Annual Princeton Barth Conference: Karl Barth in Dialogue

The annual Princeton Theological Seminary Karl Barth Conference is taking place again this June 16–19. The topic this year is Karl Barth in Dialogue: Encounters with Major Figures. Given that Barth was a theologian perpetually in dialogue—marked especially by the four volumes of Gespräche in the Gesamtausgabe—this is a topic with the potential for many creative and constructive engagements.

The conference will involve dialogues with Paul Tillich, Joseph Ratzinger, Thomas Aquinas, T.F. Torrance, Elisabeth Johnson, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Georges Florovsky, Sergei Bulgakov, Jon Sobrino, James Cone, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Certainly, a dozen more names could have easily been selected, but this is a uniquely ecumenical list that will bring Barth into conversation with some of the major figures of the last two centuries. Speakers will include George Hunsinger, Peter Casarella, Nicholas Healy, Stephen Long, Paul Molnar, Nathan Hieb, and John Drury. The last two are recent PTS PhD grads whom I look up to and greatly respect.

For more information, see the Barth Conference website. Depending on whether one is a student or not, commuter or resident, the conference cost ranges from $80–170. If you have questions, contact them here.

Is Prophetic Neutrality Possible?

This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

I have been loathe to comment on LGBT issues for various reasons, but the recent statements by both Dan Savage and Andrew Marin have elicited a response. In his review of Jeff Chu’s new book, Savage says that the Marin Foundation “looks like Westboro Baptist in the drag of false contrition: God hates you — now with hugs!” Not surprisingly, and with good reason, Marin himself completely rejects this comparison. His concern, presented winsomely in his book Love Is an Orientation (IVP, 2009) and defended repeatedly on his blog, is to foster a space for a genuinely inclusive ethic of charitable and empathic engagement. He seeks to be a bridge-builder and peacemaker in the midst of a deeply polarized and politicized environment. In this regard, I have only praise for Marin and his fellow bridge-builders. His attempt to elevate the conversation through personal, nonjudgmental relationships is an honorable one. May his tribe increase. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am an editor at IVP, the publisher of Marin’s book, though I had no involvement with it. As always, all of my opinions are my own and do not reflect those of IVP.)

There is much to dislike about Savage’s essay. See the excellent response by Tony Jones for more. That being said, I think we need to attend more carefully to Savage’s own valid concerns. To be sure, I cannot condone his description of the Marin Foundation, but I can certainly empathize with it. And I can do so by way of examining Marin’s own analogies for his project.

Marin looks at two previous instances in which “sustainable, structural societal change” required honest bridge-building: the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) in the United States and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Marin is quick to point out that he does not intend the analogies to suggest that the LGBT issue is equivalent to the issue of racism, nor does he seek to present himself as an Martin Luther King Jr. or a Nelson Mandela. Instead, his point is that “for centuries culture wars and societal disconnects are perpetuated by these same two ideologies [i.e., bridge-building inclusion vs. revenge and exclusion]–both of which have their movement’s leaders and followers passionately believing their medium of engagement as the best way forward, thus causing many public disagreements.” The problem—and no doubt Marin is well-aware of this—is that those struggling for LGBT equality do see their struggle as equivalent to that of racism. But let’s stick within the terms of Marin’s own analogy for a moment, and for now let’s focus on the CRM.

The problem I want to examine is a separation between form and content in Marin’s analogy with King and the CRM. The form is the mode or method of engagement, while the content is the basis and goal of this engagement. Marin, it seems, has isolated the form of King’s movement from the content that gave this form life and vitality. While it has a certain kind of persuasiveness, such a separation undercuts the viability of the analogy, or at least makes the analogy so loose as to be irrelevant. More concretely, the problem is that King’s approach was not simply “to build bridges between the oppressive white folks and his African-American community.” Nor was his ethic one of mere “inclusion” and “peacemaking.” And that is because the movement of which he was the leader was a movement that saw the entire issue as a matter of justice. One side was on the side of the gospel, and the other was not. One side was a co-agent with God in the arc of history, and the other was not. To be sure, King built bridges, but the bridge was built so that whites would cross to the other side and stand with their oppressed black sisters and brothers in the cause of justice. His was a radically violent act of sociopolitical upheaval—precisely in the form of nonviolent action. If we fail to appreciate this point, we miss the true significance of his social revolution.

Given that this is the fiftieth anniversary of his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” I think it will be instructive to listen to his words in that magnificent document. King writes in this letter not against the white oppressors, the Ku Klux Klanners, but against the “white moderates” in the churches—those who desire peace and order more than justice. These white moderates, he says, prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” King writes:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Notice what King is saying here. He is not advocating inclusion and bridge-building. He is instead advocating action that exposes injustice so that it can be eliminated. The white moderates advocated patience, in the hope that social ills would work themselves out over time. King instead declares that “now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.” He rejects the policies of white-moderate “do nothingism” and black-nationalist “hatred and despair,” favoring instead a third way: a nonviolent action that is not less but more radical than the nationalists. In response to the claim that he is an extremist, King writes:

I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Here is the crucial point: King’s third way of “creative extremism” is an ethic of exclusion, not of inclusion. It is an ethic that names and excludes both negative peacemaking and physically violent hatred. It is not an ethic that assumes we can overcome our problems by learning to “live in the tension,” by bringing people together in order to “mix it up in one big holy uncomfortableness,” as Marin puts it. Justice and injustice, like a cosmic concoction of oil and water, do not mix; they only wage war. The Marin Foundation refuses to take sides in order to stake out a position “in the middle.” The problem is that, from King’s perspective, there is no middle. There can be no neutrality in prophecy. The cause of positive peace, of genuine justice, requires that we take a definite stance. King called Christians to take the side of justice and equality. The issue for King was not whether one takes a side—because everyone already does, whether they acknowledge it or not—but how one takes a side.

Let me be clear: I am not saying Marin is the LGBT equivalent of a white moderate. That would be wrong on two counts. First, King certainly did bring people together to hear their stories and engage in honest and open dialogue. So in that limited, formal sense, the Marin Foundation is engaged in King-like action. Second, Marin himself is not an advocate of “do nothingism.” He is most certainly doing things to mend wounds and advance mutual understanding. In a way, he has taken a side, if that side is one of love and empathy. He stands by and for his gay and lesbian friends. Like those white participants in the CRM, he has faced abuse from both sides. We might recall King’s words for some of his white allies:

I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some—such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

We can and should recognize something of Marin in King’s words here. And yet, if the Marin Foundation does not view the LGBT struggle as a matter of justice, if they refuse to take sides at that crucial point, then the analogy with King’s white allies breaks down. Marin has certainly “grasped the meaning of this social revolution,” but he has not “committed [himself] to it,” assuming such commitment entails identifying one side as being in line with the arc of history. This brings us back to Savage. We can refuse to accept his characterization of the Marin Foundation as Westboro Baptist with hugs, but we have to acknowlege that, from the perspective of those struggling for LGBT equality, the position of inclusive neutrality is in fact a position in favor of the oppressors, not the oppressed—regardless of how much they suffer the abuse and brutality of the oppressors.

Marin, of course, denies that he is taking a position on either side, since he seeks to defuse the entire rhetoric of oppressor and oppressed; he wants to elevate the whole debate above labels that characterize one side as right and the other as wrong. But if this is indeed a matter of justice, as one side emphatically proclaims—and that is precisely the central question in the debate—then his noble efforts are not merely in vain; they are actually wrong. If this is a matter of justice, then there is no inclusion without exclusion, no peace without a struggle of violent nonviolence. The question is not whether we will take a side, but how we will take a side. Unless and until Marin can say that one side, rather than the other, is on the side of justice—unless he can truly name the oppressors and the oppressed—he will continue to be seen by people like Savage as perpetuating a false, negative peace—if not much worse, as Savage’s review indicates.

