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The Function of the Immanent Trinity in the Theology of Karl Barth: Implications for Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Paul D. Molnar
Paul D. Molnar
Affiliation:
St John's University, Grand Central and Utopia Parkways, Jamaica, New York 11439
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Extract

Many modern theologians, including Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel have been influenced by Karl Barth; they also accept Karl Rahner's axiom that the immanent and economic trinity is identical. By accepting this axiom, however, they actually stand opposed to Barth's most basic theological insight, namely, that ‘a deliberate and sharp distinction between the Trinity of God as we may know it in the Word of God revealed, written and proclaimed, and God's immanent Trinity, i.e., between “God in Himself” and “God for us,” between the “eternal history of God and His temporal acts,”’ must be maintained in order to avoid confusing and reversing the role of Creator in relation to creature both theoretically and practically. This article will explore Barth's reasons for neither identifying, separating nor synthesizing the immanent and economic trinity; and will contrast his method with more recent theological approaches. We hope to show that the contemporary tendency to identify the immanent and economic trinity uncritically compromises God's freedom. Barth was concerned that Moltmann had subsumed ‘all theology in eschatology’:

To put it pointedly, does your theology of hope really differ at all from the baptized principle of hope of Mr Bloch? What disturbs me is that for you theology becomes so much a matter of principle (an eschatological principle).… Would it not be wise to accept the doctrine of the immanent trinity of God? Barth hoped that Moltmann would ‘outgrow’ this ‘onesidedness’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 1989 , pp. 367 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1989

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References

page 367 note 1 Torrance, Thomas F., ‘Toward an Ecumenical Consensus on the Trinity’, in Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel), 31, 1975, 337–350Google Scholar believes Rahner may have introduced a ‘necessary movement of thought (a logical necessity)’ into the immanent trinity but that his basic axiom of identity is acceptable, p. 338. Clearing away this problem, he believes, may lead to a ‘rapprochement between Roman Catholic theology and Evangelical theology, especially as represented by the teaching of Karl Barth’, pp. 337 and 339. While Torrance sees Rahner's axiom as a way of avoiding any separation of the immanent and economic trinity, the question raised here is whether there can be a ‘rapprochement’ between Barth's method and Rahner's without introducing the necessities of creation into the Godhead.

page 367 note 2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. in 13 pts. (hereafter referred to as CD.). Vol. 1, pt. 1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), p. 172.Google Scholar

page 368 note 3 Karl Barth Letters 1961–1968, ed. Fangmeier, Jürgen and Stoevesandt, Heinrich, trans. and ed. by Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), p. 175. Emphasis mine.Google Scholar

page 368 note 4 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom, The Doctrine of God, trans. Kohl, Margaret (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 151.Google Scholar

page 368 note 5 Ibid., p. 160.

page 368 note 6 Ibid., pp. 4, 32ff., 38fF. and Moltmann, Jürgen, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 13ff.Google Scholar, 86–89, 101ff and 204ff.

page 369 note 7 For Barth, God was deeply affected by creatures but not because of any mutually conditioning relationship between himself and another. See, e.g., CD. 2, 1, pp. 307ff., 312, 496, and esp. 510–11.

page 369 note 8 See, e.g., CD. 1, 1, p. 119. See also CD. 1, 1, p. 193, and esp. 1, 1, pp. 198ff., ‘The Word of God and Experience’. See also CD. 1, 1, pp. 414–15.

page 369 note 9 Kasper, Walter, e.g., The God of Jesus Christ, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. (New York: Crossroad, 1986)Google Scholar mistakenly thinks that the views of Barth and Rahner are the same here, pp. 273–4. Compare CD. 2, 1, pp. 308–309.

page 369 note 10 Letters, p. 178. Emphasis mine.

