and moreemphasis came to be placed on what God had the power to do, apartfrom his will. Against Abelard, who wanted to limit God’s potential towhat really occurred, Hugo of St. Victor, Bernard of Clairveaux andPeter Lombard, for instance, insisted that it was unacceptable that Godcould not do other, or better, than what he actually did. The idea thatdivine goodness was fully realised was unacceptable.

As we have said, with that the accent shifted. If Damian and Anselmnot read non potuit as noluit, in the first decade of the 12th century thestress fell on the posse: ‘potuit, sed noluit’. If at first the distinction had hadGod’s incapacity as its subject, now it became a positive assertion aboutGod’s capability, about his power.187

Added to this was the fact that reflection on the difference betweenGod’s willing and capacity was increasingly used to make room formiracles. In the 12th century, under Aristotelian influence the worldwas more and more being viewed as a place governed by laws. Insuch a world, how were men to regard God’s interventions by meansof miracles? What sort of powers and causes formed the basis formiracles taking place? Questions of this nature led to the expansionof the available concepts. It was assumed that created things had areceptive capacity, a potentia oboedentialis, which made possible a reactionor response on the part of lower natural powers and causes to thehigher, preternatural power of God himself. Courtenay remarks thatwhen, in the late medieval debate, the term potentia absoluta was definedas potentia extraordinaria, it already had a long history of being used in thissense. The world was experienced as responding to God. At that time,such an operationalising of the term potentia absoluta had not yet takenplace. Miracles were thought to belong among the potentia ordinata, asthe definition in the Summa Halensis (1250) demonstrates.

Around 1250 the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordi-nata was taking on its classic form and meaning. The distinction mustnot be regarded as an assertion about two powers in God. It is a man-ner of speaking about the one power of God. Potentia absoluta is used for

187 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 68–69.


speaking of God’s power apart from his will and his concrete deeds increation and sacred history. Potentia absoluta refers to the whole of pos-sibilities that initially stood open for God. These possibilities are onlylimited by the principium non-contradictionis. God can not will and not-will at the same time. Potentia ordinata regards God’s power according towhat 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 statementabout what God can and cannot do. The intention is rather to makea positive statement about his relation to the world. The point of the dis-tinction is God’s binding himself to the order that He has chosen in creation andsacred history. Since God in his Counsel has chosen for this world andthis sacred history, he is approachable on that basis. In light of this, thedistinction first of all says something about the contingency of creation,as opposed to Graeco-Arabic determinism.189 The present order is aproduct of God’s 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 inthe will of God. The difference between willing and potential in God isinterpreted 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 God’s self-binding to a particular order, and when heis thought of as the one who has appointed the laws in his creation,it becomes more difficult to situate miracles within the potentia ordinata.Moreover, the self-binding of God’s power to particular forms and lawsassumes an element of deliberation in God. This assumption is not easyto square with God’s immutabilitas.

In the third quarter of the 13th century, under the influence of adebate carried on by canon lawyers, still another use of the distinctionemerged. Potentia absoluta was understood by analogy with papal powerand sovereignty. The pope was thought to possess the plenitudo potestatiswith which the status ecclesiae must be maintained. The principal of lexdigna, coming from Roman law, encouraged the opinion that the popecould act ex ratione ecclesiae.190 Concretely, that meant that the pope couldgrant dispensation or could act against rights which had been granted,when larger interests or the greater good was served by doing so. Then

188 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 74.189 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 90.190 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 92.

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he acted extra or supra legem. Potentia absoluta at that moment enteredthe sphere of practical actions; the concept was operationalised. Thearticles of 1277must be situated within this historical context. In fact thecondemnations involved propositions according to which God acted exnecessitate. With the condemnations the possibility was kept open thatGod acted directly and unexpectedly. According to Hendrik van Gent,a secular priest in Paris, the pope could use his power to cancel theprivileges of mendicant orders.

According to Courtenay, this development in the meaning of theterm potentia absoluta as a means of thinking of the order of the worldand sacred history as a non-necessary, given order, according to amodel in which potentia absoluta was considered as a sphere of actuallyused power, was unintentionally furthered by Duns Scotus. Duns him-self emphatically did not regard potentia absoluta as a form of practicalaction. However, the debate among the canon lawyers is undeniablyreflected in the definition he gives. According to his definition, the dis-tinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata can be applied toevery possible subject that possesses the capability to will and think.191

Duns hereby attributes an element of free choice to God. Free willapplies to God and mankind. Potentia absoluta is no longer a realm ofpossibilities from which a choice can be made. It is the capacity to actoutside the given order. In this way Duns hands the pope a resourceenabling him to change his mind.

For William of Ockham the distinction has primarily the traditionalmeaning. It is used to explore the boundary between the necessaryand contingent in the reality of creation and grace. Ockham reaffirmsthe explanation that Augustine had already given of the differencebetween willing and capacity to act. God could do much more, butHe does not will it. The concept of potentia absoluta only illuminates that

191 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 101 refers to Ordinatio I. Distinctio 44. OperaOmnia vol IV, 363–369: ‘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 agereconformiter illi legi rectae, et tunc secundum potentiam ordinatam (ordinata enim estin quantum est principium exsequendi aliqua conformiter legi rectae) et potest agerepraeter illam legem vel contra eam, et in hoc est potentia absoluta, excedens potentiamordinatam. Et ideo non tantum in Deo, sed in omni agente libere—qui potest ageresecundum dictamen legis rectae et praeter talem legem vel contra eam—est distinguereinter potentiam ordinatam et absolutam; ideo dicunt iuristae quod aliquis hoc potestfacere de facto, hoc est de potentia sua absoluta,—vel de iure, hoc est de potentiaordinata secundum iura.’ See also Lectura I, 44.


God could have acted differently. The contingency of the given orderis underscored. After all, certain miracles, such as the three men inthe fiery furnace or Elijah’s offering on Carmel, demonstrate that thelaws of nature are not necessary laws, but are contingent. Fire does notalways burn human flesh, and water and fire are not always opposites.The question of whether the incarnation of the Son could have takenplace in a donkey is not asked because it was a serious possibility, but asa means of distinguishing the incidental from the essential. It howevercreates confusion when Ockham regularly creates the impression ofspeaking of actual forms of Divine actions, when he only intends tospeak of the contingency of the world and the order of salvation.

Nevertheless, the operationalising of the term potentia absoluta throughthe debate among canon lawyers unquestionably had influence on theera after Scotus and Ockham. The literature refers to Gabriel Bieland Pierre d’Ailly as examples where potentia absoluta was interpretedas potentia extraordinaria.192

To return to Calvin. His use of the term potentia absoluta as actuallyused power—thus in operationalised form—leads one to suspect thathe became acquainted with the concept as it was being used in thecircles of canon lawyers. It is important for Calvin that an absolutefreedom can never, ever be attributed to God in his actions. Both in thework of creation and in the order of salvation, his actions are alwaysconnected with his wisdom and his goodness. This does not mean, wewould once more emphasise, that man always understands how God’saction rests in his justice and goodness. The fact that they form thepillars of God’s action is something that the believer must accept asan axiomatic point of departure, on the ground of revelation given inScripture.

Calvin’s view of the concept of potentia absoluta also leads one tosuspect that he was not aware of the classic meaning of the pairedconcepts potentia absoluta et ordinata. At least he says nothing about themexplicitly. This in no way has to be in conflict with the proposition thatboth terminologically and in its content Calvin’s theology is permeatedwith the idea of the self-binding of God to a given order. This isparticularly to be seen in the discussion of the work of Christ as ameritum. In still another manner in our study we also already cameacross elements which in terms of their content are related to the

192 See for example van den Brink, Almighty God, 85.

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idea of self-binding. God makes himself known through a variety ofmirrors, and it is therefore logical that believers are referred preciselyto these mirrors for their knowledge of God. The importance of theself-binding of God emerges with particular clarity in his discussion ofelection and Christ as a mirror of election. Believers must derive theirknowledge of God from the means that God has appointed for thatpurpose. These are the mirrors that God intentionally set up, in whichHe makes himself visible. Scripture opens our eyes to God’s goodnessalso being visible in nature, and, most important, Scripture points theway to Christ as the mirror where God’s fatherhood is to be seen. Ourknowing of salvation proceeds in an orderly manner.

None of this detracts from Calvin’s thought that God’s power in acertain sense is related to the late medieval view of God’s power asa potentia extraordinaria. God’s governance of the world does not alwaysproceed through natural laws, through causae secundae. It is also truethat salvation does not always proceed through a given order. Godretains his freedom with regard to the normal means with which Herules the world and draws men to him. God’s might appears as apotentia extraordinaria which governs man and the world and draws themto him through his secret or hidden power. It is crucial however thatthis inimitable quality does not concern the trustworthiness of humanknowledge of salvation. Man’s knowledge of salvation comes throughobediently looking in the mirrors God has set up.

3.12.7. Where faith must look

One could say that Calvin wishes to fix the gaze of the reader ofScripture on the image that is given in Christ. In the discussion ofthe concept of faith we already arrived at the conclusion that theknowledge of faith is an aimed knowledge. It has a scopus, a target, andthat is Christ, who is offered by the Father, as vested in the Gospel.193

In the doctrine of election we read, ‘if we seek for the paternal mercyand favour of God, we must turn our eyes to Christ, in whom alone theFather is well pleased’.194 The knowledge of faith indicates the sourcefrom which believers must draw. ‘If we are elected in Him, we cannotfind the certainty of our election in ourselves; and not even in Godthe Father, if we look at him apart from the Son. Christ, then, is the

193 Inst. 3.2.6.194 Inst. 3.24.5.


mirror in which we ought, and in which without deception we maycontemplate our election.’195 Calvin was aware that this reference toChrist as mirror was threatened when the believer, on the basis ofthe same Bible, seeks to get behind this mirror and open up a pathto the Counsel of God. This was discussed in the previous chapter inconnection with the question of the certainty of salvation. Precisely themanner in which Calvin goes to work here reveals how deeply he wasconvinced that believers for their knowledge of God must turn theireyes to those sources or mirrors in which God lets himself be known,and must not desire to go outside this appointment, this ordinatio. Inthese sources He provides trustworthy knowledge, in human languageand metaphors, acting as a father who out of his own love gives Christand adopts men as his children. With this concept we once againstand before the central metaphor in Calvin’s vision of God. But what,however, is this term worth in Calvin’s conception if one considers thatthis term too is the language of accommodation? How trustworthy isthe knowledge that God offers about himself in Scripture? We return tothis question one more time.

3.13. Once again: God as father

Are metaphors or anthropomorphisms such as father and mother notendangered by the stress on the transcendence of God? Can the formsof accommodation be taken seriously when faith itself also knows thatGod is always still higher and more than the images with which Hemakes himself known? In short, is the value of accommodated lan-guage not undermined by God’s majesty, precisely because He is notswallowed up in his accommodation?

It is my contention that Calvin gives no reason to distrust them.Indeed, the whole of revelation to man is a form of accommodation,a descent of God from his majesty. The already cited comparison thatCalvin makes in this connection is that of a woman feeding her child.In the same way that a woman who communicates with her infantdoes so in baby-talk, God defers to man and gives of himself in a waythat is understandable for the child. According to Calvin this descent isinvolved in all revelation, but that in no way means that every form

195 Ibid. Cf. also De aeterna praedestinatione (1552), CO 8, 318.

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of accommodation must now be qualified as illegitimate. Certainly,when it is said that God has nostrils, a mouth and eyes, snorts, oris drunk,196 then Calvin considers this as excessive accommodation toman’s capacity for understanding, through which a great measure ofillegitimacy accrues to such statements. But I believe I can establishthat there are for Calvin various degrees of accommodation. There aremoments when Calvin drops these reservations regarding the language.Some images are apparently much more precise and fitting than others.I wish to develop this somewhat further.

I do not find in Calvin the smallest trace of fear that accommodationand anthropomorphisms would ultimately undermine the trustworthi-ness of the content of revelation. As we have previously noted, withregard to revelation in the Old Testament he does express this reserva-tion. But in a fundamental sense his doctrine of revelation rejects thisreservation about illegitimacy, and with it distrust. Man must gain hisknowledge regarding God from the mirrors that God holds up beforehim; these he must consult, where the Spirit in Scripture pins himdown and where God shares the metaphors with him most radically.According to Calvin, in Scripture God is actively leading. The studentof Scripture must keep to the pointers given, and not go elsewhere.

There is however no basis whatever to suppose that Calvin wished toundermine the image of father. On the contrary—and to confirm thisI refer to his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. In his explication of thisprayer he offers a surprising perception of this metaphor. ‘With whatconfidence could anyone call God his Father?’ he asks. His answer isthat it is not possible other than through the believers being adoptedas God’s children in Christ. The whole of the metaphor of the familyand adoption is given a key role here, and later in the doctrine of thesacraments. The reason for calling God Father lies in God himself.God takes us into his home as children. ‘Hence he both calls himselfour Father, and is pleased to be so called by us, by this delightfulname relieving us of all distrust, since nowhere can stronger affectionbe found than in a father.’ It is apparent from this quote that Calvinrealises very well that the term father is an ordinary word that has ageneral applicability as a designator. There is however a substantivereason for applying this term to God in particular. ‘His love toward usis so much the greater and more excellent than that of earthly parents,

196 Comm. Ps. 78:65, CO 31, 742.


the farther he surpasses all men in goodness and mercy.’197 In thisexposition there is nothing of the image of an impassive God and ofa threat through his highness. God’s love is not less than that of earthlyfathers, but exceeds it greatly. The affection that earthly fathers have,upon which children can call even if they have misbehaved, is appliedto God without any hesitation.

For if among men a son cannot have a better advocate to plead his causewith his father, and cannot employ a better intercessor to regain his lostfavour, than if he come himself suppliant and downcast, acknowledginghis fault, to implore the mercy of his father, whose parental feelingscannot but be moved by such entreaties, what will that ‘Father of allmercies, and God of all comfort’ do?198

In this quote the appeal to the sublimity of God has an extremelypractical consequence. God’s mercy exceeds that of earthly fathers.That is the practical meaning of the deus semper maior. In the parableof the prodigal son God has sketched out how he himself is, accordingto Calvin:

By setting before us this admirable example of mildness in a man, hedesigns to show in how much greater abundance we may expect itfrom him who is not only a Father, but the best and most merciful ofall fathers, however ungrateful, rebellious and wicked sons we may be,provided we only throw ourselves on his mercy. And the better to assureus that he is such a Father if we are Christians, he has been pleased to becalled not only a Father, but OUR Father.199

The term father may have applicability as a general designator, butfrom a citation like this it is clear how in the language of faith this termbecomes a ‘rigid designator’ and in fact functions as a personal name.200

It also becomes clear that Calvin does not view the metaphorical use asan initiative of mankind, but as a usage that God himself willed andassigned. In his relation with mankind He appoints himself as father,with whose will and whose purposes the children will deal. He commitshimself to this. Of course, the fact remains that God in Christ makinghimself known as Father is a specimen of accommodation and theterm father is an anthropomorphic image, but in these images, derivedfrom the sphere of the family, adoption and meals, God provides very

197 Inst. 3.20.36.198 Inst. 3. 20.37.199 Ibid.200 Cf. I.U. Dalferth, Religiöse Rede von Gott, München 1981, 577.

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precise information about the way in which He intends to relate tomankind. I draw the conclusion that in Calvin’s thought there is agreat difference in the precision and truth of the various metaphorsand anthropomorphisms. Calvin himself has no intention of makingthese distinctions arbitrarily. Rather, he believes distinctions betweenthose images which are less precise and those images in which Godmakes himself known to man in a precise sense, without ambiguity, canbe made on the instruction of the Holy Spirit, by means of Scripture.The trustworthiness of God has its theological guarantee in a conceptof self-revelation, but the final guarantee is in the Spirit who keeps mento the Word given in Christ. God desires to give man something, toaffect him inwardly. The model of the family and adoption offers anapt image for accomplishing this. The pre-eminent place to which Godwill bring his children is the Supper. Our next chapter is devoted tothat.

chapter four

THE SUPPER AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

4.1. Introduction

The preceding two chapters were centrally concerned with the questionof what sources give rise to and support human knowledge of God, andof what comprises this knowledge of God. This closing chapter in thefirst panel concentrates on what is variously termed the Eucharist, theLord’s Table, or, to use the word Calvin himself used, the Supper orla cene. The reason is that in the understanding and experience of thissacrament several characteristic features of Calvin’s conception of theknowledge of God become visible. The doctrine of the Supper revealsin a concentrated manner how Calvin thought about the nature of theknowledge of God, how it was mediated, and what its most importantcontent is. The Supper is not only an illustration of God’s invitationto mankind to enter into communion with Him, but it is also for thepresent its apex.

Although the theological perspective will be dominant in this Chap-ter, it should be noted that this subject is interesting for another reasonas well. One can also point to the wider social function of the Eucharistor Supper. Together with infant baptism the Supper is one of the rarerituals that survives, in comparison with the old situation in the church.In accordance with their nature as public events in religious life they aremoments of direct social and communal importance. Thus the changedsocial and religious situation in Geneva and the demand for public obe-dience to the Word of God somehow had to be expressed surroundingthese rituals. It is therefore not surprising that precisely in relation tothis sacrament a conflict 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 wouldlast until 1541.

The sociological and theological perspectives cannot be separated,not even in Calvin’s own theology. It is undeniable that the sacramentof the Lord’s Supper occupies a central place in Calvin’s own life and

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thought. For him, the church as a sociologically visible organisation infact coincides with the community at the Lord’s Table. There, aroundthe Supper, the church finds its centre. Among other points where thiscan be seen is the view that every member of the church is expectedto participate,1 and the desire that the Supper should be celebratedweekly.2

In order to clarify what is involved in the Supper and how it reflectsthe concept of the knowledge of God, I will trace the theological argu-ments in the debate over the Supper. They are not entirely self-evident.From the modern perspective the debate can perhaps be assessed as asuccession of tragic misunderstandings that could have been avoided ifthose involved had had at their disposal better (that is to say, more mod-ern) concepts. Berkhof ’s critique may serve as representative of this: thedispute over the Lord’s Supper would not have gotten so out of handif people had conceived the media of transmission less in terms of sub-stance and more personalisticly.3 According to Berkhof ’s own theology,the core of the Supper as an instrument of transmission is the ‘effec-tive representation of Christ’,4 the encounter and the acknowledgementof the impossibility of formulating the encounter.5 Berkhof ’s distancinghimself from the concept of sacrament is directly related to his observa-tion that the doctrine of the sacraments has become isolated in Protes-tant theology. The latter is certainly true. The advantage of the newdebate sparked by the Lima report is that reflection now stands in thebroader context of the question of the mediation of salvation, so thatnot only the proclamation of the Word, baptism and the Lord’s Table,but also the place of the other means of mediation are involved in thediscussion.6 This broader context is emphatically absent in Calvin.

Theological debates are rarely interesting only for the sake of theirarguments; there is generally much more at stake. They are not only

1 See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 88–91: 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 theLord’s Table.

2 Christianae Religionis Institutio 1536, Joanne Calvino autore, OS I, 150 en Articlesconcernant L’organisation de l’eglise et du culte à Genève, OS I, 370.

3 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 347.4 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 366.5 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 368.6 Berkhof himself includes what was traditionally discussed under the concept of

the sacraments in a broader pneumatological context of media of transmission. Thushe arrives at nine institutional elements that have a conductive character, whether

the supper and knowledge of god 191

about shifts in the arguments themselves, but ultimately they reflectshifts in the field of spirituality, in the way faith itself is experienced.That is certainly true for the conflict around the Lord’s Supper, andthat is also the case in Calvin. For him, what was at stake in the Sup-per touched on the heart of his theology and his spirituality. In orderto make the contrast with today immediately clear, Calvin’s spirituality,that which he experienced in and around the Supper, is much moredistant from what has come to be called the Reformed view of the Sup-per, and much closer to the ‘material’ experience of Christ’s presence ofthe undivided church in which he had grown up.

One can look back on this conflict as an unnecessary battle, whichunfortunately arose because people did not have the ‘right’ set of con-cepts at their disposal. When today, as in the case of Berkhof, a reducedconcept of the sacrament is criticised and set aside in favour of a widervision of conductive elements of the revelation event, then this expan-sion can undoubtedly be linked up with the breadth that we encounterin Calvin in the ways by which human knowledge of God arises andis guided. At the same time it must be feared that, once the revelationevent is characterised in a personalistic sense as an encounter event,a standard has been established through which those elements in theknowledge of God for which personalism has no regard will disappear.Personalism is itself a critical offshoot of modern subject thinking, inwhich only that which can be distinguished and designated by the sub-ject within his own horizon is of value. Those things which exceed thehorizon of the personal encounter are bracketed off in advance andreduced to that which is of concern within a personalistic perspective.In Calvin one finds a vision of knowledge of God in which both per-sonal terminology and substantialist and physical terminology play arole. In faith the believer discovers himself as a child that is introducedinto a new community, a new entity. This inclusive, more encompassingdimension of a new coherence of life established by Christ becomes asubject of discussion in the conflict about the sacrament. In the imma-nence of Christ justice is done to the personal, but that personal dimen-sion is not without a context, the world.

intentionally or not. See Christian Faith, 348. For a broader discussion in the contextof the doctrine of creation, see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom, Ecumenical Essayson Creation and Sacrament, Justification and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 57–90. For a recentdiscussion of ordained ministry as a medium of transmission, see M. Gosker, Het ambt inde oecumenische discussie. De betekenis van de Lima-ambtstekst voor de voortgang van de oecumene en

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Debates with regard to the Lord’s Table, Eucharist or Supper andits meaning have been long and fierce. One need not think only of theReformation rejection of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstan-tiation. More painful and shameful, and at first sight more remarkable,is the dissension within the Reformed camp itself. These differenceswere raised in successive religious discussions, and there were momentswhen it appeared that a consensus had been reached.7 But the mistrustremained and the splits among Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvin-ism were the result. In these discussions Calvin tried to take a middleposition, and hazarded various attempts to effect reconciliation. HisPetit Traicté de la Saincte Cene (1541) and the negotiations with Bullingerthat ultimately led to the Consensus Tigurinus (1549) are prominent exam-ples of this effort. But we must record that he did not succeed in hisaim.

It lies outside the issues being dealt with in this book to answer thequestion of to what degree the cause of that failure lay within Calvinhimself. One can at the most state that he employed a terminologywhich made him suspect from both sides. In the eyes of Zwingli’s dis-ciples it leaned heavily toward a substantialist view of the presence ofChrist in the Supper. In their eyes Calvin stood close to the RomanCatholic doctrine of transubstantiation, or at least leaned toward theLutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. Luther’s followers took a dia-metrically opposite position. Westphal and Heshusius placed Calvinclose to the spiritualism of Zwingli, and in their own way continuedLuther’s conflict with Zwingli and Bucer. To their mind, with Calvinthere is nothing left of the real presence of Christ in the Supper, hispresentia realis, and they criticised him on that score. For Calvin it wasstill only a matter of memory and intellect. Calvin absolutely couldnot recognise his own position in these accusations, and repeatedlydefended himself.8

Our subject in this chapter is not the arguments of the disciplesof Luther and Zwingli in themselves.9 They only enter consideration

de doorwerking in de Nederlandse SOW-Kerken, Delft, 2000 and E.A.J.G. van der Borght, Hetambt her-dacht, Zoetermeer 2000.

7 See G.W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchenge-schichte, Göttingen 1979, 310–318.

8 See J.N. Tylenda, ‘Calvin and Westphal: Two Eucharistic Theologies in Conflict’in: W.H. Neuser/H.J. Selderhuis/W. van ’t Spijker (ed.), Calvin’s Books. Festschrift dedicatedto Peter De Klerk on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Heerenveen 1997, 9–21.

9 For a useful survey see W. Köhler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl


to the extent that it is necessary to recognise the characteristic waythat Calvin took, since Calvin’s views on the Supper, together with hisexperience of it, can serve as a mirror in which all that he meant byknowledge of God or knowledge of faith appear in concentrated form.

Calvin experienced the long and debilitating dispute in Reformationcircles about the Supper as unnecessary and shameful. He ultimatelydid not know how to cope with it. He characterised the doctrine of theeucharistic meal, as it had developed since Paschasius Radbertus (832)and been laid down by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) as the doc-trine of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, as nothing morethan a furious attempt by Satan to deter simple believers from fellow-ship with God.10 With this critical attitude Calvin fits into Renaissanceculture, and he has his own variant for putting paid to what had takenplace in the preceding centuries of theological debate. The miracle ofthe last decades, he wrote in his Petit Traicté, is that in such a short timethe Lord has brought leading figures out of the net of error in whichmen had been ensnared for so long.11 But he showed his deep unhap-piness at the discord that had now arisen. It is entirely consistent withCalvin’s own doctrine of providence when he says that not only doesSatan have a hand in this, but that it is ultimately the Lord himself whointends to humble his servants with this affliction. The Lord and Satancan both play their role on this stage, but that does not place man inthe role of marionette or mannequin. Calvin, we might say, did all thathe could to play his own role as protagonist and take responsibility inthis debate.

Everything indicates that for Calvin this difficult dispute was not overtrifling matters. With this, at least, his partners in the debate were inagreement. The reason why the conflict was carried out with so muchpassion, or even bitterness, had to do with the importance of the issuethat was at stake, according to all concerned. It was about the real-ity of salvation itself. Or more precisely, the issue was the question ofhow man takes part in that salvation. Is that only through proclama-tion and faith? All the parties were in agreement about the centrality ofproclamation. They were also in agreement that the celebration of theSupper is closely coupled with the proclamation, and means something

nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen. Bd. 1 und 2, Leipzig 1924–1953 (=NewYork/London 1971).

10 See Inst. 4.17.1. See also OS I, 517, 527.11 OS I, 527.

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for participation in salvation. The question was only, what role did itplay? Why was this precisely the sticking point? Does this not funda-mentally call into question the church with its offices, rituals and cere-monies? The Reformation took leave of a concept in which the officialchurch was self-evidently the embodiment of and dispenser of grace.The presence of God was no longer congruent with the church and itssacraments. In that case, are the church and its sacraments not amongthose outward things that are of little or subordinate importance? Inthis connection I wish to discuss several observations by Graafland soas to point out some of the ambivalences that particularly dominatedReformation theology on the church, offices and sacraments.

Graafland has pointed out that formally Calvin’s discussion of thecontent of faith in the Institutes is within the plan of his discussion ofthe themes of the Apostles’ Creed. This coincides with the first threebooks 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 ofthe elect leads to the hollowing out of the concept of covenant as aprimary theological category. Participation in the covenant is still notparticipation in eternal salvation. The consequence of all this is a mea-sured dualism in the view of the church; one unintended effect mightbe disregard of the visible church.12 All this critique is just. However, itappears to me to be incorrect to also suggest on the grounds of this thatthe outward means, which are discussed in Book IV, have little weighttheologically. This brings Calvin’s own theology all too easily undersuspicion of spiritualism. That might be the result in a time in whichinterior and exterior, inner experience and world experience are sepa-rated from one another, or a perspective on their mutual relationshipsis no longer acknowledged, but does not apply for Calvin’s pre-moderntheology. With Calvin there is a theological line that keeps the institu-tional church and inward and outward communion with Christ closeto one another. In the preceding chapters we have frequently seen howconsiderable and fundamental the role is that Calvin grants to externalreality in the way that knowledge of God comes. One might even speakof a sacramental function of outward, created reality. Outward means

12 C. Graafland, Kinderen van één moeder. Calvijns visie op de kerk volgens zijn Institutie,Kampen 1989, 51.


which God uses in a specific sense, such as preaching, the church,sacraments and the authorities, are no less essential because of theiroutwardness. The fourth book of the Institutes deals with ‘the outwardmeans or aids through which God invites us to fellowship with Christ,and preserves us therein.’13 Reading what Calvin then writes of theseaids, one discovers that theologically they receive their stature becauseGod is pleased to invite man by means of them. ‘Outward’ is any-thing but synonymous with ‘non-essential’ or ‘unimportant’. The out-ward world is just as much theologically charged as the inward world.God relates to it in an immediate way and appears in it ‘in a certainmanner’, thus in ever-changing ways. A direct line connects Calvin’stheological appreciation for creation to the place of the sacraments inhis thought.14

4.2. What is a sacrament?

4.2.1. Only a cognitive advantage?

Chapter 2 discussed by which means God invites men to knowledgeof Him. One can rightly say that for Calvin the created world plays apowerful guiding role on the path to knowledge of God. For all that,however, the natural world is not in itself a sacrament. One can onlyspeak of sacraments if God has chosen the element from the createdworld as a sign of his promise.15 With this it immediately becomes clearthat Calvin’s concept of the sacraments must be understood against thebackground of a long tradition that stems from Augustine, in whichnotions from a general hermeneutic or semiology go hand in handwith specific theological or soteriological notions. The doctrine of thesacraments is a field where doctrines of creation and soteriology cometogether. Augustine proceeded from a general ontological distinction,

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 hetsacrament als heilzaam symbool in een weerbarstige werkelijkheid, Zoetermeer 1991, 43–52. Cf. alsoM. den Dulk ‘De verzoeking Christus te representeren’ in: M.E. Brinkman/A. Houte-pen, Geen kerk zonder bisschop, Utrecht 1997, 115–129, which in connection with officepoints to two lines in Calvin: one line in which the office arises from the commu-nity, and a line in which the office is rooted in the hierarchical structure of God’sgovernance.

15 Inst. 4.14.18.

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namely that between thing, res, and sign, signum. For instance, words aresigns for the things to which they refer. Signs are also things themselves,to wit res significans. 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 eternalthings, because left to himself he would remain stuck among earthlyor temporal things. Here only the remedy of a given sign, a signumdatum, can help. At this point a distinction that is of eminent impor-tance within the theological use of semiotics comes into sight, namelythe distinction between the natural sign and the given sign. A fox spooris a natural sign that a fox has been at a particular spot. A given signinvolves, for example, a gesture or a facial expression, or is more fre-quently connected with the sense of hearing.16 Language or the spokenword is thus the given sign or signum datum par excellence. After all, aword 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, accordingto Augustine we can gather them under the broad meaning of ‘word’and language, and speak of visible words, verba visibilia. In Augustine’sanalysis of the sacrament these general ontological considerations enterinto connections with specific theological matters. A sacrament includesa natural element and a word which stems from the field of belief andrevelation. Because the verbum fidei is spoken, the sacrament mediatesthe enduring things that are of God. ‘Accedit verbum ad elementum etfit sacramentum, etiam ipsum tanquam visibile verbum.’17 Thus thereis a distinction made between that which mediates, the sacramentum reior the res significans, and that which is mediated, the res sacramenti. Withregard to sacraments, this also makes clear what they are. The selectionof 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 thatthere must be a certain resemblance between the sign and thing. Forinstance, it is abundantly clear that a tertium comparationis exists betweenthe water of baptism and the cleansing from sin, or between breadand wine and the body and blood of Christ as spiritual food for thesoul, which makes the analogy possible.18 The emphasis is not how-ever on the naturalness of the sign, or with the people who seek asymbol, but on God as the One who gives it its significance. It is not

16 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II.2.3; CCSL 32, 33.17 Augustine, Joh.Ev.Tract. 80, 3; CCSL 36, 529.18 OS I, 521.


man who assigns it significance, reads or interprets it. He simply fol-lows God, ‘who at his pleasure makes all the elements subservient tohis glory’.19 Calvin also points to various accounts in the Old Testa-ment in which an element from created reality becomes a sacrament.But this sacramental function was of a temporary or incidental nature,such as the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:17), the rainbow for Noah (Gen. 9:13),circumcision (Gen. 17:10) and Gideon’s fleece (Judges 6:37). Each hastemporarily fulfilled a role in God’s dealings with man. For Calvin it isbeyond dispute that other elements of created reality also function tolead to God, but that does not yet make them sacraments. Thereforeonly those actions that are included by God’s ordinance can be termedsacraments.20 Sacrament rests upon a choice by God. Sacraments areonly those actions that are instituted by Jesus Christ himself, and towhich he has conferred a particular significance. According to his defi-nition, a sacrament is

‘an external sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences his promisesof good-will toward us, in order to sustain the weakness of our faith, andwe in turn testify our piety towards him, both before himself, and beforeangels as well as men.’21

Various components can be distinguished in this careful definition.First, it is clear how closely the understanding of the sacraments islinked with the understanding of faith. The content of the thing withwhich the sacramental act deals is the good will of God toward us,his benevolentia. A sacrament is therefore qualified as an act of God’sturning toward man, with which He confirms his promises of salvationto mankind. Only secondarily is the sacrament an action in which menalso do something, namely testify before the forum of the world and theinvisible world of the angels. With this testimony faith or piety takes ona public character.

The peculiarity of the way in which God acts in the sacrament isdescribed by the words ‘seal’ and ‘sustain’. What precisely are we tounderstand by these notions of sealing and sustaining? As it standshere, the sacrament primarily appears to be nothing other than a con-

19 Inst. 4.14.18: ‘qui pro suo arbitrio elementis omnibus in obsequium gloriae suaeutatur.’

20 Inst. 4.14.19.21 Inst. 4.14.1: ‘… externum esse symbolum, quo benevolentiae erga nos suae pro-

missiones conscientiis nostris Dominus obsignat ad sustinendam fidei nostrae imbecelli-tatem: et nos vicissim pietatem erga eum nostram tam coram eo et Angelis quam apudhomines testamur.’

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firmation by God to man, a reinforcement of the certainty that mancan entertain toward God and his promises.22 Does that mean thatthe sacrament is a thick underscoring of something that man alreadyknows from proclamation? Or does the meaning of sealing and sustain-ing transcend a cognitive act? It is not easy to determine precisely whatCalvin’s own position is. Does it consist, as Hartvelt suggests, of a ‘cog-nitive plus’ toward man?23 At first glance one is inclined to accept thisconclusion. The fact is, from the definition of a sacrament it appearsthat what is made visible to man in the sacraments has already beenreceived in faith. Calvin strongly opposed the idea that participation insalvation could only be obtained by participation in the sacrament.24

Faith is and remains the central moment in the concept of knowledgeof God, because in it the Holy Spirit enables man to share in Christ.To this extent the assertion is true that ontologically the sacraments addnothing to that which has already been received in faith.

It seems to me however that the point of Calvin’s theology is beingmissed if one stops with this conclusion. Anyone reading what Calvinhas to say on the Supper finds it impossible to escape the impressionthat the Supper in fact meant more for him. They discover a ‘plus’ thatis inadequately designated with the adjective ‘cognitive’, particularly ifone interprets cognitive in its limiting sense as intellectual. In crucialpassages it appears that what we already remarked with regard toCalvin’s concept of the knowledge of God is also true for the Lord’sTable. Knowing God is more than an intellectual act. In the Supperbelievers are fed with ‘the body and blood of Jesus Christ’, as thestubbornly maintained formula puts it. Anticipating the conclusion ofthis chapter I will propose: In Calvin’s thought regarding the Supper,

22 In Inst. 4.14.13 he rejects the derivation for the word sacrament that Zwinglihad given in De vera et falsa religione. For Zwingli the sacrament is the battle flag uponwhich the soldier swears loyalty to his commander. With it he affirms something tohis general. Calvin argues that the Latin writers were no longer aware of this meaningwhen they chose the word ‘sacrament’. They understood nothing more by it than asacred 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, theword sacrament is derived from the Greek musterion (Inst. 4.14.2). As the New Testamentuses musterion for a hidden thing that God makes visible to man, so in the sacrament ahidden thing, God’s goodwill, is made visible.

23 G.P. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus. Een studie over een centraal hoofdstuk uit de avondmaalsleer vanCalvijn, Delft 1960, 115. See also B. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology ofJohn Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 127–133.

24 See for instance his commentary on John 6:47, CO 47, 151.


but particularly in his experience of the supper, there is an element thathas found little or no reception in Reformed theology. In the way thatit takes, both conceptually and spiritually the knowledge of God hasan involvement with the physical and sensory which has been lost inCalvin’s intellectual heirs. The entrance to salvation is embedded in thematerial, in the world of the senses. The Spirit is not in opposition tothe material, the external, but dwells in it, uses it and stimulates manfrom all sides to permit himself to be taken along.

4.2.2. Sign and thing

The real significance of the sacrament in addition to the preaching isthat it sets more clearly before our eyes, or better yet, internalises whatthe proclamation is about. The sacraments are signs that obtain theirmeaning through the word that the preacher speaks. To call on Augus-tine’s definition, ‘Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum.’25

But evidently in the sacramental act something more happens with thatwhich has already come to people in the proclamation. The sacra-mental act sustains the knowledge, increases and confirms it. Calvinadduces various examples from daily life to illustrate the function of theLord’s Table. He reminds his readers of the old custom of slaughteringa pig when a treaty was concluded. He reaches into the world of archi-tecture: sacraments are the columns that support the roof. He reachesfor other metaphors, specifically one which has been present promi-nently in the study of the knowledge of God in this section: the mirror.Sacraments are a mirror in which God’s benevolence becomes visible.26

That benevolence is the thing to which the signs refer, or rather, thething which comes along in the signs.

Calvin is classic in the distinction between sign and thing. He followsAugustine. The sacrament is rei sacrae visibile signum.27 That is to say,the sacramental act refers to a thing which is certainly connected tothe sign, but which nevertheless must be distinguished from it. Bothparts of this assertion, the connection and the distinction, are of equalimportance for Calvin, as we will see further on. The sign is notindependent of the thing. The sacramental act as such may thus never

25 Augustine, Homilia in Johannem 13; In Ioh. tract. 80,3, MSL 35, 1840. CSEL 25 I,512, 19ff..

26 Inst. 4.14.5.27 Inst. 4.14.1.

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be isolated from the word that it contains.28 This means a repudiationof sacramentalism and magic and a key role for faith, with which theWord is accepted.

The work of the Holy Spirit has a central place in the doctrine of theSupper, even as it has in faith. But precisely the work of the Holy Spirittakes multiple forms. Not everything is accomplished in proclamationand faith. ‘For, first, the Lord teaches and trains us by his word; next,he confirms us by his sacraments; lastly, he illumines our mind by thelight of his Holy Spirit, and opens up an entrance into our hearts forhis word and sacraments, which otherwise would only strike our ears,and fall upon our sight, but by no means affect us inwardly.’29 The HolySpirit is ‘the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart,stirs up the affections, and procures access for the sacraments into oursouls.’30 Without this Spirit, without faith, we are like the blind in fulldaylight or the deaf in a world full of sound. If there is no organ tosee or hear, images and sounds cannot reach us. The Holy Spirit thusfirst brings us to understanding. The work of the Spirit is not howeverlimited to enabling perception among men. There is a second aspectto the work of the Holy Spirit: the sacraments themselves are onlyeffective because the Spirit takes them into service in order to convinceand persuade men. Without that they would be ‘empty and frivolous’.31

But that means that these sacraments do not stand apart, and couldactually be dispensed with, but that through the sacraments the Spiritvery much brings man along and helps him on the way.

4.3. Sacrament as a form of accommodation

The gift of the sacrament is immediately linked with the situation inwhich men find themselves as created beings. In the previous chapterwe have seen that this situation is not defined by sin alone. It also hasto do with the place that man has in the hierarchy of being.

28 Inst. 4.14.15.29 Inst. 4.14.8: ‘Nam primum verbo suo nos docet et instituit Dominus: deinde

sacramentis confirmat: postremo sancti sui Spiritus lumine mentibus nostris illucet:et aditum in corda nostra verbo ac sacramentis aperit, quae alioqui aures duntaxatpercellerent, et oculis observarentur, interiora minime afficerent.’

30 Inst. 4.14.9: ‘… interior ille magister Spiritus … cuius unius virtute et cordapenetrantur, et affectus permoventur, et sacramentis in animas nostras aditus patet.’

31 Inst. 1.14.9: ‘… inane et frivole …’


The characterisation that Calvin gives of the condition humaine strikesour ears today as frankly alienating. With endless frequency we hear thelist of what typifies man, namely his ignorance, sloth and weakness.32

Through his body, man is still bound to the earth. In all sorts ofways his existence is defined by the cares and limitations that this lifebrings with it. Calvin can say that we still creep like animals along theground. In short, man’s station is low, and God must descend deeplyto reach mankind.33 The sacraments are therefore typical examplesof God’s accommodation to the low station of man.34 God descendsand accommodates himself to man’s capacity to understand in order todraw him into fellowship in this way, by means that man understandsand in which he himself participates.

In Calvin’s day this positive regard for the sacraments as means ofaccommodation was anything but a generally accepted idea. His posi-tion is interesting because on the one hand it guards against objec-tivism or sacramentalism, and on the other hand does not surrenderto the rising spiritualism. At the same time, maintaining this via mediamakes his position vulnerable on both sides. On the one side he defendshimself against the spiritualist views according to which God can workvery well in the faithful without physical means. Because of his empha-sis on the mediating work of the Holy Spirit, Calvin himself is oftenunderstood in this sense, and from the Lutheran side identified with thethought of Zwingli. Zwingli had emphasized that the Holy Spirit hadno need of means.35 Calvin does not contest that God would be able todo this.36 That is not really the point. The important thing is that it hasbeen God’s will to make use of this means. Making use of a physicalmeans is in no way an offense to God’s honour.37 It is his disposition tomake use of these signs in order to convince man by means of them.One can not forbid God to make use of these signs to illumine ourheart, Calvin says, in the same way as our eye is stimulated by a medi-ating beam of light.38 In other words, it simply pleases God to use these

32 Inst. 4.14.3.33 Inst. 4.14.3: ‘quomodo nostrae ignorantiae ac tarditati primum, deinde infirmitati

opus esse Deus providet.’34 Inst. 4.14.3. See also Petit traicté de la Saincte cene, OS I, 505, 520.35 H. Zwingli, Fidei ratio ad Carolum V (1530), Corpus Reformatorum 93 II, 803–804.36 For instance, in connection with infant baptism, see Inst. 4.16.19.37 Inst. 4.14.10.38 Inst. 4.14.10.

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means in his dealings with man, and men must accept that.39 One mustnot seek to deny the revelation we have been given.

4.4. The meaning of the meal

4.4.1. The family

We have suggested that one can consider the meal as an intersectionwhere various lines which are definitive for the existence of the believervisibly come together. In his Petit Traicté de la Saincte Cene Calvin sums upthree functions.40 The Supper is primarily intended as a gift, throughwhich God internalises the promises that are contained in the gospel.Or more precisely, God binds the promises to the consciences of men.God does this by making man a sharer of Christ, of his body and blood,de son corps et de son sang. This expression may sound strange, not to saybizarre, to us, but for Calvin it is essential to put it in this way, and noother. I will return to this point.

The second purpose of the Supper is to call upon the faithful toacknowledge God’s goodness toward them. In the Supper man findsreason to praise God and to live a life of gratitude. From here one candraw connections to the theme of obedience and sanctification. Finally,the third purpose is related to the visible community in which theSupper is celebrated, and in which people thus participate: the church.One who shares in the Supper is thereby included in the church, andis then called to a holy, purified life, and in particular to a living inharmony with his or her other brothers and sisters.

39 It is this element that has gone unnoticed for a long time in the catholic recep-tion of Calvin’s theology. See for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, translated byD. Foxgrover and W. Provo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1987 (= Le jeune Calvin: Genèseet évolution de sa vocation réformatrice, Wiesbaden 1966). In this study Ganoczy reaches theconclusion that in Calvin all emphasis lies on the distinction between the human anddivine, 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 Calvin’s pneumatology serves not only to affirmGod’s absolute freedom in his saving acts but also to support a dynamic understandingof the sacraments, which in many ways is quite close to the doctrine of the Eucharistin the Eastern Churches. It makes possible a theology of epiclesis.’ The closeness ofCalvin’s theology to Eastern Orthodoxy is something to which I would subscribe. Seefurther 4.4.3.

40 OS I, 505–506.


The following paragraphs limit themselves principally to the firstintention. The reason is anything but that the latter two purposes arebeside the point. They both have to do with the intended response fromman, and refer to the themes of the law, sanctification and the visiblechurch. A discussion would however lead us outside the plan of thisstudy.

What is the salvation, actually, that is offered in the church in theproclamation and the celebration of the Supper? This question dealswith its reality. Images and metaphors sometimes express what peoplewant to say more precisely than abstract definitions do. Later theolog-ical heirs have perhaps frequently been fascinated by Calvin’s defini-tions, but his first hearers pricked up their ears rather at the images andmetaphors with which his tracts and, above all, his sermons overflow.They evoke the concrete world of the family household, adoption, andmeals. Here we can refer back to the conclusions of the previous chap-ter about the image of God as father. Never for a moment does one getthe impression that the thought ever occurred to Calvin himself thatthe image of a father could become eroded as a metaphorical image forthe relation between God and man. Something similar is true for themeal.

The prominent place that the metaphor of the family has in Calvin’stheology of the sacraments, including in the Petit Traicté, is telling.Calvin firmly believes that the image of the family is the mediumthrough which God lets us see how he wishes to relate to mankind.That is true both for baptism and the Supper. According to Calvin,God takes man into his family through baptism, not as a boarder, butas an adopted child, with full rights. The walls of the church are in factthe walls of God’s house.41 The image of the family appears not onlyin the discussion of baptism, but also is the background for the Supper.God is visualised as the father who has adopted us as his children andfeeds us at his table as his children. The food consists of the life that isfound in Jesus Christ. It is given to us in Word and Sacrament. Whenunpacked, this gift appears to consist of multiple gifts—benefactions, asCalvin says. Men receive forgiveness, the promise of eternal life, a sharein sanctification, in perseverance.

What sort of people are these who are given a place at the tablein this house? The necessity for receiving a share in these benevolences

41 OS I, 504.

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becomes painfully clear when one sees the state, according to Calvin, ofthe people to whom the invitation comes. Here we should be remindedof what was said in previous chapters about the function of consciencein knowledge of God. Calvin proceeds from the idea that the peoplewho come together for the Supper are people in need, and that theythemselves recognise this need. It is not something they have beenpersuaded of; they recognise it as their own world. Anyone who looksinto his or her own heart knows very well that this is a wasted lifeand that there is no scrap of righteousness to be found there.42 Nothingfrom outside need be called upon to arrive at that judgement; our ownconscience is sufficient to remind us that we have fallen into death andiniquity. In short, if we take our own inner world under consideration,we see a structure that cannot stand, one rotting away. It is at thatjuncture that the Supper holds a mirror up before us, in which thereappears another image, namely that of the crucified 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 HolySpirit in the bread and wine. What does Calvin mean by this? Whatdid he want to say in this discussion that was carried on with conceptsderived from Aristotelian metaphysics? First we must note what hedid not intend. He did not intend any view in which the presence ofChrist 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 noinherent power of their own. The power of the Spirit, everlasting life,is not inherent in the substance. The effect of the sacrament does notlie in the performance of the act itself, ex opere operato. Were that so,sign and thing, signum and res, would be identified with one another inan improper way, a view that Calvin encounters in Peter Lombard.44

In Calvin’s concept the bread and the wine that the believer drinksremain bread and wine, and nothing else.45 The physical element neverreceives 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, 168–170 comes to the conclusion that Calvin quotes only from the fourthbook of the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, in an extremely selective manner, and with adeclared polemic intention.

45 Inst. 4.17.15.


remains God, who works through the power of the Spirit. We mightsay that with this Calvin maintains the moment of freedom of God’sact over against any possible form of sacramentalism.

For that reason he disputes both the Roman Catholic doctrine oftransubstantiation and the position defended by the Lutherans, usuallydenoted as consubstantiation. In Calvin’s view the words spoken at theconsecration are a magic formula through which the bread and wineare reputed to be changed with regard to their substance. But alsothe view defended by the Lutherans, the doctrine of consubstantiation,that Christ is physically present ‘in, under and with’ the elements ofbread and wine, goes too far for him. The body of Christ would thusbecome omnipresent, have an ubiquity ascribed to it that supposesthat the nature of that body has undergone a complete alteration.Because of this supposition he also separates himself from the Lutheranposition. A human body implies spatial limits, and although Jesus afterhis resurrection was glorified, 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 andwine remain unchanged, but Christ, according to his corporal nature,is present in the form of the bread and wine. The capacity to be in aninfinite number of places at the same time is ascribed to the humannature of Christ on the basis of the connection with the divine naturethat there is in the unique person of Jesus Christ.46 It is a development

46 We should refer here to the development of the concept of a communicatio idiomatumin Lutheran theology. From as early as John of Damascus, the foremost theologian ofthe 8th century, the doctrine that provides a reflection on the consequences of theunio personalis has been designated by this term. Traditionally it has been acceptedthat the union of two natures in the one person implies that the qualities of bothnatures can be predicated for that one person. This is true, however, not only forthe being of Jesus, but also for his works. The reference is the unique person. Onthe Lutheran side theologians spoke of a genus apotelesmaticum, on the Reformed sideof a genus operationum. With Luther one also however finds a development in whichthe qualities of the divine nature are communicated to the human nature, the genusmaiestaticum. The human nature shares in the omnipresence of the divine nature. In theother direction, one can argue that the divine nature must share in the limitation andvulnerability of the human nature (genus tapeinoticum). The traditional objection is that inthis manner one arrives at the proposition that the divine nature could suffer and die.In his remarks in Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis (1528) Luther has apparently indeedseen this objection and nevertheless is willing to accept the idea of the involvement ofthe divine nature in suffering, WA 26, 320:10–14; 321:5–10: ‘Denn wenn ich gleube, dasallein die menschliche natur fur mich gelidden hat, so ist mir der Christus ein schlechterheiland, so bedarff er wol selbs eines heilands. Summa, es ist unsaglich was der teuffelmit der Alleosi sucht … weil Gottheit und menschheit ynn Christo eine Person ist, so

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of the idea of the communicatio idiomatum into a genus maiestaticum, as thatis found in Luther. One might say that in this concept the incarnationdefinitively prescribes the manner of Christ’s presence. The incarnationoffers the model of God’s presence.

Calvin also wants to retain a real presence of Christ in the Supper,but he places the accents elsewhere. Theological theory and personalexperience go hand in hand here. Distance and communication, theAscension and the work of the Holy Spirit are defining factors. Ascen-sion stands for the distance, and the Spirit for the connection: withregard to his human nature, Jesus Christ is far away, in heaven on thethrone next to God the Father. In the Supper however the believer isfed with the blood and flesh of Christ,47 even though since the Ascen-sion the Crucified One is no longer on earth in any form whatsoever.Calvin thus also sees the cross as the deepest point of God’s approachand accommodation to man. It is the moment at which God’s majestyis no longer visible. But this moment is not definitive for the nature ofGod’s continuing presence. The history of the cross is made produc-tive in the dynamics of Ascension and Pentecost. The Spirit guaranteesthe connection. He is the One who ever and again spans distance andspace, connecting that which is far separated. That leads to another,eschatological accent, reaching above and to the future.

I will go into this more deeply. In Calvin’s judgement, the conceptsby which the presence of Christ are linked to the physical elements ofbread and wine do not take account of the situation after Ascension.Ascension implies that with regard to his humanity, thus with body andmembers, Christ is taken away and remains in heaven. By virtue of thepower and glory that Christ since then shares with God the Father, heexercises his rule on earth. Thereby He is, as we read, ‘not limited byany intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions’. Christmanifests his presence in his potentia and virtus.48

gibt die schrifft umb solcher personlicher einichkeit willen auch der gottheit ales wasder menschheit widderferet und widerümb … Denn das müstu ia sagen. Die person(zeige Christum) leidet stirbet. Nu ist die person wahrhaftiger Gott, drumb ists rechtgeredt Gottes son leidet …’ The cross invites us to think of God’s nature as involved inhuman suffering and death. Correctly, theology in our time has attempted to go furtheralong this path. The question is how this relates to the pathos that we encounter inCalvin surrounding the distinction between heaven and earth which is never ever givenup. Or do we find in Calvin himself other notions when the salvation of man is theissue?

47 OS I, 506.48 Inst. 4.17.18.


Several times already we have had occasion to refer to the distinctionthat is fundamental for Calvin’s understanding. This is the distinctionbetween the heavenly and the earthly, the spiritual and the physical,between body and soul. These are fundamental dichotomies that arebased on God’s will.49 The problem with the concepts of transubstanti-ation and consubstantiation is that, in his view, they do not respect theboundary between heaven and earth. They mix up that which God hasseparated. According to Calvin they are intellectual attempts to get ahold on something which cannot be grasped by the human mind. Thepresence of Christ is distrained by perishable elements of this world,and in this He is robbed of his glory.50 He considers both Luther’sview and the doctrine of transubstantiation as concepts through whichChrist is in fact robbed of his concrete corporeality and turned into aghost.

In Calvin’s eyes these views thus run counter to the God-givenorder. A body is defined by space and delimitation; it has a certainplace.51 If in the Supper the flesh of Christ becomes ubiquitous, andthus is present everywhere that the Lord’s Table is celebrated, it nolonger satisfies the definition of spatial delimitation. It takes on qualitiesthat are characteristic of the divine. This is the same as rejectingthe principium non-contradictionis. Westphal, from his side, responds byaccusing Calvin of not taking seriously the words of the Bible andas a result underestimating the might of God. He attacks Calvin ata point which is for him an axiomatic basic assumption, but whichprecisely because of their allegiance to the concrete word of the Biblewas regarded differently within Lutheran circles. He argues that Calvinincorrectly declares the general laws of nature to apply to the glorifiedbody of Christ. Thus accusations of intellectualisation fly back andforth from both sides.

Calvin defended himself against the accusation of shortchanging thebiblical witness, and lobbed the same accusation back. Unlike West-phal, he argues that with their concept Luther’s followers impermissi-bly overthrow an arrangement that comes from God. In fact he accusesthem of what one might call anachronistic biblicism. According toCalvin the starting point for the reading and exposition of Scripturemust be that each word in the Bible has precisely the same meaning

49 OS I, 144.50 OS I, 521. Inst. 4.17.19.51 Inst. 4.17.24 and Inst. 4.17.29.

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everywhere. He says that with each passage the exegete ‘with placiddocility and a spirit of meekness’ must make an effort to understandthe teachings that come from heaven. We do our best, he says, toobtain understanding, not only through dutifulness, but also by pre-cision. Westphal, he thinks, has failed in the latter. The meaning of apassage is not the first thing that comes into our mind. Diligent thoughtis necessary, and in it we will embrace the meaning that God brings tous through the Spirit.52 From the heights we attain we look down onwhatever opposition may arise from worldly wisdom.

Calvin felt the accusation of his Lutheran opponents that in his viewthe presence of Christ in the Supper evaporated into a notion or amemory was a total misrepresentation of his position. In the followingsection we will return to how he responded conceptually to the spatialproblem that is a given with Ascension. For now it will suffice to saythat Calvin to his own conviction confessed nothing other than the realpresence of Christ in the Supper. In the Supper one does not receiveonly a share in the Spirit53 or the benefits of Christ. Jesus Christ ismaterial and substance.54 Or put more sharply, what is partaken of isthe flesh and blood of Christ. What did Calvin mean by this?

4.4.3. Flesh and blood

That Calvin so stubbornly insisted that we share in the flesh andblood of Christ has caused no little wonderment in the history ofresearch. For him, the terminology from John 6 is holy. He speaks ofcaro vivifica, the life-giving flesh of Christ,55 of the body of Christ thatis the only food of the soul which must be vivified. In the history ofresearch this has led to the question of whether we are here dealingwith a Catholic remnant in Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper.56 In hisstudy on Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper, Hartvelt pointed out that onedefinitely does not do justice to Calvin if they skip over these ideas and

52 Inst. 4.17.25: ‘… placida docilitate et spiritu mansuetidinis …’53 Inst. 4.17.7.54 OS I, 507.55 Inst. 4.17.8. Cf. the ‘lack of ease’ on this point with C. Trueman, ‘The Incarnation

and the Lord’s Supper’ in: D. Peterson (ed), The Word became Flesh. Evangelicals and theIncarnation, Carlisle 2003, 200–201.

56 Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 2–7, refers for instance to J.W. Nevin, The MysticalPresence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Philadelphia1846.


interpret them figuratively.57 Nonetheless, the metaphorical view gainedthe upper hand. Through John à Lasco this view has become the usualinterpretation in Reformed theology.58

Why did Calvin so tenaciously hold to the concept of the ‘flesh andblood of Christ’? Here lies the core, the vital and indispensable momentin Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper—or more precisely, the nucleus of hisdoctrine of the knowledge of God. What Calvin says of participationin the flesh and blood of Christ is not limited to the Supper. On thecontrary, in his exegesis of John 6 he makes it clear time after time thatit would be improper to think that Jesus is speaking here only aboutthe Supper. In its content, the terminology from John 6 describes thatwhich takes place in the mystic union between the believer and Christ.Communion with the life-giving flesh and blood of Christ also takesplace outside participation in the Supper, extra Coenae usum.59

There are at least four reasons that can be given why Calvin sotenaciously speaks of communion with the ‘flesh and blood’ of Christ.First, Scriptural considerations play a tremendous role. In insisting onthe words ‘flesh and blood’ Calvin tried to be obedient to that whichhe believed he read in Scripture. After all, the biblical writers and theirtexts are the means through which God holds up divine wisdom beforemen. Evidently God has found it necessary to use these concepts in alltheir concreteness.

Second, it should be noted that the reference to flesh and blood hasan epistemological function and thus fits within the path to knowledgeof God. Divine salvation comes to the believer through the concreteman, Jesus Christ. Just as for Luther, the crucified Jesus is the deepestpoint of God’s coming down. Salvation is localised in the physicality

57 See Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 87. Calvin indisputably wanted to say more than thatin 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. SeeG.C. Berkouwer, De sacramenten, Kampen 1954, 305. Berkouwer disputes that for Calvinit was a matter of flesh and blood as an abstraction and interprets this as a metaphorfor the act of reconciliation, ibidem, 307. It is a matter of He himself in his sacrifice,ibidem, 313. I do not dispute that in Calvin’s view of salvation the act of reconciliationplays an essential role, but it still appears to me most fundamental that for Calvin theblood and flesh 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 usumnobis constat’ and on John 6:54: ‘Et certe ineptum fuisset ac intempestivum, de Coenanunc disserere, quam nondum instituerat. Ideo de perpetua fidei manducatione eumtractare certum est.’

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of this concrete person. God, in his approach to man, takes the roadof incarnation. Man does not have to climb above the clouds. No, thegate to God’s inner chamber is on earth, in the body of Jesus.60 No onewho disregards Christ as a man shall reach God in Christ.61 Life fromthe divine source reaches us in the way of a concrete man.62 Faith mustbe gotten from the lowest place that God appoints in his revelation, themost accessible to sight. That is the concrete Son-become-flesh, whowas among us physically. From there faith can ascend to the source, toGod the Father as the source of life.

Third, in connection with the preceding point, the conviction thatthe believer is fed with the flesh and blood of Christ has immediatesoteriological content. Believers receive the flesh and blood of the Cru-cified.63 Life, you see, is in this flesh and blood. It is striking that in hisexegesis of John 6 Calvin constantly links the words caro and vita withone another. It is according God’s marvellous Will that He reveals lifeto us in this flesh, 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. InCalvin’s exposition in the Institutes we find confirmation that for Calvinsalvation means sharing in immortality. Not sacrifice and satisfactionbut the antitheses transient-everlasting and perishable-imperishable aredominant. At the Lord’s Table it is once more, as it were, literallyheld 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 diffusedhis vigour into all creatures, but man became alienated from God bysin and lost the communion with life. In order to regain the hope of

60 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.61 Comm. John 6:56, CO 47, 156: ‘Neque enim ad Christum Deum unquam perve-

niet qui hominem negligit.’62 Comm. John 6:57, CO 47, 156: ‘Primum locum obtinet vivens Pater qui scaturigo

est, sed remota et abscondita. Sequitur Filius, quem habemus velut fontem nobisexpositum, et per quem ad nos vita diffunditur. Tertia est vita quam nos ab ipsohaurimus.’

63 Berkouwer, De sacramenten, 314, refers to Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, Locus desacramentis par. 24 Kampen, n.d., where he argues that the communion exercisedis with the corpus crucifixum Christi, not with the corpus glorificatum Christi. Kuyper hereappears to proceed from the idea that communion with the glorified Christ wouldmean cancelling out the crucifixion. That is a distinction that has no foundation inbiblical witness. God has identified himself with the Crucified, and with the Crucifiedclad in glory he bestows communion upon the disciples. (John 20:26–27).

64 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.


immortality man must be restored to the communion with that Word.This restoration began in the incarnation, that is, the personal unionthat the Word enters into with the human nature of Jesus. ‘Since thatfountain of life began to dwell in our nature,’ writes Calvin, ‘he nolonger lies hid at a distance from us, but exhibits himself openly for ourparticipation. Yea, the very flesh in which he resides he makes vivifyingfor us, that by partaking of it we may be fed for immortality.’65

The foregoing in part finds basis in the fourth point, namely the rela-tion between Calvin’s insistence on the communion with the flesh andblood of Christ and his doctrine of the immortal soul. Because in ourculture this relation is no longer felt or seen, it seems obvious to relatethe expression ‘flesh and blood’ to the personal relation with Christ. Ido not deny that with Calvin one must speak of solidarity with the per-son of Christ, but wish to also emphasize that for Calvin this solidaritygoes together with thinking in impersonal terms of power and life. Ifwe now try to reconceive Calvin’s theology in terms of revelation as anencounter event, then we overlook an essential element in this theol-ogy. The concept of encounter is too personalistic; it suggests that weinternally have a grip on that which happens with man in God’s acting.The concept of power points to there being elements in the process ofrenewal and salvation that exceed the grasp and control of man.

In solidarity with the person of the Mediator our soul is fed by theHoly Spirit with the life-giving power of God himself. Calvin’s doctrineof the immortal soul seems of the greatest importance here. Fromthe time of the polemic text Psychopannuchia it is clear that whoeverdenies the immortality of the soul in Calvin’s view assails a principleof salvation of the first order. In the doctrine of the Supper we onceagain encounter the importance of Calvin’s anthropological concept.The soul is the created, immortal core of man, and in faith once againbecomes the possession of the everlasting life that flows from Christ.66

In the Supper this reality is bound to the heart of the believer andinwardly impressed more powerfully than in the preaching of the wordalone. If the soul is at the same time fed with eternal life, then there is acontinuity which cannot be broken even by death.

65 Inst. 4.17.8: ‘At vero, ubi fons ille vitae habitare in carne nostra coepit, iam nonprocul nobis absconditus latet, sed coram se participandum exhibet. Quin et ipsam,in qua residet, carnem vivificam nobis reddit, ut eius participatione ad immortalitatempascamur.’

66 Inst. 4.17.4–5.

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Two remarks here as commentary. First, Calvin’s concept of salva-tion as a whole stands much closer to Eastern Orthodoxy than to mod-ern personalistic interpretations. Characteristic of this is the direct callon Cyril of Alexandria.67 For Calvin the flesh or human nature is notonly the place where sin is found, but thus must also be the place wherereconciliation must take place. That is the common, later Reformeddoctrine of Christ’s active and passive obedience, in part based onAnselm, and we indeed also find this concisely with Calvin.68 But itis not the be all and end all of his teaching. In addition to thinkingin terms of right, guilt, satisfaction and reconciliation we find that thereflection takes place in terms of transience and immortality. Possiblythis latter is even a more comprehensive frame of thought. This lat-ter polarity is strongly present not only in the doctrine of unio mystica,but also in the doctrine of the Supper. The flesh of Christ is a channelthrough which we come in contact with God. In his commentary onJohn 6:51 it can be seen how close Calvin comes to Alexandrine theol-ogy in his Christology and soteriology. The distinction between life inGod, life in this flesh and the life that is our inheritance through thissource is certainly maintained. But at the same time it becomes clearhow much the humanity of Christ, which in itself would be mortal,is permeated with immortality through the incarnation of the eternalSon. The flesh of Christ is certainly not the primary source of life inGod; that is an attribute of the being of God. But in a secondary senseit can certainly be said that this flesh is the locus of life. ‘It rests ina marvellous decree of God that life is presented to us in that flesh,where formerly there was only matter doomed to death to be found …Because even as God’s eternal Word is the source of life, so as a channelhis flesh confers life on us. And in this sense it can be called life-giving,because it bestows upon us the life that it takes from elsewhere.’69

Next, because of the mortal-immortal polarity it is scarcely surpris-ing that at crucial moments in his doctrine of the Supper Calvin shouldspeak in impersonal terms rather than in relational terms. In the Sup-per we receive communion with the substance of Christ.70 That is to

67 Calvin quotes Cyril’s Expositio in Evangelium Ioh. lib. II, cap. 8, MPG 73, 381–382.In Cyril see also for instance his Quod unus sit Christus, MPG 75, 1360–1361.

68 Inst. 2.17.2–5.69 See Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 215–226, wrongly

concludes that for Calvin, in his discussion of the eating of the caro vivifica, the verehomo is breached.

70 Inst. 4.17.3.


say, we receive a share of the virtus or vigour from this substance. Infaith and in the sacrament the soul of the believer stands in the imme-diate sphere of influence of divine power, the divine current of life,which comes directly from the divine-human nature of Christ. Thehuman nature of Christ, his humanity, has this power because thesecond person of the Trinity has taken on this human nature, and inthat taken in the divine sphere of influence. Thus the flesh and bloodof Christ has that life-giving property by virtue of the unio personalis.It would be incorrect to negatively qualify this manner of speakingwith the adjective ‘impersonal’. Perhaps it is also possible to say thatCalvin’s theology reminds us that we, as persons, always move withina sphere of influence, a relationship, that does not permit itself to beadequately expressed in personal terms. Our contemporary theology,still very much marked by the personalism of modern subject thinking,should be reminded by this sort of pre-modern theology that the lifeof a human being, as a person, is always determined by supra-personalcategories.

4.5. The Holy Spirit and instrumentality

4.5.1. The Supper as instrument

In the preceding it has been discussed how Calvin, together with theLutherans, emphasized that in the Supper there is a real participationin the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. At the same time it is clearhe held the concept of a local presence of the body of Christ to beuntenable. On the question of how the union with something that is sohigh and far away could come to be, Calvin answered with a referenceto the work of the Holy Spirit. The spirit is the link through which thedivine power comes to man. Here the Spirit is the vinculum coniunctionis.71

The question is now what Calvin meant by this.The Lutherans were of the view that through the reference to the

Holy Spirit no more could be left of a real communion with the fleshand blood of Christ than a remembrance or communion with theHoly Spirit. The presentia realis would be lost. On the basis of Calvin’squalifying this communion as spiritualiter it has always been interpreted

71 Inst. 4.17.12.

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in a spiritual sense. Westphal concluded that when Calvin speaks abouta spiritual eating (spiritualis manducatio) this was in opposition to a realand true eating (vera et realis manducatio).72 According to Calvin however,the reality of the eating of the flesh and blood of Christ is not at issue inthe adjective spiritualis, but only the manner in which this participationin the flesh and blood of Christ comes into being. Among the Lutheransthis eating is understood materially or physically (carnalis), because it isincluded under the bread and wine. Among them spiritualiter meansan actual non realiter. Calvin insists that this eating, this communion, isbrought about by the Holy Spirit, and therefore speaks of a spiritualeating (spiritualis).73

It is now time to examine another front with which Calvin wasinvolved in debate, namely Zurich, and particularly with the personof Bullinger. In his negotiations with Bullinger Calvin showed himselfwilling to say more than just that in the Supper we are connected toChrist through the Spirit. The characteristic feature of Calvin’s positionis to be seen in the course of the correspondence with Bullinger leadingup to the Consensus Tigurinus. In essence it turns always on the questionof whether bread and wine can be termed a sign or an instrument ofGod’s grace.74

Calvin is in agreement with Bullinger that bread and wine mustbe termed an analogy of the flesh and blood of Christ. The conceptof analogy is used to respect the boundaries of the physical and thespiritual, earthly and heavenly. The invisible thing is given in the sign,in the physical thing. One operation of the Holy Spirit through ananalogy cited by Calvin himself is the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan.The visible thing that is seen is a dove, the invisible thing that isconnected with visible thing is the Spirit. A similar use of the sign alsois to be found in the sacraments. The signs are an analogy for a hiddenoperation of the Spirit.75 As wine and bread connect nourishmentand the preservation of the body through eating and metabolism inthe body, so the everlasting life of the body of Christ flows over intoman and bestows the power of imperishable life upon his soul, that

72 J. Westphal, Collectanea sententiarum D. Aurelii Augustini ep. Hipponensis de Coena Domini,Ratisbon 1555, E7a.

73 Inst. 4.17.33.74 The following is based heavily upon P.E. Rorem, ‘The Consensus Tigurinus

(1549): Did Calvin Compromise?’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor.Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (MI) 1994, 72–90.

