AS IN A MIRROR

JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH

ON KNOWING GOD
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY
OF
CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
FOUNDED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN

EDITED BY
ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee
IN COOPERATION WITH

HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge

SCOTT H. HENDRIX, Princeton, New Jersey
BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York
ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen
JOHN VAN ENGEN, Notre Dame, Indiana

VOLUME CXX

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

AS IN A MIRROR
JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH
ON KNOWING GOD
 AS IN A MIRROR
JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH
ON KNOWING GOD
A DIPTYCH

BY

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

TRANSLATED BY
DONALD MADER

BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON
2005
Cover illustration: detail from the Issenheim Altarpiece showing John the Baptist at the foot of
the Cross. Muse dUnterlinden F 68000 Colmar. Photo: O. Zimmerman.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kooi, Cornelis van der.
[Als in een spiegel]
As in a mirror : John Calvin and Karl Barth on knowing God : a diptych / by Cornelis
van der Kooi ; translated by Donald Mader.
p. cm. (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 120)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-13817-X (hard ; alk. paper)
1. GodKnowablenessHistory of doctrines. 2. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564
Contributions in knowableness of God. 3. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968Contributions in
knowableness of God. I. Title. II. Series.

BT98.K66 2005
231.0420922dc22
2004057550

ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 90 04 13817 X

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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
List of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Knowing God and the way of history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Calvin and Barth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Faith as knowing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4. Bipolarity and conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5. The mirror as an invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

part one
john calvin

Chapter 2. Ways of Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.1. Knowledge of God and piety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.2. Rootage in society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2. Accommodation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all
revelation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred
history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.2.3. Accommodation and language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as
imitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.3. Inward revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities . . . . . . . . . 63
2.3.2. Sensus divinitatis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.3.3. Sensus conscientiae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.4. Manifestations in the external world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.4.1. Stirring the senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
vi contents

2.4.2. A splendid theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

2.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and
Parker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
2.5. Appreciation of culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2.6. Scripture as accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2.7. Knowledge of God as result of Word and Spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.8. Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
2.8.1. A qualied concept of faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
2.8.2. Unio mystica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
2.8.3. Faith and certainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
2.9. The limits and benet of knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Chapter 3. God: Judge and Father. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

3.1. Utility and the doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3.2. The anti-speculative tenor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.3. Partial knowability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.4. Unceasing activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
3.5. Core concepts: loving-kindness, judgement and
righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
3.6. Lord of the world: Gods care and goodness in the order
of the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
3.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the
father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
3.8. The absurdity of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
3.9. The anchor of Gods unchanging will. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
3.10. Predestination and responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.11. Father and Lord: love and fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.12. Knowing in faith, in bits and pieces: predestination. . . . . . . . 158
3.12.1. A center or the core? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
3.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination . . . . . . . . . 167
3.12.3. The benet of the knowledge of predestination . . . . 170
3.12.4. Gods will as the farthest horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
3.12.5. God as absolute power? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
3.12.6. Excursus: potentia absoluta et ordinata. A brief
historical overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
3.12.7. Where faith must look .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
3.13. Once again: God as father. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
 contents vii

Chapter 4. The Supper and Knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

4.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
4.2. What is a sacrament? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.2.1. Only a cognitive advantage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.2.2. Sign and thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
4.3. Sacrament as a form of accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
4.4. The meaning of the meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
4.4.1. The family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
4.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The
discussion with the Lutherans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
4.4.3. Flesh and blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
4.5. The Holy Spirit and instrumentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
4.5.1. The Supper as instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
4.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit . 216
4.5.3. The way of knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
4.5.4. Experience and tasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

the hinge

Chapter 5. The Turn to the Subject in Kants Philosophy . . . . . . . . . 225

5.1. A watershed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
5.2. The tradition-critical attitude.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
5.3. For the sake of humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5.4. The turn to the subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
5.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as
methodological investigation into the conditions of
knowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
5.6. Knowledge as human construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
5.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in
God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
5.8. After Kant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

part two
karl barth

Chapter 6. The Way of Knowing God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

6.1. Introduction: theology and society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
6.2. Not without audacity: the primacy of revelation . . . . . . . . . . 258
6.3. Human knowing of God as theological datum . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
viii contents

6.4. Knowledge of God as event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

6.5. Knowledge of God as participation in Gods
self-knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
6.6. God as the object of knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
6.7. Faith as a form of knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
6.8. The place of the human subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
6.9. Mediation and sacramentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
6.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth . . . . 274
6.11. A look back. From impossibility to reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
6.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God? . . . . . . . . 281
6.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage
of Marburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
6.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia dei . . . . . . 293
6.15. Faith and certainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
6.16. Natural theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Chapter 7. The Doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

7.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of Gods being. The
anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
7.2. Gods reality: being and act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
7.3. Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
7.4. Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
7.5. Multiplicity and unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
7.6. Revelation as self-revelation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
7.7. Two series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
7.8. The perfections of Gods love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
7.8.1. Grace and holiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
7.8.2. Mercy and righteousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
7.8.3. Patience and wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
7.9. The perfections of Gods freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
7.9.1. Unity and omnipresence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
7.9.2. Constancy and omnipotence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
7.9.3. Eternity and glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God . . . . . . . . . . . 363
7.11. Election as the basic decision of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
7.12. Election as the core issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
7.13. The decretum concretum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
7.14. The critique of Calvin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
7.15. Eternity, time and Gods acting today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
 contents ix

Chapter 8. New Space for Human Action: Barths View of the

Sacrament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
8.1. Doctrine of baptism as mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
8.2. Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
8.2.1. Regard for the humanity of Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
8.2.2. The one sacrament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
8.2.3. The living Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
8.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
8.3. Baptism with the Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
8.4. Baptism with water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
8.5. Directness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
8.6. Baptism with water as answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
8.7. The norm for humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
8.8. The meaning of the term noetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

evaluation

Chapter 9. Prot and Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

9.1. Christian theology as a counterproposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
9.2. Knowledge of God and theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
9.3. From cosmological rootage to self-suciency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
9.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation:
guarantee for knowledge of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
9.5. The place of the faculties of knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
9.6. The theological element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
9.7. Word and Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
9.8. Lights, lamps and their fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
9.9. The content of knowledge of God: saving proximity . . . . . . . 442
9.10. The role of man in knowing God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
9.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a dierent way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
9.12. As in a mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

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

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

Index of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The rst impetus for this study came quite a time ago. It began when
Dr. H.J. Adriaanse, the co-supervisor for my doctoral studies at Leiden,
invited me to think again of a sequel to my dissertation. This resulted in
a plan to expand the eld of research to the later Barth and to Calvin,
under the title Knowledge of God as Mystery. On the recommenda-
tion of Dr. H.A. Oberman I was able to realise an unforgettable term
of study at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Wiscon-
sin, Madison, WI, USA. Meeting W.J. Courtenay, D.C. Lindberg and
R.M. Kingdon provided me with access to American research on the
background and social context for Calvin which unmistakably left its
mark on this book. In Amsterdam, at the Vrije Universiteit, I was able
to continue the project next to all my other work. I would mention sev-
eral persons here by name who read the manuscript in whole or in part,
in that way playing a signicant role in this book coming into being.
The friendship and regular exchanges with Ren van Woudenberg, in
particular with regard to the epistemology of the hinge section deal-
ing with Kant, was of particularly great value to me. The sections of
the manuscript on dogmatics were read by and discussed with Aad van
Egmond and Dirk van Keulen. I would further mention here Maarten
Aalders, and the conversations with Georg Plasger on Barth interpreta-
tion. It was an enormous support for me to have Dr. C. Augustijn and
Dr. H.A. Oberman both read the section on Calvin and provide me
with their critique of it. That the latter passed away before he could
see the completion of this book saddens me greatly. His reactions were
more than heartening.
A fragment of the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grnewald is
depicted on the cover. A reproduction of this altarpiece hung over
Barths desk. The gure of John the Baptist pointing to the crucied
Christ was for Barth a metaphor for the limited service that theology
can perform. Theology points to the matter that is really paramount; it
does nothing more, and if it does well, nothing less.
xii acknowledgements

The translation was made possible in part by support from the

Netherlands Organisation for Scientic Research and the Bastiaan
Haack Kunneman Foundation of the Free University.
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Anfnge I Anfnge der dialektischen Theologie. Teil I: Karl Barth,

Heinrich Barth, Emil Brunner, hrsg. von J. Moltmann,
Mnchen 19774.
CCLS Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Turnholti
1953 e.v.
CD K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 Volumes, 13 Parts,
CO Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed.
W. Baum, E. Cunitz et W. Reuss, Brunsvigae 1863
1900.
EB Evangelische Bekenntnisse. Bekenntnisschriften der
Reformatoren und neuere Theologische Erklrungen in
zwei Bnde, Bielefeld 1997.
KD K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Mnchen 1932-
Zrich 1967; ET: Church Dogmatics, Edinburgh 1975.
OS Opera Selecta, Ed. P. Barth/W. Niesel, Mnchen 1926
1936.
PG Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne,
Paris 18571866.
PL Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne,
Paris 18441855.
Rmerbrief 1 K. Barth, Der Rmerbrief, (Erste Fassung) 1919 (hrsg.
von H. Schmidt), Zrich 19853.
Rmerbrief 2 K. Barth, Der Rmerbrief, 2. Auage, (Mnchen
1922=) Zrich 197611; ET: The Epistle to the Romans,
tr. by Edwin C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York
1968.
STh Sancti Thomae de Aquino Summa Theologiae, Roma
1962.
WA D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Weimar 1883 e.v.
ZdTh Zeitschrift fr dialektische Theologie
 chapter one

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Knowing God and the way of history

What is the primary goal of human life? That we know God.1 This
opening sentence of the Geneva Catechism does not represent merely
an age-old vision of human life, but also refers to the mystery that to
this very day is interwoven with Christian belief and is the foundation
for all Christian theology: living has something to do with knowing
God. In our time the answer may appear in other forms, with more
emphasis on being human and humanity, but it has remained like a
hidden magnet under various theological themes. It is however pre-
cisely this answer that has become a problem for present generations,
under the inuence of a culture that is embarrassed about or even
rejects belief in God. What does it really mean to know God? Can we
indeed know God? Where does such knowledge have its foundations,
what nourishes it, and what is it that is ultimately known? And if there
is something like knowledge of God, what does it have to do with being
human, with life, with our actions? These are substantive theological
questions which belong to the eld of reection on Christian dogma.
The direction that this study will go in reecting on these questions is
that of theological history, or historical theology. Theological history (or
historical theology) will be used to treat questions in the eld of Chris-
tian dogmatics. In the light of advancing dierentiation between sys-
tematic and historical disciplines, this is anything but an obvious choice.
On the basis of the experience that such an approach very easily fails
to do justice to at least one of the twoor even bothelements, pro-
ceeding this way can ever generate suspicion. At the same time it must
be said that dogmatic reection is impossible without involving its own

1 CO 6, 910: Quelle est la principale Fin de la vie humaine? Lenfant: Cest de

cognoistre Dieu. The Latin version has a somewhat expanded answer: ut Deum, a
quo conditi sunt homines, ipsi noverint. Cf. also the Instruction et confession de Foy (1537),
OS I, 378.
2 chapter one

particular situation in the reection. That is to say, the reection cannot

be separated from the Churchand in this case we of course mean the
Church in its ecumenical sense, namely as the community of faith in all
times and places. If dogmatics can be regarded as the orderly reection
on the content of Christian knowledge of God,2 then its interrelation-
ship with the Church as an historically dened entity is indispensable.
That perhaps sounds like a curtailment, as if the message of Christian
faith does not extend to all the world and to all mankind. Our situ-
ating of the question is anything but intended to place a limit on the
public domain of Christian theology. It is indeed necessary however to
recognise that Christian belief does come from somewhere, and points
back to events in history and continues to bear their stamp.3 That in
Protestant tradition the Bible, as the Word of God, is regarded as the
primary and decisive source of Christian theology, is something which
will not be disputed in the following theological-historical arrangement.
It is nevertheless important to realise that access to and dealing with
this source is not something that is independent of debates which were
carried on in the past, and just as little from debates that are ongoing
with contemporary culture. Expressed in the language of dogmatic the-
ology, with these questions we move within the sphere of the doctrine
or the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology. The organisation of this study
includes an explicit acknowledgement that in our thinking and speak-
ing we have been in part shaped and marked by preceding generations,
and that with an eye to current theological reection it is worth the
eort to grapple seriously with what previous generations have thought,
experienced and felt in their encounters with the subject that lies before
us: knowing God.

2 Thus in principle the whole of the content of dogmatics can be included within

the denition of knowledge. God is really the most comprehensive object of Christian
religious knowledge, and thus also of theology. See for instance H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde
Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 2 and W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie Bd. I, Gttin-
gen 1988, 1415; ET, Systematic Theology, Volume I, Grand Rapids/Edinburgh 1992, 45.
3 The choice of the Church as the primary reference point is intended both theolog-

ically and sociologically. This is anything but a denial that alongside it there are audi-
ences of other sorts which can be distinguished, namely society at large and academia.
I merely want to underscore that Christian theology and what it has to say about God
assumes both an historical and a contemporary community. For the distinction of the
three forms of audience, see D. Tracy, The analogical Imagination. Christian Theology and the
Culture of Pluralism, New York 1993, 631.
 introduction 3

1.2. Calvin and Barth

This study limits itself to two theologians who each has assumed a rep-
resentative place in Reformed Protestantism: John Calvin (15091564)
and Karl Barth (18861968). It can justly be said of both that they made
their choices and presented their vision of human knowledge of God in
an independent manner and in entirely dierent intellectual climates.
This book therefore consists of two parts or panels which, connected by
a hinge, together form a diptych. In the rst panel a sketch is given of
Calvins vision of human knowledge of God. How does man arrive at
knowledge of God, what invites him to faith and how does this knowl-
edge relate to other forms of knowledge and experience? The question
about the way in which knowledge of God is acquired can not how-
ever be separated from the substantive question of what is known of
God. Epistemological questions are connected with the material which
constitutes the theological content. What does man really know about
God and himself ? What can he hope for, what guides his life in the
world, his fears and desires? Arising from the same questions, a sketch
of Barths concept of knowing God appears in the second panel. Karl
Barths theology, since the appearance of his dogmatic work unjustly
termed neo-orthodoxy,4 fully bears the marks of the post-Kantian sit-
uation. Barth lived and worked in a culture and intellectual climate that
stood in the shadow of the Enlightenment. He was part of that intellec-

4 In this compound orthodoxy is viewed as the position that the truth of God

methodically permits itself to be immediately and uninterruptedly present in words and

dogmatic conceptsthus knowledge of God is knowledge of eternal truths, authori-
tatively proclaimed. Originally the term primarily carried the negative connotation of
authoritarian belief. See for instance the reaction by P. Wernle to the rst edition of
the Epistle to the Romans: Der Rmerbrief in neuer Beleuchtung in: Kirchenblatt fr die
reformierte Schweiz 34 (1919), 163 and Barths response to that in the Foreword to the
revised edition Der Rmerbrief (Zweite Fassung) (Mnchen 1922=) Zrich 197611,VI:
das Schreckgespenst einer neuen Orthodoxie (ET: The Epistle to the Romans, trans-
lated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York 1968, 3: the appearence of
the horrible spectre of a new orthodoxy). Cf. also Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf
(1927), hrsg. von G. Sauter, Zrich 1982, 7 en KD I/1, IX; ET: Church Dogmatics
I/1, XIV. For the reception in the Anglo-Saxon context, see Bruce L. McCormack,
Karl Barths Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 19091936,
Oxford 1997, 2426. See also the reference there to F. Kattenbusch, Die deutsche evange-
lische Theologie seit Schleiermacher II, Gieen 1934, 46. The association of Barths theology
with repristination and imposed authority received no small impetus from Bonhoeers
memorable assessment of Barths theology as a form of revelation positivism (letter of
May 5, 1944).
4 chapter one

tual climate, where the possibility and desirability of believing in God

was doubted, or forcefully denied.
The arrangement followed has implications for the manner in which
the context is discussed. Put dierently, the manner in which theologi-
cal history is handled has considerable limitations. Tracing the factors
which went into the development of their ideas, seeking out sources and
striking dierences from contemporaries, or the course of their own
development is not the intention of this study. Because of the structure
of the study the reader can for a moment get the impression that Calvin
and Barth were two solitary gures who arrived at their positions sui
generis. I emphasise that this is not my intention. Contemporary theo-
logical research makes it clear again and again that Calvin and Barth
were both connected with their contemporaries within a ne-meshed
net of existing concepts and forms of exegesis. Where it was possible, I
have made use of studies that focus on the narrower context, on a detail
of the panel, but in general it is the larger eld that is of interest in this
book. The idea of context is thus understood broadly, in the sense of the
cultural climate, the whole of the positions and attitudes that permeate
the way we deal with the world, ourselves and God. An awareness of
the context is of great importance in dogmatic reection. A direct com-
parison between Calvin and Barth is therefore not the intention, and
the annexation of the one for the other even less so.5 Consideration of
their concepts of knowledge of God takes place precisely in the con-
sciousness of their presumptive otherness and strangeness, while the
otherness is not so absolute as to exclude the possibility of a fruitful
comparison. I have tried to do justice to both. The step that has to be
taken within dogmatics is the question of what a concept contributes to
the particular reection at hand.
The two panels are connected by a hinge. The hinge is formed by
the epistemological critique of the Enlightenment, culminating in the
thought of Immanuel Kant. The choice for Kantian epistemological
critique as the hinge is not intended to suggest that Barth is responding
to Kant in any direct sense. What I do wish to express by this is that
Calvin and Barth each lived in a very particular time, separated by the
time we call the Enlightenment. Calvin is portrayed as a pre-modern

5 See the irate response of R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin. Studies in the

Foundation of a Theological Tradition, New York/Oxford 2000, 187 and idem, After Calvin.
Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63102.
 introduction 5

thinker,6 and Barth as someone who completely shares in the problems

of modernity.7 The focus on Kants epistemological critique functions
as a means to briey describe the changed constellation of theology
after Kant.
The intention of this book implies that I will not limit myself purely
to observations and assembling data. In the discussion of the two pan-
els the dierence in the conguration of the various elements will nec-
essarily be dealt with. There are shifts in the role taken by man and
in the manner in which God is portrayed. As a viewer of the pan-
els, one immediately forms judgements, and the judgement thus does
not remain neutral. There is prot booked, but also losses. The criti-
cal glance is not only cast backwards toward Calvin, but also forwards,
toward Barth. Contemporary theology may be closer in time to Barth
than to Calvin, but that does not eliminate the possibility that there is
something to be learned from essential components in Calvin, some-
thing which has been lost in the more modern panel. Thus material is
brought together for an individual answer to the questions of what it is

6 With this general characterisation of Calvins context I am implicitly taking a

position opposed to those classications which seek to all too easily situate Calvin, or
more broadly, the Reformation, as early-modern, and thereby as a sort of overture for
modernism. The collective religious and cultural characteristics of what historiography
with good reason distinguishes as the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Biblical humanism
and Reformation are so decisive in comparison to the Enlightenment and modernity
which owed from it, that the term pre-modern is fully justied. This leaves intact
the value and necessity of Calvin research dierentiating within this wider context. For
this tendency within current research see particularly the book by R.A. Muller already
mentioned, The Unaccommodated Calvin.
7 Quite intentionally this characterisation leaves aside the approaches to Barth as

a critic of modernism (for instance K.G. Steck, Karl Barths Absage an die Neuzeit
in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973, 733), as an
exponent of modernism (D. Schellong, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit, ibidem,
34102; T. Rendtor, Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verstndnis der Theologie
Karl Barths und ihre Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien
zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gtersloh 1972, 161181) or of anti-modern modernism
(G. Peiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie. Zu Genese und Kontext eines paradigmatischen
Entwurfs systematischer Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Tbingen 2000, 25), or as post-modern
(G. Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Cambridge 1995; idem, Barth,
Modernity and Postmodernity in: J. Webster [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Karl
Barth, Cambridge 2000, 274295; William. S. Johnson, The Mystery of God. Karl Barth
and te Postmodern Foundations of Theology, Louisville 1997; L. Karelse, Dwalen. Over Mark
C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999). Barth has a very nuanced attitude toward
modernism, in which it is dicult to bring the elements of continuity and discontinuity
together under one term. For a well-considered balance, see D. Korsch Theologie in
der Postmoderne. Der Beitrag Karl Barths in: idem, Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth,
Tbingen 1996, 7492.
6 chapter one

to know God, where this knowledge comes from, what is to be hoped

for, and what place we are invited to take.
The procedure is that in both panels there is rst a general outline
sketched of what contemporary dogmatics would call the doctrine of
revelation (Chapters 2 and 6). Here one begins to see what the way or
ways are by which man can obtain knowledge of God. This is followed
in each panel by two chapters in which several substantive themes are
discussed. For both Calvin and Barth several subjects from the doctrine
of God and the doctrine of the sacraments are successively taken up for
examination (Chapters 3, 4, 7 and 8). The choice of using the doctrines
of God and the sacraments as the basis for sketching the content of
the theology in both cases is dictated by the hypothesis that these are
the themes which are pre-eminently suited to serve as mirrors of the
theological concept as a whole. After all, in the doctrine of God one
nds reection on the question of who it is that man is dealing with
in faith. There lie the roots of any answer to questions about salvation.
The themes of providence and election are taken up within this context.
I consider the doctrine of the sacraments to be signicant because it
is in this eld that it becomes clear in a concentrated way how man
arrives at knowledge of God, what he perceives of Gods salvation, and
what position he takes with respect to God as an acting person. For
Calvin this is focused on his view of the Supper, for Barth on what he
left behind of his fragment on baptism as KD IV/4. As this dierent
choice in rounding o the panels already shows, I have not chosen to
maintain a strict symmetry between the two panels, nor is this strictly
necessary. Rather, it can be defended that the portion of the doctrine
of the sacraments in each panel permits itself to be read as a pregnant
summary of the whole vision of the content of any way to knowledge
of God. Moreover, it appears to be precisely the view of baptism and
the Supper that is suitable for catching sight of the division of roles
between God and man. In addition, in the case of Barth it makes clear
just how much his view on the place of man as a subject in the God-
man relationship evolved.