page 369 note 11 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Jesus-God and Man, trans, by Wilkins, Lewis L. and Priebe, Duane A., (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), pp. 83, 158–159 and 320.Google Scholar

page 369 note 12 Letters, p. 179. Barth maintains this insight consistently throughout the Church Dogmatics, e.g., CD., 2, 1, p. 602.

page 370 note 13 Some of Barth's critics, e.g., Zahrnt, Heinz, The Question of God: Protestant Theology in the 20th Century, trans, by Wilson, R. A., (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966)Google Scholar insist his theology is ‘unhistorical’, p. 107. Barth's refusal to grant independent status to history prompts this mistaken criticism.

page 370 note 14 This is why Barth rejected Brunner's method, CD. 1, 1, pp. 238ff.

page 370 note 15 Barth, , Letters, p. 71.Google Scholar

page 370 note 16 See, Rahner, K., The Trinity, translated by Donceel, Joseph, (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 22Google Scholar. See Molnar, Paul D., ‘Can We Know God Directly? Rahner's Solution From Experience’, in Theological Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, 1985, pp. 228–261CrossRefGoogle Scholar for how this thesis affects his thought.

page 370 note 17 Jüngel, Eberhard, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans, by Guder, Darrell L., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 369–370Google Scholar.

page 370 note 18 Rahner, Karl, ‘Theology and Anthropology’, Theological Investigations. Vol. 9. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 28–45 at p. 32Google Scholar. This 20 vol. series hereafter will be abbreviated T.I. See also Ibid.: 127–144, ‘Observations on the Doctrine of God in Catholic Dogmatics’, p. 130.

page 370 note 19 See, e.g., Rahner, Karl, ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’, in TI 4: 36–73 at pp. 50ffGoogle Scholar; ‘Reflections on Methodology in Theology’, in TI 11, pp. 68–114Google Scholar and Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction To the Idea of Christianity. (New York: Seabury, 1978)Google Scholar, chaps. 1 and 2. For a critique, see Molnar, Paul D. ‘Is God Essentially Different From His Creatures? Rahner's Explanation From Revelation’, in The Thomist, vol. 51, no. 4, October 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 370 note 20 See Molnar, , Theological Studies, pp. 254ff.Google Scholar

page 371 note 21 Letters, pp. 287–8. Emphasis mine.

page 371 note 22 See McCormack, Bruce L., ‘Divine Revelation and Human Imagination: Must We Choose Between the Two?’, SJT, vol. 37, no. 4, 1984, pp. 431–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a fine analysis of Gordon Kaufman's misplaced criticisms.

page 371 note 23 E.g. CD., 1, 1, pp. 479, 481 and 484.

page 371 note 24 Discussion of this difficulty would require a separate article. Thus, two brief illustrations must suffice. First, speaking of God's creative glory ‘overflowing’ Barth holds that his love is factually free and that it was both ‘necessary’ and ‘essential’ that God be the Creator (CD. 3, 1, p. 51). Second, in describing God's act of reconciliation as the ‘logical final continuation in which He is God’ in se (CD. 4, 1, p. 203) it is not clear how such a description avoids making reconciliation something necessitated by God's essence rather than a free act. For other examples see 2, 1, p. 274, and 4, 1, p. 200f.

page 372 note 25 E.g., CD. 1, 1, pp. 445–6.

page 272 note 6 CD. 1, 2, p. 124. Cf. also CD. 2, 2, p. 73. Barth emphasizes this point in various places with different applications, e.g., CD. 2, 1, p. 251, CD. 1, 2, p. 24, and CD. 4, 3, pp. 347ff. Since Christ himself is truly present and guiding the Church, he cannot be dissolved into kerygma, faith or the practice of the community (CD. 4, 3, first half p. 349).

page 372 note 27 CD. 1, 2, p. 128–9.