Marin continues to be a faithful witness to a thoughtful, loving form of engagement, but if that love is not wedded to a prophetic denunciation of injustice and the clear exclusion of negative peacemaking (as well as positive peacemaking that refuses to take sides), then those who see themselves as oppressed will only experience this as an empty love that embraces tension at the expense of truth. We need to be honest about that experience and acknowledge its validity. Of course, if this is not a matter of justice, then the entire comparison to King is moot. A formal comparison with King without the material basis for his particular mode of engagement is meaningless, even if well-intended. Clarity on this point is necessary before any further progress is possible.

Let’s celebrate the good work that Marin and others are doing, but let’s also recognize that such work inevitably runs up against a brick wall: Is this a matter of justice? I understand all too well why evangelical Christians refuse to answer it: if you say no, then you appear to be denying the very real experience of oppression in the LGBT community; if you say yes, then you appear to be denying the teachings of scripture and capitulating to cultural norms. It is an impossible position to be in, unless one of those two consequences changes in its appearance. What is undeniable is that to avoid answering it altogether is not a solution. Those who choose this path of neutrality must be prepared to suffer the abuse that people like Savage heap upon them. And while such abuse may often be inaccurate, it will not necessarily be unwarranted, given the divergent starting-points. We must recognize that the difference between Savage and Marin is not a difference between two modes of engagement; it is the difference between two understandings of the problem itself. Unless we can agree on the problem, we will never agree about the right way to approach it.

In the meantime, from the perspective of those who identify with the LGBT community, King’s words ring as true today as they did fifty years ago: “The judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”

Two apocalyptic families: a modest proposal

In 2009, Fleming Rutledge created an “apocalyptic family tree” that traces the genealogy and identifies the basic tenets of what has come to be known as the “Union school of apocalyptic.” It was, by and large, quite insightful—extending all the way back to the Blumhardts and including numerous non-Union affiliates and “cousins.”

Rutledge’s family tree, however helpful, is in need of reorganization. The lineage is more complicated than her single family tree would seem to indicate. For this, I propose two apocalyptic families. I first made this proposal in a paper I gave at the 2011 AAR meeting on “theology and apocalyptic,” which is now published in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology, edited by Douglas Harink and Joshua Davis. I further elaborate on the point in an article coming out in the March issue of IJST on Bultmann and Bonhoeffer. The point in both pieces is that we need to differentiate between what I call “apocalyptic A” and “apocalyptic B,” though perhaps we could give more descriptive names, such as: “nondialectical apocalyptic” and “dialectical apocalyptic.”

The distinction comes down to this. For the first family of apocalyptic, the new age is one that is directly visible or apprehensible according to the categories and faculties of the old age; the new age sequentially follows the old and is competitive with it. For the second family of apocalyptic, the new age is only indirectly or paradoxically visible, and thus cannot be grasped according to the categories and faculties of the old age; the new age paradoxically coincides with the old age and is noncompetitively present within it. The latter is thus a dialectical understanding of the apocalyptic event, in that Christ’s incursion into the world is “wholly other” in a way that preludes its observation apart from the parabolic vision of faith. The former is nondialectical or antidialectical, however, in primarily two possible respects: historico-metaphysical (i.e., kingdom of God as the supernatural, millennial reign of Christ) and historico-political (i.e., kingdom of God as revolutionary order or alternative polis). The Union school of apocalyptic harbors an internal tension, insofar as it sides with both the political-liberationist approach of apocalyptic A and the dialectical-paradoxical approach of apocalyptic B. The work of Paul Lehmann and Christopher Morse captures this tension nicely.

With this differentiation between the two apocalyptic families, we can see that Rutledge’s family tree can be separated into two different lineages, beginning with the Blumhardts themselves. What follows is thus my attempt to trace the two family lines. I have left a number of names off the list, because I do not know enough about their understanding of apocalyptic to place them with any precision. Most of those I have left off are primarily biblical scholars whose work is more descriptive, rather than normative and constructive, in nature. I have placed a question mark next to those names that I suspect belong in a particular family but cannot state for sure. Finally, certain names I left off because I do not consider them to belong to the apocalyptic family at all (e.g., Childs).

Apocalyptic Family A

Great-great-grandfather:
Thomas Müntzer

Great-grandfather:
J. C. Blumhardt

Grandfathers:
Johannes Weiss
Albert Schweitzer
Ernst Käsemann

Fathers, children, and cousins (Union and non-Union):
J. Christiaan Beker
John Howard Yoder
Jacques Ellul
Jürgen Moltmann
Wolfhart Pannenberg?
John Baptist Metz
Gustavo Gutierrez
Stanley Hauerwas
Susan Grove Eastman?
Carl Braaten (see update below)

Estranged second cousins:
Thomas J. J. Altizer
John Milbank
David Bentley Hart

Estranged third cousins:
Jacob Taubes
Slavoj Žižek

Disowned great-uncle:
John Nelson Darby


Apocalyptic Family B

Great-great-grandfather:
Martin Luther

Great-grandfathers:
Christoph Blumhardt (his later theology)
Søren Kierkegaard
Franz Overbeck

Grandfathers:
Karl Barth
Rudolf Bultmann
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Walter Benjamin

Fathers, children, and cousins (Union and non-Union):
Paul Lehmann
Christopher Rowland
J. Louis Martyn
Christopher Morse
James F. Kay
Martinus C. de Boer
Beverly Gaventa
Fleming Rutledge
J. C. Hoekendijk
Walter Lowe
William Stringfellow

Grandchildren:
Douglas Harink (in his most recent work)
Philip Ziegler
John Barclay
Susan Grove Eastman
Douglas Campbell?
Nathan Kerr?

Estranged third cousins:
Alain Badiou
Slavoj Žižek
Giorgio Agamben


To be sure, these two family trees raise as many questions as answers. Most people will scoff at the notion that Bultmann is an apocalyptic thinker, but since I have already made that case elsewhere, I refer people to the articles mentioned above. Others will wonder why Käsemann belongs in family A. This is also a case I make in those articles, but let me at least state the following: when I put Weiss, Schweitzer, and Käsemann together in apocalyptic A, I do so on the grounds that all three, writing as historians, identify a certain kind of apocalyptic thinking (viz. the historico-metaphysical type) as forming the theological milieu of the primitive Christian community. The difference between them is that Käsemann, unlike Weiss and Schweitzer, makes this conception of apocalyptic, or at least some understanding of it, to be essential to Christian faith. To be sure, Käsemann is more complicated, in that he goes on to write more normative-theological writings that seem closer to the Barth-Bultmann family line. Nevertheless, he left his mark on the apocalyptic conversation through his early historical writings. Where the definition of apocalyptic is concerned, Käsemann and Martyn represent distinctly different positions.

Other changes are worthy of extensive comment, but here I must be brief. First, I have added a “great-great-grandfathers” category, with Müntzer and Luther representing A and B, respectively. Müntzer is, of course, the anti-Lutheran Anabaptist rebel leader who is the hero of Taubes’s apocalyptic genealogy. There may be strong objections to Luther’s inclusion in the family tree, but contrary to those apocalyptic theologians who pit their views against the reformation, I can only see apocalyptic—at least in the sense of apocalyptic B—as the proper fulfillment of the reformation. Second, I have split the two Blumhardts. The father, Johann Christoph, is known for the deliverance of Gottliebin Dittus in 1842 and had a historico-metaphysical vision of the eschatological action of God. His son, Christoph, progressed through various stages in his thinking, including a period in which he left the institutional church altogether in favor of socialist politics (thus representing the historico-political side of apocalyptic A). But Christoph ended his life in a more dialectical conception of apocalyptic, whereby one engaged in action by waiting for God, since God’s action is radically eschatological and wholly other in nature and thus cannot be objectified in any metaphysical or political form. I have therefore split father and son as representative of A and B, respectively.

