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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2015
This article has three goals: (1) to provide a careful analysis of Barth's treatment of divine patience in Church Dogmatics II/1; (2) to show how Barth's thinking about divine patience helps to illumine his account of human being and human activity in later portions of the Church Dogmatics; and (3) to offer a series of constructive suggestions which connect Barth's theology with liberationist visions of human existence.
With respect to Church Dogmatics II/1, I argue that Barth breaks with a number of earlier thinkers and focuses attention on God's exercise of patience, treating it as a key dimension of God's creative and providential work. This exercise of patience means, specifically, that God accords creatures their own integrity and a capacity for free action, tempers God's punishment of sin and, in Christ, fulfils but does not temporally close the covenant. My analysis of divine patience in II/1 then serves as an interpretative key for reading later volumes of the Dogmatics. It sets in vivid relief Barth's belief that Christ's fulfilment of the covenant, achieved through Christ's life, suffering, death and resurrection, is the condition of possibility for humans being able to act with genuine integrity and consequence in the created realm. I propose, too, that Barth develops his thinking about patience by emphasising the ‘pressure’ of the patient God's empowering command – a command which is a constant summons, directed towards each and every human being, to live freely into God's future through acts of gratitude, obedience and responsibility, and to play some part in bringing creation to its glorious end. Finally, I explore the convergence between certain aspects of the Church Dogmatics and anti-essentialist construals of the self in contemporary theology. I aim to identify points of connection between Barth and thinkers like Marcella Althaus-Reid, and I voice support for a style of scholarship which elides the distinction between ‘systematic’ and ‘liberationist’ modes of inquiry.
1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., 31 vols (London: T&T Clark, 2009)Google Scholar. Subsequent citations are set in the body of my text; page numbers refer to the standard English translation and the German original. The notation ‘rev.’ indicates a revised translation, for which I am responsible. For the German, I use ‘The Digital Karl Barth Library’, published by Alexander Street Press, available at http://solomon.dkbl.alexanderstreet.com.
2 Webster, John, Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), p. 1Google Scholar and passim.
3 Jüngel, Eberhard, God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Webster, John (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001)Google Scholar.
4 See here Tertullian, Of Patience (202 ce), trans. S. Thelwall, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, pp. 707–17; Cyprian, Treatise IX. On the Advantage of Patience (256 ce), trans. Ernest Wallis, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, pp. 484–91; and On Patience (417/18 ce), trans. H. Browne, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3: 1st series, Augustin [sic]: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, pp. 527–36. These volumes were originally published by the Christian Literature Publishing Co. in 1886; I have used the reprint edition, issued in Peabody, MA, and published by Hendrickson in 1994. Barth's recourse to these patristic treatises, incidentally, has notable precedent; see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II.136 (vol. 3 of Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominician Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1948; reprint: Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1981), pp. 1743–7).
5 While the language used here is my own, it has been shaped by two instructive essays. The first is David Baily Harned's Patience: How we Wait upon the World (Boston, MA: Cowley, 1997); the second is the minor classic by Vanstone, W. H., The Stature of Waiting (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2006)Google Scholar.
6 Cyprian, ‘On the Advantage of Patience’, §2.
7 Ibid., §§3 and 13.
8 Augustine, ‘On Patience’, §1.
9 Ibid., §§14, 22, 24 and 25.
10 The remark about ‘poor and needy men’ occurs at the beginning of book III of the Institutes; sustained comments on patience are offered in III.7 and III.8. See here Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Also instructive are claims in an early French edition of the Institutes. In differentiating philosophical (i.e. Stoic) and Christian views of patience, Calvin argues that only the latter appreciates the gracious workings of providence. The former, unhappily, bespeaks thankless resignation to fate. See Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, trans. Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), esp. p. 701.
11 Three examples are Calvin's remarks on Gen 6:3, Ps 78:38 and Isa 30:18. See Calvin's Commentaries, 22 vols (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847–50; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). Note that Calvin uses a cluster of terms to make his point: ‘patience’, ‘longsuffering’ and ‘forbearance’ have proximate meanings.