1.3. Faith as knowing?

Proposing to study Calvin and Barths theology from the perspective

of human knowledge of God is anything but an obvious choice in the
present cultural climate. Can faith in fact be characterised as a form of
 introduction 7

knowing? Doesnt theology have a lot of explaining to do in that case?

Indeed, upon hearing the word knowledge, many in Western cultural
circles would think rst of scientic knowledge. The term knowledge
is in that case reserved for knowledge that derives its claim to truth
from some form of argumentation from the natural sciences. Only
that knowledge which fulls a limited number of criteria from physical
sciences is justied.8 In terms of this approach, knowledge of God falls
out of the boat, because there is no epistemological guarantee that can
be given for it.
Even if one is of the opinion that the concept of knowledge must be
taken more broadly than just knowledge in the physical sciences, it is
still clear that the concept of knowledge of God can easily be misunder-
stood intellectually or scientically. Under the inuence of intellectual
associations, the concept of knowledge of God as a description of the
relation between man and God was pushed to the margins and has
undergone an enormous reduction. That was not just a phenomenon
of this century. About a century ago the mystic ring of the concept of
knowing God was again brought to the fore when Abraham Kuyper
translated cognito dei into Dutch as kennisse Gods (which can be under-
stood as mystical knowledge from God as well as knowledge of God)
instead of simply godskennis (knowledge of God).9 Since the advance of
science and technology, knowledge has generally been associated with
instrumental knowledge and scientic knowledge. This sort of knowl-
edge attempts to make phenomena as clear as possible and to come to
grips with them by means of theory and experimentation. Thanks to
instrumental knowledge modern society is able to produce a massive
ood of goods and thus to realise a standard of welfare for at least a
segment of humanity the like of which has never been seen in world
history. This development however has its darker side. Through this
shift to an instrumental conception of knowledge the content of what

8 Without going into the matter further, following the philosopher Alvin Plantinga

one can term this approach to the guarantee of human knowledge classic foundational
thinking. See A. Plantinga Reason and Belief in God in: A. Plantinga/N. Wolterstor,
Faith and Rationality. Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame/London 1983, 1693 and the
broad exposition of the project of his epistemology in the trilogy Warrant and Proper
Function, New York/Oxford 1993, Warrant: The current Debate, New York/Oxford 1993
and Warranted Christian Belief, New York/Oxford 2000.
9 A. Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdheid, Deel 2. Algemeen deel, Kampen 19092,

193e.v. In the same line H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I, Kampen 19062, 11, 15;
ET: Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I: Prolegomena (ed. by John Bolt, translated by John Vriend),
Grand Rapids 2003, 3842.
8 chapter one

it meant to know has been reduced, and the broader meaning that the
concept of knowledge of God traditionally encompassed now must be
expressed by means of other words.
Distinguished from scientic and instrumental knowledge, there is
also a broader concept of knowing that is possible, one which has its
foundations in the world of experience. According to this epistemology
it is defensible to begin with the multiplicity of sensory and intellectual
capacities. If our faculties are functioning well they produce trustworthy
knowledge. In addition to sense perception we possess memory, we
accept the witness of others, we know the dierence between good
and bad, beautiful and ugly, truth and falsity. In short, in practice
we live with all sorts of knowledge that is the product of capacities
and that we accept in an immediate way, that is to say, without the
intervention of reasoning.10 The experience of the light of the autumn
sun on a hedgerow, the rst notes of Mozarts Requiem, the warmth
of the spring sun on your forehead, the smell of lavender, the taste
of fresh bread, an intensely experienced memory, a strong feeling of
indignation, the testimony of others: all these are examples of primary
experience and forms of knowing that do not fall into the category of
scientic knowledge, but none the less produce knowledge of a sort that
in practice we accept to be trustworthy. Knowing in this primary sense
is being in contact with, spoken to by, conditioned by, in the presence
of, involved with: in other words, relationally dened in a wide sense.
This knowing is a form of contact in which the person who knows rst
is receptive, and then receives and experiences that which transpires.
This sort of knowing also has conceptual and propositional implications
and can become the object of reection; but all these operations are an
abstraction of what presents itself in experience. What is experienced is
more than can be comprehended in words or reection about it. We
could call it a form of relational knowing, in which the person does not
so much become master of the thing known, but is addressed by and
becomes conditioned by it. It is to be emphatically distinguished from
knowledge which has the sole purpose of the transfer of information,
or control.11 In both Calvin and Barth the concept of knowing God

10 See R. van Woudenberg, Plantingas externalisme: waarborg door het naar beho-

ren functioneren van kenvermogens in: R. van Woudenberg/B. Cusveller, De kentheorie

van Alvin Plantinga, Zoetermeer 1998, 6782; ET: The Assurance of Faith: A Theme
in Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantingas Epistemology, Neue Zeitschrift fr
Systematische Theologie 40 (1998), 7792.
11 See C. van der Kooi, Kennis van belang. Wetenschapsbeoefening in het licht van
 introduction 9

is ultimately connected with notions of this sort. In knowing God

the person who knows is taken up into a relationship, dened by the
proximity of God.
It should not be surprising that in contemporary theology there has
been an attempt to replace the concept of knowing God with words
and concepts which lack the intellectual and scientic associations this
has assumed, and which therefore appear to t better with the pecu-
liar character of knowledge in faith. An orientation to the situation
of dialogue and the personal encounter has been characteristic of the
manner in which revelation and the knowledge acquired through it
have been approached over the last century. In theology inuenced
by Barth the object of knowledge of God is formulated in terms of
revelation, Word and being addressed by God in his Word. In some
cases, such as E. Brunner and H. Berkhof, the knowledge in faith is
explicitly formulated as knowledge which arises from encounter.12 For
E. Jngel God is the mystery which reveals itself in the history of Jesus
Christ. Through this the story, and the narrativity which is connected
with it, becomes the theological category par excellence for thinking
about God and His coming.13 In Roman Catholic theology God is often
spoken of as the hidden perspective that one discovers if one begins
with the whole broad range of fundamental human experiences, the
open places in human existence, and through surprise and amazement
comes out at faith in God, precipitated in myths and stories. The word
God becomes a meaningful word when people dare to let themselves
be touched by these experiences, which are nothing less than traces
of God and themselves lead to the way to God.14 Among thinkers of
Protestant background this broad approach generally takes the form of
the question of meaning as the context for the question of God,15 or,

christelijke geloofskennis in: J.P. Verhoogt, S. Grioen en R. Fernhout (red.), Vinden en

zoeken. Het bijzondere van de Vrije Universiteit, Kampen 1997, 98116.
12 H. Berkhof, Christelijk Geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer, Nijkerk 19937, 29; ET:

Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, Grand Rapids 1979, 30 for instance,
is characteristic.
13 E. Jngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begrndung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im

Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, Tbingen 1977; ET: God as the Mystery of the World.
On the Foundation of the Thology of the Crucied One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism,
Edinburgh 1983.
14 A. Houtepen, God, een open vraag. Theologische perspectieven in een cultuur van agnosme,

Zoetermeer 1997, 330; ET: God: An Open Question, London/New York 2002, 85108,
258. E. Schillebeeckx, Mensen als verhaal van God, Baarn 1989.
15 See for example W. Stoker, Is vragen naar zin vragen naar God? Een godsdienstwijsgerige
10 chapter one

as in Adriaanse, the question of God becomes a perspective which in

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

studie over godsdienstige zingeving in haar verhouding tot seculiere zingeving, Zoetermeer 1993; ET:
Is the Quest for Meaning the Quest for God? The Religious Ascription of Meaning in Relation to the
Secular Ascription of Meaning. A Theological Study, Amsterdam 1996.
16 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufstze und Vortrge zur Religionsphilosophie,

Kampen 1995, 44, 261, 300. See also H.J. Adriaanse, H.A. Krop, L. Leertouwer, Het
verschijnsel theologie. Over de wetenschappelijke status van de theologie, Meppel/Amsterdam 1987.
17 Karl Barth, Der Rmerbrief (Erste Fassung) 1919, Hrsg. v. H. Schmidt, Zrich 1985, 3:

Geschichtsverstndnis ist ein fortgesetztes, immer aufrichtigeres und eindringenderes

Gesprch zwischen der Weisheit von gestern und der Weisheit von morgen, die eine
und dieselbe ist. Cf. also Der Rmerbrief (Zweite Fassung), (Mnchen 1922=), XI: bis
das Gesprch zwischen Urkunde und Leser ganz auf die Sache konzentriert ist.
(ET, 7)
18 See W. Stoker/H.M. Vroom, Verhulde waarheid. Over het begrijpen van religieuze teksten,

Meinema 2000, 3451, 86105.

 introduction 11

The foregoing is not intended to suggest an intellectualistic concep-

tion of faith. However, the caricature repeatedly arises that knowledge
in faith could be resolved into a number of revealed truths or could
be derived from the highest principle. Now, faith indeed has content
which one can also try to express in propositions. It exists precisely in
the consciousness that God has acted and spoken in contingent histor-
ical acts and experiences. It is knowledge that refers to the history of
Israel and Jesus Christ as the history in which God has spoken in words
and deeds, has addressed man, and through His acting has accom-
plished salvation.19 That God in all this also makes Himself known and
does not withhold Himself is the deepest and most unabandonable core
of belief, which is to be heard in the modern denition of revelation
as self-revelation. To what extent the latter concept is pure prot or
may also involve a loss, will be a topic for discussion in the succeeding
chapters.
The contingent experiences of Gods dealings are passed on through
human testimonies and in this way have dened a community, are
assimilated there, and in turn passed on within varying situations. Pre-
cisely these varying situations, the debate over Gods acts and speak-
ing within the Christian community, and its debate with culture have
assured that Christian doctrine would be created. In the process of testi-
fying, retelling, actualising and referring to plausibility there arose what
we term tradition, a paradosis, was given form in a rite and a cultus,
and Christian doctrine took shape as a meta-language in the practice
of faith. In other words, it is impossible to imagine a situation where the
involvement and activity of the knowing subject is not at both the level
of lived faith, testimony and the cultus, and also at the level of reection
about faith.
Particularly the latter, the conviction that the human subject plays an
active and constitutive role in knowledge of God and, with that, also in
confession and doctrine, is both broadly accepted in our post-Kantian
culture and to a great extent denes the problem. It raises the question
of the status of dogmatic pronouncements, and in modern theological
history has led to constant scepticism regarding purported objectivism

19 Cf. N. Wolterstor, Divine Discourse. Philosophical reections on the claim that God speaks,

Cambridge 1995, who opposes the identication of Gods speaking and revelation,
and with the aid of J.L. Austins theory of language acts defends the possibility of
interpreting the Bible in a coherent manner as the speaking of God.
12 chapter one

in dogmatics.20 The increasing scientic monopoly on the concept of

knowledge and the wide acknowledgement of the role of the human
subject in the acquisition of knowledge went hand in hand, so that in
general the question about the status of religious language, and in par-
ticular that of metaphor,21 became a focus of interest. People do not use
language only for their dealings with the world. They also use earthly
means in order to express that which transcends the earthly. Can that
which is said in religious language and concepts still be characterised
as knowledge? Can this claim be made? Or, all things considered, is
all belief and all theology a human product, an entity of convictions,
stories, norms, values and rules that as a cultural construct serves to
provide answers for questions in life and our search for orientation?22 Is
man all alone by himself even at the heart of the deepest metaphors he
uses? Western theology has been deeply inuenced by the agnosticism
that modernity has accepted as its basic attitude.
That knowledge is a success word has also, in part, fed into this
distrust. To know something implies that there is something known
which actually exists or works. When the concept of knowing God is
used, it means that an implicit claim is being made that God exists,
or rather, acts and speaks. We indeed do nd that claim with both of
the theologians discussed here. No matter how dierent the times in
which they lived, for both Calvin and Barth the existence of God
or better, the knowability of Godis not open to question. Before a
man can pose the question about Gods existence, he has already been
touched by God. Both point to experiences through which it appears
that man always arrives on the scene too late with his scepticism.
By beginning with the concept of knowledge of God, I do not deny

20 The dogmatic work of G.C. Berkouwer, particularly his Dogmatische Studien, Kam-

pen 19491972; ET: Studies in Dogmatics, Grand Rapids 19521976 documents the at-
tempt to banish objectivism from theology and give the subject his specic place, ori-
ented within concentration on the Gospel.
21 See for example S. McFague, Metaphorical Theology. Models of God in Religious Lan-

guage, London 1983; idem, Models of God. Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age, Lon-
don 1987. E. Jngel, Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwgungen zur theologischen Rele-
vanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie in: idem,
Entsprechungen: GottWahrheitMensch. Theologische Errterungen, Mnchen 1980, 103157.
Idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 357383; ET, 261281.
22 For an approach of this sort, see for instance G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine.

Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia (PA) 1984. For the anthropological
approach to religion as a cultural construct see the frequently cited article by Cliord
Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System in: idem, The Interpretation of Culture, London
1993, 87125.
 introduction 13

that this assertion is subject to tremendous pressure, at least within

the agnostic climate of a Western society which, for the rest, in a
global perspective, geographically and culturally, overrates itself. The
choice for the concept of knowledge of God is however inspired by
the conviction that the notion of knowledge is something which simply
cannot be abandoned by Christian faith. As soon as we accept the
idea that man not only thinks, but reects on what he hears, the
metaphor no longer has to be labelled gurative language, but quite
to the contrary it can be said of a metaphor precisely that it supplies
knowledge. If what the sources of Christian faith themselves suggest is
true, namely that faith is called up by acts of God, through His Word,
through the coming of God to man, to His world, then the words,
stories and songs, and the metaphors that control them live from that
coming. Knowledge in faith, or knowledge of God, arises where man
lets himself be addressed, be determined, responds to Gods address
and approach. The reection takes place within an already existing web
of being addressed by stories, words, songs, images. That means that
from the very start revelation has the nature of an appeal, is creative
and performative because it creates a relationship. Knowledge of God
certainly also implies information, but the informative is ultimately
embedded in the performative: in the relation, in the appeal. If that
is true, there are good reasons to withstand the agnostic tendency in
contemporary theology and, for the sake of internal theological reasons
hold fast to the notion of knowledge.23
There are thus substantive reasons for arguing for maintaining the
term knowledge of God as a central concept. Where people experi-
ence their faith, in praying, singing, meditating, in liturgy, in shaping
their lives, in taking responsibility for the care of creation, for their soci-
ety in a larger or smaller sense, there God and his will to salvation are
in one way or another the object of human knowing, however much
hesitancy and how many limitations may accompany it, and a cause for
acting. There is no need to speak about it noisily or ceremoniously, as if
God were something that could be pointed to. Man knows all too well
that within the Christian tradition itself the knowing of God in this life
is a knowing in part, thus tentative, and the concepts of Christian doc-
trine reminds us that all theology is no more than a map on the way, in
via.

23 Jngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 383408; ET, 281298.

14 chapter one

1.4. Bipolarity and conict

In this study knowledge of God is not used in the sense that it has as
its primary meaning in scholastic theology, namely Gods knowledge
of Himself. As human knowledge of God, the concept can be pictured
schematically as an ellipse with two foci. The one focus is the acting of
God, and the other the faith of man as answer to that acting. These two
elements, which in dogmatics are generally discussed separately under
the headings of revelation and faith, are taken up together in the one
concept of knowledge of God. By reaching back to the older concept
we make it clear that these two, faith and revelation, belong together
from the very outset, and can not be discussed apart from one another.
The concept of knowledge of God thereby contains within itself the
tension that characterises the relation between God and man. The con-
cept of knowledge of God has not only a propositional, epistemological
presumption, but implies from the outset a bipolarity, namely, the rela-
tion of God and man. It is therefore at the same time a conict-laden
concept. It is not without reason that I have referred already to the
mystical, or better in this connection, the spiritual dimension of the
concept.24 This designation must still be sharpened somewhat, because
the adjectives mystic and spiritual taken in themselves are too pallid
and can easily lead to misunderstandings. They reect too little of the
drama, tension and conict in this relation. If God is known, this takes
place within a damaged world, and this is partly the fault of men who
are at odds with themselves and their world. Knowing God is not a
matter of tranquil reection or serenity, but on the contrary refers to a
confrontation, an invitation to let oneself be dened by a promise, to
respond to an trumpet call, and to do that in the midst of an existence
which is marked by emptiness and a ight from the void. Put in other
words: the concept of knowing God is soteriologically charged, and not
without reason refers to eschatology.
A short tour through the Johannine writings, at rst sight the most
serene documents of the New Testament, will teach that knowing in
this context is absolutely not serene, and has lost all sense of neutrality.
According to these texts, human knowing of God involves not only a
decrease of ignorance. Knowledge and acquisition of knowledge stand
in tension with error and lies. In the Gospel according to John the

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

 introduction 15

attitude opposed to light is described as rejection (John 1:1011), in

chapter 3 the ignorance of Nicodemus is a form of error (John 3:10),
and in chapter 8 the rejection is characterised as violence and lies
(John 8:44). These are indications that in the sphere of faith the theme
of human knowledge of God therefore can not be discussed merely
as an epistemological problem. It is a completely theological concept
within which the whole relation of man to God is being expressed.
Knowing God involves both the aective and the cognitive, but also
acting. Knowledge of God reveals itself in love, in doing the will of
the Father (IJohn 3:6, 16). It coincides with the perspectives on being
human that in the catechetical tradition were traditionally discussed
under the heads of faith, command and prayer.
The knowledge to which theology refers has to do with engagement,
with contact and presence. In short, it is relational knowing, sometimes
in a pregnant sense. This view is not limited to the Johannine writings.
It is not without reason that the Hebrew word yada is also used for
sexual intercourse between a man and woman (see for instance Gen.
4:25;; see also Matt. 1:25). Knowledge that really moves one often has
a corporeal basis. It will be seen that particularly Calvins theology
contains reminiscences of these sensory dimensions of our knowing.
God invites us through concrete, earthly means. No matter how strange
that may sound, we can learn more from Calvin about the interaction
of knowledge of God and creation and physicality than we can from
Barth.

1.5. The mirror as an invitation

The title given to this book picks up on the familiar passage from the
apostle Paul about the limits of knowledge of God in this life, but it
is not restricted to this specic association. In ICor. 13 Paul oers an
assessment of the charismata which are found in the community. He
lists prophecy, speaking in tongues, and knowledge, gnosis. For all of
these ways of knowing and dealing with one another, however, it is
the case that we still see in a mirror, dimly; it is to know in part.
In other words, in this passage the image of the mirror refers to the
restrictions and limitations to which the knowing of God is subject. This
specic meaning was however already in the ancient world embed-
ded in the broader eld of symbolic possibilities to which the natural
phenomenon of visual reection gave rise, namely as a metaphor for
16 chapter one

knowledge. The mirror invites, makes known. This broader meaning,

which as it were is presupposed in the use Paul makes of the image, is
what the title is intended to express.
As a utensil the mirror was also a source of fascination in the ancient
world. One could view an object through its reection in a mirror. It
was a form of indirect knowledge. The image is not perfect, as in direct
observation. The reection is the mirror image of the original: what is
left appears to be right, and what is right, left. We should particularly
remember that the antique mirror, as Paul knew it, was very far from
having the accuracy of todays bright and blemish-free glass mirrors.
One had only mirrors of beaten and polished metal.25 The image that
was visible in the mirror was vaguer and subject to deformations by
the unevenness of the surface. It is for this reason that the apostle
adds dimly. A mirror aorded no perfect image; there was indeed an
image, but it was vague and freakish. That throws light on the manner
in which the metaphor is used by Paul. What we know of God and His
kingdom has holes, empty places, things that are really unknown or are
known only in part. This is tentative knowledge. That however does
not detract from there being enough known, according to Paul, to live
with it. Christian knowledge of God comprises the essentials. and at the
same is limited.
The image of the mirror plays an important, and in part iden-
tical role in both Calvin and Barth, but as we will see, they dier
on one important point. For both there are places, facts or a his-
tory which can be pointed to which full the role of a mirror, of an
open invitation to learn to know, to participate. In Calvins theology
the metaphor of the mirror stands for a multiplicity of concrete ways
through which knowledge of God can arise and be nourished. It is
an outspoken metaphor which functions positively theologically as an
indicator of the range of earthly means with which God, through his
Spirit, draws men to himself. Mirrors are the places where God makes
clear what He wills regarding man. God has something in store for
man; He made him to be in fellowship with Him. They play an essen-
tial role in the trustworthiness of the images and the content with
which God makes Himself present with man. For Calvin knowledge
of God is not reduced to the singularity of the self-revelation given in
Christ.