I’ve added some second and third cousins. Second cousins are theologians who share some of the family traits, but the rest of the family is embarrassed by them and exclude them from reunions. Third cousins are philosophers who share a thoroughly “Union apocalyptic” perspective, with the crucial exception that they deny the truth of this perspective. They are estranged by nature, rather than by any embarrassment on the part of the larger family.

Finally, I confess to being unsure about several of the names on the list. I placed Eastman in family A because she pits her position against Bultmann, but she could well belong in family B. Nate Kerr is more of an enigma to me, even though we have had numerous conversations. I am inclined to put him in family B because of his opposition to metaphysical or historicist objectifications of the Christ-event, including those of Hauerwas and Milbank; but he also seems to share a kind of historico-political form of apocalyptic that identifies the Christ-event with a certain kind of political praxis. Further clarification is needed.

This gives me a chance to clarify, in closing, my thoughts with respect to politics. Emphasis on the political nature of the gospel is not itself the issue in distinguishing between A and B. Notice above that I spoke specifically of a “historico-political” form of apocalyptic, and the list of family B theologians includes many with a political bent, including inter alia Barth, Bonhoeffer, Lehmann, and Morse. What I am seeking to identify instead is the collapse of the eschatological event of Christ into a certain sociopolitical modality—a direct (or at least not paradoxical) identification of the Christ-event with a particular political subjectivity that stands in a visibly competitive relation to other subjectivities. What unites apocalyptic A is that the eschaton, the new creation, is something literal and generally perceptible on the surface of history. The metaphysical version identifies the eschaton with an imminent, supernatural divine reign that all can observe (the so-called “second coming”); the political version identifies it with an immanent, political entity that all can observe (whether systemic or sectarian in nature). Apocalyptic B rejects both of these options—because the invasive action of God has already occurred in Christ and is available to faith alone. As Martyn says, it creates an “epistemological crisis.” This does not lessen the political import of the apocalypsis of God, but it does lead to a political agency that is more parabolic, indirect, paradoxical, and incognito.

Much more clarification is warranted, to be sure. But it is time for me to stop and for the conversation to begin.

Update on 1/16/13:
I have made a few changes. First, I moved Eastman and Žižek to apocalyptic B. Those who know their works better than I have persuaded me for the time being. Second, I added Carl Braaten to apocalyptic A. I meant to put Braaten on the list but left him off on accident. A couple years ago I came across his 1972 book, Christ and Counter-Christ, and was intrigued by the contribution it makes to the conversation. To be sure, this book is a product of its time and as with a number of the names on these two lists, putting him in one family or another is anachronistic. Braaten wrote this book on apocalyptic before Martyn and others came along to shake things up, so he takes it for granted that Käsemann’s position is really the only game in town, so to speak. Nevertheless, it reads like a combination of Tillich and Taubes (he praises both of them in the book), and it largely fits very well within apocalyptic A. He argues that the essence of apocalyptic theology is its “historico-eschatological dualism” (9), that is, its historical conflict between the powers of the old age and the powers of the new age, between God and Satan. He contrasts eschatological “development” (from present to future) with apocalyptic “liberation” (future to present), arguing that the latter “brings new reality through creative negation” (11). The goal of apocalyptic theology is realize the future in the present by “mediating the new into history, and creating a new tomorrow through revolutionary transformation of the world” (19). This is all vintage apocalyptic A. And let me add that I am all in favor of developing what Braaten calls an “apocalyptic theology of revolution.” But a person in family B will want to insist on a couple points. First, the dualism will have to be a paradoxical identity, which in my opinion is the central achievement of Martyn’s interpretation of Galatians, where he replaces a literal apocalypse with a bifocal vision of the new within the old (i.e., he epistemologizes the apocalypse). The dualism must not be a literal, observable conflict between two intraworldly powers. Second, the revolutionary action, which is absolutely necessary, cannot be seen as the actual mediation of the future into the present, or the effective realization of the new age here and now; it can only be a sign and witness to that which remains eschatologically beyond our grasp. Braaten has since confirmed that he belongs within apocalyptic A, despite abandoning his earlier apocalyptic thinking, by replacing his “theology of revolution” with a theology of “mother church.” When the revolutionary fever of the 1970s died away, the basic historico-eschatological dualism shifted from politics to ecclesiology, resulting in a call for a “return to catholicity” and “evangelical catholicism.” He thus writes in his 1998 work, Mother Church, that “if the church lives toward the future of God’s coming kingdom, she will not only be open to change, but she will also become the revolutionary instrument of change” (41). The ecumenical task—including, inter alia, the task of developing a theology of apostolic succession and church order—has therefore replaced the political task of revolution, since now the institution of the church is itself the agent of the new age simply by being the unified ecclesiastical organization within the world. Braaten thus unites within the trajectory of his own life the different forms of apocalyptic A that range from Käsemann and Moltmann to Hauerwas and Milbank.

Update on 1/16/13:
Question mark after Stringfellow’s name removed.

Update on 1/17/13:
Wolfhart Pannenberg was added to family A, but with a question mark indicating that I am not entirely convinced he belongs in the apocalyptic family tree. I have also added Christopher Rowland. De Boer notes that it was Rowland’s important study of apocalyptic, The Open Heaven (1982), that dislodged apocalyptic from being associated strictly with future expectations. In so doing he paved the way for Martyn’s apocalyptic reading of Galatians. Rowland sees apocalyptic as primarily about the present-tense, since it is fundamentally a matter of receiving heavenly wisdom for life now.

More importantly, I want to offer some explanation for why I devised these two trees in the first place. The genesis of this post goes back to the summer of 2011, when I was researching for an AAR paper that I had been accepted to give on Taubes and apocalyptic. In the course of that research, I did some extensive reading in Käsemann, Beker, and other scholars of apocalyptic. I had done a lot of work in Martyn years earlier, but this was my first time really delving into the wider conversation. What I noticed was that the definition of apocalyptic was not only wildly inconsistent—imminent, cosmic parousia (Käsemann), eschatological dualism (Braaten), heavenly wisdom for life (Rowland), etc.—but there were some obvious contradictions. For instance, Beker places Barth and Bultmann together as theologians who are anti-apocalyptic. But then how could contemporary apocalyptic theologians consistently point to Barth as the origin of the recovery of apocalyptic in modern theology? I also read Philip Ziegler’s piece on Bonhoeffer’s apocalyptic ethic, and while I came away convinced, I was also puzzled how to understand just who or what counts as apocalyptic. At the same time, I was neck-deep in my study of Bultmann, and I simply could not see sufficient reason why he should not also be considered apocalyptic. It became clear that what Bultmann was rejecting as apocalyptic was not what the members of the Union school were advocating. Martyn was talking about the need for “bifocal vision” and for an apocalypse in Galatians that does not have a literal invasion or catastrophic destruction of the old age. Morse even goes so far as to argue for a “deliteralizing” of the apocalypse. At this point things started to fall into place for me. On the one side I found Käsemann, Beker, and others arguing for a historical definition of apocalyptic as referring to a literal, visible, cosmic event in the chronological future. On the other side I found Martyn, Morse, and others in the Union school arguing for what I would call a theological or normative definition of apocalyptic as a way of interpreting the meaning of the Christ-event as it breaks into our existence in the present situation. Once I differentiated between these two understandings of the apocalypse, I could suddenly make sense of how Barth and Bonhoeffer could be rejected by some and affirmed by others as apocalyptic thinkers. What was more surprising was that I realized Bultmann rejected only the historical definition, and he was dismissed largely for that reason. In short, this whole exercise arose out of a need to clarify the relation between Käsemann and Martyn, between Beker and Barth. My only goal has been to shed light on the meaning of the concept of apocalyptic in order to assist the ongoing conversation.