75 OS I, 509.


immortal, eternal part of him. The promise of the resurrection ofthe body is also given in this vitalisation of the soul.76 Calvin is nognostic.

However, the question remains how this life is conveyed in Calvin’sconcept. The body of Christ does not come to earth, but remains inheaven, does it not? How then can be believer be fed by the flesh andblood of Christ? Discussions about the nature of the communion withChrist that man exercises in the Supper are directly connected with thediscussion about the previously mentioned extra-calvinisticum.77 Thisterm refers to the coordinates of the whole of Calvin’s theological con-cept, namely the range of works of the Triune God. God’s works cannotbe reduced to one denominator, but have a diversity in sacred history.The work of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, is there-fore not limited to the incarnation in Jesus Christ. The eternal Son alsoworks outside the incarnation, extra carnem, and also outside the Sup-per.78 Thus, for instance, we encounter the Son already in creation. Asthe incarnate Word, with regard to his body Jesus Christ is in heavenafter his Ascension. There he exercises power and rule at the righthand of the Father. As we read elsewhere,79 this regnum is not limitedby spatial distance or defined by any dimensions. It is human naturethat is characterised by boundaries. According to his divine nature theincarnate Son is not bound by these limits. Anywhere He wills, any-where it pleases Him, in heaven and on earth He exercises his power,and through this power He is near his people. He gives them life, livesin them, sustains them, preserves them, pours out power on them. Tomake this more specific, Calvin uses an older distinction between Christin his glorified state and everything that there is in Christ. According tohis glorified state, Christ is totus, as a person, present with his people.But, says Calvin, not everything that is in Christ, namely his humanflesh, is present in the Supper, non totum. The distinction between totusand totum reminds one again of the eschatological import of his con-

76 Inst. 4.17.32: ‘Quam tanta virtute tantaque efficacia hic eminere dicimus, ut nonmodo indubitatam vitae aeternae fiduciam animis nostris afferat, sed de carnis etiamnostrae immortalitate securos nos reddat.’

77 See E.D. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called extra calvinis-ticum in Calvin’s Theology, Leiden 1966. See also the paper by H.A. Oberman, also from1966, ‘Die ‘Extra’-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins’ in: idem, Die Reformation. VonWittenberg nach Genf, Göttingen 1986, 253–282.

78 See Chapter 2, note 46.79 Inst. 4.17.18.

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cept. It refers to the completion of all things, in which mankind alsowill share in the glorified state of Christ according to the flesh.80

4.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit

The substance of Christ’s body is thus in heaven, and nevertheless sub-stantial communion takes place. ‘The local absence does not hinderthat the flesh does its work in an incomprehensible and hidden man-ner.’81 It is the Spirit who feeds the faithful on earth with the power ofChrist, in a manner we cannot grasp. At various points Calvin makes itclear that the limits of human comprehension have been reached. Thenature of the way in which the Spirit works is not among those thingswhich have been revealed to man. Calvin is very decided in his con-viction that there must be no confusion of heaven and earth, and therecannot be a ubiquity of the divine-human nature of Christ. He consid-ers that distinction a foundation of human religious knowledge. Withthe question of how man, here on earth, comes in contact with thelife-giving flesh of Christ in heaven, he does not know how it happens,but only that it happens. A boundary looms up before thought whichattempts to follow the working of the Spirit and experience.82 Calvindoes, however, reach for the metaphor of the sun and its rays. The sunthrows off its rays and its power onto the earth, and in this some of itssubstance flows into that which grows. It is not only the power of thesun that reaches man in this way, but the substantia comes along withthe power.83 In the same way, at a great distance Christ pours out hispower. In the image of the sun and its warmth, distance and presencego together. But, is the distinction between the creator and the creationnot overstepped in the image of the sun and its rays? The mysticalimage of communio does not cancel out the boundaries. The substanceof Christ does not merge with that of our soul. It is, Calvin says, suffi-cient that Christ ‘out of the substance of his flesh breathes life into our

80 Inst. 4.17.30: ‘Mediator ergo noster quum totus ubique sit, suis semper adest: et inCoena 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-bet absentia localis.’

82 In the literature the reference is always to Calvin’s letter to Peter Martyr of August8, 1555, CO 15, 722–723.

83 See also Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 180.


bodies’.84 With the formula used, e carnis suae substantia, Calvin attemptsto build a bridge between the bodily presence of Christ in heaven onthe one hand and the real presence of Christ in the Supper on theother. How successful is the metaphor of the sun and its warmth? IsChrist not just as far away as the sun stands above us? Is the knowledgeof Christ not marked by distance? It fed the suspicions of the Lutheranside if it came down to Christ being far away.

What did Calvin accomplish in a theological sense with the referenceto Ascension and the bridging work of the Spirit? I will attempt to listseveral points. First this: these are the conceptual means of his day forestablishing that the believers on earth do not out of their own powercommand the life-giving flesh 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 glorifiedbody is not here; the completion has not yet arrived. Through the SpiritGod comes near to his children living in this world with his power tolife, but the presentia realis does not cancel out the state of incompletion.Within Calvin’s theology lies a strong sense of the incompleteness ofGod’s way with man, of that which is not yet realised. Those who followCalvin have the room theologically to say that there is still much that isnot finished in God’s work. God makes life hard for his children witha range of things that lay claim on their daily existence. There is still away to go, the most important is yet to come. Things that cause diffi-culty and that stand in shrill contrast to the promises of the Kingdomdo not have to be polished up or ironed out. This theological notionis important, in part because it can be productive in other dimensionsand 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 isthe guarantee of the renewal of man and the world at the end of time.

84 ‘quia nobis sufficit Christum e carnis suae substantia vitam in animas nostrasspirare: imo propriam in nos vitam diffundere, quamvis in nos non ingrediatur ipsaChristi caro.’ Inst. 4.17.32.

85 See O. Weber, ‘Calvin’s Lehre von der Kirche’ in: idem, Die Treue Gottes in derGeschichte der Kirche. Gesammelte Aufsätze II, Neukirchen 1968, 76.

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4.5.3. The way of knowledge of God

If the Lutherans suspected an evaporation of the content of concepts inCalvin, from his side Bullinger feared an impermissible objectificationof grace with Calvin. Succinctly put, that which distinguished Calvin’sdoctrine of the Supper from Bullinger’s is the instrumentality of theoutward reality of the signs. While in their written discussion Bullingertime after time repeats that the bread and wine are signs which forman analogy with that which is done for the believer by the Holy Spirit,Calvin advances a powerful argument that the signs also be termed aninstrument.

We previously encountered this theme of the instrumentality of thecreated in the way to knowledge of God. We find it again here. Calvinagrees whole-heartedly with Bullinger that the proclamation of theWord brings man into communion with the eternal life that is in JesusChrist. In receiving the bread and wine this reality is once again, andnow more strongly, inwardly impressed and bound upon the heart ofthe believer. Previously we have already argued that Calvin thinks inspatial terms. That is also true for the Supper. In the sacraments itis not the intention that man’s eye should continue to rest upon theoutward signs. His gaze must rise to the Giver himself. To the extentthat this movement can be thought of with the aid of an analogy,there is no difference with Bullinger. The characteristic feature anddistinction for Calvin is that he reserves a more fundamental placefor the outward and visible sign by terming it an instrument or chan-nel. Therein resides the added value of the sacrament. Bullinger fearsthat in the use of this term something that can only come from Godwill be assigned to that which is created. He fears an objectificationor materialisation of the grace in the qualifying instrument. Bullingerwanted to emphasize the role of God and the Spirit as acting sub-jects in such a radical way that the close relation between the signand the signified actually became looser. Bread and wine are signs inso far as they are taken into service by the Holy Spirit. Calvin doesnot disagree with this. He also takes the active use of these signs by theHoly Spirit as his point of departure. He however adds that the Spiritmoves in this particular way, through the createdness of the outward signs.In this sense they are also instruments, means accomplishing some-thing. It is God’s choice, his disposition, to carry man along upwardsin that way. It is God’s freedom to feed and to cleanse man, livingin the depths, through these instruments. This dynamic view of the


sacrament is in agreement with what I previously said about the roleof outward things and the senses.

4.5.4. Experience and tasting

For Calvin, the concrete experience, tasting, eating and drinking of thebread and wine had an added value that we can scarcely conceive anymore. The evaluation of Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper by Berkhof istypical of today’s vision and perception. He primarily has an eye forthe sensory nature of the sacraments being a concession of divine Prov-idence.86 Calvin’s doctrine of sacraments is held up against the light ofwhat is essential for Berkhof, namely personal encounter. The sensory istaken as a form which God chooses to actually descend to human level.But in this the positive reasons for the sensory that are also to be foundin Calvin threaten to disappear from view: the material sacrament isa fitting tool for God. He is in no sense ashamed of it. In Calvin’stheology we encounter thought in which our physicality is taken com-pletely into account. Without our physicality, without employing oursenses, we will never come into contact with God. The bread and winemake the believer heedful of the life-giving presence of the life thatis in Christ. They are concrete signs of the hidden nearness of God,which through his Spirit now already are awakening the soul to lifeand in a hidden way now already pour out the gifts of God upon thebeliever. The presence of hope, patience, the striving for righteousness,the capacity to offer resistance to temptations: these are all nothingother than the effect of the influence of Christ’s life upon us. Throughthese instruments the believer comes under the influence of the abun-dant and eternal life that flows through the flesh and blood of Christas a channel, not exclusively, but certainly more powerfully.87 The eat-ing and drinking of the bread and wine are in direct relation with thething, life eternal. Calvin’s fear is that the outward sign will become onlya sign, a nuda figura. The thing itself and the truth are connected withthe sign.88 One can also say that it is in keeping with Calvin’s theologyto have an eye for the nature of God’s acts as means of knowing Him.The knowledge of God does not arise in abstracto, not through the Spirit

86 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 348.87 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.88 OS II, 282: ‘… res ipsa et veritas coniuncta est …’ See also OS II, 509: The dove

at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is no ‘vaine figure’.

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alone, apart from means, but through a multiplicity of ways, leading upto the Supper, where in the most powerful way man is pointed to theplace where the spring of life is.

I would add a second observation to this. The experience, the con-firmation, the certainty comes into being in the connection betweensign and thing. It is not enough to be a spectator to the breaking of thebread. It is also not enough to leave things at the moment that faithcomes into being. Faith itself leads to activity, to a manducatio of whatcomes from this source.89 But there is also progress, a driving force,a hidden working of the Spirit connected with the concrete eatingand drinking that leads to experience. As has already been remarkedin passing, this experience is more than a ‘cognitive plus’. The sacra-ment does not internalise anything different from what one receives ashare of in faith, but it internalises it differently. God’s promise is linkedin a very special sense with the graphic moment, the concrete experi-ence of eating.90 It is intended to refer to the experience that can onlybe acquired by participation. ‘It [the sacrament] calls to remembrancethat Christ was made the bread of life that we may constantly eat him,it gives us a taste and relish for that bread, and makes us feel its effi-cacy.’91 The Holy Spirit therefore sees to it that what is outwardly signi-fied reaches the believer inwardly. The language that points to an expe-rience of reality, of effect, that the believer undergoes in all intensity,is significant.92 The way in which the Holy Spirit through his hiddenoperation brings the believer into the presence of Christ conceptuallyremains a mystery. The mystery is too sublime, Calvin says, for us toconceive with our understanding.93 Directly thereafter he confesses, ‘Irather feel than understand it.’94 At the apex of his doctrine of the Sup-

89 Comm. John 6:47, CO 47, 151: ‘Quod quidam ex hoc loco colligunt, credere inChristum idem esse atque edere Christum vel carnem eius, non satis firmum est. Haecenim duo inter se tanquam prius et posterius differunt, sicuti ad Christum venire, etipsum bibere. Praecedit enim accessus. Fateor non manducari Christum nisi fide: sedratio est, quia fide eum recipimus ut habitet in nobis simusque eius participes adeoqueunum cum ipso. Quare manducatio effectus est aut opus fidei.’

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 sentiamusfacit.’

92 Inst. 4.17.1 and Inst. 4.17.4: ‘dum efficaciam 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.’


per Calvin seems to base himself not only on Bible exegesis, but his ownexperience also speaks powerfully. Above all, for him knowledge of Godis not limited to what a human being can understand, comprehend orformulate.

To sum up: In faith there are no inward or outward contradictions.The Holy Spirit uses external things, the world that comes in throughthe senses, for inward purposes, and provides what is there signified, thelife-giving flesh of Christ. In this way the soul already receives a shareof coming glory. With regard to the sacraments one may summarisethat 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, toheaven. In the Supper the believer himself is carried on high. With hissoul already in heaven, he is conveyed into the neighbourhood of themajesty of God. ‘The dignity is amply enough commended when wehold, that it is a help by which we may be ingrafted into the body ofChrist, or, already ingrafted, may be more and more united with him,until the union is completed in heaven.’95 In this citation it becomesclear once again to what extent the knowing of God transcends theintellectual. Faith has its point of concentration around the Supperbecause there, in the midst of the community, what is already thetruth is experienced in faith, and will come to its full unfolding, namelyinclusion in the perfect communion with Christ, in the completion ofall things.

95 Inst. 4.17.33.

THE HINGE

chapter five

THE TURN TO THE SUBJECT INKANT’S PHILOSOPHY

5.1. A watershed

In this study, Kant’s philosophy serves as the hinge between the twopanels of Calvin and Barth. There is a risk involved in proceeding inthis manner, not so much because the interpretation of Kant’s writingsis a matter better left to philosophers, but because it might easilybe thought that in this study Barth’s theology is being considered asa direct and conscious response to Kant. Such a suggestion is not,however, the intention. Barth was first and foremost a theologian whosought to make a contribution to Christian theology in obedience torevelation. If he was directly responding to someone in a theological-historical sense, then Schleiermacher would be a better candidate toserve as the hinge here. The connection between Barth and Kantis looser, less direct, but not therefore less profound. In making thischoice I affirm the widely shared conviction that Kant de facto marksa watershed in Western theology. Whether this role belongs to himde iure is another question, which will not be discussed here. I willlimit myself to noting that his thought fulfils this role for the mainstream of Western theology. He is a watershed, and indeed in twosenses. First, one can regard his philosophy as a mirror in which anumber of the shifts in the history of thought which are characteristicof modernity become clearly visible. In his thinking, and in particularin his epistemology, the turn from a theocentric view of the world toan anthropocentric point of departure comes to be seen. Knowledge ishenceforth no longer knowledge of the preternatural, of divine truth.Within modern philosophy knowledge comes to be ever more strictlyregarded as knowledge that is limited to human, earthly things, andhas the status of an object, which does not extend beyond the limitedhorizon of human faculties.

The second manner in which Kant is a watershed is connected withthis latter. It concerns theology directly. Modern theology has become

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fundamentally uncertain. It lives with the uncomfortable feeling thatthere is something not quite right with knowledge in faith—or better,there is something wrong with it. Modern theology is for the mostpart post-Kantian, in the sense that it has taken over the fundamentaldenial that is contained in Kant’s epistemology: God cannot be theobject of human knowledge. Men will always continue to think andtalk about God, because for various reasons they simply cannot stopdoing so. But strictly speaking, we are then dealing with ‘god’ or thedivine as a concept, idea, or as a word from our language, sometimes adisturbing word that reminds us that we have no hold on it, because atthe same time we use it we are reminded that ‘god’ or the divine doesnot have the status of knowledge. In post-Kantian theology the idea ofknowledge has become that problematic with regard to God. That Godexists, lives and works is no longer beyond question, as was the casefrom the early church through to the Renaissance culture of Calvin.For Calvin there was certainly the realisation that God is greater andmore than human concepts of Him, but that did not detract fromthe reality claim that knowledge of God made. On the contrary: thatGod existed, that He revealed certain things about himself, was a deepconviction. The evidence did not lie in the visible, in the swarm ofcommonplace things, but in that which withdrew from them, in thespiritual, in heavenly things. In modernity, as it developed, where onelooked to find the evident would shift. That which is evident no longerlies above man, but below him. The poles of proof were reversed. Toan increasing degree in modernity the fundamental attitude would bethat of agnosticism.

Once again, the observation that this is a watershed is a de factoobservation. Whether this watershed is also justifiable, de iure, is anotherquestion, which will only be addressed indirectly in this hinge chap-ter.1 I will limit myself to approaching the matter from the history ofthought. For Barth it is the case that his theology, and in particular hisconcept of knowledge of God, cannot be understood without some real-isation of the barriers that Kant erected, and the responses to them byF.D. Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, A. Ritschl and W. Herrmann. KarlBarth’s earliest theology is still entirely in line with that of Schleier-macher and Herrmann, and in the baggage of his own critical theologythere is still a good deal present that is in part defined by Kantian struc-

1 See N. Wolterstorff, ‘Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover fromKant?’, Modern Theology 14 (1998), 1–18.

the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 227

tures. When in his second Römerbrief Barth labels knowledge of God an‘impossible possibility’ and begins with man’s problem of doing justiceto God in human language, that is not only a radicalisation of the Ref-ormation’s realisation that knowledge of God is a matter of grace, butalso a shared assumption with regard to the limitedness of all humanknowledge.

What are the broader changes in intellectual history? It has becomecustomary to characterise modernity as a cultural-historical constella-tion typified by a number of qualities such as anthropocentrism, anti-traditionalism, rationalisation, individualisation, democratisation, anddifferentiation of spheres of life.2 Summed up in one comprehensivedefinition, modernity is characterised by the turn to the subject anda shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric view of life. In the

2 See for instance the analysis by H. Küng, Christianity. Its Essence and History, London1995, 650–770. a) Beginning with man as subject and the development of empiricalresearch as the entry to the world has led to modern culture being impressed by thepower of instrumental reason. Knowledge is power, according to Bacon’s maxim. It is nolonger primarily theoria, reflection. Like the natural sciences and technology, knowledgehas become a domain of its own. That has made an enormous expansion possible inthe technical and economic sense, and created a new myth which still maintains itself,even now that the original confidence 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 unification, modernity ischaracterised 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, butviewed theologically is a secondary, and not a primary element. Within modernityregard for the individual as a moral and spiritual being moves up into first place.The problem of personal identity and maintaining that personhood over against asystematic and impersonal world becomes a concern of the first 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. Theconcept of humanity cannot be viewed in terms of particularity; in principle, humanitycomprises not some men, but all mankind. This cosmopolitan, universal perspective,the explicit desire for a humanity that reclaims and includes all people, is an essentialelement of modernity. It conflicts with every view that excludes any particular group ofpeople for whatever reason.

d) The primacy of the individual has consequences for the relation of the individualto social institutions and to society as a whole. The primacy of the individual overagainst the institutional on the one hand implies a demand for tolerance, but there isalso present at the same time an element that is corrosive to society. Tolerance has itsprice. Europe initially had difficulty becoming accustomed to the break up of the unityof 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 churchand state in the 19th century was the result of this at the political level.

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long run this has had consequences for the place of religion in Westernculture in general, and for Christianity in particular. Increasingly a pro-nounced agnosticism and secularism has become the mental trademarkof our culture, and knowledge of God has become a problem. Kant’sthought serves as a mirror of this development.3

5.2. The tradition-critical attitude

The self-confidence with which modern men, unlike in previous gener-ations, take up a position over against tradition, and indeed over againstany sort of knowledge that rests on tradition and whose authority isrepresented by the church and government—in short, anti-traditional-ism—is a characteristic of the mental attitude of modernity. The well-known adage of Kant, in his 1784 answer to the question Was ist Auf-klärung, reflects this attitude and radiates confidence and self-assurance:

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minor-ity is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without directionfrom another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lackof understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it withoutdirection from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of yourown understanding! Is thus the motto of enlightenment.4

Kant expresses here what was a collective assumption and shared idealof a small elite of geographically diffuse and, in a social perspective,very diverse minds: the present era is not a time in which the mindand humanity already stand high above the landscape like a sun, butit 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 unddie Neuzeit, München 1973 or for the point of departure for Descartes, see E. Jüngel, Gottals Geheimnis der Welt, 146–167; ET: God as the Mystery of the World, 111–126.

4 I. Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? Werke in Sechs Bänden, Bd. VI,hrsg. Von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19644 =) 1983, 53 (A 481): ‘Aufklärung ist derAusgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeitist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen.Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Man-gel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohneLeitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Ver-standes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.’ ET in: Cambridge Editionof the Works of Immanuel Kant (eds. P. Guyer and A. Wood): Practical Philosophy (translatedand edited by Mary J. Gregor), 17.


enlightened era, but is indeed a time of Enlightenment.5 That marksone of the striking differences with the preceding period. This is nolonger a culture or era for which the ideal model lies in the past;man now looks forward for amelioration. Progress now becomes asocial virtue. Like the concept of Enlightenment itself, the progressthat with Calvin had its place in the realm of personal consecrationof life, as expressed in the way the pilgrim from day to day changes intothe image of Christ, is lifted out of its Christian and pneumatologicalcontext and receives cultural status.6

One could easily misunderstand the passage cited above from Kantif one analyses it in isolation and does not take the political-social con-text into account. The last thing Kant intended was to defend epis-temological solipsism. Man is in fact dependent on a community ofpersons for knowledge. What Kant has in mind in the above citation isthe process of public discussion of faith and theology, intellectual free-dom, the necessity of a public domain where debate can be carried onwithout interference from the authorities. Kant too was addressing—albeit indirectly—a ruling monarch, Frederick the Great, but now notto appeal to the monarch as defender and protector of the true faith,but on the contrary, to praise him for his tolerance. In all matters ofconscience, Kant says, a person must be free to avail himself of hisreason. Kant was speaking in a situation in which public debate ontheological and moral subjects was still controlled by the governmentapparatus. He deliberately takes an intermediate position, and makes adistinction between the responsibility that people have as scholars andthat which they have as holders of ecclesiastical offices.7 When clergyare bound to an ecclesiastical tradition or confession by their office,there are still curbs on thinking for oneself. It is however clear whichdirection things must go. ‘As matters now stand, a good deal more isrequired for people on the whole to be in the position, or even ableto be put in the position, of using their own understanding confidentlyand well in religious matters, without another’s guidance.’8 With that aline of demarcation is drawn, and a characterisation is given of thosethinkers who belong to the Enlightenment. Kant demands that peo-

5 Was ist Aufklärung, 59 (A 491); ET, 21.6 The term Enlightenment in itself already betrays how much, in the period of the

Enlightenment, the light of reason and the light of revelation were identified with oneanother, for instance in J. Locke and G.E. Lessing.

7 Was ist Aufklärung, 56 (A487), ET, 19.8 Was ist Aufklärung, 59 (A491), ET, 21.

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ple think for themselves, as John Locke and David Hume argued thatthey 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, isunmistakably anti-traditional. This anti-traditionalism at the same timeapplied the axe to something which had been accepted as self-evidentin European culture, namely the role of Christian tradition as thefundamental source of vitality and truth for the whole culture. Howeverinadequate, rancorous and malicious the image sometimes was that wasgiven of the Middle Ages in the time of the Enlightenment, accordingto Peter Gay in one regard it was right, namely that the Christiannarrative had been the deepest driving force and ultimate goal of thiscivilisation.9 In the era of the Enlightenment and the developmentswhich followed it, this certainty and its acceptance as natural falls away.The Christian legacy is more critically received. No longer do peopleautomatically regard themselves as exponents of this tradition, but seethemselves as emancipated from the religious and metaphysical matrix,and indeed question the matrix itself.

5.3. For the sake of humanity

Kant’s investigation of the conditions for human knowledge marks amoment that deeply affected Western theology. It changed the viewof the boundaries of knowable, it transformed metaphysics from amaterial to a formal discipline, and all of this had great influence onthe theological questions of from whence man derives knowledge ofGod, and for what may we hope.

Kant’s investigation of the possibilities of the human mind and itsfaculties is divided into three critiques, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781),the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) and his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790).For the status of religion, it is particularly the first two studies that areimportant. Kant’s own existential interest unquestionably lay with thesecond critique, the investigation of practical reason, its range, validityand conditions. For him, this involves what makes a man human,humanity itself, and what makes a culture humane.10 In order to obtain

9 P. Gay, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation. Vol. 1: The Rise of modern Paganism, London1973, 212.

10 ‘Thus morality, not understanding, is what first makes us human beings’, I. Kant,


clarity in this question, he radicalises the distinction between the orderof being and the moral order. In the pre-modern panel the naturalorder and the moral order still lay within the same sphere. A certainmeaning can be found for all things that exist. Everything that is—badthings, good things, the beautiful and the ugly—has a certain sense yetwithin God’s Counsel and governance, although it is not always givento man to understand what that is. With Kant this unity is shattered. Incontemporary language: being and meaning are not the same. There isnot even a link between being and meaning.

I wish to outline Kant’s position in several broad strokes, and willfocus primarily on the first critiques. The human mind has at least tworanges; man is a citizen to two worlds: by means of his power of reasonand physical senses man is able to acquire knowledge of the naturalorder. Science—or to be more precise, empirical science—establisheswhat is. It operates in the world of phenomena. In addition, the humanmind has a second range or capacity, by virtue of which it has accessto the world of freedom. That capacity is practical reason. Practicalreason is the deepest motivation of human acts. It is likewise a powerof reason which produces generally valid knowledge, namely moralknowledge. Practical reason is not dependent on the outside world. Onthe contrary, this reason focuses on that which transcends the sensory,namely on that which should be. Kant’s critiques have their point infinding a peculiar domain for morality. To this end, the reach of purereason must be limited, and those limits are in fact space and time.Morality supposes freedom, and this freedom is only guaranteed whena particular act is not considered from the viewpoint of the phenomenalworld (the world of phenomena), but as noumenal, that which cannotbe known, but which can be conceived.11 The positive result of therestriction on speculative reason is aimed at being able to continue touse God, freedom and immortality as ideas, as convictions, which areindispensable for man, that is to say, for man as a free being. God,freedom and immortality are postulates of practical reason. That isto say, according to Kant, these are convictions which are entirely

Der Streit der Fakultäten, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd. VI, hrsg. Von W. Weischedel,Darmstadt (19644=)1983, 344 (A122); ET (The Cambridge Edition of the Works ofImmanuel Kant, Vol. Religion and rational Theology), 291.

11 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bände, 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) Cambridge1998, 115.

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warranted on the basis of human reason. It is here that the famouscitation comes: ‘Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to make roomfor faith; and the dogmatism of metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice thatwithout criticism reason can make progress in metaphysics, is the truesource of all unbelief conflicting with morality.’12 This indicates thepositive point, aiming at humanity, that Kant unquestionably had inmind. This is the order of humanity.

For a proper estimation of Kant’s place in the history of modernity, itis important to grasp the order of importance. For Kant in his critiques,this issue is not merely epistemology as such. His critiques are in theservice of seeking that which is definitive for humanity and meaning, inthe service of the search for human dignity in a remote corner of thecosmos.

In this last, man’s place in the cosmos, one can also immediatelysee the distance from Calvin. For Kant there is a sense that man nolonger lives in a discrete, closed space. The globe is somewhere in aremote corner of an immeasurable space. While for Calvin our spacewas still enclosed within the rotation of the heavenly spheres, and therevolving whole experienced as orderly and inspiring confidence, as anevident reference to God’s care, in Pascal we find a totally differentexperience. ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me’,he writes.13 And although even in his critical period Kant still deemsthe teleological proof of God the ‘the oldest, clearest and the mostappropriate to common human reason’ which makes belief in a HighestCauser compelling,14 he denies the faith that arises as a result of awethe status of objective, generally valid knowledge. Only the moral law,which is manifest in men, offers man an escape from the crushingrealisation of cosmic infinity and his own insignificance. With Calvinman received a central place within God’s order of created reality; heis a pilgrim on earth, on his way to heaven. With Kant man has lostthat anchor, and the physical extent of the universe offers no possibilityto ascertain one’s place in it any more. The experience of the silentcosmos and a harsh universe, where man has become a derelict, hasincreasingly marked our understanding of life since Kant. It is nolonger the experience of guilt or mortality that forms the backgroundfor questions about God in our culture, but the realisation of our bereft

12 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 33 (B XXX); ET, 117.13 B. Pascal, Pensées, 206: ‘Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.’14 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550–551 (B 651); ET, 579–580.


state in infinite space. Man is doomed to living as a nomad in theendless reaches of the universe. The only thing that remains is life itself,the uninterrupted stream of impressions and vital moments that onemust seize, embrace in the pleasure and terror that they offer, whichone can also let go of again, reject if one must. With Kant, however, weare far from reaching that point. The natural sciences offer no solace,the earth has indeed been displaced from the centre of the universe,but in him we find the development of a new answer: the turn tothe subject. The new centre is found in man himself, as the thinking,willing, feeling subject. Man, and particularly his morality, becomes theanchorage for humanity.

5.4. The turn to the subject

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 famoussentence from the start of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft: But althoughall our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on thataccount all arise from experience.15 One can regard this sentence asprogrammatic, because there are echoes in it of both Kant’s critiqueof his predecessors and his own solution. Kant is seeking an answerfor the problem which he sees has been created for epistemology bythe empiricism of Locke and Hume. This problem involves the ques-tion of how necessary or apodictic knowledge is possible. Kant’s oth-erwise very questionable interpretation of Locke is that Locke wouldalso derive mental concepts from experience, because he encountersthem there.16 Moreover, he reproaches Locke for going far beyondthe boundaries of experience in his use of mental concepts.17 Kant’sjudgement of Locke is that he ‘opened the gates wide to enthusiasm’because, when once reason does prove to have some competence, hedoes not permit it to be limited by any exhortation to moderation.18

15 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 45 (B1); ET, 136.16 According to N. Wolterstorff, this customary interpretation must be characterised

as historically incorrect. The core of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding mustbe sought instead in book IV. See N. Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief,Cambridge 1996, 10: ‘The undeniable empiricist strands in his thought will be seen tobe balanced, if not outweighed, by the rationalist strands.’

17 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 132 (B 127); ET, 225.18 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 133 (B128); ET, 226.

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The way of empiricism, as Kant maps it out, leads to a number ofunsolvable difficulties. It is Hume who, in the eyes of Kant, deservesthe honour of having called attention to these difficulties. Accordingto empiricism, all our concepts must be based on observation. Humenoted that, on the contrary, one of the most important concepts thatwe use, namely causality, is not based on observation. We do indeedobserve the order in which events occur, or the state of affairs, butnot causality itself. The conviction that we possess apodictic or gen-erally valid knowledge can not be accounted for from the standpointof empiricism. Empiricism never gets further than the observation offacts, never arrives at the formulation of general validity. Thus, Kantsays, the realm of metaphysics has been thrown into anarchy. An agonyof doubt prevails regarding the foundation of knowledge, and the scopeof intellectual concepts. Opposite a dogmatic (for Kant, that is to sayan uncritical) use of reason and its concepts, as was customary in theschool of Leibnitz and Wolff, are the sceptics, who, as far as Kant isconcerned, are ‘a kind of nomads who abhor all permanent cultiva-tion of the soil’.19 The problem for Kant now is how it can be that weindeed take the existence of generally valid, or as he calls it, apodic-tic knowledge as a point of departure. Kant proposes a radical reversalof perspective, that is, one with reference to the reversal in perspec-tive which occurred in cosmology: in epistemology it is also necessaryto perform a Copernican revolution. Our capacity for thought is nolonger aimed toward things, but things are aimed toward our capac-ity for thought.20 In thinking about human knowledge of the world,the central point is no longer a given, ordered world that invites usto discover how it is arranged, but rather is the subject who, with hiscapacity for thought, imposes an order on the world. In other words,Kant breaks with the idea that knowledge at its deepest is a matter ofimitation, in which the subject’s role is chiefly receptive. Man’s role inacquiring knowledge is not passive, but rather highly active and con-structive.21

With this, Kant assigned a large role to reason, and shifted the bal-ance in the realm of epistemology, something which would in a certainsense find its substance in the social and cultural development of the18th century. One can detect an intellectual change which first emerges

19 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 12 (A IX); ET, 99.20 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 25 (B XVII); ET, 110.21 Der Streit der Fakultäten, 341 (A 116); ET, 299–289.


among natural scientists and the philosophes as a slowly unfolding real-isation that life here on earth can be improved. The circumstancesof life in the 18th century might still be bad everywhere and the lifeprospects for most slight, but the applications of the natural sciences,rapidly being translated into technical inventions, nonetheless openedvast perspectives. Man discovered that he could bend nature to his will.James Watt discovered the principle of the steam engine, medical sci-ence raised the hopes of a life with less affliction, fewer complaints.22

Such developments and possibilities put life in a different light. Manis no longer powerless in the face of his lot in life, in the face of lifeitself, but creator of his world, or, in the words of one of Thomas Jef-ferson’s favourite maxims, faber suae quisque fortunae.23 Knowledge is nolonger first and foremost insight, contemplation; knowledge is power(Bacon). It is this evocative idea of the constitutive role of reason thatpenetrates epistemology with Kant. The way in which reason comes toweigh more and the world less is nicely visualised by Kant. Reason isno longer in the position of a pupil who repeats precisely what his mas-ter says, but takes the role of a judge who interrogates and demandsanswers.24 This famous dictum is diametrically opposed to what wesaw with Calvin, for whom man has to assume the role of pupil inall things. This is a new attitude that is the consequence of develop-ments in the natural sciences, their application in technology and inmedical science. Reason is an active and creative force in opening upour world. Reason considers only that which it brings forth accordingto its plan. Kant argues that one will only get around the aporia ofempiricism if one realises that only that can be considered which onehas apriori brought along oneself through ideas, and is applied to thatwhich is a given in the observation. According to Kant, only througha change in perspective, that is to say, a Copernican revolution, is itpossible to explain the existence of apriori knowledge and apodicticknowledge.

22 Cf. P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, London 1973, 4–23.23 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 whichalone the agreement among appearences can count as laws, and, in the other hand,the experiments thought out in accordance with these principles—yet in order to beinstructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wantsto say, but like an appointed judge, who compels witnesses to answer the questions heputs to them.’

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Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft thus fulfils the role of a treatise onmethod,25 and does not proffer itself as a system of knowledge. Therealisation of a boundary for human theoretical knowledge is highlydeveloped for Kant, but this realisation has primarily a positive, anti-sceptic intention.

5.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as methodologicalinvestigation into the conditions of knowing

In classic and early modern thought metaphysics is not only knowledgeof being as such, ens qua ens, thus what we today would term ontol-ogy, but also knowledge of the world of first things, the highest being,or God.26 Thus classic metaphysics also comprises knowledge of thepreternatural world, of God, the soul and human consciousness whichcan be acquired with the aid of reason. In other words, the metafys-ica specialis covers in part what is handled in classic theology underthe headings of the doctrines of God and creation. Calvin’s theologyalready reflects the development in late medieval theology toward asharper distinction between philosophical knowledge of God and theo-logical knowledge. But with Calvin too all knowledge is still rooted ina metaphysical context. The soul, which through its capacities is ableto gather knowledge, operating outside the limits of its own body, isa bridgehead to the higher, divine world. This metaphysical rootagefor knowledge did not disappear overnight. In the school of Leibnitzand Wolff metaphysics is still in an inclusive theological framework,comprising metafysica specialis alongside metafysica generalis. A part of ourknowledge of God is obtained by rational means, and can be regardedas generally valid knowledge. Kant’s thought can be regarded as themoment in Western thinking when this interweaving of theological andphilosophical knowledge is broken once and for all. Thought comes tostand on its own, and no longer refers to a higher world for its cat-egories and its own operations, but exclusively to itself.27 Accordingto Kant himself metaphysics changes from a material to a transcen-

25 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 28 (B XXII); ET, 113.26 See O. Duintjer, De vraag naar het transcendentale, vooral in verband met Heidegger en Kant,

Leiden 1966, 52.27 E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Bd.

I (Berlin 19223=) Darmstadt 1991, 13–14 en Bd II, 662.


dental discipline, and henceforth occupies itself with the conditions forhuman knowing, with the systems and properties of human reason assuch. That is an enormous turnabout. The content of metaphysics isno longer being, or the highest being, but thought and the knowing ofbeing.

These conditions for human knowing no longer lie in a world behindthis world. Kant proposes that the conditions belong to the equipageof man. Authoritative knowledge from the natural sciences can onlybe accounted for if we make a distinction between knowledge that wealready possess apriori, and knowledge which is obtained aposteriori.Apriori knowledge is composed of the concepts and categories withwhich the mind works in its operations from the outset. This aprioriknowledge—in other words, knowledge which one arrives at apartfrom experience, thus in pure form—is found in mathematics andlogic. Apriori concepts and categories thus are the apparatus of humancapacity 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 createdqualities that had an objective existence apart from man, in Kant’sphilosophy they were regarded as being part of the equipage of thehuman subject. They are the forms of observation, that is, conditionsthat impart structure to the sensory capacities of man. Perception andthought now mesh with one another and together produce knowledge,or better, ideas. Kant terms the capacity to produce ideas, thus thespontaneity of knowledge, understanding. The difference with Calvin ispalpable. In its constitutive function for perception, human reason hastaken on itself a role that, in Calvin’s concept, still belonged to God.For Calvin, God is the One who imposes ordo; for Kant, that is the roleof pure reason.

There is no perception apart from the forms and concepts thatare 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 neverpermit us know the inward nature of things—thus, that which is notphenomenal—but still can serve as the highest ground for explainingphenomena.28 What we know is the shape of things as that is produced

28 I. Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftretenkönnen (1783), Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.3, hrsg. von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt

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by the combined action of thought and perception. There is indeed aconnection between the Ding an sich and our knowledge of the thing, butonly as impetus. The Ding an sich is indeed unknowable, but at the sametime it is unavoidably the correlate to the phenomenon. Obviously thisposition of the Ding an sich in Kant’s concept gives rise to a tremen-dous difficulty, not to say a contradiction that problematises the wholeconcept. If causation is first termed an intellectual category, which canonly be applied to ideas, how can one then speak of a Ding an sich asthe ground for explanation, or impetus? Once again, this chapter is notintended as a systematic critique of Kant, but to provide some insightinto the consequences for the status of knowledge of God within hisconcept. These consequences were in no sense slight.

We have knowledge of all things only to the extent that they presentthemselves as objects of sensory perception, namely as phenomenon.The interest shifts from the reality that comes in to the thought pro-cess that brings things in. After all, there is always the filter of its ownoperations between the human subject and the world. In knowing, manunavoidably must deal with his own activity. If there is contact withreality, it is at the most indirect. According to Kant, there is no per-ception without the forms of perception and the concepts of the mindimposing coherence upon it. In other words—and here we encounterthe legacy with enormous consequences for theology—experience isalways interpreted experience. Perceptions find their interpretationwithin the forms of time and space, and the conceptuality of reason.This shift of the balance to the thinking subject has the not insignificantconsequence that there is a break in reality: not that this reality can nolonger be the subject in the sense that it addresses us, but the directionis reversed. The thinking man shapes a world for himself, forms impres-sions, speaks language: in short: human acts are the centre of our reach.

5.6. Knowledge as human construction

Kant’s philosophy is an salient example of the anthropologisation ofhuman knowledge. Knowledge is a product of the human mind, inwhich the data of experience is processed into knowledge by the mind.It is a critical idealism that ascribes a large measure of constructive

(19565=) 1983, 227 (A 168); ET: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of ImmanuelKant) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge 2002, 142.


function to the mind. Kant’s constructivism, as he develops it in hiscritical philosophy, leads to knowledge being regarded as a completelyhuman activity, no longer supported by or rooted in a relation betweenGod and man. Knowledge is the creation of conceptual relationships,from which the subject constructs reality. With this, the constructionof reality has become a human endeavour. The starting point and ori-gin of the reality that we are dealing with in our knowledge lies inthe human mind, which has been discovered in its independence andautonomy. This contrasts with Calvin, where in its activity the soul dis-plays evidence of its divine origin. With Leibnitz human thought is stillderived from God’s thought. With Kant thought and human knowingis fully anthropologised. Barth, in his concept, does not retreat fromthis anthropologisation. The Bible, confessions of faith, doctrine: theseare human words and constructs that are sounded for their congru-ence with the Divine Word, and as such have a heuristic function. Inthemselves they are however human givens, which in comparison tothe situation with Calvin have lost their status as ‘heavenly’ teaching ordivine word.

The consequence of this anthropologisation is that a rupture appearsin the sensory foundation for knowledge, between phenomenon and theDing an sich. As a scheme, the world as it is described by the natural sci-ences is the world of man. This split permitted a deep scepticism to takeroot within the channel of modern intellectual history with regard to allour knowledge, and in particular with regard to any presumption toknowledge of God. The question that arises in Kant’s concept is, in anycase, to what extent we in our knowing still have knowledge of thingsthemselves. Or is human knowledge comprised only of consciousness ofmental states? For Kant, knowledge consists of mental representations.Let me take an example from sensory perception.29 In our knowledgewe are conscious of looking at a tree. But all concepts that I use in thismental representation are derived from my own reason. According toKant, the statement ‘I see a tree’ is to be understood as ‘I am consciousof being aware that a tree stands before me’. He no longer understandsthis statement as expressing the consciousness that I am aware that atree outside of me furnishes me with the impression of a tree. Nothingcan be said about the reality of the objects observed. They fall outsideof human reach.

29 See Wolterstorff, ‘Is it possible and desirable for Theologians to recover fromKant?’, 17.

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The fundamental problem that this split produces for all speakingabout God, for every presumption to knowing God, is not difficult toappreciate. The things that we know are of our own design, shapedby our own mind. Whether reality corresponds to these designs, isa question that becomes more difficult to answer. The correctness ofour designs is demonstrated as they work, when our knowledge provesapplicable to reality. It is however fundamentally impossible to haveknowledge of that which is found on the other side of our finiteness.That is the epistemological problem that history has created in moderntheology. What was not accepted was the manner in which Kant soughtto resolve the problem: God, soul and immortality as convictions whichare warranted for man on the basis of pure reason. With Kant, the ideaof God is still present as the keystone. The question was, however, howlong thought that simply referred to itself, would still need, and wouldstill tolerate, being circumscribed in this way.

In knowledge the gap continues to exist between Ding an sich andphenomenon. The relation between ontology and gnoseology is re-versed in this concept. The consequences have been gigantic. Whatis real is determined in epistemology. The ever-expanding natural sci-ences provided a model for this turnabout. In his Logik Kant writes ofnature, ‘The whole of nature in general is really nothing but a connec-tion of appearances according to rules, and ther is no absence of ruleseverywhere. If we believe we have found such a thing, than in this casewe can only say that we are not acquainted with the rules.’30 In otherwords, if reality can be ascribed to particular phenomena depends onwhether they can be thought of in relation. The judgement of reality isonly given then when a phenomenon, with the aid of rules derived fromthe mind, can be brought into connection. The judgement of reality isdetermined by rules that the mind itself has introduced. That whichcannot be included within this relationship is not known, or does notexist to be known. Knowledge can only possess the status of certainty ifwe have internal access to the conditions under which this knowledgearises. That this form of foundational thinking has had radical conse-quences for the epistemological status of knowledge of God is not at allsurprising.

30 I. Kant, Logik, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd. 3, 432 (A1); ET: (The CambrigdeEdition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Lectures on Logic, tr. and. ed. by J.M. Young,Cambridge 1992, 527.


5.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in God

According to Kant, at first sight the subjectivation of knowledge has avery disadvantageous result for metaphysics, namely that we with ourcapacity ‘are brought to the conclusion that we can never transcend thelimits of possible experience, though that is precisely what this scienceis concerned, above all, to achieve’.31 It is clear that Kant’s limitationof human knowledge (i.e., knowledge from the natural sciences) toexperience that is defined by space and time has consequences for thestatus of classic proofs of God, at least to the extent that these availthemselves of causality. On the basis of this principle the acceptanceof a first principle or God as the prime mover obtained as a generalor authoritative proof of God. The reasonableness of belief in God, itsgeneral acceptability as the content of human knowledge, was throwninto doubt by the Kantian critique, although Kant indeed made itclear that in his own view, the cosmological proof of God should beregarded with the greatest esteem: ‘It is the oldest, clearest and themost appropriate to common human reason.’32 Notwithstanding thiscommendation, as far as Kant was concerned there had to be a breakwith a long tradition in European intellectual history. In this traditionthe concept of God as the highest being had been a fundamental,and foundational element. One’s own relative, unstable existence couldonly be considered as dependent on God as the highest, unchangeablebeing. Men could be more certain of that highest being than theywere of themselves; it was among those things which, according to theexpression we found in Calvin, were extra controversiam, beyond question.But slowly ‘god’ or the concept of God took on another function forthought and human knowledge. While in pre-modern thought thinkingabout the faculties of cognition was still entirely in the context of areligious understanding of the world and dependent on this metafysicaspecialis, in the early-modern philosophy of Descartes we see that Godbecomes a prior condition for the trustworthiness of reason.33 Kant goesstill a step further: the concept of God fulfils the role of a regulative ideafor reason.

What does Kant mean by this? By a regulative idea Kant meanssomething that one can not know, but just as little can avoid think-

31 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.32 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550 (B 651); ET, 579–580.33 See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 111–125.

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ing about and working with it. In thinking itself, he says, there is thetendency to go beyond all experience, namely the unconditioned, dasUnbedingte.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 requiredto complete the series of conditions’.35 There is a unity demanded asa regulative principle for theoretical reason.36 In any case, reason hasthe inclination to venture to the farthest bounds of knowledge and toseek for a unity in which it can find rest.37 Knowing seeks an idea thatlies on the far side of all transcendent conditions, and this idea mustbecome the ground of unity. According to Kant, the concept of God isnecessary first of all as an intelligible ground for the world of our expe-rience, and then as the highest element behind the efficiency of nature,and finally as the idea of unconditionality, in order to think of all expe-rience systematically as unity.38 As soon as one begins to regard thisregulative idea or Unbedingte as an object that man can know, as a con-stitutive principle about which men can form a concept, one falls intoantinomies. The regulative idea is not an object that can be definedby thought; it is nothing more than a necessary framework that makesthinking in its unity possible.

Kant himself interpreted the regulative principle of Unbedingte as theidea of a highest being.39 Within Kantian studies the question is beingasked if within his own philosophy that is really necessary. It is strikingthat in interpretations of Kant the necessity of God as a mental conceptcan be explicitly denied.40 Once reason had discovered its own role inthe attempt to understand what knowledge is and what humanity is, itappears that in the long term the concept of God will disappear fromreason as a material or constitutive principle. That is not yet true forKant himself. For him, the concept of God as a postulate of practicalreason has the status of objective reality. But that does not detract from

34 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.35 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.36 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (A 699, B 727); ET, 620.37 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 671 (B 825); ET, 673.38 K.H. Michel, Immanuël Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes. Eine kritische Unter-

suchung der ‘transzendentalen Ästetik’ 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,

‘Kants visie op de betekenis voor kennis en wetenschap’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift35 (1981), 218. See also Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 19–20.


the fact that in Kant the balance has already shifted. Once reasonperceives its own autonomy, it no longer has to appeal to God, andthis ‘no longer has to’ very quickly becomes ‘no longer may’, and in thecase of Nietzsche even ‘can no longer bear to’. Although the logical ruleapplies that necessity can no longer be concluded from possibility—e posse consequentia non valet—culturally modernity has gone down thispath. In any case Kant ushers in a period in which theological notionsare removed from the sciences. Within the natural sciences there is nolonger any room for a reference to God. The nature of its knowledgeis neutral in the sense that no value judgement can be derived from it,nor is there any reference possible to another order. General knowledgeand knowledge of God go their separate ways.

Can we then still speak of knowledge of God within Kant’s phi-losophy? What does the word ‘God’ mean when the concept of Godbecomes a regulative idea and no longer a constitutive concept? Themanner in which one can still speak about God in Kant reveals the dis-tance from Calvin. In Calvin readers are tied to the anthropomorphicimage of God’s fatherhood. That is what God desires; that is how Hewishes 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 interms of a category that we ourselves employ in our relation to theworld, namely causality.

How does Kant’s reasoning run? He asks how our reason in its appli-cation to experience relates to that which this same reason expels toabove experience, transcendental ideas. He then suggests that one canindeed unite the prohibition against the speculative use of pure reasonwith the command to form ideas that provide our knowledge with itsground and unity, and indeed to do so by limiting itself to the relation ofa highest being to the world. From the world of experience we learn toknow certain relationships, and consider these relationships commen-surate with the relation of a highest being to the world. Kant termsthis symbolic anthropomorphism, in contrast to dogmatic anthropo-morphism. Symbolic anthropomorphism makes metaphorical use of arelationship that we know; dogmatic anthropomorphism presumes toalso know this highest being itself. Kant wants to absolutely avoid the

41 Prolegomena, 233 (A 175); ET, 146.

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latter. We look at the world as if it were the work of a higher intelli-gence and will. Kant points to the relationship of a watch to its maker,a ship to its builder, and a regiment to its commander. He is of theopinion that one can make an analogy of relationships of things thatare further entirely unknown. The result of this analogy for knowledgeof God is illustrative.

‘E.g., the promotion of the happiness of the children = a is to the loveof the parents = b as the welfare of humankind = c is to the unknownin God = x, which we call love: not as if this unknown had the leastsimilarity with any human inclination, but because we can posit therelation between God’s love and the world to be similar to that whichthings in the world have to one another. But the concept of the relationis a mere category, namely the concept of cause, which has nothing to dowith sensibility.’42

In terms of the types of analogy, Kant characterises the relation ofGod and the world as an analogia proportionalitatis: the equivalence inthe relationship is the object of the analogy. The only thing that can beexpressed in human language and concepts is that God is a premisefor the world. To my mind, Jüngel is correct when he argues thatwithin this concept God only comes into the discussion as an unknowncauser.43 Our knowledge of God is in no way increased; only therelationship is known. Kant writes explicitly that that which is unknownin God, which we term love, shows not the least equivalence with anyhuman propensity. The relational term here is merely a category inhuman thought, namely the concept of causality that we employ for thesensory world. Here we can see very sharply the extent to which Godcan only be spoken of in his unknowabilty within Kant’s concept. WhatKant then does say of God falls far short not only of what the Bible saysof God, but is a tremendous, not to say terrible, abstraction with regardto the images that we encountered in Calvin’s theology.44 God permitshimself to be thought of as a premise, analogous to the causality thatwe employ as a category within the world of our experience. Thatmen might also be able to learn to know something that did not arisefrom the world of experience itself, but that accrues to them within

42 Prolegomena, 233 (A 176); ET, 147.43 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 277–278.44 Because of this abstraction the concept of causality has gotten an enormously bad

name in contemporary theology. See for example Th. de Boer, De God van de filosofen ende God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van filosofie en theologie, ’s Gravenhage 1989, 105 andHoutepen, God: an open Question, 360–361.


that world of experience and is mediated by that world of experienceby virtue of God’s condescension and turning toward man, is ignored.God remains the Unknown.

Does this negative judgement change when in his Kritik der praktischenVernunft Kant advances the ideas of freedom, immortality of the souland the existence of God as the three postulates of practical reason?Kant is prepared to term these postulates knowledge, but we must notecarefully what he means when he says this. They are ideas, concepts ofpure reason, to which no reality can be attributed by means of theo-retical reason. Practical reason, the discovery of morality, demands theexistence of a highest good, and these three ideas are postulated on thebasis of this requirement for moral sense in man. Their objectivity ishowever only postulated with an eye to practical reason, to morality.Therefore no use of these ideas can be made apart from this relationto morality, as though these were knowledge in the theoretical sense.45

In the domain of practical reason, ‘they become immanent and consti-tutive inasmuch as they are grounds of the possibility of making real thenecessary object of pure practical reason (the highest good), whereas apartfrom this they are transcendent and merely regulative principles of specu-lative reason which do not require it to assume a new object beyondexperience, but only to bring its use in experience nearer to complete-ness.’46 It is a ‘cognition of God, but only with practical reference’.47

One can conclude that Kant’s philosophy marks the moment at whichknowledge of God loses its status as generally valid knowledge.

The conclusion that for Kant God in fact is unknowable, is con-firmed by his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. ‘Religionis (subjectively regarded) the recognition of all duties as divine com-mands.’48 What Kant termed statutarische Religion or Kirchenglaube occu-pies a secondary place with regard to the secret that is present withinmen themselves. It is something which can indeed ‘be known by eachsingle individual but cannot be made known publicly, that is, shared

45 I. Kant, Kritik der praktische Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.4, hrsg. vonW. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19565=), 266–268 (A 241–243). ET in: Practical Philosophy,tr. and ed. by M.J. Gregor (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant),Cambridge 1996, 247–249.

46 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 268 (A 244); ET, 249.47 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 270 (A 248); ET, 250.48 Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.4,

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, Cambridge1996, 177.

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universally’.49 An archetype lying in reason is the foundation of histori-cal, empirical faith. Belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God is one expo-nent of it.50 Indeed, all religion rests not on knowledge, but on the needto conceive the relation of a highest moral ruler to mankind in this way,namely as an unchanging, omniscient, good and all-powerful being.51

Within Kant’s own concept God is a ideational thing, a quantity whichappears within the horizon of pure reason as the Unbedingte, and withinthe horizon of practical reason as the guarantee of the moral order.Can one pray to such a quantity, or call upon Him?

5.8. After Kant

In epistemology, Kant’s critique of knowing marked a trend that wasincreasingly asserting itself in Western culture, namely the diminishingself-evidence of belief in God. Therefore Western theology has takenthe Kantian subdivision of the various sorts of knowledge as its startingpoint. To determine the status of a certain sort of knowledge, theconditions or the transcendental potential of the knowledge must firstbe determined. If an assertion is to be acceptable as knowledge, thenthe conditions for such a statement must first be clarified. Since Kant,Western theology has accepted that one of its responsibilities is to makeclear what the peculiar domain of faith is, or with which domain itmust be associated. In short, the question regarding the possibility ofknowing God was henceforth regarded as a question of the first order.Where are the anchorages or bridgeheads for knowing God?

Now, the faith that is summoned up by the Bible, that is confessedand experienced in the Christian community, is not dependent on aphilosophical or conceptual system. Every systematic consideration ofthe content of faith does however take place in a climate that is influ-enced by changes taking place in philosophy or in the realm of cul-ture. To this extent the post-Kantian situation has also been one of theinfluences in shaping the theology of Karl Barth. There have been var-ious responses to Kant and his removal of knowledge of God from thedomain of generally valid knowledge. The responses are generally tobe connected with three names. First we can mention the response of

49 Die Religion, 803 (B 208); ET, 164.50 Die Religion, 782 (A 165, 166); ET, 149.51 Die Religion, 806, (B 211, A 199); ET, 165–166.


those who with Albrecht Ritschl wished to go further in the footsteps ofKant, and give religion a place as an extension of the domain of moral-ity. A second response is connected with the name of Hegel. Hegelsought to win the universal domain of knowledge of God back again.According to him, Kant thought too little and too narrowly of reason.All of history and its development were expressions of reason, that inessence is nothing less than divine reason, the Spirit that comes into itsown in the thinking of philosophy. The third way, which became veryimportant for Barth’s own development, stems from Schleiermacher.To Schleiermacher belongs the honour of having gotten theology backon its own feet again after Kant by designating belief as an irreducibleexperience. In the famous words of paragraph 3 of his Glaubenslehre,‘Die Frömmigkeit, welche die Basis aller kirchlichen Gemeinschaftenausmacht, is rein für sich betrachtet weder ein Wissen noch ein Tun,sondern eine Bestimmtheit des Gefühls oder des unmittelbaren Selbst-bewußtseins’.52 In this way he prevents piety from being swallowed upin the acknowledgement of articles of faith or in ethical acts. Knowl-edge of God is accorded a place in the concrete life of every personas it is lived. Schleiermacher conceives men as beings who as such, inthe pre-reflexive layer of their consciousness, are already linked to thedivine. Schleiermacher accepted Kant’s view of scientific knowledge,but he pointed to a realm, to a particular domain for the religious,where man as it were is at home. For him too there is a turn toward thesubject, but it is a concrete subject, living in history, the living person,who is characterised by receptivity precisely in his or her connectionwith the universe.53 Christian doctrine is the articulation of the self-consciousness of the Christian community of faith, as it was defined byJesus’ consciousness of God. In Schleiermacher, the turn to the subjectis made concrete in the individual person living in community—thus inthe Christian community of faith.

52 F.D. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kircheim Zusammenhange dargestellt, Bd.I (hrsg. von M. Redeker), (Berlin 18302=) Berlin 19607,14.

53 Cf. F. Schleiermacher, Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern(1799), Göttingen 19917, 49: ‘Sie begehrt nicht, das Universum seiner Natur nachzu bestimmen und zu erklären wie die Metaphysik, sie begehrt nicht, aus Kraft derFreiheit und der göttlichen Willkür des Menschen es fortzubilden und fertig zu machenwie die Moral. Ihr Wesen ist weder Denken noch Handeln, sondern Anschauungund Gefühl. Anschauen will sie das Universum, in seinen eigenen Darstellungen undHandlungen will sie es andächtig belauschen, von seinen unmittelbaren Einflüssen willsie sich in kindlicher Passivität ergreifen und erfüllen lassen.’

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It can with some right be said that Schleiermacher’s foundationfor religion in Anschauung und Gefühl works out an element of Calvin’sconcept of knowing God, namely the notion of the sensus divinitatis.When Schleiermacher speaks of the universe, we encounter the samedynamism that we found in Calvin in his description of God’s opera-tions. The differences are however obvious. What for Calvin is a moreor less self-evident faculty within an aggregate of faculties in Schleier-macher becomes the cork on which the whole of knowledge of Godis adrift. From the perspective of the history of theology, it is this tra-dition of experiential theology that Barth appropriates, as a student ofW. Herrmann. It is also this point of departure in the actuality of givenknowledge of God to which Barth held fast in his theological devel-opment. In an early article he describes religious experience as.54 Inother words, religion has the stream of history in which men participateas persons to thank for its origin and existence. The core of humanexistence is this immediate reality, which, from the perspective of phi-losophy of life, is to be conceived as dynamic. In his acceptance of thisreligious reality as the fundamental datum of theology, one can charac-terise Barth’s position as a form of realism. In finding foundations forthis facticity, he would go his own way with regard to the experience-based theology of Schleiermacher and Herrmann.

54 K. Barth, ‘Der kosmologische Beweis für das Dasein Gottes’, Vorträge und kleineArbeiten (1905–1909), in Verbindung mit Herbert Helms herausgegeben von Hans-AntonDrewes und Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe III, Zürich 1992, 407.

part two

KARL BARTH

chapter six

THE WAY OF KNOWING GOD

6.1. Introduction: theology and society

From the perspective of intellectual history, Barth’s concept of knowl-edge of God can be considered as a theological counterproposal tomodernity, to its ideals and, it must immediately be said, to its failures.1

If modernity initially cherished the expectation that humane conductand human happiness were attainable if only we were resolute enoughin following a rational course in dealing with reality, in which only thatwhich was completely clear for the human mind was acceptable, it hasbeen some time now since we became much less hopeful, and the opti-mism about the success of this effort has yielded to a proper distrustof the potential of mankind and a staggering loss of comprehensiveideal objectives. Independent of the change in mood and ideals, how-ever, the conviction has remained that men ‘in the last analysis definethemselves, set their limits, articulate their values and design their exis-tence’.2 In that regard, post-modernity is nothing more than a ripple inthe pond of modernity.

What face does Barth’s theology show against this background? Thecurious thing about Barth’s theology is that he does anything but denythe formal definition of man as a self-determining being. Indeed, heintegrates it into his own view of what it is to be human.3 Through histheology he does implicitly confront the church and culture with theclaim that absolutising the human subject is a threat to humanity. It isthe implicit assumption that mankind is better protected and served if

1 See for instance the previously mentioned essay by D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth alsTheologe der Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, München1973, 34–102 en T. Rendtorff, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis derTheologie Karl Barths und ihrer Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Güthersloh 1972, 161–181.

2 H.J. Pott, Survival in het mensenpark. Over kunst, cyborgs en posthumanisme, Rotterdam2000, 29.

3 KD I/1, 206–239; ET, 198–227.

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man understands himself as constituted and defined by God’s turningtoward man. It is sounder if man lets himself be interrupted, and finallylets himself be defined by that which does not coincide with his ownprojections, namely, by God and His gracious care for man and theworld. The claim of this theology is that any thinking which does noton every occasion seek its point of departure in God’s approach, nomatter how bold or modest its further development may be, runs therisk of actually embracing demons or idols. Or, still more concretely,and now with terms that gradually crystallised in Barth’s theology, manis well served, and does justice to his deepest vocation if he understandshimself as being included in and defined by the history of Jesus Christas the history of God’s approach to man. In this history man learnsto know his own situation as dwelling with Jesus Christ. That is to say,man is intended for a life that shares in the glory of God. No one claimsthat for himself; it is declared to us.

With this we encounter a theme that was also briefly discussed inthe first panel with regard to Calvin’s theology, namely the relationbetween knowledge of God and social questions. Barth has a massivetheological oeuvre to his name, in which he continually and protract-edly ploughed over the theological landscape. One could make a verygood case that Barth’s influence can be credited more to his smaller,occasional writings, in which he often addressed the social and politicalquestions of the moment, than to his Kirchliche Dogmatik, unquestionablyhis main work.4 One can ask if there is a relation between the sever-ity with Barth persists in presenting the theological questions in KDand the fact that he continually could surprise (and irritate) his con-temporaries with very pointed and, from a political perspective notrarely controversial positions. It becomes increasingly clear that thisquestion must be answered positively. Barth’s main work is not themonolithic block that it perhaps appears to be, unread and from adistance. In fact parts of this central work are also products of a dia-

4 The lecture ‘Der Christ in der Gessellschaft’, presented in 1919 at a meetingof religious socialists in Tambach, and included in Anfänge I, 3–37, is an example ofsuch a paper; the lectures and letters in which Barth as a Swiss citizen took a clearand immediate position in regard to National Socialism and the political and militarydangers in Germany of that day, in part collected in Eine Schweizer Stimme, 1938–1945,Zurich 1945, provide others. See also K. Barth, Offene Briefe 1935–1942 (ed. D. Koch),Zurich, 2001. Because of these stands, Barth helped shape opinion among a broadrange of Christian intellectuals. The interplay between his two roles as an opinionleader and theologian intensified both, and formed a field of influence with greatimpact.

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logue, results of an often behind the scenes debate with contemporarypositions and persons.5 The fact that Barth generally refrained frommaking this debate explicit is an omission that unnecessarily increasesthe inaccessibility of the KD, and thereby its monolithic image. Barth’schurch theology is explicitly intended as a public theology. The theo-logical breadth and depth is immediately connected to the questions ofthe day.

Although the relations between church and state, and between theol-ogy and the various domains of modern society have undergone enor-mous changes with the comparable constellation in 16th century culture,the public character of theology and its wider influence as such doesnot appear to have been lost. The course of Barth’s life, and the effectsof his theology in diverse contexts, are a rich source for illustrations ofthe changed, but for all the changes no less broad social and politicalfunction of theology.6 That he puts his readers on the wrong track isconnected to his vision of the place and task of the church and theol-ogy in the public context. The unity of church and state, of church andsociety, which was briefly contemplated and attempted in Zurich, Basel,Bern and Geneva at the time of the reformation in the Swiss cities, isin Barth’s eyes something long in the past, not only sociologically buttheologically. It had become unthinkable to dedicate a theological textto a ruling monarch and to call upon the government to maintain thepurity of religion, as Calvin does. The modernisation of society, as thispresents itself in the separation of church and state among other things,is manifest in his theology. Barth thinks of the church as a small groupwhich by God’s grace has become engaged in a countermovement, andwhich is of importance to the whole society only as a countermove-ment. But in his theology this engagement does not obviously take theform of an hierarchically structured, broadly based people’s church;his view inclines rather to congregationalism. The strategy of a smallgroup, the shaping of an elite of inwardly engaged individuals who havea realisation of the actual relations of things and who can act from this

5 See S. Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and theHistory of Theology, University Park (PA), 1998 for an illustration of how Barth found itnecessary to engage in a direct dialogue, in order to work out a thesis by EberhardBusch.

6 For the Dutch context, see M.E. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth: dynamoof dynamiet voor christelijk handelen. De politieke en theologische kontroverse tussen NederlandseBarthianen en Neocalvinisten, Baarn 1983.

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stance, fits with this.7 It also fits with this strategy that Barth enforcesa strict separation between politics and theology. Sometimes he makesthis separation so rigorously that readers got the impression that theol-ogy could go its way unperturbed, although the world was ablaze.8 Thereader will find, however, that he is on the wrong track if he believesthat for Barth theology can be separated from its public function. Onfurther examination the imperturbability proves to have a clear theo-logical and strategic reason behind it, as can be seen in Barth’s responseto Hitler’s coming to power. According to Barth, the effort of the Naziregime to bring all political, social and ecclesiastical organisations intoline, which was greeted in National Socialist and conservative circleswith their romantic vision of the past as a vitally necessary restorationof the unity of church and state,9 does not stand by itself. In his eyesthis was merely the rank shoot of a poisonous plant that had for muchlonger grown rampantly in Western theology. Barth did not choose toview the struggle over the churches as an isolated event, but as thefrothing tip of a wave that had travelled much further and was pro-pelled by hidden forces. He therefore worked on the development ofa theology and Christian doctrine, in the conviction that there wouldonly be a productive relation between theological positions and con-temporary situation if this theology provided ‘comprehensive clarifica-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 first edition ofThe Epistle to the Romans, Barth describes his work as ‘a preliminary undertaking [whichmakes] further co-operation … necessary’, and the characterisation of the church inKD 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. Pfleiderer, KarlBarths praktische Theologie, Tübingen 2000, which places Barth’s theology in the contextof attempts to shape a theological elite, a ‘strong’ acting subject, which understandsitself and, in doing so, is enabled to discover what the Word of God is within a givensituation (426–428). Here with Barth the professionalisation of life, so characteristic ofmodernity, the roots of which Max Weber suggested lay in modern Christianity, reachesChristianity itself (440).

8 The sharpest example of this is Barth’s response in 1933 when he was asked tocomment on the assumption of power by Hitler. By his own admission the most decisivething that he had to say was the simple statement that he would continue his theologicalteaching ‘als wäre nichts geschehen—vielleicht in leise erhöhten Ton, aber ohne direkteBezugnahmen—Theologie und nur Theologie zu treiben’. Zie K. Barth, TheologischeExistenz Heute (1933). Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Hinrich Stoevesandt,München 1984, 26.