25 See 2.3.1.
 introduction 17

The image of the mirror also fulls a role for Barth, in particular in
the doctrine of the analogia dei, later elaborated into the doctrine of the
analogia relationis. Like Calvin, Barth proceeds from the actual knowa-
bility of God, but knowledge of God is rigidly Christologically dened,
and the pneumatology that we encounter in some breadth in Calvin is
here entirely in the service of Christology. God is knowable through his
revelation in Jesus Christ. In fact this history is the locus of knowability
in which all other elements by which God makes himself known partic-
ipate. At the same time, the manner in which this knowability is pre-
sented reveals the degree to which it is interwoven with the problematic
of modernity. Barths concept of knowing God begins with the realisa-
tion that the word God, as it is used in the Bible and Christian faith,
does not coincide with the fact, with the visible. The word God refers
to the Holy One who distinguishes [Himself] from fate, in that He not
so much is, but rather comes.26 Barths preference for an idealistic struc-
ture of thought, in which God, the origin or the idea, is not considered
to be represented in the factual, but as an object of knowing can only
be gained in a process of critical distancing, is brought into relation
with this preference by Barth himself. Knowledge of God is no longer
derived from the world, nor is it to be directly identied with the text
of the Bible, but can only be conceived as the bestowed participation in
the self-revelation of God in Christ. In the idea of self-revelation what is
characteristic of this concept appears to contrast with Calvins concept,
where the work of the Spirit is conceived more broadly and is not just a
property of Christology. According to Barth knowledge of God is only
conceivable as participation in a movement, an irreducible but never-
theless actual reality of Gods acting and speaking which must always
be reconstituted anew. Only by virtue of this reality and that event can
a part of earthly reality, concretely the man Jesus, become the revela-
tion of Gods acting. It is characteristic of this concept of knowing God
that, as a result of this approach, there is no plausibility whatsoever to
be searched for or to be found for the truth of knowledge of God out-
side of participation in this actual reality of Gods acting. This has led to
the questions and complaints which still pursue Barths theological con-
cept. In the wake of this theology, is knowledge of God not typied by a
certain Docetism, hermetically sealed to the concretely historical? One
does not have to answer this question in the armative to nevertheless

26 K. Barth, Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie in: idem, Theologische Fragen und

Antworten. Gesammelte Vortrge III, Zrich 1957, 70.

18 chapter one

acknowledge the underlying question as legitimate. In what way is the

truth of God peculiar? What are the supporting elements for a Chris-
tian concept of knowledge of God that is characterised by a fundamen-
tal openness for perception of reality, and that can become a contribu-
tion to discussion about our world and the search for humanity? In this
Calvin and Barth, as representatives of an ecumenical Reformed theol-
ogy, both agree that knowledge of God not only concerns the private
aairs of the individual, but serves a public interest.
 part one

JOHN CALVIN
 chapter two

WAYS OF KNOWING

2.1. Introduction

2.1.1. Knowledge of God and piety

The face of a theological project is at least as strongly dened by the
lines which are not there as by the lines which are deliberately and
forcefully introduced. That is true for Calvins theology too. One of
the most obvious dierences with contemporary systematic theologi-
cal projects is the absence of any separate handling of the doctrine of
revelation, or the question of the nature and sources of knowledge of
God. In modern schemes the discussion of this subject precedes all else,
and is broadly conceived. Anyone reading Calvin discovers that this
subject has no separate or central place in the whole of his writings
and theology. This should not be surprising. The term revelation only
made its appearance as a central and fundamental concept that organ-
ises and qualies the whole of theology and all of its sectors when it
became a point of debate where and if God revealed Himself.1 That
does not deny that Calvin too discusses the question of how man comes
to knowledge of God, but the doctrine of revelation and theological
epistemology as such are not of primary interest to him.2 That is a not
unimportant observation, because it gives us insight into the certainties

1 P. Eicher, Oenbarung. Prinzip neuzeitlicher Theologie, Munich 1977, 1757, distin-

guishes among four dierent functions of the concept of revelation, namely 1) as a

qualier of the content of belief, 2) as legitimator, to the extent that the concept refers
to God as the source of authority, 3) as an apologetic category, and 4) as a systematising
and unifying concept for the whole of theological assertions; see also H. Waldenfels,
Einfhrung in die Theologie der Oenbarung, Darmstadt 1996, 83143. In agreement with
W. Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, Grand Rapids, MI, 1991, 194195), one can
argue that the explicit assumption of revelation as a subject in contemporary theology
primarily serves the function of legitimisation and authorisation. Knowledge of God
without any form of authorisation remains a purely human, subjective assertion. See
further 9.4.
2 E.A. Dowey, The Structure of Calvins Theological Thought as Inuenced by the
22 chapter two

that Calvin shared with his times. Of course, it is possible to read a

number of portions of Book I with modern eyes and to scrutinise them
in terms of the questions that are discussed as introductory questions in
the prolegomena of later times.3 We can not however overlook the fact
that a general introduction of the sort that dogmatics in the modern era
feels is obligatory, is simply not present in an explicit form in Calvin.
He does not worry about the question of whether knowledge of God
as such is possible or real. The critical commitment of his theology lies
elsewhere, in much more substantive questions, namely who God is for
man and what his salvation for man means. It is these substantive ques-
tions which interest him more, precisely because their substance, which
should guide relations with God, in his judgement has been buried
under a weight of ritual and tradition in the church. A frequently recur-
ring description of the situation in the church is ruina. In his eyes, the
churchor better yet, Christianityis in a state of decay. That which
people know of God and His salvation is hidden and smothered by
illegitimate elements, by innovations which deviate from the original
truth. Therefore, reformation is necessary, because the lack of knowl-
edge, the ignorantia, that has gained the upper hand in church and soci-
ety can then be combated. Calvins sense of his times is characterised
by his assertion that it is only recently that, thanks to the grace of God,
insight into the true content of the Gospel has again been gained.4 He
sees his own role lying in propagating and strengthening the rediscov-
ered Gospel in the hearts of men and in social institutions. I mention
these elements because they are of importance in seeing more sharply
what Calvin is out to accomplish. Pure knowledge of God is important,
because only pure knowledge can aord understanding of salvation.
The chance is great that the word pure will immediately set o
alarm bells. It conrms the image of doctrinal orthodoxy, intellectu-
alism and persecution of heretics, in short, of all the notions that the
pejorative use of the word Calvinism has powerfully fed. Is the pursuit

two-fold Knowledge of God in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus ecclesiae Genevensis Custos,
Frankfurt a.M/New York 1984, 139.
3 W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin. A sixteenth Century Portrait, New York/Oxford 1988, 153.
4 See, for instance, the letter presenting the Institutes to Francis I, where ignorance

among those disposed to the Gospel in France is given as a reason for writing the
rst edition, OS III, 9: paucissimos autem videbam qui vel modica eius cognitione
rite imbuti essent. and OS III, 15: Quod diu incognita sepultaque latuit, humanae
impietatis crimen est: nunc quum Dei benignitate nobis redditur, saltem postliminii
iure suam antiquitatem recipere debebat.
 ways of knowing 23

of religious purity not inseparably linked with intolerance and inhu-

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

5 OS III, 11: Tuum autem erit, serenissime Rex, nec aures, nec animum a tam

iusto patrocinio avertere: praesertim ubi de re tanta agitur: nempe quomodo Dei
gloriae sua constet in terris incolumitas, quomodo suam dignitatem Dei veritas retineat,
quomodo regnum Christo sartum tectumque inter nos maneat. Digna res auribus tuis,
digna tua cognitione, digna tuo tribunali. Siquidem et verum Regem haec cogitatio
facit, agnoscere se in regni administratione Dei ministrum. Nec iam regnum ille sed
latrocinium exercet qui non in hoc regnat ut Dei gloriae serviat.
24 chapter two

that nds its apex in personal salvation, but equally involves the public
sphere, as can be seen in the role that the Consistory fullled in the
Genevan community.
By depth I then mean personal spiritual life. This introduction will
direct attention toward both aspects. The breadth of the social rootage
will be discussed in 2.1.2. The nal introductory section (2.1.3) will give
a number of examples of the inseparable connection of religion with a
pure conscience.
The involvement of the knowledge of God with the concrete cir-
cumstances of human life is programmatically expressed in the famous
opening sentence of the Institutes: Our wisdom, in so far as it ought
to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two
parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.6 In this characterisation
of the content of faith, which unmistakably bears traces of the Bibli-
cal humanism of the day and the search for a philosophia christiana as
the true wisdom,7 knowledge of God and human self-knowledge are
directly linked with one another. One cannot be had without the other.
Human religious understanding can be conceived as an ellipse with
two foci, namely the knowledge of God and human self-knowledge.
These two are correlates of one another. In this sense, Calvin enunci-
ates a principle of methodology that will be fruitful everywhere in his
theology: religious knowledge is bipolar. Knowledge of God has conse-
quences for that which men know about themselves. As a man achieves
insight into himself and life, that will have direct consequences for his
knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is anything but theoretical. In
its aim and intent it is practical and, to immediately say the word that
characterises this concept and the spirituality which accompanies it in
its whole height, breadth and depth, it is protable. Calvins theology is
rooted in the humanistic climate shaped by the Renaissance, in which it
is no longer the vita contemplativa, far from the world, which provides the
paradigm for proper life, but existence in the world that functions as
the divine task.8 What we call his theology is anything but a theoretical
activity. It is practical knowledge.

6Inst. 1.1.1.
7F. Wendel, Calvin et lhumanisme, Paris 1976, 7576 points to Ciceros denition
of philosophy which lies behind this, and the handling of this denition by Bud
and Erasmus. See particularly J. Bohatec, Bud und Calvin. Studien zur Gedankenwelt des
franzsischen Frhhumanismus, Graz 1950.
8 See for instance Calvins abundantly clear rejection of monastic life in principle in

Inst. 4.13.16.
 ways of knowing 25

The practical orientation of Calvins theology is expressed in a word

that is related to knowledge of God and that describes the spirituality
which is connected with this theology: pietas, devotion.9 The double
implications of the concept of pietas have almost been lost to us. In
the modern vernacular piety has suered a thoroughgoing reduction
to a description of a religious attitude. Piety then refers primarily to
ourselves, and not to God. Remnants of the original double meaning
of the concept can, however, still be found in English in the term
lial piety, for piety was not originally focused exclusively on the
divine or sacred, but equally well described what was owed to our
fellowmen. Calvin has deliberately chosen to limit the denition of
pietas. Real knowledge of God results in piety. Piety is no outward
form, no inessential, but has real content. The denition that he gives
for piety is worth citing; it aords access to what Calvin presents as
faith. He writes, By piety I mean that union of reverence and love
to God which the knowledge of his benets inspires.10 A couple of
elements in this denition attract our attention. In the rst place,
it must involve knowledge of Gods benets, notitia. In other words,
piety is not empty; it is paired with knowledge. Next, something is
proposed regarding the content of this knowledge. In piety God is
known as the source of all good that mankind meets, both in the
world surrounding him and also in the Bible. Knowledge of God does
not start at point zero; it is the perception of a source of good, of
something positive. Third, the denition makes it clear where such
knowledge must lead, namely to the double reaction of respect (or
worship) and love. The worship acknowledges the distance of God and
the majesty of this source of all good; the love of God acknowledges
the graciousness of the Divinity. As we have said, in the concept of
pietas the practical point of Calvins theology becomes visible. It is no
longer a question of doctrine or orthodoxy. Doctrine is in the service
of a purpose, namely to present man to God in integrity and purity.11

9 See L.J. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin, Atlanta 1974, 97134. See also the

study by F.L. Battles, The Piety of John Calvin. An Anthology illustrative of the Spirituality of the
Reformer of Geneva, Pittsburg 1969.
10 Inst. 1.2.1: Pietatem voco coniunctam cum amore Dei reverentiam quam bene-

ciorum eius notitia conciliat.

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

tradere, quibus formarentur ad veram pietatem qui aliquo religionis studio tanguntur.
See also what Calvin wrote in the Supplex exhortatio ad invictis. Caesarem Carolum Quintum
(1543), preparatory to the religious discussion at Spiers, (CO 6, 484): Certe nihil ab aliis
26 chapter two

M. de Kroon has pointed to another text where for Calvin this point
comes clearly to the fore. In his exegesis of Psalm 97:7 (All worshippers
of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; the
gods bow down before him), he writes, Piety in the true sense of the
word is this: that the true God be worshipped totally and wholly, so that
He alone is exalted and no creature casts a shadow on His majesty.12
Calvin is there anxious that honour which in fact belongs to God not be
paid to people or things. Further along we shall also see again how this
anxiety for the way in which he will speak of the relation between God
and man is characteristic of his theology.13 Neither man, nor a moral
project is the deepest motif of his theology, but a God who inclines
to man. The acknowledgement of this is what piety is about. All else
is subordinate to this practical purpose of piety. This is of paramount
importance for evaluating Calvins theology. What God makes known
of himself does not serve a theoretical or contemplative purpose, but is
practical in import.
A fourth element that surfaces in the denition of piety, and which is
telling for the colour and tone of knowledge of God, is related to this.
I am referring to the verb conciliare, which can have the more neutral
meaning of to bring about, but with regard to human aection can
be translated as arouse or win. It is close to another word which will
play a large role in the knowledge of God, namely the word invitare, or
invite. The words arouse and invite are indicators of a basic line in
Calvins theology which, I would emphasise, is far too little taken into
account in the reception of Calvins thought in dogmatics. According
to Calvin, in many manners, through a colourful palette of means,
God entices, draws, invites and encourages man to acknowledge his
Maker. It must be emphasised that this invitation comes through a

dierimus, sicut dixi,nisi quod nos hominem, inopiae impotentiaeque suae convictum,
melius ad veram humilitatem erudimus, ut abdicata in totum sui ducia in Deum totus
recumbit, item ad gratitudinem, ut Dei benecentiae quidquid habet boni transscribat,
sicut revera ab ipso est.
12 M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn. Reformatorische perspectieven. Teksten en

inleiding, Zoetermeer 1991, 99.

13 According to M. de Kroon that is the point which distinguishes him from M. Bu-

cer, for whom pietas describes the unity of faith and love. While for Calvin pietas is
focused on God, for Bucer the concept includes the relation to God and to man, thus
faith and ethics. Bucer opposes the Anabaptist tendency to primatise love toward the
neighbour with the unity of faith in the justifying God and love of the neighbour. See
M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn, 92108.
 ways of knowing 27

colourful palette of means. The Scriptures are certainly central to this,

but they are not the only means through which God lets himself be
known; the Scripture oers the possibility of giving all sorts of other
experiences, inward and outward, a place in the contact that God
exercises with them. To use a favourite metaphor of Calvins, God
places the believer in the school of the Holy Spirit and thus subjects
him to a lifelong learning process that only comes to an end when in
the future life men are united with Christ in a new body. We can call
that eschatological, or better yet, the nal orientation of this theology.
Or yet again, Calvins theological idiom here betrays that it nds its
nourishment in an intellectual climate in which God is experienced
as the One who is actively occupied with mankind, spurring him on,
drawing him, constantly training him.
By leading o in this study with the suggestion that for Calvin the
world and Bible function as an open invitation to the knowing of
God, I am following a path that is not often trodden. The well-worn
image of Calvins theology, set in stone once and for all when Hegels
philosophy in fact dened the interpretation, is that all things come
together at one point in Calvins theology, namely at the Counsel of
God as the centre which denes everything and gives all its proper
place. Calvin was the man of the system, logic and determinism. It
cannot be denied that Calvin sees no other possibility than to acknowl-
edge God as the director, as the sovereign Lord who exercises domin-
ion over all things in his sphere, but it is something else to separate
and elevate this to the only aspect of Calvins peculiar theology. It must
be admitted that this did not come out of the thin air. Seen histor-
ically, in the wake of the arguments between the Remonstrants and
the Counter-Remonstrants, independent consideration of Gods Coun-
sel, out of which arise both providence and double predestination, has
become denitive for the image of Calvinism internationally. Against
the background of the way this image was shaped, it may appear to
be an all too easy attempt to save Calvin for ecumenical discussion to
now label invitation the fundamental element in his theology. Is such
language, when it comes from Calvins pen, indeed to be taken seri-
ously? Or does the invitation evaporate in the light of the Counsel of
God, to become an empty haze, something that in the end does not
matter conceptually? After all, is the conviction that all things that hap-
pen, happen at Gods command, not a part of the knowledge of Gods
benets? Certainly the things of man and this world are xed in His
Counsel, and all is decided about doom and salvation, about all that
28 chapter two

lives, moves and has its being? It is in line with this sort of rigid doc-
trine of providence that Calvin generally has been, and is understood.
In the vehement critique of Bolsec, in the speculative idealist interpre-
tation of the 19th century,14 and down to our own time Calvin is read
through the one lens of God as absolute causality, which threatens to
smother the singularity of the nite world, and thus also the singular-
ity of man. As has already been said, it cannot be denied that in the
conception of God, man and the world that Calvin has, seen from the
perspective of God all things are appointed. Calvin is absolutely con-
vinced of this, and it is his view that God himself, by making known
this part of his Counsel to man, will reveal His faithfulness to the faith-
ful.
Or do we have here two lines that, according to Calvin, cannot
be combined in human thought, while according to the 19th century
speculative-idealist interpretation indeed can be brought together in
the same discourse? Do the invitation to all hearers and the limita-
tions that are given with Gods eternal Counsel contradict one another?
As we have said, Calvin is generally understood only in terms of the

14 Under the inuence of 19th century idealist philosophy, for a long time the theol-
ogy of Calvin was reduced to a system where one central dogma dominated, namely
that of God as absolute causality. See for instance F.C. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen
Dogmengeschichte, Tbingen 1847, 218, Alex. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in
ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformirten Kirche, Erste und zweite Hlfte, Zrich 1854/1856,
(Bd. I, 199) and O. Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus, Bd. 3. Die reformierte Theolo-
gie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung, Gttingen 1926, 166168.
H. Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, Leipzig 1922, pointed to new paths. Accord-
ing to Bauke there are always two antithetical principles that are involved with one
another, in a complexio oppositorum. Beside the doctrine of providence stands individual
responsibility; beside justication stands sanctication. For a survey of the discussion:
P. Jacobs, Prdestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937, 1549. See also
M. de Kroon, De eer van God en het heil van de mens. Bijdrage tot het verstaan van de theologie van
Johannes Calvijn naar zijn Institutie, (Roermond 1968=) Leiden 19962. For a contemporary
deterministic interpretation, see C.H. Pinnock, From Augustine to Arminius. A Pil-
grimage in Theology in: idem, The Grace of God, the Will of Man. A Case for Arminianism,
Grand Rapids 1989, 1530. See also C.H. Pinnock/R.C. Brow, Unbounded love. A Good
News Theology for the 21st Century, Downers Grove, Ill., 1994. The question of to what
extent one can speak of systematic theology with Calvin of course is ultimately depen-
dent on the answer to the question of what is systematic. If the only thing which one
can conceive with the word is the idealist notion of a system, then the answer must be
negative. W.J. Bouwsma (John Calvin, 5) appears devoted to this view of systematic the-
ology. If one considers the Institutes as a well-considered collection of loci communes and
disputationes, and therefore as a genre of its own that must be distinguished from genres
such as the sermon and commentary, the answer will be otherwise. See R.A. Muller,
The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140173.
 ways of knowing 29

latter line, and then in such a way that speaking in terms of invita-
tion no longer has any weight. The image of Calvin is still dened by
the idealist interpretation that threatened to conceive the nite as a
manifestation, and therefore as an appearance. It will be made clear in
Chapter 3 that according to Calvin a partial revelation of Gods Coun-
sel does not imply that man has the freedom to take this divine per-
spective as his point of departure and deny human responsibility. The
revelation of Gods preordination is no licence to play human respon-
sibility and Gods Counsel against one another in the space of our
human understanding. Human understanding is fundamentally limited
knowledge. The position of man as creature brings with it that mans
speaking about God must take into account the categorical dierence
between God and man. With Calvin that dierence functions as a reli-
gious given, which makes following through a line of reasoning logically
impossible. He refuses to accept the nal conclusions of an absolute
determinism, namely that God is the creator of evil.15 Precisely because
of this limitation it is not possible to relativise the seriousness of the
invitation and individual responsibility in the light of divine preordi-
nation. What lies within the innity of Gods Counsel actualises itself
in the way of invitation and individual responsibility. In what follows we will
investigate what it means for Calvins theology that he allows both per-
spectives to exist.16 Not only historically, but also with an eye to present-
day systematic reection, it will be productive to pay attention to that
rst line, almost forgotten in a dogmatic perspective: for Calvin, life in
time, in the world of the senses, in everyday experience is full of a God
who seeks, draws and stimulates. Is this something which has become
strange to us, or does Calvins theology here put us precisely onto a
track that has become overgrown and will have to be rediscovered once
again?