The Top 50 Albums of 2012

I am posting this a few weeks later than I would have liked, but I suppose that’s what comes from having a full-time job. The past year was a surprisingly good one for music. There weren’t any runaway winners, just a lot of very, very good albums. Consequently, the list of the top 50 seems even more arbitrarily ordered than in previous years. Given my time constraints, I have opted to forgo descriptions of each album. Just go and listen to them.


1. Passion Pit, Gossamer

2. Chromatics, Kill for Love

3. Lost in the Trees, A Church That Fits Our Needs

4. Bat for Lashes, The Haunted Man

5. Beach House, Bloom

6. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city

7. Perfume Genius, Put Your Back N 2 It

8. Dan Deacon, America

9. Karriem Riggins, Alone Together

10. iamamiwhoami, Kin

11. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel…

12. Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light

13. Grimes, Visions

14. Andy Stott, Luxury Problems

15. Moonface, With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery

16. Tame Impala, Lonerism

17. Julia Holter, Ekstasis

18. Sleigh Bells, Reign of Terror

19. DIIV, Oshin

20. Grizzly Bear, Shields

21. Crystal Castles, (III)
22. Trust, TRST
23. Hustle and Drone, Hustle and Drone EP
24. Twin Shadow, Confess
25. Purity Ring, Shrines
26. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
27. The xx, Coexist
28. Wild Nothing, Nocturne
29. Metric, Synthetica
30. Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes
31. Antony & the Johnsons, Cut the World
32. Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits
33. El-P, Cancer 4 Cure
34. Cooly G, Playin’ Me
35. Menomena, Moms
36. The Shins, Port of Morrow
37. Lotus Plaza, Spooky Action at a Distance
38. Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin, Instrumental Tourist
39. Bowerbirds, The Clearing
40. Solange, True
41. Tussle, Tempest
42. Poliça, Give You the Ghost
43. Ellie Goulding, Halcyon
44. Father John Misty, Fear Fun
45. Santigold, Master of My Make-Believe
46. Tanlines, Mixed Emotions
47. Lone, Galaxy Garden
48. Chairlift, Something
49. John Talabot, ƒIN
50. Hot Chip, In Our Heads

Announcing: Aberdeen MTh in theological ethics

The University of Aberdeen has a new one-year Master’s in Theological Ethics. The Theological Ethics area emphasizes fundamental texts and thinkers in the Christian tradition for engaging contemporary issues and debates. If you have questions or are interested in applying to the MTh program feel free to contact Professor Bernd Wannenwetsch, Dr Brian Brock or Dr Michael Mawson.

Announcing: analytic theology fellowships and grants for 2013–2014

The Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, announces the following fellowships and grants available for the 2013-2014 academic year:

Analytic Theology Post-Doctoral Fellowships

These are one-year fellowships for the 2013-2014 academic year. They provide a funded leave of absence to be spent in residence at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, or, in exceptional circumstances, at other major centers for research on philosophy of religion or philosophical theology. These fellowships are open to faculty who teach in theology, religion, or divinity programs. Applicants must outline a research program that leads to scholarly publications in analytic theology or to new programs of study. Fellows receive a $60,000 stipend plus $15,000 for expenses. For further details, including sample topics and application instructions, please click here. Applications must be received by January 15, 2013.

Analytic Theology Cluster Grants

These grants fund interdisciplinary seminars or reading groups. Each funded seminar or group has two leaders – one theologian and one philosopher – and up to eight additional participants. The leaders must be faculty members. We will award up to five Grants with a maximum $15,000 budget per grant. For further details, including application instructions, please click here. Letters of intent must be received by February 15, 2013. Full proposals will be invited on a competitive basis. (Prospective participants apply to leaders after funding is secured.)

Analytic Theology Summer Stipends

These stipends provide $5,000 to fund summer research in analytic theology. Successful applicants in year one or two will automatically receive an award in year two or three if they meet the following two conditions:  (a) they intend to research a project in analytic theology during the second summer, and (b) their previously funded project has been accepted for publication at a peer-reviewed journal. For further details, including application instructions, please click here. Applications must be received by February 1, 2013.

Analytic Theology Course Awards

These awards provide funding for the development and implementation of courses, or course segments, in analytic theology at divinity schools and departments of theology and religious studies. The project expects to award five applicants with $15,000 each: $5,000 for the applying faculty member, and $10,000 for the host institution. For further details, including application instructions, please click here. Applications must be received by March 15, 2013.

A brief academic update

As my (few remaining) readers will likely know, I am now an associate editor of academic books at IVP (disclaimer: the views on this blog are wholly my own and do not represent the views of IVP). I’ve been on the job for the past two months, and it’s been a great experience so far. While I miss Princeton—the great community and the equally great library—my wife, Amy, and I are both very glad to be in the greater Chicago area.

Even though I have a full-time job that is keeping me very busy, I haven’t left the academic world behind. Far from it. I have a book essay, two articles, and two conference papers coming up, and this post will be a brief summary of each for those interested. The three essays are all related to apocalyptic theology, while the papers branch out to somewhat new territory for me.

“Eschatologizing Apocalyptic”
The first essay is my contribution to the edited volume, Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology, co-edited by Douglas Harink and Joshua Davis (hopefully out by the end of 2012). The essay is titled, “Eschatologizing Apocalyptic: An Assessment of the Present Conversation on Pauline Apocalyptic.” I originally gave this as a paper at the 2011 AAR in a working group on Explorations in Theology and Apocalyptic. The paper argues that the apocalyptic conversation is hampered by a lack of clarity regarding the meaning of the term. I reinvestigate the debate between Käsemann and Bultmann to reveal that contemporary apocalyptic theology is actually closer to Bultmann, which helps to explain why there is so much confusion in the present conversation. I take this to be a positive thing, viz. as a reason to rehabilitate Bultmann as an apocalyptic thinker rather than as grounds for criticizing the contemporary work in apocalyptic (with which I am entirely sympathetic). I then look at the work of Jacob Taubes, who helpfully reveals an alternative, and highly problematic, interpretation of apocalyptic. I conclude by differentiating between two strands of apocalyptic theology and suggest that those who follow the Martyn line of thinking need to more explicitly “eschatologize apocalyptic” by constructively clarifying the way they break with traditional apocalyptic ideas (especially the notion of “imminent expectation”).

“Bonhoeffer and Bultmann: Toward an Apocalyptic Rapprochement”
The second essay is an article forthcoming with IJST, probably in early 2013. This began as a paper presented at the 2011 conference at Notre Dame on New Conversations on Bonhoeffer’s Theology. I subsequently rewrote the entire paper in light of the research that I did for the AAR paper, “Eschatologizing Apocalyptic.” As a result, the two essays were essentially written concurrently. The IJST article develops the Käsemann-Bultmann debate further and uses it as a launching point for a reconsideration of the Bultmann-Bonhoeffer relationship. Recently scholars such as Philip Ziegler have argued, persuasively in my opinion, that Bonhoeffer should be viewed as an apocalyptic theologian in a Pauline mode. I argue that, if this is the case, then we have grounds for reading Bultmann as an apocalyptic theologian as well. The bulk of this essay is devoted to an analysis of Bultmann in order to demonstrate that the standard interpretation of his theology is worthy of close scrutiny. I highlight passages such as the following from a 1931 Advent sermon: “The coming of the Lord, which the Christian community anticipates in Advent and celebrates at Christmas, is not at all primarily his coming to the individual, his entering into the soul, but rather his coming to the world. This coming . . . is not something which the soul ever and again experiences; such a comfort quickly vanishes. Rather it is the coming of the Lord into the world; it is the word that the Lord has come and is with us.”