9 For the historic context, see L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, ‘Die Kirchen zwischenAnpassung und Widerstand im Dritten Reich’, in: W. Hüffmeier und M. Stöhr, BarmerTheologische Erklärung 1934–1984. Geschichte, Wirkung, Defizite, Bielefeld 1984, 11–29.


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, Barth’s reflectionon 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 glorification ofNazism 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 towhom mankind essentially does not matter, and who has overseen thedestruction of a part of humanity. In short, on further examination theimpression of timelessness does not appear to tally with the evidence.According to Barth, theology fulfils its task most adequately when ithas the courage to concentrate on Christian doctrine as an unceasingexercise in listening. Barth’s presupposition is that the principle of theprimacy of God in his revelation makes it possible to include everythingthat happens in the social and political sphere in a constant interactionbetween the Word of God and everyday reality.11

The conviction that Barth’s theology is not a timeless theology, andthus can not be studied in that way, has become deeply rooted inBarthian studies of the last decades, in large part through the effortsof T. Rendtorff and F.W. Marquardt, however open to challenge theremainder of their views may be.12 However, there is still no defini-tive answer to the question of how the relationship between Barth’stheology and its context must be defined. A number of possibilitiesor approaches present themselves, through which one can discuss orexpound his theology as an engaged theology involved with its times.13

As was indicated above, the arrangement of a diptych of pre-modern

10 KD I/1, XI; ET, XVI.11 W. Krötke, ‘Die Christologie Karl Barths als Beispiel für den Vollzug seiner

Exegese’ in: M. Trowitzsch (Hrsg.), Karl Barths Schriftauslegung, Tübingen 1996, 19, note74.

12 F.W. Marquardt must be accorded the honour of having powerfully placed thediscussion of the historical and social rootage of Barth’s 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 Barth’s relationship withthe history of his time and, in particular, with modernity as their subject. See, amongothers, 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-lungen’, Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 14 (1998), 52–64.

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and post-Kantian theology followed here implies that Barth’s theologyin any case must be viewed against the background of intellectualhistory, which has been disrupted by the Kantian critique of the meansof knowing, and that his Christian theology responds to the problematicof modernity. This is anything but an assertion that Barth has beendirectly influenced by Kant in all sorts of ways, or is responding directlyto him. One must first take Barth’s theology as a Christian theologywhich attempts to speak of the matter of Christian faith, God in histurning toward man, in a responsible way. That is its primary intention,and it is first of all on this point that one must measure it. But that doesnot eliminate what was previously argued with regard to backgroundand context. On the contrary, the critical acuity and value of a theologylies precisely in the manner in which it implicitly or explicitly carrieson the debate with its own environment and its own soul. Barth’stheological labour took place in a constellation in which the ideals,possibilities and limits of modernity also had enormous consequencesfor theology. In part he accepted these possibilities, limits and ideals,and in part he critically reworked and corrected them in his theology.Moreover, he very deliberately wished to connect with the notionsthat are distinctive for Reformation theology. Church and theologyhave their ground and criterion in the Word of the Living God andtherefore display an orientation to the Bible and Jesus Christ. The dualsounding boards of Reformation theology and modernity define themethodological problem in this dogmatics, for which Barth sought ananswer. How must we speak about God so that we are still speakingabout God? With that the question of content comes to the fore. Whatmust we say about God, and what is the guarantee that what we aresaying is still about the God of the Bible?

The choice Barth makes in terming his dogmatics a church dogmaticsis directly related with the foregoing. The term ‘church’ has a criticalpoint, with reference both to the prevailing theological traditions aswell as the institutional church. In Chapter 8, in the rejection of infantbaptism, we will encounter an example of a critique of the latter; herewe are first dealing with the first critical sense of the term ‘church’.Barth discovered more and more that Christian thinking about God,man and the world was never a ‘free’ occupation, but in a spiritualsense is tied to the space of the church. In short, in Barth’s own moremature theology tradition is the space in which systematic reflectionfinds, learns and reformulates its material. Society as a context andreference point for theology does not drop out of sight in Barth. The


assumption is that society will best be served if theology expressly takesits place in the space of tradition, and attunes its ear to listen to theWord.14

Barth’s concept of knowledge of God leads to a critical stance in,and over against, one’s own culture. He proposed a theology that struc-turally keeps alive the realisation of the difference between man andGod, between human experience and knowledge on the one handand God, who continues to speak through his Word, on the other. Itis an attempt to assure at the conceptual level that one’s own experi-ence, words and concepts can never become more than secondary phe-nomena, answers with respect to the primacy of God’s own approachand revelation, which can never be cancelled out. Barth himself wasalways allergic to social and political positions in which this distinctionbetween what he called the penultimate and ultimate was forgotten.15

The critique is obvious. Is Barth then himself above this reproachwhen he, in his sometimes very decidedly political positions, identifiesthe cause of Christ with a certain position, as he does in the famousletter to Hromadka?16 And applied to the foundations of his theology:

14 With an eye to the various contexts of theology it is worthwhile to distinguishbetween that which theology says directly to its time, on short wave, one might say, andon the other side a theological reflection that enters into debate with the underlyingmotives and structures of a culture—long wave, so to speak. Long wave is slower, but itsstrength is all the deeper and more powerful for that. Dogmatic reflection will have tofind the courage to first of all be of service in long wave. Only then can it be productivein short wave. Barth’s theology and life is an example of both.

15 The examples are well-known, and are gradually being documented in Barthstudies. One may think of Barth’s consternation at the identification of the Germancause with God’s purpose at the outbreak of World War I, of his critique of LeonardRagaz, who in his eyes identified socialism too closely with the Kingdom of God, andof the manner in which Hitler’s assumption of power was greeted in leadership circlesin Germany as a direct intervention by God, but also of positions in which eitherWestern capitalism or Eastern European state communism was too directly identifiedwith the will of God. For a brief and popular overview, see F. Jehle, Lieber unangenehmlaut als angenehm leise. Der Theologe Karl Barth und die Politik 1906–1968, Zürich 1999 andT.J. Gorringe, Karl Barth against Hegemony. Christian Theology in Context, Oxford 1999. Seealso my Anfängliche Theologie, 63–72.

16 K. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme 1938–1945, Zürich 19853, 58–59: ‘Jeder tschechischeSoldat, der … streitet und leidet, wird es auch für uns—und, ich sage es heute ohneVorbehalt: er wird es auch für die Kirche Jesu Christi tun, die in dem Dunstkreis derHitler und Mussolini nur entweder der Lächerlichkeit oder der Ausrottung verfallenkann.’ The exchange of letters is also included in M. Rohkrämer (Hrsg.), Freundschaftim Widerspruch. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Karl Barth, Josef L. Hromádka und Josef B. Soucek1935–1968. Mit einer Einleitung von J.M. Lochman, Zürich 1995, 54; now also included inK. Barth, Offene Briefe 1935–1942, 114.

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are his thesis of the primacy of the Word, of God’s 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 subjectto all ambivalence? To ask the question implies the answer. No humanact whatsoever escapes this ambivalence. What can be given concep-tual form is that one’s own words and judgements always remain fluid.Over against the primacy of God’s Word the human subject is con-stantly made aware of his own secondary position. Man is the one whois called to obedience, to an attitude of prayer, which results in thisdependence on God.

The concept of this second panel is no less theocentric and noless focused on culture and society than was the case with Calvin.It is certainly theocentric in a different way, and focuses differentlyon culture and society. Theology is useful and worthwhile when itconfronts the church, the Christian community and, at its deepest, theworld ‘with the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materiallychanges, all things and everything in all things—the fact that God is’.18

With this we find ourselves at the hub, on which, we would emphasise,all Christian theology turns, and through which its exercise within anagnostic and anthropocentric cultural climate becomes a astonishingand at the same time hopeful phenomenon. Audacity is necessary tolook at the world and man, at ourselves and our history, in the light ofa living God.

6.2. ‘Not without audacity’: the primacy of revelation

‘Without audacity there can be no foundation for theology’. This ax-iom, once meant ironically by F. Overbeck and cited by Karl Barthin his review of Overbeck’s posthumously published book Christentumund Kultur,19 could be used as a motto for Barth’s own theology in gen-eral, and his concept of the knowledge of God in particular. The back-

17 For the text of the Barmen Declaration and a commentary by H. Asmussen, seeEB 2, 255–279. Barth very decidedly experienced, and wished to see the Declarationvalued as prophetic speech. In his deepest conviction it regarded it as more than a‘Theologenfündlein’. See KD II/1, 198; ET, 176: ‘not merely a pretty little discovery ofthe theologians’.

18 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.19 ‘Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie’ in: Karl Barth, Die Theologie und

die Kirche, München 1928, 23.


ground of Overbeck’s remark was his conviction that Christian the-ology had had all the ground cut away from under it by historicalinvestigation. The expectation of the first Christians that God’s king-dom would quickly descend from the heavens to earth is of such atotally different structure from the expectation of modern Christian-ity, namely that the Kingdom will be realised by way of a humani-sation of their own culture, that there is simply no relation betweenthe them. Concrete eschatological expectations and cosmological con-ceptions separate the two. If Overbeck can stand for the voices thatmaintain that Christian belief has been fundamentally problematisedon historical grounds and argue that people can no longer adhere toChristian belief without losing their intellectual integrity, Barth is themodel of the attempt to reflect on the premises of that Christian faithanew, even after the problematising of Christian faith in Western cul-ture.

He does not begin his theology by taking up general problems.Swelling prolegomena were one of the characteristics of the theolog-ical projects that initially were developed in response to the break inEurope between Rome and the Reformation, and later in reaction tothe process of continuing differentiation among domains of knowledge.That Barth’s theological concept belongs in the second, modern panelis clear simply from the fact that the Kirchliche Dogmatik begins with anextensive prolegomenon entitled Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes. Prolegomena zurkirchlichen Dogmatik. What is found in this prolegomenon is however assurprising as it is pregnant. If it had been customary for prolegomenato discuss questions which have to be answered first before one comesto the content of the project, Barth makes clear that he will not sep-arate the way of knowing God from the content of the knowledge ofGod. Prolegomena are not the things which must be said first; they arethe first things which need to be said. One can not first speak aboutthe way of knowing God, as if this involved only formal considerationsof a general nature. Speaking about the way and nature of knowingGod is not possible without discussing the content of the knowledge ofGod. Or, to put it better, the way and nature of human knowledge ofGod are completely defined by the content of the knowledge of God,that which God himself reveals. In doing this, Barth relativises the dis-tinction within the concept of faith that had made itself at home inProtestant orthodoxy as the difference between fides quae and fides qua:one cannot think about the way of knowing God without Him whois the content of what is known in human religious knowledge. In KD

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I/1—thus in his prolegomenon—Barth formulates the unity of the way(or form) and content of knowledge of God in the thesis ‘God revealshimself as Lord’.20 This elementary thesis is clearly what the contentof the revelation is. Revelation is essentially the self -revelation that isfurther characterised as the revelation of God’s lordship or the revela-tion of the basileia theou. One can hear the modern rejection of revela-tion as the imparting of preternatural truths reverberating through thisdefinition of revelation as self-revelation. But there is more to it: onearrives at human knowledge of God only because God reveals himselfas the Lord, the Kurios. The relation is constructed from God’s side.He is the acting subject. In its whole, the thesis says something aboutthe ambivalence toward the idea of divine revelation and knowledgeof God. In this thesis the question of whether God can be known onthe basis of human faculties or experience is radicalised and integratedby powerfully denying it. In this—particularly in his early ‘dialectic’phase—Barth follows a strategy of negative association. He sides withhis times in the assumption that there is nothing that can be knownof God with certainty on the basis of experience in nature and his-tory. The latent agnosticism is exposed and intensified into a radicaldenial. This radicalisation has a theological basis, however. Knowledgeof God—knowledge of God that really saves and liberates—is a gift ofGod, an act of grace. It is an act through which God’s divinity andbeing as Lord are known. It is this dominion of God in his revelationwhich Barth points to in KD I/1 as the root of the doctrine of the Trin-ity.21 That is to say, as a construct the doctrine of the Trinity is a humanproduct; the ground in which this construct has its roots are the actsof God. In this way, within theology itself Barth drives home the reali-sation that the presence of God can not be proven. Only God himselfcan himself produce the evidence by being present. In this way Barthmakes a connection with the question which faced theology after Kant,namely the question of where the anchorage and mediation of God’srevelation is to be found in this finite reality.22 In the phase of his dog-matic theology, the strategy of negative association recedes more and

20 KD I/1, 323; ET, 314.21 KD I/1, 324; ET, 314.22 See H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven. Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuit-

spraken, Baarn 1977, 210–215, according to which Barth thereby exposes the subjectivismof liberal theology. The appeal to revelation serves as legitimisation for his own religiousthinking. See also B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de


more into the background in favour of the effort to formulate the per-spectives in which speaking about God has a chance of really remainingspeaking about God.

In this second panel we will focus on this later phase in Barth’s the-ology. A few words will not be out of place regarding the limitationswhich accompany this. For the purposes of this investigation, there arehighly defensible reasons for limiting the study to the Kirchliche Dogmatik,because in this opus magnum Barth’s concept of knowledge of God isfound in its most mature form. But this context is still too broad, andtherefore two chief points of reference have been chosen. Attention willbe focused on the main outlines of the second part of the KD, ‘DieLehre von Gott’ (KD II/1), where knowledge of God is discussed asboth way and event, and in its content, namely the being of God andhis qualities.23 The investigation continues on into the doctrine of elec-tion, because it is here that Barth’s thinking finds its substantive heart(KD II/1). Barth’s thinking on baptism (KD IV/4), where the epistemo-logical implications of Barth’s doctrine of the prophetic office of Christfrom KD IV/3 make themselves felt, will be taken as the second pointof reference. However, a discussion of continuity and discontinuity inBarth’s development will not be a focus of the study in this secondpanel.24 Only where this is useful for a sounder understanding will wenow and then, by way of an excursus, sketch the lines through for thecourse of Barth’s development.

problematiek van de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, DietrichBonhoeffer en Wolfhart Pannenberg, Kampen 1999, 204, which supports Kuitert on this.

23 For a very different sort of investigation, where Barth is followed step by step, seethe studies of J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en de geldigheidvan Karl Barths strijd tegen de natuurlijke theologie, Amersfoort 1983 and R. Chia, Revelationand Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, Bern/Berlin 1999.

24 Investigation of the development and phases of Barth’s theology has becomea genre all of its own within Barth studies. See, among others, I. Spieckermann,Gotteserkenntnis. Ein Beitrag zur Grundfrage der neuen Theologie Karl Barths, München 1985;M. Beintker, Die Dialektik in der ‘dialektischen Theologie’ Karl Barths. Studien zur Entwicklungder Barthschen Theologie und zur Vorgeschichte der ‘Kirchlichen Dogmatik’, München 1987; C.van der Kooi, Anfängliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barths 1909–1927, München1987; H. Anzinger, Glaube und kommunikatieve Praxis. Eine Studie zur ‘vordialektischen’ TheologieKarl Barths, München 1991; J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeptiondes Neukantianismus im Römerbrief und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der TheologieKarl Barths, Berlin/New York 1995; Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s critically realisticdialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936, Oxford 1997.

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6.3. Human knowing of God as theological datum

As Barth begins in his prolegomenon with the phenomenon of theproclamation of the church, in order from this to move back to revela-tion as the prerequisite for this proclamation, he also begins his doctrineof God with a localisation of theological thinking. Theological thoughthas its place within the space of the church, where people speak aboutand hear about God. What the church does in all its activities andeverything it undertakes, presupposes God as the subject of everythingthat is to be said and heard. The point of departure for the church andits acts is the reality of God, who lets himself be known to men andpractices community with them.25

Starting from the actual knowing of God has a number of conse-quences that deserve attention. First, the question is not whether Godcan be known and how far our capacity to know reaches. A questionof that sort, Barth says, can only arise from the perspective of an out-sider. The community lives within the circle of the movement that Godhas set in motion by making himself known to man. The whole raisond’être of the church depends on whether God is indeed present with thepeople who speak and hear within the church. Christian theology existsthanks to the truth of this insider’s perspective, or it does not exist at all.That is the first point.

The second, which is connected with this, involves the order of themodalities of reality and possibility. What is revolutionary about Barth’sconcept is his reversal of the usual order. In classic foundational think-ing, the question about the possibilities of knowing comes first. Thefirst thing asked is what man, on the basis of his faculties for know-ing, can know. The primary question is about the reach of humanreason. The extent to which things visible and invisible can actuallybe known depends on the answer to this question. Barth reverses thisorder. The question is not whether it is possible to know God. Thestarting point for the theological concept is the reality of knowledgeof God, which presupposes that God actually permits himself to beknown. Man already stands in this reality. He has already been reached,he already stands before God, and God already has him in sight. Inshort, the facticity of knowledge of God—and thus the modality ofreality—precedes questions of possibility. In this respect Barth’s theol-

25 KD II/1, 1; ET, 3.


ogy is a form of realism. He asks first about that which is known, thatwhich we are in fact confronted with in our knowing, in order to thenpose questions about the possibility that serves as the foundation for ourknowledge.

It is at this point that Barth’s position is at odds with all positionswhich, appealing to Kant, regard it as impossible that God could bethe object of human knowledge. Revelation means that this barrier hasbeen lifted—and is continually being lifted—from God’s side. Accord-ing to Barth, the only theologically legitimate question is therefore towhat extent God can be known.26 The question of whether God canbe known is immediately ruled out. This question implies a searchfor what has already been found, namely God. In situating itself thisway, Barth’s theology takes the standpoint of faith. From the outset, thereader is invited to take his or her place within the circle of faith. Ques-tions about what constitutes knowledge of God are already entirelywithin the movement of the knowledge of God.27 It is understandablethat this starting place for Barth’s concept makes it attractive for ‘believ-ing atheists’. From this world there is only one way that authoritativelyleads to God. Were it not that they every now and then stumble acrossHim, feel themselves forced to call on him, Christian belief would notbe an option. Further along we will still see how Barth does all that hecan to grant human knowledge of God, in all its elements, a conceptualraison d’être only to the extent that it is supported and guided by God’sown turn toward man. Without this vital speaking and acting by God,human knowledge of God is an empty husk, in which there is nothingto be found. Knowledge of God cannot be summoned up by man; manfinds himself in it, or it is not found at all.

6.4. Knowledge of God as event

The characterisation of knowledge of God, as it is given in the title of§25, ‘The Fulfilment of the Knowledge of God’, is crucial for this con-cept. Knowledge of God is not a static entity, and for Barth, as a goodstudent of the post-Kantian, ‘modern’ tradition, as represented by thenames of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Herrmann, it is not comprised

26 KD II/1, 3; ET, 5.27 By G. Pfleiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie, 141 formulated as ‘prinzipialisierte

invertierte praktische Transzendentaltheorie’.

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primarily of articles of faith; it can best be characterised as a move-ment, an event that has its origin in God, and in which man is given apart. The relation between God and man is constituted in this move-ment proceeding from God. It is a circle, in which man moves forwardfrom faith to faith and from knowledge to knowledge.28 In this move-ment man is given a role in the self-knowledge of God. It has the natureof a personal encounter in which God shares part of himself. With sucha great emphasis on knowing as an encounter event, as an activity, ofcourse the question naturally arises of whether it can be designated bythe noun ‘knowledge’. What role do observation, propositions, notions,concepts and texts play in this concept? We must acknowledge thatBarth has no intention of allowing knowledge of God to be reduced toan action. In knowledge of God, God is the object of an act of know-ing. Barth formally characterises the act of knowing with terms such asobservation, perceiving and understanding. The Kantian background isunmistakable. Observation stores up unprocessed sensory data; percep-tion and human faculties for understanding lead to knowledge.29 Con-cepts and propositions play a role; man must use them to interpret, butonly so far as they are included in the context of a personal contact,a contact in which God opens himself to be addressed as Thou, andthe human being knows him or herself to be addressed as a person.Barth recognises that these are human words, ecclesiastical doctrine,concepts—but none of these factors within our history and on the axisof time are of primary interest for him. What is theologically importantis the vertical relation of God’s acts to these concepts, words and narra-tives as signs. Theologically situating that which has a role as a meanson the horizontal axis is overshadowed by the vertical element in whichall forms and concepts of our knowledge are included in the movementand mental activity of knowing.

The assertion that man has no access to this event from his side,and that it does not have its origin in man, is fundamental for Barth’sconcept. The decisive conclusion is that the basis of this movementwhich leads to knowledge of God on the part of man must be soughtin the openness of God himself. Theologically one must return to that

28 KD II/1, 40; ET, 37–38: ‘In love we are set on the circular course in which theris no break, in which we can and shall only go further—from faith to faith, fromknowledge to knowledge—never beginning with ourselves (and that means, with ourown 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.


sphere which is closed to man as man, but which, once God involvesman in knowing Him, is de facto not closed. This characterisation ofknowledge of God does not infringe on a sphere to which we as menhave no access. On the strength of God’s willingness, in the oppositeperspective 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 forwhich there are no analogies. It is the mystery of divine pleasure, towhich no earthly analogies lend us access. God’s breaking into oursphere, his choosing to live in unity with the man Jesus, is an actwhich is not accessible for us on the basis of any other earthly data.The accessibility rests, without any restrictions, in God’s own act, andcertainty of it is only to be found in the actual interaction of Godand man. To put it in Barth’s own words, ‘In it rests the undialecticalcertainty of the realisation of the true knowledge of God’.31 In short,if man looks to himself, to the flow of his own thought, to his ownpsychological state, then he will find varying moments of certaintyand uncertainty. In the circle of knowing God, he is summoned toalso look to the other side, to Christ. In that name he stands beforedivine pleasure, before grace, that transcends and fills the fragility ofknowledge of God on the human side.

6.5. Knowledge of God as participation in God’s self-knowledge

Now it is also possible to further characterise what the relation is ofGod and human knowledge of God: on the human side, the knowingof God is participation in God’s self-knowledge. On his way towardman, God shares his self-knowledge in ‘impartation’, Anteilgabe.32 It isone of the essential characteristics of this concept that God permitshimself to be known wholly, and not merely in part. Even when Godmakes himself known through the mediation of an earthly element, thesharing is not partial in the sense of a certain quantity or segment.Barth has already explicitly described revelation as the repetition ofGod’s being,33 as the representation of the event that takes place in God

30 KD II/1, 72; ET, 67: ‘We therefore have to go back to a sphere which, since weeare men and not God, might be entirely closed for us, But in the fulfilment of the trueknowledge of God, it is not actually closed’.

31 KD II/1, 81; ET, 74.32 KD II/1, 55–56; ET, 51–52.33 KD I/1, 315; ET, 299: ‘Revelation in the Bible is not a minus; it is not another over

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himself. If man knows God, God is known entirely, or not at all. In thismovement the emphasis lies therefore on the cognisance of God, as Heexists in the mystery of his threefold being.34 That does not mean thatin the knowing of God there cannot be movement or growth. Thereis a movement that leads deeper into the whole of this knowing and isexpressed in the term mystery. The word mystery serves to characterisethe depth and inexhaustibility of this knowing of God.

It should be clear that at this point there is a huge difference dis-cernible from Calvin’s vision of knowledge of God. For Calvin, revela-tion is a form of accommodated speaking. In his speaking God adaptshimself 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 secondpanel revelation is thematised as self-revelation and knowledge of Godis basically participation in God’s self-knowing, a quantitative view is nolonger possible. Human knowledge of God then always has the qualityof being seized by what God essentially is, and coincides with Him.This seizure can certainly deepen, but only within the relation of theparticipation.

6.6. God as the object of knowledge

If knowing God is participation in God’s self-knowledge, this immedi-ately has implications for the content of the knowing. Knowing meansthat God is in some form or another the object of observation, perceiv-ing and understanding. Barth is not willing to accept less than theseterms, although further along he will specify what the content of theobservation, perception and understanding means with regard to God.After all, God is not an object like other objects.35 From the perspec-tive of the ‘objectness’ of God, we have the fundamental assertion thatGod, whatever the case, falls within the horizon of man as an objectof knowledge, and that the categories of observation, perceiving andunderstanding, as they are normally found in epistemology, are applica-

against God. It is the same, the repetition of God. Revelation is indeed God’s 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.


ble. The reality of religious knowledge stands or falls with the reality ofthis appearance of God within the human horizon. If one cannot speakof observation, perceiving and understanding, the life of the church,the calling of people to God, their being moved, their protest, theirgratitude and daily prayer are all to be viewed as a dream world, anillusory world of concepts which correspond to no reality.36 That peoplehear about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about grace and truth, ofpromises and commandments, that there is something of the nature ofobservation, perceiving and understanding on the human side of Godin his works, has its reality in God’s making himself the object of humanknowledge.37 In terms that are reminiscent of the German idealist tradi-tion, Barth says ‘Only because God posits himself as the object is manposited as the knower of God.’38 The constant dependence of realityon God’s acts comes across clearly here. Man can only have and knowGod as an object that postulates itself.39 The believing subject existsonly in the act of God’s own self-revelation. This is Barth’s mannerof expressing that faith does not lie within the control of man himself.If he encounters himself as believing, as knowing, that is a matter ofgrace, a transition from non-being to being, the creation of an I thatdares to say yes to a God who gives himself. Once that is said, then itmust follow that God makes himself knowable as an object, to man asa subject.

In this phase of Barth’s theology, the acknowledgement that Godmakes himself the object of human knowing means a high regardfor indirectness of all knowledge of God. Over against Augustine hemaintains that no one can transcend language, concepts and otherhuman images.40 God meets man in the midst of this world, as creature.This means that words, terms, concepts, preaching and ecclesiasticalacts have a legitimate place in Barth’s concept. He no longer stresses,as he did in the ‘dialectic’ phase of his theology, human impotence tospeak God’s Word. In the foreground of his doctrine of God standsthe contention that God himself permits people to speak his Word, givesthem 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: ‘Ánd so man can only have God as the self-posited object.’40 KD II/1, 9–11; ET, 10–12.

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6.7. Faith as a form of knowledge

As was the case in the first panel, the concept of knowing thus playsa key role. Because in religious knowledge we are not dealing withan ordinary object from created reality, but with God, knowledge ofGod must be further particularised. Faith is the positive relation of mantoward God, in whom the believer trusts. It is the ‘yes’ by which aperson acknowledges that he is completely committed and declares that‘God is God and He is his God’.41 That ‘yes’ is central to this definitionof faith as the movement of the whole human person. Faith is surrenderof the whole person to God, whose being and holiness is expressed inthe tautology ‘God is God’. Along with the term knowing, words suchas love, trust, obey and obligation also belong to the characterisationof the act of faith. These words can all be used to describe the totalreality of faith. It is, however, characteristic of Barth’s concept of faiththat, with express reference to Calvin, he makes the concept of knowingcentral.42 In fact, the concept of knowing not only makes it possible toinvolve all the other concepts mentioned, but more than all else it isvaluable because it guarantees a structure in man’s relation to God thatBarth emphatically wishes to retain. The characterisation of faith as anact of knowing expresses that in his faith man forges a link betweenhimself and God, but at the same time makes a distinction betweenhimself and God. In the relation with God, man acknowledges himselfto be the one loved and blessed; he recognises God as the one fromwhom this love and blessing comes. Knowing is an act which links andseparates, one in which the duality is not lost in an undifferentiatedunity, but which creates association and connection, which nonethelessrespects the peculiarity of each of those linked in it.43

6.8. The place of the human subject

Starting from God’s approach to man implies that a decision has beentaken about the place of the human subject in relation to God. Withthe fact that God places himself within the human horizon as an object

41 KD II/1, 11; ET, 12.42 KD II/1, 12; ET, 13.43 KD II/1, 12; ET, 13.


of knowledge, there is implicitly a link forged,44 and a requirement ofobedience. From these givens about the reality of faith, Barth comesto the conclusion that not all questions can be asked any more. Thereare questions which become meaningless in this context. For example,the question of whether God can be known becomes absurd, if God hasalready provided his ‘self-evidence’. Put differently, in the living rela-tionship to God’s Word, in the experience of being spoken to, uncer-tainty and doubt are banished. It is important to remember in relationto this that Barth’s arguments on this point are primarily theological,and that it is not his intention to give a psychological characterisation.He consciously avoids the question of which psychological experiencesor emotions man encounters in his dealings with God. He limits himselfto a purely theological characterisation. His contention that true knowl-edge of God is ‘is not and cannot be attacked; it is without anxiety andwithout doubt’ can only be understood in this way.45 This characterisa-tion appears to be true only to the extent that the tie to the living Wordof God is reality. The concrete believing individual just surfaces at theedge when he writes, ‘The battle against uncertainty and doubt is notforeign to man even here.’46 But the psychological aspects are deliber-ately left out of consideration as much as possible. The purpose of thistheology is the characterisation of an objective reality from a strictlytheological perspective, in which psychology (although perhaps not intheory) is granted hardly any role in practice. Theoretically Barth doesindeed leave room for human experience as a secondary and depen-dent element in the relation between God and man. However, the pri-mary attention for the objective element in knowledge of God is thecritical mass of his theology, and fosters a practical mistrust of the expe-riential element. That mistrust, and the obstructive effects it has had,are something which has continued to haunt this theological current.47

In implementing a rigid and deliberate differentiation between var-ious domains, Barth’s concept is an exponent of the differentiationwhich is so characteristic of modernity. He provides an analysis—or

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, damagingeffects in the wider realm of church and theology. If the only thing that be done isto stake out danger signs around any interest in human experience and psychologicalprocesses—in other words, around anything that lies in the horizontal plane—this leads

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if one may choose to call it that, a phenomenology—of the strictly the-ological element of faith. From the theological perspective, uncertaintyand doubt are part of an entirely different process, namely that of mangoing in search of God entirely outside of this link with the Word. Onlywhen tied to the living Word can the good fight of faith be fought.48

Barth therefore speaks of two circles, or two closed systems, which donot touch upon one another. It should not therefore be surprising thatprayer has an essential—that is to say, a theological—place in this con-cept of knowing God. Conceptually, prayer is wesensnotwendig, of essen-tial necessity.49 Because knowledge of God is a gift, a gift that Godfreely gives, this relationship correlates with a continuing dependenceon human side, and thus with prayer. In prayer man acknowledges thathe is reliant on God and evidences his position as a subject over againstGod. In this way prayer also becomes the place that offers a prospecton another word which in Barth has not so much an ethical as a theo-logical significance, namely obedience. Prayer is a visible sign that onedoes not stop with that which one already knows or understands on thebasis of previous encounters, but that one is thrown back on the com-ing of God. The actions on the human side which correlate with God’ssaving grace are obedience and prayer.50 In this context we encounter aconcept that to an increasing degree will define the structure of humanknowing and response, namely Entsprechung, correspondence or analogy.Human subjectivity takes on its colour and character in this concept.Because man has been given a role in knowing God, he is no longer anobjective outsider, but an involved participant. Knowing God involvesman as a participant and constitutes him as an answering and respond-ing partner. In this panel knowing does not move toward a fulfilment inimitation; it is active participation and response. Ethics and dogmaticsare extensions of one another, and it is impossible to say where the oneends and the other begins.

to a damaging isolation of Barth’s theological legacy. On this obstructive effect see M.den Dulk, … Als twee die spreken. Een manier om de heiligingsleer van Karl Barth te lezen, ’sGravenhage 1987, 112, 226–231.See also the overview of the influence that Barth hashad in the field of Biblical studies provided by J. Barr in The Concept of Biblical Theology.An Old Testament Perspective, London 1999. For a powerful defence of Barth’s objectivismand anti-psychological stance see N.T. Bakker, Miskende Gratie. Van Calvijn tot Witsius.Een vergelijkende lezing, balans van 150 jaar gereformeerde orthodoxie, Kampen 1991, 47–65 andidem, Geschiedenis in opspraak. Over de legitimatie van het concept geschiedenis, Kampen 1996.



6.9. Mediation and sacramentality

In his revelation God makes himself the subject of human knowledge.In this way He becomes present with man. Barth however introducesa restriction into this, one which is reminiscent of the distinction whichwas made in classical dogmatics between theologia archetypa and theologiaectypa, although because of the content of the theologia, namely God’sself-knowledge, the distinction has much less effect.51 The nature ofGod’s presence with man varies, Barth suggests, according to the wayin which God himself is present. To distinguish the two manners ofobjectivity or presence, Barth introduces the distinction between ‘pri-mary and secondary objectivity’.52 God’s knowledge of himself is imme-diate, in no way veiled. That is God’s primary objectivity. That knowl-edge which man has of God is veiled. That is God’s secondary objec-tivity. The latter thus means that God makes use of things of this earthin order to reveal himself. More precisely, God makes use of what isnot-God in order to reveal himself, God. No element in our reality isin itself able to reveal God. God’s explicit acts therefore also play arole in the revelation of God by means of what is essentially not-God.Barth’s verb here is active, the language directive. At the appointmentof God, a piece of reality becomes operative for him. He determinesand sanctifies certain elements from our reality as symbols, to clothehis presence.53 In this event an object from our created reality becomesmore than it is in itself. Without that object becoming identical withGod, it represents God. It clothes his acts, becomes a symbol or templefor them.

This characterises the manner in which knowledge of God arisesand exists as being very specific and defined. God does not revealhimself in everything and everyone. For its knowledge of God theChristian message does not refer man to the eternal, the infinite, theunfathomable. Those who wish to know God are directed to a concretehistory, the history of prophets, apostles, of the man Jesus Christ. Godteaches men to know him from his works, performed in specific places,at specific times. By this, knowledge of God in this concept is tied toconcrete acts and spaces. It is not the world which as such coincides

51 R. Chia, Revelation and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, 104–105.52 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.53 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.

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with God’s presence, but on the basis of God’s choice and sanctificationhis work does indeed take place within this sphere.54

Barth has explicitly further qualified this concreteness of God’s self-revelation by linking it with two other concepts that are importantwithin this study, namely sacrament and Christology. Christian knowl-edge of God is thus given a Christological foundation. Just as in the firstpanel, in the second too there is a deep coherence between thinkingabout the sacramental and Christology. The centre and inclusiveness ofthe sacramentalilty of God’s act is the human nature of Jesus Christ.Through union with the Word of God this creature is distinguished andappointed as the work and symbol of God. In other words, the humanJesus is localised as the place where God’s condescending to man occurspre-eminently. That suggests that it is a unique occurrence, but this isa uniqueness that corresponding occurrences permit and suppose. Theincarnation, the taking on of the humanity of Jesus by the eternal Wordis indeed, according to Barth, a unique event, but that does not denythe possibility of continuations of it, proceeding from it as a centre,moving both forward and backward in time. In his doctrine of Godhe explicitly terms the humanity of Jesus the first sacrament, and assuch the ground of reality and circumscribing concept of a sacramentalrepetition. Other sacramental realities are the people Israel—this waswritten in 1940!—and the church built upon the apostolate. They aredenoted as the created realities that can bear witness to that which wasreal in Jesus Christ in a unique sense, namely the unity, or better, theunion of Creator and creature.55 True knowledge of God therefore findsits origin in this extraordinary act of God. It is explicitly knowledge ofthe gracious act of God; it goes without saying that it is defined soteri-ologically. In this concept revelation is not thought of as a plurality ofparts, but is each time singular and whole, because it is ultimately Godhimself who reveals himself as sacred reality.

For a good understanding of Barth’s concept it is of the utmostimportance to grasp the elementary difference between revelation andthe means of revelation. In the incarnation a sharp distinction contin-ues to exist between Jesus’ humanity as the means and God’s revelation

54 KD II/1, 21; ET, 20: ‘Christian faith as knowledge of the true God lets itself beincluded in this area of objectivity, and allows itself to be kept in this area, which initself and as such is certainly not identical with the objectivity of God. But in it God’swork takes place, and hence God’s own objectivity gives itself to be known and is to beknown, and this on the the strength of the choice and sanctification of His free grace.’

55 KD II/1, 58–59; ET, 54.


which makes use of this man Jesus. For this Barth reaches for termsfrom 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 ofthe 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 theSon, is Jesus the revelation of God.56 Enhypostasis however is conceivedof in as dynamic a manner as possible. It never under any circum-stances becomes a condition or takes root as nature. In this way Barthkeeps the gap between the man Jesus and his revelation as the Son asopen as possible. The words of ICorinthians 13 about knowing in partand seeing through a glass darkly are identified by Barth with his pos-tulating the hiddenness and indirectness of revelation. ‘Even the manJesus as such is always enigma as well. If He is not only enigma, if asenigma He is also illumination, disclosure and communication, then itis thanks to His unity with the Son of God and therefore in the actof the revelation of the Son of God and of the faith in Him effectedby the Holy Spirit.’57 What Barth wishes to say is clear. One does notarrive at knowledge of God on the basis of a human and historicalknowledge of Jesus. The earthly Jesus becomes a sacrament of God’spresence through God’s grace. Historical and literary investigations inthemselves will never lead to faith.

There are indeed some questions that must be raised systematicallyabout this rigid division—and indeed separation—of domains. Thequestion which arises in the exposition in KD II/1 is whether therelationship between Jesus and his revelation as the Son of God isthen completely arbitrary. While there may be no necessary connection

56 Barth used the concepts of enhypostasis and anhypostasis in his own way. In theearly church anhypostasis meant that the man Jesus had no existence apart from the tiewith the Word, the Logos. That did not mean that as a man Jesus would not have hadany individuality; that is not included in the word hypostasis. What the early church didintend 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), thenthat unity would be threatened if people subsequently spoke of two persons in JesusChrist. The doctrine affirmed 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 keepingtogether the true God-being and the true man-being of this one person. See A. van deBeek, De menselijke Persoon van Christus. Een onderzoek aangaande de gedachte van de anhypostasievan de menselijke natuur van Christus, 48–49 and G. Hunsinger, ‘Karl Barth’s Christology:its basic Chalcedonian Character’ in idem, Disruptive Grace. Studies in the Theology of KarlBarth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 131–147.

57 KD II/1, 61; ET, 56.

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between the earthly actions of Jesus, his historic Gestalt, and who He infact is through God’s revelation, his Gehalt, does that at the same timemean there is no connection whatsoever? Is the means of revelationonly the opportunity for God’s revelation, or, in view of the content ofthe revelation, is there in retrospect, is there indeed a connection withthe means of revelation? In terms of Augustine’s semantics, is there aconnection between Jesus’ life and actions as signum and the revelationin this life of the kingdom of God as res, or is the connection entirelyrandom? Barth’s use of the image of seeing through a glass darklyseems to indicate that for him the opacity of the symbol is the onlyviewpoint that he will allow in this phase of his theology. He is stillmoving along a track that is antithetical to the effort of the Leben Jesu-Forschung to arrive at a generally accepted appraisal of Jesus on the basisof historical and psychological investigation. The point of the insistencethat Jesus is a riddle is that historical investigation cannot function as abasis for faith in Jesus. The only reason why Jesus Christ has theologicalsignificance and is an object of faith is the act of God in Him, the powerof the Word of God. Within the programme of KD II/1 one can see thisas a means of cutting off every attempt to arrive at ‘natural theology’.It would however bear witness to a certain folly to reject offhand everyinquiry into the relation of this revelation with the actions of Jesus asthe Gospels bear witness to them. The presence of the genre of gospelsas part of the canon testifies to the perfect right, indeed the theologicalimportance, of this inquiry.

6.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth

In his thought Barth’s approach to knowledge of God is severely ana-lytic. If human knowledge of God is genuine and real, it has its pre-requisite and source in what God himself says. Because of this, thisconcept of religious knowledge can defined as ‘revelation theology’ ina strict sense. It will do no harm to spend a moment examining thisconcept, which is called upon so easily by contemporary theologians.At first glance it is a remarkable term. Every Christian theology will inone way or another appeal to revelation, to a transcendental element,but this appeal does not justify calling it revelation theology. That istrue, and thus a narrower definition is required. One can only speakof revelation theology in a terminological sense if the subject of reve-lation is explicitly taken up as a theme and becomes the starting point


of the thought. This is the case with Barth. That is a point which dis-tinguishes this second panel from the first. As Barth himself indicatesin §27, under the title ‘The Limits of the Knowledge of God’, his the-ological thinking on the existence and origin of human knowledge ofGod takes place between two limits, as it were. The terminus a quo anytime God is spoken of is revelation, God himself, and that is also werewe end up. The terminus ad quem is once again the knowledge of God.Possible human knowledge of God lies between these two limits. Thesection involved has two parts. The first part deals with the hiddennessof God as the terminus a quo of all that is said of God. The second partof this section is entitled ‘The Truthfulness of Human Knowledge ofGod’. In fact section 27 is once again an exposition of the thesis ‘God isknown 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 isnot our own faculties for knowing which are the foundation which sup-ports knowledge of God. For any evaluation of Barth’s view of humancapacities this is of great importance. While it is quite true that knowl-edge of God cannot exist without human faculties, but it does not oweits existence to these human faculties.58 The emphasis in this concept isdeliberately placed not on our own human capacities, but on the singu-larity of God as subject. In this concept revelation, God’s own act is theonly element which is acknowledged as basic.

From a general epistemological perspective this exclusive fixation onthe element of revelation is to be regarded as inconceivably lopsided.It can however be understood as a form of theological reductionism inwhich only those elements which are constitutive for knowledge of Godas such are acknowledged as fundamental. The concept of the secondpanel implicitly recognises that finiteness as such, including man withhis faculties, can not produce knowledge of God. God, in his othernessor his holiness, is hidden from man.

It must however be emphatically stressed that with Barth such anassessment of finiteness is justified indirectly, by theological argument.The hiddenness of God is not the result of a general ontology. At thispoint we see in this second panel an attempt to keep general ontologyand theology strictly separated. Barth’s concept is an exponent of theaspiration that welcomes the disjunction of culture and Christian faith

58 KD II/1, 205; ET, 183.

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as a purification of Christian belief. Again we see the strategy with anegative association. Philosophical critique of classic metaphysics andthe thinking about God as the highest being which accompanied itis drawn into theology as a blessing in disguise. The field in whichBarth wants to carry out this purification is marked by the concepts ofhiddenness, incomprehensibility and ineffability. He pauses to providean exhaustive examination of how these concepts are a familiar andwide-spread theme throughout the tradition of Christian doctrine,59

and that God’s incomprehensibilitas is even counted among his qualities.In his judgement it however remains veiled in the mist whether thetradition wishes to have the incomprehensibility of God regarded asan assertion of Christian belief, or whether it simply annexed a themefrom philosophy. To his mind, it can not be ruled out that with the hid-denness and ineffability of God one is saying about the same as whatthe Platonic ideal or Kantian regulative idea stood for.60 The attemptat purification and to separate out a general philosophical ontologicalconcept at any rate says enough about the new self-confidence thatappears in this second panel. Barth seeks to regard the incomprehensi-bility of God and his hiddenness not as a general truth, but considersthem as a truth of faith with its roots within Christian knowledge ofGod. Barth’s exposition of the boundaries of knowledge of God thus isdefinitely intended to exert a critical and cleansing function with regardto Christian doctrinal tradition. The incomprehensibility of God is notone of the qualities of God standing alongside the others, but is a con-stant which accompanies and qualifies everything which is said of God’svirtues.61 The incomprehensibility of God expresses that human think-ing and understanding are not as such in the position to comprehend,conceive and understand God.62 It must be repeated again: knowledgeof God is a matter of grace.

In summary, in this concept of knowledge of God, hiddenness is nota predicate which can be ascribed to God on the basis of a generalontology. It is to be regarded as a quality which accompanies the acts ofGod from the outset. God himself is not hidden; in his being as Father,Son and Spirit He is himself obvious. However, the veiling is a direct

59 For example Augustine, Sermo 117, 3.5: ‘De Deo loquimur, quid mirum, si noncomprehendis? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus.’

60 KD II/1, 207–208; ET, 184–186.61 He names H. Bavinck as one of the few who have realised this. KD II/1, 208; ET,

186.62 KD II/1, 209; ET, 187.


consequence of his revelation. Because God becomes present with manin a part of our reality, seen from His perspective he at the same timerenounces his manifestness to the extent that this involves concretemeans. In this context, Barth labels this humiliation. Compared with theunveiled way in which God himself is manifest, he degrades himselfand becomes alienated from himself in the mediation of revelation.63

Applied to the incarnation, this means that because God revealedhimself in Jesus Christ, in a piece of earthly reality, he at the same timehides the glory with which He himself is present. In the incarnationhe indeed does reveal his glory, but in the doctrines of God the accentstill rests primarily on the veiling and hiddenness that revelation ipsofacto implies. Revelation, incarnation, is limitation. The form in whichGod reveals himself is not the revelation itself. It is form, not content.The question that we earlier sketched out is whether the form of therevelation, the means of revelation, also has any connection with thecontent of the revelation.

With this question we again pick up the thread which was droppedat the end of the previous section. Barth refused to draw a positiveconnection between form and content in revelation. One can ask ifBarth did not employ a dialectic of veiling and unveiling that was notso much the result of an investigation of Biblical concepts and forms ofrevelation, but which rested rather on his reflection of the concept ofrevelation as such. If revelation means that God makes himself knownto man who is not-God, and in that revelation makes use of that whichis not-God, then from the outset the medium of the revelation standsover against what must be revealed. The medium of the revelation,the Gestalt, is opposed to the content, the Gehalt. What is the relationbetween them? In the Bible, is the form of revelation only contradictoryto the content? One can ask to what extent Barth took into account thefact that the nature of the veiling diverges sharply in various forms ofrevelation. The relation of signum and res may not be a necessary one,but that is far from saying that this relation is arbitrary. In revelationthe ambivalent symbol begins to speak a language that removes theambivalence and unveils the referential function of the symbol foronce and for all. A connection is constituted and unveiled throughthe revelation that elevates the symbol above randomness. When Jesusheals, restores, encounters people, these actions do not compel one to

63 KD II/1, 59; ET, 55.

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the conclusion that this is more than a prophet. The acknowledgementof Jesus as the Messiah of Israel is something that flesh and blood doesnot have the capacity to reveal (Matt. 16:17). But once involved in God’srevelation the symbol begins to speak, and its symbolic power becomesintegrated into God’s act. The nature of the veiling in the case of thesigns of God’s coming kingdom differs fundamentally from the mannerof veiling in the cross.

Did Barth later correct himself ? In KD IV/2 Barth will describe theway of the Son in depth in his significance for mankind, namely aselevating. In this context he indeed does not leave the ‘closed circle’ ofself-revelation.64 But it is certainly more than a detail that Barth in hisexposition of the ‘royal man’ devotes substantial attention to the witnessof the New Testament. Precisely within the circle of revelation, withinknowledge of God, paying attention to the witness regarding the earthlyJesus is of theological importance.

6.11. A look back. From impossibility to reality

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 defined his own the-ological development: how can we think about God’s relation to ourearthly reality? Where do the connections lie, the points of anchoragethat invite us to knowledge of God? Has the world as a mirror becomeclouded, or even lost its reflective quality all together?

In his dialectic period Barth’s method of doing theology was stillstrongly dominated by the conviction that human words and thoughtscan not make the living God of whom the Bible speaks present. In thesecond edition of his Epistle to the Romans Barth characterises revelationas an ‘impossible possibility’.65 The method of his theology is defined bythe human situation, the given world in which God is not immanent.Time and eternity are characterised as mutually exclusive.66 Seen fromthis life, God’s eternity is separated from the finite by a Todeslinie, a

64 KD IV, 2, 174; ET, 156.65 See for example Römerbrief 2, 80, 89, 142, 256; ET, 79 105, 114, 273.66 It is this static view of the duality of time and eternity that has saddled Barth’s

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 flesh (John 1:14)can, according to the Epistle to the Romans, only be thought of as a crisis and negation


chasm which cannot be bridged from this side. All religious possibilitiesfor arriving at God, at sacred reality, die in the no-man’s-land thatseparates us from God’s eternity. Considered from the reality of thisworld, God, revelation, salvation and all words that intentionally referto the divine mystery can be termed impossibilities. An example ofBarth’s early dialectic theology is the 1922 essay ‘Das Wort Gottes alsAufgabe 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 recognizeboth our ought and our cannot and by that recognition give God theglory’. In this panel theologians are not just professional theologians orclergy. In principle, the term includes anyone wishing to speak of Godand his Word. The first and second theses are antithetical. The thirddoes not bring the two preceding thesis into synthesis, but argues thatone must hold fast to both in order to honour God. Only God himselfis able to speak his saving word, the Word of God. Methodologically—and that is what this is about—the starting point for his argument islocated in the human situation.68

This methodological point of departure in the human situation isstill the foundation of Barth’s 1927 Christian Dogmatics. The summons byGogarten, Bultmann and others to refine the attention for the humansituation by making it an explicit theme convinced him that this startingpoint was precisely a fundamental weakness in his concept. Gogartenasked for a clear anthropology as the entrance to the theology; Bult-mann likewise considered Barth’s analysis of human existence unclear.For Barth, this criticism was the reason to methodologically no longerbegin the whole project with the human situation. He allowed his con-cept of knowledge of God to be defined methodologically by the insightthat the truth of God is a concrete fact. Theology has its reality andpossibility in the God’s revelation. Or, in terms he used in his study ofAnselm, in revelation lies an ontic rationality that is reflected upon bya noetic rationality. The ontic precedes the noetic.69 A theology whichacknowledges that permits itself to be guided by this realisation in the

of history (Römerbrief 2, 5; ET, 29–30). In the idea of the analogia fidei and enhypostasisBarth found means for thinking of God’s revelation in a more satisfactory manner.

67 Included in: Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, München 1925,156–178.

68 For a sketch of the development of Barth’s dialectic, see M. Beintker, Die Dialektikin der ‘dialektischen Theologie’ Karl Barths, München 1987.

69 K. Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang

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manner in which it orders the modalities of possibility and reality. The-ology is intellectus fidei.70 Putting the human problematic first—in otherwords, putting the question of how man can arrive at knowledge ofGod first—even summons up the misunderstanding that a particularanthropology or epistemology would be fundamental for knowing God.In Barth’s eyes that is both to overrate human potential and undervalueGod’s power and freedom to reveal himself. In his study of AnselmBarth thus arrives at an explicit development of what I just term theapriority that, seen in retrospect, had already asserted itself in his the-ology very early on. Much earlier Barth had expressed the idea thatknowledge of God is to be considered only as something that finds itsground in God as subject, without this subjectivity being able to bebrought into synthesis with human subjectivity.71 Undoubtedly even inits dialectic period Barth’s theology was already dominated by a theo-logical apriority and universalism. In this context, that means that theconclusion has already been reached about truth. Christ is the driv-ing, motivating power in society, the resurrection is not at hand, butin its imperspicuity still the definitive and disquieting driving force inhistory.72 In dialectic terms, the power of the thesis and antithesis arerooted in a preceding synthesis.73 In his life, man encounters the living,all-defining God. In his dialectical phase, when he also used the real-ity of revelation as his methodological starting point, Barth’s theologydeveloped more and more into a theology of confidence. The theologycould proceed from God’s revelation and try to follow the ontic or innerrationality of what is discerned in faith. This trust is not determined bya confidence in human faculties for knowing, but happens ‘im Blick aufdie Mächtigkeit der objektiven, durch die summa veritas von oben hererleuchteten und erleuchtenden ratio des Glaubensgegenstandes selber,

seines theologischen Programms (1931), hrsg. von E. Jüngel und I.U. Dalferth, Zürich 1981,49–52.

70 Fides quaerens intellectum, 55.71 See for instance Spieckermann, Gotteserkenntnis, 69–70, who locates this relinquish-

ment of a synthesis in a letter from Barth to Thurneysen of August 6, 1915. Faith, thekingdom of God and knowledge of God become realities that one does not simply‘experience’ and ‘have’, or ‘make present’. See also my Anfängliche Theologie, 71, whereI point to an echo of the lecture ‘Kreigszeit und Gottesreich’, given in 1915 but notpreserved.

72 See for instance his Tambach Lecture (1919) ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in:Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 33–69, also included in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfänge derdialektischen Theologie I, München 19774, 3–37.

73 ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in: Anfänge I, 33.


der Anselm es zugetraut hat, daß sie zu lehren vermöge und immerwieder lehre, was kein Mensch den andern lehren kann.’74 The formalexpression of this power and dominion of God to make himself and hispresence known is the tautology ‘God is God’. This tautology is notempty or closed. Barth understands it as a reference to God’s realitywhich, through the power of the Spirit, is open to man. In this way the‘proof ’ that can be given in this theology for the truth of knowledge ofGod is linked with God’s own speaking and coming. Outside of that,according to him, all is illusion.75 This brings us to the question of whatthe place of dogmatics is in this panel.

6.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God?

With Barth, dogmatics is not only a way of checking up on, but alsoan exercise in ‘biblical speaking’. ‘Exercise’ is to say that Barth doesnot begin from a collection of Bible texts, but in the various partsof Christian doctrine concentrates on the connections and movementsthat are in his view characteristic. This altered view of the relationshipbetween Bible text and dogmatic discussion comes to the fore in theway in which Barth goes to work methodologically in his dogmatics.He begins with relatively short and open statements, which sometimesserve 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 hisdiverse section titles, such as ‘God’s being in Act’, ‘Man before God’,‘God before Man’ and ‘God’s Being as Loving in Freedom’. They are,as Welker noted,76 statements that taken by themselves are ambiguousand 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-ified in multiple steps or courses. The clarification is achieved by meansof negations, shifts in stress and distinctions. For example, statementswhich are in themselves vague and open become more focused in anumber of steps, and gradually gain definition. It is because of thismanner of working that Barth’s dogmatic has a relatively high medi-

74 Fides quaerens intellectum, 71.75 Fides quaerens intellectum, 70: ‘Die via regis der göttlichen Einfalt und der Weg uner-

hörtester Illusion sind in der Geschichte der Theologie in allen Zeiten und Entwicklun-gen nur durch Haaresbreite getrennt parallel gelaufen.’

76 M. Welker, ‘Barth und Hegel. Zur Erkenntnis eines methodischen Verfahrens beiBarth’, Evangelische Theologie 43 (1983), 307–328, 322.

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tative character. His expositions can be read as a meditative exercisein listening to and testing the decisive elements and structures that lieat the foundation of knowledge of God. Short sections of Bible text,parts of abstract concepts and pronouncements that have a rather highmetaphorical and evocative character can also serve as starting pointsfor this meditative process. It is not so strange that this method, par-ticularly where Barth makes use of abstract notions, provokes questionsand creates the impression of being highly speculative. It is obviousthat Barth here gives good reason for critical questions. Pannenberghas expressed the critique that the manner in which Barth developshis doctrine of the Trinity, to wit, as an exposition of the words ‘Godreveals himself as the Lord’, can be understood as a logical derivativefrom the Hegelian subject concept. The Trinity in Barth could be con-ceived as the self-unfolding of God as absolute subject, with the Chris-tological legitimisation as an afterthought which as such could haveno influence on the argumentation.77 E. Maurer has argued, perhapsin response to such critiques, that one should not take such formalderivatives from the concept of self-revelation at face value.78 Follow-ing the lead of Wittgenstein, he draws on linguistic philosophy to inter-pret formulations of this sort. According to Maurer, they render theirhermeneutic service only in dealing with the Biblical narrative itself.They are, like all dogmata, to be considered as a form of grammar forthe language of faith. In this view, they add nothing to knowledge, butonly define the rules for unlocking the narrative and speaking aboutGod. Dogmatics provides the rules and examples by which one tries toempower the language. Understood this way, the scheme of unveiling,veiling and impartation is purely an tool to be taken up in order to layopen the dynamic of a Bible text and its content. Such schemes areuseful to the extent that they are subservient to the knowing of God, tofollowing the movement of God in his revelation. They must be made

77 W. Pannenberg, ‘Die Subjektivität Gottes und die Trinitätslehre’ in: idem, Grund-fragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Bd.2, Göttingen 1980, 110. Barth’s man-ner of speaking of the Father, Son and Spirit as manners of being would therefore notdo justice to the fact that in the Trinitarian concept of God personality is gained fromthe mutual involvement of the persons with each other. The Son is a person becauseHe surrenders himself to the Father and his mission. The Father is a person becausehe identifies himself with the Son. The Spirit is once again nothing in himself, but is aDivine person because in the Spirit the unity of Father and Son works for the renewalof the world.

78 E. Maurer, ‘Grammatik des biblischen Redens von Gott. Grundlinien der Trini-tätslehre Karl Barths.’ ZdTh 14 (1998), 113–130, 117.


transparent until the encounter with God, until the moment at whichthe Word of God himself breaks through the human aids.

To what an extent is such an explanation satisfactory? Perhaps wemust conclude that an approach like this from linguistic philosophyindeed succeeds in turning the spotlight on the function of the doc-trine of the Trinity for the whole of Barth’s theology. At the sametime it must be stressed that one turns aside from Barth if one con-sistently functionalises dogmatic concepts and formulas. They receivetheir 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 summaryof 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 anactivity which, when done, is done on a meta-level. Therefore dogmat-ics seeks the conditions for the underlying structure for speaking aboutGod. The relation between dogmatics and what the church has to sayabout God can indeed to a certain degree rightfully be seen as therelation between grammar and language. I say ‘to a certain degree’because this comparison only holds true in limited measure. The fact isthat within dogmatics there are solid statements made which, althoughthey have a regulative function, are also intended to have substantivecontent. This does not detract from the fact that Barth’s theology toa great extent rightly leaves a formal impression, and as reflection isintended to have a regulative function in regard to that which is saidabout God in the space of the church and in its proclamation. Dog-matics is no longer, as it was for Calvin, a transcription and orderingof the content of what God has communicated. It is an arrangementof perspectives and coordinates which together delineate a field, in theconfidence and with the expectation that God himself as Lord of hisrevelation will make himself present, and that entrance to Him willbe opened up through the subjective work of the Holy Spirit. In bothCalvin and Barth, systematic reflection is in service of the reading and

79 Perhaps one must say that in the first parts of the KD Barth’s thought stillmoves strongly from abstract formulations and concepts to biblical history. Later hethinks more from the concrete history to the concepts, thus preparing the way thatPannenberg and Moltmann were to go. When in the second part of his doctrine ofreconciliation Barth selects a starting point, he chooses the history of Jesus Christ, thuschoosing a point of departure in the opposition of the Father and Son, it becomes clearthat thinking in terms of the Trinity springs from this history.

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exposition of Scripture. But the connection that is made by each ofthem between Bible and ‘systematic’ reflection also reveals a deep andradical difference. The truth and truths for which Calvin is seeking afitting ordo in his Institutes are direct, divine truth. Barth neither can norwill deal with the Bible in this manner. God’s speaking, God’s Wordin the singular, is a category all of its own, an event which can indeedmake use of human words, but which still remains categorically distinctfrom man’s word. The theology of the second panel is strongly con-scious of its own distance from God’s own speaking and coming. Thetiny space that there was in the first panel between Biblical words andChristian doctrine on the one side and God’s Word, His speaking onthe other, has become a categorical difference.

On the one hand, that means that for Barth dogmatics is on theone hand more modest in tone, to the extent that it is the word ofman. At the same time it has more space and freedom to arrive atits own design. To the extent that dogmatic theology boldly occupiedthe space that opened up, it broadened out and exhibits less modesty,indeed becomes speculative.

The method followed in this second panel is the method that wasdeveloped in the systematic theology of the 19th century by Schleierma-cher and the idealistic thinkers. Slowly the accent shifts from an entitymade up of revelations to an entity that is the collective of revelation. Dog-matics is the individual, personal attempt, with one’s gaze directed tothe Bible and tradition, to trace adequate lines and establish perspec-tives which, in its unfolding, connecting and specifying, invites one togo that way. It is an attempt to do justice to the whole. That is to say,the point of departure in this method is no longer words and revela-tions, plural. That is the level of the Bible, a human text. The level ofknowledge of God is God in his revelation, singular. Systematic reflec-tion and faith are more sharply distinguished, and the space betweenthem becomes greater. Barth’s dogmatic work represents this change ina paradigmatic manner. Dogmatics understands itself as labour on ameta-level with respect to the way of knowledge of God itself, as a pos-sibility that in some way is grounded in the given, and still being givenparticipation in God’s self-knowledge.

A differentiation of tasks has taken place in theology. While in thefirst panel, for Calvin the real task of theology lay in Bible exposition,and systematic reflection had no greater aim than the judicious andorderly arrangement of subjects and content, in the second panel sys-tematic theology has lost its direct access to knowledge of God, and


it must formulate the perspectives through which the knowing of Godtakes place. With Calvin Bible exposition and the search for a fittingordo for the main points of Christian doctrine were distinguished, butin the second panel we see how just how much dogmatics and Biblicalinvestigation have drifted apart, like two continents which were onceunited. This observation may be surprising because it is precisely Barthwho emphatically called upon biblical studies to be a theological dis-cipline, but this summons is itself an expression of a realisation of thepeculiar responsibility and space of dogmatics.

Barth’s answer to a written query by Brunner in 1924 asking how thediscipline of dogmatics should be conducted in that time, is interestingin this context. Barth chooses two of the various options that Brunnerlays before him.80 The first way for dogmatics is prophetic, that is to saygoing its own way under constant scrutiny by the Bible, the ancientChurch and the Reformation. The second option is what he callsconfessional. The material of dogmatics is dogma, which perhaps haswasted away as the church has become modern, but that must again besought beyond the confessional texts of the apostolicum. The confessionaltexts fulfil an heuristic function and the authority of Scripture as theorigin of the whole is termed self-evident. It would appear from thisexchange that Barth viewed his own work as a renewing Reformation.‘Selbt Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen’,81 he calls it, that is tosay, daring to speak on one’s own account, while allowing one’s ownideas to be checked constantly against Scripture and tradition. Such

80 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 1916–1966, Hrsg. von der Karl Barth-For-schungsstelle an der Universität Göttingen, Zürich 2000, 87–96. Brunner lists fourpossibilities: ‘1. Dogmatik, als Auslegung eines christlichen Bekenntnisses. 2. BiblischeTheologie—etwa wie Beck oder Hofmann. 3. Lehre von der christlichen Religion alsAusschnitt aus der allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft. 4. Spekulative Theologie, die vonvornherein weiß, daß sie bei christlichen Resultate endet.’ In his answer Barth respondswith the following possibilities: ‘Loci’ im Anschluß an den Römerbrief (Melanchton). 2.Biblische Theologie à la Beck. 3. Spekulative à la Biedermann. 4. Scholastische (anstelledes Petrus Lombardus: Calvins Institutio … oder der Katechismus Genevensis 1545). 5.‘Prophetische’, d.h. selber Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen und unter beständigerKontrolle 1. durch die Bibel, 2. durch das kirchliche Altertum + Reformation einenselbstgewählten Weg gehen. 6. Konfessionelle: Stoff der Dogmatik ist nun einmal dasDogma; gibt uns die verglunggte modern-reformierte Kirche kein solches an die Hand,so stehen wir offenbar wieder am Anfang der reformierten Reformation, haben zu fra-gen, was dort Dogma war vor den Bekenntnisschriften, kämen also auf das Apostolikum.Bekenntnisschriften heuristisch zu verwenden. Autorität der Schrift als des Ursprungs desganzen Krams selbstverständlich. 7. Der helle Unfug: Schleiermacher und, was hinterihm kreucht und fleucht.’

81 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel, 95.

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statements are characteristic of this new constellation in the secondpanel. With regard to the Bible and confessions, dogmatic reflectionsteps back to take a tertiary position. At the same time it is aware of itsown freedom and obligation to be of service in its way to the speakingof the church.

By keeping this categorical difference between the word of man andGod’s speaking in mind, an answer can at the same time be givento the constantly recurring question of whether in this concept thesubjectivism of the 19th century is not brought to a head.82 If there isno basis whatsoever in history to which we can point for our knowledgeof God, and if we are then as a result thrown back on God’s speakingin Jesus Christ for our knowledge of Him, then this always takes placeclothed in theological, human words and concepts. In other words,has Barth’s own theology not become the mediating body? That isthe critic’s argument. To ask the question is to answer it. Barth iscompletely aware of his role as the subject of theology. Theology is ahuman endeavour, an attempt to do justice in thinking and speakingto an event which never coincides with the thinking, but that onecan at the most follow and attempt to do justice to in the thinking.It is characteristic of Barth’s theology that this categorical differencebetween knowledge of God and the knowing of the knowledge of God,or reflection on the knowledge of God, is included in the thinking itself.

That in his dogmatic work Barth should exhibit a considerable reluc-tance to provide concrete examples of the knowing of God is consistentwith the foregoing. Dogmatics is not proclamation; it sets up rules forproclamation. Dogmatics is not knowledge of God, it points the way tothe knowledge of God. It indicates the way in which God himself hasand continues to maintain dominion in his revelation, but consciouslyavoids the suggestion that its indications coincide with revelation. It isnot without reason that a reproduction of the picture on the Isenheimaltarpiece, where John the Baptist points to Christ on the Cross, hungabove Barth’s desk.83 Theology does nothing more than point. Preciselyin its referential structure, Barth’s theology possesses a strongly sugges-tive and meditative power, because the presupposition always is thatGod makes himself present in the lives of men.

82 Zie H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven? Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuitspraken,Baarn 1977, 210–215.

83 See R. Marquard, Mathias Grünewald und der Isenheimer Altar. Erläuterungen, Erwägun-gen, Deutungen, Stuttgart 1996.


One of the few personally coloured examples of the conviction thatGod himself provides for his presence found in the KD is Barth’schildhood experience with the songs of Abel Burckhardt.84 Barth writesabout this in connection with the distance in time which separates usfrom the incarnation. How is it possible that this history also fills thepresent day and defines life now? How is it possible that the distancein time is a factor which disappears in Christian feasts? Barth tells ofthe experience that he had with these songs as a child, in which thecontent of the ecclesiastical feasts was sung about in a simple manner.In that there was no gap, no historical distance. Jesus was as close asif he still walked the streets of Basel and the events had happened thatvery morning in his own city. In other words, God himself sees to hispresence through his Spirit. The hermeneutic problem is taken care ofby the work of His Spirit making Christ present. For this theologicalreason the hermeneutic problem is not to be regarded as the ‘horriblywide grave’ of which Lessing spoke with so much pathos. One does notunderstand Barth’s theology if one does not see that he wishes to reflectupon the reality of this mysterious effect with which God himself makeshimself known to men in the present.

Of course, one can ask if Barth here has done justice to the ques-tion of historical distance and the estrangement that one can feel withrespect to biblical stories as a problem which can be brushed asideso simply. What interests me now is that this way of dealing with theLessingfrage is theologically based and displays a form that is also char-acteristic of Barth’s concept of knowledge of God. In its modern formthe problem is dominated by the question of how human knowledgeof God is possible. In Barth’s concept this form of the problem is over-taken and trumped by a different statement of the problem. It is notGod and his act that is the problem, but man and his answer.85 God andhis approach to man constitutes the situation in which man is alreadybeing confronted, and from which he constantly wishes to escape. Thetheme of human knowledge of God does not take on the colour of ageneral epistemological problem; it is a matter of life and death, beingsaved or being destroyed—and with that, we find ourselves in the realmof soteriology. It is therefore the fact that God turns his face towardman which defines the force field toward which dogmatic reflection has

84 KD IV/2, 125; ET, 112–113.85 See particularly Barth’s answer to the Lessingfrage in KD IV/1, 321–322; ET, 292–

293.

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to orient itself. Or, in other words, the object of reflection, God who jus-tifies sinners, at one and the same time determines the way of knowingand the method that must be chosen theologically in order to do justiceto this object.86 From beginning to end, knowledge of God is a matterof saving grace; Barth makes this clear in his prolegomenon,87 and it isthis opposition between the general epistemological interest and a the-ological, soteriological input that is decisive. Thus it is also made clearthat in Barth’s concept knowledge of God must be discussed entirelyfrom an inward perspective.