15 It is signicant that the critics of determinism in Calvin, and more broadly in

Reformed theology, do not accept the religious character of the sovereignty of God
and reduce it to a system of causes and eects that lie on the same plane. Thus for
instance Pinnock, in his eort to do justice to the freedom and subjectivity of man and
the openness of history, arrives at a theology in which the notion of Gods sovereignty
disappears completely into the void. This sort of theology is right to the extent that it
will do justice to human responsibility; it is wrong to the extent that this is done at the
cost of the notion of Gods sovereignty. Karl Barth increasingly wanted to do justice
to both perspectives, that of Gods sovereignty and that of human subjectivity, without
however telescoping them together as factors in one sphere.
16 See P. Jacobs, Prdestination und Verantwortlichkeit, 138139.
30 chapter two

2.1.2. Rootage in society

Choosing the concept of knowledge of God is not without risk. In the
introduction we have already discussed a possible intellectual and sci-
entic misunderstanding due to the associations that the word knowl-
edge calls up. Once it has been made clear that knowledge of God
has its source in the faithful relationship with God, at once the miscon-
ception that knowledge of God belongs purely to the inner chamber
and personal life threatens. Now, there can be no doubt about it: the
personal is indeed present. It is one of the characteristics of Calvins
theology that the point of knowledge of God is focused on the indi-
vidual person, on his or her eternal salvation. At the same time the
association mentioned wrong foots us if we forget that Calvin lived in
a society where faith and the church were part of the ferment in soci-
ety and played a central role in the public domain. Moreover, Calvin
was not willing to limit the role of religion to the civil well-being of
the city and society alone. For him, it was ultimately a matter of the
spiritual quality of society. His pursuit of pure knowledge of God is at
one with his pursuit of reformation in the church and society, and in
this he had in mind not just one city, or a couple of cities, but the
whole of Europe, which threatened to fall to pieces, not through the
divisions that the Reformation as such brought about in Europe, but
through the lack of spiritual values. He acted as the reorganiser of
the Genevan society and as an advisor to the city council, which by
withdrawing from episcopal authority and through the disappearance
of the old ecclesiastical structures that followed from this had to deal
with countless new responsibilities in jurisprudence, administration and
morals. Important institutions that previously had seen to education
and the care of the poor and sick, and which in doing so had encour-
aged the human qualities of the society, were now left in an adminis-
trative and organisational vacuum. Thus thinking and acting were not
separate compartments for Calvin. His theology cannot be separated
from a situation in which he bore responsibility for the well-being of
a concrete society. Put more strongly, it is inseparable from a situa-
tion in which the issue of reformation was a European aair, and the
break with the Roman Church was not accepted as anything like a
fait accompli. It would still be more than a century before the shock of
the spiritual and political rupture in Europe had been digested some-
what and the division took political shape in the Peace of Westphalia
(1648). To complicate things still further, in his vision of the church
 ways of knowing 31

and state Calvin is in no sense modern, but stands entirely in the ideal
of the Middle Ages, of one undivided society. For a long time Calvin
hoped for a renewal of one unbroken church, in which the old unity
between nation and church or between city and church would still be
maintained. As a reformer of the second generation,17 his work and
theology is to be placed in a situation in which the reformation of the
church had for some time been seen as the aair of the cities and their
leaders.18 With regard to the relationship of the church and state, the
reformation of the cities did not deviate from the medieval pattern: the
borders of the state (or rather of the city-state) coincided with those of
the church. Church and civil authorities considered themselves as parts
of the societas christiana, in which both had responsibilities which were
indeed to be distinguished, but in which the realisation that people
belonged to one Christian society was so overwhelming that the civil
authorities felt themselves responsible for the welfare of the church and
the Christian identity of society. Church and government are involved
in the same concern and from that involvement work together con-
stantly. Calvin can call on the government and point out to it its task,
to be concerned with the organisation of church and society and the
purity of doctrine and life.19 In his Institutes Calvin includes public life,

17 Historically, Calvins theology can be situated at the transition of what Oberman

termed the second and third reformation. See H.A. Oberman Calvins Legacy. Its
Greatness and Limitations in: idem, The two Reformations. The Journey from the last Days
tot the new World, New Haven/London 2003, 146147. The rst reformation was that
of Luther and Zwingli, the second that of the cities, and the third reformation was
that of the refugee movement. This arose because in the Interim, after the close of
the Schmalkaldic wars, the terrain won by the evangelical movement was seriously
threatened. It was a time in which transitions from the old church to the evangelical
movement and vice versa were still the order of the day, as the example of Louis du
Tillet shows (on this see for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, Philadelphia 1987,
118120). In short, Calvins theology was not born in a situation of academic peace. The
rst edition of the Institutes was written because he felt the challenge to give orientation
to those inclined to the evangelical movement in France, who, in his opinion, found
themselves in a spiritual vacuum. Many of his writings were in response to concrete
situations and are polemic in nature, in which he does his absolute best to win people
over or defend his rigid and highly controversial policy in matters of organisation and
reformation of the society.
18 See H.A. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, Kampen 1994.
19 See, for example, the Articles concernant lorganisation de lglise et du culte a Genve,

proposs au conseil par les ministres (1537), OS I, 369377. A striking example is Calvins
commentary on the words from Luke 14:23 compelle intrare (compel them to come in),
CO 45, 401: Interea non improbo, quod Augustinus hoc testimonio saepius contra
32 chapter two

governmental authorities and their organisation under those aids that

are necessary for mans journey to the kingdom of God. The govern-
ment and its tools are not to be placed outside of God and his dealing
with mankind, as Anabaptist groups did. Certainly, Gods rule over the
inward man, over the soul, is lasting and most important; worldly rule
is however just as much involved in that eschatological salvation, and
subservient to that end. In connection with the role of the government
and the shaping of public life, Calvin uses the metaphor of peregrina-
tio, a journey to a foreign land. The life of a believer is a journey to
the heavenly fatherland. It is Calvins conviction that the government,
with its institutions, is one of the aids to accomplishing that journey
satisfactorily and preserving humanity.20 The task of government is thus
directly connected with the objective and accomplishment of all knowl-
edge of God: eternal communion with God in the future kingdom. It is
clear that criteria can be derived from this purpose by which the gov-
ernment can be criticised, and that unity with the government is not
to be preserved at all cost. Salvation in Christ is a higher good than
remaining at one with the civitas,21 the civil unit, but this possibility of
critical distance should not blind us to the principle from which Calvin
proceeded totally: namely the linking of church and state, solidarity
between church and government on the point of the goal of mankind,
and the lifestyle which was geared to attaining that goal.
One place where the entwining of the church and civil authorities
within the whole of the Christian society can be seen in a striking
way in the Genevan situation is the Consistory. It will be worthwhile to

Donatistas usus est, ut probaret, piorum principum edictis ad veri Dei cultum et
dei unitatem licite cogi praefractos et rebelles: quia, etsi voluntaria est des, videmus
tamen, iis mediis utiliter domari eorum pervicaciam, qui non nisi coacti parent. For
the whole, see O. Weber, Johannes Calvin, Gestalter der Kirche in: idem, Die Treue
Gottes in der Geschichte. Gesammelte Aufstze II, Gttingen 1968, 118.
20 Inst. 4.20.2: Sin ita est voluntas Dei, nos dum ad veram patriam aspiramus,

peregrinari super terram: eius vero peregrinationis usus talibus subsidiis indiget: qui
ipsa ab homine tollunt, suam illi eripiunt humanitatem.
21 According to H.A. Oberman, Europa aicta: The Reformation of the Refugees,

Archiv fr Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992), 91111, especially 102105, Calvin can not

therefore be understood in terms of the reformation of the cities, in which civic peace
and unity were more important than maintaining the truth of faith, but must be
understood in terms of what he calls the reformation of the refugees. In this Calvin
proceeds in a dierent direction than Zwingli and Bucer before his banishment from
Strasbourg. At the same time one can determine that it was only rather late, and not
then under the force of circumstances, that Calvin became resigned to the unity of the
national church in France being broken and membership being uncoupled from the
 ways of knowing 33

introduce several points from more recent research into the functioning
of this administrative body into this study, because they throw light on
the social rootage of Calvins theology.22 The Consistory was established
by Calvin in Geneva in 1541. From the Registres of this administrative
body it can be concluded that this ecclesiastical institution in the main
played a role in three ways.
In the rst place, it functioned as an educational institution. We can
hardly imagine today what a staggering loss the withdrawal of episcopal
authority must have been for broad portions of the population in
terms of religious rituals. The search for reformation resulted in a
tremendous reduction in the shaping of their life. Rituals and customs
gave form and oered rootage and guidance to daily life. Henceforth
there could be no appeal to saints in times of need or uncertainty;
there was no longer a sacrament of extreme unction in the last hour
of life; henceforth there were just two sacraments, only the rst of
which could still function as a rite of passage. One lived in a society
without priests, and was driven in the direction of a more personal
form of belief. The Consistory played a considerable role in this process
of interiorisation, even if its remedies for ignorance and superstition
were clumsy and deeply inferior according to todays standards. There
are countless cases known from the rst years in which the Consistory
summoned the citizens to leave behind the old rituals, to no longer
be involved with devotions to Mary, and to learn the Lords Prayer
and Ten Commandments in the vernacular. The people were regularly
reminded to attend the countless preaching services and Bible lectures
that were held in Geneva.
In the second place, the Consistory functioned as a Council for
Arbitration and Reconciliation. In the case of disrupted relationships in
families, or dierences in business relations, people could be summoned
by the Consistory, which then attempted to eect a reconciliation, or
impose a solution.23

state church (January, 1562). He continued to hold to the ideal of the unity of city or
state and church. See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 179184.
22 For years now the leading gure in this research has been R.M. Kingdon of the

University of Wisconsin. For a description of the function of the Consistory from his
hand, see The Geneva Consistory in the time of Calvin in: A. Pettegree/A. Duke/
G. Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 15401620, Cambridge 19962, 2134. See idem, Adul-
tery and Divorce in Calvins Geneva, Cambridge/London 1995, 1030. See also H.A. Speel-
man, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 7279.
23 See the examples that R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce. Where possible
34 chapter two

The third function was as an ecclesiastical court. Questions of doc-

trine or life were brought before the Consistory. When the case was
serious enough that a public punishment was necessary, the matter was
then handed over to the civil authorities. This last function is the most
familiarand notorious. According to Kingdon, however, the great
inuence this administrative body projected is to be attributed rather
to the rst two functions mentioned.
Among the factors which are indicative of its close interrelations
with the government is its composition. In addition to clergymen the
Consistory had a majority of elders, who in fact sat as commissioners
and deputies in the church council as representatives of the various
councils, and were also so selected that the various neighbourhoods
of the city were represented. It was chaired by one of the syndics, or
burgomasters. Although primarily an ecclesiastical organ, where the
burgomaster has to set aside his sta and seal, the way that the civil
or municipal authorities were woven into it is very clear.
The long conict between the Consistory and municipal authorities
regarding the right of excommunication,24 which was only decided in
Calvins favour in 1555, shows not only that for him the importance of
a sanctied society prevailed over the rights of citizens, but also is fur-
ther evidence of the close relationship between church and society. The
conict also reveals how great the sensitivity on the point of excommu-
nication was. The link between faith and society is clearly to be seen
with the Eucharist, or Supper. In this there is no dierence from time
when the church was still under episcopal control. The struggle over
the question of whether excommunication was the prerogative of the
municipal authorities or an ecclesiastical body is precisely reminiscent
of the previous era when ecclesiastical courts under the guidance of
episcopal authority could pronounce excommunication even as a sanc-
tion in business conicts. In the new situation too excommunication

a reconciliation between the marriage partners was hammered out, often expressly
against the will of the complainant. In several cases a divorce was allowed and a
second marriage permitted. Kingdon believes that in the dissolution of the marriage
between Calvins own brother Antoine and Anne le Fert, the Reformers unswerving
commitment to preserve his own house from any possible scandal and taint played a
decisive role (88, 94). The rst request for a divorce was made as early as 1548 on his
brothers behalf by John Calvin himself. It was only granted in 1557, when he has at the
height of his power.
24 See particularly the description by W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the

Genevan Reformation, Manchester/New York 1994.

 ways of knowing 35

had not only a religious signicance, but also immediate social conse-
quences. Anyone excommunicated, or banned from the city, was not
only excluded from an important ritual, but cut o from family, friends
and business.25

2.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience

We might summarise the previous section by saying that in Calvins
model the growth of human knowledge of God and the life style which
accompanied it was supported by the civil authorities and social insti-
tutions. We now arrive at the second point, namely that of the inward
anchor of knowledge of God, within man. I particularly want to high-
light the role that conscience has in the knowledge of God, accord-
ing to Calvin. We are not used to that; in the history of philosophy
the emphasis has come to be placed on the relative autonomy of faith
and morality opposite, or next to, one another. A pluralistic society
nds it important to emphasise a shared moral framework, apart from
religious convictions. With Calvin we are still in an entirely dierent
world. Conscience is a faculty, but not a faculty which primarily rests in
men themselves. The centre of gravity lies elsewhere and is dened
theocentrically: conscience is an opening by which God approaches
man. Listening to the voice of conscience is listening to God. Con-
science and God are inseparable. Those who slam the door in their
conscience to the appeal that God makes there, deprive themselves of
the possibility of seeing the reality of God. To illustrate that it will be
worth the trouble of examining two passages in which an explicit con-
nection is made between an active conscience and pure knowledge of
God.
The rst passage is taken from the Advertissement contre lastrologie iudici-
aire (1549), a polemic written by Calvin on the improper use of astron-
omy. Calvin begins immediately with a warning which still sounds curi-
ous to the reader today. He reminds his readers of the words from
ITimothy 1:1819, where Paul impresses upon Timothy to ght the
good ght with faith and a good conscience: By rejecting conscience,
certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith. (RSV) According
to Calvin, what Paul intends to say is that those who have besmirched
their conscience and given themselves over to evil are not worthy of

25 See R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce, 1819.

36 chapter two

being preserved in the true knowledge of God. They deserve to be

blinded and led astray into diverse errors and lies.26 In short, the
one follows from the other. Astrologyor according to modern terms,
astronomy27is used properly so long as it is applied to obtain knowl-
edge about the natural order and the way in which God has disposed
the planets and stars to full their task. God has given the sun and
moon to rule the days and nights, months, years and seasons. Natural
astrology has a certain use for agriculture and public life.28 Such use
nds abundant support in Scripture, according to Calvin. There are
howeverso his critique runsalso people who use the Word of God
as social conversation, as a manner of obtaining a personal advantage
orstill worseof gaining access to noble women.29 God will not per-
mit such abuses, warns Calvin. God will permit those who give them-
selves over to such practices to lapse into the most foolish ideas. Such
people call down Gods wrath and punishment upon themselves. In
contrast (citing Heb. 4:12), the Word of God is living and powerful,
so that it penetrates to the marrow in order to discern what is within
man.30
The tenor of Calvins argument is that on the human side the way to
pure knowledge of God begins with a clean conscience, or rather with
self-examination before the face of God. The rst step in that way is
that a man, standing before the tribunal of God, becomes honest and is
aware of the need for obedience.

26 J. Calvin, Advertissement contre lastrologie judiciaire. Crit.ed. by O. Millet, Geneve 1985,

47: Car il signie que ceux qui polluent leurs consciences en sabandonnant a mal
ne sont pas dignes destre maintenus en la pure cognoissance de Dieu, mais plutost
meritent destre aveuglez pour estre seduitz par divers erreurs et mensonges.
27 The negative associations of the word astrology as a pseudo-science only date

from a much later time. See the introduction by O. Millet accompanying the Advertisse-
ment.
28 Advertissement, 54.
29 Advertissement, 48: La plus part se sert de la parolle de Dieu seullement pour

avoir de quoy deviser en compagnie; les uns sont menez dambition, les autres en
pensent faire leur prot; il y en a mesmes qui en pensent faire un maquerellage
pur avoir acces aus dames. According to J. Bohatec, Bud und Calvin, 274, Calvins
treatise is a direct response to a text published anonymously in Lyon in 1546, entitled
Advertissement sur les jugemens dAstrologie, a une studieuse Damoyselle. Bohatec names Mellin de
Saint Gelais as the probably author. See also Millets introduction to Calvins treatise,
22.
30 Advertissement, 48: Elle doit estre vive et dune telle ecace quelle transperce les

doeurs pur examiner tout ce qui est dedans lhomme, ouy jusquaux mouelle des os,
comme dit lApostre.
 ways of knowing 37

One can nd the same crucial role for the conscience with regard to
the knowledge of God in De Scandalis (1550),31 published in a period in
which the political prospects of the Reformation were frankly poor, as a
result of the Interim. It is a text with a patently obvious polemic ten-
dency, written as an aid for those who were wavering in their attitudes
regarding the Evangelical renewal. In this text Calvin indeed names
the names of a number of freethinkers in the cultural upper crust of
Paris and Strasbourg, such as Agrippa van Nettescheim, Villeneuve,
Etienne Dolet and Franois Rabelais,32 but the treatise is not addressed
to them. They have crossed a critical line. In Calvins view they belong
to a group who have become far too casual in their attitudes toward
God and his Commandments and embody an attitude that has over-
stepped all bounds. Their satiric commentary on parts of Christian
doctrine such as the immortality of the soul and hope for personal eter-
nal life is, to Calvins mind, destructive of faith. Such commentaries
result in inward scepticism, which undermines and drives out all fear
of God Calvin can just hear them thinking: if there is no personal life
extending on into eternity, the fact of the matter is that there is also no
judgement, so why should anyone still be concerned about such things?
In their eyes religion and morality are sheer fabrications, invented to
keep people in check.33 Calvin accuses them of what he elsewhere calls
an Epicurean concept of God: if such a supreme being exists in some
form, then it does not have anything to do personally with mankind.
Calvin mentions the ominous word atheist in this connection. One
can best understand the function of this term by comparing it with the
manner in which anarchist was used around 1900 to stereotype ones
opponents, or the term communist was used in the 20th century. In
any case, it means that those being so labelled were to be considered
a threat to something that is fundamental. In the view of Busson, in
Calvins mouth atheism becomes a collective label for diverse forms of
unbelief or deviant convictions. In some cases it implies the denial of
Gods existence in any form, in others to a form of rationalism, deism
or Averroism.34 What these ideas all have in common is that they lead
to a form of practical atheism. People lose their respect for God, scorn

31 See the introduction and edition by O. Fatio, Des Scandales, Geneve 1984, 8. For

the Latin text see: OS II, 162240.

32 OS II, 201.
33 OS II, 202.
34 See H. Busson, Le nom des incrdules au XVIe sicle, Bibliothque dHumanisme

et Renaissance 16 (1954), 273278, who opposes the assertion of L. Febvre in his book Le
38 chapter two

obedience and lose their passion for those things that are of eternal
value. If there is no immortal soul, if man will not always stand before
the face of God Almighty, life in time is stripped of its importance.
According to Calvins deepest conviction, that is the gravest of errors.
As we have said, those being addressed in De Scandalis are not these
atheists; they have already passed the point of no return. The treatise
is directed toward doubters, to those who may indeed have diculty
with some points of doctrine, but who are nevertheless still to be healed,
because their conscience is not yet obstructed.35
One of the stumbling blocks that Calvin takes up is the doctrine of
the incarnation. It is striking that he makes no attempt whatsoever to
clarify or explain this doctrine. In the passage in question we encounter
another strong example of how Calvin deals with what I previously
termed the categorical dierence between God and man. It appears as
if he wants to say that any attempt at explanation rests at its outset on
a false estimate of human capacity to comprehend what he terms doc-
trina caelestis. The incarnation is a mystery which far exceeds human
understanding. Among the causes of the diculty which people have
with this doctrine is that the human mind is incapable of taking it in.
From Gods side there is however no paradox whatsoever. According to
Calvin the real problem lies not at the intellectual level; one must dig
deeper. The problem is spiritual in nature. It becomes visible when men
let their conscience speak. Calvin suggests that the oence with which
the incarnation confronts us lies in human arrogance and the refusal
to accept Gods nearness in the incarnation. God comes too close for
mans taste. Because God descends from his immeasurable heights to
you, would you therefore continue further removed from Him? What
if He had called you up to the inaccessible sanctuaries of the heavens?
How would you have gone to him from such a distance, you who are
oended by his drawing near? According to Calvin, the scoers con-
clude that there is no one more foolish than we, who hope that we shall
be given life out of a dead man, who ask acquittal from a condemned
man, draw the grace of God from a curse, and ee to the gallows as
the only anchor of eternal salvation. By laughing at so much gullibility
on the part of others, they present themselves as being extremely intel-
ligent. There is however something which cannot be found in them,

problme de lincroyance au XVI e sicle, Paris 1942, that the concept cannot be considered as
theoretical atheism because such an idea could not have been conceived in that day.
35 OS II, 172.
 ways of knowing 39

which is the most important in true wisdom. That is a sense of con-

science. What remains of wisdom, of reason, of the capacities for judge-
ment, when the conscience is blunted?36 The stumbling block however
disappears when someone descends into themselves and sees their own
deplorable condition. True knowledge of God begins with the realisa-
tion of who it is that men are really dealing with, with God himself.
A man must rst become a fool in his own eyes. In the confrontation
with God men learn humility. Then, when someone sees their own
wretchedness, the realisation of the necessity of a Saviour will grow,
someone through whose mediation one can escape eternal death. Only
then shall the way for them to come to Christ be opened, at the same
time with the possibility for Christ to come to them.
What is striking about Calvins refutation is the emphasis on the
necessity of getting a feeling for the real relationship between God and
man. When the realisation of the holiness of God is absent in a man, if
he has no fear of God, no timor Dei, he will remain stuck at the level of
questions born of curiosity, which because of sin really do not accom-
plish anything. Calvins thought has no room for outsiders, spectators
in the sidelines. We know that they take oence, because they, devoid
of fear of God, have no taste whatever for spiritual teachings. There-
fore let us, so that their senselessness should not be a stumbling block
for us, be led from the human nature of Christ to divine glory, which
transforms all curious questions into reverence. Let us turn from the
death on the cross to the glorious resurrection, which negates the whole
ignominy of the cross. Let us exchange the weakness of the esh for the
might of the Spirit, in which all foolish thoughts are absorbed.37
We have quoted extensively in the foregoing, because these passages
put us on the track of several basic lines in Calvins vision of knowledge
of God.

1. As a means by which the transcendent God can enter our inward

life, conscience plays a fundamental role. God appeals to us through
conscience. No one can ignore this voice without suering the conse-

36 OS II, 173.
37 OS II, 174: hos sciamus ideo oendi, quia timore Dei vacui, nullum spiritualis
doctrinae gustum habent. Quare ne sit nobis oendiculo ipsorum stupor, sed potius ab
humana Christi natura ad divinam gloriam feramur, quae omnes curiosas questiones in
admirationem convertat: a morte crucis ad gloriosam resurrectionem dirigamur: quae
totum crucis opprobrium deleat: a carnis inrmitate ad potentiam spiritus transeamus,
quae stultas omnes cogitationes absorbeat.
40 chapter two

quences. That which presents itself to man in his realisation of good

and evil is precisely nothing other than the voice of God breaking in
upon his life. But beginning with conscience does not suppose that
moral restoration is possible in itself. Conscience confronts man with
a gaping chasm, a gulf between them and God. Conscience forces man
to consider his turning away from God.