“Reconsidering Apocalyptic Cinema: Pauline Apocalyptic and Paul Thomas Anderson”
At the same time I wrote the above two essays, I also applied this same body of research to the film and theology conversation. This was purely for fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing this piece. It should appear later this year in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. I begin by showing that current discussions of apocalyptic themes in film are dependent upon an old notion of apocalyptic that belongs to the thought-world of Second Temple Judaism. I then present what I take to be the revisionist apocalypticism of the new Pauline school (Martyn et al.) and suggest that this understanding of apocalyptic offers new vistas for a theological engagement with cinema. I suggest that Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece, Magnolia, serves as a perfect example of apocalyptic cinema in a Pauline mode. I argue that interpreting the film in this way actually makes the best sense of the film’s own narrative and satisfactorily addresses some of the common criticisms.

AAR paper #1: “The Missionary Situation of a World Come of Age: The Problem of the Missionsgemeinde and Volkskirche in Bonhoeffer”
My first AAR paper looks at the role mission plays in Bonhoeffer’s theology, both early and late. I focus on Sanctorum Communio and the essays gathered in volume 16 of the collected works. I argue that there are serious problems with the way Bonhoeffer thematizes mission in these works. In the writings of 1942, in particular, Bonhoeffer posits a split between a Volkskirche and a Missionsgemeinde as two equally legitimate forms of the church in the world. This effectively makes mission a subordinate and nonessential aspect of the church and opens up the very theoretical gap that the German Christians exploited in 1933 in defense of the Aryan Paragraph. I suggest that there are positive resources in Bonhoeffer for a theology of mission today, but these are to be found in his discussion of a non-religious interpretation of Christian faith.

AAR paper #2: “Hegeling Kierkegaard: Barth’s Historicization of Kierkegaard’s Incognito-Christology”
This title might be a little misleading, since I probably won’t have time to actually develop my own constructive Barth interpretation. That’s (hopefully) not a bad thing. The full paper has three sections. The first and most important is a close historical analysis of Barth’s relationship to Kierkegaard. Like Jon Stewart’s recent argument regarding Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, I argue that Barth’s ostensible rejection of Kierkegaard after 1926 has nothing to do with Kierkegaard himself and instead everything to do with his rejection of contemporary Kierkegaardian theologians whose ideas he opposed. The second section then examines the recent magisterial work of Cora Bartels, who has written a two-volume work on Kierkegaard’s reception among the dialectical theologians. I briefly explicate her analysis of Barth’s Göttingen dogmatics and suggest that what Bartels is actually looking for can be found in the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics. The third section of the paper, which I probably will not have time to read, will then explore the ways in which Barth constructively incorporates Kierkegaard into his mature dogmatic theology.

In addition to all of this, of course, Travis and I are putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for Karl Barth in Conversation. You can look forward to that in 2013.

Part 5: Conclusion

This is part five of my series on “Trinity, Gender, and Subordination,” which is my contribution to Rachel Held Evans’s Week of Mutuality.

A Different Perspective

The heart of my argument is now clear: the theological presuppositions for the complementarian argument from the trinity are, in fact, groundless. They depend upon certain assumptions connected with social trinitarianism and other misguided analogies between God and humanity that (1) fail to respect the ontological divide between the divine and the human and (2) fail to look to Jesus Christ as the one who alone unites the divine and the human.

At this point, I want to look at things from a different perspective. I will do so as briefly as possible in two ways. The first is a simple point regarding social trinitarianism. Earlier I argued that the social doctrine of the trinity is the hidden assumption behind the complementarian argument. Without this doctrine, none of its claims work, because you can only extrapolate human relations from the divine if the trinitarian persons are three distinct subjects. The irony is that—in the work of theologians like Moltmann, Miroslav Volf, Leonardo Boff, John Zizioulas, and Catherine LaCugna—social trinitarianism makes the same move from trinity to humanity in support of egalitarianism. This, in itself, should give us pause. Whether one side has more arguments in favor or not, the fact remains that it is not at all clear that the argument from the trinity should result in a complementarian social order. Whereas the complementarian argument focuses on the way Father and Son relate within history, the egalitarian argument focuses on the being of Father and Son within eternity. Picking one over the other is hazardous: losing the Son’s subordination to the Father cuts one off from the biblical narrative of Jesus, but losing the eternal co-equality and perichoretic unity lands one in subordinationism.

In the end, both versions of social trinitarianism presuppose the same problematic conception of divine “personhood.” Both employ circular reasoning that construes God in human terms, making God into the image of humanity so that humanity can then find its image in God; both end up confirming what the theologian already believes. Social trinitarianism—whether a social-trinitarian complementarianism or a social-trinitarian egalitarianism—ends up with a quasi-tritheistic conception of God that undermines the single subjectivity of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. For this reason, we cannot appeal to an egalitarian doctrine of the trinity over against a complementarian doctrine of the trinity.

The second change of perspective involves rethinking our gendered metaphors for God. While God is beyond gender, we are nevertheless able to use gendered imagery for God in order to articulate the reality and revelation of God for us. The problem is that we have been too blind to the way the tradition engages in rather surprising acts of de-gendering or gender-bending. Again, Tanner is helpful here, and I will quote her at length:

The gendered imagery in classical trinitarianism is always considered in tandem . . . with other forms of biblical imagery of a quite impersonal sort—light and water imagery, for example. Paired with these other images, the meaning of Father-Son language becomes quite abstract and relatively untethered from its specifically gendered associations. . . . The Son comes out of the Father, for example, like a ray from a source of light, so as to share its nature. No one set of biblical images, furthermore, is privileged; each has its particular theological strengths and weaknesses. . . . Multiple images are therefore commonly employed together so that they might mutually modify one another’s theological shortcomings. . . . One might grant too that in classical trinitarian thinking this is a Father who acts like a mother: he births or begets the Son. . . . The closeness of the relationship is at issue: the absence of any temporal or spatial distinction between originator and originated. Birth as the primary metaphor for developing whatever the Father is doing in relation to the Son is therefore often quite strong in classical trinitarianism. One might even say, following Psalm 120:3, as Hilary of Poitiers does, that the Son is begotten of the Father’s womb. . . . Gendered imagery is “exceeded” in a “baffling of gender literalism,” as Janet Soskice puts it. “Roles are reversed, fused, inverted: no one is simply who they seem to be. More accurately, everyone is more than they seem to be . . . the Father and the Spirit are more than one gender can convey.”¹

The claim is not that we have to always balance out our gendered imagery whenever speaking about God. That would certainly be an improvement over an exclusively one-sided use of gendered language. But the real point is that God is absolutely beyond gender in such a way that no single gender can accurately reflect the trinitarian life of God, and thus both genders can be used to speak faithfully of God—though, in our current state of linguistic confusion, no gender might be the best option. This needs to become axiomatic for Christian faith. Without it, we are easily bewitched by the language found in scripture and the tradition into thinking that Father and Son are somehow comparable to what we call “fathers” and “sons,” that God is somehow more like a man than a woman, or that relations within the trinity share a likeness to relations between men and women. These are all examples of Christianity run amok, and we have to be diligent about extinguishing such ideas whenever they appear. Once this axiom is in place, however, we are free to employ gendered imagery in ways that help to articulate the truth of the gospel. We can speak of God the Father who is, at the same time, God the Mother. This is not an act of departing from scripture or of bringing in pagan notions into our theology. It is precisely out of a true faithfulness to the triune God that such language becomes meaningful, even necessary.