With this Barth took a fundamental position in a discussion betweenhimself and his friends in dialectical theology that finally lead to thebreak-up of their common front, and which became concretely visiblein the cessation of the periodical Zwischen den Zeiten. The forum in whichdogmatics is practised as reflection on what the church says regardingGod is not primarily defined by the public fora of the academy, society,or even the church itself. Faith, and therefore reflection on what thechurch 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 Barthspeaks of the Sache that must define the method. But even earlier, in the precedingperiod, we encounter the realisation that the usual methods of reading the Bible aretotally inadequate to do justice to its content. The Bible is not a moral tract, not a bookthat 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 first pages of the prolegomenon in this dogmatics, and to realise thatthis word is not used figuratively or as embellishment. Theology, which is characterisedas a measure of the church to meet this double need, is only possible and worthwhilein the light of ‘justifying grace’, ‘which here too can alone make good what man assuch invariably does badly’ (p. 4 in the English translation). This statement is not aneasy, pious formula. It fundamentally characterises how in this theology all knowing ofGod outside of God’s act of salvation has ceased to offer any certainty. If God is tobe known, that is knowledge of salvation, and not knowledge. This reveals how muchthe core question in Barth is immediately and completely theological. It is identifiedwith the justification of sinners. Epistemology is no longer an antechamber to thedoctrine of justification. Or better, the rupture between God and man is so total thatknowledge 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 myselfto the following. Barth’s immediate stress on the gracious character of knowledge ofGod implies a negative judgement on all attempts to search for signs or grounds forknowledge of God outside this gracious act. Such searching is denial of the real state ofaffairs between God and man.

88 KD I/1, 2; ET, 4.


is focused on something that continues to give itself. The soteriologicaldefinition of all knowledge of God now enables us to move toward anunderstanding of Barth’s evaluation of and handling of human facultiesand scientific knowledge in general.

6.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage of Marburg

With Calvin, the question of the possibilities for human knowledge ofGod still lies in the framework of a general concept of human knowing.Man is connected with the world through inner and outward senses,and particularly through his inward cognitive faculties is embedded inthe hierarchy of things visible and invisible. Generally acknowledgedfacts, arranged according to the insights of natural science in that day,point to the existence of God. As we saw in the hinge, in Kant’s phi-losophy the extent and tenability of human knowledge is determinedby critical investigation into the human cognitive faculties. God is nolonger the object of generally accepted knowledge. Since Schleierma-cher, theology has responded by postulating a dualism between gen-erally accepted knowledge and faith. The pretence that knowledge ofGod as creator and sustainer of the world is compelling was declaredgroundless. If we look to Barth, then his vision of the relation of thesciences and faith is deeply influenced by the Marburg neo-Kantianismof Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. It is an heritage that was deeplyinfluential not only in the dialectic period, but, in the judgement ofJ.F. Lohmann in his thorough and convincing study,89 also reached oninto the Kirchliche Dogmatik through to the section on baptism.90 It is, onemight perhaps say, the most important handling of the Kantian legacywith which Barth came into direct contact.91 It presented him with anextremely dynamic vision of science in general. Science is not so mucha file of knowledge, but is rather to be viewed as a process in which thecoherence within our reality is constantly defined by the human mind.A short resume of this critical idealism therefore will not be not out ofplace.

89 J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianis-mus im ‘Römerbrief ’ und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths,Berlin/New York 1995, 399.

90 Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus, 382–383.91 See also my Anfängliche Theologie, 36–38 en 155–157.

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Particularly in Cohen’s philosophy of science Barth came in touchwith a view in which scientific knowledge was conceived as entirelyand totally the creation of the human mind. In contrast to Kant,Cohen did not formulate scientific knowledge as the collective resultof two heterogeneous sources, namely the senses and cognition, butexclusively as the product of thought itself. According to his philosophy,an appeal to the given, as it plays a role in all sorts of irrationalismand materialism, has no legitimacy. In his epistemology the given isregarded an element of thinking itself. Only that which can be foundby thinking itself can be considered as a given.92 Extra-mental reality isaccorded only the role in thinking that the letter X has in mathematics.X is that which can be defined by thinking. The given is therefore nolonger an unalterable thing, but an object in the literal sense, namelythe Vorwurf of thinking itself.93

For Cohen philosophy is not focused on material reality, but on thesciences that study this reality. They are in fact the given around whichphilosophy is oriented. The laws with which reason works are depositedin the sciences. By expressly focusing on the science which is in factat hand, Cohen disassociates himself from speculative idealism, whichbelieves that it can develop a system of pure knowledge a priori. Hisown system is then that of critical idealism, which attempts to follow anddiscover pure thinking itself on the basis of the historical realisations ofthinking. The relation with reality and experience is thus very indirect.‘Der echte Idealismus macht sich zwar nicht abhängig sonder durchausunabhängig von der Wirklichkeit und von der Erfahrung; um so energi-scher aber und gründlicher achtet er auf den Zusammenhang mit derErfahrung.’94

What, now, are the structural points of agreement between Barth’stheology and this philosophy of science? First I would note the highlydynamic view of scientific knowledge, which Barth apparently took overfrom Marburg neo-Kantianism in his earliest essays.95 With regard to

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 darfnur dasjenige als gegeben gelten, was er selbst aufzufinden 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

H. Holzhey, (Berlin 19072=) Hildesheim/New York 1981, 391.95 See, for instance, ‘Ideen und Einfälle zur Religionsphilosophie’ in: K. Barth,

Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten (1909–1914), hrsg. von H.-A. Drewes und H. Stoevesandt,Zürich 1993, 126–138. In his essay he distinguishes between three forms of humanknowing, to wit, theoretical science, ethics and aesthetics. Together they form what is


theology Barth proceeds from a particular given, namely the fact of thechurch and its proclamation. He takes the reality of the proclamationand doctrine as the ‘matter’ of theology, in order to theologically definereality a posteriori, in a return to God or his Word as the beginningand source of all knowledge of God. This linkage of the a posteriorimethod and objectivism also appears in the way that thinking proceedsfor Cohen. In his critiques he takes as his point of departure the givenscience, but scientific objectivity is made dependent on the judgementof the source. In Barth’s dogmatic method too, theological objectivityis 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 divineact, speaking and election. It is only knowable if men participate inthis Word as a vital event. By proceeding in this way, there is no roomleft in this concept for nature or history which is encountered outsideof this act and election God. Man, his history, his world, his destinyare the X that must be defined through an ever rejuvenating returnto the beginning, namely God’s speaking. Barth’s rejection of ‘naturaltheology’, his design of a theological view of time, space, man andhistory, flows from this.

A second agreement can be noted in the objectivism, and the anti-subjectivism that accompanies it, which is characteristic of Cohen, andwhich we likewise find as a characteristic of Barth’s theology. Theobjective 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 thiselement. Nor does this change as in his later doctrine of reconciliation,and very strikingly in the doctrine of baptism, Barth emphaticallymakes room for man as the answering subject.

termed Kulturbewußtsein. This Kulturbewußtsein seems to be a formal concept. It includesthe laws and rules toward which the various fields of human knowledge must orientthemselves. This scientific consciousness is therefore to be sharply distinguished froma concrete, empirical I. It contains exclusively the rules which must be observed bythinking in a reconstruction of what men believe they know scientifically. For us it isimportant that Barth follows Cohen entirely when he gives knowledge of God no placewithin the structure of Kulturbewußtsein. Knowledge of God is not a matter of generality,something which can be enforced. Science as such is agnostic, or better, atheistic. Inthis essay Barth locates knowledge of God in the reality of the concrete subject. Wherethere are living men one can speak of experiencing life in all its mystery, of Erleben, andthere one immediately encounters a realisation of God.

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It is clear that Barth’s acceptance of the legacy of Marburg neo-Kantianism brought with it the problem that Kant’s criticism presentedtheology, namely how one can still defend a form of realism involvingrevelation while accepting a theoretical epistemological idealism. At thesame time one has to give an answer to the pressing question thatcontinues to pursue this criticism, namely the question of the relationof human knowledge to reality. Does this knowledge that men acquirefor themselves by means of scientific methods bring them in touch withreality in any way? To begin with the latter problem, at the least onehas to say that the status of the surrounding reality has become unclearin neo-Kantianism. As soon as man has acquired knowledge, he isdealing with creations of his own mind. Nature becomes the knowledgeof nature. Nature itself has become a precondition, an undefined X. Incomparison to what we found in Calvin regarding reality as a mirrorof God’s glory, it has here become pure materiality, without the powerto bear testimony. If nature is a mirror, in this thinking it is a mirrorof the human mind. The world has become empty, undefined, andcan only speak again if man begins from his life and mind, as thingsare understood in the process of forming judgements. As such, in hisknowledge man encounters only himself. Reality, with its structures andconnections, will never contain a reference to God, because at theirdeepest level the structures and connections arise from the mind ofman, are a matter of human understanding. Between the way theologyunderstands creation and the way science understands nature lies anunbridgeable gulf. The role of the reality which is investigated by thenatural sciences in the development of knowledge of God has herebecome extremely problematic. Barth had learned from Herrmannthat nothing could any longer be expected from the sciences, and thatone had to begin somewhere entirely different. With this we reach thesecond problem, namely to what reality in revelation theology points.

According to Herrmann (and the young Barth) knowledge of Godarises in the centre of the Ur-experience of the human person, theimmediate reality in which he or she finds themselves as a living per-son. The knowledge which arises there, or better, that is a reality there,is dynamic in nature, a vital current of life, Erlebnis. This designates theanchorage in this world where man is sensitive to God and his action,where there is a synthesis of divine and human reality. It is preciselyat this point that Barth separated himself from the liberal theologicaltradition without, for the rest, distancing himself from a certain form ofrevelation realism. However, he no longer speaks of there being a fixed


bridgehead for God’s revelation in human consciousness, in humancapacities, or of a synthesis with the reality of individual lives. Knowl-edge of God rests on a personal act carried out by God. That is whyhis theology refers to a moment, an origin, conceived geographicallyas the vanishing point that falls outside the frame of the picture. Onlythose acts of God, outside the grasp and sight of man, bridge that gulfand assure that man in the last analysis is not left alone with himself inhis finiteness. To this end, in KD II/1 Barth develops the concept of theanalogia fidei. This concept enables Barth to retain revelation as a verydynamic form of reality.

6.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia fidei

Knowledge of God can not be derived from the existence of the worldand given things. With this, the status of universality and rationaldemonstrability is lost for ever. In this respect Barth belongs to themainstream of post-Kantian theology. But this does not yet mean thathis theology has a sceptical tenor epistemologically. One the contrary,one must say. The purpose and direction of God’s revelation is thatHe himself becomes the object of human knowledge. In his revelationGod permits this, commands it and grants the means.96 For Barth thesethree assertions are constituents of the positive proposition that realand true knowledge of God with reliable content indeed exists. First,the three all remind us of the fact that God Himself must act andspeak. Human knowledge can be conceived as a cycle that finds itsstart in God. God is however not only a point of origin, He is alsothe initiator of the movement, through whom the cycle arises and issustained. Second, conceptually this is a form of objectivism which isexpressed in the thesis ‘God is known through God’.97 As Father, Godis the subject of knowledge of God, and as God the Spirit He is themovement itself. Any human knowing of God is only conceivable sofar as man is included in this movement. To the extent that throughthe work of the Spirit man is made a participant in this movement,

96 KD II/1, 213; ET, 190.97 KD II/1, 230; ET, 204: ‘A circular course is involved because God is known by

God, and only by God; because even as an action undertaken and performed by man,knowledge of God is objectively and subjectively instituted by God Himself and let toits end by Him; because God the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit is its primaryand proper subject and object.’

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one can speak of real knowledge of God. Third, this position makesclear what the content of the revelation is. The content of knowledge ofGod is nothing other than ‘God Himself ’. In this definition the Son ofGod stands for the content of knowledge of God. What does this meanfor human knowledge of God? Is the subjectivity and activity of manhimself in faith wholly absorbed in an action of God? If one begins bythinking of the relation of God to man in competitive terms, that couldeasily be the conclusion. But that is emphatically not what is intended.According to Barth, because God appears He creates the subject ofknowledge of God.98 Or perhaps we could express it this way: the ‘eyeof faith’, in the sense of the acte through which man discovers God in hisworks, is not an extension of other acts of knowing, but is an elementof its own, distinguished from them, in which the person becomes asubject that once again begins to see and receive, but now differently.Jüngel has described the characteristic of the experience of faith as ‘anexperience with experience, in which all the experiences acquired, andexperiencing itself, are once again experienced anew, from scratch.’99

In the experience with God, man is as it were constituted anew as abelieving subject.

Does not faith in this way take on the form of an esoteric closedcircuit? Is access not denied except to those to whom it is given? Epis-temologically that conclusion is correct. The movement which Barth isthinking of with the words ‘knowing God’ can not be compelled. It restsupon an encounter brought into being by God, on a moment in whichHe comes and makes himself the object of human knowing. The rela-tion which arises here is therefore not symmetrical. He is the Lord whoin his revelation declares himself as the Lord of mankind. Barth there-fore guards against conceiving the acts of God and the acts of man, thework of the Spirit and the human act of knowing, as points on the sameplane. Whether the reality of knowledge of God is closed is however adifferent question. Would it not be better to term Barth’s theology anattempt to point to an open mystery? In that case his theological theoryprovides a framework where the reader and hearer have their attentiondrawn 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, inproclamation, in the work of a comforting mother, in the simplicity ofa children’s song. If that is true, must the configurations of the second

98 KD II/1, 22; ET, 21.99 E. Jüngel, Entsprechungen: Gott-Wahrheit-Mensch, München 1980, 196. Cf. also 176.


panel, abstract though they may appear, not rather be considered asa form mystagogy, which in all their apparent emptiness precisely areintended to leave room open for the living God himself ?

It is within the context of this question about the veracity of humanknowledge of God that Barth arrives at the unfolding of his doctrineof the analogia fidei. The movement which proceeds from God gains ahearing among men and achieves its goal. Barth couples this insightto a number of qualities which should characterise reflection regardingdogma. The constant, unceasing dependence of the work on the HolySpirit demands (1) intellectual sobriety, and further, (2) certainty and (3)trust with regard to human knowledge of God now also are given aplace. We have here arrived at an important motif in Barth’s theology.Since Kant the insight into the human character of everything that issaid of God has become widely accepted in Western culture. If peoplespeak about God, then these are human words, concepts and schemes.But in the presence of the Biblical witness one now has the roomto speak boldly about human knowledge of God as ‘a undertaking… which succeeds’.100 It is important to note the present participlehere. Barth quite deliberately does not speak of a successful undertaking.Knowing God is not a matter of the past tense. Completing the workof truth is a matter for God alone. In this way the boundary betweenGod’s work and our human work is maintained, but without the poisonscepticism. Our work can only ‘be work which succeeds within itsown natural and impassable limits; that is to say, a work which strivestowards its perfection as fulfilled in God alone.’101 In our knowing weare on the way to the knowing of God. Because it moves between thetwo limits of God’s hiddenness and veracity, theology is a theologia via-torum.102 That means that our attempt to understand something of Godis not self-deception or something with which we deceive others. Thisattempt is ‘on the way to success’.

It is important here to note carefully the stress that is put on thetrustworthiness of revelation. God desires to let himself be known andhe has the power to accomplish this. In the moment of revelation Godlays his hand on man, and it is from the recognition of that momentthat human thinking and speaking begin to develop. Once God’s voice

100 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208.101 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208–209.102 KD II/1, 235; ET, 209.

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is heard, it is the responsibility of men to speak that which is heard inthe presence of God, themselves and their fellows.

For a good understanding of Barth’s theology, it is important toremember that the accents have shifted in comparison to the dialecticperiod. There the inadequacy of all human methods when it came tospeaking about God was central. The dogmatic, critical and dialecticalmethods were all limited means which, complementing one another,gave a description of the task of theology. In KD II/1 the emphasis hasshifted to a positive relation between revelation and human knowingof God, between human words and concepts on the one side and theobject that is intended with these words and concepts on the other:God. Barth therefore explicitly states that the dialectic of veiling andunveiling must not be conceived as static. If veiling and unveiling areequated with each other as entirely analogous elements, they wouldsimply neutralise each other as a plus and minus. That is emphaticallynot what is intended. It is not a case of something being given withone hand that is taken away with the other. God’s revelation has anirreversible direction, namely toward unveiling. The mode of revelationis hiddenness, but the sense is its truth, or as Barth expresses it, its‘veracity’.103 One could once again say, in the expression borrowedfrom Jüngel, say that veiling and unveiling come together in favourof unveiling. The dialectic movement has a finality. This does not inany way decrease the fact that the dialectic of veiling and unveiling,which occurs in ever new forms, makes his theology something likewalking a tightrope. In his earlier work Barth indeed used the image ofthe ‘unsuspecting rider on the Bodensee’.104 The image comes from astory by Gustav Schwab. A horseman on his way to a village close toLake Constance spurs his steed on and gallops across the snow-coveredplain before him. On arriving in a village he asks directions, and hearsthat he has already passed Lake Constance. Without suspecting it, hehas taken the clouds filling the natural bowl in which the lake lay fora snow-covered plain. It is a striking image. It impresses us with thethought that, seen from the human perspective, knowledge of God, allhuman speaking about God, has no solid basis, like the absurd story ofa ride over the clouds. But the fascination with the absence of a humanfoundation slowly makes way for another emphasis, namely the truthand reality of human knowing of God.

103 KD II/1 242; ET, 215.104 Romerbrief 2, 276; ET, 293; Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, 24.


This does not mean that what Barth intended with the dialectic ofunveiling and veiling disappeared from his theology. In Chapter 8 wewill see yet that the point of this is definitive for his doctrine of baptism.In his theology Barth was in search of the true connection betweenGod’s revelation and human knowledge of God. That this connectionis there, that there are links made in all sorts of ways, is for him beyonddispute. That God and man, regarded conceptually, are incongruententities, and human knowledge of God is never to be acquired byway of direct derivation, is likewise beyond doubt. The question that itcomes down to, theologically, is how human knowledge of God relatesto God’s self-unveiling. If, after the autumn of 1915, it was incongruencewhich was in the foreground in the theology, now this incongruencehas been absorbed into a thought which henceforth takes its theologicalstarting point in the recognition that God imparts knowledge, that Godspeaks.

Barth analyses at great length what the consequences are once theveracity of human knowledge of God is recognised. The terms whichemerge here are thankfulness and worship. Both of these are words,we must first note, which fit with the new paradigm which makes itsappearance with Barth, namely knowledge of God as the result of anencounter. In his doctrine of God the reality of knowledge of God ischaracterised as a spatial confrontation: man stands before God andGod stands before man. When the possibilities of knowing God arediscussed, Barth does not point to anthropological data. It is ratherunder the heading of the readiness of God. Only secondarily does itrest on the readiness of man, but it is clear that Barth considers thereadiness of man as a possibility that only exists within God’s readiness,and nowhere else.105

Within the question of the truth of knowledge Barth arrives at anexposition of the implications of his theory of analogy for theologicallanguage. The entrance to human knowing of God lies exclusively inthe free initiative that proceeds from God. From the side of man thereis no analogy which could connect him with the being of God and withHis majesty. Our knowledge rests on a special permission, commandand capacity for such knowledge. God imparts the event of his self-knowledge. Barth has described this movement as an analogia fidei, andsharply distinguished this analogy from the analogia entis which he finds

105 KD II/1, 142; ET, 128.

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in its most acute form in the dogmatic constitution Dei filius of VaticanI. This constitution takes a position against the denial of the generalknowability of God.106 According to Barth’s interpretation this consti-tution makes a distinction between God as principium omnium et finem onthe one side and God as dominum nostrum on the other. This erodes theunity of God. Knowledge of God is divided up into a knowing that canbe gained outside of revelation, leading to a knowing of God as originand goal, and a knowing of God as Father that is gained through rev-elation. What makes Barth’s interpretation interesting is not so muchwhether he is right or wrong, but his evaluation of this duality in theknowledge of God. Any form of differentiation in the ways of knowingis 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 theprophets and apostles, is the ‘being’ of the church and the one Wordof God, then any other sort of knowing is an alien and hostile elementin Christian doctrine.107 The confession that God is one must also beexpressed in the answer to the question of the way of knowing. On thebasis of this principle, there can only be one way to knowing, namelythe self-unveiling which coincides with Christ. Within this concept onecan not give credence to the idea of an initial notion of God, a firstrealisation or trace of his presence or mystery, because from the outsetit is considered a competing approach. Once brought inside the gatesof 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 reasonor 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 drawnon the basis of a predicate which can be attributed to both God andman. According to Barth that is the sin, the mortal sin, of the analogiaentis doctrine: the same concept of being which is attributed to God as apredicate in a sublime sense is also attributed—to be sure, not in equalmeasure, but indeed in a similar manner—to the creature. Therefore,according to Barth, thinking about the relation of God to man becomesa miscalculated arrogance on the part of man. We will return to this in

106 H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum(ed. P. Hünermann), Freiburg i.B. 199137, Nr.3004: ‘Eadem sancta mater Ecclesia tenetet docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis luminee 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 humanaelumine certo cognosci non posse, anathema sit.’

107 KD II/1, 87; ET, 80.


the subsequent section on Barth’s crusade against natural theology. Butit is sufficiently clear now that Barth allows no room for the traces ofdivine presence that played such a prominent role in the first panel.Calvin left no doubt that man, through his capacities, stimulated by thesigns of the presence of God’s Spirit, really could not help but be awareof the living God, were it not that under the influence of sin his fac-ulties had been thrown out of joint and these signs become hidden. InBarth’s concept, knowledge of God rests at all times on a gracious actof God, not on a reference structure intertwined with what is earthly,but on a relation which is being created by God. Nature, or what isgiven, is not a priori a creation of God, not a priori a mirror. If thereis an analogy between God and the creature, it is an analogy that iscreated ever anew by God in his gracious act.108 We can here refer backto what was said earlier when we discussed Jesus as sacrament. Knowl-edge of God is based on a relation that is created through God’s act inJesus and through the work of the Spirit being unveiled to man. Knowl-edge of God is saving knowledge, it is a consequence of an salvific act,has the structure of a covenant of grace. It is this act that now definesBarth’s view of theological language, thus of the words, concepts andstatements that are used to speak of God.

First of all, it is striking how much Barth radicalises the incongruencebetween God and man in comparison with traditional doctrines of rev-elation and God. He regards it as half-hearted in the tradition that the-ologians had the inclination to exercise a thoroughgoing critique withregard to anthropomorphisms in the Bible, but then did not see thatthe apophatic manner of speaking about God, by using terms such asincomprehensibility, unchangeableness and eternity, in fact was equallyanthropomorphic.109 The core of his critique is that, by a methods ofspiritualising the incongruence between men and God, the impressionhas been created that it can be transcended.

According to Barth, the truth of our knowledge of God is only con-ceivable if God in his coming also supplies the means of our thinkingand speaking. In his coming He incorporates the means of our thinkingand our language into his own speaking, thereby making thinking andlanguage good, whole and fitting for a task for which it in itself is inad-equate.110 The difference with Calvin is remarkable. In Calvin’s empha-

108 KD II/1, 92; ET, 85.109 KD II/1, 250; ET, 222.110 KD II/1, 252; ET, 223–224.

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sis on the accommodation of God, the stress on the humility of humanknowledge of God is maintained. God’s majesty stands front and cen-tre. In Barth the stress lies on the permission and command of God, onthe taking on of human words and concepts. We may use language inthe confidence that God himself involves our language and accommo-dates it in his work. In this, the tendency of Barth’s theology becomesunprecedentedly positive and turns against the agnosticism that doubtsthe possibility of knowledge of God. He develops the reality of thisacceptance through his interpretation of analogy, the analogy of faith.

What does analogia fidei mean? The meaning of the words which weapply to God and to earthly reality is neither completely congruent norcomplete incongruent, but there is a similarity, a partial agreement.111

Revelation makes it clear that we can speak of such a congruent rela-tion between our words and God’s being. As always, here too Barthemphasises the element of incongruence. An example is already foundin the word analogy. In revelation man not only receives knowledgeof God (x) but also knowledge of the relation God’s being and thishuman word (x:a). In short, the word analogy presents itself as a suit-able word. Yet Barth is quick to add that this relation does not simplycoincide with what we normally term analogy. When we choose theword analogy, the element of dissimilarity with what obtains for anal-ogy within earthly relationships is always greater than the similarity.What we mean by words used for God and his acts does not coincidewith the meaning of the word with God. The polemic against the ideathat knowledge of God could be derived from human words bringsBarth to the pronouncement that ‘everything that we know as “similar-ity” is not identical with the similarity meant here.’112 That is to say, thesingularity of this similarity is primary, but acknowledgement of this sin-gularity does not prevent there evidently being something in the word‘similarity’ that makes this word suitable to use for the relation createdby God. Is this logical? It is characteristic of Barth’s concept that hedoes not work this aspect out entirely, but concentrates all attentionon the event of revelation in which a human word or concept is takeninto the service of God’s revelation. God himself is the one who in hisrevelation, in his coming, captures the words, as it were, and makesthem suitable.113 The element of incongruence, of not being obvious,

111 KD II/1, 254; ET, 225.112 KD II/1, 255; ET, 226.113 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 285 in this connection speaks of the analogy


of not being capable of representation is retained, but as a qualifierof a succeeding indicator. The relation that is created in revelationbetween God’s reality and our world is the active principle that drawsthis word to it, as it were. Something like a shift of subjects takes place.A word which normally describes a relation of an object in our world toanother object in our world (b:c) becomes caught up in the force fieldof revelation. The relation of similarity created by God (x:a) is reflectedin what we ordinarily call similarity, so that what we usually denote bythe concept of similarity becomes similar with the similarity constitutedin revelation.114 Language comes home in the force field of God’s reve-lation. In contrast to what we saw with Kant in Chapter 5, in this viewof proportional analogy not only is a relationship revealed, but one alsocomes to know the identity of the X. Once again the example of theconcept of fatherhood can be of service to us here. The term ‘father’is an indication of a relationship, namely the relationship of a father toa child, and in revelation is applied as a mirror to make a relation inGod visible. God, Barth says, comes to meet us in our language, andmakes a choice, which we must accept in obedience. Thus, the wordsand concepts chosen by men in the tradition of Christianity are notrandom; they are ultimately not based on human construction, but area matter of obediently following what God has done in his revelation.115

Barth goes still a step further. When it comes to consonance betweenour language and God’s being, according to Barth one must assumethat this consonance already previously existed in God. The possibilityof a successful indicator lies in God himself. He is in himself theone—for instance, the father—who loves. If the human activity, theapplication of words to God, is moving toward success, that success isnot based on a lie or a fiction or on the illegitimate use of these earthlywords. The opposite is the case. Our earthly words are not alienatedfrom their real milieu; rather, God brings home terms which belong tohim in the truest sense. He came to his own, as John 1:11 puts it.116

At the very least this is a remarkable and certainly contrary visionof language, which can give rise to all kinds of speculation. What

of advent. God is not an unknown X, but he makes himself known. The relationbetween x:a is not a static relationship; it is a movement through which it comes tobe known.

114 KD II/1, 255; ET, 226–227.115 KD II/1, 256; ET, 227.116 KD II/1, 257; ET, 228.

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does Barth intend with this view of language? In the most originalsense language, the words which we apply to him, belongs to God.If words succeed in expressing who God is and what He does, thenthat is because these words are in the truest sense His. What thisconcept comes down to, one can note, is a tremendous turn about, atheological reversal of the concept of language. The assertion that Godis ineffable and incomprehensible dominates the pre-modern panel.God makes himself known in his revelation, and the question of howthis operation relates to God in himself is not a subject for reflection.That is something which is forbidden to man. The recognition thatGod is always more than he allows be seen in his working does notthreaten the trustworthiness of his works and promises; that was theconclusion in Chapter 3, on the basis of the discussion of Calvin’sdoctrine of God. But we must realise that the proposition Deus sempermaior does not directly result in the view of God as deus absolutus. Inthe second panel there is explicit reflection on the way in which God’sworking is anchored within his inter-Trinitarian being. Here too thereis a theocentric perspective, but the background against which thediscussion is set has fundamentally changed. If speaking about Godin the pre-modern panel was discussed in terms of accommodatedspeech, and with that the stress lay on the limitedness and inadequacyof human language with respect to divine reality, now human wordsand concepts are placed within the perspective of God, who has powerover human language and captures the language again and again, toprove his power and dominion over it. The point of Barth’s theologyis the veracity of knowledge of God. In the hinge section on Kantwe noted that God is essentially the unknown, who stands outside oflanguage and concepts. This dogma of modernity is now powerfullycontradicted in this concept. God is not the ineffable; God himselfultimately speaks in the language of men, takes possession of it, dwellsin human language and words, and can do that because the Word,which is characteristic of Him, has its deepest being in language, iscommunicative. 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 onlyreceive their true meaning in their application to God, who in his

117 KD II/1, 259; ET, 229.


own deeds imparts content to these terms. According to Barth, thisis likewise the case for concepts that have passed in the tradition forillegitimate anthropomorphisms, such as hearing and seeing. Hearingand seeing are in the truest sense qualities of God, and he cites thefamiliar passage from Psalm 94:9, ‘Does he that planted the ear nothear, he that moulded the eye not see?’ These terms too come home inrevelation.

Its point of origin is decisive for Barth’s teaching on analogy. Theanalogy does not have its origin in this world; ontologically it has itsorigin in God. It exists because God draws a relation between hisown being and our being. The analogy is thus not a latent quality ofearthly reality. One may not, as with an analogia entis, first place Godand man in a comprehensive relation of being in order to subsequentlyclimb to God from the common being of things. The analogy onlyexists as an event if it pleases God to reflect his own being in ourhuman relations. The analogy is created each time that God bringsthe words and concepts home. We recognise what is rightly termedBarth’s actualism. One can not speak of the analogy outside of God’sdeeds. Knowledge of this act, of the created relationship, then alsobelongs to this deed. Barth clearly separates this from what he regardsas the error of natural theology, both in liberal Protestant and RomanCatholic theology. According to Barth, in these currents the nature ofthe analogic relation as an act is transformed into a latent quality ofbeing, and this transformation would spell the end for the realisation ofa constant dependence on God’s act.

Here we encounter the hidden cultural presupposition of the discus-sion of analogy in KD II/1. The actualism presupposes a culture inwhich nature and history are experienced as ambivalent or empty. Apart of the attractiveness of Barth’s concept of the knowledge of Godis apparently that it fits with the experience of the emptiness of things.The experience that reality is pure materiality, and man as a part ofthis materiality is confronted with his finiteness, is given full play. Werereality not to receive a new character in its critical involvement withGod and be experienced afresh, it would remain essentially dumb andmeaningless. Only in the search for this relation will be truth be found.Our critique on this point is confirmed by the discussion that Barthengages in with the teaching on analogy found in Quenstedt (1617–1688).

Barth unfolds his own position in thinking about analogy by meansof a critique of Quenstedt, whom he regards as a spokesman for what

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Lutheran Protestant orthodoxy has had to say on this point.118 Whatare the grounds for applying the same concepts to God and man?Quenstedt suggests that the truth of human knowledge of God restson an analogia attributionis intrinsecae. The attribution of qualities to bothGod and man takes place on the basis of the fact that they originallyhave their existence in God, and likewise exist in man, to be sure inunequal degree (inaequaliter). In Quenstedt Barth descries the threaten-ing shadow of an analogia entis doctrine. This would mean that in princi-ple the reasoning could be reversed and could lead to assertions aboutGod that were not dependent on Jesus Christ, on God’s salvific revela-tion, but on a being that encompasses both God and man. This couldhave been avoided if Quenstedt had spoken of an analogia attributionisextrinsecae.119 Indeed, according to Barth, Quenstedt could have avoidedthis if he had handled the first article of the Apostles’ Creed similarlyto the second, that is to say, had he in fact subsumed the article on cre-ation under the doctrine of justification. Barth’s critique of Quenstedtcan hardly be taken seriously historically. It would suggest that in histime Quenstedt actually could have written differently. Barth’s critiquefits entirely within his thesis that Protestant theology has fallen intodecline. It is precisely this thesis however which indicates that Barthhimself had too little awareness of the way his own systematic reflectionwas shaped by the culture in which he lived. He appears not to haveseen that his own argument for the external and ‘injected’ characterof analogy is deeply linked with an intellectual climate in which thepresence of God in creation, the connection of creation and man withGod, is seriously problematised. The immanent critique that McCor-mack presented of Barth’s argument in this connection is worth not-ing.120 Barth would not have had to reject Ouenstedt’s intrinsecae, if hehad interpreted it within the possibilities that his own concept offeredhim. If Barth had kept in mind that God also acted as the God of thecovenant in his acts as creator, there would have been no need to rejectthe intrinsecae. In that case there is, as it happens, also an analogia attribu-tionis intrinsecae with regard to the creation, thus at the ontological level,which exists protologically and eschatologically by virtue of God’s gra-

118 KD II/1, 267–275; ET, 237–243.119 KD II/1, 270; ET, 239.120 Bruce McCormack, ‘Par.27 “The Limits of the Knowledge of God”. Theses on

the Theological Epistemology of Karl Barth’ in: ZdTh 15 (1999), 75–86, part. 83–85.


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 aboutcreation and the world than is necessary within the framework of hisown theology. That critique deserves support. Further on in Barth’sdoctrine of God, in his discussion of the doctrine of qualities, the out-lines of his doctrine of creation as the outward ground of the covenantalready become visible. Creation is then no longer alien to grace, andthe 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 Barth’s rejection of intrinsecae as a double signal mustnot be underestimated. On the positive side, the rejection of intrinsecaeserves 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 presentand ‘transferable’ identity. Negatively, the rejection is a signal of hisview that theologically there is hardly any place for the notion of theindwelling of God’s Spirit, for the traces and channels that are instru-ments of God’s Spirit, for theological perception of horizontal struc-tures and phenomena that begin to speak precisely in the gospel’s fieldof influence. Theologically there is a place for the coming of God’s Spirit,but in terms of geometry that is a vertical event which eclipses every-thing which happens on the horizontal axis and stands independent ofit.

Barth’s interpretation of the metaphor of the mirror in ICorinthians13 is connected with this. The world is not in itself a mirror, nor isthe life of Jesus a mirror. Earthly things become mirrors at the momentGod 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 God’s deeds. God goes after the realitywhich is estranged from Him and brings it again into the domain whereit originally belonged.

Barth has been followed on this point by countless others: there isno way from our reality to knowledge of God. The world is not amirror of God’s goodness and care. This negation, directed by Barthagainst every attempt to acquire salvation apart from God, can alsoset itself up as an autonomous principle. This can occur, for example,

121 McCormack, ‘The Limits of the Knowledge of God’, 84.

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when the denial that the world as such, in itself is a direct referenceto God is presented as a truth of faith, and the world is regardedas empty and in itself meaningless for this theological reason. WhileBarth’s thinking was intended to impress upon his public that speakingof the world as a mirror can never be separated from God’s active work,imperceptibly the emphasis can shift to the conviction, possibly with areference to Nietzsche, that the world is cold, meaningless and God-forsaken. A theological conviction—namely that saving knowledge ofGod is always a work of the Holy Spirit—then keeps company with aview of nature in which nature is a self-referential reality determined bypatterns, which as such has nothing to do with God.

The barriers thrown up in KD II/1 with respect to the way in whichthe natural reality which surrounds us was traditionally brought intotheology reveals Barth’s 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 knowingparticipates in the manner in which God makes himself known in sec-ondary objectivity, can there be theological objectivity. Outside of thismovement there is, theologically speaking, no true knowledge. Thusone can also understand theoretically why Barth says he feels uneasywith the ‘strange generality’ with which the tradition speaks of God’srelation to the creature. If we dare to speak of God on the basis ofthe creation, then, according to him, that is on the basis of an addi-tional revelation which illuminates it. Barth’s completely idiosyncraticand contrary view of what are termed the nature psalms affords a goodillustration of where this theological conviction can lead in exegesis.For instance, with regard to Psalm 104, he asks how the joy over theworks of creation can be distinguished from the optimism of 18th cen-tury physio-theology, which collapsed like a house of cards as a resultof the 1754 earthquake in Lisbon. The reading of the nature psalms inthe second panel represents an attitude of mind and mentality that ismore dismayed by the horrors of an earthquake than it is amazed bya firefly. The spectre of Darwin appears on the stage as we hear thatnature yields a spectacle of the struggle of every creature against everyother for mere existence.122 Within this new constellation there is nointrinsic relation between this, our familiar reality, and God. Where,asks Barth with an eye to Psalm 104, where does the image of the world

122 KD II/1, 126; ET, 114.


that the psalmist has bear witness as such to an order and harmony inwhich one can immediately read the divinity, wisdom and goodness ofthe Creator?123 In his view one cannot for a moment read the joy ofPsalm 104 without the eschatological key of Revelation 21:1–5, ‘Behold,I make all things new.’ According to Barth there is only one conclusionpossible: the goodness of creation, its intention, is a divine judgement:it is good in God’s eyes. Goodness and pleasantness are not qualities ofthe creation; their reality lies entirely in God’s judgement. This judge-ment of God does not for a moment reflect things as they are. Thestarting point for judging and knowing theologically is the covenant ofgrace. Such an evaluation betrays not only the presence of a differentmentality, but in terms of theory of knowledge, a neo-Kantian legacy.Reality as it is perceived by the senses is no longer as such ontologicallydefined 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 bedependent on God. There is a relation, but it must time and again bemade 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 referenceto the extraordinary judgements and acts of God. Thus Barth makesit clear that creation is a theological concept which is only meaningfuland receives objectivity in the light of God’s 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 difference from Calvin seems at first sight only a matter ofdegree. For him too the Creator-creature relationship is not somethingwhich proceeds from creation. Calvin conceives God as the highestactive 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 realityis in itself dumb, meaningless and highly ambiguous. In the secondpanel, in contrast to the first, there is no manner of conceiving God’sindwelling. Therefore Barth begins with the event of revelation. It ishis conviction that something is read into the nature psalms that is notpresent in reality as such. It is an eschatological reading of the worldof creation. Phenomena are in fact seen in the light of the world tocome. The definitive moment that invites us to see the phenomena

123 KD II/1, 126; ET, 114.

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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 onthe other side of it. God himself must make his works into the contentof his Word and his judgement. Only then does one arrive at knowl-edge.

One can ask whether, in his battle against natural theology, Barthhas not arrived at a more radical standpoint than was necessary onthe basis of his own theological point of departure. He embraces aview of life and the world according to which the works of God areincomprehensible, opaque, ‘indeed dark and strange, in their beingand nature’.124 Nature is blind and coarse materiality, and sneers atman rather than being a smiling source. Speaking theologically, Barthstresses the absence of God from the world. If phenomena do speak,they proclaim their own insufficiency.

Reality only becomes a mirror to the extent that there is ontologi-cally an analogia fidei.125 The relation that leads to knowledge of God isa separate event, which indeed takes place in the sphere of creation,but which is not interwoven with this created reality. The ambiguity ofthe world in which we live is thus theologically founded, and the expe-rience of the world as creation can only be understood as theologicaldesignation.

6.15. Faith and certainty

At the end of the discussion of the truth of knowledge of God Barthcomes to speak about the certainty of faith. Considered systematically,knowledge of God is participation by man in the movement that isexpressed in the thesis God is known through God. What does thismean for faith? Can a guarantee be given that the reality describedis the circulus vertitatis Dei and not a circulus vitiosus? Peculiar to Barth’sradicalism is that in his answer he maintains the dialectic that we

124 KD II/1, 127; ET, 115.125 Later, steered in that direction by D. Bonhoeffer, in his creation doctrine Barth

would speak of a analogia relationis. As there is in God a calling I which relates to a calledThou, so God relates to the persons He calls, and so these persons also relate to oneanother in the human estate, I and thou, man and woman. The world is understoodas a series of relations that have a correspondence in the divine being Himself. SeeKD III/1, 219–220; ET, 195–196. Following this line one may expect a more positive,non-tragic recognition of otherness.


always encounter in his doctrine of revelation, namely the dialectic ofveiling and unveiling. Now, in the description of faith, it takes the formof faith and disputation.

The difference between disputation and doubt was mentioned ear-lier. Disputation stands within the circle of faith, indeed itself lives fromthe contact by God. Doubt, on the contrary, falls outside the correla-tion of faith and revelation. In disputation the believer is affected bythe question of whether he or she is really indeed involved with God,or whether he or she has been fumbling around in the dark. Barthemphatically rejects every attempt to provide a support or guaranteefor faith outside the reality of faith. He regards the solution of spec-ulative idealism, which would have our thinking correspond with thethinking of an absolute spirit, or that faith is confirmed because it isassociated with the highest good, as escape routes that only call updoubt. There is a vast difference between doubt and disputation. Doubtseeks for grounds outside the encounter with God. Only in disputa-tion do things get serious, because disputation searches for and asksof God.126 Disputation itself appears to be a phenomenon that belongsprecisely in the circle of faith and encounter with God. Disputationexpects an answer from God himself, dies of the question and preciselyin this dying, in this way, is there a chance that God himself speaks andacts.

Only the way of faith, in the asking of God himself, will faith ulti-mately find rest and ground under its feet. This also means that thereassurance that faith gives, Sicherung, is accompanied with an ‘unset-tlement’, Entsicherung.127 Faith knows that it can not be founded on thestrength of autonomous thinking, on evidence of a moral order, on thehypothesis of an abstract Spirit. Barth emphatically screens faith offagainst such things. Faith renounces these things when it sees God, andexpects and receives an answer from him. The systematic unfolding ofknowledge of God can thus in turn not find its support in any othersystematic construction; it can have its foundation only outside itself, inGod’s speaking. Barth’s theology leaves no other way out. ‘Faith refusesto grasp after any axioms and guarantees.’128

It will be worthwhile, by way of evaluation, to glance back at the firstpanel. Practically, one finds a similar radicality in Calvin too, when


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he points one to the realm of Word and Spirit for the certainty offaith. One receives certainty of God and his salvation only because thecontent of the Gospel is personally impressed on the believer’s heart.The element of being convinced, persuasio, and commitment, are thework of the Holy Spirit. It is also obvious that there is a difference. ForCalvin 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 first panel that only the malevolent would deny it.It is part of the colour scheme of the whole painting. With Barth itis no longer malicious and stubborn folk who deny these self-evidenttruths; the ‘unsettling’ is a subject which becomes a theme within thediscussion of faith itself. Every philosophical support or confirmationis suspect in advance of being ‘natural theology’. The grounds thatfaith itself gives on the one side, and the cultural and philosophicalevidences on the other, have been dispersed like a school of fish, andno longer bear on each other. Is that a purification of faith, or also animpoverishment?

Barth undoubtedly saw the Entsicherung as a necessary purification.Purer means that it is now clearer than before what faith ultimatelyrests upon, namely on God’s own Word, on Christ. Religious knowl-edge has its own source and cannot be derived from other evidencethan that which supports faith itself. And yet, as the further develop-ment of Barth’s own theology reveals, the question of the universalityof God cannot be suppressed. Even as Christian theology in its modernform acknowledges that it ultimately lives from God’s own speaking,from his Word, then one teeters on the edge of esoteric insularity ifone refuses to examine the question of how this Word relates to theworld of experience shared with other human beings. It is not withoutreason that the viewpoint of God’s universality has once again beenthought through from various sides, for instance by Pannenberg andJüngel, the former by demanding that the question of truth be explicitlytaken up by theology, the latter by developing a theological anthro-pology that can also make meaningful and plausible pronouncementsabout mankind outside of faith. Such attempts are theologically linked,because they take into account the fact that in the Christian creed theFather of Jesus Christ is the same as God the Creator.


6.16. Natural theology

Within the context of the question of the knowability of God, in KDII/1 Barth settles the score with ‘natural theology’. For him, the term‘natural theology’ represents the negative flip side of his revelationtheology. He discusses the matter in the sections ‘The Readiness ofGod’ and ‘The Readiness of Man’, thus as a phenomenon that deservesattention precisely at that point, because in his eyes ‘natural theology’is diametrically opposed to the foremost thesis of revelation theology:knowledge of God is possible exclusively on the basis of God’s graciousrevelation. Why does Barth so vigorously contest ‘natural theology’,and why should the pages that he devotes to this dispute be amongthe fiercest in Kirchliche Dogmatik? It is because ‘natural theology’ standsfor the attempt on the part of man to justify himself before God. Ifit has once been recognised that knowledge of God exists only as areality that is summoned up and maintained through God’s readiness,any suggestion that there could be true knowledge of God outside thismovement of God’s action ‘cannot even be discussed in principle’.129 Itis in this way, and no other, that Barth interpreted natural theology:as a denial of the fact that knowledge of God is a grace. In his eyesnatural theology is nothing but a theologoumenon; behind the conceptof knowledge of God outside grace stands the concrete subject of the‘natural man’, who wants to be justified in this life without God. The‘natural man’ is inclusive of enmity toward God, the resolution orveiled refusal to live from God’s grace. Barth paints the debate for us asa spiritual struggle. In these pages of his dogmatic work, Barth comes tothe strongest identification that one can arrive at in theology. He termsthe Barmen declaration ‘a miracle’ which can not be dismissed as a‘pretty little discovery of the theologians’.130 It is likewise no less thana judgement of faith when in this context Barth assigns to the churchthe role of a ‘witness’ which found itself ‘guarded by the Word of Godin contemporaneous self-attestation’.131 These designations reveal thedegree to which prophecy and theology can coincide in this concept.They are among the rare moments within his dogmatic work whenBarth forthrightly passes judgement on a historical situation, and in the

129 KD II/1, 93; ET, 85.130 KD II/1, 198; ET, 176. See also note 17.131 KD II/1, 198; ET, 177.

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light of this situation illuminates a tradition that ‘that for more than 200years now has prepared the destruction of the church.’132

As Birkner has convincingly demonstrated, with his pejorative useof the term natural theology Barth stands in a longer tradition inwhich ‘natural theology’ functioned as a designation for heresy and tostigmatise those to whose thought it was applied.133 It became a polemicterm and an imputation of theological error. The struggle against thenatural man has a function similar to Calvin’s struggle against the lackof pietas, the lack of an adequate life style. While Calvin appeared tobe constantly confounded by the tenacity of human hypocrisy, by thefeigned obedience to God, by the pockets of resistance in the recessesof the human heart, Barth descries the natural man134 ‘as far as theeye reaches’,135 who refuses to expect everything from God. In KD II/1the empirical man and the subject living from God’s grace do notentirely coincide. The incongruence is maintained with regard to the

132 KD II/1, 197; ET, 175. Literal citation from the commentary that was spoken byHans Asmussen as explanation with the theses.

133 See H.J. Birkner, ‘Natürliche Theologie und Offenbarungstheologie. Ein theolo-giegeschichtlicher Überblick’, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1961), 274–295,287. The term ‘natural theology’ has a very long history of polemic use. As appearsfrom the overview of theological history offered by Birkner, since Kant the term hashad a pejorative significance, serving to characterise the inadequacy of the positionof those whose theology was so identified. In modern theological history the term hasbecome a stereotype in disputes, useful for pillorying one’s opponent. Already in Ritschlthe term functions to denote that theology which in his eyes remains stuck in a heathenmorass because in its doctrines of God it remains connected with Greek metaphysics.For Ritschl true Christian theology is therefore characterised by explicitly taking itspoint of departure from the spirit, as opposed to nature. For Barth the term incorpo-rates a definition of what Christian theology can not be, namely a domestication ofrevelation, giving it a middle-class outlook: the Christian as bourgeois (KD II/1, 157;cf. ET, 141). Despite the pejorative connotation the term took on in modern theologicalhistory, there is unmistakably a continuity which can be observed with its pre-Kantianmeaning. As was already sketched above, in the name of ‘natural theology’ reflectionon the relation or connection with contemporary thinking receives a place in theol-ogy. The question is not if there should be this connection with modern culture, but,as Gestrich correctly notes, how this connection takes place. Barth’s rejection of nat-ural theology therefore anything but excludes all sorts of connections being made inhis theology too with what presents itself as acceptable or plausible in his own culture.A famous example of such a connection within Barth’s theology is his reception ofthe religious critique of Feuerbach and Marx: religion as an absolutising of a humanconstruct or as legitimisation of bourgeois society. From the first edition of the Epistleto the Romans Barth was applauded by the critics of historical Christianity because heincorporated their critique of religion in his own theology.

134 KD II/1, 93; ET, 85.135 KD II/1, 148, 150, 157; ET for example 133, 134, 137.


believing subject. It can be observed historically that men proceedfrom the assumption that God is already present in one manner oranother in their domain and sphere, God as a being of consequencewith whom we are directly related. Natural theology proceeds froma direct connection between God and man, and on the basis of thisdirect connection can hypostatise or identify itself in whole or in partwith God.136 The image which Barth gives is a closed circle. It is acircle which will not permit itself to be broken open, and in whichfrom the onset all that appears is a manifestation of something human,something of this world. The system is from its inception immune to thenotion of God as the Other, as alterity, because everything that appearsis immediately encapsulated and vitiated within its own system.

There has been an immense amount said and written in modernBarth research about the function of Barth’s dispute with natural the-ology. If anywhere, it is in this polemic that it becomes clear just howmuch difficulty modern Christian theology has coming to grips withthe relation between faith and knowing, church and culture, the con-nection between the two entities. That there is a relationship betweenfaith and culture is not a point of discussion, the question is only howand where this connection runs. Barth’s argument with Brunner revealsthe extent to which a starting point in creation theology had becomeimpossible for Barth.137 Barth could only consider the use of conceptsfrom creation theology as a cover for the autonomy of earthly powersand processes in opposition to God. That Barth—and in his footstepsthe Barmen Declaration—broke with the two-source theory of Refor-mation tradition is a signal that concepts such as nature, creation andhistory have become ambivalent and closed entities in post-Kantiantheology. With Barth an experience of reality becomes visible, we mightsay, which lacks the inner mental capacity to see more in nature thanan alien reality, an unknown X, which first and foremost is the objectof scientific definition and description.

Several conclusions are now in order. We conclude that Barth, inexpounding knowledge of God, chooses a way that makes it clear thattheological epistemology is anything but a neutral prolegomenon. Epis-temology is in fact already a part of the content of doctrines of God.

136 KD II/1, 151; ET, 136.137 Brunner still worked with notions from creation theology. He proceeded from the

distinction between an imago Dei formalis and imago Dei materalis, the former of which alsocontinued to exist after the fall and could be used theologically.

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One cannot speak about the knowing of God in general, outside ofrevelation itself. How knowledge of God comes to be and is replen-ished can only be conceived as a result of God’s own coming; in Barth’sown terminology, it is a consequence of revelation. The way of reve-lation is not received without the content (Christ) and the subject ofthis revelation. In a certain sense, in his thought Barth carries througha movement which differentiates theology and makes it self-sufficient,which was completed for philosophy in the epistemology of Kant andhis followers. In the history of philosophy, epistemology liberated itselffrom a theological framework. Barth completes this process of emanci-pation for theology. In his theological concept of knowing God, he nolonger looks to explicit support from observations of a general episte-mological nature. That does not say that his concept can not implicitlyinclude all sorts of insights and elements from its cultural and philo-sophical environment. The process of inclusion is in principle eclecticin nature. Every form of a preambula fidei as a necessary entrance to thereally theological is replaced by the conviction that God in his majestyis able to use any means, without this having the result that meansand methods can be chosen at will, as if it made no difference. In hisprincipled eclecticism Barth does anything but defend indifference andcapriciousness, although he does go to cudgels with regard to makingany particular method or epistemology a matter of principle. There ishardly any reflection on human capacities, let alone support for theirhaving any separate place in his theology. They are entirely secondaryin comparison with the speaking and acts of God. In Barth’s personalis-tic and voluntaristic language, all attention is focused on the commandand permission that God gives, and the person who in obedience seeksto follow God in his revelation.

A second conclusion is that no status of perfection can ever beattributed to the concepts and images that we form and apply to God.They are in themselves never a work of God, but man’s work. Thereremains a distinction between the speaking of God and the speakingof men. Dogma is thereby characterised as an eschatological entity; theincongruence continues to exist from the side of man. We can indeedcall on and use human words, concepts and images in the intercoursebetween God and man. Through God’s grace they can become mirrorsof God’s greatness and his turn toward man. Within a theologia viatorum,they are to be esteemed as means of blessing.

Third, Barth’s teaching on analogy is a radical theological answerto a vision of reality presented by Kant’s philosophy. His concept of


the reality of knowledge of God is an attempt to give the reality ofknowledge of God a place in the face of post-Kantian agnosticism. Thisworld in itself has no gateway to God, and there are no bridgeheadswhere men can get a foot on the ground. The only possibility ofknowing God lies in God himself building the bridge, creating theanalogy, and making himself knowable in our reality, granting signs ofhimself.

chapter seven

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

7.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of God’s being.The anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision

With whom or what is man dealing? Since modernity penetrated West-ern cultural circles in scores of ways, inhabitants of the West have beenmade deeply aware that it is chiefly themselves they are dealing with,in one sense or another. Humanity is alone by itself in the world, inall its finiteness. This realisation is revolutionary in comparison to thefirst panel. Here, the hinge holding the two panels together representsa fault line. The consequences for faith and theology were paradigmat-ically already to be found in the thinking of Kant. The turn to humanactions, to humanity takes primacy, and doctrines regarding God andsalvation serve at the most as exponents of the question of what manmust do. The demand for freedom, for the actualising of mankind,the concern about the fragility of life begin to define the horizon ofall questions, all thinking and action. In the context of post-Kantianculture every form of attention to beliefs about God must thereforereckon with responses of surprise, scorn, distrust and, especially, indif-ference. The autonomous discussion of doctrines of God very quicklyraises suspicions that what is being talked about neither touches norconcerns life. All things considered, this is something one can do with-out, not because the truth of falsity of these claims must be disputed,but because they have simply become irrelevant. If discussions do turnto God, then it is as a somehow unavoidable question within the ques-tions of life, within the context of ethics and humanity. It is not withoutreason that one of the points of discussion in Christian theology afterKant has been to what degree an autonomous discussion of doctrinesof God is responsible. Does not such an approach lead to talking aboutGod as an object, as a thing among things? Barth’s teaching on knowl-edge of God could be read as an attempt to escape that accusationof immediate objectification. Both the doctrine of the Trinity in theProlegomenon and the emphasis on the hiddenness of God in the dis-

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cussion of knowledge of God function to point back to an inalienablesovereignty that God exercises in his dealings with mankind, withoutthereby denying the possibility of knowing God.1

Notwithstanding the tenor of his time, Barth dared to undertake abroad, systematic development of a doctrine on God. Already in thefirst move in this chess game in his effort one finds the answer to thequestion implicit in the previously mentioned adage, Quae supra nos, nihilad nos. Theology has to give an account of ‘the fact that not only shedsnew light on, but materially changes all things and everything in allthings—the fact that God is’.2 This assertion is problematic. It does notplace ethics and the acting man in the limelight; it is not the projectof freedom and self-realisation that forms the horizon. According toBarth, the long and short of it is that theology is about the exposition ofthe sentence ‘God is’, and thus is about nothing less than the beingof God.3 All of theology is a form of knowledge of God. Theologydeals with the whole sum total, about man, his world, his fears andyearnings—but deals with all of this in the light of the sentence ‘Godis’. That is not an insight alongside other insights; it is the given throughwhich all the others come to stand in a new and different light. But theexistence of God, his work, what he says, his acts are characterisedas things that do not only throw a certain light on life. They indeeddo that, but Barth says much more. The being of God, his acts, hisdeeds as such are definitive for being. The being and acts of God haveontological implications and are therefore relevant for man and hishistory. The question of the meaning of life, who man is, the questionof his humanity and responsibility, all of life is set on one track, is newlyconstituted as it were, when one understands these questions within theacts of God.

After these introductory sentences it will be clear that in this chapterwe are not entering totally new territory. The decisive lines towardan answer to the question of who man is dealing with in faith have

1 The other way was chosen by another of W. Herrmann’s pupils, R. Bultmann. Inhis essay ‘Welchen Sinn hat es von Gott zu reden’ in: R. Bultmann, Glauben und VerstehenBd.I, Tübingen 19727, 26–37, he denied the possibility of a separate, material doctrine ofGod. For the rest, in both cases there is a deep agreement: God does not permit himselfto be objectified in the same way a normal object in the world is objectified. WhatBarth achieves with his doctrine of the Trinity and his discussion of the hiddenness ofGod is what Bultmann means by his programme of demythologisation. See E. Jüngel,Gottes Sein ist im Werden, Tübingen 19763, 33–34.

2 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.3 KD II/1, 288–291; ET, 257–259.

the doctrine of god 319

already been sketched out in the preceding chapter. It must once againbe emphasised that the distinction between the way and content ofknowing God can only be conceived as strictly a matter of logic. Thetheme of the way and the theme of the content of knowledge of Godtogether form an inseparable whole. In this chapter then we will findonly a shift of the accent within one and the same field. Attention willshift to God as the content of human knowledge. Barth’s concept ofknowing God permits itself to be seen as a circular movement, fromGod to God, with man being involved in this movement.

Barth’s exposition makes it crystal clear that from the start he fliesstraight in the face of undeclared or open agnosticism, any suggestionthat there is nothing which can be said about God and His being. Inpart as a consequence of the Kantian reconsideration of the bound-aries of human knowledge, Christian doctrine has been suspected ofreaching beyond its grasp. Does not Christian theology speak about anorder that transcends the limits of time and space? When it speaks ofGod and His being does it not assume a reality that in fact means aduplication of the existing order, a world behind this world? Barth iswell aware of these suspicions, and for his part in fact uses them againstesoteric tendencies.4 The answer in the second panel betrays its moder-nity by making it clear in many ways that God’s being is not simply aduplication or extension of earthly reality. God is not an object in thenormal sense of that word.5 But this otherness of God does not detractfrom the fact that one must indeed speak of a form of objectivity. Faithtakes on shape because another order that does not coincide with ourspresents itself.

For the rest, it is not only the modern Kantian tradition that assuresthat there is an extreme reticence in making pronouncements aboutGod’s being. We also encountered this reticence in the first panel.Calvin takes a stance close to the position that Melanchthon took in hisLoci in 1521, when he argued that men should not seek to understandthe basis of the incarnation, but must have reverence for the blessingsof Christ. We stand before a tension which is not rarely felt to be acontradiction. Barth says explicitly, with a reference to Melanchthon,that never on any occasion may investigation, vestigare, be separatedfrom reverence, adorare. Even if one will investigate the blessings, ben-eficia, of Christ, there is a chance that the investigation will in fact run

4 See for example Römerbrief 2, 82; ET, 107–108.5 KD II/1, 15; ET, 12.

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toward irreverence.6 It is clear that Barth, in contrast to Calvin, doesnot shrink from questions about the essence of God. That is a signifi-cant difference. Calvin indeed provides a structure of terms that obtainas qualities of God, but it is deliberately very summary. He offers, aswe saw, a rational order, but as soon as the question begins to movein the direction of a question about God’s eternal being, separate fromhis revelation, this is a question which he will not pursue. Man mustknow God only as God wishes to make himself known. The content ofthe knowledge of God has its bounds. There are spaces and subjects inGod’s Counsel that man does not know, and does not have to know. Itis enough that God adopts believers as children and is known by theiras their loving Father.

With Barth we have entered another climate. Revelation is self -revelation, and consonant with this, knowledge of God is nothing lessthan knowledge of God Himself. The question about the essence ofGod is no longer conceived as a question about God’s substance, butas a question about who we are dealing with. The image of spaces inGod’s Counsel to which man is denied access, makes way for an imageof a personal encounter, in which man comes out as a person, andenters into a relation with an other. In the second panel it will thus alsogradually become clear that faith does not reduce people to children,but makes them adults who are called to partnership. In the KirchlicheDogmatik the stress comes more and more to be on man as a partner ina covenant, a mature adult who precisely in the knowing of God is notexcluded, but included as a whole person and a subject.

This must be clear: Barth’s doctrine of God offers a modern reinter-pretation, not a reversion. In respect to terms, he seeks as much con-tinuity as possible with the patristic and orthodox Protestant tradition,but that produces anything but a simple repetition of an inherited bodyof thought. Barth has his theological reasons for making such exten-sive use of the vocabulary of orthodox doctrines of God: the history oftheological thinking may be approached with the presupposition thatGod speaks to man in His freedom, and takes man into service, inclu-sive of man’s thought.7 It would testify to an unbelievable impudenceand an indifference toward God’s Spirit to scorn the development ofdoctrine in the Church as merely a defection from original Christianity.

6 KD II/1, 290–291; ET, 259.7 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvätern zu Karl Barth. Das altkirchliche Dogma in der

‘Kirchlichen Dogmatik’, Amsterdam 1993, 19–22.


For Barth the Church has wide boundaries, and therefore the possi-ble partners with whom one can enter into discussion are many. Thesource material for a dogmatics as training in listening to God is foundin that which the Church has thought and said, thus in that whichis provided in doctrine and reflection on doctrine. But the criterionremains the Word of God, and thus critique is always possible. Theattention and respect for Protestant orthodoxy thus did not stop Barthfrom arguing the thesis with great conviction that Protestant ortho-doxy was in decline—a thesis the effects of which still permeate ourtheological-historical conception. In Barth’s eyes the coalition betweena general ontology and Christian belief had had fatal consequences inliberal theology, and had its climax and apotheosis in ‘natural theol-ogy’, which asserts that God can be known from nature and history. InBarth’s depiction of natural theology, nature and history, or the gener-ally accessible, becomes the actual gangplank to knowledge of God. Butthe presupposition of Barth’s 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 ofidentity between God and man.8 Barth does not deny that there is sucha point of identity, an element of participation; the critical question ishow 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 whichman 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 toencounter man, the next step must follow: one can begin to think aboutWho shares himself in this revelation.

With this we come to a key element in the theology presented inthe second panel: the relation of God’s revelation and his being. Theremust be a distinction between God’s being and his work, between es-sence and revelation—but they certainly must not be separated. Whenin faith people recognise that in Jesus Christ they share in God’s reve-lation, through the mediation of that name a prospect on God’s beingopens up for them. According to Barth that is not speculation. It mightbe termed speculation if there were a gap between being and work, butone of the pillars of his theology of revelation is precisely that such agap does not exist in revelation. In the previous chapter we saw why itdoes not exist: namely, because God himself creates an analogy, because

8 See for example Barth’s critique of Ph. Marheineke in Die protestantische Theologieim 19.Jahrhundert. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte, Hamburg 19753, 423; ET, 497.

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in his revelation in Jesus He himself reveals his Lordship, and thus him-self. Barth does indeed make a distinction between God’s essence andhis revelation, but expressly guards against that essence and revelationbecoming divided into two ontological layers which would be separatedby a gap.9 Barth’s fundamental assertion is that God is who He is inhis works.10 That opens the possibility for human knowledge of God.Within the reality of faith as participation in God’s self-knowledge, whoGod is can be further particularised on the basis of his works.

7.2. God’s reality: being and act

The title of the first section of the chapter in which Barth discussesthe 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 thisstatement is far from modest: it proposes to present a reinterpretationof what is discussed in traditional theology under the concept of thebeing of God. Two terms are brought together with one another here,which in the history of classical metaphysics represented two unequalorders, namely being and act. ‘Being’ refers to the highest being, and assuch the eternal, enduring and foundational. ‘Act’ refers to the world ofhuman action, to the imperfect and inconstant. With the Hebrew worddabar in mind, Barth engages them with one another when he says ‘TheBeing of God in Act’. God’s being is not a foundational, immovablebeing; it is Ereignis, event, and more to the point, the reality of Godhimself is the act. In the picture of God it is no longer the foundationaland the immovable that is primary, but God as the acting subject. It isnot without reason that Barth presents his doctrine of God under thetitle ‘The Reality of God’. The word ‘reality’ here must be understoodas containing the double meaning, namely as act or deed, and as being.Act and being are both intended as specifications of God’s being. Withrespect to God, being and act are not antitheses, and neither one hasany logical priority over the other. This too must be read as critiqueof thinking which asserted that one must first and foremost speak ofGod as the immobile mover, as being at rest. God’s being is typified byacting.

9 Cf. E. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden, 45; ET, 46–47.10 KD II/1, 291; ET, 260.11 KD II/1, 288; ET, 257.


Barth research is very well aware that, in choosing to go in thisdirection in his reinterpretation of the concept of God, Barth soughtto connect with the modern concept of the subject. As a subject, manis someone who creates and shapes the world by has actions. In Barth’spicture of God, man can easily recognise the homo faber, the creativeand acting man, or more strongly, in an adapted form, the attempt tomaintain God’s autonomy. Certainly the latter concept, used by TrutzRendtorff,12 calls up the suggestion that in this concept there is in factno room for the peculiar responsibility of man, and for the mediatingand sustaining function of ecclesiastical and cultural institutions. Now,the critical point cannot be whether a theology—in this case Barth’sconcept—makes use of the means of thought that our times and cultureoffer. The critical point is whether such use does justice to what must bespoken of there, namely God as he manifests himself in the history ofIsrael and Jesus. The answer to that can only be given by investigatingthe meaning of the content of the terms used. It is the presumption ofthis second panel that these modern terms precisely do justice to thecontent of Biblical revelation.

The further specification of the being of God takes place through theterms event, act, life, love and person. The content of these terms—soBarth never tires of repeating—must not be drawn from the meaningthat these terms have in general, but must be derived from a criticalreading of revelation, and concretely, from Jesus Christ. The contentof revelation and the way to knowledge go together. That indicates thedirection theological thought must go, and it can be connected withwhat was said in the preceding chapter about Barth’s vision on lan-guage. The fact that particular terms are already part of the languageis not totally definitive. Barth takes the basic assumption that a termis entirely defined by the ‘thing’ or content of revelation so radicallythat he sometimes suggests that the meaning of a word which has been‘captured’ by revelation has hardly anything to do with its ordinarymeaning. The polemic point of this accentuation of discontinuity hasalready been discussed in the preceding chapter. The point is that thewords which we apply to God are not purely extrapolation from whatwe already know. Theology always and in all circumstances has to listen

12 T. Rendtorff, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis der Theologie KarlBarths und ihrer Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studienzu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gütersloh 1972, 161–181 and idem, ‘Karl Barth und dieNeuzeit. Fragen zur Barth-Forschung’, Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986), 298–314.

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to God in his Word, and the words will receive their meaning within therealm of God’s speaking. As the ground of its knowledge, Christian the-ology has the encounter in revelation through which God’s own beingdistinguishes itself as the ‘self-motivated person’.13

7.3. Love

In the substantive description that Barth gives of the being of God as afurther specification of the formal characterisation ‘The Being of Godin Act’, the term ‘love’ comes first: ‘The Being of God as the One whoLoves’ is the second section.14 Why, one could ask, is precisely this termchosen, which in the usual series of qualities in traditional doctrines ofGod is generally subsumed under the holiness or goodness of God?15 Itis because this term describes God’s being most comprehensively andinclusively. Love, according to Barth, is the qualification that followsfrom the revelation of the Name, and also the revelation of the Father,Son and Spirit. Love is the word that indicates the structure of howGod is in Himself, and how He is also in his works, namely as the onewho exists in fellowship, who creates relations. The lines which Barthsets out in this subsection are therefore definitive for the whole of hisdoctrines of God and of salvation. A longer citation is therefore not outof place:

‘He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God. In asmuch as He is Himself and affirms Himself, in distinction and oppositionto everything that He is not, He places Himself in this relation to us.He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in thisrelationship … In Himself He does not will to exist for Himself, to existalone. On the contrary, He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and thereforealive in His unique being with and for and in another. The unbrokenunity of His being, knowledge and will is at the same time an act ofdeliberation, fellowship and intercourse. He does not exist in solitude butin fellowship.’16

The fellowship that he seeks with mankind is not alien to Him, but isfounded in the Divine being itself. Although the word ‘election’ is not

13 KD II/I, 304; ET, 271.14 KD II/1, 306; ET, 272.15 See for example H. Heppe/E. Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche,

Neukirchen 19582, 52.16 KD II/1, 308; ET, 274, 275.


used in this passage, it is still clear that the will to fellowship with manflows froth from the depth of divine life itself and therefore is most inti-mately connected with elements in it, namely with the will to fellowshipor the love that is peculiar to divine being. Put another way—and herewe encounter the central element of the second panel—living in fellow-ship or love is not incidental for God, but is essential, a characteristictrait for Him.