12 Amandus Polanus a Polansdorf, Syntagma Theologiae Christianae, II.24 and 25. Quoted in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, trans. G.T. Thomson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950), p. 96. See also Muller, Richard A., Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1985), pp. 180Google Scholar and 219.
13 See here, of course, Schreiner, Susan, In the Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in John Calvin (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995)Google Scholar.
14 I am here skirting the difficult question of how this account of God's perfections might be complicated by Barth's later doctrine of election. To address it briefly: since Barth's treatment of God's Gnadenwahl does, to my mind, involve a revision of certain earlier claims, remarks about God's unconditioned aseity in II/1 sometimes sit awkwardly with remarks about God's self-determination in II/2 and beyond. Yet I also believe that Barth is on the way to his doctrine of election in II/1. As such, the tensions between Barth's doctrine of God in Church Dogmatics II/1 and the more consistent ‘post-metaphysical’ position of II/2 are not acute. Bruce McCormack seems to share this judgement; see his exceptional essay, ‘The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism’, in McCormack, Bruce (ed.), Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), pp. 185–242Google Scholar.
15 One can also say that these paragraphs are characterised by ‘rhetorical actualism’: a dialectical style of writing which sets diverse terms in vital relationship, so as to help readers understand God less as an outsized ‘being’, more as a vital – and utterly objective – event.
16 I use the term ‘fringed’ purposefully, since I find Paul Helm's arguments about Calvin's theological epistemology somewhat persuasive. So Helm: ‘Through God's gracious disclosure of himself we can know his nature – what God is toward us, and, because we know that what God says and does accords with his immutable essence, we can know that what he says and does is utterly reliable.’ See John Calvin's Ideas (Oxford: OUP, 2004), p. 13, emphases added. A somewhat similar position, which situates Calvin in broader historical perspective, is adopted by Louis Berkhof in Systematic Theology, new edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996); see pp. 43–6. The crucial question, however, is whether Calvin's distinctive construal of ‘a substantive “epistemic gap” between God and ourselves’ (ibid., p. 31) undermines the connection between ‘nature’ and ‘essence’ that Helm posits. I would say so. The reason is that Calvin's handling of ‘accommodation’ sometimes serves to undermine plainly cognitive statements about God's eternal identity. It is not quite clear how the ‘lisping’ of the nurse tells sinful ‘infants’ about the nurse him or herself; we cannot easily claim that the nurse's ‘accommodated’ speech comports with the identity that he or she has when ‘out of uniform’ (see here, of course, Institutes, I.xiii.1). Or, to put it a bit more sharply: while sidelining medieval accounts of analogical discourse about God, Calvin does not offer a functional equivalent to the (modern) claim that divine revelation means self-revelation. The relationship between statements about God's economic activity and statements about God in se therefore remains somewhat ambiguous.
17 So Bruce McCormack, writing of Barth's account of Jesus Christ: ‘However partial and incomplete our reception of revelation may be, revelation is not partial on the side of God's act. God reveals himself by appearing in person, as the Subject of a human life in history. Nothing of God is left behind in this personal act’. See Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), p. 171. The essay from which this quotation is taken, ‘The Limits of the Knowledge of God: Theses on the Theological Epistemology of Karl Barth’ (pp. 167–80) is a penetrating analysis of §27, from which I have learned much.
18 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 52.
19 Price, Robert B., Letters of the Divine Word: The Perfections of God in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 3Google Scholar.
20 See here esp. CD II/1, pp. 461–90 and 608–40. I borrow the language of ‘letting-be’ from Macquarrie, John, Principles of Christian Theology, 2nd edn (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977)Google Scholar. Macquarrie's phraseology turns up in more recent work, too. See for instance, Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 2002), esp. p. 239, and Gunton, Colin, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), esp. pp. 1–56Google Scholar. Gunton offers particularly instructive remarks about patience which are themselves indebted to Barth.