page 373 note 28 CD. 1, 2, p. 258–59. Emphasis mine. In CD. 2, 1 Barth describes knowledge of God as ‘an event enclosed in the bosom of the divine Trinity’, CD. 2, 1, pp. 204–5. See also CD. 1, 2, pp. 203–279, ‘The Holy Spirit the Subjective Reality of Revelation’; CD. 4, 1, pp. 740–779, ‘The Holy Spirit and Christian Faith’, CD. 2, 1, pp. 4–31 and Anselm: Fides Quaerens iniellectum – Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, (Richmond: John Knox, 1960)Google Scholar. Barth opposes any idea that creatures (in their acts of self-transcendence) are free for God. This denies the truth that ‘It was because the world was lost that Christ was born’: CD. 1, 2, p. 257, and CD. 3, 2, pp. 55–203.

page 373 note 29 CD. 1, 2, pp. 125–26.

page 373 note 30 Cf. CD. 2, 1, p. 257ff., and CD. 4, 2, pp. 756ff. and 777f.

page 373 note 31 CD. 1, 1, p. 479. Compare CD. 2, 1, p. 309: ‘His absoluteness … does not derive primarily from the mode of His relationship to the world.’

page 374 note 32 CD. 1, 1, p. 414.

page 374 note 33 CD. 2, 1, p. 260.

page 374 note 34 Ibid., and p. 258.

page 374 note 35 CD. 2, 1, pp. 261 and 267.

page 375 note 36 CD. 1, 1, pp. 476–77. This applies also to election (CD. 2, 2, pp. 20fT.) and to knowledge of God's hiddenness and wisdom (CD. 2, 1, pp. 184 and 51Off).

page 375 note 37 CD. 1, 1, p. 367.

page 375 note 38 CD. 1, 2, p. 126.

page 375 note 39 CD. 1, 2, p. 125.

page 375 note 40 CD. 1, 2, p. 137.

page 375 note 41 CD. 2, 1, pp. 194 and 226.

page 376 note 42 CD. 2, 1, p. 224. See also CD. 1, 2, pp. 6–7. Barth argues this point against Leibniz in Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1973), pp. 75ff.Google Scholar, and CD. 2, 1, p. 538, and 3, 1, pp. 388ff. and 406ff.

page 376 note 43 CD. 2, 1, p. 32. See also CD. 2, 1, pp. 16–19 and 205–206.

page 376 note 44 The divine perfections treated in CD., 2, 1, pp. 322–678 depict this.

page 376 note 45 Barth adopts Martin Kahler's position here while Pannenberg rejects it.

page 376 note 46 Eberhard Jüngel, op. cit., correctly criticizes Rahner's, K.via negativa (pp. 260f.)Google Scholar and Dionysius (pp. 251, 255–6) for doing this. Cf. also CD. 1, 1, p. 403. Docetism is invariably the starting point in the history-of-religion approach to Christology.

page 376 note 47 Cf. CD. 2, 1, pp. 527ff. and 547.

page 376 note 48 This for Barth is the error of natural theology (CD. 2, 1, p. 232).

page 377 note 49 Cf. CD., 2, 1, pp. 301ff.

page 377 note 50 Cf. CD., 1, 2, pp. 164ff.

page 377 note 51 Cf. CD. 1, 2, p. 23 and CD., 4, 1, pp. 179ff.

page 377 note 52 CD. 1, 2, p. 129.

page 377 note 53 See also CD. 1, 1, p. 168. Though human freedom is not set aside or weakened by an encounter with God (Ibid., pp. 246fF.), ‘it cannot in any sense be regarded as its [man's freedom] product, as the result of an intuition …’ (ibid 1, 1, 1, 247).

page 377 note 54 CD. 1, 2, pp. 6ff.

page 377 note 55 Cf. e.g., K. Rahner, T.I. 4.113, ‘On the Theology of the Incarnation’, where he writes: ‘God can become something, he who is unchangeable in himself can himself become subject to change in something else.’ Thus, ‘God's creative act always drafts the creature as the paradigm of a possible utterance of himself, and he cannot draft it otherwise.…’ (T.I. 4.115. Emphasis mine.) For Barth God can change because he is self-moved in his immanent life. Thus God's creative act is and remains a free act having no paradigmatic basis in creation.