What does Barth hope to achieve by postulating the concept oflove in this way? Two points should be listed: First, that the contentof human knowledge of God is determined by God, who in Himselfexists in community and love. God is a God who exists in fellowship,in love, and therefore seeking fellowship with mankind is not foreignto 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 ofGod, a threat which Barth saw hanging like a dark cloud over patris-tic, medieval and Reformation theology. One can ask how justified thischarge is, and as a consequence place a question mark after the imageBarth himself so successfully created of his own theology as a libera-tion from the centuries-long bondage to pagan philosophy. Has thereever been a time that faith and theology did not avail themselves ofcontextual means and were thus free of them? Barth would be the lastto deny this, but in his polemic has not escaped the suggestion that apure stance, listening only to revelation, can only be developed througha fundamentally Christological method.

Second, through the primacy of the characteristic of God’s love,Barth makes clear that Christian thinking does not conceive God asa lone, monolithic subject. God has distinctions within Himself, andthe fellowship of Father, Son and Spirit. This builds in a critique fromthe very outset against an ideal of existence as a subject that does nothave its existence in analogy with this God. More to the point, Barthposits that God’s being as a person not only illuminates what being aperson implies for man (a knowing, willing and acting I), but that onlyin the love of the God for man does man become a person.17

17 KD II/1, 319; ET, 285–286.

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7.4. Freedom

The second central term with which the doctrine of God is unfoldedis freedom. Barth brings precisely this term, which was of such para-mount importance as a beckoning ideal and driving force for modernhumanity, into his theology in order to incorporate a number of char-acteristics that classic theology subsumes under God’s incommunicablequalities. Dealing with the term freedom after that of love is quite delib-erate. Freedom qualifies God’s love.18

For Barth, freedom is not primarily to be defined negatively. Itis crystal clear how critical Barth’s attitude on this point is towardmetaphysical doctrines of God, where God’s majesty or exaltation isarticulated primarily in negative terms. In Barth’s eyes terms such asaseitas and independentia have a good sense in so far as they indicatethat God is not defined by others. But precisely in their negativitythese terms are too weak, and are incapable of expressing that whichmust be expressed. Freedom is a positive concept that refers to thedepth dimension of God’s acting and being. It expresses that what Goddoes happens out of Himself, has its ground in Him. He is Himselfin his act, and his act arises from the depths of his own being. Inthis context Barth refers very concretely to the self-evidence of God’sexistence. In his revelation God himself provides the evidence of hisexistence, so that theology can only study this after the fact. Everytime man stands before the reality of God, he perceives the freedomwith which God demonstrates his own existence within the realitywhich is distinguished from Him.19 Freedom means that God is theone who has his origin within himself, each time beginning againfrom that same depth and source. What the tradition expressed in theconcepts of sovereignty, exaltation, aseitas, for Barth will be discussedunder the heading of ‘freedom’.20 Freedom therefore primarily meanssomething positive; it is a qualification of God’s love. The positivethrust of the concept of freedom in the sense of a free choice todo something has great consequences, and argues against the ideaof independence, independentia. ‘God must not only be unconditionedbut, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can

18 KD II/1, 334–335; ET, 296–297.19 KD II/1, 342; ET, 304.20 KD II/1, 340; ET, 302.


and will also be conditioned.’21 In other words, God’s freedom andsovereignty do not prevent him entering into a relationship in hisrevelation, seeking a form and binding himself to it. His revelation inChrist is a form of self-definition, covenant, a ‘commitment’, which Hewill not abandon.

This linkage of freedom and love in turn has major consequences forthinking about God’s necessity. It is customary in classic metaphysicsto think of God as the highest being in terms of negation. But accord-ing to Barth’s critique, by speaking of God as the infinite, absolute orunconditioned we are still speaking of God in terms of our own limita-tion. When man wishes to transcend himself, God can only be spokenabout as a purified human limitation, from an anthropocentric per-spective.22 According to Barth, when this is done it does not take intoaccount God’s own revelation as a reality which places itself oppositeman in freedom, which is to say, in a contingency of its own. He there-fore attempts to interpret God’s freedom as a further qualification ofthat which God does in his act, namely the creation of fellowship. Hemust close off the possibility of God’s freedom being discussed solelyand only as a term reflecting human boundaries. It must be clear intheology that human existence understands itself to be secondary andmade possible by something outside itself. To this end Barth makes adistinction between primary and secondary absoluteness and freedom.In his own being and act God exists in primary freedom and absolute-ness. Therefore in God absoluteness and freedom coincide as qualifiersof God’s own Wirklichkeit. The way in which God exists in his ownbeing and act is the actuality, or better, the Wirklichkeit which theologycan not get behind or reduce to human categories. Only when that issaid can one then speak of freedom or absoluteness in relation to thereality created by God.23 The predicate ens necessarium therefore cannotbe applied to God. The decisive objection against the concept of neces-sity is that in this concept God’s being is associated with need, with theinevitable, while that precisely ignores the sovereign freedom in whichGod is who He is. The word faktisch, actual, is essential for Barth. Mencannot see behind the actuality of God. Our thinking with regard toGod is a posteriori. When God confirms his own being in his act, itis not because there is a necessity that God confirms his own being or

21 KD II/1, 341; ET, 303.22 KD II/1, 342; ET, 303–304.23 KD II/1, 347; ET, 308.

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that God bring forth his own being out of the void, but it is simply theactual conformation of his being.24

That God begins from himself each time in his act does not saythat God must separate his own being from non-being and needsa foundation, or that God must realise his own existence. Such anaffirmation does indeed say that He, because He is who He is, is hisown foundation, causa sui, and with his foundation is also the separationfrom what He is not. Formulated in other terms, the being of God isexalted above the alternative that originates from human experienceof man’s own fragility, namely of not-being or being necessary. Withrespect to God, man can only takes as his point of departure theactuality of God, the ‘empirical decision’ in which God is who He is.25

The location of God’s being as beyond the opposition between thenecessary and not-necessary has great consequences for consideringrelationships and affections with regard to God. Traditional doctrinesof God have great difficulty ascribing real relationships to God, becauserelationships express situations of dependence. For that reason too theattribution of affections to God was problematic in the first panel.By placing God’s own being beyond this opposition, in this panelthe existence of affections in God is something which is no longerreally unthinkable. It is no longer a pudendum. On the contrary, love,sorrow, being moved, pity and suffering are not illegitimate mannersof speaking about God. They have their possibility and reality in Godhimself.

We can draw still another conclusion. We men can not reach Godthrough our concepts, by our thought. The starting point for theology,for human knowledge of God, is the actual: God, who in His revelationis who He is. Barth thinks from eternity to time, never the otherway around, not even in his doctrine of election. What then is theappropriate way to knowledge, which fits with this actuality? It is notwithout reason that in this context Barth refers to prayer, to the hearingof the Word of God, and speaking in Pauline terms, to the strugglebetween flesh and spirit. Only there can the real contest be won. Onthe human side, the primacy of hearing the Word, obedience andprayer as an answer by man to this Word fit with this facticity. Thereality of knowing God thus plays itself out on a field that dogmadesignates as the reality of the Word is that is spoken and heard.

24 KD II/1, 344; ET, 306.25 KD II/1, 345; ET, 307.


7.5. Multiplicity and unity

The next major consideration to which Barth turns for the whole ofthe doctrine of God is the unity of God’s perfections with his being.The peculiarity of this approach is that the antithesis between diversityand unity, which in the tradition led to an assumption of God’s unityat the expense of diversity, does not hold true for God. God exists inthe multiplicity and wealth of his perfections. Barth explicitly recallsthe difference 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 encountersGod’s 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 tohold fast to the idea that the perfections of God in their multiplicity,individuality and diversity from each other not only exist because ofGod’s relation to the world, but in his own being as the God who lovesin freedom.

This means that in thinking about God’s qualities, multiplicity andunity must be held together. It is precisely in a coherent unity that themultiplicity comes to its full expression. This coherence is however nostatic unity; it is a concrete unity through the act of God. In God’sdealings with man, man encounters a unity of act, with ultimately theone person who in all his acts is himself. Put in other words, there is nodifference between the questions of who God is and how He is.

7.6. Revelation as self-revelation?

According to Barth, revelation is self-revelation. We here encounter thecentral substantive core of his doctrine of God: knowledge of Godis nothing more or less than knowing God Himself. Negatively thismeans that it is not primarily insights, statements, articles of faithand promises and commandments that are given to us in revelation.At its deepest, the content of revelation must be expressed in thesingular. Not that Barth leaves behind the multiplicity of conceptsas components of that which is given in knowledge of God, but theone common denominator of all revelation is self-revelation. Promisesand commandments are derived, further specifications of God’s self-revelation. In his revelation God makes known what is within Him,

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what constitutes his self,26 namely his love, his will to fellowship withman. Self-revelation is therefore much more than an expression ofinsights or truths; it is sharing in fellowship with God himself andthereby sharing with the salvific, good God, above whom no other goodexists. For this reason the content of revelation can not be characterisedin the plural, but in the singular. Knowing God is fellowship with himas a person.

That is undeniably a shift, we must acknowledge, in comparison withCalvin’s substantive definition 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 fromthe plural, it is however also possibly a reduction, which runs the riskof impoverishment. This judgement of the shift deserves further discus-sion.

The reduction in this second panel becomes obvious if we turn backto the first for a moment. In Calvin’s definition of faith the content ofknowledge of God was at its deepest defined by knowledge of God’sgracious gifts to man, as bestowed in Christ. That implies plurality.The believer comes to realise the state of affairs in the visible and—to amodest degree—in the unseen world, knowledge of God’s care, of goodand evil, of promises, commandments, of security with God in this lifeand the life to come. Calvin’s concept of faith is not, however, absorbedinto this plurality. Faith is more pointed, focused on God’s will to salva-tion. In simple terms, communication goes together with informationand these two can not be separated from one another. What God doesin the cosmos, in human history, in dictates of conscience and com-mandment, in the Bible, in Christ, in the sacraments, clearly has to dowith the triune God who desires to enter into fellowship with strayedman, to draw him to Himself as an adoptive child—but this is in itselfnot be to be characterised as self-revelation. Calvin’s definition of faithtakes more account of a multiplicity of ways God speaks.

With Calvin facts that point to God in a wider sense also belong toknowledge of God, thereby forming ways through which God comes toman, and alongside these, in a closer circle, commandments, precepts,promises and threats. These are ideas and distinctions which disappear

26 KD II/1, 308–309; ET, 274.


from the modern panel. Barth’s characterisation of revelation as self-revelation reflects a typically modern development in which revelationas revelation of truths was increasingly experienced as problematic, andrevelation slowly came to be reduced to self-revelation. With Barth,human knowledge of God arises through personal communication. Theinformative aspect of revelation has been shoved to a lower shelf. It isstill there, but as something implicit in the communication.

Theologically and historically, the further definition of revelation asself-revelation, thus that God himself is the content of the revelation,runs through Hegel. Barth was conscious of the importance of thespeculative, idealist tradition for his own theology, and experienced thedirection that theologians such as Ph. Marheineke and I.A. Dornertook as they followed Hegel’s lead as compelling and productive inmay respects. Parallels can be found particularly in Barth’s doctrineof the Trinity. In his description of the history of Protestant theology inthe 19th century he has therefore written in remarkably positive termsof Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel’s thought is characterised by Barth asa philosophy of confidence.27 One might suggest that Barth brought

27 K. Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (19603=) Hamburg 1975, 318–350, esp. 325, 330; ET, 384–421, 391, 397. In their thinking, in their perception of theworld, in forming a notion of the world and the multifarious stream of phenomenain it, men do not stand outside the mystery of reality, but are themselves a part ofthe process of the Absolute or the Spirit. Between the human mind and God thereexists an ultimate identity, so that self-confidence and confidence in God coincide attheir deepest. Hegel sought to reconcile Christianity and culture in his own manner. InHegel’s system, and in the sense of life that bore the stamp of Romanticism, the chasmthat prevailed in Kant between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between the worldof 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 oneagain. Hegel would not accept the unhappy awareness which reason reached afterKant. Kant’s fundamental realisation was that human knowledge is still isolated in allof its constructions of this reality, having no knowledge of the Ding an sich. Althoughman is part of a higher order of life, that of practical reason, in a certain sense hemoves around lost in a world which is strange and unknown to him. Hegel thinks froma different view of life, not that of dualism, but of one all-inclusive whole. History isa holistic process, where contradictions are overcome precisely by historical diversity.In terms borrowed from the hinge section on Kant, in Hegel’s philosophy the turn tothe subject becomes even more profound. Thinking of historic reason is identified withthe way of the divine Spirit itself. According to Barth, in Hegel culture was liberatedonce and for all from the power of the church. Barth felt that in his philosophy Hegelhad been better able to defend and actualise the general truth that is locked up withinChristian doctrine than was possible for Christian dogmatics. Thus, in his eyes, Hegelwas the philosopher who avowed openly that knowledge which really matters and isuniversally valid, divine truth, is identical with the human self.

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this attitude of confidence over into the field of theology. The Wordwhich resounds in the Bible and is heard in faith is the Word of Godhimself. In the Word, in revelation, God makes himself known. Thatis to say, the ridgepole of theological thought is the confidence thatin the Word men are encountering God himself as the subject andcontent.

As has been said, in terms of intellectual history the thesis of the self-revelation of God is unthinkable without the background of modernsubject thinking. In modernity the notion of the subject, in connectionwith the concept of the person, has assumed primacy, a position thatuntil then had been occupied by the concept of substance. The subjectis the creating principle that realises itself in its acting and shapes aculture. At the end of a long development, the concept of substanceis slowly dissolved in and superseded by the concept of the subjectas a fundamental notion.28 Barth’s theology in the second panel is anexample of this development.

The increasing emphasis on the individual as a unique person isillustrated in the relation between the artist and his artwork. In me-dieval art the artist was in the background. He or she is hidden behindthe artwork, or is wholly unknown. Since the Renaissance the accenthas no longer been exclusively on the work of art, on the product, butmore and more on the maker, the craftsman or artist in the foreground.Within some branches of handicraft the craftsman or woman has beenrenamed an ‘artist’. Art has freed itself from ordinary life. Notions suchas authenticity, originality and genius are typically Romantic conceptswhich, via idealism, have lodged themselves in the centre of modernviews of life. The artist is no longer anonymous, behind his or her work,

28 W. Pannenberg, ‘Person und Subjekt’, in: idem, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie.Gesammelte Aufsätze Bd. 2, Göttingen 1980, 80–95. The definition of person, as it is foundin Boethius, still testifies to the prevalence of the concept of substance. A person is an‘individual substance’ (persona rationalis naturae individua substantia). Under the influence ofthe Trinitarian and Christological debates the term hupostasis, person, gradually comesto be used more independently as a concept for which relationality is constitutive. WithRichard of St. Victor this relationality and autonomy are confirmed in the definition ofthe divine persons: the persons possess an incommunicabilis existentia through their relationto one another. With that, according to Pannenberg, the step is taken that is analysedby Hegel, but that he essentially does not go beyond. The relation to the other isconstitutive for the person. However, with Hegel the concept of substance is includedin, and, with that, replaced by the concept of the subject. The primary function thatwas accorded to substance in the Aristotelian doctrine of categories is now taken overby the concept of the subject.


but signs the work, and defends his or her authorship as a personalexpression. The work is something from his or her self. Rather than abeautiful specimen of skill, it has become art. The artwork is part ofthe way of the subject, and is therefore his or her unalienable mentalproperty.

Earlier in this section the critique was already raised that the conceptof self-revelation runs the risk of resulting is a certain impoverishment.It was first substantiated by noting that in comparison to the conceptof revelation in Calvin there is historically a reduction. It is howeveralso necessary to indicate the risk entailed by an unthinking use of theconcept of self-revelation in the current system. The point is not todispute the proposition that in its focus and intention revelation hasto do with God and with his intention to bring us into his salvificpresence, but to note that the modern identification of revelation withself-revelation reduces the perspective on the ways in which God in factmoves in his turn toward man. Already in the Bible we see that not allthe speaking, commands and acts of God can immediately be labelledas self-revelation. The person of the Revelator is not in the foregroundin all forms of His speaking and acting. When in the Bible there isthe gift of the Law, when Israel gains experience with judgement andGod’s absence, when harvests and seasons are received as a grace,when prophets bring their message to man in the name of God, menencounter the acts of God in diverse forms. But not all these thingsare immediately understandable as revelations that give us knowledgeof God himself. In the course of coming to know God and the historyof God’s dealings with man, for a long time human knowledge is infact focused on knowledge of God’s will, his commands. The contentof God’s speaking is not primarily God himself, but rather how man isto act. These forms of God’s speaking are indeed connected with whoGod is, but that connection frequently remains in the background. Onecan rightly speak of self-revelation only when this connection betweenthe variety of God’s speaking and God in Himself is thematised. Therevelation of the Name of God in Exodus 3, the numerous ‘I am’pronouncements and other statements in the Gospel of John29 andin his epistles that concern the identity of Jesus Christ, where theconnection and identification is made explicit, can rightly be termedself-revelation. It is not without reason that it is precisely in the latter

29 Jn. 1:14; 4:26; 6:35; 10:11; 15:5.

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text that we are expressly reminded that the eschatological completionof our knowledge of God is still to be awaited (IJohn 3:2).

If we should stop here in our excursus regarding the concept ofself-revelation, we would however miss the essential function of thenotion. The concept of self-revelation has a—even the—key role in theanti-agnostic project of Barth’s theology. We have already noted thatBarth characterised Hegel’s philosophy as a philosophy of confidence.This adjective can be applied to Barth’s own theological concept. Thatis particularly true for his doctrine of God, when he deals with thetheological assessment of the qualities of God, or as Barth deliberatelyputs it, the perfections of God. The term ‘perfection’ points in thedirection that is taken in this doctrine. The classic terms (proprietates,attributa, virtutes) easily create the misunderstanding that one is dealingwith qualities that if necessary can be done without. Of even more forceis the objection against the term appellatio, or naming. By opting for theconcept of perfection Barth opposes what we might term the nominalisttendency in doctrines of God: the wealth of God’s qualities disappearsif what is basically an illegitimate manner of speaking of God is used,one which does not guard the unity of God as that which can ultimatelybe said of Him.30 Echoing behind the concept of perfections is theassertion that the diversity of qualities that we encounter in Scriptureand tradition has another foundation in addition to our perception. Itis not just a matter of human perception which may not correspond tosomething in God himself. Barth puts paid to a long tradition that hesees running from Eunomius to Ockham and Eckhart. The statementof the last may be held representative of this whole tradition: ‘It is notpossible there be any distinctions in God himself, nor can we conceivethem’.31 In the words of Thomas Aquinas, the diversity with whichGod appears to man has its ground in acceptatione intellectus nostri.32 Barthlikewise detects this view in Calvin. It is revealing that in this contexta pair of 19th century German theologians are introduced as positiveexceptions, namely H.R. Francke and J.A. Dorner.33 Barth will, likethem, consider the virtues or attributes of God as characteristics whichreally exist in God himself. Faith can hold together what for humanunderstanding perhaps seems a contradiction, namely God’s unity and

30 KD II/1, 368–372; ET, 327–330.31 Cited in KD II/1, 368; ET, 327.32 KD II/1, 369; ET, 328.33 KD II/1, 371; ET, 330.


the multiplicity of terms in which God’s greatness is expressed. In otherwords, the qualities are immanent, have a fundamentum in re, and are notonly distinctions that merely have their being in God’s outward acting,in his approach to man. Thus we once again encounter the motifwhich we earlier identified. In revelation we encounter God himself,not as he is toward us, as Calvin put it, but as He is in himself. It isa decisive motif in Barth. When God does something in his works, inhis revelation, he can do that because it has a ground in Him as Heis. There is not something or someone different behind the revelation.God does not have two faces, one for the outside world and one forhimself. God is no Janus-faced despot. Calvin’s addition quoad nos isa limitation, which in Barth’s eyes forms a straightforward threat tothe reality and trustworthiness of revelation. At the same point Barth’stheology is a theology of confidence, that revelation is revelation ofGod’s essence, of how He himself is. In our knowledge of God weencounter Him as He ‘actually and unreservedly’ is.34 If man is to beable to trust God, God must enter his revelations without reservation.He must be there entirely, or not at all. Barth works this out in hisdoctrine of the qualities of God.

7.7. Two series

In accordance with the definition of God as ‘The One Who Lovesin Freedom’, in this panel the two terms love and freedom form thetwo poles around which the whole of God’s acts can be considered.In sections 30 and 31 of KD the qualities of God—or in the termBarth uses, the perfections—of God are discussed as the perfectionsof his love and the perfections of his freedom. This creates two series ofqualities, which traditionally have been conceived as opposites, namelyas communicable and non-communicable qualities. The first series thatBarth chooses consist of grace, mercy, patience, holiness, righteousnessand wisdom—all communicable qualities, according to classical views.That is to say, man can also share in them, albeit to a lesser degree.Barth’s creative intervention is that he subdivides these six accordingto the previously mentioned division, namely love and freedom. Thefirst three he qualifies as terms of God’s love, the second three asterms of God’s freedom. He discusses them in their mutual connections

34 KD II/1, 365; ET, 325.

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in section 30 as the perfections of God’s love. In the second serieshe discusses qualities which have traditionally been regarded as non-communicable: unity, constancy, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotenceand glory. Here too Barth applies his own principle for subdivision.The first three (unity, constancy and eternity) are qualities of God’sfreedom. Omnipresence, omnipotence and glory are connected to theseas qualifications of God’s love.

What does Barth achieve with this rearrangement? First, in none ofthe qualities do we encounter a side of God which is turned away fromus and unknowable for us. The qualities of his love are further qualifiedand the qualities of his freedom are qualities of a God who loves in hisfreedom. These two series delineate the whole field of God’s being andacting, as it were. Precisely in their mutual involvement with each other,each pair of terms gives a view of the whole of God’s being and act, eachtime however from a different perspective. It is like making a circuitaround a mountain, which remains constantly in one’s field of vision,but always from a different vantage point. The circling movement isnecessary to enable us in our thinking and speaking to do justice to—or, as Barth puts it, to follow—the dynamism and motion in whichGod is and acts as God. The asymmetry between our speaking andGod’s act is expressed precisely in the verb ‘to follow’. Human thinkingis following at a distance. The element of non-identity is maintained.Second, in this way it is made clear that in his outward works andrevelation God is nothing other than in his being. Our time, our space,our history has its ground and possibilities in God.

The choice of these two groups and the decision to place their ele-ments in this particular order is very deliberate and reflects a criticalapproach of the orthodox Protestant heritage. In Lutheran orthodoxythere is a sharp distinction between attributa absoluta on the one sideand attributa respectiva or operativa on the other. In the Reformed traditionthe terms differ, the non-communicable qualities over against the com-municable qualities, attributa incommunicabilia. In these old divisions theabsolute, immanent, foundational or non-communicable qualities hadprimacy. They were in fact considered as the qualities that describedthe side of God that is hidden from us, and in Protestant orthodoxywere accounted the actual qualities. They are the terms ‘from above’.A deep reluctance and ultimate refusal to make the qualities of God toomuch a subject of reflection was typical of the first panel. In terms ofchiaroscuro effects in the first panel, the qualities of God lie in the shad-ows, and the light falls on mankind, and the things of this earth. In the


second panel one can conceive knowledge of God as a ray of light thatpenetrates from above to below through the one centre, Jesus Christ,so that one can follow the light in two directions, namely upwards anddownwards. For Barth too knowledge of God is bipolar. Who God isbecomes knowable through God’s self-revelation, and it also becomesclear who we are and what this world is. The question of how God isimmanent is no longer a matter of satisfying curiosity, of our curiositas.It has an eminently practical significance. If one cannot take as one’sstarting point that God in his own inner life is the same as He permitshimself to be known in the history of Jesus Christ, then we are gropingaround in the dark. The light runs from above to below through thecentre; clear colours predominating on both sides.

In the following two sections (7.8 and 7.9) I provide a survey—albeitvery summary—of several elements of Barth’s doctrine of the perfec-tions of God. What is offered is neither comprehensive nor simple. Itis an exercise in which several points of Barth’s reinterpretation of thedoctrine of God are taken up. In this manner some insight is given intothe development that led to the rearrangement of the qualities in KDII/1. These sections are not of the greatest importance in the whole ofthis study; they are a interlude which can perhaps be skipped by thereader who wishes to move directly ahead to what can be consideredthe heart of Barth’s doctrine of God, namely his doctrine of election(7.10—7.15).

7.8. The perfections of God’s love

7.8.1. Grace and holiness

The first two qualities dealt with are grace and holiness. Grace obtainsas the first perfection of God’s love, and is further specified by the per-fection in which the high freedom of His love shows through, namelyholiness. Grace is the fellowship seeking and creative act of God. Barthemphatically distinguishes this from the Roman Catholic doctrine ofgrace, because this has the inclination to consider grace as a tertiumbetween God and his creation. No, in revelation, in God’s movementtoward man, He makes himself the gift.35 With the concept of grace,

35 KD II/1, 397; ET, 353–354.

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however, the fundamental point of departure in the construction ofBarth’s doctrine of God, the rootage of God’s works in his being, imme-diately leads to a problem. How can it be said that grace is rooted inGod himself, if there is no opposition or conflict in God himself ? Isthere in God himself then a movement that is analogous to the gracethat sinful creation experiences? Barth’s argument here takes the formof a postulate. If God’s grace toward us is revealed and operative inour midst as divine being and act, Barth proposes, it can not be deniedthat ‘it is real in God Himself in a form which is concealed from usand incomprehensible to us’, namely as ‘the pure love and grace whichbinds the Father with the Son and the Son with the Father by the HolySpirit’.36 One can understand this to mean that God’s own being can-not be comprehended in neutral terms. God’s own Trinitarian life issalvific reality par excellence. Later, in KD II/2, in the doctrine of elec-tion, Barth will further specify this rootage of God’s gracious act as theoriginal form of self-definition.

The term grace is linked with the term holiness. The content ofthis term is not defined phenomenologically, but theologically as aperfection of God’s loving. It indicates that God, in his turn towardman, himself remains the Lord and presses ahead despite all resistance.Holiness is another designation for the high freedom that we find inGod as he perseveres in his will to salvation.37 It is in this contextthat the idea of judgement is also taken up. When God in his holinesspresses ahead in his grace, there arises a disjunction between God andman, a conflict between God and his creature. Faith recognises thisdisjunction and bows to it. In other words, the idea of judgement is onlyto be approached and examined from faith. Only from the internalperspective of knowing God does it become visible that God’s holiness,and thus also his judgement, at its deepest concerns the preservationof man. Barth is sharply critical of Ritschl, because the latter wouldturn the contingent event of God’s grace into a notion. If grace were tobecome a notion that could be developed further deductively, there isno room for something like judgement. Indeed, Barth says, if looked atfrom a definition of the concept of judgement that is separated from theact of God, the notion of judgement becomes unbearable.38 By howevertaking God’s act as the starting point, that act can be recounted as

36 KD II/1, 402; ET, 357–558.37 KD II/1, 404; ET, 360.38 KD II/1, 411; ET, 366.


a history that runs through a movement. In that act one perfectiondoes not stand next to another, nor is one set off against another to itsdisadvantage, but the vitality of God becomes visible in it.

7.8.2. Mercy and righteousness

Grace, as the will to fellowship, necessarily takes the form of mercy. Weare literally dealing here with a forced intervention. The creature findshimself in distress and God’s will to fellowship with this creature movesHim to pity. An essential characteristic of God is also addressed in thismovement. God has a heart and is touched, affected by the distress ofman. What was previously said in regard to God’s primary and sec-ondary absoluteness is important in this context. Can God be affected,touched, by the distress of man? Does God have feelings emotions?In this second panel this question is answered with a resounding yes. Inthe first panel offered hardly any possibility for thinking of the existenceof emotions in God. This would make Him into a dependent, vulnera-ble being and rob Him of his divine freedom. If there is one being whodoes not get upset, it is God: that is how we understand the tradition.For the rest, Barth’s critique of the image of God that begins from gen-eral notions does not limit itself to pre-modern theology. Schleierma-cher’s understanding for the reluctance of tradition to ascribe emotionsto God is met with the ironic remark that indeed God as the ‘source ofthe feeling of sheer dependence’ has no heart.39 Beyond this, however,Barth acknowledges the point that tradition wished to preserve: God’semotions are not a sign of weakness.

The foregoing also means that in this second panel an attempt ismade to take anthropomorphism seriously theologically, in a mannerentirely different from the tradition did. Barth’s basing anthropomor-phism in the being of God has gained wide following in theology. Onceagain there is critique addressed to Schleiermacher, who still regardedit as impossible to think of God as one who could be moved by thesuffering of another. In contrast, it is now proposed that God has aheart and can be touched or moved. For Barth however it obtains thatthis being touched by an outside force does not have priority. Sensibil-ity is peculiar to God. The distinction between primary and secondaryabsoluteness becomes productive with regard to anthropomorphisms.

39 KD II/1, 416; ET, 370.

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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 first point. To that itmust be added, that this being touched and moved does not take placein powerlessness; it is a matter of strength. According to Barth, that iswhere the difference with man lies. A man can be so affected that hesinks under the experience. Being too sensitive involves risks, which aremet by the human mind by defensive responses and isolation. Amonghuman beings, being excessively sensitive can lead to the destructionof the self. Is that not the case for God? In this respect there must bea distinction between God and man. God possesses the capacity forsympathy, sympathy in the highest sense of syn-pathos or ‘suffering with’.He can therefore expose himself without risk. For him it is a matter ofcapacity.

The preceding can be understood as an attempt to put paid to theimage of God as the Great Outsider. That is the practical intent of theproposition that revelation is self-revelation and the ecumenical Trin-ity has its basis in the immanent Trinity. These theologoumena arethe theological means for conceiving God’s real involvement. In short,we find here in the doctrine of revelation the building blocks for thetheopaschitic position. God does not remain detached from suffering,but is involved in it in an original manner—and can, through the lifeand death of the Son, become involved in a new manner in that whichwould otherwise be foreign to Him. Before we have called down wrathupon ourselves, we have already encountered God, who permits him-self to be touched by human resistance.41 In practical terms that meansthat the summons arises from this theology to stop regarding the suf-fering that men bear as divine, eternal or inescapable. Because humansuffering becomes involved with the inner life of God himself, at theconceptual level Barth accomplishes a relativisation of the absolute-ness and immutable blackness of all human darkness. Before man tastesand experiences this darkness—including the darkness they themselvescause—God, in his heart, has already been touched by their plight.42

40 KD II/1, 416; ET, 370: ‘The affection of God is different from all creaturelyaffections in that it originates in Himself ’.

41 KD II/1, 420; ET, 374.42 KD II/1, 420; ET, 374: ‘In the recognition and confession of the mercy of God,

what we are accustomed to take so serously as the tragedy of human existence isdissolved. There is something far more serious and tragic, viz., the fact that ourdistress—the anguish of our sin and guilt is freely accepted by God, and that in Him,


Can one label this ‘idealism’? Are we dealing with a position that doesnot take evil and suffering seriously enough, theologically? Or shouldwe esteem this position as a genuine Christian protest against our con-temporary culture, which permits itself to be crushed under its ownexperience of suffering?

It is also worth noting the development of the term righteousnessand the polemic Barth repeatedly entered into with Ritschl. God’srighteousness is defined as a further qualification of God’s love. Hisrighteousness is the perfection with which He accomplishes his searchfor fellowship with man in a way that is worthy of Himself. Godretains his dignity in his love.43 The impression from the first panel isthat God’s righteousness remains rather separate from his mercy. Theconnection between the two qualities is not visible there. The notionof judgement, punishment and wrath thereby becomes autonomous,creating a certain doubleness in the image of God. Barth has tried tounderstand God’s righteousness and judgement in light of His mercy.As a consequence of this, however, the notions of wrath, judgement andacquittal do not disappear as terms which no longer really have a placein a humane theology, and of which any humanely conceived theologyshould be ashamed. For Barth Ritschl’s theology is the paradigm ofsuch a theology, tailored to human measure.44

For the rest it is however fascinating to see in how many respectsBarth is connected with Ritschl. Both are undeniably heirs of theEnlightenment in a religiously defined ethos. Both proceed from theunity of mankind and could not accept there being an ultimate twofolddivision of humanity. The Enlightenment has a universalistic perspec-tive in the search for the humanum, for meaning and the potentiality oflife for all without distinctions of race or class. It accepts the equal-ity of all men as its basic principle. This realisation of unity, whichin Calvin’s theology and culture still obtained for only certain areas,namely within the sphere of creation, the law and civil authority, whereall fall under the same regimen of God the Creator and sustainer, inpost-Kantian theology expands to become dominant in the doctrinesof salvation and God as well. The doubleness that is an intrinsic com-ponent of Calvin’s theology, namely that by decisions in God’s Counselmen are consigned to one of two groups, to wit the elect or repro-

and only in Him, it becomes real agony.’43 KD II/1, 423; ET, 376.44 KD II/1, 429; ET, 382.

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bate, and that, corresponding to this, two sorts of outcomes are possiblefor human existence, namely being definitively taken in or definitivelycast away, contrasts sharply with the most fundamental realisation thatmodernity has made its own. All men are one before God, including inthe intention for their salvation. The same unity that governs the realmof creation, also governs the order of salvation. Perhaps we must saythat the Enlightenment, with its vision of lasting peace and prosperityfor all, was the catalyst for the universal perspective on salvation thatpermeates the theology of the second panel. Both Ritschl and Barthare in their every atom a part of an intellectual culture that no longerhas any inner capacity to think in terms of a double outcome for his-tory. Even those forms of contemporary orthodox Protestant theologywhere 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 thatsalvation for all is the one aim and purpose of God.45

There is however a profound difference in the way in which Ritschland Barth approach a solution to this problem. While Ritschl dropsthe idea of a wrathful judgement and sentence or permits it to evapo-rate in the light of God’s mercy and reconciliation, Barth attempts tohold the two together by plotting out the way in which God’s mercydevelops toward its goal. In his discussion of the crucifixion of ChristBarth can even say, ‘The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is thatthere God’s condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, reallysmiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel.’46 Therighteousness of God can indeed properly be considered as a iustitia dis-tributiva. Man is there confronted with God’s verdict. He has forfeitedhis life, stands in that judgement stripped bare before God, all his fail-ings revealed.47 God’s mercy is not something alongside and apart fromhis 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 thatcan 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 eternalPunishment, Grand Rapids 1998. Cf. also the remarkable debate between D. Edwardsand J. Stott in: D.L. Edwards/J. Stott, Essentials. A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue, London1988, 312–319.

46 KD II/1, 446; ET, 396.47 KD II/1, 434; ET, 386.48 KD II/1, 441; ET, 392–393.


God’s mercy is recognised. The notion of judgement thus is not foundon the periphery, but points to the depth of God’s mercy. According tothis concept, the unity of this act of judgement, wrath and mercy mustbe read from Him in whom God’s mercy became visible, from ChristJesus. In short, God’s righteousness can not be understood as an idea.It must be derived from the history of Good Friday. That is what it costGod to be righteous, without destroying us. Only through substitutionwithout exception can man be saved.

Barth reaches the perspective of universal salvation not throughrelativising the element of God’s wrath against human rebellion, butby having it fall in its totality on God himself. The figure of theenhypostasis functions practically as a key to illuminating two sides ofthe cross event. The humanity of Jesus has its existence in the personof the eternal Son. Our contrast with him is apparently so great sogreat that He enters into this opposition and must endure what is tobe suffered in it. This means that on the cross the Son of God, andin Him God himself, bears the judgement. Barth literally speaks of itas ‘this sternness of God against Himself ’ (English, p. 397). But it isalso true that God can in Christ subject Himself to this sternness andconflict precisely because He is God. The conflict is localised there, theonly place where it can be localised productively and with hope.49 Theconflict that plays itself out on the cross can be read as a conflict in Godhimself, without there being a split or division in God.

The place given to the issues of theodicy in this concept shouldhardly be surprising any more. The question of Job, the question ofthe why of evil and suffering, does have a place, but it is a place thatis bounded on all sides by the foregoing. That people and nationsencounter God’s judgement does not have to be denied. There is ahidden connection between the judgement on Golgotha and what indi-viduals, nations and the church suffer. But this suffering may no longerbe seen as absolute, of itself. The cross of Christ offers a possibility

49 KD II/1, 449; ET, 399: ‘It consists in an alienation from God, a rebellion againstHim, which ought to be punished in a way, which involves our total destruction, andwhich apart from our annihilation can be punished only by God Himself taking ourplace, and in His Son taking to Himself and bearing and suffering the punishment.That is what is costs God to be righteous without annihilating us. The opposition toHim in which we find ourselves is so great that it can be overcome and renderedharmless to ourselves only by God and indeed only by His entering Himself into thisopposition and bearing all the pain of it.’ And KD II/1, 450; ET, 400: ‘Because He wasGod Himself, He could subject Himself to the severity of God. And because He wasGod Himself He did not have to succumb to the severity of God.’

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to refigure all the other forms of judgement, namely as an announce-ment or as an aftershock of that one judgement. Around Golgotha allforms of suffering are still signs, foreshadowings or afterpains of thatone judgement.50 In a Christian perspective, the history of the cross isthe reason to reread one’s own history and world history.

Again the question presents itself: is this not an idealisation, anattempt at amelioration, resulting in a distortion of what we experi-ence in daily life? Has not grace here become a principle which is castover all experiences of misery like a fire blanket tossed over a blazeto smother it?51 The fear that for Barth grace has become a principlethrough which concrete history in fact evaporates and is stripped ofits decisive character, has followed this theology like a shadow. West-ern European, continental theology in the last decades has gone otherdirections and has, unlike Barth, taken the absence of God, suffering,Auschwitz, or temptation as its constant reference point. Barth leavesmany with the impression that for him the experiences of emptiness,terror and temptation immediately lose their power once one is takenup into the movement of faith, of knowing God. His theology wouldthen lead to a sort of pastoral naivety, because it leaves no room forthe experience of suffering and temptation. Is this conclusion correct?One is at least bound to say that this does not have to be the conse-quence of the configuration in the second panel. Barth, in his answerto Berkouwer, resisted the suggestion vehemently. According to him, asman one can only think of these things if one thinks from the historyof Jesus Christ.52 The disposition of facts that we encounter in Barthis a variation on the theme that the apostle Paul expounds in Romans8:32–35: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? If, according tothe proclamation of the Church, since the history of Christ the powershave lost their autonomy before God, then that is a judgement whichcan be applied in one of two ways. On the one hand, it can be takenas being an objective, established fact, which denies the reality of theexperience, and indeed the existence, of suffering. But there is anotherdirection possible, namely to regard this configuration as a matter ofproclamation, a promise, which precisely as promissio does not pretendto be a description of the present, generally observable condition. It can

50 KD II/1, 456; ET, 405–406.51 G.C. Berkouwer, De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth, Kampen 1954, ET,

The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids 1956.52 KD IV/3, 198–206; ET, 173–180.


be a statement that has its existence and justification exclusively in themovement of faith, within the circle of what is reserved for us in Christ,and responded to in prayer and obedience.

One more thing must be added for the interpretation of this theol-ogy: one should here take Barth strictly on his theological intention andnot read him as psychology or pastoral psychology. He is not describ-ing how believers feel, how they should feel, or how to approach thempastorally or in terms of promoting their personal well-being. It is, aswe have said above, necessary to continually distinguish between thevarious fields of dogmatic reflection, psychology, pedagogy and pas-toral care. Dogmatics or doctrine has consequences for pastoral the-ology and pedagogy, but the translation from the former to the latter isanything but a simple one-to-one matter. The question which is posedtheologically is, what can be considered the horizon? If theology con-figures what it has to say in such a way that God at the most can be dis-cussed as the horizon for personal experience and questions, then one’sown experiences are primary, and perhaps one’s own questions andtemptations become understandable and bearable in light of this hori-zon. That is the way that the largest part of theology has proceeded, inkeeping with the turn to the subject. With a rigor bordering on beinguncompromising, Barth has begun on the other side. He takes the lightwhich colours the horizon as his starting point. In reality the historyof Christ is the centre around which the concentric circles of our life-histories spread. In reality it seems that man and his experiences aretaken up within the horizon of God’s work. That is the objectivismwhich is at the heart of this configuration.

7.8.3. Patience and wisdom

The third pair of terms with which the field of God’s operation isexplored are patience and wisdom. Barth here broaches a questionwhich is highly pertinent in light of Albert Schweitzer’s discussion ofthe failure of the imminent expectation of the Second Coming, andparticularly in light of the concrete experience of suffering. Why hasGod allowed history to go on so long? One might suppose that God’smercy would be realised through putting an immediate end to ourhistory. The immediate destruction of all creation and its passing intonon-being might well be a realisation of God’s mercy. According toBarth, the question of the meaning of the continuation of time afterEaster and Ascension has its theological justification in Easter itself. It

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is a theological question, which is answered by—note carefully—theactual continuation of history. Again, the answer is given with referenceto God’s acting in the world. Theological thinking is fundamentally aposteriori, not a priori. God’s patience means that God gives the other,creation, its time and space, grants it an existence next to His ownbeing, and carries out his will with regard to this other so that he doesnot suspend or destroy this other, but accompanies and sustains it, andallows it to develop in freedom.53 The patience of God, his patientia, isthus defined as an extremely active quality. It is a patience that doesnot diminish his majesty; it is indeed a peculiar form of his majesty, ofhis being involved with mankind, that He gives them time and space infreedom. What Barth will later develop more broadly in his doctrinesof creation and reconciliation we find here in outline in his doctrine ofGod.

In this pair of concepts too the distinction between what God is inhimself and what he does in history appears to be of practical impor-tance. It becomes vital in the question of what within God’s own beingcorresponds to judgement being by turns carried through and sus-pended. It is fundamental throughout Barth’s doctrine of God that themotivation to act in God does not arise in response to man and his his-tory. In the encounter between God and his creature God remains theone with power, who in his strength and power sustains man, and evenpermits him to go his way. In this connection Rendtorff has spokenof the autonomy of God, which for Barth is elevated to the dominantprinciple on the theological level.54 One can hardly deny this interpre-tation, although the term autonomy suggests a certain cold dominance.The way in which Barth fills in the concept of patience makes it possi-ble to interpret the word autonomy as an inner divine attachment thatexpresses itself in fidelity to the creation and creature. The idea thatcreation and the creature is never without God is thus fundamental.The decisive element in God’s patience is that God sustains all thingsby his Word of power (cf. Heb. 1:3). Or to put it otherwise: He is notbrought into action by our response, through what is visible on ourside. He sustains all things through his own Word—that is, through hisSon.

53 KD II/1, 461; ET, 410. In fact, Barth has here entered into the subject of thedoctrine of the convergence of all things, which he will discuss in KD III/3, 102–175;ET, 90–154.

54 See note 12.


The patience that God exercises therefore serves not only for man’ssalvation. This might be called a theocentric motif. Barth makes clearthat the progression of time has its ground in God himself. God isthe principle source of the latitude in which time develops, in hispatience moves in ways that are fitting 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 hemeans by that is that God does not will that his acts should run outinto nothingness, that his words be spoken to no effect. The contin-uance is for the satisfaction of God himself. It is not surprising thatBarth should cite Isaiah 55:10–11: the Word which proceeds from God’smouth shall not return to him without result. ‘It shall not return tome fruitless, without accomplishing its purpose’. God gives himself timeand space to do what He wills to do with his creature. For his ownsake God’s word is spoken effectively, and only then, once it is saidthat this is fitting for God, can it also be said that this is done forthe sake of man.55 God’s honour implies the salvation of man. Againstthe background of the beginning of the Second World War Barth inthis way provides a vision of history which is completely theological,and is reminiscent of the theocentric perspective of the first panel.The intention of God, and not the human experience of nonsense,senselessness, power run amok, must be definitive and dominant in allthought.

Within this context of the patience of God Barth also then speaks oftime: God’s yes to himself happens in such a manner that He also saysyes to man. Because we are taken up in the will of God, we are giventime. For the sake of Jesus Christ there is time for the multitude. Thatalso defines the concept of time. Our time is participation in God’stime. The meaning of time is the active patience of God, through whichhe calls us to active participation, to assent. Anyone seeking a meaningfor time outside of this definition of time as time for repentance, assentto God, in fact ignores God’s turn to mankind, and there is nothing elseleft then but to see the patience of God as a cruel game, unworthy ofHim.56

55 KD II/1, 469; ET, 417.56 KD II/1, 469; ET, 417.

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7.9. The perfections of God’s freedom

7.9.1. Unity and omnipresence

In section 31 Barth once again traverses the doctrine of God, now fromthe other perspective, namely that of God’s freedom. As has alreadybeen said, under the heading of freedom he takes up the qualities thatclassic doctrines of God term incommunicable. In fact, these qualitieswere held to be the true essence of God. Barth’s correction implies thathe reinterprets these qualities—or, to remain within his own vocab-ulary, these perfections—as predicates that arise from the contingentrevelation in Jesus Christ. Put differently, he attempts to extract thesequalities from the embrace of a general, philosophical concept of God.

One might also say that Barth’s doctrine of God in this way itselfmakes a contribution to the continuing differentiation and distinctionof theology and philosophy. What can be said of God on the basis ofthe revelation events witnessed to by the Bible goes in a whole differ-ent direction from a general philosophical concept of God.57 As withthe first series of qualities, the perfections of love, here too Barth con-stantly makes a connection between two qualities. The first particularlyemphasises the freedom or the divinity of God’s act, and the secondperfection God’s approach or love.

The first quality of God’s freedom taken up is God’s unity, thesimplicitas Dei. Barth wishes to consider the unity as a qualification thatcan be read from the revelation itself. That means that the unity as aperfection of God is not postulated as a reflection on being as such. It isnot the unity which is divine. Unity is the conclusion of the encounterwhich is brought into being by God.58

In the previous panel it appeared that in the tradition the unity ofGod was directly linked with notions of indivisibility and constancy.Barth’s reinterpretation consists in no longer considering the unity as a

57 Barth in his own way participated in the consciousness that the god of thephilosophers is other than that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To what degree theologyis really able to go its own way in the freedom of the Gospel is a question in itself. Itsays 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 intohis historical context in all sorts of ways. At the same time, his theology is precisely ofparadigmatic value in the second panel because he reminds theology that it has its ownsources for knowing God—albeit that it does not ‘have’ them, but must listen to themeach time anew.

58 KD II, 507; ET, 450.


qualification of the first being,59 but as being linked with God’s love.God’s unity then becomes His trustworthiness, His faithfulness andfidelity.60 The unity of God therefore does not mean that God is aunique or single. His unity reveals itself precisely in the history of JesusChrist. In this event, not only caused by God but also identical with hisbeing and act, He reveals himself and He becomes known as the One.Unity thus is not in conflict with Trinity, but the confession of the unityof God is a description of the concrete unity of God in this history. TheNew Testament can speak of the one God in the same breath with faithin 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 God’s freedom because by virtue of thisperfection He can be close to his creation. Barth develops this con-cept by presenting an analysis of the spatiality that is a factor with theconcept of omnipresence, and then interpreting the term of love in spa-tial categories. Barth tells us that God’s omnipresence in fact meansthe confession of God’s capacity for proximity.61 Because God incorpo-rates proximity into his own being, He can be close to his creature. Forthe spatiality of creation this means that there is no remoteness that isnot without God’s proximity. Because this creation is God’s creation,there must already be a basis in God for the notions of remoteness andproximity. In God himself, however, remoteness and proximity are one.Things that are next to one another in creation, or far apart, are onefor Him. There is no distance or proximity that is without His prox-imity. What Barth produces here is an analysis of spatiality which in itshighest sense can be ascribed to God. In fact it is literally speculation,a reflection based on something known to us, being attributed to Godhimself. God is able to be present with the other, indeed with everythingthat is other. God does not coincide with the other; but He is nearby.God’s capacity for proximity is at its deepest founded in the theology ofthe Trinity. In the event of Father, Son and Spirit love is defined as a

59 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvätern zu Karl Barth, 186 draws attention to a theo-logical-historical idealisation on the part of Barth. Since Augustine the simplicitas Deihad metaphysical foundations; according to Barth that was not the case in the earliestChurch. According to Meijering, that is an idealisation which has no historical founda-tion. The earliest Church too, when dealing with polytheism and Marcionism, alwaysdefended the unity of God with rational arguments.

60 KD II/1, 516; ET, 458.61 KD II/1, 519; ET, 461.

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unity of remoteness and nearness.62 God not only exists, but co-exists inHis Three-in-One being. Presence is defined as being together within adistance.63

In an extensive excursus Barth corrects Protestant orthodoxy whenit makes God’s omnipresence and eternity derivatives of his infinity.The boundaries of time and space that apply for man do not apply toGod, and thus man arrived at aeternitas and ubiquitas. Barth’s responseis that in this way God’s being is again discussed in terms of humanlimitation, that is to say, in terms of a problematic within creation. Inthis manner eternity and omnipresence threaten to become only nega-tions, namely timelessness and non-spatiality. It is this sort of abstractthinking about God that Barth criticises in Schleiermacher’s definitionof eternity and omnipresence. For Schleiermacher God is ‘absolutelytimeless (non-spatial) divine causality’.64 That is saying too little, or evenfalse. Space and time as categories can not be handled in parallel withone another. God’s omnipresence is primarily a quality of God’s love.In contrast, unlike Schleiermacher Barth predicates God’s eternity as aperfection of God’s freedom, a perfection that expresses his sovereigntyand permanence. God’s acting, internally and externally, has an abid-ing quality, and in analogy with this quality for his external operationGod 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 theacts of divine freedom. Precisely for this reason, creation is not eternal.Otherwise it could be no arena for the acts of God’s freedom.

Barth will not say this latter about God’s omnipresence. Omnipres-ence too falls under the perfections of God’s freedom for Barth, buta further specification is necessary. God’s omnipresence is a perfectionof the freedom at work in His love. Because this freedom works itselfout in love inwardly and externally, in his external work God createsspace. This space is the form of creation by virtue of which creation, asa reality which differs from God, can be an object of God’s love.

Let us pause for a moment with this analysis. It is, as I said already,literally speculation, reflection, in which love is interpreted in terms ofspatiality. Here we already find a prefiguration of Barth’s later doctrineof creation in nuce. Creation is the outward basis of the covenant, and

62 KD II/1, 521; ET, 463.63 KD II/1, 527; ET, 468.64 KD II/1, 524; ET, 466.65 KD II/1, 522–523; ET, 464–465.


within this creation there is again a distinction between the form oftime and the form of space. Time is connected with God’s freedomacting in love, and space with God’s love acting in freedom. Thisreflection has no small consequence. In pre-Kantian theology, in thefirst panel, time and space were still absolute quantities. Eternity andomnipresence were in fact thought of as a negation of the limitationsthat time and space form for man. In Protestant orthodoxy theseconsiderations of omnipresence and eternity led to the notions of non-spatiality and timelessness, thus to purely negative definitions. In theconcept of God prevailing in Kant and taken over by Schleiermacher,God’s eternity is reduced to a timeless and non-spatial causality. Barth’sachievement is that God’s revelation in time and space, or better, Hiscondescension, comes to be understood as a movement, a real comingthat is not alien to God. The movement, the approach, the comingto man is to be conceived as an event that has its ground and theconditions for its possibility in God’s love. If from the beginning Godhas existed as Father and Son, as love, then co-existence, a confluenceof nearness and distance, is characteristic of God’s being. This structurereceives a consonant shape in one of the forms of creation, space.

Why, we might ask, does Barth seek to so anchor the forms ofcreation, time and space, in the being of God, in his immanent life? Is ita hunger for speculation? Does Barth suffer from the (to quote Berkhof)South German disease of wanting to speculatively root everything inGod’s being? It is striking that Calvin did not display this same needfor speculative reflection. With him there was a rational handling ofwhat he believed he found in Scripture, but no speculative reflectionseeking to penetrate to the being of God. We would have to say thatwhile Calvin could still call upon Scripture as a mirror, as the placewhere God’s will and disposition toward man could be seen, for Barththis territory as the last ground had become something relative. Humanknowing of God can not rest until it has found an absolute, irreducibleground. That ground is only there when faith discovers its own peculiarknowledge, given in Christ, as a participation in God’s self-knowledge.Only then is what is known no longer something accidental, not avagary, but something that is anchored in God’s own being.

In regard to space, there is still a second difference between thetwo panels to be noted. For Calvin the world is the theatrum gloriae;existence itself, in its coherence and hierarchical construction, testifiesclearly to God. For Barth the natural world can no longer be thepoint of departure for real knowledge of God. Only the life disclosed

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in revelation provides a theological siting for the concepts of space andtime. Nature, or better, things from the world which surrounds us, ceaseto be primary concerns for theology. Only after the theme of revelationhas been explicitly discussed can they re-enter theology and receive aplace in theological discourse.

Our space is thus not God’s space as such, but a creation of God.God can be in created space himself. According to Barth there istherefore a differentiation in the nature of divine presence, but Goddoes not have to relinquish or diminish himself. It is worth notingthat in this context Barth clearly separates himself from the conceptof accommodation: ‘This differentiation of the divine presence doesnot depend on its adaptation to the nature of creation. To be sure,it is indeed adapted to it, but that is another matter. It is adapted toit because it is truly grounded in the essence of its Creator …’66 Inother words, in his revelation God does not leave any part of Himselfbehind; he is fully Himself. He can be near the other because othernesshas its basis in himself. God’s condescension, his approach to man, hasnothing of the nature of concession.

Barth ultimately gives omnipresence a Christological foundation.God is present with us gratia adoptionis, but with Jesus however gratiaunionis, and the latter is the foundation for the former.67 Barth drawsfrom this the conclusion that he will later develop in his doctrine ofreconciliation. If Jesus Christ is God’s dwelling in creation, then Godnot only gives space to the creation but the space that is most peculiarto Him. In doing that, God has elevated man to the throne. The mostcharacteristic space is the space that man occupies near God. If thefullness of God dwells in Him physically, then man has in Christ sharedin the space that is most peculiar to God. Then the manger becomesGod’s space, thereby establishing a fact which can never be reversed.68

Barth’s exposition can be understood as a frontal attack on themodern axiom of the non-spatial essence of God. The perspective mustbe reversed. It is peculiar to God that he takes a place, or constitutes ita better place. He does this in our history in Jesus Christ, in his body.The God who dwells in heaven dwells by us symbolically, sacramentally,spiritually.

66 KD II/1, 532; ET, 473.67 KD II/1, 545; ET, 485.68 KD II/1, 546–547; ET, 486.


7.9.2. Constancy and omnipotence

The concept of constancy as a quality of God is intended to transcendthe opposition between movement and immovability. It is clear that thisconcept is intended to be both distinct from, and a reference to theconcept immutabilitas. If God was really the one who was not moved,either by himself or by another, then, we read, this would be deathpar excellence. Barth accuses Protestant orthodoxy of having paved theway for the deterioration of the church and the anthropologising bySchleiermacher and Feuerbach by including the axiom of immutabilityamong the qualities of God. In his life and action the living God ishowever also the one who remains and sustains himself. ThereforeBarth very deliberately chooses another word than immutability. InBarth’s eyes the term immutabilitas is derived from the concept of being.He himself opts for the word ‘constancy’: it is more personal, andimplies God is a willing, knowing and acting subject. God is the livingPerson who transcends the antithesis of changeable-unchangeable. Inthat, God is the Constant One, the one who in his deeds does notabandon or turn against himself, but in his love and freedom confirmsand reiterates himself.

It will not be surprising to here encounter a concept which we like-wise found in the first panel, namely the repentance of God. In analogywith what was earlier discussed with regard to anthropomorphic lan-guage in the Bible, repentance is not regarded as an illegitimate man-ner of speaking, which only says something about the changed relationof man to God. If Calvin had the inclination to regard anthropopathicexpressions as language secundum hominem recipientem and to fend off thethought that something happened in God himself, Barth places thechange firmly in God himself. If God repents of a judgement that pre-viously had been declared over the residents of Nineveh, this indicates amovement and change in God himself. It is, Barth insists, blasphemousto deny God the capacity to change in his acts and intentions.69 Godhimself does not change when his intentions or plans change. Rather,in these changes He perseveres in his love and freedom.

It is essential for Barth’s doctrine of God that he tries to find asolution to the problem with which classical theology always wrestled,namely in what way one can speak of a decision in God with regard

69 KD II/1, 560; ET, 498.

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to, for instance, creation, if He at the same time is immutable. In orderto synthesise both elements into a higher unity Barth opts for activeconstancy. Creating is a free act of God’s love. That means that thisSetzung is not new in an absolute sense. It is not a surprise for God. Godalone is the One who is eternally new, but in the choice between beingand non-being God has chosen for being.

Two elements follow from the fact that God has committed Himselfto the creature. First, such a commitment is a free decision. God wasnot forced to do this. Second, it is a decision. That means that man,in thinking about God and man, cannot disregard this decision ordecree.70

In Barth’s classification of perfections the term constancy is pairedwith the term omnipotence. With this concept we undeniably heretouch upon a nerve in modern debates regarding God. That Godshould have the quality of might attributed to him was regarded asself-evident in the first panel. God’s might stood for God’s care. Godcould care for creation, because He was powerful. In contemporarytheology such a prominent position for the concept of might would beunthinkable. Might stands for the power to make decisions regardingcontrol, and therefore a God who has power can hardly be exemptedfrom responsibility for excesses or atrocities and suffering. Nevertheless,this historical and cultural factor regarding this concept is no reasonto abandon the concept of might as such. In fact, we might say itis anything but a reason to do so. There is however indeed a shiftin perspective that has to do with this historical background. God’smight is not a concept which can be derived from cosmology, from thehierarchic design of a closed universe. The orientation has shifted tothe history of Jesus Christ as the crossing point where all lines cometogether and, above all, proceed from.

An abstract discussion of God’s omnipotence therefore is not inorder. Theology can not reflect on omnipotence as such. What God’somnipotence is, is to be filled in and limited by the subject, namelyGod himself. A second point reminds us of something which we alsoencountered in the first panel. God’s power there is not only a matterof potentia, of capacity, but also a matter of His right, legitimacy andauthority, of potestas. The world is God’s world. God is the rightfulowner of this world.71

70 KD II/1, 583; ET, 518.71 KD II/1, 591; ET, 526.


The third decision that Barth takes in his discussion of the conceptof power is the most important, because it formulates his critique of thedevelopment of the power concept. The thesis runs that God’s poweris not exhausted in his works. As usual, Barth chooses his directionby entering into discussion with Protestant orthodoxy and reinterpret-ing the definitions found there. He upbraids Polanus for identifyingGod’s omnipotence with his omnicausality. In so doing, omnipotencebecomes a concept that is applicable in the realm of God’s opera adextra. In Quenstedt’s definition the potentia Dei is the principium exsequensoperationum 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.Barth’s critical point is clear: by connecting omnipotence with God’sexternal works orthodoxy has contributed to power being consideredas the characterisation of the highest world principle. In other words,orthodoxy is in part responsible for God’s omnipotence being labelleda might that has its place in his acting toward the world, in creation. InBarth’s view, with Schleiermacher this results in God vanishing as thedefining subject, and becoming instead the concept of might. That is atremendous reduction. Causality now becomes the only, real and com-prehensive description of God’s power. God’s capacity is exhausted inGod’s actual willing. Nature, that which is, henceforth coincides withGod’s power. Barth descries a development which had become thedominant view in liberal theology, namely that God’s omnipotence andomnicausality were congruent qualities.

It is precisely at this point in the second panel that the figurationis readjusted. Nature, that which is, the sum total of actuality, is notidentical with God’s omnipotence. Certainly, God is the cause of allthings. Let there be no misunderstanding that God’s knowing andwilling must be discussed as part of the concept of omnipotence. Hisomnipotence is not however exhausted by his omnicausality. God’sacting and his being are not exhausted by what is. That would robHim of his freedom. The liberal identification of omnipotence andomnicausality makes a fatal reversal possible. It becomes possible tosimply interpret all power that man encounters as God’s will. Thisview leads to an apotheosis of history, nature, and of man himself.72

God becomes an exponent of history and nature, and that is precisely

72 KD II/1, 597; ET, 531.

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what Barth is battling against. That which is salvific in God can be soprecisely because He does not coincide with what we experience in thisworld.

Finally, I would mention Barth’s view of the relation between potentiaabsoluta and ordinata. I would particularly note his critique of the thesisthat there is a potentia ordinaria alongside a potentia extraordinaria. Whathas been understood under potentia extraordinaria also falls under the onepower of God. He reproves the bringing of the potentia extraordinaria intothe essence of God. This reproof tallies with Calvin’s critique. The realpoint for both is their objection to the idea that an actual, operationalpower of God is concealed behind the potentia ordinaria, namely a potentiainordinata, or arbitrary power.73

Despite the altered configuration of elements, the doctrine of Godin this second panel can in no way be labelled a polished extrapo-lation of the modern sense of life. The figures in this panel becomecontrary and stubborn when it comes to God’s knowing and willing.God’s omniscience, and the omnificience of his will, are maintainedtenaciously. God’s will is also constitutive and determinative for whatHe does not will.74 In this respect Barth is no less radical than Calvin,when he derives everything from God’s knowing and willing. That doesnot however mean that God is the actor peccati. Death, the devil andsin would indeed have no existence outside God, but they are char-acterised as that which God has not willed, ant thus has rejected. Asdivine judgements, God’s yes and no are the constituents of all that isand occurs. There is no third, neutral realm outside the verdict of God.This means that God’s prescience is indeed the presupposition of eviland sin, but not the cause. Nothing escapes from God’s knowing andwilling, but that does not mean that sin and the devil have their causein God. That would express a positive relation.75 God is involved withevil in a different manner than He is involved with good. In no casehowever can God’s involvement be considered as a form of responsethat does not do full justice to God’s sovereignty. One can indeed alsospeak of a God reacting, although that is not a reaction that is in thesame plane as human action. Human acting and reacting are always

73 KD II/1, 609–610; ET, 541–542.74 KD II/1, 625; ET, 556: ‘But it is by God’s refusing and rejecting will that the

impossible and non-existent before Him is, since it is only by God’s rejecting will, Hisaversion, that it can have its particualr form of actuality and possibility.’

75 KD II/1, 627, 630; ET, 557, 560.


encompassed by the wealth and depth that is peculiar to God. Thismeans that on a very significant point the two panels do not divergefrom one another. Although in different ways, all things are subject toGod’s knowing and willing. The problems to which this propositionleads are no less strongly present in the second panel than they werein the first. If all is subject to God’s knowing and willing, can one stillspeak of man having any responsibility? Does not the foreknowledgeof God cancel out the real possibility of human will and responsibil-ity? It is not without good reason that Barth reiterates and endorses thedistinctions that were made in Protestant orthodoxy between the vari-ous forms of knowing in God, because these explain that the relationof God’s knowing and willing to things varies in nature.76 But all theserational exercises are of little use in defending the proposition that manis really a subject if one rejects the fundamental proposition: divine andhuman action can not be involved on one and the same plane.77 God’sresponse to man is a real response, but is not purely a response as menrespond to one another. It is encompassed by God’s Lordship, his glory,and that means that conceptually two things must be kept clearly inmind. God’s acting is true communicative acting, and to that extentreaction, and it is also more than human response to the extent that itis supported by and arises from God’s Lordship over and grasp of allthings.

76 KD II/1, 638–639; ET, 567–568.77 It is for this reason that Barth rejects the post-Tridentine doctrine of the scientia

media: KD II/1, 640–661 (ET, 567–586). Scientia media is a category between scientia neces-saria and scientia libera. God knows things that can happen under certain circumstances.Scientia media involves the collective result of God’s gratia preveniens and human freedom.The point of this concept is of course to secure the possibility of the real existenceof human responsibility. Barth commends later Thomistic theology for not wanting totelescope the action of God and the action of man together in this manner. In thewords of Aquinas, it obtains for God that ‘operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eiusproprietatem’ S.Th I.q.83, art.1 ad r3. God’s knowing is never an empty exercise orenvisaging. Doing, knowing and willing can not be separated from one another. In theargument about a scientia media the Molinists and Jesuits make the error of regardingGod’s knowing and human acting on one level. Man therefore constitutes a riddle fordivine knowledge (KD II/1, 654; ET, 580). Man is what he is by God and before God.‘In its relation to God it exists simply in virtue of the fact that God establishes andmaintains this relationship, and therefore simply by the grace of God. This alone is theway in which the creature exists in its oneness with God in the person and work of JesusChrist’ (ET, 585). God’s foreordination, his priority for all our acting, changes nothingin the definition of human existence as self-determination: ‘We are foreordained andperceived by God in our genuine human self-determination. That it is under divineforeordination does not alter the fact that it is genuine human self-determination.’ The

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Analogous with the foregoing, we also find in this panel the distinc-tion between a voluntas efficiens and a voluntas permittens. Obviously, thedistinction between the two will play a prime role in the question oftheodicy. On the basis of his voluntas permittens God takes up in his willevil, the revolt, the ‘limitation of being by non-being’ (English, 594).The voluntas permittens is however no less divine than the voluntas efficiens,for one is no less within the sphere of God within his ‘permitting’ thanwhen one is within God’s voluntas efficiens, but only within it in a differentform. What then is the purpose of this distinction? To excuse evil, or toattribute it to God in a terrible manner? That might be the conclusionif this concept were presented as a conclusion drawn from events in thisworld. There is, one must say, only one possibility for adequately read-ing this sort of distinction, namely from a concentration on the storyof Jesus. Only when our gaze shifts from world history to the history ofJesus Christ can this distinction be read to say that God’s freedom doesnot stop at the point where we most need Him. The distinction formu-lates how God still has a relation to his creation when it finds itself inrealms of horror.78 Barth even advances an argument which outside ofthe domain of faith, outside of the relation to God, must be seen as thegreatest blasphemy, and that can only be understood from inside, fromthe way of prayer: God’s highest goodness blazes forth precisely whereit appears that obedience and bliss are not simple nature, but that hisgoodness consists in rescue from the abyss.79

7.9.3. Eternity and glory

In a last movement the perfections of God’s freedom are explored withthe aid of the paired terms eternity and glory. Barth terms eternitythe sovereignty and majesty of God’s love so far as this has and ispure duration. With God, beginning, succession and end are not threeseparate elements, floating apart from one another, but are one. Eter-nity is thereby characterised as the principle of God’s unity, uniquenessand simplicity. The thread of Barth’s critique of traditional doctrines of

reverse is also true: ‘On the other hand, that it is genuine human self-determinationdoes not alter the fact that it is completely under God’s foreordination and does not inany 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 etiamsinendo fieri quaecunque fiunt male. Non enim hoc nisi iusto iudicio sinit; et profectobonum est omne, quod iustum est.’ Augustine, Enchiridion 96, CCSL 46, 99–100.