Conclusion

The complementarian argument from the trinity is biblically and theologically unsupportable. It makes assumptions about God that we have no basis for making and draws analogies that we have no business drawing. In short, it is not controlled by God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ in the way that all our thinking and speaking about God must be. That’s not to say the egalitarian argument from the trinity is any better, though it is by far the more common. I am saddened whenever I hear Christians appealing to the trinity in support of any social model—whether complementarian or egalitarian. It is evidence that we have domesticated God and, simultaneously, that we have lost contact with the insights of our ancestors in the faith. I hope this argument is not taken to imply that the trinity is irrelevant for the church’s life. But the relevance will have to be located elsewhere, filtered through christology. The trinity is not a social model for us to imitate; it is rather a christocentric mission in which we are called to participate as a community of faithful and obedient disciples.

____________________

¹ Tanner, Christ the Key, 213–15. Quoting from Janet Soskice, “Trinity and Feminism,” in Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. Susan Frank Parsons (CUP, 2002), 146; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the Odes of Solomon, and Early Syrian Tradition,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 37, nos. 2–3 (1993): 114.

Part 4: The Problem of Analogy

This is part four of my series on “Trinity, Gender, and Subordination,” which is my contribution to Rachel Held Evans’s Week of Mutuality.

The Problem of Analogy

I have identified social trinitarianism as the crucial factor in the complementarian position. I have also identified this position as theologically unfounded, based on an illegitimate application of human personhood to God. Social trinitarianism results in a mythological, tritheistic, and Marcionite conception of God. But this does not exhaust the problems with the complementarian use of trinitarian doctrine.

I have classified these additional concerns under the heading of analogy. By “analogy” I mean the move between speaking about God and speaking about humanity. As I have already implied, such speaking cannot be univocal—because then God and humanity would be basically identical, as is the case with the social trinitarian concept of “person”—nor can it be equivocal, because that would mean we could never actually speak about God. If our language is equivocal, then it has no real meaning; there would be no actual relation between God and humanity. But God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ establishes precisely such a relationship, and for that reason, meaningful speech about God is indeed possible. The result is that we can speak analogically.

But what kind of analogy are we talking about? If the analogy only comes into effect via revelation, then it is only available on the basis that God chooses to make this analogy possible. The analogy is not a general possibility that any person can articulate. If revelation in Jesus Christ is the starting-point, then the analogy is only possible on the basis of faith. It is only because God has spoken to us in the Word that we can then speak truthfully about God in our words. This is what Barth calls the “analogy of faith” (analogia fidei). Truthful speech about God depends upon a reconciled relationship with God. We can only begin to know God once we discover that God already knows us in Christ. As Paul states, “you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Gal. 4.9). To know God is to know that we are loved and saved by God. What this means, in effect, is that we only know who God is and how God relates to us in light of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We don’t have access to a God outside of or behind the incarnate God. Something can only be analogous to God if it is in accordance with what God has made manifest in Jesus.

Why this brief discourse on analogy? Because the logic of the complementarian argument—which tries to establish an analogy between Father-Son and male-female—violates the analogy of faith. This takes a variety of different forms. I’ve already addressed the social-trinitarian basis for this move, but let’s look at it from another perspective. By drawing the analogy to men and women, the complementarian position posits an analogy of being rather than an analogy of faith. The analogy of being (analogia entis)—to which Barth was adamantly opposed—is the notion that there is an inherent likeness between humanity and God. The analogy of being posits an analogy between human being and divine being, irrespective of faith. Classical proponents of the analogy of being locate the connection in our reason (our logos) that participates in the divine reason (the Logos). Others make an immortal soul the basis for the analogy. What I am suggesting is that complementarianism is implicitly locating an analogy to God in our gender differentiation. Unlike some versions of the analogia entis, the complementarians are, presumably, not trying to use this gender binary as an apologetic basis for reaching knowledge of God outside of faith. And yet their version remains a species of the analogia entis insofar as the analogy is grounded in a particular feature of humanity-in-general, namely, our sexual differentiation as male and female. Our being as male and female is supposed to correspond to God’s being as Father and Son. Even if the fulfillment of the analogy only arises within the church, the possibility of this analogy is already latent within our natural being. In other words, complementarianism tries to find a point of analogy in creation rather than in reconciliation. It is not an analogy given in revelation and made possible through faith.

What unites all versions of the analogia entis is the notion that our analogy to God is a feature of our being created “in the image of God.” The doctrine of the imago dei is a very convoluted affair in Christian history. There is very little agreement among textual and theological scholars about what the term ought to mean. What is certainly clear is that a change happened in early Christian theology. Instead of asking “how do we image God?” the church began to ask instead, “What makes human beings different from the animals?” The assumption was that the image is something we are, something we possess, rather than something we do; it was a noun (“the image”) instead of a verb (“to image”). The result was the identification of some structure in our being that could conceivably correspond to God’s being. The notion that the image could be lost through sin and restored only through reconciliation was inconceivable. And yet it is precisely this more dynamic understanding of the image that makes the best sense of the biblical witness.

Rightly understood, the imago dei answers the question, “What does it mean to be like God?” with the answer, “Be holy, because I the LORD your God, am holy” (Lev. 19.2). And we must also remember Exodus 31.13: “You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy.” For Christians, God’s act of making us to be holy occurs in the reconciliation accomplished in Jesus Christ. This is why we find Jesus described as the true image of God (2 Cor. 4.4, Col. 1.15). We are to be conformed to his likeness. All of this is brought together, in light of Christ, in Colossians 3.9-11 (emphasis added):

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

What it means to be “in the image of God” is not having rationality or (gendered) relationality—something intrinsic to us, something we possess—but rather coming to live in reconciled relationship with the Creator, becoming-holy, becoming-righteous, becoming-new. In other words, the imago dei has nothing to do with some inherent feature of our humanity; it is not an attribute that characterizes us by nature. It is instead a gift that comes to us by grace. We receive it as part of our conformity to Christ through faith. We only image God when we image Jesus, and we only image Jesus when we receive the new life that he provides and participate in the ministry of reconciliation. This has nothing to do with being male or female, since all persons are equally sinful and so equally reconciled to God. The analogia entis tries to find a point of contact between God and humanity outside of Jesus Christ; the analogia fidei recognizes that we only image God—i.e., we are only analogous to God—when we become participants in the mission of God through the saving work of Christ.

But let’s bracket the issue of the analogia entis. Even if an analogy of being is not involved, there is still a fundamental problem with the analogy itself. Why are Father and Son supposed to correspond to male and female? How did we even come up with such an analogy? Obviously, both Father and Son are masculine images, and Jesus is quite literally a man. On what grounds does anyone make the connection between the Son and women? Of all the connections one could theoretically draw, this one makes the least amount of sense. Maybe the gender analogy is based on the fact that the Holy Spirit has a history of being understood in feminine terms. That would be rather surprising, considering these are complementarians who refuse to use feminine language for God at all. Moreover, the Spirit in the biblical witness does not possess the kind of concrete interpersonal agency that would provide an analogue for human relations. And there is no history of obedience and submission on the part of the Spirit, nothing that would provide any support for the complementarian position. So the appeal to the trinity to support gender subordination depends finally upon the identity of the Son.