21 Tertullian, De Pat. §2.
22 Calvin, John, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. Rev William Pringle, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847–50Google Scholar; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), p. 367 (on Isa 30:18).
23 Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 72. The great Herman Bavinck, unfortunately, is rather less expansive; see the passing remarks in Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt and John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), pp. 213–14.
24 CD II/1, p. 411–16.
25 So, notoriously, albeit in a sermon which does not adequately represent his theology, Jonathan Edwards: ‘natural men [sic] are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it . . . they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of, all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God’. The sermon, of course, is ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’; see Smith, John E., Stout, Harry S. and Minkema, Kenneth P. (eds), A Jonathan Edwards Reader (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 94Google Scholar.
26 Implicit here is the idea that all human beings are de iure participants in the covenant of grace, even granted that a select number are de facto participants. For more on the de iure/de facto distinction, applied to the Dogmatics, see Neder, Adam, Participation in Christ: An Entry in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
27 See esp. CD III/1, §41.3.
28 Hans Urs von Balthasar makes a similar point: ‘He [Christ] lies between these two status, in a situation where all his energies are exhausted as he bears the brunt of all powers hostile to God. His fate surpasses all human tragedy; it is the super-tragedy of ultimate “God-forsakenness”, in which he descends to the hell of those who have lost both God and every personal name (that is, the personal consciousness that comes from possessing a mission); and, for that very reason, he experiences a “superexaltation” and is given “the Name that is above every name” (Phil 2:9). In this way, in this collapse and rebirth, he maintains his identity; and so, as the matrix of all possible dramas, he embodies the absolute drama in his own person, in his personal mission. Here it becomes clear that this person, in order to preserve his identity, must be Trinitarian: in order to be himself, he needs the Father and the Spirit. On the other hand, he makes room within himself, that is, an acting area for dramas of theological movement, involving other, created persons.’ See Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 3: Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1992), p. 162.
29 Which is not to say that one cannot so describe creation. Barth himself, after all, writes that creation ‘is one long preparation . . . for what God will intend and do with [the creature] in the covenant’ (CD III/1, p. 231). My point is simply that, for Barth, more can and should be said.
30 Barth, Karl, Epistle to the Romans, trans. Hoskyns, Edwyn C. (Oxford: OUP, 1968), p. 229Google Scholar. The original German bears quotation: ‘Diese Beziehung bedeutet, dass ein gerechtfertiger und erlöster, ein guter und lebendiger Mensch, der neue Mensch der neuen Welt in Jesus Christus Einlass fordernd an der Pforte meines Daseins erschienen ist – wobei alle jene Attribute das besagen, was ich nie war, nicht bin und nie sein werde!’ (Der Römerbrief, 2nd edn (Zürich: TVZ, 2005), p. 230). Barth's claim about attributes that ‘will never be mine’ reflects, to some degree, the often-extreme eschatology of the 2nd edn of Romans. But the phrase is not hyperbole. Barth is simply reminding readers that life ‘in Christ’ and conformity to Christ will always be a creaturely affair. While Christ is in nobis, Christ and Christ's perfection will always be extra nos. We can only approximate ourselves to his reality.
31 As with the Dogmatics, page numbers are included in the body of the text. The editions used: Barth, Karl, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics, IV/4, Lecture Fragments, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (London: T&T Clark, 2004)Google Scholar; Barth, Karl, Das christliche Leben: Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/4, Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Vorlesungen 1959–1961, ed. Drewes, Hans-Anton and Jüngel, Eberhard (Zürich: TVZ, 1999)Google Scholar.