79 KD II/1, 672; ET, 596.


God runs through his reflection on the concept of eternity: the conceptmust 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 isrelated to the fact that in time past, present and future are separatedand pull apart from one another. The characteristic of duration thateludes 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 God’s inherent unity, uniqueness and simplicity.That this eternity must not be defined primarily in contrast to time, butrather says something positive about the wealth of life that is peculiarto God, can also be seen in Boethius’s famous definition: ‘Aeternitas estinterminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio’. God’s eternity isa perfect and at the same time consummate quality of unlimited life.It is His principle of abundance, through which he can relate preciselyto our time, and underpin the separate times. Again, the reversal ofperspective is applied: God in himself is the foundation for time. If inBarth’s early theology the pregnant confrontation between time andeternity was in the foreground and revelation was only conceivableas a cancelling out of time, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik the opposition isreplaced by something which underlies and connects. Therefore Barthcan also say, ‘God has time for us’. In God’s self-revelation time partici-pates in divine duration, in the abundance of God’s time at the momentof the revelation. The analogical form prevails. Thus there also remainsa difference between God’s time and our time, but human time is notcancelled out, but rather receives a foundation and is brought to per-fection.

Barth has a Trinitarian foundation for eternity. God the Father is thesource, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Fatherand Son. That implies a unity of movement. Next, in the incarnationGod not only gives time as the form of our existence, but God alsotakes time: He becomes time.81 He permits created time to become theform of his eternity.

The lines which Barth later develops in his doctrine of reconciliationbecome visible here in this movement. Because God himself becomescreature—man—in his Son, He does not cease to exist in His glory,but at the same time He humbles himself. However, for man this move-

80 KD II/1, 689; ET, 611.81 KD II/1, 694; ET, 614.

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ment, which has its ground in God himself, means an opposite move-ment of elevation. Barth therefore terms the incarnation a ‘fulfillingand surpassing of creation’ (English, 616). Time is elevated to a form ofGod’s eternity. The eternal God is clothed in time. Here too, I wouldonce again note, it is no longer distance, but similarity, analogy, whichprevails. 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 differences from the first panel are obvious. Accommodation asthe possibility for human knowledge of God is an adjustment to thelow state of man. In view of Calvin’s emphasis on the majesty of God,accommodation has always also had the smack of condescension to lostmankind. With Barth the accent lies elsewhere. For him too revelationis a matter of grace from beginning to end, of benevolence, and heretoo the incarnation can be termed an estrangement with regard toGod’s own being. This however does not detract from the fact thatBarth’s concept tends first of all to understand revelation in time assomething which is in keeping with God’s nature, something whichdoes not run counter to but which tallies with God’s being. In beinggracious God does something that is most deeply characteristic of Him,which has always been present in his own being. God is so powerfulthat 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 mysteryof time. Time and space are not the forms in which in which manregards and shapes the world, but lie within God as structures ofhis omnipresence and eternity. Time is not alien to Him. With Kanttime and space were ‘anthropologised’; Barth responds by ‘theologising’them, understanding them as forms within God. Thus this conceptfundamentally yields a positive relation between God’s eternity and ourtime. If God, in his unlimited life, did not embrace our time on allsides—thus before and behind, above and below—then, Barth tells us,this reality would be a dream, a reverie or a nightmare.82

Finally, a few words about the final term, the glory of God. If inthe second panel there is anywhere that the meaning of creation isdiscussed, 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.

82 KD II/1, 699; ET, 620.


Glory is to be understood as the inclusion of all God’s perfections, Hiscapacity, rooted in himself, to make himself known. Among the termsgiven, it is striking how great the consequences of this perfection arefor man. God’s glory is a joy which shares itself. The works of God areall performed as a movement of self-delight and the communication ofjoy. God desires his works, his creation, not because they would havemeaning in themselves, but because however inadequate they are, theywill still grant faithful passage for and respond to the joy that is in Godhimself.

It is a strange and provocative thought in a world which has become,before all else, a riddle to itself: God willed creation, including man, inorder for the communication and expansion of joy to become a fact.At the same time this throws light on the place that man and his beingas a subject assumes in this configuration. Man is not an autonomousbeing, sufficient in himself. In this concept we encounter the modernhumanist ideal, though from its formal aide; the content is howeverdefined wholly by the concept of analogy. Formally, being human isto possess self-determination, Selbstbestimmung. The decisive question onthe material side is of course what the self is. Through the work of theHoly Spirit, in faith this self-determination undergoes a change. Theself-determination is not annulled; in the typical double meaning of theword Aufhebung (revocation and closure) it is fundamentally critiquedand at the same time taken up into a new context.83 Through the workof the Holy Spirit the human existence is ‘determined as the act of ourself-determination in the totality of its possibilities’.84 God’s work doesnot force man to a halt, does not reduce him to an attitude of passivity.It is characteristic that the believer is characterised as a fully active andacting being. In his acting he is however no longer autonomous, but istaken up into the operation and acting of God. Barth reaches for theimage of a choir member who comes too late to the weekly practise: theone who finds himself in the history of Jesus Christ is ‘like a late-comerslipping shamefacedly into creation’s choir in heaven and earth’.85

In this connection we encounter the metaphors of the mirror andtheatre, though less frequently than we did in the first panel. It is in

83 Cf. also KD I/2, 342; ET, 313; ‘Faith in the New Testament sense does not meanmerely the superseding but the abolishing of man’s self-determination. It means thatman’s 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.

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those elements in life which correspond with God’s acts that God isglorified, and only in those elements; then and only then is this exis-tence a mirror. The differences from the first panel are considerable.There, in the light of revelation the whole of reality is intended toglorify God. As God is known, man begins to share in God and thewhole of creation again begins to shine. Therefore the whole of cre-ation can again become a mirror of God going his way.86 But, wemust acknowledge, it is always the fleeting, pale movement of a shadow,which man can not grasp. Human existence is only the mirror of Godin this movement, in the living connection that God creates betweenhimself 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 animage that is only true to the extent that God’s claim is heard. JesusChrist is the centre and compendium of this history. Reality is involvedin a series of reflections or corresponding actions. In his doctrine ofcreation Barth develops this still further. The relation of the Father tothe Son in the Spirit finds an analogy in God’s covenant with man,and this relation is the found of the humanity of Jesus Christ. It isthis reality of a relation within God’s own being that is repeated asan analogia relationis in countless refractions and is reflected 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 tounemployment. The modern view of man as an active, acting being,who does not act under compulsion or as a slave to another, but actsin 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 God’swork, God’s self-determination. It is God’s choice to live in relationto man, in fidelity to and in solidarity with the human creature. Thatcreates the horizon for the content of the human self. It is the identity ofman, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to live in fellowship with the eternallyabundant God. Thus there is a space indicated where man can learnto know himself better than he can understand himself outside ofit.

86 KD II/1, 760; ET, 674–675: ‘In this sense the way and thatre of the glorificationof god is neither more nor less than the total existence of the creature who knows Godand offers Him his life-obedience.’

87 KD III/2, 261–263; ET, 219–220.


7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God

Who is God, with whom man is dealing? The discussion of God’s per-fections served as a first round in answering this question; the discus-sion of the doctrine of election will be the occasion for a second roundtoward an answer. For Barth, the doctrine of God flows out into thedoctrine of election, which is in its turn the core of the doctrine of rec-onciliation. As compared with the dogmatic tradition, Barth takes thefar-reaching step of no longer dividing reflection on God’s being andon His acting into two separate compartments, instead considering theone 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 toreveal himself. Once God has decided to reveal himself, this revelationtakes the believer entirely into the mystery of God’s being. For Barth,God’s acting—concretely the acting in election in the history of Jesus ofNazareth—is the window through which one can look into the heart ofGod. As a result, as compared with the first panel, in Barth’s theologythe concept of election has moved up to a place within the actual doc-trine of God. Election describes not only God’s action toward man, butalso his own being. We could also put that differently: the positioningof the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God is theologicallythe conceptual model for breaking the centrality of the human subject.After the turn to the subject, the only possibility left appeared to be todiscuss God as an element within the human horizon. By making thedoctrine of election the spearhead of the doctrine of God, a reversaltakes place. Man and his world receive their place and meaning con-ceptually within God’s horizon.88

Barth never avoided making use of the word election theologically. Inhis early theology the word however does not function as a descriptionof the content of revelation, but of the nature and manner of revelation.Election and rejection are the designations for the two categories intowhich man comes in the light of revelation. In the second edition of hisEpistle to the Romans man is empirically—thus according to the visibleorder—never more than Esau, that is to say, the rejected, someoneto whom God says no. In the light of revelation the same man canhowever become Jacob, the child of election, over whom the light ofGod’s love and eternal life shines, although this is never directly visible,

88 Cf. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden,Tübingen 19763, 45; ET, 46–47.

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but at the most being perceptible as the yes that lies hidden behindthe visible no. Election and rejection in this way coincide with theactual reality in faith of man himself. In the first parts of the KirchlicheDogmatik election also functions as an element of God’s call, withoutthat expressly referring to an eternal ground in God himself.89 Thatchanges in the doctrine of God. In KD II/1 election refers to a contentin 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 theologicalhistory had been associated with an arbitrary and tyrannical God,with the threat of destruction and inhumanity and with the tragedyof Reformed theology,91 into the concept that serves as the summaryof the Gospel. The formulation of the Leitsatz for §32 permits nopossible mistake about it. It is a clarion call: ‘The doctrine of electionis the sum of the Gospel because of all the words that can be saidor heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man toothe One who loves in freedom.’92 What Barth wants to achieve is thatthe word election become a concept of salvation without any darkerassociations.93 He accomplishes this by exercising a sharp critique onthe Biblical exegesis of preceding theology. For a moment I would recallthe undervaluation of the covenant in Calvin, how the covenant isthere termed ‘something in the middle’ and all the drama of sacredhistory which is unfolded in Romans 9–11 is reduced to a decisionabout the salvation of individuals. Barth’s critique is as follows: therehas been too little awareness in the tradition that in Scripture electionis a category of sacred history, which must be wholly understood in lightof 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 providedthe traditional Biblical basis for the doctrine of predestination is God’schoosing for a relation with his people, their choice for discipleship orother, and God’s choosing to permit them to share in the messianicfuture. It is from this perspective that chapters 9–11 of the epistle of theRomans must be read. In these chapters God’s election and rejection

89 See also McCormack, Karl Barth’s critically realistic dialectical Theology, 456.90 KD II/1, 308; ET, 274.91 C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 593 f.92 KD II/2, 1; ET, 3.93 KD II/2, 12–13; ET, 13–14.


are in the service of his intention to salvation. For Barth this point—God’s intention for salvation for all mankind—is the reason to takeelection as the concept in which numerous threads of his theology cometogether and become interwoven. In this concept election has a topicalfunction.94 Within his dogmatic concept the doctrine of election formsthe transition and threshold from God’s own being to his works. Assuch, God’s election belongs in both subsets. Election is the core of thedoctrine of reconciliation, which follows on the doctrine of God, but atthe same time this election is part of God’s 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 God’s electing and willing. It is not a decision, awill, a choice that is central, but the emphasis lies on the acting, themovement: God is the One who himself chooses, wills. Pointing back tothe acting of God in this way is characteristic. In faith, in our existencein the world, we are not dealing with a decision, with an intentionthat, once taken, becomes a self-standing entity apart from the livingGod. Strictly speaking, there is no decision that one can take from thepress like a printed decree; one is dealing with the living God in hiswilling and decreeing. We see again what we have already noted: thereality to which dogmatics refers is a movement, an event, the actingof God. Human knowledge of God can therefore only be the result ofthis acting and willing of God, which becomes knowable in the historyof the one person Jesus Christ. There, in a real sense, one sees into theheart of God.

7.11. Election as the basic decision 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 rolein Barth’s theological development. He derived the concept from theposthumous work of Fr. Overbeck, for whom Urgeschichte stood for adefining phase in the life of a people or movement, which none the lessremains shrouded in darkness.96 Barth took up the concept in the sec-ond edition of his Epistle to the Romans to denote the incomprehensibil-

94 KD II/2, 15; ET, 15.95 KD 11/2, 6; ET, 8–9.96 ‘Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie’, 5.

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ity of revelation. It surfaces again in Kirchliche Dogmatik, in the doctrineof election, but now with more—and specifically theological—content.This electing and willing of God is primal history in the sense that it isthere that the structure of God’s acting becomes visible. The prefix Ur-refers to the logical and objective priority of God’s electing of the manJesus to live in unity with his Son. The history of Jesus Christ standsfor this turning of God toward mankind. The history connected withthe name of Jesus Christ thereby becomes a centre which is the defin-ing origin of everything which lies around it. Jesus Christ is, Barth saysquite literally, the centre of the cosmos,97 and as such the primal deci-sion of God.98 The decision to be in relation to man in the person ofJesus Christ is the primal relation, which is fundamental to the beingof God himself.99 Election thus becomes the word that represents the apriori of God’s gracious proximity to Jesus.

The inclusion of the relation with man in the discussion of Godcan be termed fundamental for Barth’s theological concept, and hasfar-reaching consequences. First, the primal history taking place in theessence of God is definitive for those who are linked to this man Jesusas his fellow humans. The electing and filling of God is somethingwhich characterises man. In Jesus Christ, man is chosen as a partnerin covenant.100 Cosmology falls away as the fixed space of orientation,to be replaced by a spiritual point, the decision in God in favour ofman in Jesus Christ. The whole of reality is rebuilt anew, reconstitutedaround this point.

Second, election is never an inherent religious or moral quality ofman; it is anchored in God’s own being and can only be read from thehistory of Jesus Christ. Here too the term ‘primal’ in primal historyand primal decision functions to indicate a movement that has itspoint of departure in God and remains a quality of God’s acting. Theopposition to every attempt to make God’s reality psychologically orhistorically manifest and controllable is continued in the KD. God andhis salvation can not be represented directly.

There is a sharp contrast here from the first panel. For the truthof double predestination Calvin called upon an ordinary observation,entirely perceptible: many are indifferent to the Gospel. There are


100 KD II/2, 10; ET, 11.


only a handful of people who are conscientious in the service of God.Barth’s response to this is telling in many ways: he tries to respondon the theological level and at the same time he will not in any waydisguise his aversion. He ascribes the fact that Calvin is able to draw thedividing line between the small flock of the elect on the one hand andthe riffraff on the other to a streak of nastiness. Barth clearly sees littlein Calvin’s personality to recommend him. His foremost objectionshowever are theological in nature. According to Calvin, election is animmanent quality, a ‘private relationship’ between a particular personand God,101 while according to Barth election and rejection are firstof all verbs that indicate the structure of God’s acting and manner ofdealing with that one man, Jesus Christ. Only within the outlines ofthat one is there anything which can be said about all the others.

Third, we must be aware that Barth, by including the election ofJesus Christ, and with it that of man, in the doctrine of God, makes asuggestion that has still other far-reaching consequences. It is an inno-vation in the doctrine of God that can be interpreted as the attemptto include the humanity of God definitively within the definition ofGod himself. In classical dogmatics the decisions to create, to redeem,and to send His Son into the world belonged to the doctrines of thedecrees of God, which followed after discussions of God and his quali-ties. Barth breaks with that tradition. He borrows the notion from theReformed tradition that election is the ultimate, or actually the firstword that describes the salvific relation of God to man, but then makesthis doctrine the heading under which all of the action of God canbe subsumed. Creation and providence, including the vulnerability, thepains and the unbelievable risks of suffering and guilt that are attachedto this human existence: these are all surveyed with God’s election ofthe man Jesus of Nazareth in mind. Put in other words: theologicallythis earthly reality can only be refigured as God’s work if one beginswith the actions of God in Jesus Christ. The covenant is the inside, thepoint of God’s actions. That means that incarnation, the approach toman is not additional, not incidental to our world history. Since thename of Jesus Christ, since his history was given to the Church, think-ing about God and about man and the world can no longer get aroundthat name.102 Barth summarises this in two short assertions, namely that

101 KD 11/2, 40–42, ET, 41–44.102 KD II/2, 57; ET, 54; ‘There is no greater depth in God’s being and work than

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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 twopropositions.

7.12. Election as the core issue

One can consider Barth’s doctrine of election as the substantive core ofhis theology. If it is true for God as a person in the consummate sense ofthe term, that He determines himself, and that nothing external to Himdefines him, then it is in the concept of election that we subsequentlyfind the answer to the question of how God determines himself. Heelects the man Jesus of Nazareth to be in unity with his Son. Thus,in the name of Jesus and in his history the Church discovers thatGod has chosen his Son to exist in unity with this man. With this, itbecomes possible to interpret the concrete life history of Jesus from twoperspectives. One can follow the ray of light that is this history in twodirections, to God, and to mankind. In the former, this history offersan entry to God for those who go upward. One can no longer think ofGod outside of the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is not somethingextra for the Christian image of God, not an adjunct, but essential.Thus the proposition in §33 is ‘Jesus Christ is the electing God’.104 It isin his life that it becomes knowable who it really is from whom electionproceeds. That is the ray of light which returns to the electing subject.

But one can also follow the beam of light downwards to the electedobject. The same light characterises Jesus of Nazareth and the peoplerepresented through him.105 The second proposition is therefore ‘JesusChrist is elected man’.106 Through God’s election of the man Jesusof Nazareth he—and the people represented by him—becomes theobject of God’s election. The gracious approach of God in Jesus ofNazareth becomes the decisive horizon for man’s existence. Throughthat electing and willing of God, man is the chosen one, says Barth,and who is chosen finds a Lord.107 Put in other words, in election the

that revealed in these happenings and under this name. For in these happenings andunder 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.


decisive lines are drawn for man and his destiny. God chooses to existin proximity to mankind, and man is thereby the one for whom theproximity of this God has become the definitive factor.

We will have to develop these brief pointers further. First, with regardto God: in Jesus Christ it becomes clear who God is and what He islike, to the very remotest corners of His being. That God chooses forman, turns His face toward him and seeks his life, is not a movementor decision that comes from God the Father alone. It is a decision,work that is attributed to the Father, Son and Spirit.108 Barth attemptsto carry the Trinitarian perspective through to its extreme. The Sonis not only the object of election. From one perspective it can appearthat one must speak of the Son primarily in passive terms. It is indeedthe case that the Son is elected through the Father to exist in unitywith and in the same form as mankind. But the Son himself and theSpirit are also involved in this choosing. The term which here indicatesthe nature of the connection and structure of the relation of God inhis acting to the man Jesus, and in Jesus to the whole of creation, isEntsprechung, analogy or correspondence. The movement in which theSon of God himself becomes a co-subject of the choice to exist in unitywith the man Jesus corresponds to the obedience of Jesus Christ. Or,going the other direction, the choice of the eternal Son himself reflectsJesus’ obedience and the commitment of his life.109

Then the second proposition must be developed: Jesus Christ iselected man.110 Calling upon Ephesians 1:4 and John 1:1–2, Barth firstargues, quite in line with tradition, that in the electing of the manJesus we see what election is at its deepest. Because God through hisWord decided to live in unity with this man, He shows what graceis, what impartation is to living, to glorification. In terms of content,electing means that God makes the life of the creature his own life, ormetaphorically, God makes himself Father and man his child. This isyet too weakly expressed in words such as goodness and mercy; thisis self-surrender. God gives himself in the fellowship. The most radicalchange that all of this brings with it for the second panel is the breadthof election. God’s decision does not involve an abstract entity such ashumanity, mankind, or individuals as exemplars of mankind, but in theperson of Jesus involves all the fellow men of this man. The electing of


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all is mediated in the person of Jesus Christ. In this there is a correctiveto Calvin, who was quite willing to speak of election of the human race,but emphatically stated that the preservation of the human race did notimply the preservation of all men.

We must not only see this concept presented by Barth as a critiqueof the traditional doctrine of election which left space for the hiddendecision of election; this consideration also tables a counterproposalto the ideal of our modern and post-modern culture. In modernitythe subject begins with himself, and from there formulates his world.Barth’s doctrine of election permits itself to be read as the proposal thatman and his world must be seen in light of divine electing, as that canbe followed in the history of Jesus Christ. God does not ask us to realiseor maintain ourselves; from the outset man is to be understood as theone who is the object of God’s electing and approach. Barth continuesto think from eternity to time, from the a priori of grace. It is notabsolute self-realisation that is asked of man, but acknowledgement ofthat which God in His grace has decided regarding him, and promisedhim. Thus there is a decision which precedes all else, a willing fromGod’s side. Before man searches for himself, seeks to unfold and fulfilhis life, he is already in relation to Jesus, to this history. The historyof Jesus is the space in which every human creature may discoverthat God already had reserved a place for him or her with himself.A formulation of this sort fits with Barth’s own exposition of John 1:1–2. It would be an incorrect interpretation of matters to say that thehistory of Jesus is projected in God, and that history on earth is only anunreal, automatic representation of that. The Logos of John 1:1 holdsa place open for Jesus. The houtos of verse 2 does not refer back to thelogos, but to Jesus.111 His acting on earth (below) takes place by virtue ofthe mystery and proximity and power from above. Jesus fulfils the logosconcept fully and totally. Man cannot speak of the above outside of thatwhich happens on earth in this history. Here that which is from God,that which comes from above, takes place under our eyes.

We must acknowledge that the doctrine of election developed inthis manner provides a foundation for a theological anthropology. Thesecret of man and his humanity does not lie within himself. The mys-tery of man, of his being born, living and dying, is God’s comingtoward us, is being addressed by name. Second, the uneasy dream

111 KD II/2, 105; ET, 98.


that man ultimately stands all alone in a cosmic void and in complete,bleak abandonment—and Barth himself had such dreams—goes handin hand with this on the theological level.112 The history of Jesus showsthat man has a place with God, that being human is from the veryoutset being together with God. Third, the human subject does not dis-appear if God’s Lordship is acknowledged. The alternative between lifeas a design and life as subjection is a false choice.

7.13. The decretum concretum

In conscious debate with the Reformed tradition, Barth no longerwished to begin with an eternal and unchanging decree in God’s Coun-sel with regard to salvation and damnation, from a decretum absolutum,but from Jesus Christ as decretum concretum.113 In this Christian speakingreceives an orientation point which is not a vanishing point behind his-tory, nor an idea, but one in the history which is connected with thatname. Jesus Christ is the beginning of all things, from which God’s will,His eternal will, develops. It is God’s own decision, taken in his owneternity, to live in indissoluble relation with man. In Jesus Christ theeternal Son gives Himself to the Son of Man and the Son of Man iswholly one with the eternal Son.114 This movement, this decision, is ahistory, a history to which we can point, that in all its concreteness, all

112 It is not purely as a matter of biographical interest that we refer to Barth’s dreamshere. Eberhard Busch tells of a dream from the last year of Barth’s life: Eines Morgenstraf ich Karl Barth niedergeschlagen an. ‘Aber was ist Ihnen denn zugestoßen?’ fragteich. Er sagte: ‘Denken Sie, ich hatte heute nacht einen argen Traum. Mir träumte, daßmich eine Stimme ansprach: ‘Willst du einmal die Hölle sehen?’ und ich antwortetenoch wohlgelaunt: ‘Doch, das möchte ich gern einmal sehen; das hat mich schon langinteressiert.’ Da öffnete sich vor mir ein Fenster, und ich sah hinaus in eine endloseWüste, deren Anblick Mark und Bein erschütterte; und mittendrin saß steineinsam eineinziger Mensch. Da schloß ich das Fenster, und die Stimme sprach: ‘Und das drohtdir!’. Ich sagte etwas leichthin: ‘Ein Traum …’ er wehrte dem heftig: ‘O nein, Träumesind in der Regel ernst zu nehmen.’ Er schwieg eine geraume Weile und fuhr dannzögernd fort: ‘Und da gibt es noch Leute, die mir vorwerfen, bei mir fehle das Wissenum solche abgründige Bedrohung. Ich weiß nur zu gut davon. Aber was bleibt mirgerade darum anderes übrig, als alles darauf zu setzen: “Gott schwört bein seinemLeben, daß er dich nicht verläßt”?’ Cited with W. Schildmann, Was sind das für Zeichen?Karl Barths Träume im Kontext von Leben und Lehre, München 1991, 168.

113 KD II/2, 172–173; Cf. the english translation 159, which by mistake reads ‘decre-tum absolutum’ for ‘decretum concretum’.

114 KD II/2, 171; ET, 157.

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its mundanity, at the same time arises from and is grounded in the lifeof 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 Barth’s conceptof the decretum concretum. The speaking of the Church does not beginwith an elusive above; the above makes itself known in the below, inthe history of Jesus Christ. The a priori starting point that Barth oncepostulated outside of time in the concept of Ursprung, enters the worldof time and space, in a concrete human history. In the early Barth theeye of faith is drawn to a point which itself no longer belongs to timeor space; in the later Barth of the doctrine of election God’s eternal,sovereign Counsel coincides with a history in space and time. Afterthe doctrine of election Barth will increasingly formulate his a priori interms of the history of Jesus Christ, the living person himself.

We must underscore that particularity continues to belong to thevexing, surprising and provocative points of Christian belief. Whenmatters concern us, there are references to a specific people, Israel,and a specific person, Jesus of Nazareth, and his history. Does Chris-tian faith then have nothing more to offer, something that is closer, thathappened yesterday? The concretely historical, that took place some-where in time and space, which we know about through stories andtexts, is the point of departure for thinking and speaking. For Kant Jesuswas the exemplary figure for a moral ideal; with Hegel the concretelyhistorical is taken up and elevated in the concept; with Barth the con-cretely historical is no longer something which must be transcended: itis the origin and criterion.

Barth expresses the shift in perspective which the appearance of thispoint of departure brings with it by proposing that this starting point inthe decretum concretum makes possible and activates human knowing andquestioning.115 In his view, confrontation with a decretum absolutum as thefinal limit of belief and thought strikes us dumb. One can only flee intoethics or mysticism. Not-knowing is then the highest attainable. Whenhowever we have God and his will before us in concreto in Jesus Christand his history, all knowing is a further occasion for new, and this timemore specific questions. The believer does not silence questions, butis prepared to pose all questions anew in the light of this answer, andthus bring the space he or she inhabits, personally or collectively, into

115 KD II/2, 173–174; ET, 160–161.


the sphere of influence of this answer.116 I would conclude that it wouldbe difficult to harness Barth to the wagon of the post-modern insightthat men, for all their attempts to know reality, ultimately do not know.Certainly, beginning from themselves men can not reach the liberatingand salutary truth of God. In Christ, in his person, however a dooris opened for him to an open secret, an open mirror. In confrontationwith this history we stand before a mystery that gives itself. Again theperspective on the asymmetry between God and man opens up. Theanswer that is given in the Gospel is not the end of the questioning.Each answer is the overture to a new question; in each answer the spacetoward the source, toward the beginning, toward the abundance in Godhimself opens up, space which man never had, but which is given tohim. Facing this source, man as the knower is always one who doesnot know. Revelation is thus a mystery that sets the process of knowingin motion, and keeps it going constantly. This means that knowing infaith, and theological reflection, can never reach a resting place, that nospeculative leap will ever succeed in comprehending the coherence ofGod’s deeds, the meaning of the events. In the continuing orientationto the source, to the beginning of all knowledge of God, Barth in hisway shows the limitations of human knowing. It remains dependent onGod, on his Spirit.

With the word mystery we encounter a concept that has been pro-ductive in more recent theology for characterising knowledge of Godaccording to its structure.117 In Barth’s theology it is a concept thatmaintains the unity of veiling and unveiling, revelation and conceal-ing. In contrast to a riddle, a mystery is not something which can besolved by knowledge and then disappears. Once a solution is found, a

116 KD II/2, 174; ET, 160: ‘Genuine and open questioning begins with the knowledgeof the mystery of the election of Jesus Christ, for in this mystery we are confrontedwith an authority concerning which we cannot teach ourselves but must let ourselvesbe taught, and are taught, and can expect continually to be taught.’

117 The word mysterion appears at various places in the Bible, indicating somethingwhich was hidden and has now been brought to light. It can be applied to the Kingdom(Mark 4:11) or God’s Counsel (ICor. 2:7, Col. 1:27, Eph. 3:4). In all cases mysterionis 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 thiscontent is unveiled through God’s gracious act. One does not come to see the contentwithout being aware of God’s absolute power. The content of the knowing is notwithout a certain nature of knowing. It is in this more general sense, as a term forthe relation between content and way in knowing God, that the term has taken root incontemporary theology. See, for instance, the title of E. Jüngel’s book Gott als Geheimnisder Welt.

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riddle ceases to be a riddle. A mystery is something that is always outof our reach.118 Mystery is characterised by an abundance that is notexhausted as one delves into it, but rather becomes deeper and vasterthrough new complications, new connections.

Christian existence does not have its centre of gravity within itself,not in man as a subject; rather, this subject is determined by anotherreality which has come to light. Purpose can only be found by man timeand again emerging from himself, venturing over the threshold of hisbeing in a questioning attitude, in order to let himself be defined by themystery of God’s good-pleasure, concretely through this history. Thismeans that existence comes under the power and sphere of influenceof what Barth further on in his doctrine of reconciliation will describeas the two movements of the one act of God. In Jesus Christ the Lordbecomes servant. The way of the Son leads to a foreign land, and inunity with the man Jesus the Son himself bears the judgement (KDIV/1). At the same time the election of the Son to an existence in unitywith the man Jesus has as its consequence that man is exalted to aroyal dignity. The servant becomes Lord; man is elevated (KD IV/2).This structure is already found in the doctrine of election. In short:Man benefits, God assumes the risk. For God, the election of the manJesus means placing a question mark after His might, His majesty, thatthese are placed in a danger zone. For man this choice, this electionmeans a gain, an unheard-of advancement. In words that remind oneof Irenaeus, God willed to lose, in order that man win.119

What is it that God’s decision will cost Him? He has, Barth says,given up something, namely His untouchability. Because of his divinenature, within his own sphere He Himself is not affected and threat-ened by a will that opposes his. Man, whom He chooses as a partner, ishowever the one who is overwhelmed by sin, and God exposes himselfto this resistance, to these opposing powers. In Jesus Christ He him-self moves into the field of the opposing powers, of rejection.120 Thetendency toward theopaschitism in Barth’s theology is already patentlyobvious here in the doctrine of election.121 The choice for man meansthat God himself puts his majesty at stake and enters into confrontation

118 KD II/2, 172–175; ET, 158–161.119 KD II/2, 177; ET, 162.120 KD II/2, 177–178; ET, 162–163.121 See A. van Egmond, ‘Theopaschitische tendensen in de na-oorlogse protestantse

theologie’ in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, edited by D. vanKeulen and C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 9–23.


with the opposing force. The opposing force of sin is therefore not justsomething that has its claims on earth, here below. It has an effect thatreaches to the very being of God.

The differences with the first panel of Calvin’s theology become verymanifest at this point. With Calvin all emphasis lies on the propositionthat the divine and human must remain separated. In his discussionof the ignorance of Christ, in the portrayal of his fear and of hisdeath, the divinity of Christ is regarded as in abeyance or hidden.122

For Calvin too the crucified Christ is the most profound point of God’smercy, but Christ bears sin and its punishment according to his humannature. With the suffering of Christ, Calvin emphasises the differencebetween the two natures. At this very crucial point Barth follows notCalvin, but Luther,123 thereby becoming an important marker in thepresent orientation to the Cross as the origin and criterion for Christianthinking about God.124 In this, Barth’s doctrine of God marks what maywell be termed the great substantive difference between the first andsecond panel: the involvement of God in this world is not primarilyunderstood in terms of creation theology and pneumatology, but beginsfrom Christology, from the Cross and resurrection as the places whereGod decides about man and Himself.

God’s choosing is conceived as a double predestination. Election andrejection, yes and no, do not however involve groups of men, nor arethey qualities of God’s revelation; they refer to the content of salvation,namely God who in his Son brings down the judgement on Himselfand thus precisely through the judgement maintains the fellowship andgives Himself. In Barth’s words, God himself tasted damnation, deathand hell.125 It is still more radical when we read that the incarnation ofGod can mean nothing other than that ‘He declared Himself guiltyof 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 orcovered, see Comm. ad Matth. 27:45. See also Inst. 4.17.30.

123 Cf. G. Hunsinger, ‘What Karl Barth learned from Martin Luther’ in: DisruptiveGrace. Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 288.

124 One of course thinks of the theology of E. Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigenGottes. Ein Plakat’, in: idem, Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Bemerkungen, München1972, 105–125 and J. Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, München 1972. See also A. vanEgmond, 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.

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declares himself responsible for the situation of man, and that Godfinds himself at fault for the failure of the project of man and creation.This idea, which can take root if the theodicy question dominates thediscussion of the question of God,127 is not however to be found inBarth. He places the stress on the voluntary solidarity with which Goddeclares himself guilty. It is assumed guilt, suffering 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 findourselves in the centre of the themes that one deals with in everyconcept of Christian theology. How should we conceive God’s relationto human failure, human sin, human suffering? How does the decisionto create man and the world relate to the fact that man as creaturechooses his own way, to man’s freedom, that he can turn away fromGod? How does God’s plan for salvation relate to human obstinacy,to the closed nature of the vicious circles of evil? These are the greatthemes that man can indeed push around conceptually, but which cannever be pushed away. Nor can one escape from the problem by notattributing the quality of power to God. Recent theological historyteaches that man loses the concept of God if power is not in some waypredicated to His acting, if one denies that He is Lord over time andspace. That is not the case in either of the panels here. God’s Lordshipdefines the colour scheme for both Calvin and Barth. In both wefind substantive lines that point in the direction of supralapsarianism.It is necessary to spend a few words going into the debate betweeninfralapsarians and supralapsarians.

Although from a distance the conflict between infralapsarianism andsupralapsarianism may largely seem a case of theological fatuity andinanity, 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 adifference in emphasis which transcends pure curiosity. In infralapsar-ianism election has more the nature of a response to the fall, of anaction towards restoration. Creation, as a work of God, has greaterindependence. The spotlight is on the seriousness of sin, its absurdityand 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 hartvan de theologie, Kampen 1998, 155–157; ET: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology(Studies in Reformed Theology. Supplements I), translated by P.O. Postma, Zoetermeer2004, 168–169.


object of predestination is the homo creatus et lapsus.128 The decision aboutelection follows the decision about creation. In supralapsarianism theaccent is on election as a manner of glorifying God. In infralapsarian-ism the emphasis is on the variety of decisions and their causal order;in supralapsarianism the stress is on the unity of the decisions, andthe other decisions are teleologically subordinate to election.129 In thiscase the object of predestination is the not-yet created man in all hisfallibility, thus the homo creabilis en labilis. Barth’s theological concept isunmistakably in line with supralapsarianism. But for him that meansthat God makes the decision about the fall not so that man falls, butso that man in his fallen state is witness to His gracious acting, to Hisglory.130 God wills for us in this life as it is lived, with all the givenlimitations and shadows. He wills an answer from man not beyond ofthis life; He places man within the boundaries of this existence, and inhis revelation opens up this existence as the space for the covenant. Inthis respect too Barth’s theology fits in with this second panel, in thatit situates the covenant on earth, wanting to remain true to the earthin that way. For Barth, the foregoing implies an answer to theodicy. Itimplies that the shadow, the darkness does not fall outside the sphereof action and outside the proximity of God; but it equally implies thatin no case do people themselves fall outside the presence and care ofGod. Therefore, in his extensive historical excursus on this dogmaticconflict he indicates his sympathy for supralapsarianism, after he hasstripped it of its ‘inhumane’ characteristics.131 Double predestination nolonger means that a part of humanity forever remains excluded fromthe proximity of the God who is rich in blessing. The phrases duriores, forwhich supralapsarianism became so notorious, and that the represen-tatives of infralapsarianism sought to avoid by taking the boundaries oftheological speaking more into account, become impossible in Barth.The severity in all its weight is absorbed by God himself in his Son.Barth’s concept of electing is a means of combining the relative truthof supralapsarianism with the universal perspective of salvation for allmen who are born on earth alongside the one man Jesus of Nazareth. Ispeak here of relative truth, because supralapsarianism does not shrink

128 KD II/2, 144; ET, 134.129 See H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 399; ET: The Doctrine of

God, trans. and ed. by W. Hendriksen, Edinburgh/Carlisle 1979, 393.130 KD II/2, 153; ET, 134.131 KD II/2, 136–157; ET, 127–145.

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from the consequences of seeing all things in life, all decisions, as beingunder the sovereignty of God, under his dominion. Anyone who willnot accept that inevitably arrives at a form of Pelagianism, in whichGod’s majesty is reduced or where in one way or another, precisely inthe effort to safeguard God from every form of responsibility for evil,a form of dualism is created.132 In that case, the remedy for defendingGod’s moral inviolability is worse than the disease.

Barth’s theology teaches that creation and the fall can not be spokenabout 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 theabstract. According to Barth double predestination means that all peo-ple, as fellowmen of the man Jesus, as people under sin, are intendedto become witnesses to His glory. The centre of gravity and core of thistheology does not lie in the decision to create. Creation is not the lastof God’s deeds. It has in it the potential for the fall, and is thereforenot the highest achievable. This difference in the place and content ofthe concept of creation was among the issues which Barth himself indiscussion with Brunner pointed to as noteworthy differences betweenLutheran and Reformed thought.133 Lutheran theology can still think ofgrace as restitutio ad integrum, restoration of an original and sinless con-dition; in agreement with the old Augustinian line of thought, in theReformed doctrine of a creation covenant with Adam and Eve the ideaof the surplus of the eschaton, and with it the eschatological tenor, is

132 Calvin and Barth are both theologians for whom the theological perspective ofthe glory of God predominates. God is glorified in the salvation of his children. Calvinfelt he had to speak of the extent of election to life in a restrictive sense, and thereforehis theology appears so much more inhumane. Within dogmatic reflection however itis advisable to be careful with such judgements, which can result is a feeling of moralsuperiority. Even within the perspective of universal salvation in Barth’s theology thequestions are no less serious, human existence no less enigmatic, and the dark place noless dark! Barth also must give a place to the darkness that pervades life, to the reality ofsin, alienation, suffering, pain for what will not be fulfilled, was cut short, never came tobe. Within his unitary perspective he postulates the darkness in the idea of the Nichtige,which is connected with God’s positive creative will under a negative portent. But hislocating evil and sin in this way and defining it as the impossible and unreal as opposedto the reality of grace shows that Christian theology cannot avoid giving a place to sinand evil in some way or another.

133 See Karl Barth/Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 1916–1966, hrsg. von E. Busch, Zürich2000, 135–141. Cf. also Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, 616; ET: In the Beginning.Foundations of Creation Theology, ed. by John Bolt and trans. by John Vriend, GrandRapids 1999, 208.


much more pregnant. With Barth the doctrine of creation is however sototally dominated by and integrated into thinking about salvation thatcreation can nowhere come to be discussed as an independent theme.It is here that, so far as I can see, a difference exists between Barthand Calvin. Barth never intended the thesis of creation as the externalfoundation for the covenant to suggest that creation would have beensufficient in itself. For Barth creation is a provisional and extremelyvulnerable reality which, as he develops the idea in his creation doc-trine in KD III, is undeniably endowed with beauty and praises theCreator. At the same time there is a fragility to it, it borders on thevoid and is an ambiguous entity. Creation implies the possibility of fall,of risk. Creation implies man, a being which is not-God, an existencebordering on the possibility of non-being, which is exposed to a tempta-tion that is excluded within God Himself through his divine nature, butthat with regard to man can only be answered by the Word and com-mandment.134 However, Barth says in his defence, in no case can thisincredible risk be raised as an accusation against God, because He hastaken on Himself the rejection, the no that He has spoken against sin.Because in double predestination God himself stands in for man, letsthe estrangement come down upon Himself, He is justified in takingthat risk. It is in this light that Barth, later in his doctrine of creation,can discuss creation as justification: creation is good as it is. Withinthe order of creation, as space and outward ground for the covenant,creation is good, including the light and shadow sides that are givenswithin it.135

In light of revelation, the world of time and space becomes trans-parent with regard to the work of God, transparent with regard to theintention of the covenant, but precisely in the light of this revelation itbecomes clear that deliverance can never consist of restoration of thatwhich has been created. Brunner writes to Barth that for him creationis so ‘weak’, so separated from God, that creation itself, as creation,must already be delivered. Brunner’s insight was accurate. In Barth’sthought creation is so regarded as provisional, as separated from God,as an overture to His covenant, that deliverance can by no means beconceived as a mending or restoration. The heart of this theology liesnot in creation, in so far as that is understood as an untroubled andblissful reality in childish naivety. Thinking about and experiencing the

134 KD II/2, 180; ET, 165.135 KD III/1, 418–476; ET, 366–414.

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created world is entirely in the light of divine steadfastness, as that isseen in the history of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation is, Barth says literally,the deed by which God justified his own creative work of creation. Godtakes responsibility for the work that He himself has conceived.136 Thepossible accusation against God for his creating a world under threatis answered by Barth pointing to the fact that God in Jesus Christ letsthe negative forces called up in the movement outward come down onhimself. Double predestination therefore no longer means that peopleare lost for eternity, but that the threat to that which is created andthe actual estrangement is taken on by God himself. In this way Barthmakes it clear who, in his understanding, God is. Posited as a realityoutside of God, this world is a threatened reality. In the double move-ment of election and rejection God takes responsibility for this reality.The double decree of election and rejection is the background in GodHimself which becomes visible and transparent in the history of Jesus.

It is characteristic of Barth’s theology that the exalted, God’s eternalglory, becomes visible, and more, transparent, in the lowly, in thehistory of Jesus. Jesus becomes the testimony to that which God willsand of that which he does not will, of God’s yes and no. This yes andno do not stand next to one another as equal judgements; the no isa consequence of His yes. Because God chooses for an existence infellowship with man, He chooses for the creation of man; at the sametime He draws a line against that which goes counter to fellowship,and wills its elimination. The points of departure for speaking of thesteadfastness of God are provided by the resurrection and prayer ofJesus.137 These two elements are the windows, so to speak, the iconswhich afford a perspective on divine and human steadfastness. Thecontent of predestination is this: that divine steadfastness regardingcreation and the problems which accompany it comes first.

According to Barth, Christian thinking and life therefore can onlyunfold as an answer to this steadfastness of God. That God unveilsHimself in the history of Jesus as the One who defeats these problemsbecomes the foundation for this theology. Believing in Jesus, we read inBarth, means keeping his resurrection and his prayer in our minds andhearts.

136 KD II/2, 134–135; ET, 126.137 KD II/1, 135; ET, 126–127.


7.14. The critique of Calvin

Arriving at this point, we can try to understand why Barth exercisedsuch a vehement critique on the way Calvin spoke of Christ as themirror of election.138 The heart of the matter is that Christ is indeedreferred to as the mirror of election, but that subsequently the actualelecting still appears to be the work of God, dismissing Christ. Can itindeed be taken seriously theologically, he asks, when it is proclaimedto the people in the Church that they know their election in Christ? Isthe reference to Christ as the mirror of election not a pastoral mediumwhich keeps open the possibility that the real electing God is a Godhidden behind Christ? Then Jesus Christ is an instrument or organ ofelection, and the real decision about salvation or doom comes in aneternal, absolute decree that is separate from the incarnation.139 In thefirst panel the freedom of God is powerfully emphasised, and that ispositive. But the actual election is the hidden work of the Father. Christdoes not come into the matter when the issue is the content of election.The electing itself is a work of God the Father and is hidden behindthe concrete person of Jesus Christ. Calvin’s refusal to admit man tothe depths of God’s Counsel meets with the sharpest critique fromBarth. According to him, in this manner a space is opened up in thebeing of God behind revelation that is threatening, a space in which therejection, a ‘no’ to concrete persons can echo. Then Jesus Christ is notGod’s self-revelation. A revelation does take place, but God himself stillremains the Unknown. Barth meets this obscurity with his propositionthat Jesus Christ is the electing God.

In the historical space between the two panels however quite abit changed, certainly when it came to thinking about God and hisbeing. For Calvin, the question of who God is in Himself was notthought to be answerable. It was still conceived as a question aboutGod’s substance, as a question about the essential nature or quidditas ofGod’s being. All we knew of this essential nature, this nature peculiarto God, is that it was infinitely exalted above man, entirely different,spiritual. It was eminently possible though to say how God is in relationto us: how he presents himself to us, how he wishes to be servedand worshipped. For Calvin God is the one who is ‘our Father’ parexcellence, and in baptism and the Supper He enters the picture as

138 KD II/2, 66–68; ET, 62–64.139 KD II/2, 68–69; ET, 63–65.

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Father. That is how He wishes to be known by man; that is how Hewishes to be addressed: as an Father who takes the elect into his familyas adopted children. The questions about God’s substance and theinner structure of his Counsel are rejected as dangerous speculation.The final horizon for believing mankind is the will of God, the wayin which he makes Himself known in the mirrors of his instruments ofrevelation.

In the second panel we are in a different era. God as a personis thought about in frameworks and structures which were shaped byRomanticism and idealist philosophy. Increasingly the concept of ‘per-son’ is no longer thought about in terms of substance, but in terms ofa subject with self-awareness and active self-determination. In the eraof Romanticism and idealism the subject was the ground and source ofall expressions in life. All such expressions of a higher order were con-sidered as external expressions, creations of a person as a determiningand self-determining being, realised in his acting. As Pannenberg andothers rightly argue, with this development revelation became increas-ingly limited to self-revelation. The idea that God in His revelation alsorevealed matters that could not be situated directly under the headingof self-revelation was experienced as problematic by 19th century liberaltheology. This legacy has become the collective inheritance of Westerntheology down to this day. Revelation can no longer be thought of asthe revealing of values, of the state of affairs; revelation can only bethought of in terms of the teleological goal of God’s revelation, his self -revelation. Anything which falls short of being self-revelation does notdeserve to be considered revelation.

In view of these cultural-historical shifts and the need within theol-ogy to reflect explicitly on the concept of revelation, it is historicallyunderstandable that Barth takes the step to revelation as self-revelation.Once it is accepted in a culture that someone is only known whenone can trace his or her expressions back to, and characterise them asproviding insight into their person, then for that reason alone it willbe understandable that in the field of theology too the question mustbe asked about the relationship between the expression of God’s willand his innermost self. In the language of the doctrine of election, itmust be clear that the electing God is no deus absconditus, but that JesusChrist must be thought of as the electing God. If the expression is notanchored in the self, that expression is accounted false. The surprisethat Barth exhibits about the fact that in particular Calvin not onlydid not answer the questions which are here, but did not even expe-


rience or see them as questions,140 says less about Calvin than it doesabout the changed cultural and intellectual constellation in the secondpanel. This is not to say that the identification of revelation with self-revelation in the second panel is wholly and totally a matter of changesin intellectual history involving culture and mentality. The developmentof the concept of revelation as self-revelation can also be connectedwith essential notions in the Old and New Testaments themselves. Itis easy to defend the proposition that the altered constellation in intel-lectual history awakened a sensitivity which enabled theologians to seeessential elements in Scripture and think through their implications. Inthe 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 inthis encounter man, for his part, also becomes more and more a per-son.

In the second panel the final horizon for theological knowledge nolonger coincides with the will of God, but is the person of God, Hisself-gift in Jesus Christ. Barth attempt to prevent that the will of Godremain an abstract entity. Jesus Chris is not only the application inthe ‘search function’ for man seeking salvation, but is also the contentof this salvation. The will of God as the last horizon increasinglycoincides with a concrete name, and a concrete history: Jesus Christ.Only by reading this story and taking it seriously theologically as thehistory in which the depths of God as a person speak to us, will allanxious doubt be banished. In this history, above and below, eternityand time coincide through God’s grace.141 The question of whether lifewill ultimately still end in darkness, is merely a bad dream in whichman is unwanted and left behind alone in a bleak cosmos, is answeredby pointing to that which came close to us in our reality.

For the rest, the concretising of God’s will does not mean that thedistinction between God’s 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 thedistinction was not there, God would be absorbed into his relation toman and the world. The difference from the first panel is however thatBarth focuses this eternal will most precisely on the life story of Jesus

140 KD II/2, 119; ET, 111.141 B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de problematiek van

de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer enWolfhart Pannenberg, Kampen 1999.

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Christ. This story provides perspective and insight into the sovereigntyand glory that God has in himself.142 The agreement with the traditionis that Barth wants to hold fast to the unsearchable majesty of divinegood-pleasure. But he deviates from the same tradition by not consid-ering this eternal will as an obscurity into which we cannot see. On thecontrary, we can indeed see into it, we understand Barth to say. God’seternal will is transparent in the history of Jesus Christ. It has takenconcrete form there, and come to dwell among us.

7.15. Eternity, time and God’s acting today

It will be clear that in the above the relation of time and eternity hasbeen a constantly recurring theme. It is necessary here to briefly reachback to what was previously said about God as the Eternal One. Forthe concept of eternity it is essential that God’s being Lord of timeis expressed. The words vorzeitlich, überzeitlich and nachzeitlich indicate inspatial terms that God transcends in all possible ways the time which isfamiliar to us, is involved with the forms of our existence, encompassesthem—in short, is Lord of Time. For Barth eternity is not primarilya concept related to time; it is first and foremost a characterisationand indication of God’s majesty and sovereignty over the forms of ourexistence. That means, therefore, that any concept in which time andeternity are discussed as opposites to one another will from its inceptionfail to engage what is being said here. Barth’s actualism means that inGod’s acting in time and space man encounters the dominion over ourtime and space that is peculiar to God. The fact that in the historyof Jesus Christ God’s eternal will is made visible and comes aboutdoes not however imply that earthly history is only the performanceof a scenario that is decided somewhere else. Barth terms that a deisticmisconception. In deism the acting of God is something that precedeshistory, and not something which defines it in the here and now. Thelatter 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 existencewe stand before the God who chooses, determines, surrounds and callus, and who precisely in that calling and determining summons man

142 KD II/2, 171; ET, 157.


to freedom. Never on any occasion does God become a principle,He never remains behind in the past, nor is He an element far inthe future. God’s decree is His acting to us, so that every moment ofour history is defined and surrounded by the depth of God’s glory andmajesty.143

With his interpretation of the actuality of God’s eternal will, Barthseeks to resolve a dilemma to which the doctrine of predestination gaverise traditionally. The one horn of the dilemma is that the salvationof man in time could only be thought of as the outcome of a onetime decision lying further behind it. In that case the relation of God’sactive willing and deciding, and the decision as an effect of his will, isconceived as a mechanistic relation. The other horn of the dilemmais that one permits God’s deciding to become so wrapped up withthe existential situation in which man is put by God’s summons, thatactuality in this case means that God would progress from decision todecision and there would be no constancy or certainty. In the latter caseGod’s acting is coupled to the outcome of what man does in response tothe appeal. In this view, which Barth in his doctrine of election discussesas a view defended by his brother Peter,144 it is also easy to recognise thevision that he himself still defended in the first and second editions ofthe Epistle to the Romans. Election is there still a quality of God’s acting.In this period election and rejection coincide with the moment of faithwhen God’s ‘yes’ breaks through the concealment and the ‘no’.145 Nowhe breaks with this concept. After all, it implies a refined form ofsynergism, and does not square with the relation between God andman. If it were true, the relation between God and man would haveto be conceived as an ellipse with two foci, in which the human focushas the same sort of independence as God’s acting does. Barth optsfor a different image that well represents the objectivist tenor of histheology: the circle, with one centre. The primacy of God’s electingact is preserved in this image, while human acting is conceived asthe drawing of concentric circles around that one centre. In that wayhuman action confirms and repeats God’s electing. What man is calledto, is a life that has the structure of a corresponding answer, a life in

143 KD II/2, 170, 200–201; ET, 157, 182–183. A good illustration is found in the wordsof O. Noordmans: ‘Eternity is precisely the string that drives the arrow of deliveranceon to its target. God’s 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, 207–214; ET, 188–194.145 See Karl Barth, Römerbrief 2, 331–332; ET, 346–348.

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Entsprechung. In the image of the circles, God’s gracious electing remainsthe a priori of human life, the axis with which every point of the circlesremains involved.

The thesis of the actuality of God’s willing means that God’s decreeis a spiritual life charter, which on the one hand precedes all humanacting, but which does not have the nature of a dead letter despite itspriority. In Christ it is not only a revealed mystery, but also a presentmystery, which leads the way and remains close, as God preceded hispeople and remained close to them in the pillars of fire and cloud.146

This Counsel manifests itself in the history of Jesus Christ, is historyin the life of Israel and the Church. It is at this point that Barthemphatically sets the priority of the events, of the concrete history ofJesus Christ, over against a form of thinking in which God’s Counseland human acting are cast into a fixed system. This history is the realityof God’s electing, it is the history where the reality of God’s electing,his ruling and guidance take place. The earthly history of Jesus Christthus has its anchorage in the life of God, forms one whole with God’slife and relates to it in a manner which further eludes us. Eternity, thefullness of the life of God, thus becomes the power of the proclamationof the Kingdom. The asymmetry between God and man forbids thatman here, beginning from himself, creates a concept in which he hasany hold on the relation of time and eternity. Thinking theologicallymeans ascribing the priority, the glory, to God. Therefore Who orwhat He is cannot be regarded as a system, not simply embedded ina concept; it must be told to us again and again.147 The category ofthe story, history as narrative to be told, here comes explicitly into thepicture for Barth as a theological category par excellence. The historyof God’s acting itself is the object on which all theological reflection isfocused. Narration, history, the Word is then not an illustration, a figurefor eternal truth. The image, history, this narrative is the reality of Godhimself, of his ‘Being in Act’, of his coming. Knowledge of God ariseswhen men permit themselves to become involved with this history,148

when men, hearing and answering, take their place as participants.

146 KD II/2, 210; ET, 191.147 KD II/2, 206; ET, 188: ‘Who and what Jesus Christ is, is something which can

only be told, not a system which can be considered and described.’148 Especially E. Jüngel has developed this notion into a theology where the conceiv-

ability of God is made dependent on ‘speakability’. See Jüngel, God as Mystery of theWorld, 300.

chapter eight

NEW SPACE FOR HUMAN ACTION:BARTH’S VIEW OF THE SACRAMENT

8.1. Doctrine of baptism as mirror

To round off the second panel we will discuss Barth’s doctrine ofbaptism as he himself had it published as a fragment of his doctrineof reconciliation. Paralleling the discussion of Calvin’s theology, we willalso take a subject from the doctrine of the sacraments and use thisas a mirror to reveal the tenor and direction of Barth’s theology. Theparallel is not perfect, however. Unlike the first panel, it is not thedoctrine of the Supper, but of baptism which will be discussed. Animportant reason for this change is simply the fact that we do nothave before us a fragment from Barth’s later theology dealing with theSupper. There are other reasons, though. For Barth it was evidently ofgreat importance to once again speak out on the theme of baptism.In his Preface he explains that the doctrine of reconciliation, like thedoctrine of creation, would have been followed by a section specificallyon ethics.1 For reconciliation, a section would have followed on man’sanswer, beginning with baptism. It would then have been developedon the basis of the Lord’s Prayer,2 and closed with a discussion of theSupper. The introduction makes it clear that the context within whichBarth wanted to discuss the sacraments was that of man’s response.Prayer is accounted the basis of that human response, and it is thisbasic attitude toward God which takes on paradigmatic form in theactions of baptism and the Supper.

The choice of rounding off the examination of Barth’s view of know-ing God with a discussion of his doctrine of baptism is thus not moti-

1 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Das christliche Leben (Fragment). Die Taufe als Begründungdes christlichen Lebens, IX; ET, VIII–IX.

2 These fragments were later published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jüngel under thetitle Das Christliche Leben. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß. Vorlesungen1959–1961, Zürich 1976.

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vated by the fact that Barth once again reaffirmed his reputation asan enfant terrible in the ecclesiastical and theological establishment byhis rejection of infant baptism. It had been common knowledge formany years that Barth was extremely critical of infant baptism; he hadalready previously expressed himself on the subject in a document from1943.3 At that time he had already connected the retention of infantbaptism—and particularly the fact that it appeared to be a topic onwhich no discussion was possible—with the stubborn refusal to recog-nise that Christianity had ceased to be the corpus christianum, and acceptthe sociological consequences of the new minority situation.4 That helater, in the present fragment from 1967, characterised infant baptismas an ‘abuse’5 and once again vehemently rejected the custom, was thusnothing new. As he had done in 1943, he suggests that the retention anddefence of infant baptism, even in liberal theological circles where peo-ple acknowledged that the exegetical basis for infant baptism was shakyand open to dispute, had more to do with the fear of a sociological andsocial horror vacui than with faith. Infant baptism belongs too much tothe structural pillars of a church for which the totality of the populationwas identical with the totality of its members, with a state church or anational 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, whichwas in fact the capstone of the KD, is theological in nature. The struc-turing lines of Barth’s theology are radicalised in a direction which hasleft the theology which came after him with great questions. Is therejection of the sacramental principle indeed the final consequence ofthis theology? Is it even perhaps the final consequence of the Reforma-tion, in which all knowledge of God depends on the Word, and thisWord is characterised by discontinuity with respect to historical and

3 K. Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, Zürich 19473.4 Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 39–40: ‘Irre ich mich nicht, wenn ich denke, daß

der eigentliche und durchschlagende außersachliche Grund für die Kindertaufe schonbei den Reformatoren und seither immer wieder sehr schlicht der gewesen ist: Manwollte damals auf keinen Fall und um keinen Preis auf die Existenz der evangelischenKirche im konstantinischen corpus christianum -und man will heute auf keinen Fallund um keinen Preis- auf die heutige Gestalt der Volkskirche verzichten? … Wo stehtdenn eigentlich geschrieben, daß die Christen nicht in der Minderheit, vielleicht sogarin einer sehr kleinen Minderheit sein dürften.’

5 KD IV/4, XI; ET, X.6 KD IV/4, 184–185; ET, 168.

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mediating forms? Or can one with equal justification turn and go inanother direction?

Among the lines which structure Barth’s theology is the emphasis onthe difference between God and man. In his revelation God remainsfree. In his gracious turning toward man, in his holiness, he is neverdetermined by history. This means that the church or a social move-ment, a people or culture, may never under any circumstances declareitself the proud possessor of salvation and the humanum. In this respectthe baptismal fragment is, as Schellong has correctly argued, a truecontinuation of one of Barth’s deepest purposes.7 But the reference tothese fundamental lines must be supplemented with a second accentthat received increasingly more focused form in the further develop-ment of Barth’s theology. Barth’s early theology, his rejection of liberaltheology, was set out programmatically in two theses: ‘God is God’ and‘Man is Man’.8 If in his early publications these tautological statementsserved primarily to prevent any possible annexation of the word ‘God’and its content, now space is created for a change of course, to giveman and his subjectivity a place in the room that is freed up. One canread the baptismal fragment as a treatise that makes the counterpro-posal to modernity more specific with regard to the place and space forman. The baptismal doctrine specified how, in view of the participa-tion in the new being in Christ brought about through the Holy Spirit,human existence is broken open and man in baptism can commit him-self to and become involved with this new being.

7 D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong,Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, München 1973, 72: ‘Ich bin der Meinung, daß KD IV/4 …die Probe aufs Exempel ist, oder man begriffen hat oder wenigstens ahnt, was in dertheologischen Arbeit Karl Barths passiert und intendiert ist, welcher Weg es ist, den ersuchte. Es geht um die Absage an das Verwirklichen und Haben des Göttlichen—umdie Absage an die Vergegenwärtigung des Heilsgeschehens, wie man später zu sagenliebte und damit Neo-Orthodoxie trieb.’

8 For all practical purposes, these two theses appear in a report of Barth’s Novem-ber, 1915, lecture in Basel, ‘Kriegszeit und Gottesreich’, that P. Wernle wrote toM. Rade. According to Wernle Barth described the Christian’s consciousness in faith asfollows: ‘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, dasReich Gottes muß kommen, dann wird alles anders, 3. was haben wir zu thun, an JesusChristus 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 Briefendes Basler Theologen Paul Wernle an Martin Rade’, ZSK 71 (1977), 393–417, 406. Seefor a discussion my Anfängliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barth (1909–1927),München 1987, 71–72.

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Already in Barth’s early theology the emphasis on the freedom ofGod in his revelation, in the sense that God refuses to be annexed, isaccompanied by an equally strong emphasis on the universality of Godand Christ. Compelled by his experience at the time the First WorldWar began and by renewed Bible study, around 1915 Barth came to theconviction that the big word ‘God’, with all its meanings of whole-ness, deliverance and cancelling out alienation, might no longer beintroduced as an integral part of any historical movement, ideologyor church. The entities ‘God’, the ‘kingdom of God’ and ‘Christ’ areindeed present in Scripture, but almost as a sort of jamming apparatus,not as realities to be realised in human activity. That does not meanthat God or Christ are dead. Quite on the contrary! Even as his lib-eral opponents do, Barth believes that Christ is at work in the society,is the secret source of power for human searching and the striving forhumanity. The lecture Der Christ in der Gesellschaft, written against thebackground of a social situation in which a selection of groups andmovements were calling for renewal, resounds with the hope that soci-ety is not abandoned to its own resources:9 Christ is the secret motor,the origin of human searching. The difference with other voices thatare searching for the presence of God is that the divine, or the Spirit,can no longer be fit into the relation between God and man. The fun-damental asymmetry in the relation between God and man surfaces inthis lecture, so that Christ ‘in us’ is interpreted as ‘above us’, ‘behindus’ and ‘beyond us’. ‘The Christ in us is that which we are not.’10 Hereit becomes visible for the first time that the relation between God andman is to be characterised as a relation of non-identity. There are allsorts of ways in which this lecture can be read productively along-side the baptismal fragment. The reason is not only that baptism withthe Spirit is termed an ‘incommensurable’ element I am also referringto another aspect that continues to make the 1919 lecture fascinatingreading, namely the universal perspective that is carried through in alldirections. Christ involves everyone. He is free to be present with, andenter into relation with all men. What in the neo-Calvinist traditionwas discussed under the term ‘catholicity’,11 also remained a cantus fir-

9 ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ (1919) in: Anfänge I, 3.10 Anfänge I, 4.11 H. Bavinck, De katholiciteit van kerk en christendom (1888), Kampen 1968; ET: ‘The

Catholicity of Christianity and the Church’, trans. by John Bolt, Calvin TheologicalJournal 27 (1992), 220–251.


mus in Barth’s theology. In the struggle with natural theology regardingthe criterion and site of Christian knowledge of God, it might haveappeared that this universal perspective was forgotten. An appeal tocreation, to a wider concept of experience, is no longer possible. Subse-quently Barth attempted to comprehend under Christology all that forCalvin fell under the broader horizon of the work of the Spirit. And, ashas already been said, through Christology and the doctrine of electionBarth attempted to give shape to a view of creation and history. As amatter of fairness in judgement, we must acknowledge that the concen-tration on Jesus Christ as the only Word in life and death (Barmen) hasas its point the question about the criterion for knowledge of God, notits range. In the sections which follow the doctrine of God in KD II,within this new starting point it really does appear that a vision of cre-ation, man and history is possible. The doctrine of election offers thefundamental, substantive definition for the divinity of God. This meansthat man cannot overlook God’s proximity to all people in his Son JesusChrist, but must regard this first as a theological fact, and only thenin its anthropological and soteriological implications. The sending ofJesus Christ breaks through the isolation of man—through our humanisolation; God has come near to all, all of mankind are brought withinhis actual sphere. These are the fundamental themes that bring thisconcept of human knowledge of God under the denominator of hope.

More than in the preceding section of the KD, in KD IV/4 Barthwants to sharply distinguish between actions of God and actions ofman. The doctrine of baptism is no alien element, but a ripe harvest ofBarth’s theology. In sending his Son, God reverses man’s situation, andthe reconciliation and forgiveness of sins this involves is made inwardlyaccessible to man through God’s Spirit. Then it is up to man to respondto this divine act. Man lets himself be baptised, lets himself becomeinvolved. This distinction between the acting of God and the actingof man has far-reaching consequences for the place and theologicalmeaning of the sacraments. Barth breaks with the classic sacramentaldoctrines in which God is actively present in the administration of thesacraments by man, so that the sacrament is a means of salvation.With Barth, all the emphasis is placed on man, who permits himselfto become involved with the sacrament, and in this passivity is himselfactive. The subjective element is given room within the objective workof Christ and the Spirit.

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8.2. Developments

8.2.1. Regard for the humanity of Jesus

Barth’s doctrine of baptism reflects the development in his thought.The question which is of theological interest is whether the conclusionsdrawn by Barth are necessary, and follow as a matter of course onceone subscribes to an asymmetry in the relation between God and man.Within the doctrine of God in KD II the concept of the sacramentsstill has a full place. The humanity of Jesus Christ is termed the firstsacrament.12 This is not to say that Jesus Christ is the one sacrament.There is a place for the sacraments of the Church alongside this firstsacrament. As already emerged in 6.9, one can interpret Barth’s viewof the relation between God and man with the pair of concepts fromthe early Church, anhypostasis and enhypostasis. The term enhypostasisis intended to comprehend the unity of the person of Jesus Christaccording to the divine perspective. In Jesus Christ the divine Logosor the eternal Son is the supporting ground for the unity of divine andhuman nature which exists in Him. With Barth enhypostasis comes tocharacterise the dynamic of God’s veiled revelation in Christ. The manJesus is the place where God reveals himself, and in the event of therevelation he can be characterised as the Son. For Barth anhypostasis isindicative of the revelation: it refers to the event of the Word, outsideof which the man Jesus is nothing. In the first parts of the KD thehumanity of Jesus fulfils no role of its own; the humanity, like all history,is predicated upon revelation.13 All the space is taken up by the Godwho acts. There is no room for the question of whether in Jesus Christman also stands facing God. The stress on the revelation of God inChrist is in fact at the expense of attention for history, for mankind.The fact that in Jesus Christ God and man come together, and thattherefore the person of Jesus Christ can be termed the mediator, isactually pushed aside. In the later parts of KD there comes more andmore space for man as the partner of God. This can be seen in theterminology alone. If the first parts of the KD are dominated by thecategory of the Word, the later parts deal with Jesus Christ as a person,

12 KD II/1, 58; ET, 53.13 KD I/2, 178; ET, 162: ‘His manhood is only the predicate of His Godhead,

or better and more concretely, it is only the predicate, assumed on inconceivablecondescension, of the Word acting upon us, the Word who is the Lord.’


or with the Son of God who is also the Son of Man. Within his conceptof knowledge of God, in which the primacy continues to lie with Godas subject, Barth attempts to expound the revelation as concrete history,the history of Jesus Christ, which must be understood as ‘the way of theSon of God into the far country’14 and as ‘the exaltation of the Son ofMan’.15 Theological thought remains the ontological ground for faith,in an analogy for which no analogue can be identified in our world:the unio hypostatica as ‘the assuming and assumption of human natureinto unity with the Son of God’ is an event which is self-evident andunparalleled.16

The development in Barth’s view of the sacraments runs parallelwith his recognition of the humanity of Jesus. Baptism and the Supperare sacraments analogous to the anhypostasis of the man Jesus. For allpractical purposes, the only place for that which is human is as anexponent of the event of revelation. The sacraments are human actions,which by virtue of God’s free and electing act can become a means forHis revelation.