page 378 note 56 Torrance, T. F. stresses this important point in ‘Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy’, SJT, vol. 39, pp. 461–482, 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is why Barth adopted the Western Filioque [C.D. 1, 1, p. 481]. Moltmann accepts the Eastern ex pane against the Fialioque [The Trinity, pp. 182–90] because his view of the trinity is not subject to the one mediator but to the necessities inherent in suffering love.

page 378 note 57 CD. 1, 1, p. 481.

page 378 note 58 CD. 1, 1, pp. 170–76. Barth believed that Gogarten dissolved the immanent into the economic trinity in his understanding of the act of faith.

page 378 note 59 CD. 1, 1, pp. 23–31ff. and 238ff. Pannenberg begins his Christology on the foundation which Barth here rejects in Brunner, i.e., the idea that there is a point of contact for revelation in man's spirit and apart from Christ.

page 378 note 60 Cf. CD. 1, 1, pp. 48ff., 54ff., 62ff., 138ff. and 152ff. Barth likens Tillich to Schleiermacher in his attempt to understand God's act of revelation as part of the general expression of human life as illustrated in the history of religions.

page 378 note 61 CD. 1, 1, p. 172.

page 378 note 62 Cf. CD. 2, 1, pp. 199ff.

page 378 note 63 See CD. 2, 1, pp. 58ff. and CD. 3, 1, p. 368. See also Molnar, , TS, pp. 238ffGoogle Scholar. for Rahner's view that we know God directly. He really must presume this since he believes ‘The revealed Word and natural knowledge of God mutually condition each other’, ‘Theos in the New Testament’, T.I. 1.98 and 107. Moltmann also holds that we can know God directly, The Trinity, pp. 211 and 220 and God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 57–64.Google Scholar

page 379 note 64 CD. 1, 1, p. 171.

page 379 note 65 CD. 1, 1, p. 323.

page 379 note 66 CD. 4, 2, pp. 635.

page 379 note 67 Cf. e.g. CD. 3, 2, p. 72, and CD. 4, 3, first-half, pp. 63–5.

page 379 note 68 CD. 1, 1, p. 323.

page 379 note 69 CD. 2, 1, p. 409 and Protestant Theology, pp. 468 and 471ff.

page 379 note 70 Protestant Theology, pp. 468 and 471ff.

page 379 note 71 Protestant Theology, pp. 412ff., esp. 418–20.

page 379 note 72 CD. 2, 1, pp. 291ff.

page 380 note 73 CD. 1, 1, pp. 322–323. This is why Barth rejects any sort of divinization of Christ's human nature (CD. 4, 1, p. 132), and why he insists that in becoming a man Christ did not change himself into a man so that his divinity in some sense ceased (CD. 4, 2, pp. 40ff.). See also CD. 2, 1, pp. 360ff.

page 380 note 74 CD. 4, 1, p. 90.

page 380 note 75 CD. 1, 2, p. 135. Emphasis mine. Compare CD. 2, 1, pp. 306–314.

page 381 note 76 CD. 1, 1, p. 354. Emphasis mine. Compare to Rahner: ‘the word … as the image and expression of the Father … is necessarily given with the divine act of self-knowledge, and without it the absolute act of divine self-possession in knowledge cannot exist’, T.I. 4.236. Moltmann's belief that, for Barth, God's unity takes precedence over his triunity is simply mistaken. Cf. Moltmann, J. ‘The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit — Trinitarian Pneumatology’, in SJT, vol. 37, 1984, pp. 287–300, p. 289CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Trinity, pp. 69 and chap. 5.

page 381 note 77 Cf. CD. 1, 1, pp. 139 and 343ff., and 1, 2, p. 136.