32 See Flett, John G., The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010)Google Scholar.
33 Nigel Biggar writes similarly about this sentence; see The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 77.
34 The works of Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhardt Pannenberg, most obviously, would be interesting to examine on this front. A particularly interesting question is whether Barth promotes a stronger eschatology than Moltmann realises. Does not Barth effectively signal that ‘faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience, but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man?’ Does not Barth himself plainly avoid supposing that ‘the future redemption which is promised in the revelation of Christ [is] only a supplement, only a noetic unveiling of the reconciliation effected in Christ . . . such . . . that it gives promise of the real goal and true intention of that reconciliation, and therefore of its future as really outstanding, not yet attained and not yet realized’? See Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. James W. Leitch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), pp. 21 and 58.
35 Calvin, Institutes, III.x.6 (p. 724). Calvin is alluding to Cicero, On Old Age, 20.73. The 1541 Institutes is just as vivid: ‘Lest we disturb everything by our madness and wantonness, by distinguishing different estates and ways of living He has ordained for each one what he has to do. In order that no one may lightly go beyond his limits, He has called such ways of living “vocations”. Each one in his place ought to think that his estate is for him like a station assigned by God, so that he may not turn around in circles here and there without reflection, the whole course of his life’ (pp. 711–12).
36 Tanner, Kathryn, Christ the Key (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 50Google Scholar; and Culp, Kristine A., Vulnerability and Glory: A Theological Account (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), esp. p. 2Google Scholar. A supplementary (and non-theological) voice that might be added is that of Catherine Malabou. See The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, trans. Lisabeth During (London: Routledge, 2005); What Shall We Do With Our Brain, trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); and Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, trans. Carolyn Shread (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
37 Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Introduction’, in Loughlin, Gerard (ed.), Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 9Google Scholar.
38 Althaus-Reid, Marcella, The Queer God (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), pp. 49 and 50Google Scholar. ‘Transversality’, for Althaus-Reid, ‘is the flow of ideas and experiences, like a drunk walking in zig-zag patterns, while bringing together odd, dispersed elements, not necessarily in harmony’ (p. 49). The concept is taken from Félix Guattari, Chaosophy (New York: Semiotext(e), 1995). A qualification that I would offer: granted that a person may undergo ‘odd, dispersed elements’ which do not harmonise, and granted that she may walk, and be led, along ‘zig-zag patterns’, the graciousness of the process of sanctification is such that that person can hope that the turbulence of her life will ultimately make ‘sense’ in some respect – simply because of her election by God and her enclosure in the body of Christ.
39 See Barth, Karl, ‘Freedom for Community’, in Rogers, Eugene F. Jr., (ed.), Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 114–15Google Scholar.
40 For more on such ‘parables’, which Barth considers in CD IV/3, see Hunsinger, George, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology (New York: OUP, 1991), pp. 234–80Google Scholar.
41 Barth, Karl, Theology of the Reformed Confessions, trans. Guder, Darrell and Guder, Judith J. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), p. 92Google Scholar.
42 Not that this is easy: ‘patience with others is only second in difficulty to patience with oneself’. So Donald Gray, ‘On Patience: Human and Divine’, Cross Currents (Winter 1975), p. 416.
43 Some of the ideas above were developed for talks offered at Australia Catholic University (Melbourne), Charles Sturt University (Canberra), and United Theological College (Sydney) in summer 2012. I owe thanks to my various hosts and audiences in Australia – especially Anne Hunt, Kevin Hart, James Haire and Benjamin Myers – for their generous hospitality and thoughtful questions. I had the opportunity to recast and reconceive these ideas for the Karl Barth Society of North America at the 2012 American Academy of Religion; the lecture I gave formed the basis for this article. I'm very grateful for the feedback provided by the attendees of Barth Society lecture, particularly to George Hunsinger (Princeton Theological Seminary), who presided over the session, and Kate Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary), who delivered a wonderful lecture on Barth's understanding of the divine attributes. Many thanks, too, to a group of talented graduate students in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia – Gillian Breckenridge, Timothy Hartman, Christina McRorie, Shelli Poe, Matthew Puffer and Reuben Glick Shank – who offered advice when I was preparing the lecture.