8.2.2. The one sacrament

Barth undeniably intended the fragment on baptism as a retractatio ofhis earlier exposition of baptism in 1943. It was not without reason thathe gave this earlier brochure the title Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe.Already at that time the title was critically intended. It becomes clearin the title how from the outset Barth intended the adjective kirchlichefor his dogmatics as a critical term which invites one not to declarethe status quo holy, but rather to repeatedly place the givens under thecritique of the living Word of God. In Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufebaptism is still called an Abbild of renewal through the Spirit.17 As anelement of the proclamation of the church its power lies in its being afree Word and the work of Jesus Christ himself.18 The way in which theconcept of the sacraments is forced into the background is documentedin the fact that in KD IV/2 he terms the history of Jesus Christ theone sacrament. From this point the accent is placed on the singularity

14 KD IV/1, Par. 59.1.15 KD IV/2, Par. 64.16 KD IV/2, 62; ET, 58.17 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 3, 8.18 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 11.

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of the self-witness and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Risen One ispresent as a force in history, and makes all things testify to Him. Withhis power He is assured of a response, He opens a way with peoplesand nations. Particularly in KD IV/3 this aspect is worked out in lengthunder the heading of the prophetic office of Jesus Christ. This sectionis therefore important for Barth’s later theological epistemology. Godmakes 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 ofJesus Christ stands as being a double movement. He makes creativeuse of two doctrines distinguished by Protestant orthodoxy, namely thedoctrines of the offices of Christ and of the estates of Christ. Accordingto the doctrine of offices, one can regard the work of Christ under thethree offices of prophet, priest and king; according to the doctrine ofestates, Jesus moves from the state of humility to a state of exaltation.19

Barth interprets the doctrines of estates and offices together, in terms ofeach other. The priestly office of Christ is connected with his state ofhumility, and the office of king with the state of exaltation. By sendingthe Son into the world below, God does something with himself andto 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 forman. 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 theheights: in the life of Jesus the outline of the royal man becomes visible(KD IV/2). Debasement and exaltation are both poles through whichthe history can be characterised. In addition, according to Barth in KDIV/3, there is a third aspect which can be distinguished in this history.The history of Jesus Christ finds its perfection, its peculiarity and itsdivine glory in the fact that He reveals Himself and makes Himselfknown.20 Independent of the question of whether this revelation will beunderstood and accepted by man subjectively or noetically, it is true ofthe history of Jesus Christ that it is in and of itself a communicativeand transeunt event.21 This history is not only light, it is in itself a

19 Cf. Heppe/Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, Neukirchen 19582,355–403: locus XVIII, De officio Iesu Christi mediatorio en locus XIX, De Iesu Christistatu exinanitionis et exaltationis.

20 KD IV/3, 6; ET, 8.21 KD IV/3, 7; ET, 8.


source of light. Put in other words, what Barth in this third part of thedoctrine of reconciliation says under the heading of the prophetic officeof Christ touches directly on the question of the way to knowing God:reconciliation is not a closed event, but a history which opens out fromwithin itself, which shares itself. Reconciliation, the significance of JesusChrist, does not still have to be applied; every application exists byvirtue of the fact that Jesus Christ himself is the Living One who opensup the significance of reconciliation. What does Barth do with this?In the following sub-section two manners in which Barth develops thisself-disclosure will de discussed.

8.2.3. The living Christ

We will first here consider his Lichterlehre. Barth makes a distinctionbetween, on the one hand, the direct testimony of apostles and proph-ets, the continued action of the Gospel and its effects, and on theone hand, lights which glow outside the circle of the Church andthe Gospel.22 The confession that Jesus Christ is the one Word ofGod does not, according to Barth, prevent God in His freedom fromproclaiming Himself elsewhere, outside the familiar circles. In Barth’sterms, Christ speaks this Word ‘directly’. The other true words andlights that men can descry extra muros ecclesiae23 in world history, amongpeoples and movements, do not take precedence over the one Wordof God, but can only witness to that one Word. Barth’s Lichterlehre hasprovoked the question of whether he really here is saying somethingmore than in the first sections of the KD. Is the Lichterlehre only afurther clarification of what was articulated in the Barmen Confession?Or does something thrust its way to the surface here for which thereis hardly space in his theological concept?24 Do we not here run upagainst the limits of the fundamental Christocentrism, and would theconcept not be better served here with a stronger distinction between

22 KD IV/3, 107; ET, 96–97.23 KD IV/3, 122; ET, 110.24 H. Berkhof, ‘Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und

Welt’ in: H. Berkhof/H.J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre, Zürich 1978, 36, 48, Zurich1978, 36, 48, is inclined to this view. Berkhof rightly points to remarks in the fragmentsfrom the years 1959–1961 published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jüngel, Das Christliche Leben,197 on God being objectively known in the world. This concession, which soundsso much like Calvin, regarding objective acquaintance with God in the world andsubjective ignorance of Him as a result of human slowness and fault, does not receiveany theological development.

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Christology and pneumatology? Whatever the case, the Lichterlehre is anindication that for Barth there is now more space than was impliedby the statement in KD I/1, which sounds so much like a concession,that of course God can also reveal Himself in a Mozart concerto orthrough a dead dog.25 Evidently he regards the question regardingcriteria for the speaking of God as answered now, and it must be saidto the Church and Christianity that God has the freedom to reveal histruth outside the Church. Therefore one must take into account thatthere are lights which witness to this great Light.26 In short, howevermuch believing Christians and the institutional Church may then feelthemselves cornered in modernity, theologically it is the case that no‘profane sphere left to its lot’ exists. It may therefore be true that whilethere are many people who live without God, within the concept ofman and the world in Christian knowledge of God, God does not existwithout man.27 One can detect a tone critical of the church in suchremarks, but it is perhaps more productive to note how much the motifof the sovereignty of Christ and of hope sounds out. Christ as the LivingOne continues to lead us and go ahead of us.

As a second development of this self-witnessing of Jesus Christ as theLiving One, we can refer to the 1843 account of exorcism involvingJ.C. Blumhardt and Gottliebin Dittus of Möttlingen, which is citedby Barth. It is the story of a young woman who is freed from analien power by which she has been overwhelmed and controlled. Barthconsiders it of particular importance that Blumhardt did not thinkof the phrase ‘Jesus ist Sieger’ himself, but heard the words from themouth of Gottliebin’s sister Katharina. It is a desperate cry, utteredin the midst of a struggle with demonic forces.28 This experience ledBlumhardt to once again take seriously the reality of the Living Lordand his dominion. Throughout his life Barth himself felt the appeal ofthis realism of belief, which in the midst of conflict places more faithin God and His gracious rule than in the powers, and in KD IV/3 heagain reaches back to it.

In this third part of Barth’s theology his a priori point of departureincreasingly comes to coincide with the name Jesus Christ, the LivingOne who makes Himself present. His theology becomes more and

25 KD I/1, 55–56; ET, 55.26 KD IV/3, 128; ET, 114.27 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.28 KD IV/3, 192–196; ET, 168–171.


more a concentration on and exploration of the history of Jesus Christas the Living Lord, and of His dealings with his people as a battle filledwith the expectation of victory.29 The critical function that the categoryof the Word fulfils in the prolegomenon of the KD is specified in thedoctrine of reconciliation as the self-witness of Jesus Christ. The samecritical distance that in the prolegomenon distinguishes the category ofthe Word from all human words, in KD IV/3 accrues to Jesus Christ asthe Living Lord of history.

8.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment

Barth developed the concept of the prophetic office of Christ into acritical manner of dealing with the way that this had taken form inProtestant scholasticism. He critiqued the inclination to make Christonly the Revealer of a truth or principle. That is too little. By that atruth comes to occupy the place of the Person of Christ and his history.Barth explicitly attributes to the Enlightenment the role of having beena catalyst for reflection on self-revelation as the content of revelation.In his eyes, classical theology continued to deal with the authority ofthe Bible, dogma and tradition in a rather naive manner. A criticalinvestigation of these givens, of their relation with the speaking ofGod, was lacking. According to Barth, a first realisation of the vitaland living speaking of God could be seen in the Reformation, butthe Enlightenment has to be given the honour of having forced theChurch to press on to a deeper understanding of that living speaking.30

In fact, Barth deems that the development of modernity, far from beinga misfortune for the church, the effects of which must be rectified as

29 The role of G.C. Berkouwer’s critique appears to have played in this connectionis 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 toBerkouwer, for Barth grace had become so much the basis for all thinking that it in facthad led to a speculation about grace, eternity and sin. Berkouwer’s accusation was thatBarth actually taught the resurrection of all things, and had trivialised the seriousnessof sin and evil. In his reply Barth shows that this had hit home, and at the same timeprotests that it is a misunderstanding to say that in his thought grace has to do witha principle, and not a living Person. See KD IV/3, 198–206; ET, 173–180. See alsothe discussion with the Tübinger Stiftlern in: Karl Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, Zürich1997, 80: ‘Ich habe es ja nicht umsonst als einen Kampf beschrieben, aber -als einensiegreichen Kampf.’

30 KD IV/3, 33; ET, 32.

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quickly as possible, is a way in which the church is being forced tobetter discern its identity.

It goes without saying that the effect of the gap that modern timeshave created between the church and culture is positively assessed.Because the church was being driven ever more into isolation withits message, it sought a new entrance to this same world. In order tospeak, it has to know. Furthermore, that knowing has to be a knowingwith certainty.31 Now, according to Barth, that knowing can only be acertain knowing if it is based on the self-witness of Jesus Christ. JesusChrist is the one Light of all lives, the one Word that makes itselfknown. The difference with the first parts of the KD, it would appearfrom this, is that the word of man, including the speaking of the churchin its preaching and dogma, is no longer characterised as a form of theWord, but exclusively as a sign and witness. In all its forms the word ofman refers to Jesus Christ; it is not itself that speaking. This points tothe way that Barth’s critique of the classical concept of the sacramentswill go.

8.3. Baptism with the Spirit

Previously, in Chapter 6, we already noted that modern systematictheology is characterised by a relatively large and conscious libertywith regard to Biblical words and concepts. In the case of Barth,among the points where that liberty can be seen is in his terminologicalspecification of the concept of ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’. Thereis indeed some connection with texts which speak of baptism with theSpirit (Mark 1:8, ICor. 12:3 and Acts 1:5, 11:6 and 19:2), but Barth alsoacknowledges that he has permitted himself some exegetical freedom.32

For him, baptism with the Spirit refers to a work by God throughwhich men become objectively and subjectively involved in salvation.Thus under this head fall both the objective revelation of the meaningof Jesus Christ in the resurrection and the work of the Spirit as thesubjective application for particular individuals. It does not mean aseparate gift of the Spirit that has an existence alongside faith.

In this way Barth distinguishes between baptism with water andbaptism with the Spirit. In contrast to baptism with the Spirit, water

31 KD IV/3, 34; ET, 32.32 KD IV/4, 33; ET, 30.


baptism is an act of man. By so separating baptism with the Holy Spiritand baptism with water, Barth has taken a radical step in comparisonwith the first panel. The doubleness that is so characteristic of theclassical view of the sacraments is abolished.

For the rest, with this terminological specification it is fitting to recallthe critical commentary that Jüngel offers at this point. In a certainsense the collective term ‘baptism’ is a confusing word to use for bothacts, because the meaning of the word ‘baptism’ is so different thatas a collective term it has become almost empty. At first sight Barthappears to want to maintain that these are two sorts of the same class,but that seems to be precisely not his intention. He is using the sameword to denote two entirely different actions, a divine and a human,which nonetheless together form one entity. It is however not easy tosee what the unity is that would justify the collective term ‘baptism’.33

The terminological problem does not stand alone, however. It issymptomatic of a problem which becomes visible upon examination ofthe content of Barth’s concept. He wishes to make a clean distinctionbetween the work of God and the work of man, so as to do justiceto both. It is vague, though, whether Barth, in his desire to keep therelation clean and pure, does not ignore the symbolic power that isalready connected with the elements water, bread and wine. Baptismand the Supper are actions of the Church which cannot be imaginedwithout the symbolic power that these elements have as signs, andthat they already had when they were transformed by the earliestcommunities into their own rituals. In the first part of this study wehave already referred to the fact that any doctrine of the sacramentsis interwoven with general semantics (4.2). Within the cultus the sign,the signum sacramentale, is on the one hand used to unlock the meaningand content of the sacrament, the res sacramenti. On the other hand,the story, the word, serves to focus the meaning of the sign moreprecisely. The cultic action of a sacramental event is already interpretedby Paul, being further defined in terms of God’s act in the cross andresurrection.34 That God can use the symbols of water, bread and wine,from the creation and ambivalent in themselves, is an idea that drops

33 Jüngel, Barth-Studien, 265.34 Thus, for instance, in Romans 6:1–11. Baptism does not bring about death for

the believer, but a dying to sin on the basis of the justification that the sinner receivesfrom God. What is accomplished here is exclusively the work accomplished by God inChrist.

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out of the second panel. God’s acting is swallowed up in baptism withthe Spirit. What does Barth mean by this?

Barth understands the concept of baptism with the Spirit as meaningthat an individual comes to faith. Put differently, and now in a mannerwhich expresses that faith is secondary, it is the event through whicha human being shows faithfulness towards God’s faithfulness to him.35

Faith, the fact that men know and acknowledge God in his faithful-ness, is termed ‘incommensurable’, and we are told it ‘cannot be co-ordinated’.36 We have heard words like these before, and they will con-tinue to appear in his theology. Once again the reader is made awarethat faith in God is not a possibility that derives from already existentpossibilities or capacities.37 It is characteristic of the concept of theologyin this second panel that faith is a unique, irreducible element. Faith inGod is not am expression of the possibilities of human existence in gen-eral or of man’s spirit in particular. The emphasis is on its irreducibility.Once the fundamental or irreducible character of knowledge of Godis acknowledged, there is indeed space to acknowledge that all humanpossibilities are used in the process by which knowledge of God comesinto being. There are also anthropological structures that are not dam-aged by, or have not disappeared in sin,38 but these structures are notthe means through which man is able to respond to God’s Yes withfaithfulness in return. Here too Barth is not interested in investigatingthe human capacities for knowing as such. The one thing it all comesdown to, the one thing that is fundamental theologically, is God’s act-ing, through which man becomes the free subject of his faith.

In his exposition Barth summarily reviews the positions that, accord-ing to him, have not succeeded in making it clear how one arrives atfaith, at partnership with God. He first lists the Roman Catholic viewof grace, which views the renewal as an infusion. The second view isthat of liberal theology, namely grace as the actualisation of humanimpulses. Finally, Barth mentions a third way that he associates withthe early Reformation view of Melanchthon and Luther: the renewalexists in a divine judgement, which introduces the otherwise unchangedman adjudged afresh and in grace: grace as a divine predicate. Barth’sown critical distance from the their way is interesting in theological-

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.


historical terms, because it at the same time means a distancing fromhis own earlier view in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. Inthe baptismal fragment his interest is in man, who as an empirical sub-ject endorses God’s faithfulness. He now acknowledges that all of thepreviously listed views contain a particula veri that however can only beintegrated if justice is done to that which is most important in the orderof faith. Faith is in the first place a possibility of God himself that pro-vides for man assenting to be a partner, ceasing to be an outsider andbeginning to take part in the fellowship not only passively, but actively.39

Thus Barth identifies a divine initiative which turns man around,making his response possible, as the only origin of the Christian life.With this reality in mind, one can use the terms realism and objec-tivism. The Christian life becomes possible in answer to a new beingthat is created by God in Christ. The images in which the Biblical wit-ness speaks of this new being are not merely images, Barth argues. Themetaphors of the new garment, of being born again, of the transitionfrom death to life, not only point to the radicality of the new state thatGod brings about, but it comes in them, according to Barth.40

Barth wishes to understand this turning by man which is broughtabout by God as different from other religious conventions that alsoinvolve renewal and change, but which he interprets as expressions of ageneral religiosity in which God or the divine is a normal componentof a coherent world order. We can leave aside here the question of towhat extent Barth here does justice to the self-understanding of otherreligions. The argument is obviously not phenomenological; Barth isarguing theologically, on the basis of the incommensurability of theturning about that only God himself produces. The intention is clear.Human knowing of a living God is not derived from being in general,not a conclusion on the basis of a desire for God, but a unique event,not derived from anything else, which is constituted by God himself.

Barth terms this new being as ‘the history of Jesus Christ’. What doeshe mean by this? First, the content of this term must be distinguishedfrom that which can be historically known of the earthly Jesus. Withthis ‘history’ Barth means not just a series of events that took placein the past. For Barth, ‘history of Jesus Christ’ is a theological term.Certainly, it also does refer back to events that took place in time andspace—in other words, to earthly history—but since their confirmation

39 KD IV/4, 6; ET, 5–6.40 KD IV/4, 7; ET, 6–7.

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by God the Father in the resurrection of Jesus, for faith they have cometo be understood as the history of God’s acting and being. This historyis the complete representation of the new being, because He is theone within time who answered the faithfulness of God in all placeswith his human faithfulness. That new being is the divine truth for allpeople, apart from the question of whether these people acknowledgeand accept it in their own life.41 This new being is the objective realitythat can be characterised as Christ pro nobis. Baptism with the Spiritimplies a second step, namely the explicit acknowledgement from theside of man that the new being which has come into existence in JesusChrist defines our lives. Barth characterises a Christian as ‘a man fromwhom it is not hidden that his own history took place along with thehistory of Jesus Christ … as the decisive event which establishes his lifeas a Christian. He himself in the midst of all other men can see himselfas one of those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what Hedid.’42

It is of fundamental importance here to realise the universal importof the history of Jesus Christ. Barth does not say that man potentiallyhas a share in this history. Man’s participation is a fact, a situationbrought about by God. However, through baptism with the Spirit,that which from the perspective of God we have pro nobis, is now anevent in us, in nobis. In an event faith becomes an actuality withinman, a turning of the heart through which man becomes a believer,becomes an empirical subject of faith.43 In his discussion of baptismwith the Spirit Barth in fact reaches back to what he had written inthe preceding sections on the doctrine of reconciliation with regard tothe ontological connection between Jesus Christ on the one side andall other human beings on the other. When God sends his Son, heobjectively alters the situation of being human. Barth’s interpretationof the incarnation continues to make itself felt. The primary meaningof the incarnation is not assumptio hominis, but assumptio humanae naturae.The Son does not primarily take on the shape of a man, but of thatwhich is human, of humanitas.44 It is the possibilities and givens that areinherent in our being human, in our humanitas, that God accepts inChrist. The early Church expressed this in the term anhypostasis. What

41 KD IV/4, 23; ET, 21.42 KD IV/4, 15; ET, 13–14.43 KD IV/4, 24; ET, 22.44 KD IV/2, 50–51; ET, 47–48.


God assumed was an impersonal human nature, the essence of beinghuman, which however only can have its existence in a concrete person.In the case of Jesus Christ this human nature has its concrete existencein the person of the Son, expressed though the term enhypostasis. It isthis assumption of human nature by God in His Son that for Barthbecomes the definite centre of nature and history. We have previouslyindicated that the nature of the unio hypostatica cannot be clarified byother analogies, but is itself the Grundwirklichkeit, the ground on whichall other analogies are possible. In other words, the irreducibility ofthe unio personalis already required that Barth regard the incarnation asthe one, unique sacrament performed once and for all, which can notrepeated another time, or be represented in baptism or the Supper.

It is well to pause here for a moment. Barth’s rejection of the sacra-mentality of baptism and the Supper does not rest on the premise thatGod really remains alone in the heights and does not take pity on ourhuman condition. He presents it here as a consequence of the solusChristus, of the uniqueness of the incarnation. The question he posesis suggestive and rhetorical: ‘Was it a wise action on the part of theChurch when it ceased to recognise in the incarnation, in the nativitasJesu Christi, in the mystery of Christmas, the one and only sacrament,fulfilled once and for all, by whose actuality it lives as the one form ofthe one body of its Head, as the earthly-historical form of the existenceof Jesus Christ in the time between His ascension and return? Is it reallynot enough to occupy it in the giving and receiving of this one sacra-ment’.45 These words would suggest that Barth saw the rejection of thedoubleness in baptism and the Supper as an extension of the discoveriesof the Reformers. The mediation of this one sacrament is entirely andtotally the work of God. The divine and the human become hopelesslymixed if one suggests that in the actions of baptism and the Suppersomething extraordinary, something supra-human, something divineoccurs. Barth’s desacramentalising raises no small questions: should weview this desacramentalising as an attempt at theological purification,in order to permit God to be God and man to be man? Or is it in facta limitation of the condescension of God, who is also free to mediatehimself in the ambiguity of the created symbol?

45 KD IV/2, 59; ET, 55.

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8.4. Baptism with water

Barth attempted to defend his rejection of baptism with water as asacrament, that is, as a ritual in which God’s salvation is mediated andeffected, with exegetical arguments. An explicit discussion of Barth’sexegesis of familiar baptismal texts, such as Acts 22:16, Hebrews 10:22,Eph. 5:25, etc., Titus 3:5, Romans 6:3–4 and Mark 16:16, would take usoutside the bounds of this study. I will limit myself here to the negativeconclusion to which Barth comes: exegetically, there is no compellingreason to expound these texts sacramentally. The cleansing and rescueof man happens in the history of Jesus Christ, and the New Testamentknows no duplicate of this event.46 With this he rejects the manner inwhich the tradition defended the sacrament with anthropological orBiblical arguments. Calvin and Luther broke with the anthropologicalorientation of the doctrine of the sacraments in the medieval church, inthe conviction that the sacraments had an explicit ground in the Bible,or more precisely, must have had their foundation in the institution byChrist Himself.47 Barth’s altered attitude toward the Biblical texts andhis acceptance of modern critical tools in Biblical studies clearly implythat he no longer subscribes to what is in his eyes a Biblicistic criteriaof that sort. It is important to note that in his critique of the classicalconcept of the sacraments it is a theological argument which formsthe touchstone, so to speak, for the Biblical argument. The theologicalargument is the insight that the only reality which can exist alongsidethe one new being that is reality in the history of Jesus Christ, ishuman witness. The classic view of the sacraments is characterisedby a doubleness: the sacrament is both acting by man and acting byGod. Calvin and Luther both took that over, although there are cleardifferences between them.48 For Barth this view arouses the suspicionthat here something is being lifted heavenwards that can better be donejustice to if one considers it exclusively as human acting.

46 KD IV/4, 140; ET, 128.47 Among the reasons Thomas Aquinas advances for the several sacraments are

the underlying anthropological structures: Summa Theologiae III, q.65 a.1. The sevensacraments are each in themselves symbols that form the bridge that runs from sen-sory and physical things to a spiritual world capable of being apprehended by themind.

48 In baptism the difference between the Lutheran and Reformed views is striking.In his Small Catechism Luther makes a very immediate connection between baptism


With Barth the rejection of the sacramentality of baptism and theSupper is accompanied by an astonishing absence of attention forthe relation between symbol and sacrament. That water, bread andwine also have symbolic meanings and are profoundly related withcreatureliness in all its ambiguity, receives no attention at all.49 He limitshimself to several remarks that make it clear that he does not intend togo in the direction of a doctrine of the sacraments that makes use ofsymbol theory. The water of baptism is chosen because water is whatone washes with. Water makes one wet; it does nothing more. TheBible offers no basis for a theology of water, Barth declares.50 Barth’sopposition to a doctrine of the sacraments such as that of G. Van derLeeuw, which observes the ambivalences of phenomenon and makesuse of them, is powerfully expressed in this rejection. However, I wouldsuggest, it is not clear why phenomena, in all their symbolic power,can not be called upon in a concept of knowing God. In the classicview of the sacraments the language spoken by the elements of bread,wine and water is not a language that they speak purely of themselves.Their eloquence comes only because they are brought into relationshipwith the history of God’s acting and are employed to open up andtranslate the meaning of salvation. With Barth however this possibilitydisappears entirely. How is it then that God acts? God acts directly, weare told. What does that mean?

8.5. Directness

The question arises of what Barth had in mind with his pronouncementthat Jesus Christ acts directly in baptism with the Spirit. Does he mean

and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism ‘works forgiveness of sins, delivers from deathand the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words andpromises of God declare’ (I, Baptism, II). In the Reformed tradition the HeidelbergCatechism follows the line of Calvin’s view of the sacraments by explicitly denyingthat the reception of the sacrament would be identical with the forgiveness of sinsor participation in Christ. In baptism man is ‘reminded’ and ‘assured’ ‘that the onesacrifice of Christ on the cross avails for [him]’ (Q. 69). See Dr. Martin Luther’s SmallCatechism (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 (NewYork: Reformed Church in America, 1968), 475.

49 See for example M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creationand Sacrament, Justification and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 57–70.

50 KD IV/4, 50; ET, 45.

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that in baptism through the Spirit no use of any instrument whatsoeveris made? This possibility would turn baptism through the Spirit into amystical event, not mediated by any earthly means. As it happens, theterm ‘direct’ is anything but simple, and Barth fails to explain preciselywhat he is thinking of.

When can we speak of direct contact? Is contact by means of a letterdirect? Is telephonic contact direct? When we send a message to afriend through a another friend, we would say it is an indirect contact.Then there is another person who is an intermediary. Someone whomaintains contact by letter could say that in this case the letters arethe means by which the contact is made. The contact does not takeplace without this instrument, and in this sense it is not direct. Yetin this case it is not the medium through which the contact is madethat is of decisive importance. The concept of immediacy generallydoes not involve the fact that certain technical means are used, suchas paper, ink, a postman, or an electronic infrastructure. The conceptof immediacy is rather related to the question of whether the contact ismade via a third party. If the contact is not through a third person, thenwe are inclined to term it direct. Thus in the case of a power of attorneyindirectness prevails. Power of attorney permits the person authorisedthe right to perform acts or proceed in the name of the person whogrants it. In this case, indirectness means that another person representsthe principal person.

In the case of telephonic contact it is clear that it is not the infras-tructure that is decisive in the question of immediacy. The telephoneand the whole infrastructure that is connected with it serves as theinstrument through which the contact is made. Yet in this case we stillspeak of direct contact, because the instrument acts as the conduit fora contact, by which a person to person conversation takes place. As weexperience it, the directness of the contact is paramount. We could saythat it is indirectly direct.

To return to Barth. Must we interpret Barth’s speaking about direct-ness as the absence of any conduit or mediation? The premise of histheology is always that there is a Church, which witnesses, and so acts.That would argue for indirect directness. In comparison to 1943, theway that acting is characterised has changed. We are told the church ispresent, ‘ministering’ and ‘assisting’. What changes is the way that act-ing is qualified. In the baptismal fragment this acting is now specificallydistinguished from the acting of God. ‘The church is neither author,dispenser, nor mediator of grace and its salvation. It is the subject nei-


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 meanthat Barth denies witness and service by men. The immediacy of whichBarth speaks, one can interpret, implies that he no longer wishes togive human service the theological qualification of a medium throughwhich God makes Himself present in a hidden manner. Assistance is notrepresentation. The concept of representation disappears. The intercoursebetween God and man has the form of directness, in which the earthlyfactors no longer are qualified theologically as representation, but atthe most as assistance and reference. One can regard this as relievingthe human actors. Human actions no longer have to represent. Officesand the sacrament lose their nimbus. Thus the direction of our ques-tion will also have to be reversed. Does Barth still offer the conceptualpossibility of thinking of condescension? Are there still sufficient possi-bilities offered here to draw attention to God’s using various means tomake Himself known, and taking persons into service as assistants?

8.6. Baptism with water as answer

Barth wished to emphatically distinguish baptism with water from bap-tism with the Spirit. For him water baptism is a secondary element inwhich man answers the new reality created by God. We now encounterconcepts with a power and significance that they did not have in hisearlier theology, or to which they had not yet developed then. Manbecomes a ‘partner’, a free subject in the covenant of grace.52 Mangoes from being an outsider to being a participant. The participationconsists in the fact that man chooses what God has chosen for him.We must not understand the word ‘partner’ to imply an equal com-peer. God remains the first, from whom the covenant proceeds and bywhom the new being of Christ is constituted. What is new here is theaccent. The relation of God and man, with all the inequality betweenthe two partners, is one of true bipolarity.53 Barth underscores the pecu-liar subjectivity of man in the relationship by the proposition that whileaccording to Christian doctrine there is indeed an omnicausality of God

51 KD IV/4, 35; ET, 32.52 KD IV/4, 5–6; ET, 5.53 KD IV/4, 21; ET, 20.

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posited, this must not be construed as His sole causality.54 The concept ofpartner implies that there is room for real intercourse between God andman, and for a real answer. Through the power of the Holy Spirit thehistory of Jesus Christ, which is revealed in the resurrection, is manifestfor a particular individual. Barth rejects the objection that God’s omni-causality and the freedom of man are irreconcilable. A contradistinc-tion of this sort betrays a way of thinking which places God and manon the same plane, thereby making them competitors. If one beginswith God’s omnicausality, then there would be no room left for humanfreedom. If one begins with the assumption of human freedom, God’somnicausality can not be maintained. In both cases, God’s omnicausal-ity and the freedom of man are absolutely antithetical, and becomeabstractions which then can not tolerate each other’s existence. But thisis thinking from outside. One only obtains insight into their polarityand mutual relationship by taking up the insider’s perspective of faith.It is the same point of departure that Barth takes in his actualism, bywhich the extremes of both determinism and a complete historisationare avoided in the doctrine of election. Dogmatic reflection has to pro-ceed from the meeting between God and man in Jesus Christ. Suchreflection 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 asthe other partner in the covenant.55

Barth has blocked every idea of a mediating function for baptismwith water. The acting subject in baptism by water is the communityof Christ, which by its administration of baptism acknowledges thatthe baptismal candidate is someone who knows Jesus Christ.56 Thecandidate is also present in this event as subject, because he or sheapproaches and wishes to be baptised. In short, baptism is only con-ceivable as adult baptism. The ambiguity that is characteristic of thesacramental acts in Calvin and that is anchored in the classic doctrineof the sacraments is renounced in favour of man as subject. Baptismis an act of obedience, a first 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 anintegral part of the doctrine of reconciliation.57 In receiving baptism,

54 KD IV/4, 25; ET, 22.55 KD IV/4, 22; ET, 20.56 KD IV/4, 54; ET, 49–50.57 KD IV/4, 94–97; ET, 88–90.


the candidate assents to the decision of God about his or her life, withits judgement and grace.

Barth founds the dichotomy and distinction between God and manChristologically. In his judgement, the baptismal commission in Mat-thew 28:19 is in fact an extrapolation of Jesus’ own baptism by Johnthe Baptist. Barth here adopts as his view an interpretation of thepassage in question which is defended in Biblical studies by form-historical arguments. What is remarkable though is that he transposesthis literary-historical judgement into a dogmatic argument without fur-ther discussion. For the rest, this form-critical manner of dealing withthe baptismal commission is perfectly congruent with Barth’s vision ofthe resurrection. According to Barth, the resurrection adds nothing; itis the revelation or unveiling of the meaning of Jesus’ life. But to returnto 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 whichthe man Jesus places himself under the command of God.58 In the waywhich he goes he confesses his sins. In this way Jesus applies God’scommand to himself and thereby is exemplary for every human being.Baptism is not performed on the basis of the consideration that it isa means of salvation, a medium salutis,59 but because it is commandedby God, ex necessitate praecepti.60 In the same way that Jesus testifies tohis obedience to God by his baptism by John, accepting God’s serviceand thereby fulfilling the covenant between God and man, so Christianbaptism 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 waythe 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 ofJesus’, which frequently occurs in the New Testament in connectionwith baptism, as having sacramental implications. He suggests thatthis phrase does not have to be expounded sacramentally, and cansimply mean to baptise with the name of Jesus in mind. With thisexposition he creates room for his own non-sacramental interpretation.The baptismal formula is not an invocation, but a summons to thebeliever. It is of great importance to Barth that baptism—and, wemight add, also the Supper—be qualified as an act of man. These

58 KD IV/4, 60; ET, 54–55.59 KD IV/4, 171; ET, 156.60 KD IV/4, 59; ET, 54.

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actions are not channels of Christ’s gracious work, are no longer formsof the Word. Christ is not the subject of these actions; in baptism asan act of obedience man opens himself up and begins on the way tothe Kingdom of God, or better, he opens himself up within the newexistence brought about by Jesus Christ. Human subjectivity, man’sobedience and answer have their place within the realm created andcontrolled by God. It is one event with two subjects. This is a visionin which the things of this world do not take place outside of God. Alldisorder and horrors in history may not in themselves be viewed as ifthey were the only reality to be taken seriously. They must be seen inthe light of God, who has come close to all men in the history of JesusChrist. The worst thing that the Christian community can do is to livein denial of this new being. Faith means regarding and accepting thewhole of human life, the darker sides no less than the bright spots, inthe light of God’s approach in Christ.

Can one accept this emphasis on man as the acting subject in thesacrament without adopting Barth’s rejection of the sacramentality ofbaptism and the Supper? In a critical sense, opposing Barth, the fol-lowing could be said: If God reaches us by various means, through thepower of the Spirit, through historical mediation, then the sacraments,in all their sensoriality and corporeity, could also be regarded as meansthrough which we are given a share in something that is not other thanthat which we share in the proclamation and in faith. In the hearingof the Gospel, in Baptism and the Supper, the community lets itselfbe involved in that history of which Jesus Christ himself is the subject.That which was said in the first panel can here be critically advancedagainst Barth. In the sacrament, as a condensed and sensory mediationof the story, we do not come in contact with anything other than thehistory of Jesus Christ, nor do we stand before a repetition or actuali-sation of the salvation event, but, to use Jüngel’s formulation, we comein contact with the same thing in a different way.61 The notion of thesacramental has to do with the fact that God’s approach embraces andtouches our spatial and temporal, physical existence. Should this notmean 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. Jüngel, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’ in: idem,Barth-Studien, 310.


8.7. The norm for humanity

The positive intention of Barth’s denial of the sacramentality of baptismand the Supper may be now be clear: he wants to take the character-istic nature of the acting of the community and the individual believerswith utter seriousness. According to Barth the view that baptism andthe Supper are in essence forms of divine expression obscures the eth-ical meaning of these actions. This leads to the human answer beingmuffled so that the peculiar subjectivity does not adequately come tolight. One can interpret Barth on this point as being the figure whosought to fully honour modernity’s challenge to take man as subjectseriously, and integrate the concept in theology.

His view has massive consequences. This vision of the community, itsoffices and the sacraments breaks with the hierarchical way of thinkingthat is so definitive for Calvin and the tradition he shaped. The offices,sacraments and the life of the community: all are the work of man,through and through, human answers to the work that God has donein the history of Jesus Christ. Barth breaks with the basis on which thesacraments, and also the offices of the church, are built. But man isnot left to his own devices as a result. After all, the answer of man willbe structured, because it will be the answer to the history and work ofJesus Christ. Man and his answer are situated within a bigger story, intowhich man has been introduced by the incarnation. Barth confrontshis era with the reminder that mankind must not be conceived inabstracto. The Christian vision of man is defined by the history of JesusChrist. Being human is being together with Jesus Christ, finding ourvocation within the covenant that God has established and brought toits fullness in Jesus Christ. Man finds his norms, arrives at his purpose,as he follows this act of God, responds to it, gives to his life the formthat fits with this act of God. The possibilities that accompany thatwhich is human are thereby actualised. It appears that the concept ofanalogy is productive in order to clarify the elementary structure of theview of knowing God and human life. When a man has learned toknow God as nearby in Christ, and has discovered his own life as anexistence that may be lived out within God’s proximity and sphere, itcan result in arriving at answers and going along ways that correspondto this structure of proximity. Answering does not mean repetition orimitation. In his own place, as a creature, in his own culture, man isinvited to assent to, receive and make use of the work that God hasdone for him. The theological primacy of the history of Jesus Christ

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as a history in which all men have a part preserves us from thinkingthat we must—or even could—establish the kingdom of God ourselves.Man does not have to be God, but man must let God be God. LettingGod be God is submitting to the nearness of God in Jesus Christ. In thehuman perspective, it is letting oneself be defined by this history withinthe boundaries of time.

8.8. The meaning of the term ‘noetic’

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 ofthe term ‘noetic’. As was said above, in his doctrine of reconciliationBarth speaks of the ontological connection of Christ with all mankind.The difference between believers and non-believers is that the formerhave knowledge of this connection and the second group do not yetknow of this correspondence. What they lack is not the real proximityto Christ. That is the hidden secret of every child of man. Jesus Christas the ‘great Yes of the goodness of God’62 is the One through whichevery man is made a christianus designatus or christianus in spe.63 What islacking 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’ fits with the propositionthat all salvation is given in Jesus Christ. All newness is contained in hishistory; nothing of substance has to be added. The work of the Spirit isnot creative, but it unveils and implements. Pneumatology falls withinthe circle of Christology, or coincides with it. In those cases where acertain peculiarity is ascribed to the work of the Spirit and it is thoughtof as the wider perimeter of the acting of God, as is the case in Calvin,the term ‘noetic’ is insufficient. Next, in Barth’s case it will be well forus to not define the term ‘noetic’ too statically. As was the case forCalvin, it is also true for Barth’s theology that for him knowing is morethan just an intellectual matter. Learning to know oneself in connec-tion with Jesus Christ and discovering that one’s own existence playsitself out in the proximity of the living Christ is indeed a dangerous

62 KD IV/3, 922; ET, 805.63 KD IV/3, 927; ET, 810.


knowledge. It is a knowledge that produces conflict. How dangerous itis can be seen in Barth’s handling of the Lessingfrage. Lessing’s questionregarding the historical chasm that separates us today from the earthlyJesus was interpreted by Barth as a denial of the fact that the Scripturetells us that Christ’s proximity to every man in time and space has longbeen a fact. In Barth’s eyes Lessing’s question was an escape hatch,because with this question people could provide themselves with spaceto keep the hazards of the proximity of Christ at bay.64 In fact, sincethen the questions of who man is and what his destiny is can no longerbe answered in abstracto—that is to say, without taking into account thehistory of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Church and the content ofChristian doctrine is that this question has already been answered, andcan not be asked again quietly and philosophically, as though nothinghad happened. The real issue which presents itself in the circle wherethe proximity of Christ is denied is the request of Peter: ‘Depart fromme, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’

For Barth then ‘noetic’ is not the same as having only intellectualknowledge of something. Anyone who learns to know Jesus Christ asthe Yes of God discovers how much his own existence in fact con-tradicts this. I propose that at this point there has not been even abeginning made in digesting Barth’s theology. One can say that in factBarth’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of election and his thesis of theuniversal meaning of salvation in Christ have had the effect of an anti-spasmodic, relieving the cramped situation into which the church andtheology had come.65 That can be assessed positively. But the point ofthis theology is only just half understood, and thereby distorted into atotal lie, if subsequently the necessity of communicating the Gospel alsodisappears under the table. As if it is no problem and maintaining a lie,if we close the door on this Yes of God! Barth’s irritated reaction whenit was suggested to him in an interview, that for him faith was ‘merely’a question of becoming acquainted with God’s eternal grace, is telling.66

In the first part of the doctrine of reconciliation we hear that it is onething to acknowledge the pro nobis of Christ, and quite another to hearthe pro nobis not merely as an assertion, but to explore its range and

64 KD IV/1, 320; ET, 290–291.65 For the effect on the Dutch situation, see C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 329–

365 en 533–592.66 See the conversation already cited, in Gespräche 1964–1968, 74–80.

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implications as man, and let it resonate against the walls of one’s ownlife. Learning to know is making the first steps on a way; it is a battle,even though in the light of the priority of grace it is a ‘battle filled withthe expectation of victory’.67

67 Gespräche 1964–1968, 80.

EVALUATION

chapter nine

PROFIT AND LOSS

9.1. Christian theology as a counterproposal

What is profit and what is loss, as we draw up the closing balance?Looking back over both panels, what are lines that are important fortoday’s theology when it comes to the question of what knowing Godmeans? What does Christian theology point to, and what does thismean for life as it is lived? First I would recall to mind the point ofdeparture from which we began in the introduction. Christian theologydoes not start from zero; it exists within an historic space and thereforehas to take into account the empirical fact of the Church, whereGod is invoked, where prayers are said and hymns are sung. It mustdeal with the fact that there are believers, half-believers and doubterswho, sometimes in spite of themselves, can not stop speaking of God,seeking Him, suspecting His presence, who are responding to an appealthat has moved them. How can that be conceptually and theoreticallyexplained theologically—that is to say, from within? And how can thistheoretical and conceptual explanation be of use? It seems obviousto assume that the theology of the second panel will yield the mostin such a closing evaluation. After all, that is closest to us; we arepractically contemporaries of Barth. We are ourselves an active part ofa cultural climate and intellectual framework for life that one can labelpost-Kantian, modern or post-modern. That already produces oneimmediate conclusion, which is of great importance for contemporaryreflection: whatever the different responses to modernity, this much iscertain: that Christian belief in God has lost its self-evident political,social and cultural dominance, so that the task of ‘accounting for thehope that is in us’ (see IPeter 3:15) is necessarily undertaken underconditions different from those in the first panel. Ours is a society whichis dominated by the realisation that man is alone in his finiteness andleft to his own devices. That is the context of this evaluation.

Does the evaporation of that sense of life in the first panel, that ‘webelong not to ourselves, but to our Lord’, involve only the loss of a

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burdensome idea and a conviction that has become superfluous? Or ismore at stake? Does this loss constitute a threat to humanity? Does adenial of this really do justice to man? What are the consequences ifthe horizon of personal life and the horizon of public space is no longerdefined by the story of the Gospel, if man is thrown back entirely onhimself and must write his own story? Or are these questions them-selves already a testimony to unbelief, owing their existence to a Euro-pean culture grown weary? Barth’s theology is a voice in oppositionwhen on theological grounds he announces that there ‘is no secularsphere abandoned by Him or withdrawn from His control [i.e., to JesusChrist]’.1 Nothing profane in its origin is abandoned! If that is true,men can look at their world and themselves through different eyes, andcut short the lease that despondency and lethargy have taken out ontheir lives.

To put it succinctly: Christian theology offers a counterproposal, acounterproposal in an agnostic climate, to a culture that believes thatit has been abandoned to itself. That was the tenor of the precedingchapters on Barth, and that is worth bearing in mind. Barth’s doctrineof reconciliation does not end up as a lament, but as a theology ofhope. Christian theology can fulfil that function as a theology of hopeif it provides an elucidation of man and the world from the recognitionthat God is. And, to recall another quotation,2 that not only producesa certain explanation; it changes things. Knowing God means a trans-formation of the world. It means that men need no longer reflect, butthat they have already been addressed, and thereby have become par-ticipants, figures in a narrative, a drama with various actors. Christiantheology therefore refers to a story in which God acts for the benefit ofman. This acting is not at the expense of man and the world. It rathergives it precisely the lustre that was intended. The story of Jesus Christprovides the possibilities for this life, in all its finiteness, as the objectof God’s grace and care, possibilities to once again learn to know theworld and ourselves in the presence of God. Formulated in terms ofdrama: by the actions of the protagonist the other actors find them-selves in an altered position, and they are invited to explore their ownpositions anew as coram Deo.

1 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.2 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.

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9.2. Knowledge of God and theology

One of the most obvious differences between the pre-modern and post-Kantian panels involves the relation between faith and theology, or, inthe language of this investigation, the relation between knowledge ofGod and theology. The manner in which a distinction is made in thesecond panel between the act of knowing God on the one hand andconfession and dogmatic reflection on the other differs radically fromthe first panel. In this case, that means that the relation is regarded asqualitatively different. In the first panel what we now would call dog-matics or dogma is indeed present, but as a human activity it regards itselfvery differently, and much more modestly. That perhaps sounds strangeand 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 superiorto faith. Still, it is true and worth the effort to recall what was said inChapter 6 about the difference in the self-image of doctrine and reflec-tion on doctrine. For Calvin, dogma, doctrina, is not a human given, notdoctrine; it is divine teaching. It definitely does not include all that ispresent in God’s thinking and willing; it is a deliberately limited butadequate selection of that which man must know to serve God, obtainblessing and live in a manner worthy of Him.3 Doctrine is not intendedto know all things; it is intended to produce to the right attitude inman, a sincere disposition toward God. Man can closely follow whatGod has to say in revelation in Scripture itself. The discussion of thedoctrine of election in the first panel afforded a striking example of thisidea. To our mind, Calvin may have gone much too far by mirroringelection in a negative decision which runs parallel to it, reprobation,but in his own view he was only providing a rational arrangement ofBiblical data, a deduction which one simply could not avoid. If we our-selves no longer make such deductions, honesty compels us to say thatthis is something which was not decided merely on the basis of alteredinsights from Biblical studies. It is true that the discussion of electionand reprobation in Romans 9–11 are categories in sacred history. It istrue that the announcements of judgement and damnation as found inMatthew 22:1–14 can not be uncoupled from the situation of preaching,debate, threat and denial. But all these altered insights are not enough.

3 R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101–117.

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They are themselves already a sign that more is going on. The pathfrom the Bible text to doctrine has for us become longer, more indirect.The character of the text as a human, historical product is prominentlyin the foreground. How the earthly, the human, can be a vehicle forGod’s speaking, an instrument in His hands, is raised for discussion inthe second panel. Barth provided an answer for this which graduallybecame still more radical. Must we follow him in this radicality, andis his position perhaps the most extreme consequence of the Reforma-tion choosing the free grace of God as its starting point?4 These arequestions which not only continue to make Barth’s theology interestingfor interconfessional discussion, but also point back to the fundamentalquestions for all Christian theology within the oecumene.

As we have said, theology in the second panel begins from a sharpdistinction between the reality of knowing God on the one side andthe reality of human words, texts and reflection on the other. Therealisation that knowledge of God is absolutely not self-evident runslike a thread through this thinking. Already in his early theology Barthcites 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 avariant of the same theme: God’s grace is an incommensurable elementthat cannot be coordinated.6 The uniqueness and complete originalityof the acting of God with respect to man recurs everywhere in thetheological structure in the concept. This peculiarity does not precludethe presence of God and the reality of intercourse between God andman, any more than it supports an agnostic vision. The structureof the theological concept is already in itself a continual reminder:God as the object of human knowing is never negotiable, never atour 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 ofGod is a reality, a movement, the secret of God’s own dealings, andas such does not permit itself to be fixed in words. Theology andpreaching can point to that mystery and bear witness to it; they donot 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, Olten1951, 32: ‘Wir müssen Karl Barth zum Partner wählen, weil in ihm zum erstenmal derechte Protestantismus eine -seine- völlig konsequente Gestalt gefunden hat.’

5 Römerbrief 2, XIII; ET, 10.6 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.

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It is not without reason that the pointing finger of John the Baptist onthe Isenheim altarpiece, focusing attention on the suffering Christ, isthe model for the relation that Barth conceives between theology andknowledge of God. Biblical texts testify to God’s dealings with man, anddogmatics also in its way points to this acting of God. In all its elementsthe reality of these dealings, of knowing God, remains a matter of graceand a gift. Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity in KD I/1, the doctrine ofthe analogia fidei in KD II/1 and the doctrine of election in KD II/2 arethree attempts to point, from different vantage points, to the alwayselusive mystery of the relation initiated and constructed by God, to abecoming attentive to God who seizes man and the world for Himselfin Christ. Dogmatic reflection must keep space open for this livingreality. That is the anti-agnostic import of this theology. Theology nolonger pretends to be a demonstration of this reality; it intends to beof service to faith and proclamation by providing a listening exercise inreflection, assuming an attitude toward the Bible that makes it possibleto hear the Word in the dialogue with the texts. That is profit.

I would wish to emphasise that in the presence of this second panel itis difficult to accept a view of dogmatics that isolates only one functionthat was very prominent in the first panel, namely a summary of allthat God had made known about things visible and invisible. Thefunction of ordering material, of distinguishing and connecting thecontent of belief, remains indispensable. But Christian doctrine anddogmatics as reflection on the body of belief is more than a classicalgarden where the paths and beds are laid out neatly and need onlybe raked and weeded by future generations. The word ‘dogmatics’ andthe adjective ‘dogmatic’ still call up such associations. Barth’s conceptof theology is modern in that it emphatically places the human andsubservient nature of dogmatic reflection front and centre. Reflectionon faith—and what is dogmatics other than thinking about faith ina more or less orderly way?—has to serve the knowing of God, tobe useful to the relation between God and man, to equip people toname the experiences in their lives, and to bring these into connectionwith the story of God. That can not happen without all the greatthemes coming into play, being examined again with regard to theircontent and eloquence. But doctrine, and reflection on doctrine, do nothave the function of binding the individual believer; their function isto point the way for people, to provide words and concepts that canhelp them unlock and name their own experience, and invite them tomindfulness. In this there is a parallel between Kant and Barth. The

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unusual emancipatory streak in Kant’s philosophy toward thinking foroneself is recoined by Barth as the consequently maintained invitationto discern for oneself, in the trust that the living Christ himself speaks,comes, presents himself and lets himself be known.

In Barth’s theology there is an explicit distinction made between thespecific gravity of knowledge of God as an event between God andman, the spiritual reality of trust, knowing and above all, being knownby God on the one side, and on the other the levels of confession,dogma and theological doctrine derived from this. The latter do indeedshare in that knowing, but at a distance. In the modern panel the dif-ference between the reality of knowing God and all forms of mediationand objectification of knowledge of God is explicitly thematised as agulf between the two.

In Barth we therefore encounter a thoroughgoing relativisation oflanguage, but this relativisation does not stand alone. All language weuse is human language. As we heard in the preceding chapter, knowl-edge of God therefore exists only as God himself, without assistance,lets Himself be known in human words and terrestrial means. In thisconcept relativisation is paired with high regard. The high regard con-cerns the fact that God makes himself known; the relativisation con-cerns human power over God’s works. Human language and words arealways and everywhere dependent on God’s Spirit, on God who makeshimself available for man. That results in an enormous relativisation,and at the same time a relief in the service that man can perform.This is a double movement which we can place in the profit column.Words, sentences, stories and concepts must always be interrogated inregard to their content, with regard to the event which precipitatedthem and which can again become reality. Beginning from man, God’struth cannot be made present, be made visible immediately. That isthe one side. But according to Barth this does not lead to there beingno knowledge of God. Certainly, in knowing God the unveiling takesplace in the modus of veiling. The veiling is not cancelled out in theunveiling, but the veiling or hiddenness is a qualification of the unveil-ing and revelation. However, it is fundamental that the veiling does notbolt the door to unveiling. Veiling and unveiling describe a movement,together reveal a teleological structure through which knowing God isan ‘undertaking which succeeds’.7 That is the other side.

7 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208.

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For the rest, in my opinion this teleological structure of revelation inBarth, and with it the reality of knowledge of God, require the exerciseof the utmost restraint in attaching the label of ‘postmodern’ to Barth’sthought. In any case, it is impossible to use that term for Barth’s con-cept of knowing God if postmodernism means that man, in his know-ing, fundamentally remains confronted with an unknown and continuesto fumble in the dark.8 Barth’s concept of knowing God indeed has adimension of the hidden, of what withdraws from human grasp. Butif postmodernism means the abandonment of a demonstrable centrefrom which reality is formulated and understood, then there is somesense to it.9 In that case it refers to the undemonstrable in knowledgeof God, to the constant openness to correction, and does not refer to aperiod but to a theoretical critique of modernity itself. The stress mustbe on that which can be said positively here: that which is veiled here,or the One who is veiled here, withdraws in the furtherance of a newrelation with man and the world. God’s self-concealment happens tofurther his coming.

There is however a question which arises here. What does it meanwhen in Barth’s later theology all human actions are characterised asassistance? How does human acting participate in the acting of God?The term ‘assistance’ leads one to suppose that Barth wishes to empha-sise that the role of man is extremely modest. It seems to me incor-rect to interpret what Barth has to say about the immediacy of thework of the Spirit to mean that God, in his dealings with man, worksentirely outside all that is human.10 For Barth human knowing of Godalso remains connected with language, with stories, is concrete in theBible, in liturgy and its confessional language, but he is vigilant against

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, 184–191. G. Ward baptises

the meaning that Lyotard assigned to the term postmodernism and applies it criticallyto Barth. See ‘Barth, Modernity and Postmodernity’ in: J. Webster (ed.), The CambridgeCompanion to Karl Barth, 276, 291 (= ‘K. Barths Postmodernism’, ZdTh 14[1998], 35,49): ‘But “postmodernism” concerns that which Lyotard terms the unpresentable, therepressed, the forgotten other scene that modernity both needs and negates in whatBarth will call its “will for form”, its absolutisms, its rational utopias … That whichcomes before, constitutes the other scene of and follows after the modern. In fact,this statement … pitches Christianity outside the stories of premodernity, modernityand postmodernity. Christianity … transcends our history-making with its epochs andperiodizations.’ In this way the concept is placed in the service of an indeed veryidiosyncratic supra-historical interpretation.

10 See 8.5.

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terms which would suggest God’s dependence. In neo-Calvinism thefundamental relativisation of the Bible and confession was initially—and I would add, quite understandably—subject to critique and dis-trust. After all, Barth’s theology abandoned the direct identification ofthe Bible as text and the Word of God. In the first parts of KD heindeed still speaks of an indirect identification between God’s Word andthe Bible. This is however only really to the degree that God has him-self taken these human words into his service. But Barth increasinglycomes to emphasise the human character of all Scripture, and aban-dons the possibility of any identification. By his later theology there isno longer any suggestion of even an indirect identification of the wordof man with God’s Word. The man or woman in the pulpit must notadd anything, however weighty the element, however striking the word,however solemn the gesture. Proclamation is bearing witness.

Barth has undeniably contributed to the desacralising of the Bible,church offices, preaching, sacrament and ritual. Has he ended up whereone inevitably comes out once God and his Word are accepted as freegifts, as a purely spiritual event? Do we find in Barth the spiritualitythat Noordmans, with reference to Calvin and Kuyper and J.H. Gun-ning Jr., once characterised as a basic line in Reformed spirituality?11

For Barth, all things that lie on the historical, horizontal plane arethe work of man. What one can learn from Barth is theological mod-esty with regard to human capacities and high esteem for the incompa-rability of God. Yet it is precisely at this point that there is somethingthat Calvin can teach us. The first panel is dominated by the reali-sation of the incomparable majesty of God no less than the second.Because of this majesty it is necessary that God accommodate himselfto the measure of man. Precisely this accommodation on the part ofGod, the movement from above to below, is for Calvin the foundationof his high esteem for and expectations of the earthly means throughwhich God makes himself known. Accommodation means that Godcomes close up through His Spirit, not eschewing the sensory and ter-restrial. In the first panel the gaze of the viewer is drawn from aboveto below, to the places where the earth is illuminated by divine light.

11 O. Noordmans, ‘Gereformeerd ethisch’ in: Verzameld Werk, deel 3, Kampen 1981,392: ‘This stance before God, without any mechanism, without arrangement, withoutsolemn 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 thewhole argument see A. van der Kooi, Het Heilige en de Heilige Geest bij Noordmans. Eenschets van zijn pneumatologisch ontwerp, Kampen 1992.

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The means through which God speaks and the mirrors of His reve-lation are in direct relation to His acts. God instructs man through arange of means, among which Scripture as his Word takes first place.Scripture came into being under the direct auspices of the Holy Spirit,and God’s will is made public in it. For Calvin Scripture is indeed thecriterion for knowledge of God, but not the only place where God letshimself be known. Under the guidance of the Spirit the whole of theworld that surrounds us becomes an instrument of God’s dealings withman. The heavens, the firmament, birds, fish, the scent of flowers, theseare the decor of the theatre in which Adam found himself. The naturalworld is not regarded as a product which came into being as part ofan unimaginably long, mysterious and unrefined evolutionary process,as the result of an interaction of energies, forces and chance. Scriptureis not the fruit of human reflection, not designed by a group or peo-ple which wished to promote its collective interest, but is the deliberatecreation 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 God’s goodness and care. In its everycorner this world bears the stamp of divine intention and providence.The sheen of God’s favour and goodness lies over ordinary life.12 Hereeveryday living is still traditionally a part of a hierarchy of life, sacra-mental.

How should be regard this? Is not Calvin too harmonious here, toohierarchical, and has his experience of life not become alien to us forprecisely these reasons? Or, on the contrary, does his hierarchicallystructured theology not preserve for us the realisation of the goodnessof God that one can encounter, precisely in the ordinary, the given?How different is Barth on this point! Barth’s preference for idealismabove realism, noted in the introduction, is significant: there is nodirect access to the reality of God. His theology is dominated by afault line, by discontinuity. Knowing God consists of breaking withthe ordinary, familiar, human. Making the difference between Godand man an explicit theme however also presents an opportunity tointegrate an insight into this concept that must be called modern, parexcellence: 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 confirmed, but it did create the conditions under whichordinary life in its splendour and beauty could become the subject of attention.

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want to retreat from that insight. Nor would I deny the risk. Makinga theme of the human nature of knowledge of God can call up thesuggestion that there is no real reference in the whole of being whospeaks and lets Himself be known. In this constellation, it can be readilyunderstood why the concept of revelation has acquired such a keyfunction in post-Kantian theology. That there is really something likehuman knowledge of God, finds its theological anchor in the concept ofrevelation becoming a theme. We will return to this shortly.

9.3. From cosmological rootage to self-sufficiency

We practice Christian theology in a public space in which belief inGod is not absent, but in which, from a cultural and sociological per-spective, the plausibility structures of Christian belief are diminished orhave even to a great extent disappeared.13 Whatever judgements onemay wish to make further regarding the manner in which continentaltheology has processed the legacy of Kant,14 that is one of the greatdifferences from the situation in which Calvin lived and worked. ForCalvin knowledge of God was still rooted in a more or less generallyaccepted cosmological framework which comprehends God, man andthe world in one overarching metaphysical concept. Nature in its var-ious parts is considered as pointing to God as the highest Being, tothe source of all good, from which all things come. We find the directrecollections of this in Calvin. The inward and outward world are mir-rors in which God in various ways makes Himself perceptible throughHis Spirit. Man is a microcosm which as such refers to the macro-cosmological coherence. Man is not just material. He is that as well,but that he is more than just material and has an immortal soul isto Calvin’s mind beyond question. Man in principle has access to thespiritual world through all his mental capacities, a world which cannotsimply repose in itself, but betrays its origin and basis in a higher, eter-nal world. The rootage of existence in a higher coherence which pointsto God does not mean that man has free access to true—that is to

13 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Religionsphilosophie,Kampen 1995, 35–37, 243–247.

14 For a challenge to this assertion on purely epistemological grounds, see the workalready mentioned by N. Wolterstorff en A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, NewYork/Oxford 2000, 3–63, 412–419.

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say, salvific—knowledge of God. Calvin’s thought is dominated by theidea that sin has had a decisive noetic effect on life with God. Brieflysummarised, his concept of knowing God is interwoven with a generalcosmological framework, but this cosmological framework is dominatedtheologically by soteriology.

Barth’s theology shares with modern theology the fact that the cos-mological and metaphysical rootage has disappeared. What Christianshave to say about knowing God no longer finds support in a generallyshared horizon in which God is the self-evident keystone in a conceptof life and the world. This process becomes visible in theology in theway that the concept of revelation becomes a key and central theme.One can only speak of knowledge on the human side if this knowing ofGod is not purely a matter of human guesswork and conjecture, but isreally the fruit of divine revelation. The disappearance of a metaphys-ical framework has its counterpart in the promotion of the theme ofrevelation. It is no longer accounted as a support for a general doctrineof being; an irreversible differentiation has been made between the cos-mological framework and theology.15 For the rest, that does not implythat Barth, in the manner in which he raises the theme of a knowingof God that is founded on revelation, has no debt to contemporary phi-losophy. We have noted the role that the neo-Kantian, critical-idealistphilosophy of H. Cohen played in this regard. Barth derived a struc-ture of thinking from this form of idealism which made it possible toacknowledge as theologically true and pure only that which is gainedfrom returning to the ‘origin’ and ‘the judgement of the origin’. God isthe origin which never coincides with that which is empirically percep-tible in human experience, but which indeed occurs in this experienceas a critical and productive element. Theological objectivity is achievedby going back to God in His revelation. The particulars of life in timeand space, of man, of evil and alienation, are subjected to critical exam-ination for their theological content, and reconstructed starting fromthe being and acting of God.

15 It is widely recognised that it would be incorrect to say that Barth puts paid toevery form of ontology. Ill will toward ontology as such is simply not a part of thisconcept. Exactly when theology focuses on the concrete history of God with Israel andJesus Christ for its knowledge of God, exactly when the object of theology therebyis the Word or story that God himself speaks in this history, it becomes possible todiscover the ontological implications in this way of thinking, which itself leads to a newperception of reality. For such an attempt see I.U. Dalferth, Existenz Gottes und christlicherGlaube. Skizzen zu einer eschatologischen Ontologie, München 1984.

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Barth increasingly expressed this a priori in the structure of his the-ology too. The starting point in his early theology, of human questionsabout for God and human incapacity to speak of God, is in itself nota sign of a natural theology in which men try to find traces of Godoutside of revelation. In the dialectic period the human demand, thesearch for meaning and life is considered a signal of the hidden activ-ity of Christ.16 Barth increasingly removed from his theology all thatwas a reminder of this starting point at the existential situation of man.The theme of the incapacity of man is no longer the point of depar-ture in Kirchliche Dogmatik. The theology of Barth’s principle work isthus so much of a model for the second panel, because it begins withthe acknowledgement that one can only speak of knowledge of Godunder the condition of God’s self-revelation. What was self-evident inthe first panel, namely that God through his Spirit spoke through themouths of the prophets and apostles and confirmed his Word by signs,in the second panel becomes the theme of the question about the basisof knowledge of God. That is to say, knowing God is only possible andreal under the condition that God has revealed himself. Outside of that,it is nonsense.

9.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation:guarantee for knowledge of God

How are we to appraise this making of the concept of revelation asa theme, indeed a principle, in the second panel? Is it something tobe retained? Should we reject it because of its authoritarian implica-tions? The critique by W. Pannenberg is well known. He has repeatedlypointed out that in the post-Kantian context the appeal to ‘revelation’can not be regarded as anything other than a sublime form of sub-jectivism.17 Others, such as the Dutch theologian H.M. Kuitert, havejoined in this critique and tried to find a way out through seekinga criterion for good religion, for the truth of statements about God,‘because all statements about above come from below, even the state-

16 See ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfänge der dialektischenTheologie, Teil I, München (Kaiser) 19774, 3–37, for example. 4: ‘Christ der Retter istda—sonst wäre die Frage nicht da, die der heimliche Sinn all der Bewegungen unsererZeit ist …’

17 For example W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie. Bd. I, 142; ET, 127.

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ment that something comes from above.’18 The distance that has grownup in the culture of the Enlightenment with regard to all appeals todivine authority, and that was also posited as such in Barth’s concept,echoes through this aphorism. But does it get us anywhere? Appliedconsistently, it ultimately becomes meaningless and negates all religion,all affection, all life. It is a screw that ultimately turns but no longerholds. Even if one sustains an approach from history and comparativereligion, based on texts and experience, for as long as possible, onemust at some moment ask the question of their truth content. At somepoint one finds oneself facing the question of whether ‘god’ is the prod-uct of man’s creative faculties, of religious need, or whether there isa real referent.19 The word ‘revelation’ is, so to speak, the other sideof the coin of ‘feeling spoken to’. In his concept of knowing God Barthtook this step in all its radicality: knowledge of God is only true and realunder the assumption that God himself is speaking, comes, makes Him-self present in all sorts of ways, reveals Himself and in this way makesHimself 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 profitof Barth’s 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 ofbooks, each of which begins in the field of the history of religions and ends in the fieldof Christian doctrine. In the repetition however it also becomes clear that in fact eachtime two books are being written which are published inside one cover, namely oneon history of religion and one on dogma, in which the assertions that are made in thedogmatic section are no less reflections of subjective belief than what Barth is accusedof. In a recent book, Over religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars, Baarn 2000, 188 hearrives at the experience of ‘feeling himself spoken to’ as the core and germ of Christianfaith.

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 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York 1973 andG.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia1984, in taking the nature of Christian faith as a cultural-liturgical phenomenon asits starting point, is in danger of becoming totally uninteresting theologically. Anapproach of this sort regards religion—and Christian religion—primarily as a humanconstruction, and undoubtedly this perspective leads to a multitude of valuable insightsregarding the anthropological and cultural function of religion. Christian faith affords,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 canalso however ignore the most fundamental assertion of Christian belief, namely thatthe rite, the prayer, the act at their deepest honour God and do justice to Him. In aculture where the attempt is made to define and understand all phenomena exclusively

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the circulus veritatis Dei, in a totally consequent manner, while pointing toits vulnerability.

The profit from Barth’s concept lies in his having consistently takenthe fundamental theological insight of God’s revelation as the point ofdeparture for his theology. Knowledge of God finds its final basis innothing other than in God himself. That does not exclude elements increation playing a role in knowing God. The doctrine of the analogiafidei which Barth developed in the first parts of KD and which in thesubsequent parts he gradually elaborated into the analogia relationis offersthe possibility for anthropological and cultural phenomena to also havea function as witnesses. Quite properly, other theologians have followedBarth in this.

I began this section with a positive evaluation and acknowledgementof the function of the concept of revelation. That said, there is how-ever also room for critique. It can not be denied that the concept ofself-revelation as principle of doctrine has become a shibboleth in con-temporary theology. It is familiar to the initiates, and opaque to therest. Without further explanation, the term cuts corners and is unclear.What threatens to remain unmentioned are the multiplicity of ways andmeans by which God relates to man and knowledge of God comes intobeing.

9.5. The place of the faculties of knowing

What are the paths by which we arrive at knowledge of God? Is itworthwhile to begin with a broad concept of experience, as is forinstance the case in ‘Reformed epistemology’? According to this episte-mological theory it is possible to start with a wide range of sensory andmental faculties, which if functioning well produce trustworthy knowl-edge.21 This approach to knowledge does not mean that all that peopleclaim to be knowledge is warranted knowledge. This perspective doeshave the advantage that human knowledge cannot be reduced to a nar-rowly scientific or instrumental understanding of knowledge. There isa wide range of various kinds of faculties which all play a fundamentalrole in the acquisition of knowledge.

in terms of human actions and capacities, theology, should it join in this point ofdeparture, is doomed to speak of God only between inverted commas.

21 See A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, New York/Oxford 2000.

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It is characteristic of Barth that he avoids the general epistemolog-ical debate as much as possible. The goal of his theology is a strictlytheological judgement regarding Christian knowledge of God. He doesacknowledge that humans are indeed equipped with faculties for gath-ering knowledge, but this acknowledgement plays no fundamental rolein his theology.22 The discussion of the problem of human knowledge ofGod by way of a theory of capacities is tainted by its association withexperience-based theology in the line of Schleiermacher and W. Herr-mann. The question about human faculties is identified with naturaltheology, where man searches for points of anchorage for faith out-side of the acting of God. As a student Barth had learned from Cohenthat human faculties had to be regarded as the abstract conditions forhuman culture. Therefore already in his early theology the theologicalcentre of gravity lay totally in the living reality of faith itself, in whichman discovered himself as being in proximity to God, as being bornealong in the Gottesgeschichte. In KD II/1 this theological method is givenform as Barth begins with the reality of the ‘true knowledge of God’where man stands before God and God before man. The reality of faithis not anchored in a general epistemology, but founded in a Trinitarianand Christological argument. In conformity with that point of depar-ture, Barth has localised revelation, the place where human knowledgeof God comes into being, in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ stands for theplace where God makes Himself known. He is the symbol, the uniquesacrament that speaks for God. Barth does not intend this to deny thatother people also have knowledge of God; he only intends to focus thetheological relationships sharply. Theologically, all of our knowledge ofGod can only be considered true when it is thought of as participationin God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Outside of that first sacrament ofJesus Christ there are indeed extensions, premonitions and sequels, butthese extensions are real because God makes Himself present in thetestimony of men, of Israel and the Church. In KD II/1 Jesus Christis designated as the first locus and, more important, the anchorage forChristian knowledge of God. The truth of human knowledge of Godhas its foundation in His history.