page 381 note 78 CD. 1, 1, p. 140. Cf. also C.D. 4, 1, pp. 53ff.

page 381 note 79 CD. 2, 1, p. 54.

page 381 note 80 Cf. C.D. 1, 1, p. 344. This is an inherent difficulty with Augustine's idea of the vestigial.

page 381 note 81 Cf. C.D. 4, 2, p. 43, and 1, 1, p. 339. Moltmann literally cannot even conceptualize such a freedom, so he re-defines God's freedom as friendship (fellowship) rather than lordship, The Trinity, p. 56.

page 381 note 82 C.D. 1, 1, p. 370. See also 2, 1, pp. 52 and 157ff.

page 381 note 83 CD. 2, 1, pp. 38ff.

page 381 note 84 See, e.g., K. Rahner T.I. 1.323ff. and Molnar TS for more on this.

page 381 note 85 CD. 2, 1, p. 226.

page 382 note 86 CD. 1, 1, pp. 371–74, S.T. I, 39, 7–8, cited in CD. 1, 1, pp. 373–74. Rahner's axiom amounts to a denial of this principle.

page 382 note 87 CD. 1, 1, p. 135 and 335ff.

page 382 note 88 CD. 1, 1, p. 163.

page 382 note 89 Cf. CD. 1, 2, pp. 137ff.

page 382 note 90 CD. 4, 1, pp. 180ff.

page 382 note 91 CD. 1, 2, p. 137.

page 382 note 92 Cf., e.g., CD. 1, 1, p. 139, and CD. 2, 1, pp. 66–70 and 306–314.

page 383 note 93 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans, by Drury, John (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972), pp. 226 and 265Google Scholar.

page 383 note 94 See Foley, Grover, ‘The Catholic Critics of Karl Barth In Outline and Analysis’, in SJT, 14 (1951), 136–155, p. 152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 383 note 95 See esp. Karl Rahner, ‘The Concept’, in T.I. 4.72, and Rahner, Karl, Hearers of the Word (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 49Google Scholar, and Molnar, TS.

page 383 note 96 J. Moltmann, op. cit., p. 4. Emphasis mine.

page 383 note 97 Moltmann, God in Creation, chap. 3. It is not a real immanent trinity that defines truth here but a trinity based on ‘the saving experience of the cross’, Moltmann, The Trinity, p. 161.

page 383 note 98 Ibid., pp. 72ff.

page 383 note 99 Ibid., pp. 86–94, and The Trinity, pp. 37ff. and 108ff. A God who makes nothingness in order to create and then makes this part of his being is not the Christian God.

page 384 note 100 See, e.g., Moltmann, , God in Creation, pp. 27ffGoogle Scholar. and 97–103, and The Trinity, pp. 97 and 99ff.

page 384 note 101 ST, qu. 3, art. 5, and CD. 2, 1, pp. 187–90.

page 384 note 102 CD. 2, 1, p. 312. Emphasis mine.

page 384 note 103 Moltmann, , The Trinity, pp. 19ff.Google Scholar, 32ff., 38ff. and 197, and God in Creation, pp. 13ff. and 108ff.

page 384 note 104 Moltmann, , The Trinity, p. 58.Google Scholar

page 384 note 105 Ibid., p. 59.

page 384 note 106 Moltmann, , The Trinity, p. 167Google Scholar. ‘The generation and birth of the Son come from the Father's nature, not from his will. That is why we talk about the eternal generation and birth of the Son. The Father begets and bears the Son out of the necessity of his being’, emphasis mine. Moltmann distinguishes ‘the world process and the innertrinitarian process’ by saying that in God necessity and freedom coincide (Ibid., pp. 106–7). Yet, because he has confused the immanent and economic trinity, God also needs to create and give himself away since love must move toward another. This also affects his view of time and eternity, (cf. God in Creation, pp. 112–118).

page 385 note 107 CD. 2, 1, pp. 546–47.