2. Knowledge of God is a way which begins with God making man

restless. This way continues by man, in his misery, grasping the gift that
is oered him in the incarnation and Christs death on the cross, and
which leads to the glory and power of the exalted Christ. Man is borne
upward on the way of the knowledge of God. The sursum corda is a part
of the movement that the human soul makes under the inuence of the
Spirit of God. A third characteristic is connected with this:

3. Calvin exhibits no need whatsoever to rst speak of Jesus Christ

and then of conscience. Instead, as far as our understanding reaches,
conscience is the unconditional starting point. Conscience is a source
for the beginning of knowledge of God. Calvin does not distrust con-
science; for him, temporally and theologically, revelation is not imme-
diately revelation of Jesus Christ, but revelation of the harsh judgement
of God, although this is certainly nally oriented to Christ.38

4. Mans knowledge of God is not an epistemological or intellectual

problem, but primarily a spiritual problem, and from the outset is
dened soteriologically. That is to say, it cannot be separated from the
fact of the relationship in which God and man stand. Man lives in a
tension between obedience and disobedience, remorse and obduracy,
tractability and intractability. This is the spiritual realm in which intel-
lectual, conceptual and moral problems take their place. Anyone who
really becomes concerned with the question of how things are between
God and man will take a dierent attitude with regard to the di-
culties in understanding the incarnation theologically. The human sit-
uation and Gods wrath are the real heavy-weight problems and are
the centre from which intellectual diculties take their own, albeit sec-
ondary place. In short, Calvin has no revelation problem as the centre
of his theology. He begins with the religiously, ethically charged reality

38 See also Calvins answer to Sadoletus, where he describes something like an ordo

salutis, OS I, 469.
 ways of knowing 41

in which man will henceforth nd himself. This reality is that of the

man alienated from God, who is again sought out by God and enticed
to a way in which community with God can again be found. That is
the passion of this thought.

2.2. Accommodation

2.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all revelation

Gods actions are the foundation of all human knowledge of Him.
This formulation, when applied to Calvins theology, is not untrue,
but at the same time is not specic enough. In order to catch sight
of the way by which knowledge of God comes into being, we must
pay attention to characteristic words and concepts that are denitive
for its structure. One of the most important words that Calvin uses to
describe Gods action is descendere, coming (or going) down. Gods act
is a movement from above to below. We also nd the word ascendere,
to ascend or mount, directly linked with this. In other words, Calvin
describes Gods acts as movements in space, as a movement from high
to low and from low to high. Because by his movement God comes
closer to man, to be within the reach of the human capacity to know,
knowledge of God arises. Knowledge of God is the result of an action
of God, who through his Spirit, in a multiplicity of ways, will reveal his
will and intentions to man, stimulate and invite him, instil him with
his presence and bring him into connection with the divine power
from on high. The spatiality of this concept is intended literally. It
is intended to focus attention on the distance and dierence in place
which must be bridged. That does not mean that Calvin situates heaven
on the utmost edge of the universe and in that way postulates it as a
localisable place. He is well aware of the sense of the word heaven
in many Bible verses. According to his exposition of the Lords Prayer,
the apposition who art in heaven is intended precisely to deny any
possibility of sensory perception. It reminds us that the exaltation of
the glory of God exceeds any human capacity for understanding.39
That does not detract from the fact that in the concepts of descending
and ascending, space and distance must be understood as real. That

39 Inst. 3.20.40.
42 chapter two

heaven is dened as being a place, and Christs ascension by physical

movement and separation from the earth, are both part of the content
of revelation which is to be taken literally.40 In the chapter concerning
the sacrament of the Supper (Chapter 4), the theological (or more
precisely, eschatological) tenor of this thinking in terms of space and
distance will once again become clear. Revelation, or rather Gods
deeds, consist of a movement of the Spirit from high to low, and
from low to high. In faith and in the Supper, the Spirit connects man
with the esh and blood of Christ, and so opens up participation in
renewed being existence. It is this renewed body and blood of Christ
that is localised above, in heaven, and this is the guarantee and
eschatological goal of our renewal. In the following sections of this
chapter the various parts of this structure of descent and ascent will
be developed further.
The rst movement is that of descent, and the concept of accom-
modation ts as part of this descent. Human knowledge of God exists
thanks to accommodation.41 Accommodation describes what happens
structurally in this descent. In His coming down, in all his acts and
words, God accommodates himself to our human measure and human
capacity for understanding. We will here discuss further the necessity
and form of this accommodation.
For Calvin it is self-evident that in the whole of his dealings with
man, God must accommodate himself to mans measure. The neces-
sity for accommodation arises directly from the innite elevation of
God above creation.42 There is a fundamental distance which must be
bridged. Accommodation therefore implies both the notion of indirect-
ness and the tempering of Gods overpowering glory. The necessity of
accommodation and tempering must be sought not only in the fact that
sinful man has lost the way to God; it is a given that arises from the
categorical dierence between Creator and creature. The elevation of
God above the transient world always makes a certain form of media-

40 See his exposition of Acts 1:11, CO 48, 13.

41 For a survey see F.L. Battles, God was Accommodating Himself to Human
Capacity in: Donald K. McKim, Readings in Calvins Theology, Grand Rapids 1984, 21
42; J. de Jong, Accommodatio Dei. A Theme in K. Schilders Theology of Revelation, Kampen
1990. The great theological signicance of thet concept of accommodation is discussed
in D.F. Wright, Calvins Accommodating God, in: W.H. Neuser/B. Armstrong, Calvi-
nus Sincerioris Religionis Vindex. Calvin as Protector of the Purer Religion, Kirksville (MO) 1997,
319.
42 See for instance his commentary on Jeremiah 31:2, CO 38, 660.
 ways of knowing 43

tion necessary. Thus it is not in sin that the necessity of accommoda-

tion itself is found. Some form of mediation is always necessary. Calvin
does not speak at length of this, but the matter is clear. It is one of
the tings taken for granted in his theology: Had man remained free
from all taint, he was of too humble a condition to penetrate to God
without a Mediator. This remark comes in the course of the discussion
with Osiander about the necessity of the incarnation.43 Reecting on
Luthers notion of the justication of the godless, Osiander had argued
that justication is the result of the indwelling of the divine nature in
man. If man is called the image of God, then that must imply his par-
ticipation in divine nature in some manner. The next step that Osian-
der makes is that he derives the necessity of the incarnation as such
from the ontological dierence between God and man, and not from
the fallen state of man. Calvin opposes that second step, but neverthe-
less the remark that the distance between God and creature demands a
mediator or agent comes in this context. How can that be? Is the incar-
nation of the eternal Son still to be derived from the distance between
God and man? The apparent inconsistency disappears however when
we take into account that Calvin emphatically distinguishes between
Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word and the eternal Word as agent of
creation. In his thinking the concept of the mediator has a wider mean-
ing and reaches further than the incarnation. When dealing with the
incarnation of the eternal Son, the assumption of human nature by the
second person of the Trinity, Calvin wants to stop at the strict rela-
tion that is made in the Bible with deliverance: he refuses a speculative
diversion. Anyone who seeks further grounds for the incarnation than
this soteriological ground, oversteps the bounds set by God.44 To sum-
marise, as a theological concept the notion of mediator has a wider
function, and by Calvin is chiey, but not exclusively connected with
the incarnation, the assumptio carnis. But Christ, as the eternal Son of
God, also plays a decisive role in Gods dealings with the world outside

43 Inst. 2.12.1: Quanvis ab omni labe integer stetisset homo, humilior tamen erat

eius conditio quam ut sine Mediatore ad Deum penetraret.

44 Inst. 2.12.4: Ubi ad opem miseris peccatoribus ferendam Christum divinitus pro-

prie addici audimus, quisquis has metas transilit, stultae curiositati nimis indulget. Inst.
2.12.5: Siquis excipiat, horum nihil obstare quominus idem Christus, qui damnatos
redemit, testari etiam potuerit suum erga salvos et incolumes amorem, eorum carnem
induendo: brevis responsio est, quum pronuntiet Spiritus, aeterno Dei decreto coni-
uncta simul haec duo fuisse, ut eret nobis redemptor Christus, et eiusdem naturae
particeps, fas non esse longius inquirere.
44 chapter two

of the incarnation, extra carnem. As the Son, as the eternal Word, He

is involved with the world as mediator in creation and as sustainer.45
Nor does the incarnation prevent Him as the eternal Son from being
active extra carnem in certain ways. We here encounter a substantive ele-
ment of Calvins concept of the knowledge of God that is taken up in
the debate between Lutheran and Reformed theologians under a title
prone to lead to misunderstanding, the extra-calvinisticum, as if this
were a notion wholly limited to Calvin. I will restrict myself here to two
observations. First, in light of the history or dogma, Calvin is absolutely
not original on this point. As Willis has demonstrated from an abun-
dance of materials, he simply continues a line of thought that has been
generally accepted since the apologists.46 Next, it must be stated that

45 Calvin agrees with the exegesis in the ancient church in which the appearances of
the angel of the Lord (Judges 6:1124; Gen. 32:2930) were appearances of the Word as
the second person of the Trinity. See, for instance, Inst. 1.13.10: Etsi enim nondum erat
carne vestitus, descendit tamen quasi intermedius, ut familiarius ad deles accederet.
E.D. Willis, Calvins Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called Extra Calvinisticum in
Calvins Theology, Leiden 1966, 6971, points to the clarication that Calvin introduced
in his vision of the mediatorship of Christ in answer to the views of F. Stancaro.
According to Stancaro Christ was only mediator by virtue of the human nature that he
assumed in the incarnation. In his Responsum ad Fratres Polonos (1560), CO 9, 338, Calvin
makes it clear that Christs mediatorship also involves the creation and sustaining of
the world. By virtue of this mediatorship in creation the Son is the Head of the Church
from the very beginning, standing above the angels, and is properly named the rstborn
of the whole creation.
46 See Calvins famous formulation in Inst. 2.13.4: etsi in unum personam coaluit

immensa Verbi essentia cum natura hominis, nullam tamen inclusionem ngimus.
Mirabiliter enim e caelo descendit Filius Dei, ut caelum tamen non relinqueret: mirabi-
liter in utero Virginis gestari, in terris versari, et in cruce pendere voluit, ut semper
mundum impleret, sicut ab initio. The study by E.D. Willis cited in note 71 shows
that in light of the history of dogma there is no reason this should be termed the
extra-calvinisticum. The notion that the Logos was active apart from the incarnation
is a component of the established store of traditional doctrine. From the abundance
of material, see for instance Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, 17, John Damascene,
De Fide Orthodoxa, III.7, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.5, a.2. The term
can therefore only be understood as a polemic label that was introduced against the
Reformed position by the Lutheran side in the conict over the nature of Christs
presence in the Supper. The Reformed position is expressed in Question and Answer
48 of the Heidelberg Catechism: Q. But are not the two natures in Christ separated
from each other in this way, if the humanity is not wherever the divinity is? A. Not
at all; for since divinity is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow
that the divinity is indeed beyond the bounds of the humanity which it has assumed,
and is nonetheless ever in that humanity as well, and remains personally united to it.
(trans. A.O. Miller and M.E. Oosterhaven) Since its introduction the term has become
meaningful in the theological debate to the extent that it does refer to the Lutheran
accusation that Calvin does not take the incarnation seriously enough theologically. For
 ways of knowing 45

the distinction has its roots in Trinitarian theology, and has major con-
sequences for the whole structure of theology. In Calvin Gods acts are
dierentiated in a Trinitarian manner from the very beginning; that is
to say, what God does is to be resolved into the work of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, in which these three can not be identied with one
another without qualication. With all emphasis on the unity of God,
the work of the Spirit, for instance, has a peculiarity with respect to the
work of the Son, and the work of the Son has characteristic properties
with respect to that of the Father. The eternal Son does not coincide
perfectly with the incarnate Word, and knowledge of God does not
therefore coincide perfectly with knowledge of Jesus Christ as the incar-
nate Word. However much knowledge of God substantively derives the
criterion for its content from Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word, as
the mirror of divine mercy, for Calvin the work of the Spirit forms the
wider horizon in which the work of the Son is situated and the Father
leads his people to renewal and perfection through the Spirit. It is at
this point that later, in our second panel regarding Barths theology, a
variant conguration will be seen. Barth derives all knowledge of God
from the one revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the logos ensarkos, and
sees it as consisting of the disclosure of that which is given in Christ.
The concept of disclosure would not do justice to the peculiarity and
relative originality of the work of the Spirit as conceived by Calvin.
Meanwhile, from the discussion between Calvin and Osiander we
can make out the premise that both share, for all their dierences: God
stands far above man, and cannot be reached from the side of man.
The majesty of God is too high to be scaled up to by mortals, who
creep like worms on the earth.47 God would therefore remain hidden if
He himself had not come towards mortals by various paths and nally
the brightness of Christ had not shown upon us, according to Calvin.48
After all, the dierence between Creator and creature, and between

its signicance in the structure of Calvins theology see H.A. Oberman, Die Extra-
Dimension in der Theologie Calvins in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf,
Gttingen 1986, 253282. According to Jngel, Karl Barths doctrine of the eternal
election of the man Jesus Christ can be seen as a systematic counter-proposal to this
accusation: one can no longer think of the man apart from the Logos incarnatus. See
E. Jngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. Eine
Paraphrase, Tbingen 19763, 96.
47 Inst. 2.6.4.
48 Inst. 3.2.1: Nam quum Deus lucem inaccessam habitet, Christum occurrere

medium necesse est Quia Deus ipse procul absconditus lateret nisi nos irradiaret
fulgor Christi.
46 chapter two

Gods innitude and the niteness of creation, is immeasurably great.

The necessity for mitigation applies even within the unseen world of
the angels around Gods throne. Appealing to Isaiah 6:2, Calvin says
that as parts of Gods creation, even the angels are not permitted to
look upon Him directly.49
For Calvin, the realisation of an all-excelling majesty of God is not
theory. Although Calvin exercises the utmost restraint in telling about
himself and his religious experience, his writings nevertheless betray a
direct realisation of Gods holy and mighty presence. In every nook and
cranny of his work we can nd the realisation of his own insignicance
and a majesty of God that shines in the cosmic cogwheels. The awe
with which he recounts and evaluates the theophanies described in
Scripture is typical. In the confrontation with the majesty of God the
creature is deeply convinced of his dependence and fragility.50 For those
to whom this occurs, this is a shattering experience which they fear
they will not survive. The reason that Calvin adduces for this fear (as
in Judges 13:22 and Isaiah 6:5) is interesting, and at rst sight appears
totally illogical. God is after all the source of life; why should people
who confront the source of life need to fear that they will die? Calvin
makes an important distinction here. He explains that the fear has its
ground in something incidental (per accidens), namely the fact since the
fall, mankind bears death within himself.51 There is no reason for fear
because of our created nature as such.
Whatever the case, in order to learn to know God, it is necessary
that God comes down, bends down to man, and accommodates himself
to mans capacity for comprehension. In his commentaries, and still
more in his sermons, Calvin never tires of impressing on his audience

49 Inst. 1.11.3. See also Comm. Isaiah 6:2, CO 36, 128: Duae aliae quibus faciem

tegebant satis indicant ne angelos quidem fulgorem illum Dei sustinere posse, sicque
ipsos perstringi Dei conspectu, ut quum solem splendentem intueri volumus.
50 Comm. on Is. 6:5, CO 36, 131: Itaque priusquam sese nobis patefaciat, non cogi-

tamus nos esse homines, imo nos putamus esse deos: ubi autem apparuit Deus, tunc
incipimus sentire et experiri quales simus. Inde vera humilitas: quae in eo consistit
ut homo nihil amplius sibi arroget, totusque a Deo pendeat. See also Comm. Gen.
32:30, CO 23, 446: Quamdiu praesentem non sentimus Deum, superbe nobis place-
mus. Atque haec imaginaria est vita, quam stulte sibi arrogat caro, ubi deorsum incli-
nat. Fideles autem, dum se illis Deus ostendit, quolibet fumo se magis evanidos esse
sentiunt: denique ut confusa iaceat carnis superbia, ad Deum venire necesse est.
51 Comm. Is. 6:6, CO 36, 131: Videtur enim absurdum ut Dei intuitus vel propin-

quitas vitam auferat, cuius ipse fons et autor est. Respondeo id eri per accidens:
quando id ex nostro vitio, non ex Dei natura accidit. Mors enim est in nobis: eam
non perspicimus, nisi cum vita Dei conferatur.
 ways of knowing 47

the fact, the signicance of Gods coming down and accommodating

himself. We here encounter an element that will be deeply denitive
for the conguration of this rst panel. It confronts us with a radical
dierence between the mentality of that day and ours. The human
spirit was still considered as lower, dependent and uncertain. We are
still a long way from an attitude toward life founded on the notion of
the free, autonomous individual who shapes, orders and in that sense
creates the world by his own power and from his own resources. The
images that Calvin employs leave no doubt about what the real place
and stature of the creature is, seen in the perspective of the relation
between heaven and earth. One of the xed stars of Calvins symbolic
universe is the image of the wet nurse suckling a child while speaking
baby talk to the child. God is like that. God addresses us in simple and
unaected language.52 We will perhaps nd the physicality of the image
very appealing in our day, but probably not nd the point of the image
so attractive. The point is our stature, and our lack of capacity when
compared with the sublimity of God. What we hear from God is an
adapted speech, an address in simple language, as a baby is spoken to.
Indeed, the image of the wet nurse and her baby talk is not designed
with the self-condent, autonomous man in mind, and is calculated for
a relationship in which man is by far the inferior.
All of Gods self-revelation in creation, in the Scriptures, in Jesus
Christ and in the sacraments must be understood as a form of accom-
modation. The characteristic of revelation is its downward motion. Or
put in other terms, God stoops down to such an extent that he deliber-
ately places himself at the level where he can be seen and heard by
his creatures. That too is an element which is often forgotten. Not
rarely, the gure of accommodation is understood only as a concession,
something which really does not t with the highness of God. It has
been part of the established theological and historical repertoire to con-
trast Luther and Calvin with reference to this. Luthers theology then is
accounted as a theology of the Cross. God is present here sub cruce. It is
however best not to force the issue and act as if only the transcendence

52 See for example Inst. 1.13.1. See also OS II, 171, CO 5, 181 and CO 7, 149:

Car le Seigneur, sachant bien que, sil parlait nous selon quil convient sa maiest,
nostre intelligence nest point capable datteindre sihaut, saccommode nostre peti-
tesse: et comme une nourisse begaye avec son enfent, aussi il use envers nous dune
facon grossiere de parle, n destre entendu. Celuy donc qui renverse cest ordre, ne
tasche sinon densevelir la la verit de Dieue laquelle ne peut estre congneue, quen la
facon quil la nous al voulu reveler.
48 chapter two

of God counts for Calvin. God is not only elevated; he comes down,
with the crucied Christ as the nadir, down to within the reach of the
senses, and thus into our lives and hearts. He wishes to reach out to his
people in his eacement. The fact is, that mankind must be delivered.
God does that in a way that leads down, and from the depths upward.
This is the way and the movement that forms the structuring principle
of Calvins vision of the Supper.
Accommodation is a central element in Calvins theological epis-
temology. However, for Calvin it is not limited to an epistemological
concept. It is also a concept that is of far-reaching signicance for the
content of his theology. In the following section we will however limit
ourselves for the present to the consequences for Calvins hermeneutic
and his conception of language. That God as the great Orator accom-
modates himself to various times and places53 is even the key to under-
standing the Old Testament, as we will explain in the following section.

2.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred history

In the past century the concept of accommodation has prompted ques-
tions which aect the content of theology. What does it mean for the
content of religious knowledge? Is it at the cost of content if God makes
himself known under the conditions of this world? Does the reality of
what God has to say not suer under the form of accommodation,
under the baby talk? We here encounter the mine eld of anthropo-
morphic language, which has occupied theology and philosophy since
antiquity. Only in the very latest theology has this reection led to a
revaluation of the anthropomorphism in the Bible.54 How adequate are
the Biblical concepts actually, when all that God says is accommodated
to the measure of man? Calvin shares with the metaphysical tradition
the realisation that God exceeds all manner of human conception. One
can ask whether the coalition between the metaphysical tradition and
Christian belief does not necessarily lead to a total relativisation of the
historic and terrene in favour of the eternal. Does this not lead us
to Fichtes adage, Nur das Metyphysische, keineswegs aber das His-

53 Comm. Ex. 31:18, CO 25, 79.

54 E. Jngel, Anthropomorphismus als Grundproblem neuzeitlicher Hermeneutik
in: idem, Wertlose Wahrheit. Zur Identitt und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens, Munich 1990,
110131.
 ways of knowing 49

torische, macht selig; das letzte macht nur verstndig?55 What is most
remarkable, howeverand I deem this fundamentalis that the pres-
ence of metaphysical elements in Calvins concept of God has not led to
disqualication of revelation in history. He arrives at an extremely var-
ied and well-considered evaluation of anthropomorphisms. Some are
metaphorical, others on the contrary very precise. In Chapter 3 we will
return to this matter. I will here limit myself to the manner in which
accommodation functions as a hermeneutic key for the clarication of
the dierences between the Old and New Testaments.
Accommodation as a means in divine pedagogy is a familiar ele-
ment in the history of Christianity. In the theology of Irenaeus of
Lyons, Origen and Clement of Alexandria accommodation is the key
for the understanding of revelation in the Old Testament. Calvin thus
stands in a long hermeneutic tradition, inaugurated by Philo of Alexan-
dria.56 According to this tradition, the anthropomorphic ways of speak-
ing about and images for God in his relation to Israel are part of an
earlier phase of revelation. Accommodation ts into the childhood of
mankind. In other words, Calvin spiritualises. And yet, with all the cri-
tique that has been passed on this method, a basic assumption that
has come to be of great importance for the high esteem for the Old
Testament and Israel in the Reformed tradition can be seen. The way
in which Israel and the church become acquainted with revelation is
very dierent, but the content of the revelation is the same under both
the old and new covenant, namely community with God.57 In terms of
its substance, the covenant is the same. It is merely that under the old
covenant the church is still in the stage of childhood. The content of
the covenant appears to coincide with land and possessions; the punish-
ments which are threatened are corporal punishments. The ceremonies
under the old dispensation are the primer, as it were, through which the
child is taught the rules. The old dispensation is a veil.58 With Galatians
3:24 in mind, the law and its dispensation are the custodian, literally
our schoolmaster, the tutor who is to lead a young child to adulthood.