Returning to the main question, then, how does the Father connect with men and the Son with women? Is it simply because we see superiority and submission in the Father-Son relation? Besides the fact that this presupposes the social trinitarianism criticized above, it is an entirely formal conception of this relation. Nowhere in scripture do we find abstract discussion of the Father’s superiority and the Son’s submission. What we find are concrete accounts of specific actions and relations for the sake of specific ends. Jesus is not subordinate to the Father in the abstract; he is subordinate because, as the gospel of Matthew puts it, “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16.21). Jesus is sent (missio) on a mission of obedience to the point of death. The fact of his submission cannot be abstracted from his mission. His subordination has the cross as its indispensable content. Likewise, the Father is not superior in the abstract; the Father is superior as the one who sends the Son into the world. The Father’s superiority has the mission of the Son as its indispensable content. Both aspects absolutely preclude any generalization of their roles within the history of salvation. The “roles” of the trinitarian modes of being cannot become a formal template for human “roles,” gendered or otherwise.

We can demonstrate this rather easily through a little reductio ab absurdum. Where exactly are we to find an analogue for women in the obedience and submission of Jesus? Jesus is subordinate in terms of his obedience unto death, but let’s sincerely hope there is no attempt at an analogy there. Jesus is the revealer of God and the apostle to the world. Ironically, wouldn’t that mean women are the true apostles and ministers? Jesus says that “I and the Father are one.” Does this identification apply to men and women? Jesus prays to the Father. Are women supposed to pray to men? We could go on and on. The point is that the analogy between Father-Son and men-women is clearly arbitrary, formal, and in the end, meaningless. The whole basis for the analogy is wrong-headed from the start. The complementarians have a position they want to find theological justification for (viz. the subordination of women). They look around and happen to see subordination in Jesus’ relation to the Father. They then use this to legitimate their model of gender roles. The circularity of the argument is painfully obvious, just as it was in the social trinitarian position discussed above. The complementarians find in God confirmation of what they already believe to be true.

The only non-arbitrary basis for an analogy between human relations and the Father-Son relation is found in the fact that the Son took on human flesh in the incarnation. It is Christ’s humanity that then establishes a connection with other human beings. But this immediately poses a problem for the complementarian position, no matter how one looks at it. If we view Jesus’ gender as significant, then he becomes the analogue for men; if we view his humanity in terms of its salvific significance—in which case men and women are included equally—then he becomes the analogue for all human beings (i.e., within the church) irrespective of gender differentiation. Either way, any attempt to make him the model for women in particular appears baseless. At least the connection between the Son and the church makes sense from the biblical text. Paul speaks of Christians as those who are adopted by the Father and become co-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8.16-17; Gal. 4.7). If we are going to speak about a particular group of people who are subordinate, it can only be the church as a whole that is subordinate before the Lord, not women who are subordinate to men.

On this point, the evangelical complementarians have something to learn from Catholic complementarians. Catholics have their own way of drawing gender-based analogies from Christ. They aren’t any less problematic overall, but they are less arbitrary. Catholics don’t use the intra-trinitarian relations at all; their commitment to the orthodox doctrine of the trinity precludes any social trinitarianism from the start. Instead, they take for granted the so-called “law of nature” that defines the man as the active giver and the woman as passive receiver—represented in the different sexual organs of men and women. They then see this natural law exemplified in the relation between God and Mary: God as the active initiator and Mary the humble receiver (“let it be with me according to your word”). God represents the “male” function of activity, and Mary represents the “female” function of receptivity. This then maps on to relations within the church—except not in the way one might expect! Catholics do not make the mistake of applying the God-Mary relation to actual men and women in any straightforward sense. They don’t need a theological reason for complementarianism, because they believe God has already ordained a self-evident law of nature. (There are many good reasons for Protestants to reject this notion of a law of nature, but that’s another conversation for another time.) Instead, Catholics use the God-Mary relation as the analogue for the God-Church relation as a whole. The entire church, men and women, are called to be “feminine” by receiving God’s grace. Hans Urs von Balthasar even calls the church “the woman-in-community.”¹ We could say, according to the Catholic understanding, that we are to be “masculine” in our active ministry towards others, but “feminine” in our receptivity before God.

Among modern Catholic theologians, Balthasar is perhaps the one who has reflected on this “polarity of man and woman” the most. For him, it is central to the very drama of salvation. Like almost all Catholics, he takes this gender binary to be “a fundamental feature of human nature.”² In his explication of the male-female relation, he defines man as “word” (German: Wort) and woman as “answer” (Ant-Wort). He connects this distinction to the Genesis creation account, where the man is the one who names the animals, while the woman is the response to the man’s word: “If man is the word that calls out, woman is the answer that comes to him at last.”³ The woman’s fruitfulness “is an answering fruitfulness, designed to receive man’s fruitfulness . . . and bring it to its ‘fullness.’”⁴ He makes a similar connection to the parallel terms Litz (“look”) and Ant-Litz (“face”). The man is the look, the woman the face that returns the look. For Balthasar, it is a fact of nature that the man is superior and the woman is subordinate. The woman only responds to the man; she cannot be an initiator herself. There is an order “built into” the structure of nature itself. It is a “natural datum,” he says, which neither sin nor redemption changes.

What’s important to note is that it is only after he has developed this account of human nature that Balthasar then adds: “This [account of male and female as word and answer] yields an analogy for the relationship between God and the creature.”⁵ In other words, there is no claim to find the basis for male-female relations in the trinitarian relation between Father and Son. The analogy goes the other direction. Catholics take the “fact of creation” as their starting-point, and only from that perspective do they go on to find confirmation of this relationship in other examples from Scripture and theology. The advantage of this approach is that Balthasar makes none of the questionable analogical moves noted above, except (crucially!) for his embrace of the analogy of being. On that point, Catholics are united against Barth and the Reformation. Nevertheless, his account does not make the mistake of social trinitarianism, nor does he try to map the Father-Son relation onto the male-female relation. Balthasar represents one of the only logically respectable alternatives to a full-fledged position of radical equality. If one is going to try to argue for complementarianism on theological grounds, one has to take creation or nature as one’s starting-point. One has to embrace an analogia entis. This will mean sacrificing Jesus Christ as the normative center of one’s theological anthropology.

We are thus faced with a crucial decision: either the event of salvation accomplished in Christ is determinative for human relations (thus resulting in radical equality), or it isn’t, and instead there is a bifurcation between creation and reconciliation. This essay is premised on the claim that only the former route is theologically responsible for Protestant Christians committed to Jesus as the self-revelation of God. As problematic as it may be, the Catholic position at least makes internal sense. What makes no sense at all, however, is the evangelical complementarian attempt to find a theological justification for its account of gender roles in the trinitarian relations.

There are many problems with the analogy between the trinity and humanity—many more than I can adequately discuss here. The time has come to evaluate the underlying problem with every such analogy: the disregard for the ontological divide between God and the world. The attempt to find some analogue in the trinitarian being of God for human social relations is fundamentally misguided, because it fails to take into account the wholly otherness of God. Words like “Son,” “person,” “relation,” etc., lull us into thinking that we can compare God’s intra-trinitarian relations with relations between human beings. But this forgets that all such language is a feeble and fallible human attempt to speak about a reality that is radically different from anything we experience or imagine. Our language about God is never a direct expression of who God is and what God is like. God’s self-revelation, while granting us true knowledge of Godself, does not mean that our concepts are themselves revelatory; our words are at best a finite, provisional, and contextual witness to the reality of God. We must not allow the authority of Scripture or the familiarity of the church’s language blind us to the fact that our words have only analogical significance, meaning that God is both similar and dissimilar to what our words normally mean. And while the similarity is important—grounded as it is in Christ himself—the dissimilarity is crucial, since God is absolutely transcendent and totally other than the world. God is of a completely different ontological order from humanity.