page 385 note 108 Moltmann, , The Trinity, p. 108.Google Scholar

page 385 note 109 CD. 1, 1, p. 172. Emphasis mine.

page 385 note 110 Cf. Moltmann, , Creation, pp. 16ffGoogle Scholar. 57–60 and 206ff. While Barth insisted that the oneness and threeness of God are one [CD. 1, 1, p. 352] Moltmann's thinking tends toward tritheism, The Trinity, p. 86. Rahner (T.I. 2.239) has similar problems. Walter Kasper, op. cit., notes the ‘danger’ of tritheism in Moltmann's theology, n. 183, p. 379.

page 385 note 111 Cf. Moltmann, , God in Creation, pp. 258ffGoogle Scholar. This leads to his mistaken criticism of Barth for modalism (cf. 56fT.) and nominalism. These criticisms rest on his failure to see that the oneness and threeness of God is dictated by Christ and not by experience.

page 385 note 112 Moltmann holds that there has never been a ‘Christian tritheist’, (The Trinity, p. 243, n. 43). Yet, von Harnack, Adolf, History o] Dogma, vol. 3, p. 90Google Scholar, and vol. 6, p. 82 and 101 cites several. Marcion was also named as a tritheist in a letter of Pope St Dionysius circa A.D. 260. Moltmann's opposition to Barth's rejection of tritheism rests on a modalism which misconstrues the functioning of the three patristic principles discussed above.

page 385 note 113 See, e.g., Moltmann, , God in Creation, p. 206Google Scholar. ‘We have understood human likeness to God in this same context of the divine perichoresis … as a relationship of fellowship, of mutual need and mutual interpenetration’, Ibid., p. 258. See also p. 266, and The Trinity, pp. 106ff. and 148ff.

page 385 note 114 CD. 2, 1, pp. 312–13. Rahner, Karl, too, accepts a modified doctrine of panentheism in Theological Dictionary, ed. Ernst, C. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), pp. 333–334Google Scholar.

page 386 note 115 Moltmann, , The Trinity, pp. 56ff.Google Scholar, 99ff., 106ff., 159–61 and 167–8.

page 386 note 116 Ibid., p. 197. Emphasis mine.

page 386 note 117 Ibid., p. 31. Emphasis mine. Rejecting the doctrine of appropriation (Ibid., p. 112) Moltmann appears to argue against certain forms of modalism (Ibid., pp. 135ff.) while uncritically maintaining that both the Father and Son suffer (Ibid., pp. 31, 35, 59, 81 and 83). This is the modalism which Barth clearly opposed by rejecting patripassianism (CD. 1, 1, p. 397) and distinguishing the immanent and economic trinity.

page 386 note 118 Ibid., pp. 32–3. Emphasis mine. Thus, ‘God is nowhere more divine than when he becomes man’ (Ibid., p. 119) and Incarnation means for God ‘an increase of his riches and his bliss’ (Ibid., p. 121).

page 387 note 119 Ibid., pp. 33–4. Barth rejects this thinking in CD. 2, 1, pp. 304–6.

page 387 note 110 Ibid., p. 38. Moltmann appears to modify his view of panentheism (God in Creation, p. 103) by ascribing to the creature's self transcending movements the indwelling Creator Spirit. The only change, however, is that the Spirit is now the principle of infinity which ‘imbues every finite thing … with self-transcendence’ (Ibid., p. 101). Indeed the Spirit is part of the structure of creation (Ibid., p. 212). This, infinite and finite are mutually and necessarily related. Creation is seen as evolving toward God (Ibid., chap. 8) and God is necessarily related to it (Ibid., pp. 207 and 213). Barth consistently rejected both of these views by rejecting Pelagianism and Panentheism.