55 J.G. Fichte, Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (1806), Fichtes

Werke Bd.V, ed. by I.H. Fichte, Berlin 1971, 485.

56 See among others Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God. Divine Accomomodation

in Jewish and Christian Thought, New York 1993. For Philo see for instance W. Maas,
Unvernderlichkeit Gottes. Zum Verhltnis von griechisch-philosophischer und christlicher Gotteslehre,
Munich/Paderborn/Vienna 1974, 8799, 116118.
57 Inst. 2.10.2.
58 Inst. 2.11.3; Inst. 2.11.5; Inst. 2.2.13.
50 chapter two

When the content of the covenant between God and man in Christ
comes into being, God speaks at another level, namely to people who
have become adults. Then what is important is no longer the letter, but
the spirit, not bondage but freedom. History is a process of education
and within this process anthropomorphisms have their function.
It will help clarify things to understand which opponents Calvin is
trying to fend o with this vision. He is ghting against millennial-
ist views which had their followers particularly in Anabaptist circles.
In these groups the prophecies about the coming kingdom of peace
and the Day of the Lord were being applied directlyand in Calvins
eyes uncritically. Qualifying these prophetic predictions as anthropo-
morphisms oers the possibility of conceiving them as metaphorical.
On the basis of the New Testament Calvin concludes that what they are
about is not the establishment of peace on earth; the prophecies in fact
involve the eternal kingdom with God. Here the concept of accommo-
dation serves to spiritualise the interpretation of the promises. Accord-
ing to Calvin, the same is true for other anthropomorphic images and
expressions. That God has ears, a nose, eyes and hands must not be
taken literally. It is a way of speaking, a modus loquendi, which is not
adequate to express the spiritual nature of Gods being.
Obviously one can not avoid questions of a substantive theological
nature about the use of this concept of accommodation. How does
Calvin arrive at the criterion for distinguishing real and metaphorical
language? If all revelation given is an accommodation and involves
some degree of metaphor, does this not undermine its trustworthiness
as such? We betray ourselves in such questions. We touch a sore spot,
the raw nerve of contemporary theology, where every mediation, every
embodiment of Gods speaking and disclosure has become the basis for
uncertainty. What does the distinction between real and metaphorical
mean when the Bible speaks of God as the loving Father? Can men
still take that seriously? Or in the end is Gods Counsel all that is left,
like a threatening thunderhead behind which all the sunlight suddenly
disappears? As we have indicated, these questions particularly concern
the content of knowledge of God, and will be taken up in Chapter 3.
Yet it would be good to here note that Calvin was evidently not
conscious of a possible relativisation of all revelation. He does not speak
of this in simple terms, and that in itself is telling. It is at least as
important to know what is not the subject of the debate, as to know
what is being spoken of. He is defending himself against a critique
of an entirely dierent nature, apparently coming from spiritualising
 ways of knowing 51

circles. Briey, in the spiritualistic view all the outward manifestations

of the church, its oces and Scripture were fundamentally relativised
as means of divine revelation and sources of authority because God
could be known by the human soul in a direct manner.59 Truth is
eternal and immutable. According to the spiritualistic critique, if one
really took seriously the dierent manner of revelation in the Old and
New Testament as coming from God, that would indicate mutability
and inconstancy in God himself. Such inconsistency cannot properly be
attributed to God. Calvins reply reads that the development in forms
of revelation must be considered as being purely of a pedagogic nature.
It is a response of God to dierent times and circumstances, and not
a reection of any inconstancy in God himself, which would indeed
be absurd. In the third chapter we will yet go into that which is at
stake existentially with regard to the changelessness of God, not only
for Calvin but for the whole of ancient and medieval thought. The
conclusion can here be limited to noting that Calvin appears to be
defending himself against the accusation from some enlightened minds
in his age, namely that his God shows some tendencies to instability. As
an illustration of how he deals with accommodation, there follows here
a passage in which he points to the dierence in agricultural activities
in dierent seasons as an apt comparison.
If the husbandman prescribes one set of duties to his household in
winter, and another in summer, we do not therefore charge him with
ckleness, or think he deviates from the rules of good husbandry, which
depends on the regular course of nature. In like manner, if a father of a
family, in educating, governing and managing his children, pursues one
course in their childhood, another in their adolescence, and another
in their adulthood, we do not therefore say he is ckle, or abandons
his opinions. Why, then, do we charge God with inconstancy, when he
makes t and congruous arrangements for diversities of times?60
In summary: changes in the means of revelation have nothing to do
with Gods own being, but with altered circumstances. Accommodation
and anthropomorphism as a form of accommodation within sacred his-
tory are related to changing circumstances in human history. It can be

59 According to the publishers of the Opera Selecta, Calvin is reacting against Sebasti-

aan Franck and his Paradoxa, published in 1535. See Inst. 2.11.13. Regarding Franck see
A. Sguenny, Sources du spiritualisme daprs la Chronica de Sebastian Franck in:
M. Lienhard, Les Dissidents du XVI e Sicle entre LHumanisme et le Catholicisme, Baden-Baden
1983, 165174, particularly 169.
60 Inst. 2.11.13.
52 chapter two

said that the price which Calvin pays for the concept of accommo-
dation is that something of the clarity of revelation must be surren-
dered, but nothing of its essential content. The substance, the actual
content, of revelation in both the Old and New Testaments is the same.
Or, as formulated by K. Schilder, accommodation aects the revelation
received in such a way that it cannot be said to be perfect, but can still
be said to be pure.61 The anthropomorphisms are means in the hands
of God with which He makes clear what He has to say.

2.2.3. Accommodation and language

The foregoing turns the spotlight on Calvins vision of the language of
the Bible. This view deserves attention because the dierences between
Calvins time and ours are great, and of immediate importance for the
concept of knowledge of God. The images in the Bible are chosen by
God in order for Him to communicate with man through them. That
makes anthropomorphic language useful and means that man must
carefully follow the indications given in Scripture. This does not mean
that Calvin ignores the human nature of language in general or for the
human input in these Biblical writings. Among the things that reveal
Calvins connections with the humanistic culture which surrounded
him is the way in which he identies and deals with the theological
problem of accommodation as in part a general problem confronting
anyone who wants to communicate something, that is to say, as a
problem of rhetoric. Or, from the opposite angle, one could say that
it is precisely from his familiarity with rhetoric that he is to a large
extent sensitive to this theological problem.62 The realisation of the
necessity of eective communication, or eloquence, was a characteristic
of humanistic culture. A speaker must choose a means of expounding
his subject and a style that is in accordance with that subject and the
audience that he wants to address.63 With such a concept from rhetoric,
decorum is necessary. True eloquence, eloquentia, seeks precisely a simpler

61 K. Schilder, Wat is de hemel, Kampen 19542, 54. See also H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde

Dogmatiek II, 90, 92. Human knowledge of God is not adequate, but is analogical, pure
and trustworthy.
62 Among others, W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 116127, points to these connections.

See further the extensive study by O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. tude de
Rhtorique rforme, Genve 1992.
63 Comm. ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320: sed eloquentiam veram, quae constat prudenti

rerum inventione, dispositione ingeniosa, et elegantia sermonis.

 ways of knowing 53

form, not a more elaborate one, using now this image, and then that
one. But it always searches for a form that is in the service of the powers
of persuasion, persuasio, for the matter involved and the audience being
addressed.64
It is remarkable how greatly Calvins thought regarding Gods way
of approaching man is permeated by rhetoric. The realisation that
God accommodates himself to the measure of man is omnipresent in
it, so to speak. That God expresses himself pro sensus nostri modulo or
has accommodated himself ad sensum nostrum is constantly on his lips.
The consequences of this interweaving of the doctrine of revelation and
rhetoric can hardly be overstated; they extend throughout his theology.
For Calvin the question of how (qualis) God is (we today would say who
God is) often appears to matter less than does sorting out the eects
of certain words and images on man. Theologically his interest lies in
the pragmatic question of the handling of language and images, with
what God seeks to accomplish in man through an image or word.
In terms of language theory, the centre of gravity for his theology lies
in perlocution, the eect intended by the use of certain words. In the
course of the discussion in this rst part, diverse examples of this will be
provided.
It should be clear that this linkage has consequences for a theological
evaluation of both panels of this study. When in a post-Kantian situ-
ation, in which Biblical images and concepts are regarded as human
constructs, the trustworthiness and salutary value of revelation becomes
dependent on the question of whether God is revealing himself, one
can expect little understanding for a concept that structurally places so
much emphasis on the practical eects of words and concepts. Calvin
can stress the metaphors and images of the Scriptures precisely because
he is convinced that they are given by the Holy Spirit and not for-
mulated by the human mind. According to him, it is exactly at those
points in Scripture where the central truths of faith are unfolded for us
that we must make minimal use of our own freedom.65 In fact, we here

64 See for instance Calvins extensive commentary on ICor. 1:17, CO 49, 320322.

He exerts himself to show that the apostle does not intend to condemn rhetorical means
in general. On the contrary, the verse gives Calvin the opportunity to pronounce a
eulogy on true eloquence. The power of the Cross would have been buried if Paul
had availed himself of philosophical subtlety (philosophico acumine) and rhetorical artice
(articio dicendi) (320). What is important is that eloquence serves the Gospel in all ways.
65 From a letter to Simon Grynaeus (Nov. 15, 1539), here cited from: Iohannis Calvini

Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T.H.L. Parker, Leiden 1981, 4: deinde ut
54 chapter two

encounter what Protestant theology will later call the truth principle.
Scripture is the revelation of Gods will. That will have great conse-
quences for dealing with the Bible, its words and stories. Knowledge of
God arises when people carefully follow the instructions given by God.
It is not human imagination or construction that takes primacy; the
emphasis is on the Spirit as instructor. In this eld we encounter still
other metaphors. One image which surfaces frequently in Calvin is that
of reins.66 God does not drive with a loose hand or long rein, much less
give free rein. The reins are tight, and train the pious to be attentive.
In his text Contre les libertins Calvin also utters a strong critique of the
handling of the Bible by people such as Quentin, who he terms lib-
ertines. Basing themselves on IICor. 3:6 (for the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life), according to Calvin they permit themselves an expo-
sition of the Scripture that is a hundred times worse than the allegor-
ical exposition of the Papists. The literary means used lead the reader
down the garden path, away from the true intention. Are the injunc-
tions satire, or caricature? The reader no longer knows how to properly
interpret the author; is the author playing the clown, is he being seri-
ous?67 Calvin condemns this game of disguises, because it runs counter
to the order that God has laid down. Certainly when the mysteries of

id at in Scripturae expositione: in religionis autem dogmatibus, in quibus praecipue

voluit Dominus consentaneas esse suorum mentes, minus sumatur libertatis.
66 See for example what Calvin wrote in the prologue to his commentary on the

psalms on the experience of Gods guidance in his own life: CO 31, 20: Deus
tamen arcano providentiae suae fraeno cursum meum alio tandem reexit. Faced with
the precarious situation of the evangelical movement as a result of Interim, he again
used the image of reins: OS II, 192: Hodie cum duro austeroque fraeno nos Dominus
constrictos teneat, videmus ut passim omnes fere lasciviant. See also OS II, 197.
67 Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins, CO 7, 149248, 174. See also the

telling chapter titles Du langage et style de parler quont les Quintinistes (168) and De
la grande malice et impudence quont les Libertins, en se gloriant destre doubles
de cueur et de langue (170). See J. Wirth, Libertins et epicuriens: aspects de
lirreligion en XVIe sicle, Bibliotheque dHumanisme et Renaissance 39 (1977), 601627. As
examples of such spiritualistic exegesis Wirth refers to Agrippas text De nobilitate atque
praecellentia foeminei sexus (1529) and the Problemata of O. Brunfels (1523). With a range of
arguments and examples, Agrippa defends not the inferiority, or even the equality, but
the superiority of woman over man. If in his creative action God progresses from the
lesser to the more perfect, then logic would dictate that the woman is the most perfect
creature. Only in female beauty does the true image of God light up! Moreover, it was
Adam who sinned rst, not Eve. However ne this may sound, according to Calvin it
leaves the reader in fatal confusion. The praise of woman is ambiguous in the extreme,
and in the last analysis the reader does not know if the author really intends to praise
women or if the text is persiage, and the reader is being taken for a ride. See also De
Scandalis, 201.
 ways of knowing 55

God are at stake, the Scripture itself must be the rule for exposition. In
the Scripture the Spirit itself is speaking, without indirection. The point
for God, in all his accommodations, is to penetrate the heart of man,
to attract him, to stir him from his lethargy, to invite him to commu-
nity.
It would be too simple and even unjust to dispose of Calvins criti-
cism of literary tools such as persiage and satire as a want of personal
artistry. Anyone hazarding such a judgement shows instantaneously
that they have never read Calvin, or in any case read none of his trea-
tises, where he permits himself more room than he does in, say, his
commentaries. The rhetorical ideal of elegance and eloquence is highly
valued, and it is not without reason that in Calvin studies there has
been so much attention for his use of the rhetorical arts.68 His critique
does not involve satire and persiage as such, but ows from a vision
of the Bible and the instruction given in it. The Bible is a book drafted
by the Spirit, and comprises the doctrine given by the Spirit. Put suc-
cinctly, man should not step in and ddle with it.
What counts systematically is a totally dierent vision of the lan-
guage and words of the Bible. For Calvin biblical anthropomorphism
and analogies are not what they are in post-Kantian theology, namely
creations of men who, in their speaking about what is more than this
world are also connected with this world.69 For him they are creations
of and tools in the hand of God. The place of anthropomorphism
in this concept therefore results in a positive valuation for rhetori-
cal means employed by God.70 Man must adapt himself to the way
and order used by God. Calvins argument for a way of thinking
that lies within the boundaries of revelation is therefore directly linked
with his doctrine of scripture. The message of God enters the under-
standing of man through Scripture. The Bible contains the oracles
of God,71 the instruction from heaven.72 These descriptions begin to

68 See for instance Q. Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism, Chicago 1931,

Bouwsma, John Calvin, 113127. See also R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140
158.
69 See for instance S. McFague, Models of God, 2957.
70 In recent years quite a bit has been written on the signicance of rhetoric for

Calvins context and theology. See W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 14, 113114. See also
S. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, Louisville 1995. See particularly the study already
mentioned, O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. tude de Rhtorique rforme,
Genve 1992.
71 Inst. 1.6.2: oracula Dei.
72 Inst. 1.6.3: caelestis doctrina.
56 chapter two

dene revelation: revelation is not exclusively, but certainly also the

making known of truths; it has a propositional content. Therefore,
according to Calvin, the church has repeatedly gone down the wrong
path when people obstinately sought to add something to the content
of revelation. Calvins criticism of the many ceremonies and institutions
of the Roman Church as innovations with regard to doctrine given by
God, and his deathbed entreaty to change nothing both arise from this.
The desired purity can only be achieved if everyone carefully holds to
what God Himself has said in Scripture.73
What is the place of man in this concept? What role remains for
him? On the basis of the above, one can conclude that man is the one
who receives, pays careful attention and listens. The relation is that of
teacher and pupil. Calvin seeks to engender in man a concentration
on what God shows, says and oers to him. The roles are xed. The
role of human subjectivity in the understanding of divine teaching is
not a subject for further reection. It goes without saying that this is
very dierent from the manner in which Barths theology develops the
role of man as the answering subject. The Kantian turn toward the
subject is reected in a much more individual and independent activity
by man. With Calvin there is less room for man as a creative, answering
being. The emphasis lies entirely with God. God has accommodated
himself to our limited measure, and reveals his will to our salvation
in a form adapted to our understanding. The church deals carefully
with the knowledge which is given it when it immures itself on two
sides, against ignorance, and against speculation. Truth is therefore
an approach to the truth supplied by God, an approach made under
the guidance and direction of God; and knowledge of God is therefore
the via media between these two extremes. On the one hand men must
guard against lagging behind the knowledge they are given, and on the
other side they must not run out ahead of it.74
It goes without saying that Calvin aords few opportunities for the
human capacity for invention and imagination with respect to the
teachings of God. When it comes to divine revelation, it is other virtues
that count. Let me emphasise once again: in saying this, I am in no way
denying that many points in Calvins writings reveal rhetorical skill,

73 See the example of Ahaz in Inst. 4.10.23. See IIKings 16.

74 For an interpretation of Calvins theology with the aid of limit theory, see F.L. Bat-
tles, Calculus FideiSome Ruminations on the Structure of Calvins Theology, Grand Rapids
1978.
 ways of knowing 57

creative power and imagination. I am only saying that on theological

grounds one should expect no place for invention, imagination and
literary ction in the theological concept. This has not been without its
consequences for ction and literature within the Calvinistic tradition.75

2.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as imitation

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

75 For example, with regard to Agrippa dAubign, see C. Randall Coats, Subverting

the System. DAubign and Calvinism, Kirksville (MO) 1990, 124.

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

1991, 129.
77 Hartvelt, Symboliek, 132.
78 KD II/2, 68; ET, 64.
58 chapter two

seriously theologically than it has generally been. It stands for the indi-
rect means to which God commits himself toward man. As a theolog-
ical concept, the Counsel of God only becomes a relativisation of and
threat to the revelation which is given if it is forgotten that God has com-
mitted Himself to man by means of the mirrors in which he permits Himself to be
known.
The whole of created reality, in all its facets, is a tool in the hands of
God by which He makes himself known to manor better, an invi-
tation to enter into community with God. The word facet is used
here deliberately; it connects with another metaphor which surfaces
frequently in Calvins writings. To describe the forms of divine accom-
modation Calvin uses the metaphor of the mirror. The metaphor is def-
initely not unique to Calvin; it has a long and rich history in epistemol-
ogy, in optics and in literature. Since antiquity the natural phenomenon
of the reection of an object on the surface of water and the mirror as a
utensil have provided a paradigm for understanding what knowledge is
and how it comes to be.79 In the neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition
the nature of knowledge is understood primarily in terms of light and
sight. Knowledge comes into being because an external object through
its eect represents itself to the knowing subject.80 The criterion in both
aesthetics and the artes was that trustworthy knowledge and art were an
imitation of reality. In pre-modern times knowledge was a form of rep-
etition or imitation of the given. The metaphor of the mirror is closely
connected with imitation (imitatio) as an epistemological principle. Just
as the steam engine had a paradigmatic function in the culture of the
18th and 19th century, and the computer at the end of the 20th, the mir-
ror and its optical potential aorded the 16th century the possibility of
visualising what knowledge was and how it arose. In Calvin we nd the
metaphor in connection with knowledge of God. What the use of this
fundamental metaphor implies for Calvins doctrine of revelation will
be summed up in several points in the paragraphs which follow.

79 H. Leisegang, Die Erkenntnis Gottes im Spiegel der Seele und der Natur,

Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung 4 (1949), 161183.

80 For a brief survey of optics in the Middle Agesor as it was then known, per-

spectivasee D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientic Tra-
dition in Philosophical, Religious and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago
1992, 307315. For Roger Bacons inuential theory of representation, see particularly
K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Founda-
tions of Semantics, 12501345, Leiden 1988, 326.
 ways of knowing 59

First and foremost, the metaphor allows us to visualise that God per-
mits himself to be known by indirect means. God makes his will known
with the aid of a selection of means in creation, in which he makes his
own qualities visible, as though in a mirror.

Second, that the various mirrors are places where God becomes per-
ceptible in his works is something that rests on Gods order. The con-
cept of ordo refers back to that which is the subject of the place and
quality of the created thing, namely God. From their inception, the
means of Gods revelation have never been neutral in any sense.

Third, the metaphor makes it clear that the image that is visible is there
because of God, and is not the result of human thought. The image in
a mirror is not the result of mental activity in man himself, or which
he has arrived at by way of an abstract process. God himself sees to
it that something of himself and his works is visible in these mirrors,
and presses himself upon man in his ineluctable majesty. For Calvin the
stress lies upon direct experience, the realisation of Gods presence in
the mirrors He has set up, and less on a process of abstraction through
which man comes to a conclusion about Gods activity. Perhaps, from
a theological-historical perspective, one might say that in this regard
there is a formal similarity between Calvins concept of knowledge of
God and what in late medieval philosophy was termed cognitio intuitiva,
as distinguished from cognitio abstractiva.81 As will be seen in the remain-

81 For the concept cognitio intuitiva, see among others W.J. Courtenay, Schools and

Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England, Princeton 1987, 206208; K.H. Tachau, Vision

and Certitude in the Age of Ockham, 5584, 113153 and T.F. Torrance, Knowledge of
God and Speech about him according to John Calvin, included in: idem, Theology
in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 7698. The term cognitio intuitiva was originated
by Duns Scotus in contradistinction to cognitio abstractiva, in order to resolve a number
of problems for which perspectivism had no solution. It is assumed in Roger Bacons
theory that the knowing subject obtains knowledge of an object because the object
itself produces gures or forms of itself (species) in the space surrounding it, conceived
of as transparent and mediating material. Through endless multiplication the form
is imprinted on the outward senses, becoming visible on the retina. From here the
forms are then assimilated by the various inward senses and noetic faculties. The
diculty with this theory was that the knowing subject had not been confronted with
the substance of the object itself, but only with its accidental qualities. This being the
case, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the forms that actually go back to
an object and those which are purely hallucination or imagination. With the concept
of a cognitio intuitiva, Duns Scotus asserts that there are actually countless moments in
which we are directly certain of the existence of the known object. The statement I
see a tree does not mean that on the basis of the shapes and colours that I see, I
60 chapter two

der of this chapter, knowledge of God is less a matter of abstraction and

demonstration, and more a consequence of immediate impressions, a
direct realisation of Gods presence, which is not gained through an
interjacent process of reasoning.