This is why, in the final analysis, no gendered comparisons can be made between God and humanity. There simply is no analogue to human gender to be found in God. God is wholly beyond human attributes like sexual differentiation. The distinctions between men and women, masculine and feminine, have no connection to or grounding in the being of God. On this point, the tradition has consistently insisted that God is absolutely beyond gender. Gregory of Nyssa makes this quite explicit: “The divine is neither male nor female (for how could such a thing be contemplated in divinity?).”⁶ The traditional use of the masculine pronoun for God has no gendered meaning whatsoever. God is not male, nor does God have “male” characteristics. Conservatives sometimes claim that the use of feminine imagery for God is an illegitimate anthropomorphizing of God. But that argument holds true for masculine imagery as well. It is the radical transcendence of God that allows both masculine and feminine words to describe God—precisely because neither is directly applicable to God.

In the end, the argument from the trinity is a complete dead-end. There is no way to determine human social relations from intra-trinitarian relations. We are prevented from making any such move. Whatever “person” means in relation to Father, Son, and Spirit, it does not and cannot mean the same for human persons. Even if there is a relation of superior to subordinate between Father and Son, these are modes of one and the same divine subject; they do not relate to each other as separate individual subjects brought together through a fellowship of wills. Whatever “subordinate” means within God’s being, therefore, it does not and cannot mean the same for human beings, nor could it possibly apply to a particular gender (or any other set of people).

To return to where we began, the problem with all these analogies is that they are not grounded in the analogy of faith. What the analogia fidei makes clear is that our speech about God—that is, our understanding of how God relates to us and how we relate to God—has to be seen in the light of our reconciliation to God in Jesus Christ. And what we learn from Christ is not that superiority and subordination are mere characteristics of God. On the contrary, the relation of superior and subordinate within the trinity only has theological significance as part of the event of reconciliation. They are not attributes to be applied to us; they are aspects of a salvation narrative in which we are called to participate as faithful witnesses. The Son is only subordinate to the Father for the sake of his mission as the one “obedient unto death”; his subordination is integral to the divine will to reconcile the world to God. Christ’s submission is entirely “for us and for our salvation,” as the creed puts it.

The complementarian attempt to use this submission as a model for gender relations ends up separating the form of Christ’s mission (submission to the Father) from its soteriological content (reconciling us to God). But this is to arbitrarily and illegitimately isolate an aspect of Jesus Christ’s history—dislocating it from its proper location within the event of salvation and turning it into an example for us to imitate. The problem is that Christ’s submission to the Father is not a model to follow; it is a mystery to praise. The complementarian use of this narrative for human relations does not respect the exclusive nature of this Father-Son relationship. Not only is it ontologically other than any human relationship, it is part of a salvation occurrence that we simply cannot and must not try to apply to ourselves.

In conclusion, the only way to relate the trinity to human beings is not by moving from God to humanity, but by bringing humanity to God. It is not the intra-trinitarian relations, but the trinitarian movement into the world in Christ, that establishes our likeness to God. We become analogous to God only by participating in the mission of God. Tanner is very helpful here:

My own strategy for closing the gap [between God and humanity] looks to what the trinity is doing for us—what is happening in the life of Christ, in short—to answer the question of how the trinity applies to human life. Human beings are not left to their own devices in figuring out what the trinity means for human relations. Instead, the trinity itself enters our world in Christ to show us how human relations are to be reformed in its image. . . . The trinity in the economy does not close the gap by making trinitarian relations something like human ones, but by actually incorporating the human into its very own life through the incarnation. We are therefore not called to imitate the trinity by way of the incarnation but brought to participate in it. . . . In Christ we are therefore shown what the trinity looks like when it includes the human, and what humanity looks like when it is taken up within the trinity’s own relationships. . . . The gap between divine and human is not closed here by making the two similar to one another, but by joining the two very different things—humanity and divinity, which remain very different things—into one in Christ via the incarnation. . . . The trinity is not brought down to our level as a model for us to imitate; our hope is that we might be raised up to its level.⁷

It’s worth reflecting on Tanner’s words here. Her point is that if we want to know how humanity ought to look in light of the trinity, then we should look to where the triune God has actually become human. We see in Jesus, for example, a dependence upon God, an empowerment by the Spirit, a self-offering love for others, and a ministry of prophetic witness and healing care. We image the triune God by faithfully participating in this mission as apostolic witnesses to God’s abundant mercy and saving love. Jesus was sent on a mission “to inaugurate a life-brimming, Spirit-filled community.” To share in the life of the trinity involves participating “in the kingdom or new community that accords with Jesus’ own healing, reconciling, and life-giving relations with others.”⁸ This is how we model our lives in correspondence to the trinitarian life of God.

Tanner makes two important observations. First, “Jesus’ relations with Father and Spirit do not appear in any obvious way to be the model for his relations with other human beings in the story.” Second, the relations that Jesus has with Father and Spirit are simply and obviously “the sort of relations that it is appropriate for humans to have with Father and Spirit. . . . We are to worship the Father following the precedent of Jesus’ own prayers, carry out the will of the Father as human beings filled up with and empowered by the Holy Spirit as Jesus was, which means working for the well-being of others as Jesus did, and so on.”⁹ To be human is to be related to Father, Son, and Spirit—not to be related to others as Father, Son, and Spirit are related to each other.

We therefore learn nothing from the trinity about gender roles. The relations between Father, Son, and Spirit are not relations that we are called to imitate. They do not apply to us. It is also completely irrelevant what gender Jesus is. His humanity is representative of all human beings, since all people are equally sinners and thus are equally reconciled to God in him. (But even if his gender were significant, it would apply to men only.) There is no distribution of people groups among the trinitarian persons. The Father does not stand for one group and the Son for another. Tanner, again, states the matter well:

When humans are incorporated into the trinity through Christ, different people are not spread across the trinity to take on its pattern; instead, we all enter at the same point, we all become identified with the same trinitarian person, members of the one Son, sons by grace of the Holy Spirit; and move as a whole, as one body, with the second person of the trinity in its movements within the dynamic life of the trinity. The trinity does not therefore in any obvious way establish the internal structure of human community . . . . Instead, the one divine Son and the one divine Spirit are what make human society one; we are one, as the Pauline texts suggest, because we all have the same Spirit and because we are all members of the one Son.¹⁰

The attempt to specify a group that the Father represents and another group that the Son represents has no basis in Christian theology. All human beings find their unifying point of origin and departure in Jesus Christ as the incarnate one of God. Christ is the one who brings us into relationship with a God who is absolutely transcendent and ontologically other than humanity. Outside of his reconciling death and resurrection, there is no analogy between God and humanity; in him and through him, however, we are able to truly bear the image of God. If we wish to bear the image of the trinity, therefore, we can only do so by bearing the image of Jesus as his faithful body of Spirit-led disciples within the world.

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¹ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama III: Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 290.

² Ibid., 283.

³ Ibid., 284.

⁴ Ibid., 285.

⁵ Ibid., 287.

⁶ Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. Casimir McCambley (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1987), 145; quoted in Tanner, Christ the Key, 212.

⁷ Tanner, Christ the Key, 234–36.

⁸ Ibid., 240.

⁹ Ibid., 237.

¹⁰ Ibid., 238.