page 387 note 121 Moltmann, , Creation, p. 211Google Scholar. Moltmann cites Teilhard de Chardin's view as an adequate account of this. Barth rejected Teilhard's Gnostic Pantheism several times. Cf. Letters, pp. 116f. and 119f, and Busch, Eberhard, Karl Barth, translated by Bowden, John (Phila.: Fortress Press, 1976)Google Scholar; ‘Teilhard de Chardin is an almost classic case of Gnosticism’, wrote Barth, p. 487.

page 387 note 122 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Jesus-God and Man, p. 320. Emphasis mine.Google Scholar

page 388 note 123 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

page 388 note 124 Ibid., p. 35.

page 388 note 125 Ibid., pp. 151 and 319.

page 388 note 126 For more on this see Ibid., p. 384.

page 388 note 127 Ibid., pp. 320–321.

page 389 note 128 Cf. Rahner, , The Trinity, pp. 23 and 27Google Scholar. See Pannenberg, op. cit., pp. 158–9 and 183.

page 389 note 129 Pannenberg, op. cit., p. 168. Emphasis mine. Compare this to how his idea of revelation functions, pp. 154–5ff.

page 389 note 130 See, e.g., Rahner, , The Trinity, pp. 31–32Google Scholar, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’. T.I. 4.239 and Molnar, , TS, pp. 252ffGoogle Scholar.

page 389 note 131 Rahner, T.I. 4.106. Moltmann does the same, The Trinity, pp. 4ff. and 19.

page 389 note 132 In fact the unio Rahner describes and maintains is quite different from the unio which Chalcedon maintained. See Molnar, , TS, pp. 257ffGoogle Scholar.

page 390 note 133 Pannenberg, op. cit., pp. 34–5.

page 390 note 134 Ibid., pp. 154–5.

page 390 note 135 Jüngel, , God As Mystery, pp. 163ff., 317, 376–7.Google Scholar

page 390 note 136 See esp. CD., 2, 1, pp. 272–285.

page 390 note 137 Jüngel, , God As Mystery, p. 315Google Scholar. Emphasis mine.

page 390 note 138 CD., 2, 1, p. 282.

page 390 note 139 Jüngel, , God As Mystery, e.g., pp. 14, 17, 32–33, 165 and 317.Google Scholar

page 390 note 140 Ibid., p. 33. This is a ‘miraculous experience’, apparently, because it cannot be deduced or induced from other experiences. It results from an event called ‘the revelation of God’. Both his definition of miracle and of revelation, however, are quite different from Barth's. Against Pannenberg Jungel wrote: ‘God, then, is first encountered where he allows himself to be experienced as the one who gives. That is precisely what I call revelation’, p. 17, n. 6.

page 391 note 141 Ibid., pp. 376–77. Similar statements are made in The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being is in Becoming, trans. Harris, Horton (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976), pp. 52–60, 82ff. and 104.Google Scholar

page 391 note 142 Ibid., pp. 316–17.

page 391 note 143 Ibid., p. 317.

page 391 note 144 Ibid. While Barth does say ‘love is God’ (CD. 4, 2, p. 756), this is no authorization for moving from the general to the particular. In fact he states that love and God may be equated ‘presupposing that the content of the terms remains the same’ (p. 756) and insists, in a way that Jungel does not, that God would still be perfect love without loving us (p. 755) and that his love is grounded only in God and ‘not at all in man’ (p. 771). He still insisted on giving precedence to divine over human love by not moving from the general to the particular (cf. pp. 755, 777–78). By love Barth means the inconceivable action ad extra of God in the Son and Spirit which can only be acknowledged (p. 760). ‘Only His act can be the basis of ours.… We have thus to gain a full and clear picture of the act of His love before we can speak meaningfully of the act of ours’ (p. 760). See also CD. 1, 2, pp. 136, 162, CD. 2, 1, pp. 275, 308–9, and CD. 4, 2, pp. 64 and 68.

page 391 note 145 Jüngel, , God as Mystery, p. 317.Google Scholar

page 392 note 146 Ibid., p. 326. Emphasis mine.