Fourth, for Calvin the metaphor serves to make it clear that the image
that appears in the mirror is always of less quality, less pure than the
object itself. With regard to this, we must remember that in Calvins
time they did not yet know the smooth glass mirror we have today.82
Mirrors were then of hammered metal, and depending on the smooth-
ness of the surface achieved, the image was unclear or vague. Never-
theless Calvin holds fast to the trustworthiness of the mirror image. In
his exegesis of ICorinthians 13:12 he suggests that the mirror lacks only
the precision that characterises direct sight.83 The angels do not need
the aid of mirrors; for them God is already openly present. Mortals
have not yet risen to that height in this life. In comparison with the

conclude that these could indicate something like a tree. I am immediately certain that
there is a tree there. This cognitio intuitiva involves both the receptive capacities of the
soul as well as the intellectual faculties. Cognitio intuitiva is thus knowledge that is caused
by an immediately present object. It aords immediate certainty of the existence of
the object. With cognitio abstractiva, on the other hand, one is speaking of a process
which abstracts from the factual existence of an object. This knowledge is derived from
other objects. According to Torrance, it is this concept of a cognitio intuitiva, in a version
reinterpreted by John Major, that is the foundation of Calvins concept of knowledge of
God. Knowledge of God is not obtained through abstraction, as Aquinas maintained
following Aristotle, nor does it come about because God grants man some form of
cognitio abstractiva during his pilgrimage on earth, which coincides with the revealed
truths established in Scripture and tradition, as argued by Ockham, but it arises from
the intention and inuence of God, who is personally present through his Spirit (see
Torrance, particularly 8486). Torrance demonstrates that there is at least a formal
similarity with Duns Scotus and John Major at important points. However, evidence
is not forthcoming for his condent assertion that Calvin was directly dependent on
Major and Scotus.
82 The technique of making glass mirrors was known in antiquity, but lost until it

was rediscovered at the end of the 12th century. Only in the course of the 16th century
was the glass mirror imported into Western Europe from Venice. It steadily gained
popularity as a mass product. One can assume that Calvin was primarily familiar with
mirrors of cut or polished material. See H. Grabes, The mutable Glass. Mirror-imagery in
titles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, Cambridge 1982, 72.
83 Comm. on ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514: Hanc visionem, aenigmaticam hic appellat

Paulus: non quia dubia sit aut fallax, sed quia minus conspicua est, quam quae olim
extremo die constabit Quare sic habendum est, notitiam Dei, quam nunc ex
Verbo habemus, certam quidem esse et veracem, nihil in ea confusum aut perplexum
aut tenebricosum: sed comparative aenigmaticam nominari, quia procul abest ab illa
perspicua manifestatione quam exspectamus: quia tunc videbimus facie ad faciem.
 ways of knowing 61

state of angels, our knowledge is less clear. Calvin emphatically disputes

the idea that what appears in a mirror is dubious or deceptive. Only
in comparison with the knowledge that will come in the perfection of
seeing face to face can it be said that the image with which the pilgrim
must make do in this state is dark. The comparison of knowledge of
God with a mirror image must not be conceived in such a way that it is
at the cost of the clarity of the Gospel. Calvin disputes that the revela-
tion of God is packaged in other things and must rst be distilled from
them. The revelation God oers in his word is open and bare.84

Fifth, for Calvin the metaphor functions within the eschatological struc-
ture which characterises all human knowledge of God. There is not one
mirror, but many, and all serve to aid the pilgrim on earth in growing in
knowledge and conformity with the image of God, not in one moment,
but in a successive series of moments.85 The diverse mirrors are Gods
aids on the way on earth, the manner in which God brings himself
into our eld of vision and exerts his attraction. They are part of Gods
order of salvation, of the intention that He has for man.86

Sixth, the metaphor illuminates the belief in the divine origin of Scrip-
ture and the assurance of salvation. Although both topics will be dis-
cussed again later in this chapter, an explicit reference is now already in
order: while the mirror and the image that appears in the mirror can be
distinguished logically, in fact both are directly linked with one another.
Scripture is called the mirror in which Christ comes to us.87 One can-
not see the image that appears in the mirror without looking at the
mirror. One does not see the mirror rst, and after that the image. In
the act of seeing, both moments coincide. It therefore does no justice to
Calvins theological epistemology to make a separation between formal
and material belief in scripture.

84 Comm. ICor. 13:12, CO 49, 514515: aperta et nuda Dei revelatio in Verbo

(quantum nobis expedit), nec quicquam habet involutum (qualiter ngunt impii )
85 Comm. IICor. 3:18, CO 50, 47: continuo successu
86 If there is anywhere that there is a possibility of placing Calvin against the

background of the theology of the late Middle Ages, then it is at this point, of an express
ordo salutis. Despite all attempts to make direct connections and indicate sources, one
can apparently not get beyond a number of analogies. For a survey see H.A. Oberman,
Initia Calvini. The Matrix of Calvins Reformation, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus
Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994, 117127
on The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit.
87 Inst. 3.2.6. See also Comm. IICor. 3:18, CO 50, 47.
62 chapter two

In short, the metaphor of the mirror provides the key to enter into
Calvins concept of the knowledge of God. In order to learn to know
God and his salvic intent, man must look into the mirrors that are
held up before him by God himself. God engages man through the
mirrors He himself appoints for mans knowledge of God and his
salvation, and forbids man to obtain insight outside of these mirrors.
This draws a line on both sides for knowing and thinking. The one limit
is that man must not neglect the knowledge of God that is given, the
other is that the knowledge of God that is given must not be a reason
for continuing to ask questions out of curiosity. Transgressing this latter
line leads to speculation. Theology moves between these two lines. We
will return to this point again.
What are these mirrors? In a brief compass we will summarise them
here, in order to elaborate them in the following sections. The rst
form of accommodation or mirror is found in the creation of heaven
and earth. God invites man to knowledge of him. To that end he places
the structure of heaven and earth before our eyes, thereby making him-
self visible in a certain manner.88 The cosmos can therefore, with Psalm
104, be called the garment of God, or the mirror in which he made
himself visible.89 But, second, Calvin says that man himself, with his fac-
ulties, is a mirror in which Gods image appears.90 Through the coming
of sin, however, this mirror is not longer adequate for arriving at a su-
cient knowledge of God. The third mirror, the Bible, assumes that role.
The Bible too is a consequence of divine accommodation, a mirror, in
which faith can behold God.91 Or better, to use another optical image,
the Bible is the spectacles through which Gods revelation in creation
becomes visible again.92 In this sense, the Bible fulls an integrating
function. The fourth and highest form of accommodation is the incar-
nation, an idea which Calvin takes over directly from Irenaeus: The
Father, who is boundless in himself, is bounded in the Son, because
he has accommodated himself to our capacity, lest our minds be swal-

88 See his Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 7: Haec ratio est, cur Dominus, ut nos ad

sui notitiam invitet, proponat nobis ante oculos coeli terraeque fabricam, et in ea se
quodammodo conspicuum reddat. Nam aeterna quoque eius divinitas et potentia (ut
inquit Paulus) illic relucent.
89 Comm. Ps. 104:4, CO 32, 86.
90 Inst. 1.15.4.
91 See, for instance, Inst. 3.2.6; see also CO 31, 16.
92 Inst. 1.6.1; Inst. 1.14.1. See also Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 9.
 ways of knowing 63

lowed up by the immensity of his glory.93 Finally, the sacraments are

also among the mirrors. They are the apex of what Calvin terms the
outward means through which God comes to the aid of those who still
nd themselves on earth.
It is true for all of the forms of accommodation or mirrors listed
that they must be understood as means through which God, through
the Spirit, invites mankind to come to himself. The goal is that man
be enticed into entering into communion with God. Calvins vision of
the events of revelation is located within a very broad and dynamic
view of the work of the Holy Spirit. At its deepest, knowledge of
God is possible because God, through his Spirit, becomes present
in his creation in all sorts of diverse ways, and brings man into a
vital community with Christ. This will be developed further in what
follows. First, we will discuss the forms of accommodation that we
might characterise as Gods manifestations in the inward life of man.
Then we will turn our attention to revelation in creation and the
cosmos. These manifestations of God are likewise insucient to bring
man to real knowledge of God. To state it roughly here already: man
needs the spectacles of Scripture to arrive at a saving knowledge of
God. Ultimately that is still too little, too formally put. Men need the
guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit in order to really discover
what is really important and to be led to a mirror where God is really
to be seen, namely in the face of Christ. Fellowship with God is reached
through faith, in the interaction of Word and Spirit. This chapter will
then conclude with a discussion of Calvins concept of faith, his view on
the assurance of faith and a provisional exploration of the boundaries
of knowledge of God.

2.3. Inward revelation

2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities

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

93 Inst. 2.6.4.
64 chapter two

some people or some groups because there is also a range of good

reasons which can be adduced for them. For the persons themselves
they are not a point of discussion. In reading Calvin it is striking how
frequently the expression extra controversiam appears. Certain views or
convictions are beyond dispute. As is often the case, these verities are
not to be traced back to one origin or source. Bouwsma has charac-
terised the early-modern culture in which Calvin lived as a culture in
which, in general, two impulses were at work, namely those of the Stoa
and of Augustinianism.94 Each of these is a set of convictions which are
nowhere to be found in a pure form, and that sometimes have become
inextricably intertwined with the content of Christian belief. One of
these convictions, which Calvin passionately defended and which can-
not be traced back to any one single source, is the immortality of the
soul. For him, this doctrine not only has the negative eect of being
an antidote for religious and moral indierence, but also has a posi-
tive side, namely lasting community with Christ. In this section I will
therefore discuss the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as some-
thing which has great signicance for epistemology.95 For Calvin episte-
mology lies embedded in classical metaphysics, where the human soul
forms the link between the visible world and the divine world. In con-
trast to the independence of human knowing in Kant, this epistemol-
ogy is still wrapped within an all-inclusive vision of the relationships of
God, man and the world. The existence of a number of human mental
capacities which in their marvellous power point to a connection and
relationship with that which is above the world perceived by the senses,
with God, is still something which is beyond question.
Calvin is rmly convinced that man comprises a duality-in-unity of
soul and body, in which the soul must be qualied as the nobler part.96
The soul is the immortal and higher element in man. In contemporary
terms, the soul guarantees the mystery of the identity of the human
person.97 It is, so to speak, the bridgehead to the higher created world

94 Regarding the dierent impulses of Stoicism and Augustinianism in early-modern

Europe, see W.J. Bouwsma, The Two Faces of Humanism in: idem, A Usable Past.
Essays in European Cultural History, Los Angeles 1990, 1973.
95 Regarding this see E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft

der neueren Zeit, Bd.I, Darmstadt 1991 (=19213), 89.

96 Inst. 1.15.2: Porro hominem constare anima et corpore, extra controversiam esse

debet; atque animae nomine essentiam immortalem, creatam tamen intelligo, quae
nobilior pars est.
97 For a contemporary analysis of the mystery of the human person, see R. van

Woudenberg, Het mysterie van de identiteit. Een analytisch-wijsgerige studie, Nijmegen 2000.
 ways of knowing 65

of the angels, where immortality reigns. The anthropological dualism

which we nd in Calvin is of immediate importance for epistemology.
Man, as he literally says, is formed from the dust of the earth, and
that is immediately a curb on mans pride. Through its physicality, that
which is created has a humble place in the order of created things.98
By virtue of their possessing a soul, however, all people also belong
to the world of immortality, in which the angels likewise have a share.
After all, the angels were also created, but thanks to their immor-
tality stand closer to God. Calvin refers to words from Matt. 22:30:
For in the resurrection they [men] are like angels in heaven. This
does not mean that corporeality and physicality are in themselves to
be disdained. In that respect we cannot simply identify Calvins view
with a neo-Platonic devaluation of the material as such. The body is
also created by God. There are numerous passages to be found in
Calvins writings that reveal that he knew from personal experience
the joys of life as a created being and of physical pleasure. Even more
strongly, as we will elaborate in Chapter 3, material reality is a daily
evidence of Gods continuing goodness. But nevertheless physicality
occupies a low position in the hierarchy of being. It belongs to the
things which are perishable. The soul or spiritCalvin uses the two
terms interchangeablyis the created, immortal part. With this posi-
tion Calvin draws a line separating himself from two views which had
considerable following in the late Middle Ages. In the conict with
Servetus, among other points, Calvin encountered the view that the
soul must be considered as an emanation from the divine Spirit.99 As
might be expected, Calvin sharply opposed this idea, apparently aris-
ing in French and Italian rationalism. The distinction between God
Himself and the human soul must not be blurred. The human soul
or spirit is a result of Gods creative action, and not an outpouring of
divinity. The soul is an incorporeal substance of its own sort, an entity
of its own.100 The same rejection is dealt to the idea, labelled Epicurean,

98 Inst. 1.15.1.
99 Inst. 1.15.5: Quod dicitur inspirasse Deus in faciem hominis spiraculum vitae,
putarunt animam traducem esse substantiae Dei, quasi aliqua immensae divinitatis
portio in hominem uxisset. For Calvins attitude toward the thinking regarding the
soul in spiritualistic circles, see G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, Kirksville (MO),
19923, 899904. The idea of a world-soul appears to have its roots in the Averroism
of Siger of Brabant, and through the Italian Platonism of Pomponazzi to have gained
inuence in free, non-conformist groups.
100 Inst. 1.15.5: Creatio autem non transfusio est, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium.
66 chapter two

that the soul is mortal in nature, because its form is linked to the
material, in this case to the body. According to this idea which achieved
popularity in the Aristotelian climate of Averroism, with the death of
the body the soul dissolves again in the general world-soul.101 In his
text Psychopannuchia Calvin passionately opposed this idea, which had
found a home in Anabaptist circles.102 While the soul may be created,
it is an immortal element. In this text it becomes crystal clear why
Calvin is so attached to this doctrine. The ultimate salvation in the
consummation is at stake. If the soul dies with the body, community
with Christ is broken. It is of eternal importance that the pilgrim on
earth has already entered into the Kingdom of God, shares in the
community with God which lasts for eternity, even if that Kingdom
has not yet been perfected. From the fact that the Kingdom is not yet
in its perfected form one may not conclude that there is no Kingdom.103

101 In De scandalis, OS II, 201 Calvin names Agrippa, Villanovanus (alias Servetus)
and Dolet. See among others G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 900901 and
S. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory. Nature and Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin,
Durham 1991, 20. For this idea of monopsychism, reminiscent of the radical Averroism
of Siger of Brabant, see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 234236.
102 CO 5, 177232. The subjects of the immortality of the soul and the situation

between death and the consummation are central in the Psychopannuchia, a rst version
of which had been written as early as 1534 but which was only published in 1542, as
matters of the rst order. The existential importance of this theme must be said to be
directly linked with the heart of Christian faith, fellowship with Christ. If the soul would
sleep or perish in death, fellowship with Christ would be broken, or at least interrupted.
That was in complete conict with Calvins conviction that in faith and through the
sacraments man, with regard to his soul, was now already together with Christ, and
that this fellowship could not be broken by anything or anyone. Although it cannot
be said of the dead that they are already delivered, they can nevertheless be called
blessed. Thus the situation between death and the general resurrection is characterised
by the eschatological perspective, through the not yet. This looking forward however
takes place in a situation of rest and bliss with God, and the seeing of things that
during their life on earth the faithful only foresaw in hope. Cur enim nondum salvati
dicuntur aut regnum possidere, qui in domino mortui sunt? Quia exspectant, quod
nondum habent, nec nem suae felicitatis attigerunt. Cur nihilominus beati sunt?
Quia et deum agnoscunt sibi propitium et futuram mercedem eminus vident et in
certa expectatione beatae resurrectionis acquiscunt. Quamdiu certe habitamus in hoc
carcere luteo, speramus quae non videmus et preater spem credimus in spem, quod
ait apostolus de Abraham (Rom. 4:18). Ubi autem oculi mentis nostrae, qui nunc
sepulti in hac carne hebetes sunt, absterserint hanc velut lippitudinem, videbimus quae
exspectabamus et in ea requie delectabimur. Quoted from the edition of W. Zimmerli,
Psychopannychia. Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus 13, Leipzig 1932, 81.
103 CO 5, 212: non ideo nunc nullum esse regnum, quia nondum perfectum est. See

also C. van der Kooi, De spanning van het reeds en nog niet bij Calvijn, Kuyper
en Berkouwer in: M.E. Brinkman (ed.), 100 jaar theologie. Aspecten van een eeuw theologie in
de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (18921992), Kampen 1992, 257259.
 ways of knowing 67

The soul is the sustaining element of all human faculties, and thus
the bearer of knowledge. What, however, are these faculties? Calvin
exhibits a remarkable reticence toward making an all too specic and
distinct breakdown. With him we nd no extensive discussion of the
relation of the various faculties of the soul. The discussion of the
problem occurs in the context of soteriology, and thus has more to
do with the freedomor absence thereofof man to make use of his
capacities, than with the question of what man might be capable of
in an ideal state. With this qualication, however, one can nevertheless
determine that the most important faculties are those of understanding
and will. Calvin refuses to consider an original opposition or tension
between higher and lower capacities of the soul before the fall. The
conict that takes place within man is a consequence of sin.104 If the fall
had not occurred, will and understanding would have been perfectly
attuned. The inner economy of understanding, will and feelings would
have been an harmonious unity, such as Calvin attempts to derive
from the example of Christ. Understanding steers and gives direction
to the mental faculties. It helps make the distinction between good and
evil, between justice and injustice. Will however is the capacity with
which in fact a choice is made. Every other capacity that is found
in man is resolved into these two faculties. It is not unusual to nd
that, because Calvin speaks of the intellect as the leading part, the
conclusion is drawn that he takes an intellectualistic standpoint in his
vision of humanity. That understanding is the leading part implies
anything but that understanding is determinative. It is leading only
in the sense that it comes rst. According to Calvin, however, the
real decisions are made by the will. That would argue for a more
voluntaristic position.105 This last tallies with the observation that, as
we will soon see, for Calvin understanding, cognitio, includes more than
only intellectual categories.

104 Inst. 1.15.67.

105 See Inst. 1.15.7: quasi animae ducem et gubernatorem. Cf. Bouwsma, John
Calvin, 101, who is of the opinion that Calvins vision of man is intellectualistic. Muller,
The Unaccommodated Calvin, 162, points out that intellectualism and voluntarism are
wrongly identied with a particular human type. Intellectualism is then associated with
the inclination to want to reason everything out, voluntarism with the inclination to
focus entirely on free will. In a theological-historical perspective, both qualications
describe the relation of God and man in eschatological perfection. If bliss can be char-
acterised as a visio beatica, and is thus a form of seeing, we can speak of intellectualism.
If in the consummation the soul devotes itself to God as the highest good, then we can
speak of voluntarism. In this case God is the summum bonum or summum volendum.
68 chapter two

Calvin classies all forms of perception, sensus, both inward and out-
ward, under understanding, and desire under the will, although he also
says he has no objection to others who arrive at three basic capacities,
namely the senses, understanding and desire.106 We nd the word sensus
used by Calvin to denote the ve senses, and in the phrase sensus com-
munis, which has not yet taken on the later meaning of sound human
understanding (common sense).107 Here sensus communis denotes the
ground for the whole eld of inward and external perception. What is
received in perception is subsequently subject to processing by the cog-
nitive faculties in three steps.108 He further names phantasia as the faculty
that makes the rst distinction, after which follows reason, ratio, which
renders a general judgement, and nally mens, mind, through which a
more rened and dierentiated judgement comes into being. Parallel
with the three cognitive faculties of phantasia, ratio and mens, there are
three corresponding capacities in there will. Will strives to obtain that
on which can produce judgement and feeling. Choler, vis irascendi, draws
to itself that which is supplied by the rst faculty of discrimination and
reason,; then there is desire, vis concupiscendi, which takes to itself what is
oered by perception and phantasia. The degree of caution with which
Calvin presents this further distinction of mental capacities is striking.
Understanding and will are not separated from one another. They are
not faculties which each lead a life apart from the other. Both belong
to the equipment of human reason. Anthropologically, what is most
important for him that in the soul man possesses an immortal, incor-
poreal element which is still involved with the body, through which he
as such is connected with God as the source of life. In short, the facul-
ties of the soul proclaim aloud that something divine is engraven upon
man.109
The soul, as integral for the mental faculties of the human person,
is therefore not linked with the ve senses. One can sense Calvins
admiration for the fact that the reach of human mental capacities far
exceeds the range of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. The soul

106 Inst. 1.15.6. For the whole see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 165166, who

points out that Calvin, despite his refusal to participate in the debate between Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus regarding the designations intellectus appetitivus or appetitus
rationalis, appears to opt for the Scotian position.
107 See H.G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tbingen 19754, 22.
108 For the origin of this triple division, Barth and Niesel refer to the commentary by

Themistius on Aristotles De Anima. See Schreiner, The Theatre of Gods Glory, 141.
109 Inst. 1.15.2: divinum aliquid insculptum ei esse.
 ways of knowing 69

transcends the limitations of place and time, to which the senses are
connected. For example, it possesses the capacity to gauge and bridge
distance in the mind, and memory is able to link past and present.
In short, in contrast to the Aristotelian tradition, where the indepen-
dence of the soul is simply not conceivable, on this point Calvin stands
in the Platonist current of thought, where the independent soul is the
foundation of thinking and knowing. The independence of the soul
can especially be seen in the phenomenon of the dream. While the
body shows no sign of activity during sleep, the mind can be highly
active, and even be elsewhere. The fact that man can form a concept
of angels and of the invisible God points to a capacity that cannot be
ascribed to the senses.110 Thus, as an independent substance the soul
or spirit is not to be identied with God, but in relation to the body
is indeed to be labelled as something divine.111 At the same time that
says something about its value and destiny. Calvin exhibits no hesita-
tion at all on this point. The senses of honour and shame are a tangible
proof for everyone that man is born to lead a just and honourable life.
The concept is already founded in the soul of what the really satis-
fying life for man is, namely life lived in relation to God. These are
things which are absque controversia, beyond discussion. In its original and
undamaged state the soul strove for these higher things. Even in the
situation where the soul sits imprisoned in the web of a life turned
away from God, good remnants of this original orientation still exist.112
This conviction that is so essential for the early Renaissance echoes
powerfully through Calvins theology too. The soul is of cosmic signif-
icance and the orientation of its life is denitive for human worth.113

110 Inst. 1.15.2.

111 Inst. 1.15.2.
112 Inst. 1.15.6: Unde enim tanta famae cura hominibus, nisi ex pudore? unde

autem pudor, nisi ex honesti respectu? cuius principium et causa est, quod se ad
colendam iustitiam natos esse intelligunt: in quo inclusum est religionis semen. Sicut
autem absque controversia ad caelestis vitae meditationem conditus fuit homo, ita eius
notitiam animae fuisse insculptam certum est. Et sane praecipuo intelligentiae usus
careret homo si sua eum lateret foelicitas: cuius perfectio est cum Deo coniunctum
esse.
113 See Ch. Trinkaus, Renaissance Idea of Mans Dignity in: Idem, The Scope of

Renaissance Humanism, Ann Arbor (MI) 1983, 345. Idem, In Our Image and Likeness.
Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, London 1970, 171321 and 459551.
With Florentine Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Pietro
Pomponazzi human dignity is complementary with the factual misery of the human
condition.
70 chapter two

Calvin may then be known for his negative image of man,114 but one
also nds passages sounding forth the praises of human possibilities.
M.P. Engel explains this contradiction on the basis of the changing per-
spectives of Calvinss theology.115 If it is forgotten who the Giver is of
mans superb potential, then there is reason to speak of the immense
frailty or fragility of human existence. If the divine origin of human-
ity is indeed acknowledged, then there is every reason to challenge the
disparagement of human potential.116 Precisely because man through
his terrestrial existence participates in both the visible and the unseen
world, he can be highly regarded in comparison with other created
beings. In terms of his original nature, man was a being who strove
upward, and theology must not deny the traces of this dynamic and
excellence.
Calvin appeals to the fact that, in a cultural perspective, his view
is anything but isolated. He points out that what he writes about
the soul is also eloquently said by profane writers.117 In his eyes, that
increases its plausibility. In other words, according to Calvin the exis-
tence of an independent, immortal soul is a truth that is also upheld by
non-Christian thinkers. Insights from non-Christian sources and data
derived from Scripture form a perfect unity. In summary, the inward
faculties of thought, will and feeling are explained by Calvin through
the concept of an independent, created, but immortal soul.