As we said, with Barth this rigorous theological anchorage takes con-ceptual form in his interpretation of the doctrine of enhypostasis and

22 For a development of this, see C. van der Kooi, ‘The Assurance of Faith: ATheme in Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemology’, NeueZeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 40 (1998), 77–92.

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anhypostasis. Negatively, these concepts are intended to say that no ele-ment in this world whatsoever, not even the man Jesus, is in itself capa-ble of revealing God and leading to the knowledge of God. As a prin-ciple, all things are insufficient. For knowledge of God, it is necessarythat God reveal himself. In Calvin we still find an interest in the vari-ous faculties of knowing because they are the channels which are linkswith God and the invisible world, even if man, under the influenceof his alienation from God, suffers from what one might call a seri-ous form of blindness. With Barth interest in a theory of epistemologyhas been entirely sidelined. Or better: interest in reflection on humancapacities has disappeared from the pitch, onto the terraces. The realgame is being played on a theological pitch, whereby only the fact thatthere are human faculties and that they are in principle insufficient,count as boundary conditions for the theological debate. The ques-tion of what these faculties are and how they are called upon in ourknowing of God, is irrelevant. Against Brunner’s interest in man as theformal image of God, Barth says merely that it is entirely self-evidentthat man is man, and not a cat.23 In other words, according to Barth,that human beings possess certain capacities is beyond doubt, but itis theologically uninteresting. In agreement with neo-Kantian philoso-phy this is regarded as purely descriptive of various human functions,belonging to human self-definition. With this, as we said, Barth takesover an image of what it means to be human that has its roots in mod-ern subjectivity thinking. The point of departure is the human subject,which through capacities of all sorts defines itself, is founded on itself,and gives shape to its own existence. Of course, this formal definition ofwhat it means to be human still provides no answer to the question ofhuman identity. According to Barth, investigation of the cognitive facil-ities, into psychological and pedagogical data in no way helps one togo further in the question about knowing God. Knowledge of God is amatter of grace, and theologically can be identified with the justificationof sinners.24 Where men learn to know God, where God reveals himselfin the countenance of Christ, is where men come into contact with sal-vation, with the most unexpected, new and surprising thing which canhappen to them. That is what Barth intends when he grounds knowl-edge of God in grace or defines it as the most incommensurable event,‘whereby everything [man] was before or is apart from this, though

23 K. Barth, Nein. Antwort an Emil Brunner, München 1934, 25.24 KD I/1, 2; ET, 4.

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not expunged, is totally relativised, bracketed, and overshadowed’.25 Ata conceptual level Barth’s notion of knowledge of God testifies to thesurprise and discovery that can overcome people when they perceivethemselves as creatures on whom God’s eye has fallen, who have beenknown, who are no longer alone by themselves. That is where the profitof this concept lies. That Barth’s theology gives minimal attention tothe human faculties that play a role in faith coming into being, andmaximum attention for that which is basic and constitutive in a the-ological perspective, namely the work of the Holy Spirit, thus has aninternal-theological ground. The general-epistemological stands in theshadow of what must be said theologically. It is a form of theologicalascesis. In the following section we will clarify this ascesis further, inorder to critique it.

9.6. The theological element

In his later work Barth radicalises the fundamental distinction betweenGod and man which defines the structure of his whole theology. In thefirst sections of KD the proclamation of the church in preaching canstill coincide in an indirect way with the Word of God itself,26 in thedoctrine of baptism the lines from the first portions of the doctrine ofreconciliation are extended: the acting of the church is testimony. Whatmen do, what the community does in all its expressions and actions, aretermed assistance, aiding and abetting. The real work through whichman is reached and comes to know God takes place in the immediacyof God’s acting. We do not have to take the meaning of immediacy hereas if Barth denied that we come to know God within a web of humanrelations and events—in other words, through education, through thestories of others, through liturgy and music, in short through witness inhistory by concrete individuals. In the way that God deals with man,in His coming, these means are however not constitutive, but only ofrelative importance. It is a relation that is indirectly direct.

An important difference between the two panels is to be found inthe scant interest shown in human capacities, and the rigorous concen-

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 andaccepted as speech in and by which God Himself speaks …’

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tration on the theological element in knowledge of God. Anthropolog-ical, psychological and biological factors are indeed found in Barth’stheology, but officially only under the discipline of a theological judge-ment. A strong distinction is made between the theological and thenon-theological.

How different matters are in this regard in the first panel! For Calvinknowledge of God and its ground, structure and development can in acertain sense be indifferently spoken of in connection with created—inother words, cosmological, biological, psychological and pedagogical—structures and arrangements. We find this in the metaphors used tospeak of the life of man in relation to God, his fellow man and himself.Metaphors of the theatre, school, pilgrimage, exile in a foreign land,the metaphor of God as a father, as an adoptive parent, as a motherwith a baby at her breast, and of the unfathomable depths into which amortal falls should he encounter God as his Judge in the severity of lifeand the chaos of his own psyche, are not merely decorative in Calvin,not adornment which could be left out. The metaphors and images areexpressions of a theological perspective, namely that the Spirit seeks usin created structures and approaches us in that way. The metaphor ofthe theatre stands for the space in which we are actor and spectator,of the school for the interest in the phases of life and growth, that ofthe exile for the intense alienation which can overtake man and thedesire that drives him as a pilgrim. Not to mention the frequent imageof adoption, referring to the surprising fact that men do have a homethey can go, a table to which they can pull up their chair, and as aparticularisation of this, the image of the wet nurse: God as the giverof what is needed first, and most radically. These are images that arefull of implicit attention for the biological and psychological, for theaffective elements in knowledge of God.

The presence of such picturesque and metaphorical elements is notonly a result of biographical and cultural peculiarities. In part followingon from the study by W. Bouwsma on Calvin, recently there have beenthe expectable claims made regarding Calvin’s person and his psycho-logical make-up.27 Although the dangers of psychologising should notbe underestimated, it is not wise to avoid questions about the connec-

27 See Oberman, Calvin’s Legacy, 125–134; Selderhuis, God in het midden, 23–48. Seealso A.J. Jelsma, De ziel van Calvijn, Kampen 1998, who for the rest does not escape anextremely pedantic tone. For a critical consideration of the literary basis for Bouwsma’sthesis, see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 79–98.

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tion between a certain theology and psychological aspects. It is not hardto defend the fact that the web of sociological, anthropological, psycho-logical connections within which we live are also theologically impor-tant. With Barth the emphasis on intellectuality and the immediacy ofthe Word is so strong that its ‘physicality’, its relation to our own lifehistories, is, to my mind, undervalued. Theologically, all these thingsstill only ‘assist’. That the ‘physicality’ of the world in which we livecan also become an instrument in God’s hand in its attendant role, andthat in the sphere of influence of the Word it can begin to speak in avery real manner, thereby taking on a sacramental function, assisting inunlocking the mystery, is insufficiently expressed in his theology. Thatthe Word of God is also ‘natural-physical’, enjoys sacramental medi-ation, is not something to be ashamed of, a pudendum,28 is a concessionwhich in the first parts of KD is still at the edge of the table; by KD IV/4it has fallen off the edge. For all the space that Barth in his doctrine ofbaptism wants to give to man as a subject of his history, the theologi-cal structure continues to be defined by the insight that man may notmake that which is human, that which comes from his own life history,a factor that actually overshadows or annexes divine action.

In Calvin’s theology the connections and factors are used theologi-cally. Calvin makes a theme of the way to faith which men take. Thepaths along which man comes to the realisation of God’s power, God’scare, God’s command and justice, and is brought by the Holy Spirit asan inward preceptor to embrace Jesus Christ, have a fundamental placein his theology. God deals with man in a dynamic involvement of Wordand Spirit.

9.7. Word and Spirit

With the paired concepts Word and Spirit, derived from Calvin’s theol-ogy, I take up two words with which some justice may be done to theway to knowing God and its actual intertwinement with human experi-ence. The linking of these two concepts goes farther toward expressingthe historic involvement of God’s turn toward man, and the diversityand plurality of various forms of revelation which arise from it, thandoes the single concept of self-revelation. The dominant position of the

28 For example KD I/1, 138; ET, 134.

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concept of self-revelation with Barth and in contemporary theology isthe result of the thought that all approach by God at its deepest coin-cides with a relation in which He is not only the subject, but in whichHe also is entirely present as object. God holds nothing of Himselfback in His relation to man. The concept of self-revelation is to beassessed as a word that stands for the personal nature of the relationGod creates, for the relationality of knowledge of God, and for God’sunconditional commitment to his relation to man. It is to be under-stood as a definitive putting paid to a deus absconditus, a God who infact still remains an unknown entity behind his revelation. We can citeseveral Biblical texts, such as Matthew 11:27, John 1:1, John 1:18 andHebrews 1:1. With these texts in mind, one can indeed speak of God’sself-revelation in Jesus Christ. God declares Himself in Jesus Christ,commits Himself to His history, the history of the Cross. But as a termfor all revelation, this does not express the fact that many forms ofthe approach of God to man do not have Him Himself as their pri-mary content, but rather His will, His care, His grace, His command,His demand for obedience, judgement and promise. In short, God isindeed the subject in all His speaking, but not necessarily the object.What men come into contact with in their lives is a multitude of ideas,notions, experiences of astonishment, perplexity and joy, an appeal. Itis the task of theology to make this varied palette of experiences trans-parent, identifiable, perhaps not immediately but at least in retrospect,as moments in which we came in touch with God’s majesty, command,care, protest, wrath, promise. It is the task of theology to foster a criticalattention to how in this varied palette of experiences we encounter Godas Father, as Son and as Spirit. The pair of concepts, Word and Spirit,fit better with this diversity, this school, than only the concept of Wordor self-revelation.

In their continual involvement with each other, Word and Spiritdescribe the force-field of God’s acting. The concept of ‘Word’ has todo with the words of the prophets, with the person of Jesus Christ as theincarnate Word, with the words of the apostles, with the Bible as Word,with what the Church has to say about God. The concept impliesa certain concreteness, because it refers to events, to the speakingof persons, to the acts and person of Jesus Christ, to the Bible asdocument. Beside it we have the concept of Spirit to indicate that thisWord, in all His concrete forms, stands in the sphere of God’s actingand dealings. Not that the Word receives its content only through theSpirit. The paired concepts of Word and Spirit point to the dynamic

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conduct of God himself with man, by means of concrete instruments.The Spirit is the One who invokes this Word, points to it, binds thosewho hear the Word to it. It is the Spirit that binds the individualbeliever to Christ and Himself in a life-long journey of learning tobelieve, and, together with others, brings the believer further. The workof the Holy Spirit is necessary on the one hand to provide man withinsight into the wealth and coherence of the truth of salvation, and onthe other to inwardly assure the person that he or she participates in thereality of this salvation. Calvin’s view of the work of the Spirit can betheologically productive in this. The ‘work of the Sprit’ does not meanan experience that stands apart from the actual path of faith which aperson travels. No, it is precisely in this path of life, in the processingof life experiences, in listening to the openings that God provides there,in hearing the stories and the message of the Scripture, that the Spiritcalls up desires, breaks the unshaken self-image, and inclines the heartto an inward assent and thankful acceptance of the invitation to sonshipand daughtership that God extends. The Holy Spirit is the inwardperceptor under whose tutelage we sit throughout our whole lives, andunder whose supervision we may grow toward competence. Thus theSpirit witnesses to the truth of the Gospel in an inward and hiddenmanner. Word and Spirit circumscribe the dynamic field of concretelife history and offer the possibility for integrating insights from otherfields of knowledge. Through His Spirit God is also involved in the‘horizontal’, with the orders and processes interwoven with creation,with events and phases in life.29

What must be accepted as a plus-point from the struggle againstnatural theology which must never be forfeited, is the criterion forChristian knowledge of God. According to the New Testament, Chris-tian knowledge of God finds its key and content in the person of JesusChrist. ‘No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosomof the Father, he has made him known’ (John 1:18). According to theapostle Paul the believers in Corinth are brought into relation withJesus Christ through God’s action: ‘But of Him you are in Jesus Christ,who God has made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctificationand redemption’ (ICor. 1:30). Pointing out this criterion is a profit never

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. Geestelijkebegeleiding in onze tijd, Baarn 1996. A. Lanser-van der Velde, Geloven leren. Een theoretisch enempirisch onderzoek naar wederkerig geloofsleren, Kampen 2000, 206–208.

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to be given up. But this criterion is far from saying all there is to be saidabout the ways and places where man learns to know God. This is thequestion about the universality of God’s revelation.

9.8. Lights, lamps and their fuel

Anyone who interprets Barth’s Christological concentration to meanthat according to this concept God would not make himself knownanywhere except in the proclamation of the Church, has an all toomeagre understanding of this theology. But that does not detract fromthe fact that with regard to the constellation in the first panel the fun-damental Christocentrism of Barth at first sight appears to offer manyfewer possibilities for conceiving God’s efficacious presence with all cre-ation. That is precisely the reason why Barth’s theology is so attractivewithin the constellation of an agnostic or even atheistic climate. Thistheology resonates with the notions and assumptions of the surroundingculture. According to these notions the world, outside of explicit reve-lation, outside of the coming of God to his creation, is dumb, expres-sionless, and by far supports the preference for an agnostic or evenmaterialistic worldview. It is undeniable that we find an echo of thismodern attitude in Barth’s theology. That is what makes this theologyattractive in a modern culture influenced by the shadow of Nietzsche.The discussion of knowledge of God no longer is approached throughcreation. Indeed, the world is not a ‘creation’ at all; it is primarily astrange, bizarre chaos of forces, energies, from which anything exceptthe countenance of God as caring Father shines forth. The world in thesecond panel is different from in the first. It is no longer the mirror ofan overarching, higher context. That the world is the creation of God,that this lump of rock circling in space is more than a God-forsakenbit of matter somewhere in a distant corner of the universe, that in itsenigmatic finiteness it is actually a space in which God makes Him-self known, for a life in relation to Him, to the glory of God and thesalvation of man: these are notions that are gained first by means of,through the only port of God’s revelation in Christ. In comparison withthe first panel, Barth’s theology marks a shift in the relationships of thestructural elements in theology. Calvin can still conceive God’s enteringthe world through the conscience of man, through self-knowledge thatarises as soon as man engages in some introspection; Barth abandonsthis structure. His theology marks the movement to the central element

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of Christian theology, Christology, the history of Jesus Christ, as thatwhich is fundamental for all speaking about God.

Does this mean that for Barth God reveals himself nowhere else? Itis easy to forget that Barth, with his making Christology fundamental,wanted to present a criterion for Christian proclamation. This crite-rion does not mean that God can not manifest Himself in all sorts ofplaces and all in all sorts of ways. Barth explicitly opposed the under-standing of this Christological concentration as a curtailment of theuniversality of God’s revelation. It does not mean that God can revealHimself only within the Church, in its proclamation. That is a vulgarmisunderstanding. What Barth writes about this universality in his Pro-legomena is both well-known, and enlightening: ‘God may speak to usthrough Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, ora dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does. But, unlesswe regard ourselves as the prophets and founders of a new Church, wecannot say that we are commisioned to pass on what have heard asindependent proclamation.’30 The core of this citation is in the rejec-tion of an ‘independent proclamation’. The criterion here is not withregard to what God can do, but what the community is given as itsstandard.

In both panels, for both Calvin and Barth, we find the productivedistinction between the locations where knowledge of God can beobtained and criteria for knowing God. It is this line which, to mymind, deserves elaboration, both with an eye to events in life andexperiences, and with an eye to discussions with other religions. In acertain sense Barth has himself already plotted out this line with hisLichterlehre. In his Lichterlehre he treats phenomena that speak, true words,which are found in the world outside the circle of the Church and itsproclamation.31 These are not true words and lights that have theirlight in and of themselves. Barth wishes to understand these true wordsand lights as witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Light of the world.32 ThisLight shines in the world, the witness to itself. This one light nourishesall lamps and lights. With this Barth creates the conceptual possibilityfor considering the universality of God. Christian knowledge of Godimplies that men must be observant and open for all these places wheretruth is spoken, where light is spread, where life-giving insights break

30 KD I/1, 55–56; ET, 55.31 KD IV/3, 108; ET, 97.32 KD IV/3, 132; ET, 118.

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through. In the world reconciled by God through Jesus Christ, there is,as we quoted earlier, no one abandoned to themselves, to a profanenessoutside God’s dispensation.33

Barth’s acknowledgement of universality is nothing new. In his ear-lier theology too Barth ventured to trace personal questions aboutthe meaning of life and the social dynamics of the search for justice,peace, political equality and personal happiness to God and Christ, byconsidering them as the unseen source and motor of these questions.That he withdrew from this position after the end of the 1920s, in thecourse of the debate over natural theology, almost goes without saying.Strategically, he no longer had room for it. The Church instructs theworld, not the other way around. Only after the Second World War,in his doctrine of creation, is the attempt made to bring all sorts ofgeneral anthropological phenomena back into theology through Chris-tology. The various relations and arrangements in which man lives—man/woman, parent/child, fellow men—are understood through theanalogia relationis. In the light of revelation they become mirrors of theway in which God relates to Himself within His own divine being, andhas a place for ‘the other’ within Himself. Berkhof correctly suggestedthat Barth also wanted to give all these things, which for him hadbecome places where divine light was found, a place in his theology.Speaking theologically, the work of the Spirit in creation and historyis indeed involved with Christology, but does not wholly coincide withit. In fact a certain instruction of the Church by the world also doesexist, and it is not only the opposite that is the case.34 Theologicallythis openness and acknowledgement does not lead to a relativisation ofthe 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 structuredhis thought so that theologically seen, all knowledge of God is derivedfrom revelation in Christ. He had no intention of retreating even a stepfrom the Barmen confession. Pneumatology is entirely comprehendedin 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 ordergiven in creation, as we saw that in Calvin. As we have said, it becomesclear in Barth’s own theological development that the comprehensive

33 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.34 H. Berkhof, ‘Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und

Welt’ in: H. Berkhof/ H.-J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre, Zürich 1978, 46.

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centralisation in Christology as a matter of principle cannot be main-tained. I would add to that, that it does not need to be maintained inorder to nevertheless defend the position that Christian knowledge ofGod has its criterion in the revelation of Christ.

In saying that, I am not arguing that we simply return to a forthrightappeal to order. The straightforward appeal to creation and its orderhas become a problem, both historically and systematically. The notionhas become compromised historically,35 and systematically a direct ap-peal to creation is connected with a theology in which the developmentfrom the starting point of creation defines its whole structure. Whenwe realise that creation itself suffers from alienation from God anditself must be freed, there is good reason to join with Barth and definethe structure of Christian theology from its centre, the appearance ofGod’s salvific proximity in Jesus Christ. Then creation is not only anextrapolation from the centre, but is theologically involved with thecentre.

A straightforward appeal to the notion of creation and the order init yields numerous problems. The structures found often turn out to befluid, malleable, hard to trace and strongly culturally defined. But thisis not to say that we can afford to lose the notions of order or of wisdomas theological categories, or that they should continue to be suppressedbecause of previous abuse.36 An appeal to the idea of creation anda created order has returned again in the debate on ecology andtheology, in the contention that there are limits, structures and systemswhich cannot be broken except at man’s peril. In the course of our liveswe glean fragments of knowledge, notions of truth, of wisdom37 fromoutside the visible circle of light from the Gospel, which theologicallycan better be linked with the work of the Spirit. This does not separatethe work of the Spirit from, or make it independent of Christ, but itpoints to Him, is subject to Him, and reaches its fulfilment in Him.

35 See for example J.C. Adonis, ‘The role of Abraham Kuyper in South Africa. ACritical Historical Evaluation’, in: C. van der Kooi/J. de Bruijn, Kuyper Reconsidered.Aspects of his Life and Work, Amsterdam 1999, 259–273.

36 See C. van der Kooi/A. van Egmond, ‘Het beroep op scheppingsordeningen. Eenwisselend getijde’ in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, bezorgd doorD. van Keulen/C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 157–172; ET, ‘The appeal to creationordinances: a changing tide’, in: REC Theological Forum 21/4 (December 1993), 13–25.

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 byG. von Rad, Weisheit in Israel, Neukirchen 1970, 189–239. See also J. Barr, The Concept ofBiblical Theology, 468–496.

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In His history, in an order that is theologically marked by moments ofresurrection and ascension, creation is not cancelled out, but its orderis transformed and, in this transformation, confirmed.

With these questions, we stand before a challenge to find a theo-logical place for the debate about Church and world, faith and culture,which is actually going on. This debate is not new, something which hasarisen only in a pluralistic situation. God’s message to men has neveryet reached them without elements of witness, debate, opposition andunexpected assent, not in the course which proceeded the compositionof Scripture38 and not in the course which the Gospel has taken amongthe nations. There are good theological reasons to proceed in opennesswith other philosophies and religions, from the realisation that Christin His majesty is given the power to have men participate through HisSpirit in His light and life, wherever He wills to do so. In dialoguewith other religions, this fundamental theological distinction betweenplaces where true knowledge of God is found and the criterion for itstruth can contribute to an attitude of openness and a realisation of theuniqueness of the Christian tradition of faith.

9.9. The content of knowledge of God: saving proximity

What is profit, and what loss, with regard to the content of knowledgeof God? In both the first and second panel Christian knowledge of Godhas its substantive criterion in the history of Jesus Christ. For Calvin thepromises that are contained in Jesus Christ, in his life and his death onthe cross, form the content of faith. The believer is invited to beholdGod’s will and plan in this very limited mirror. The source of savingknowledge is in this way precisely localised: namely, the countenanceof Christ. Particularly in the Cross of Christ God’s majesty shines forththe most, because it is here that it becomes clear that He desires to savesinners fallen into distress. One of the most significant images in thefirst panel is that of the Father with his adopted children. Outside of theScripture and outside of Christ the world is alternatively a spectacle ofretribution and obscure injustice, and a theatre of tender and wonderfulcare. But all these notions, of a strict judge and a caring king, undergoa refiguration when one has once learned to know God’s compassion

38 See, for instance, for the Old Testament, W. Brueggemann, Theology of the OldTestament. Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Minneapolis 1997.

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and mercy in the face of Christ. As the sources of knowledge about hissalvation, Calvin wanted to pin the believer to Scripture and Christ asthe mirrors which the Spirit held up for man. The possibility that theCounsel of God which lay behind them would become a threat wouldonly arise when the Bible lost its status of evident divinity. The bindingto the Biblical promises as mirrors of God’s mercy would then lose theirits anchor.

In the foregoing we have given one of the reasons why the conceptof double predestination could undergo such fundamental correctionin the second panel. Calvin’s view imposed a premature limitation onthe seeking love that is held up to us by Scripture in the actions ofJesus and in his resurrection as the firstborn of all creation. Like thetheology of his time, Calvin did not see that in the Bible electionis first and foremost a category of sacred history. Election describesthe way that God goes about searching for and recovering man. Inthis regard, the second panel of Barth’s theology represents a profitwhich can not be abandoned. As an extension of Barth’s reading ofscripture we can say that God chooses for men, chooses for them inorder to involve them in the things of His kingdom in the interplayof Word and Spirit. He invites them to this, urges them to this, andmen stand under judgement if they turn aside. The word ‘election’means that God in his own proximity makes room for man and theworld. The relation between God and man can therefore be formallyexpressed as a creative proximity which realises itself in various formsof acting which are to be ascribed to the Father, Son and Spirit. InChrist as the Son the nearness of the one God becomes concrete indeliverance and liberation; in the Father the acting of the one Godbecome concrete in creation and sustaining; in the Spirit the work ofthe one God becomes concrete as renewal and sanctification. Barthwanted to read God’s choice for man in terms of the history of JesusChrist. The relation to the man Jesus is thus a part of the manner inwhich God elects to be God. With it God’s salvation is promised toman, the history of Jesus Christ becomes a symbol and sacrament ofGod’s choosing fellowship. At the same time, something is said aboutGod. There is no longer anything that can be said about God outsideof the history of Jesus, outside of his Cross, outside of the threat of deathand ultimate abandonment. Such a change of tracks, as comparedwith the first panel, has abundant consequences, both for thinkingabout God and for thinking about man. I will enumerate several plus-points.

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1. As opposed to the modern axiom of human self-determination, thesecond panel introduces the idea that everything is decided about manand his destiny in God’s self-determination in Christ. From God’s sidebeing man is defined as being together with Jesus Christ, and as such,as being together with God. This being together of God and manis not a condition that man is entitled to on the basis of immanentqualities; it is exclusively the freedom of God to make this choice inlove that is decisive, and that also maintains it against resistance. Itis basic to this thought that the abundance of the divine being willbe definitive for man, even as it was definitive in the appearance ofChrist.

2. At the same time, the opposite must also be said. It is God’s choicenot to will Himself without man. It is His choice not to will Himselfwithout 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 bemade clear that He is not an apathetic God, but that in the incarna-tion as the deepest point of identification with the human condition,with His resurrection, God exposes Himself to rejection and defensivegestures by creation. If there is something in the abundance of His lifethat God may not be denied, it is the highest sensitivity. That meansthe possibility of injury, of suffering in God.

3. The content of Christian knowledge of God is filled in throughthe fact that within the Church the history of Jesus Christ is told asthe history in which God gives Himself as the One in whose fellow-ship creation may exist definitively. Christian theology speaks aboutman as someone who lives and moves in the close proximity of God.Whether he experiences that, or desires it, is secondary. The princi-ple secret of people’s lives is the closeness of God. Because the fel-lowship is with the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, this fel-lowship can be called a salvific fellowship. True freedom is foundonly in this fellowship. If man is intended to be in this fellowshipand to live from this reality, the origin and purpose of man has beendecided.

4. God’s electing in his Son to be in fellowship with the man Jesus isa decision that extends to all Jesus’ fellow men. Being a man is beingtogether with this particular man. In this way Barth’s theology offers aradical correction to the doctrine of election in Calvin, where election

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is ultimately the election of specific individuals, and the covenant isa link in sacred history between God’s Counsel and the election ofindividuals.

The decisions in God about man, about his salvation, death and lifefall ultimately in the order of God’s eternity. In this choice Calvin andBarth stand side by side, and we stand before the spiritual and theo-logical core of Reformed theology. However much accent may fall onfurther human responsibility, on renewal of life and the appeal to manto respond to God’s invitation, it remains a problem for contempo-rary theology as well how one can reconcile the subjectivity of Godand the subjectivity of man without conceiving them as competing, inother words without the alternatives of determinism and historicising.Once one premises the primacy of eternity over time, are man’s actionsnot then determined, and does the order of time and history still haveany weight? At a conceptual level, how can one keep human historyand responsibility from being trivialised? And, from the other side, howcan one prevent God from being trivialised? Or must we leave thingswith the observation that there are limits to our knowledge of Godand our thinking about God? Of course the latter is true. The termsinfralapsarianism and supralapsarianism were mentioned several timesin preceding chapters. They are terms that theology has left to gatherdust. 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 God’s sovereignty and gracioussupremacy, or to dispose of human responsibility. The historic debatebetween infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism confronts us with thelimits that we would rather avoid, but in fact always run up against.Barth sought to avoid the trivialising of the order of time by termingthe decision for electing a decretum concretissimum. The eternal decisionof God to live in fellowship with man is taken with an eye to a histor-ically defined person, the man Jesus Christ. Eternity is not primarilya concept of duration; it is primarily the designation for the order ofGod’s life and acting. Behind the words decretum concretissimum we hearagain how Barth wished to think of God and His plans, proceedingfrom Jesus Christ and his history. There the order of God’s sovereigntyand human history coincide, and that co-incidence must be the point ofdeparture and criterion for Christian theology. This Name and this his-tory are the counterweight that is necessary to prevent human historyfrom become nothing more than a projection screen for an eternally

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established scenario. By calling upon the name of Jesus, Barth seeks todo justice to the peculiar weight of time. Thinking from the perspec-tive of eternity coincides with the opposite movement, namely thinkingfrom time toward eternity. That is what is properly called Barth’s actu-alism.

By working this way Barth tries to avoid both the danger of deter-minism and that of historicisation, where everything depends on man.He does this by always taking the history of Jesus Christ as his startingpoint. His history is the moment, the point where time and eternitycome together. His history is, as it were, the true icon from which wecan read who God is, how He has chosen to live—and at the same timewe can read from this history that which in the light of this history isthe secret of God’s history with all men. At the same time it grants usan insight into the role of man in history.

9.10. The role of man in knowing God

If we compare the first and second panels with regard to the role of thehuman subject, the differences are immediately obvious. With Calvinthe metaphors expressing man’s relation to the Holy Spirit are thoseof the school and pupil. A pupil deserves to pay careful attention tothe material which is offered him. Man remains to the end of his daysin the school of the Holy Spirit, who teaches and instructs him. Atthis point we touch another metaphor that is of great importance inCalvin, namely that of man as the alien, the pilgrim passing through astrange land. Here, unquestionably, lies a dynamic, eschatological fea-ture in Calvin’s concept of knowing God. God showers his creatureswith countless signs of His providence. Moreover, in the sacraments thiscare and grace is once more impressed upon man, by tangible means,not that this stop with the symbols, but that they might be mindful ofthe promise of solidarity with Christ and everlasting life in God. Thepurpose of these accommodations is that man now already reaches outfor a life in perfect union with Christ in God’s glory. In the fellow-ship with Christ which is now already a hidden reality man is called toconsecrate himself and practice a life that corresponds to that high pur-pose. In Calvin’s theology the person who knows God himself comes torenewed activity, to deeds of thanksgiving. Sanctification and progressthereby become one of the key elements in Calvin’s thought. Yet it isunmistakable that the role of man is worked out in a different manner

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in the second panel, namely through the modern ideal of human self-determination. The larger place which the Enlightenment demandedfor the human subject is for Barth no misfortune, the effects of whichmust be rectified as quickly as possible. The place which is given toman as subject should be entered on the profit side of the ledger. Thereis increasing space given in Barth’s concept for man as an answeringbeing. In the first two volumes of KD, in the development of the conceptof revelation, the stress lies on the majesty of God, on God’s sovereignty.In that period Barth’s theology maintained something of a barrage thatwas to constantly remind its readers that man always, in various ways,had to deal with God as Lord in His turning toward man. The changethat was already evident in KD II/1, the first volume of the doctrineof God, to electing as a movement that was ontologically decisive bothfor God Himself and for man, made it increasingly possible to developthe aspect of the humanity of God. The locus of knowledge of God isspecified as the history of Jesus Christ, in which the concrete humanperson of Jesus Christ is distinguished from the Father, and is involvedwith Him. Characteristic of this new accent is that anhypostasis now nolonger serves to disqualify every form on inquiry into the life of theearthly Jesus—in other words, every form of manifestation in history—as theologically unprofitable. It can be asked how the assumptio carnis—the assumption of what man is, of the condition humaine—takes form inthis one person. In Barth’s later theology the unio naturarum or the uniohypostatica no longer mean that the life of the man Jesus is merely anenigma. God’s special relation with this man does not elbow out whathappens in time and space, but creates room for it. All the theologicalconstructions within Barth’s concept, such as the Trinity and election,that are used to impress upon us that in His plans and intentions Godis not the dupe of our history, change in colour to concepts that remindus that God does not cease to seek man in his acting and aspirationsand refuses to permit him to become the victim of his own conduct.

Two terms define the image of the new man in Barth’s concept: self-determination and analogy (or correspondence). Self-determination isthe 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 redefined.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 underthe influence of the Word is interpreted with the concept of self-determination. All

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agrees or corresponds with the choice for life that was made by Godin His electing. The figure of analogy comes increasingly to the fore inBarth’s theology as a productive category for understanding the rela-tion between divine and human acting.40 In this way it becomes clearthat ethics is not a second field which lies next to dogmatics, but ratheroccupies the same space. In terms of structure, Barth has given shapeto this insight by closing his doctrine of God, his doctrine of creationand 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 desacramentalisationof baptism and the Supper was intended to give full measure to theanswer from man, to his acting. Barth wished to distinguish moresharply than was possible in the traditional concept of the sacramentsbetween the acting of man and the acting of God. Unquestionably thiscontains elements which connect with modern attitudes toward life. Butin this counterproposal man does not realise himself in a vacuum. Heis already in fellowship; the decision has already been made about him,and about his destiny. The sharp distinction in Barth between God’swork and man’s work is the result of the Christological concentration,through which the singularity and immediacy of Christ, the Word andthe Spirit are powerfully emphasised over against the human work oftestimony, proclamation, baptism and the Supper. The destiny of beingman is known, namely existence in fellowship with God and his salva-tion, which means in fellowship with Jesus Christ. This in turn meansthat in this fellowship direction is given to self-determination.

Can we take over this linkage with the principle of subjectivity justlike that? I would make two observations, the first positive, the secondcritical. The continuing positive feature in the concept is first of all thatman 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 communitiesin 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 redefined once again, namely by the Word.

40 See particularly the work of E. Jüngel, in particular his essay ‘Die Möglichkeittheologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zumAnalogieverständnis Karl Barths’ in: idem, Barth-Studien, München 1982, 210–245. Cf.also H. Veldhuis, Een verzegeld boek. Het natuurbegrip in de theologie van J.G. Hamann (1730–1788), Dordrecht 1990, 347–350.

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ideal of autonomy, or better, given it content. The contours of man’sself can be read from the history of Jesus Christ. Finally, it must beremembered that Barth, by giving a full measure to human subjectiv-ity, has provided an answer to the problem of Pelagianism. Freedom isprimarily defined by its content. People are free when they arrive atthe point where the possibilities are realised that being human bearswith it. Jesus Christ is the true man. From the very beginning Barth’sconcept of being human is defined as being in fellowship with JesusChrist. That means that human subjectivity, man’s acting and respon-sibility, do not exist outside of this relation, but only fit within it. Ethicsas a question of human acting is found in the same space with dog-matics. In a Christian perspective, ethics is the question of how menmust act now that they participate in the history of Jesus Christ. Mandoes not have to make or constitute the covenant that God has con-cluded in Jesus Christ; man is rather invited to take his place withinthis covenant. Thus one can not speak of a sole causality of God. Theprofit of Barth’s baptismal doctrine is that he gives a clear answer to thealternative of God’s omnicausality and synergism.41 The new reality inwhich the believer shares is constituted entirely and totally through byGod in Christ, and the meaning of baptism is that it is the first answerfrom man to the revolution accomplished by God.

Precisely this locating of human existence in answer to the historyof Jesus Christ however raises the question of suitable terms. Thequestion is whether the manner in which Barth takes over the prin-ciple of subjectivity can indeed be maintained. In modern culture self-determination and self-discovery are all too closely linked with frag-mentation and ecological problems. The terms have become compro-mised. When man takes himself as his point of departure for achievinghis social or economic goals, there is no critical brake built in againsteconomic and ecological exploitation. The concepts of correspondenceand analogy imply that man does not enjoy primacy, but is in a sub-sidiary position. But this secondary position does not come through inthe term self-determination. The Biblical concept of stewardship wouldfit better in this connection. The subsidiary role of man, and his nor-mative responsibility, are immediately clear in this image.42 It conjoinsprecisely with a concept which is strongly emphasised by Calvin. God

41 KD IV/4, 180; ET, 163.42 B. Goudzwaard, Kapitalisme en vooruitgang, Assen 19824, 293–297; ET: Capitalism and

Progress: a Diagnosis of Western Society, Toronto/Grand Rapids 1979, 242–245.

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has the potestas, the power is His, and when man takes this in, it is clearthat the freedom of man is not adequately conceived if it is thoughtof as only formal freedom of choice. Man becomes free when he goesin the ways that are already represented in the history of Jesus Christ.Man is free when his decisions bring him to the ways that correspondwith the lines that were already set out by God himself in Jesus Christ.

9.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a different way

What is the role of the sacraments in knowing God? In the secondpanel of Barth’s theology we are dealing with a desacramentalising ofbaptism and the Supper; one could even speak of demythologisation.The denial of the sacramentality of baptism and the Table is, for Barth,closely connected with the greater accent on the subjectivity of man.Preaching, baptism and the Supper are acts of witness by man, andno longer means of grace, not a medium salutis, and just as little aconfirmation and strengthening of human knowledge regarding God’spromises. The work of the Holy Spirit indeed does come to man withthe assistance of means of all sorts, but Barth no longer wishes to termthese sacraments. True baptism is performed by God, in the work ofthe Spirit, and what happens alongside that, through the community,through the baptisand, has the nature of a testimony or an answer.The acting of the community in the various forms of witness is notdisowned in this concept; we must understand the contesting of thesacramental character of human actions as an attempt to give full roomto human subjectivity as an answer to God’s work in the history of JesusChrist.

Are we forced to come to the same conclusions as Barth did? Couldit not belong to the freedom of God in His turning toward man, in Hisspeaking, to make use of the created as a means of approach, in sucha way that the notion of the sacramental finds its justification preciselywith this in mind? Calvin and Barth both agreed that neither baptismnor the Supper could be termed a medium salutis. Both also agreed thatthe fellowship with Christ is the centre and object of human knowledgeof God. Faith involves us in the history that God wrote in this Name,and we are called to set forth our journey within the horizon of thishistory.

What place do the sacraments have then in this way? In the intro-duction of this book I suggested that thought regarding the sacraments

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functions as a mirror for the whole of knowledge of God. That meansthat a vision of the sacraments must fit within the whole scheme of aconcept of knowing God. If it is part of the freedom of God to makeHimself known to men through a multiplicity of earthly means, in prin-ciple this provides space for a broad view of sacramentality. This is abreadth which we encountered in the first panel. God draws man toHimself through a wide range of means. In Calvin we found the pairedconcepts of Word and Sprit for this. This pair of concepts first pointto the central element of the Word, the Bible and the history which isnarrated in the Bible. At its deepest, the Word is the designation for theacting of God himself, who declares himself in his Son, who has writtenhis history with man in the history of Jesus Christ. And, once again, byGod we mean God who, through the power of His Spirit, involves uswith Christ and what is concealed in His life.

In order to bring us and the things of our lives in contact with Him,to give us a taste of it, God has various means. First, there is thenarrative which refers to Jesus Christ as the Word of God in person,and that is told in a multiplicity of accounts, of Bible stories. Once thesebecome Scripture they have a potency, through the work of the Spirit,to become alive, the Word of God speaking to the present, to become aWord that touches men, seeks them out, and takes them along into thesecret of God’s dealing with man. The Scripture, as a literary reality,derives its high status in the Church from this: that by the grace of Godit has the potential to become the Word of God ever anew. Calling theBible the Word of God is only meaningful if we continue to focus onthat way of exposition and proclamation as Word that gives life anddirection.

In the first panel we found that not all of the means that God usescan be termed sacraments. With the Reformation, Calvin reduced thenumber of sacraments to baptism and the Supper, with the argumentthat these were the two which were instituted by Christ Himself. Todayit does not appear wise to take this argument over without giving itserious thought, if only because it has the result, as Berkhof correctlystressed, of very quickly placing baptism and the Supper in an isolatedposition. If we wish to give a place to the sacrament, this will have tohappen in the context of a comprehensive concept of knowing Godand a broader view of the sacramental, in which all of the acting of theTriune God in creation, reconciliation and renewal of life is reflected.

The point of departure for the acceptance of baptism and the Sup-per as central acts of the Church is first the historical fact that in the

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early Church these acts had a place in connection with the account ofJesus’ death and resurrection. The theological justification and found-ing of these acts as meaningful acts lies in that connection. They havetheir place in church life primarily with the salvation that was a gift inChrist and the promise of His kingdom in mind.43

Next, in the connection that is made in the actions of baptism andthe Supper between ambivalent signs or symbols on the one handand the history of Jesus Christ on the other, the symbol begins tospeak a language that it does not possess of itself. That is the decisive,theological justification for these actions. They are actions in which anappeal is made to the senses as ways to knowledge, to contact. In theSupper the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste are brought intoservice. In baptism by immersion it is particularly the sense of touchwhich plays a role, alongside hearing and sight. It is characteristicof these ritual actions that created elements are taken into serviceby the story. They interpret the history of Jesus Christ. The reverseis also true. In the Pauline letters we see that God’s acting in theCross and resurrection interprets these rituals and thus protects againstsacramental misunderstanding.44 A mutual hermeneutic involvementarises between story or word on the one side and the symbol on theother. In the dynamic between word and symbol God’s acting is madeknown, man is brought into the presence of God and his acting, andman commits himself to that acting by letting himself be baptised andby participating in the Supper. Created elements here fulfil the role ofsymbols, of visible words that refer to the thing, to God’s judging andlife-giving proximity. The content of the sacraments, the ‘thing’ beforewhich we stand, does not differ from that which is received in faith. Inthe sacramental mediation man comes in touch with the same thing,but the same thing in a different way. Precisely the sacraments in all

43 Discussions regarding a broad, theological, Trinitarian rootage of this sort forthe sacraments are already well under way as a response to the BEM Report ofthe World Council of Churches and the reactions which followed it. See Baptism,Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111), Geneva 1982; Baptism, Eucharistand Ministry 1982–1990. 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.Justification and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999.

44 See the extensive note by E. Jüngel, Barth-Studien, 285–287. See also at greaterlength the article ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, in: Barth-Studien, 295–314.

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their connections with the sensory and physical point to dimensions ofknowing which go further than intellectual comprehension, because theaffective possibilities are brought into play and included too.

9.12. As in a mirror …

There is one final step. That God lets Himself be known and thereforemen can know God, is a vulnerable proposition. It is not vulnerablebecause something could go wrong with the epistemological status ofknowledge of God. The warrant for belief in God and the epistemo-logical grounds for defending it have gained rather than lost ground inrecent years. When I speak of it being vulnerable, I just as little havein mind the implausibility of belief in God in Western culture. Thatis indeed manifest in important sectors of these cultural circles and itforces adherents of faith to adjust, willingly or unwillingly, to status asa minority. However difficult that is, however much theologians, churchmembers and people in social organisations often still act and think asthough 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. Thevulnerability that I have in mind has internal grounds. It is felt withinthe knowledge of God; it has to do with the fact that the promise of theperfect unveiling of God’s majesty and mercy is still outstanding. Theconcept of self-revelation expresses that in the appearance of Christ oneis encountering God Himself. This does not exclude the incomplete-ness of knowing, the enigmas and things not yet understood, as this sopointedly is expressed in the image of the mirror in I. Cor. 13:12. Put inanother way, Christian knowledge of God is vulnerable because it is aform of Christian hope. In this context vulnerability is not so much asign of weakness, but is a sensitivity, a new attitude of discernment. Inthe mirror of the history of Christ, it appears that man and the worldare not abandoned. Nourished by this hope, faith does not remain byitself, but reaches out. In Christian hope men reach out to the comingof 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 reachedby God’s Spirit as the great bridge builder, the pontifex maximus, and inresponse, began moving toward the future.

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INDEX OF NAMES

Aalders, M.A., XIAdonis, J.C., 441, 456Adriaanse, H.J., XI, 10, 255, 426Agrippa of Nettesheim, 37, 54, 66Agrippa d’ Aubigné, 57Ailly, Pierre d’, 183Alston, W.P., 76Andriessen, H.C.I., 437Anselm of Canterbury, 122, 179, 180,280, 281

Anzinger, H., 261Aristotle, 68, 88, 125, 134, 146, 154Asmussen, H., 258Athanasius, 44Augustijn, C., XI, 162Augustine, 87, 117, 154, 155, 163,168, 173, 174, 177, 178, 182, 195,196, 199, 267, 274, 276, 349,358

Austin, J.L., 11

Bacon, R., 58, 59, 227, 235Bakker, N.T., 270Balke, W., 120Balthasar, H.U. von, 420Barr, J., 270, 441Barth, Karl, 29, 57, 102, 117, 124,153, 154, 156, 166, 173 passim

Barth, P., 385Battles, F.L., 25, 42, 56Bauke, H., 28, 102Baur, F.C., 28Bavinck, H., 2, 7, 14, 52, 99, 107,163, 276, 377, 378, 390

Beek, A. van de, 273, 376Beintker, M., 261, 279Benedict, Ph., 79Benin, S.D., 49Berkhof, H., 9, 134, 190, 191, 219,351, 395, 440, 451

Berkouwer, G.C., 12, 124, 163, 168,209, 210, 344, 397

Bernard of Clairveaux, 180Beza, Th., 160Biel, Gabriel, 183Birkner, H.J., 312Blumhardt, J.C., 396Boer, Th. de, 136, 244Boëthius, 332, 359Bohatec, J., 24, 36, 150Bolsec, Jérome, 23, 28, 74, 123, 160,161, 162

Bonda, J., 342Bonhoeffer, D., 3, 308Borght, E.A.J.G., 192Bouwsma, W.J., 22, 28, 52, 55, 64,67, 78, 79, 102, 111, 121, 148

Breen, Q., 55Brink, G. van den, 178, 183Brinkman, M.E., 191, 195, 253, 255,405, 452

Brueggemann, W., 442Brunfels, O., 54Brunner, E., 9, 81, 285, 313, 378–379, 432

Brunner, P., 82Bucer, Martin, 26, 32, 192Budé, Guillaume, 24, 36Bullinger, H., 162, 192, 214, 218Bultmann, R., 279, 318Burckhardt, Abel, 287Busch, E., 253, 371Busson, Henry, 37

Caligula, 71Calvin, Antoine, 34Cassirer, E., 64, 236Castellio, Sébastien, 23Chia, R., 261, 271Cicero, 24, 71

468 index of names

Clement of Alexandria, 49Cohen, H., 289–292, 427, 431Courtenay, W.J., XI, 59, 123, 177–183

Cusveller, B., 8Cyril of Alexandria, 212

Dalferth, I.U., 187, 427Damascene, John, 44, 125, 205Damian, Peter, 178, 180Darwin, Ch., 306Dee, S.P., 99, 100, 108Descartes, R., 241Desiderius, 178Dittus, Gottliebin, 396Dolet, E., 37, 66Dorner, I.A., 331Dorner, J.A., 334Dowey, E.A., 21, 85, 86, 91Duintjer, O., 236Dulk, M. den, 195, 270Duns Scotus, 59, 68, 182Dyrness, W.A., 79

Eckhart, 334Edwards, D., 342Egmond, A. van, XI, 374, 375,441

Eicher, P., 21Engel, M.P., 70, 87Erasmus, Desiderius, 24, 118Eunomius, 334

Farel, G., 189Fatio, O., 37Febvre, L., 37Feuerbach, L., 312, 353Fert, Anne le, 34Fichte, J.G., 48, 49Ficino, Marsilio, 69Franck, Sébastian, 51Francke, H.R., 334Francis I, 22, 23, 25, 133Frederick the Great, 229

Gadamer, Hans G., 68Ganoczy, A., 31, 96, 148, 202

Gay, P., 230, 235Geertz, C., 12, 429Gerhard, J., 117Gerrish, B.A., 91, 94, 119, 198,208

Gestrich, Chr., 312Gloede, G., 82Gogarten, Fr., 279Gorringe, T.J., 257Gosker, M., 191Goudzwaard, B., 449Graafland, C., 159, 194, 364,413

Grabes, H., 60Gruet, Jacques, 23Grünewald, Mathias, XI, 286Grynaeus, Simon, 53Gunning J.H., 424

Hardy, D.W., 79Harnack, A., 144Hartvelt, G.P., 57, 198, 208, 209, 212,216

Hegel, G.W.F., 27, 226, 247, 331, 334,372

Hendrik of Gent, 182Heppe, H., 324, 394Herrmann, W., 226, 248, 263, 292,318

Heshusius, T., 192Hesselink, I.J., 74Hieronymus, 178Holtrop, Ph.C., 162, 166Houtepen A., 9, 140, 244, 429Hromádka, J.L., 257Hugo of St. Victor, 180Hume, D., 230, 233, 234Hunsinger, G., 273, 375

Irenaeus of Lyon, 49, 62, 106,374

Jansen, H., 144Jacobs, P., 28, 29, 163Jehle, F., 257Jefferson, Th., 235Jelsma, A.J., 434

index of names 469

Johnson, W.S., 5, 423Jones, S., 55Jong, J. de, 42Jüngel, E., 9, 12, 13, 45, 48, 241,244, 294, 296, 300, 310, 318, 322,363, 373, 375, 386, 399, 410, 448,452

Kaiser, C.B., 134–135Kamphuis, B., 260, 383Kant, I., 81, 123, 225–248, 314, 372

passimKarelse, L., 5, 423Kattenbusch, F., 3Kingdon, R.M., XI, 33, 34, 35,161

Keulen, D. van, XIKöhler, W., 192Köstlin, J., 85Kooi, A. van der, 424Kooi, C. van der, 8, 66, 261, 280,289, 389, 431, 441

Korsch, D., 5Krötke, W., 255Kroon, M. de, 26, 28Krusche, W., 82, 99, 128Küng, H., 227Kuitert, H.M., 124, 145, 260, 286,428–429

Kuyper, A., 7, 163, 175, 210, 424

Lanser-van der Velden, A., 437Leeuw, G. van der, 405Lasco, Johannes à, 209Leibnitz, G.W., 234, 236, 239Leisegang, H., 58Lessing, G.E., 229, 287, 413Lienhard, M., 51Lindbeck, G.A., 12, 429Lindberg, D.C., XI, 58, 66, 130Link, Chr., 84Locher, G.W., 192Locke, J., 229, 230, 233Lohmann, J.F., 261, 289Lombard, Peter, 180, 204Luther, Martin, 31, 47, 107, 118, 205,206, 400, 404

Maas, W., 49, 146Major, John, 60, 122Marheineke, Ph., 321, 331Marquard, R., 286Marquardt, F.W., 255Martyr, Peter, 216Marx, K., 312Maurer, E., 282McCormack, B.L., 3, 261, 304, 305,364

McFague, S., 12, 55Mellin de Saint Gelais, 36Meijering, E.P., 118, 143, 320, 349Melanchthon, Ph., 119, 319, 400Michel, K.H., 242Millet, O., 36, 52, 55Moltmann, J., 129, 283, 375Mozart, W.A., 8, 396Muller, R.A., 4, 5, 28, 55, 67, 68, 84,90, 109, 110, 160, 419, 434

Myconius, O., 162

Naphy, W.G., 34, 162Natorp, P., 289Nevin, J.W., 208Nietzsche, Fr., 243, 306, 438Noordmans, O., 385, 424Nösgen, D., 148

Oakley, F., 178Oberman, H.A., XI, 31, 32, 45, 61,104, 118, 122, 129, 130, 147, 159,163, 164, 174, 176–178, 215, 220,434

Ockham, William of, 60, 182, 183,334

Oorthuys, G., 163Origen, 49Osiander, Andreas, 43, 45Overbeck, Fr., 258, 259, 365

Palamas, G., 329Pannenberg, W., 2, 21, 282, 283, 310,332, 382, 428

Parker, T.H.L., 85, 86Parmenides, 146Pascal, B., 232

470 index of names

Paschasius, Radbertus, 193Pfleiderer, G., 5, 254, 263Phigius, A., 169Philo of Alexandria, 49Pico della Mirandola, 69Pinnock, C.H., 28, 29Plantinga, A., 7, 426, 430Plasger, G., XIPlato, 146Polanus, A., 355Polman, A.D.R., 163Pomponazzi, Pietro, 65, 69Pott, H.J., 251

Quenstedt, Andreas, 303, 304, 355

Rabelais, F., 37Rad, G. von, 441Rade, M., 389Ragaz, L., 257Rahtmann, Herman, 97Randall Coats, C., 57Rendtorff, T., 5, 251, 255, 323, 346Reuter, K., 122, 150Richard, L.J., 25Richard of St. Victor, 332Ritschl, A., 226, 247, 263, 312, 338,341, 342

Ritschl, O., 28Rohkrämer, M., 257Rorem, P.E., 214

Sadoletus, Jacopo, 40, 96Sauter, G., 3, 76Schellong, D., 5, 228, 251, 389Schilder, K., 52, 163, 175Schildmann, W., 371Schleiermacher, F.D.E., 119, 225,226, 247, 248, 263, 284, 289, 339,350, 351, 353, 355, 431

Schreiner, S.E., 66, 68Schwab, Gustav, 296Schweizer, Alexander, 28Seguenny, A., 51Selderhuis, H.J., 138, 434Selinger, S., 253Servet, Miguel, 23, 37, 65, 66, 74

Siegele-Wenschkewitz, L., 254Siger of Brabant, 65Simonides, 88Socrates, 118Sozino, Laelio, 154, 156Speelman, H.A., 31, 33, 190Spieckermann, I., 261, 280Spinoza, Baruch de, 228Stancaro, Francesco, 44Steck, K.G., 5, 228, 251, 389Stoevesandt, H., 248, 254Stoker, W., 9, 10, 242Stott, John, 342

Tachau, K.H., 58, 59Tempier, Etienne, 129Thomas Aquinas, 44, 60, 122, 125,163, 334, 357, 404

Tillet, Louis du, 31Torrance, Thomas F., 59, 60, 122Tracy, D., 2Trinkaus, Ch., 69Tylenda, J.R., 192

Veenhof, J., 99, 100, 102Veldhuis, H., 448Verhoogt, J.P., 9Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 216Villeneuve, see ServetVroom, H.M., 10

Waldenfels, H., 21Ward, G., 5, 423Warfield, B.B., 89, 93Watt, James, 235Weber, O., 32, 158, 217Weber, M., 76, 125, 140, 254Welker, M., 281Wendel, F., 24, 150Wernle, P., 3, 389Westphal, J., 192, 207, 208, 214Williams, G.H., 65, 66Willis, E.D., 44, 215Wirth, J., 54Wissink, J., 261, 264Wittgenstein, L., 282Wolff, Chr., 234, 236

index of names 471

Wolterstorff, N., 7, 11, 226, 233, 239,426

Woudenberg, R. van, XI, 8, 64Wright, D.F., 42

Zachman, R.C., 113Zimmerli, W., 66Zwingli, H., 31, 32, 192, 198, 201

INDEX OF TERMS

Absoluteness, 309, 327Accommodation, 41–48, 72, 145,185–186, 299–300, 352, 360As a concession, 47, 185–186, 219

Actualism, 17, 303, 383–384, 408,446

Adoption, 100, 165, 186, 203, 434Affects, 15, 94, 109, 144–147, 187,339

Agnosticism, 291, 418, 438Agnosm, 12, 226, 319Anabaptism, 66Analogy, 214, 265–268, 360–362

Analogia proportionalitatis, 244,301

Analogia fidei, 293, 300–301, 430Analogia entis, 298, 303Analogia attributionis, 303–305

Angels, 46, 118, 126Anthropology, 45–46, 64–70, 88, 89,132, 440

Anthropologisation, 225–226, 238,360

Anthropomorphism, 152, 185, 299,303, 339, see also accommodation

Apriorism, 280, 428Arbitrariness, 133, 143Artist, 75, 332–333Ascend, 43Ascension, 42, 128, 206–207, 217Assistence, 406, 423, 435Astronomy/astrology, 36, 126Asymmetry, 294, 299, 373, 385–386,390

Atheism, 37, 38, 72, 263, 291, 396, 438Augustianism, 64Averroism, 37, 66, 130

Baptism, 6, 387–414, 451–452Infant, 387–388

Barmen confession, 258, 311, 313,391, 395, 440

Biblical studies, 270, 285, 404, 409,421, 441

Biblicism, 102, 118, 171, 207, 404

Calvin’s personality, 76, 140, 161–163, 367, 434

Caro vivifica, 208–211Categorical difference, 42, 43, 257,286, 299, 389, 422

Categories, aristotelian, 123, 125,146, 236, 332

Causality, 28, 127–130, 135, 155–156,168–169, 447

Certainty, 98–99, 108–115, 170, 398Christology, 43–45, 105–106, 204–210, 446Anhypostasy and enhypostasy,273, 344, 392–393, 402–403,432, 447

Assumptio carnis, 43–44, 273,352, 403

Communicatio idiomatum, 179,206

Eternal son, 43Light of life, 398Logos ensarkos, 45Mediator in creation, 43–44Mirror, 100, 114, 154, 381Natures of, 44Status exinanitionis et exaltatio-

nis, 394Unio mystica, 106–108, 212Unio personalis, 155, 210–211, 403

ChurchAnd government, 30, 32, 34, 227,254, 255

As institute, 194Authority, 103

474 index of terms

Cognitio intuitiva et abstractiva, 59–60

Communicatio idiomatum, seechristology

Conscience, 35–39, 73, 105, 205Consistory, 24, 32–34Consubstantiation, 205Contingency, 163, 174Corporality, 65, 107, 435Cosmology, 78, 84, 126, 134–135,146–147, 232, 354, 366, 426

Cosmopolitism, 227Counsel of God, 27–29, 50, 57, 125,141–142, 159, 166, 170, 173, 381

Covenant, 49–51, 164, 166, 172–174,178–179, 194, 299, 304–307, 320,327, 350, 362, 364, 366–367, 377–379, 407–409, 411, 445, 449

Creation, 195, 305–308, 440Outward ground, 305, 379Vulnerable, 378–379

Cross, 40, 41, 47, 105, 210, 375Curiositas, 49, 62, 118–119, 167, 172–173, 337, 376, 466

Deism, 37, 123, 384Descend, 38, 41–42, 47, 102, 105,210

Despotism, 133, 141, 161, 335, 364Determinism, 27, 29, 122, 181, 385–386, 408, 445–446

Devotio moderna, 122Ding an sich, 237–240, 332Disputation and doubt, 309–310Docta ignorantia, 172, 174Doctrine, 11, 38, 94–95Dogmatics, 1, 11–12, 94, 240, 255–256, 281–289, 417–426Church, 10, 255–256Loci, 90Training in listening, 321, 421

Dream, 69, 72, 267, 360, 370–371, 383

Eastern orthodoxy, 212, 329Eclecticism, 314Election, 363–383

Shadow, 124, 143, 375

Empirism, 233–235Epicurism, 37, 66, 127–128Epistemology, 7–20, 64–65, 209,232–250Reformed, 8, 74–75, 430–431

Eschatology, 14, 27, 66, 107, 114, 132,175, 259, 307

Eternity, 358–360, 384Ethics, 14, 26, 35, 133, 270Ethos, 23Excommunication, 35, 189Ex opere operato, 204Extra calvinisticum, 44, 209, 215Extreme, 56, 118, 445

Faculties of knowing, 8, 59, 62, 67,68, 109, 111, 225, 241, 260, 262,275, 289, 299, 375, 428, 430–433

Faith (fides), 104–106Fides qua et fides quae, 3, 259And knowing, 7–13, 268

Fall, 46, 87, 376–377Family, 165, 188, 203Fatalism, 143, 148–151Fear, 39, 46, 131, 156–158Foundationalism, 240, 246Freedom, 29, 145Freethinker, 37

GodAseitas, 126, 326Being and act, 322Competency, 132, 348Constancy, 51, 353Creator, 134Deus revelatus et absconditus,118, 381, 436

Dynamism, 71, 127Essence, 125, 152–154, 175, 319–320, 381

Father, 83, 131, 136–137, 145, 150–155, 187–188

Fountain, 25, 210Freedom, 175, 326–328Glory, 42, 360–361Goodness, 76–77, 121, 131Grace, 157, 337–339

index of terms 475

Hiddenness, 139, 274–276Holiness, 46, 337–338Immutability, 51, 141, 143–148,181, 353

Incomprehensibility, 126, 276Judge, 131, 138–139Judgement, 338Knowability, 12–13, 124–126, 225–226, 266–267, 271

Lord, 131–132Love, 324–325Mercy, 131, 151–158, 341Mother, 144–145, 185–186Nearness, 38–39, 106–107, 349,442

Objectification, 317Omni-activity, 407–408Orator, 48Patience, 345–347Personhood, 382–384Power, 131, 355Presence, 350Providence/Care, 76–77, 133–135,143

Qualities, 119, 130–131, 333, 334,336

Regret, 145Righteousness, 131, 348Self-binding, 155, 181, 183, 184Sublimity, 47, 107, 126, 187, 302–303

Subtance and subject, 331–332,381

Unity, 348Will, 105, 129, 143, 149–151Wisdom, 141

Hierarchy of Being, 123, 200, 289Historisation, 385, 408, 445History of Jesus Christ, 11, 252, 373–374, 386, 394, 401–402, 444–445

Hope, 115, 217Humanity, 1, 32, 227–228, 243, 417Humility, 171

Idealism, 238, 340, 341, 425Critical, 17, 289–293, 427

Speculative, 28–29, 267Images, ban on, 79–81Immortality, 37, 64–70Incarnation, 38Insider’s perspective, 262Inspiration, Doctrine of, 89–90Instrument, 214, 218Intellectualism, 22, 67, 92Invitation, 3, 6, 15, 16, 27–29, 47, 55,62–63, 84, 113, 116, 131, 157, 176,195, 206, 263, 307, 393, 411, 421,442–443, 449, 453

Jesus Christ, 40, 43, 45, 204, 205,246, 252, 265, 271, 272, 393–397

KnowledgeScientific, 7, 30Construction, 239Cognitio et comprehensio, 109Relational, 8And senses, 77Imitation, 57–62, 234

Knowledge of GodBipolarity, 14Clarity, 60Cognitio dei, 7, 319Cognitio duplex et simplex, 81,82, 85–86

Fountains, 14, 21, 424, 425, 439God known by God, 275, 282,293

Immediate, 75Notitia, 25Soteriological, 14–15, 40, 287Partial, 13Participation in, 264–265, 347Practical, 27Proofs of, 232, 241–242Self-knowledge, 24Senses, 8, 15, 75–84Succeeding, 294

Labyrinth, 167Language, 52–57, 282–283, 422Lex naturalis, 74

476 index of terms

Libertines, 54, 162‘Lichterlehre’, 395, 439, 440Limits, 16–17, 29, 115–116, 124

Means, 74, 103, 184, 194, 271, 420,425, 435, 451–452

Mediator, 43Merits, 155–156, 171, 183Metaphysics, 10, 147, 233–236, 241,321

Millenialism, 50Minority, 228Mirror, 6, 15–17, 45, 57, 63, 93, 100,105–106, 112–115, 117, 119, 122,124, 150, 152, 154, 156, 160, 172,184–186, 199, 201, 204, 225, 228,278, 292, 299, 301, 305–308, 314,351, 361–362, 373, 381–382, 387,419, 425–426, 438, 440, 442–443,450, 453

Modality, 262–263Modernity, 5, 226, 251, 256, 270,417–418Early modern, 5, 64, 241Postmodern, 5, 422, 423Premodern, 4, 5, 143, 144, 194,256

Mortificatio-vivificatio, 157Mystagogy, 295Mystery, 266

Nature, 240, 291–292, 303Natural theology, 81, 255, 274, 288,299, 303, 308, 310–313, 391, 428,437, 440

Nature psalms, 306–307Necessity, 150, 168, 327, 328

Necessitas antecedens et conse-quens, 179

Coactio, 150Negative connection, 256, 261Neo-orthodoxy, 4, 312, 389Noetic, 71, 279, 412–414Noumenal world, 231

Obedience, 103, 328Objectivism, 12, 201, 293, 385

Office, 194, 393, 407Prophetic, 393–394

Ontological connection, 402, 412Opacity, 139Optics, 59Ordo/ordinatio, 59, 147, 155, 168,185, 440Ontological and moral order,231

Ordo salutis, 61, 62, 108, 122

Paris articles, 130, 182Partner, 132, 270, 320–321, 366, 392,400–401, 407–408

Pedagogy, 49, 345Perlocution, 53Personalism, 191, 213Persuasion, 53, 110, 310Piety, 25–26, 75, 82Pilgrimage (peregrinatio), 60,66, 79, 114, 116, 217, 229, 232,434

Pneumatology, 2, 16–17, 84, 291,391, 440

Postulates, 231, 237, 245Potentia absoluta et ordinata, 123,176, 185, 356Oboedentialis, 78, 180Decretum concretum, 371Decretum horribile, 165

Predestination, 18, 27, 111, 138, 158–174, 443Parallelism, 164–166Reprobation, 161, 363–364

Presentia realis, 107, 206, 213Profane sphere, 396, 418Prolegomena, 21–22, 86, 259Providence, 128, 133–138, see also

GodPower, see potentia absoluta et

ordinataProfit, 25–26, 110–121, 123, 139, 170–174

Psychology, 93, 113, 265, 269, 270,345, 433–434

Public interest, 18, 23, 30–31, 217,253–254, 417

index of terms 477

Rationalism, 37Realism, 248, 263, 292, 396, 401,425

Regulative idea, 242Relationality, 144–145, 212, 333Reprobation, see predestinationRespect, 25Rhetoric, 52, 93, 109Revelation

Dialectic of veiling and unveiling,276–278, 282, 296–297, 305,309, 373, 380, 409, 422–423

Encounter, 9, 10, 190–191, 211,219, 264, 294, 297, 320

Mystery, 9, 266Plural, 92, 259, 266, 284, 331,333, 382, 397

Positivism, 4Propositional, 56, 94, 397Realism, 248, 293Self-revelation, 11, 260, 265, 293,320, 329–335, 382, 436

Singular, 272, 284

Sacrament, 6, 44, 195–221, 271–272, 299, 387, 391–401, 450–453Doubleness of, 404Cognitive plus, 197–199Flesh and blood, 196, 202, 208–213

Means of salvation, 409Satire, 37School, 83, 101–102Scientia media, 357Scopus, 89, 105, 156, 184Scotism, 122, 174Scripture, 55, 84–93, 102, 424

Authority, 91, 96–97Mirror, 62

Self-examination, 36–37, 111–112Senses, 10, 47, 68–69, 75–84, 198,219–220

Sensibility, 339, 453Sensus divinitatis, 70–74, 83,248

Sensus conscientiae, 70, 73, 83Signum, 195–200, 399Soul, 37, 64–70, 67–69Spectacles, 62–63, 90Speculation, 43, 56, 62, 116, 118–120,124, 176, 301, 318, 321, 349–351,382, 397

Spirit, 40–41, 45, 63, 78, 90, 93–103,106, 127–128, 200, 218–219, 284,398, see also pneumatology andmeansInhabitation of the, 77–78Sealed by the, 98, 108, 171

Spiritualism, 51, 194, 201Stoicism, 64, 75, 128–129Story, 386, 451Student, 186, 235Subject, 11, 47, 56–57, 77–78, 99,103, 191, 227, 232, 258, 267,293, 313, 369, 401, 410, 447–448Absolute, 282

Substitation motif, 73, 87Supper, 46, 49, 189Supra- and infralapsarianism, 376–377, 445–446

Synergism, 385–386

Teaching, 56, 92, 94Terministic logic, 123Testimony, 11, 264, 398Theater, 77–78, 111Theodicy, 78, 140, 142, 341–443,375–376

Theologia archetypa et ectypa, 271Time, 319, 347, 384–385Tolerance, 74, 228Transsubstantiation, 192–193, 204Trinity, 124, 129, 260, 282, 371–372

Trust, 131, 148, 156–158

Ubiquity, 205, 216–217Universality, 227, 341–342, 391

Of God, 83, 310, 440Of grace, 369–370, 377–378, 413,444

478 index of terms

Via moderna et antiqua, 122Visual Arts, 80–81, 332–333,425

Voluntarism, 67, 110, 174

Wet nurse, 47, 434Will (Voluntas), 67, 105, 356–358Word, 89–95, 258, 392

And Spirit, 82, 95–103, 436–437

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(formerly Studies in the History of Christian Thought)

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