page 392 note 147 Ibid., p. 325.

page 392 note 148 Cf. esp. Barth, KarC.D., , 4, 4, The Christian Life: Lecture Fragments (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1981), pp. 146–147Google Scholar.

page 392 note 149 Indeed, according to his own presentation of Barth's theology in The Doctrine of the Trinity, esp. pp. 25ff., this very compromise is excluded.

page 392 note 150 Jüngel, , God as Mystery, pp. 216–225.Google Scholar

page 392 note 151 Ibid., p. 14. Emphasis mine. God's humanity is now the context for understanding God, revelation, Christ and love.

page 393 note 152 Ibid., p. 17, n. 6.

page 393 note 153 Ibid., e.g., p. 222, n. 67, p. 251, n. 11, and p. 262, n. 1.

page 393 note 154 Ibid., pp. 220ff. ‘Thus, “in the beginning” the “word” is with God, belongs to God as the word of love in that he expresses himself in order to address others’, p. 222.

page 393 note 155 Ibid., p. 282.

page 393 note 156 Ibid., p. 261, i.e., ‘as an “introduction to mystery” (introductio in mysterium)’. Cf. also Ibid., p. 262, n. 1.

page 393 note 157 Ibid., pp. 283ff.

page 393 note 158 Ibid., pp. 284ff.

page 393 note 159 Ibid., p. 282.

page 393 note 160 Ibid., pp. 284–5. Thus, there is never a conclusion. The Augustinian ‘unrest for God’ arrives at no end. There is always that greater dissimilarity even in the midst of the similarity.

page 393 note 161 Ibid., p. 282. Cf. Foley, op. cit., p. 149 where he notes that Barth, in reply to Brunner and to von Balthasar ‘cautions against all speculations on a “new Barth”’. Could this be why Jungel thinks that Barth discovered the ‘analogy of faith as the precondition for … proper talk about God’, God as Mystery? p. 282. For Barth even the analogy of faith could not be a precondition for grasping the meaning of revelation.

page 394 note 162 Jüngel, , God As Mystery, p. 282.Google Scholar

page 394 note 163 Ibid., p. 384.

page 394 note 164 Ibid.

page 394 note 165 Ibid., p. 392. Emphasis mine. The same point is repeated on p. 395 in connection with faith, love and hope as described in 1 Cor. 13.13. Compare the ‘later’ Barth: ‘the divine love and the human love are always two different things and cannot be confused’, CD. 4, 2, p. 778.

page 395 note 166 Ibid., p. 392.

page 395 note 167 Ibid., p. 298.

page 395 note 168 E.g., CD. 4, 2, pp. 776ff.

page 395 note 169 Ibid., pp. 282ff. It would appear at times that Jüngel ascribes to parables a power which Barth held came only from the Holy Spirit!

page 395 note 170 Ibid., p. 348.

page 395 note 171 Ibid., pp. 348–9.

page 396 note 172 Ibid., p. 349. Moltmann's, view is quite similar, The Trinity, p. 161.Google Scholar

page 396 note 173 Ibid., p. 329. We are a long way from Barth's constant insistence in volumes 1 through 4 that as Father, Son and Spirit, God does not need anyone or anything in order to be fully one who loves. He could have remained God without us and would have suffered no lack.

page 396 note 174 Ibid., p. 346.

page 396 note 175 CD., 1, 1, p. 242. ‘We have to think of man in the event of real faith as, so to speak, opened up from above. From above, not from below!’

page 396 note 176 Jungel, God as Mystery, pp. 376–7. While Jüngel correctly rejects the ideas that God is unknown in principle or a being who can be understood as possessing being (Rahner) he gives to experience a place Barth did not give it.

page 396 note 177 Ibid., p. 349.

page 397 note 178 Ibid., p. 363, n. 39.

page 397 note 179 Ibid., p. 369.

page 397 note 180 Ibid., pp. 369–370.