2.3.2. Sensus divinitatis

The above can serve as background for the two faculties of inward
perception that play a role in knowledge of God coming into being, to
wit the sensus divinitatis and the sensus conscientiae.
What is the sensus divinitatis? It is beyond question, says Calvin, that
in the human soul there is a certain realisation present of Divinity,
and this through natural inspiration. In his theology this is a funda-
mental anthropological given. It precedes all denial and obfuscation;

114 Inst. 1.13.1. From the majesty of God, man is a worm crawling upon the earth.

If God did not elevate the human soul toward those heights, the spirit in its slowness
would continue to hang back on earth.
115 For the signicance of perspective in Calvins theology, see M.P. Engel, John

Calvins Perspectival Anthropology, Atlanta 1988.

116 Calvins Comm. on Is. 2:22 aords a good example of this dual perspective, CO

36, 7778.
117 Inst. 1.15.2.
 ways of knowing 71

it possesses a facticity that God Himself has deposited in man. The

importance assumed by the subjectivity of God in the description of
this faculty is signicant. God, we are told, has engraved [this realisa-
tion] in the heart of man. It is not something which can wear away; it
is constantly renewed. In images that relate to a most strongly dynamic
view of Gods work (see Chapter 3), we are told that God constantly
renews the memory of the Godhead, and constantly sends down new
droplets of it on him.118 Calvin borrows from Ciceros De natura deorum
the conviction that this sense of the Godhead is to be found in every
nation and tribe, however civilised or uncivilised they may be. Mankind
has thus never been without the realisation of Gods presence. Knowl-
edge of Gods existence on the basis of this sensus divinitatis is not the
result of a conclusion which men arrive at after a process of argumen-
tation, or the result of the human capacity for abstract thinking. The
sensus divinitatis implies a more or less developed capacity to directly
perceive Gods majesty inwardly. It is a form of knowing that thrusts
itself upon us, which can be repressed, but which man can never shake
o for good. In terms of Reformed epistemology the sensus divinitatis
belongs to the design plan of man. The knowledge that results from it
is not derived, but is basic, fundamental. For man, who would prefer
to dismiss the very idea of God, it is an uncomfortable sort of sense.
Man can never entirely free himself from the eects of this faculty, no
matter how deep he sinks. The Emperor Caligula is adduced as an
illustration:
We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and
audacious contempt for the Deity than Gaius Caligula, and yet none
showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was mani-
fested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the God
whom he professedly studied to contemn. You may every day see the
same thing happening with his modern imitators. The most audacious
despiser of God is most easily disturbed, trembling at the sound of a
falling leaf.119
It is impossible to escape from Gods majesty, either in this life, or in the
life to come. In his Psychopannuchia Calvin makes it clear to the reader
that this is not only a comforting truth, but also one of terror. One

118 Inst. 1.3.1: Quendam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divini-

tatis sensum, extra controversiam ponimus: siquidem, nequis ad ignorantiae praetex-

tum confugeret, quandam sui numinis intelligentiam universis Deus ipse indidit, cuius
memoria assidue renovans, novas subinde guttas instillat.
119 Inst. 1.3.2.
72 chapter two

cannot ee Gods presence, not even if one is prepared to throw himself

into the deepest abyss.120 Calvins theology is thought dominated by the
presence of God. Theologically and spiritually it has no room for a
theoretical atheism. All men have indeed some knowledge of God.121
Moreover, while the direct realisation of God can be disrupted, it
cannot be destroyed by sin. The noetic eect of sin never goes so far
that this capacity ceases to stir.
They all, indeed, look out for hiding-places where they may conceal
themselves from the presence of the Lord, and again eace it from
their mind; but after all their eorts they remain caught within the net.
Though the conviction may occasionally seem to vanish for a moment,
it immediately returns, and rushes in with new impetuosity, so that any
relief from the gnawings of conscience is not unlike the slumber of the
intoxicated or insane, who have no quiet rest in sleep, but are continually
haunted with dire horric dreams.122

Sin and rebellion against God thus will not silence this capacity for
knowledge. At the same time, Calvin makes it clear that possessing the
sensus divinitatis has no positive eect spiritually. The realisation of God
comes to life in a eld of inuence which carries man away from God
rather than toward Him. Man lives in an attitude that turns aside from
God; his life is ruled by pride and vanity. The blindness toward God
goes together with emptiness, vanitas and restiveness, contumacia. The
realisation of the Godhead therefore becomes a function of an image
of divinity developed by man himself. Calvin is, we can say, well aware
of the creativity inherent to human consciousness. However, accord-
ing to him, this creativity has only negative results. In his imagination
sinful man, caught up in himself, cannot rise above his own measure.
Once again we encounter the familiar concept of accommodation, but
this time as something which is in the hands of man. Accommoda-
tion promptly becomes a mechanism preceded with a minus sign. It is
now man, alienated from God, who has control of things. He designs
an image of God according to the things which he encounters in his
own world. In his creativity man manufactures idols.123 The attitude

120 Psychopannychia (Zimmerli), 6: Et quemadmodum maiestas dei, quam sit sublimis,

verbis explicari non potest, ita nec quam terribilis sit ira iis, quibus incimbit. Vident
praesentem dei omnipotentis gravitatem, quam ut eugiant in mille abyssos se demerg-
ere parati sunt, eugere tamen non possunt.
121 Inst. 1.3.2: aliquem Dei notionem.
122 Inst. 1.3.2.
123 Inst. 1.4.1: Itaque non apprehendunt qualem se oert, sed qualem pro sua temer-
 ways of knowing 73

of faith is dierent. There, so to speak, there is no space between the

way God presents Himself and the perception of faith. Pure knowl-
edge of God comes into being because man follows the instructions
of God and directs his capacity for knowledge in strict obedience to
them. Calvins dependence on what Paul wrote to the Romans on
the substitution motif is obvious (Rom. 1:23). The worship of the liv-
ing God has made way for that which is not-God. This is not only a
matter of ignorance or pure vanity. It has to do with mans wanting
to reach further than the boundaries which are set for him, and pre-
cisely through this, dissatised with his human measure, man courts
darkness of his own accord.124 The idolater exhausts himself in all
sorts of rituals and ceremonies, but precisely in that misses the holi-
ness of life and integrity which are necessary to come before the face of
God.125

2.3.3. Sensus conscientiae

The second form of inward faculty for perception in Calvins concept
is the sensus conscientiae. Of this faculty too it must be said that it is
part of the basic equipment of man, and its results present themselves
directly. The only response possible for man is to embrace the results, or
repress them; the capacity cannot be denied as such. In modern terms
we would also thus here use the term basic. The dierence from the
sensus divinitatis is that here it is not the majesty of God with which man
is confronted, but in his conscience he is being summoned before Gods
court. In conscience, then, man stands before Gods judgement seat.
Conscience is a powerful evidence of the immortality of the soul, of
the indissoluble bond between man and God.126 Etymologically Calvin
derives the meaning of the term conscience from the word scientia,
or knowledge: it is the realisation of divine judgement as a witness
not permitting them to hide their sins, but bringing them as criminals

itate fabricati sunt, imaginantur. (Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character
in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has
devised.) See also his Comm. on Rom. 1:22, CO 49, 25: Nemo enim fuit, qui non
voluerit Dei maiestatem sub captum suum includere, ac talem Deum facere, qualem
percipere posset suopte sensu.
124 Inst. 1.4.1: quia sobrietate non contenti, sed plus sibi arrogando quam fas sit,

tenebras ultro accersunt

125 Inst. 1.4.4.
126 Inst. 1.15.2.
74 chapter two

before the tribunal of the judge. Literally it is a kind of middle place

between God and man, not suering man to suppress what he knows
in himself .127
Conscience is not only the formal potential to distinguish between
good and evil. It is also the source from which substantive knowledge
of good and evil is drawn. It will be clear that in this Calvins appeal to
conscience diers radically from that in modern times. Calvins appeal
to conscience is dened by the struggle against what in his eyes was
the restraint of conscience by the Roman Church. These were rules
and dictates of Pope and tradition which were slipped in between the
revealed word of God and man. For him conscience was not a last
source of appeal which has authority because it is viewed as being
anchored in the integrity of an unique human person. In Calvin there is
no place for an appeal to individual conviction and personal conscience
in that sense. Appealing to conscience means that there is immediately
a given content, namely the will of God, and that this sets the norm for
the whole of society. Calvin exhibits no doubt about the clarity of the
will of God.128 There is no room for divergent opinions.129
Even as with the sensus divinitatis, here we must ask about the eect.
What are the results of the working of this faculty for perception?
Conscience marks the human being as a responsible being, and through
that deprives him of every excuse of ignorance before God. Man is
convicted by the witness of his own conscience.130 Still, Calvin is more
positive about the eects of this capacity than he was about the sensus

127 Inst. 4.10.3.

128 It appears to the conscience as the lex naturalis. This lex naturalis is in turn the
foundation for the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commands in turn point forward
to the complete unfolding that Gods will received in the obedience and love of Jesus
Christ. See I.J. Hesselink, Calvins Concept of the Law, Allison Park (PA) 1992, 68, 101.
129 The collective of society can be corrupted if a pernicious element is tolerated.

A rotten spot is a danger to the whole apple and the whole basket. Cf. what Calvin
says in a sermon on Deut. 13, with an eye to the cases against Bolsec and Servetus:
What sort of mercy is it really to want to spare two or three and subsequently suer
cutting the throat of a whole people? Quite the reverse: if they who are found so lawless
are suppressed, no longer allowed the last word, but are destroyed, you see a puried
people and healing of society. CO 27, 268. Calvin acknowledges that Jesus Christ did
not come to establish His kingdom with the sword, but he argues that everyone within
his own calling is required to advance that kingdom. CO 27, 247. CF. also CO 24, 362.
The alienation that we feel from Calvin on this point has less to do with the principle
that not everything can be tolerated in society, as with the decision about what it is
which is intolerable, and the choice of means to accomplish its elimination.
130 Inst. 2.2.22.
 ways of knowing 75

divinitatis. I will return to this later. For now it is sucient to establish

that the conscience is an irreducible and axiomatic element in the
denition of man. No one can escape this appeal. The sinner, when
trying to evade the judgement of good and evil implanted in him,
is ever and anon dragged forward, and not permitted to wink so
eectually as not to be compelled at times, whether he will or not,
to open his eyes.131 Under the inuence of this source of knowledge
of God man is brought under judgement, because the choice between
obedience and disobedience is a matter that is part of true piety. True
piety lies within the force eld of the choice between obedience and
disobedience.

2.4. Manifestations in the external world

2.4.1. Stirring the senses

A third and important place where God reveals Himself is the external
reality of heaven and earth. Here the outward senses pave the way for
knowledge. According to Calvin, contemplating the natural order and
wealth with which the created world is endowed automatically forces
one to look up to the Maker of all of this. The good things that man
descries in himself and through which he is surrounded are not of his
own making. Man can follow them, as one follows a stream upwards
to seek out its source, and thus arrives at God.132 Calvin frequently
describes God as an architect, a craftsman or an artist, whose work
unmistakably bears his signature. One would in these cases be able to
qualify knowledge of God as a matter of indirect recognition. Within
Calvins thought there is, as we said before, also an other, more direct
and intuitive knowledge possible, which does indeed arise in connection
with the senses, but which is not the result of argumentation. Anyone
reading Calvin is impressed at the way in which in his experience
the presence of God and the sparks of his glory can be perceived by
the external senses. The realisation of an ordered cosmos, a heritage
from the Stoa, and belief in a free, creating God are fused into an
indissoluble unity. Modern readers are however warned: the belief
in God the Creator has still by no means eroded into the general

131 Inst. 2.2.22.

132 Inst. 1.1.1.
76 chapter two

realisation of something, a Supreme Being. At no point does this

realisation of God become general or vague.
All our pores are open, so to speak, and all our senses participate
in our encounter with God. God and his acts enter our consciousness
not only by hearing. A quote from the introduction to his commentary
on the book of Genesis illustrates the sensory nature of our experi-
ence of God: With the eyes we see the world, with the feet we walk
the earth, with the hands we touch Gods works in uncounted forms,
we breathe in the sweet and pleasant odour of grasses and owers, we
enjoy a multitude of good things; but in all these things of which we
obtain knowledge, lies an innity of divine power, goodness, wisdom,
an innity through which all our perceptions are devoured.133 The cita-
tion reveals the immediacy and tangibility with which the presence of
God manifests itself, according to Calvin. Smelling, tasting, providing
food for the eyes, the tactile sense of skin and feet: it is all as God has
willed it. In these ways too God approaches man. This is an element
in the image of Calvin which is hardly recognised today, thanks to the
overpainting of later generations who were certain that Calvin was all
head, and no body. The image of Calvin held by modern Protestantism
has no room for this unrestrained enjoyment.134 Indeed, the senses and
enjoyment do not stand alone in Calvin. They are in a spiritual force
eld, but that does not stand in the way of the immediacy and sur-
prise of the experience of God. In modern terms, the meaning of life
is astoundingly close at hand: it forces itself on the senses.135 It is liter-
ally to be found in experience. With Alston, one could also call this sort
of knowledge, which arises in close connection with the senses, indi-
rect mystical experience of God.136 In this context the word mystic has
nothing to do with a supposed unity between God and man, but is suit-
able for indicating the intuitive character of the experience. That seems
to be in conict with the term indirect, but this is only apparent. The
experience is indirect because it arises in the contemplation of evidence.
At the same time, the perception of evidence is to be distinguished from
the experience of Gods presence. That is another word for experimen-

133 Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 6.

134 See M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus Gesam-
melte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Tbingen 1922, 183.
135 For the relationship of the senses and the question of meaning, see the ne book

by G. Sauter, Was heit: nach Sinn fragen, Mnchen 1982.

136 W.P. Alston, Perceiving God. The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca/ London

1991, 28.
 ways of knowing 77

tal Christianity. There is a congruence of evidence and Gods presence

in the service of Gods presence. That is the inner dynamic of this con-
gruence. I use the term mystic only to indicate that dynamic, by virtue
of which God imposes Himself on the senses.
The preceding xes attention on a fundamental given in Calvins
vision of knowledge in general and knowledge of God in particular. In
his thinking and world the connection of the senses with knowledge
is still very direct. The senses are in principle direct and trustworthy
entries into reality itself, and lead to what one could call experien-
tial knowledge of Gods goodness and care. Only in the course of the
development of modernity would the place of sensory perception in
the realisation of knowledge become complicated. The way from senses
to knowledge became longer because such aids as the microscope and
telescope made their appearance, and thus gave shape to the method-
ological procedure of the experiment. Knowledge became more and
more the fruit of a rational operation than the direct fruit of the senses.
In the long term that lednot only in continental philosophy, but also
in theologyto the drastic decline in the market value of the senses as
sources of direct and evidential knowledge. In the course of that devel-
opment the role of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge of God
would also fade in comparison with what we nd in Calvin. For him,
faith in God the Creator and Maintainer of the world and its order
is not just a logical conclusion; it rests also on the recognition of His
presence and majesty which forces itself upon man through the senses.

2.4.2. A splendid theatre

What we earlier remarked regarding receptivity is now conrmed in
another manner: here too in the encounter with the majesty of God
in creation, man does not play the role of active subject; the emphasis
lies on human receptivity. The external structure of the world is an
invitation to the purpose of life, the knowledge of God. It is important
to note that it is inconceivable in Calvins theology that someone could
pass over the exterior world as if it was meaningless. Calvin did not live
in the modern climate where nature is experienced as dumb, as user-
unfriendly, a labyrinth of phenomena that bit by bit must be mapped
out until the whole of reality lies open to the all-seeing rational mind.
On the contrary, his reality testied on all sides to a connection with its
Creator. In this rst panel people were still in a time in which things
were considered to have an openness to their Maker, a capacity to obey
78 chapter two

Gods command. In the language of medieval theology, the created

world possessed a potentia oboedentialis. In Calvin this openness comes
to the fore in terms of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious working of
Gods Spirit is the vital ground of being for all that exists. That is all
important. The realisation that there is a secret working of God in all
things denes his symbolic universe. Reality is the primary handiwork
of God. Every element is dependent on Him, a mirror in which the
Creator testies to Himself. Thus, God displays his majesty in the
ordering of the world, and man is the spectator. God is not far away.
He is indeed exalted, but his majesty is perceptible and nearby. The
Spirit is active in the tiniest details. A somewhat longer quote:
God has been pleased so to manifest his perfections in the whole
structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we
cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him. His
essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending all human
thought, but on each of his works his glory is engraven in characters so
bright, so distinct and so illustrious that none, however dull and illiterate,
can plead ignorance as their excuse.137
The visibility and appearance of Gods activity and goodness are strik-
ing elements in this rst panel. For more than one reason this pre-
modern panel saddles us here with suggestions that we nd almost
entirely strange, with gurations that we nd confrontational at the
least. With regard to creation and the natural world, it is not the com-
plaint about pain and physical suering that dominates the image. We
might expect something of that sort in a time when physical pain, child
mortality and economically straitened circumstances ravaged daily exis-
tence in untempered intensity. That is not however the dominant
thought. What rather manifests itself in Calvins writings is surprise
at the wealth of the external world and its essential user-friendliness.
Calvin may be known for being severe and austere, but he experi-
enced the natural reality which surrounded him as anything but barren
or meagre. Creation is a ne and spacious house, provided and lled
with the most exquisite and at the same time copious furnishings.138
The image lies close to another metaphor, namely that of the the-
atre. Bouwsma points out that the 16th century was not just one of the
Golden Ages inside the theatre. It also provided theology and preach-
ing with a wealth of images and metaphors. The world of the theatre

137 Inst. 1.5.1.

138 Inst. 1.14.20.
 ways of knowing 79

included a range of forms, a eld of possibilities for picturing man, God

and the world.139 In this case the metaphor oers the opportunity for a
comparison of the world with a most glittering theatre, into which man
is placed as both actor and audience.140 That implies a high esteem for
created reality. This cosmos as such is a visible representation of Gods
glory. Knowledge of God is in part nourished and constructed via the
eyes.
These observations prompt us to see a not unimportant nuance in
the image that the literature has created with regard to Calvins atti-
tude to the visual arts. It is generally acknowledged that Calvin had
little use for the visual arts. Personal disinterest may have played a role
in this; a more important factor in this connection is the criticism of
the use of images and representations in worship that was expressed
across the whole breadth of the Reformation.141 Images in the church as
books for the laity undermined the instruction that God gives primar-
ily through the Word. The language of the second commandment set
the tone: Thou shalt not make for yourself any graven image, or any
likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or is in the earth beneath,
or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them or
serve them: for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God (Ex. 20:45)
In his exposition of these words Calvin makes clear what the inten-
tion of the ban on images was. God, in his incorporeality and majesty, is
much too exalted for men to be able to represent him in stone or wood.
Worship of images shifts the attention to the object and thus dishonours
Gods majesty.142 To this extent it is thus true that in Calvins theology

139 According to Bouwsma, John Calvin, 177188, the notion of theatre made it pos-

sible to perceive historical changes and mobility, and the peculiar role of man on the
stage of history. The general repudiation of the stage and theatre is not yet present in
Calvin. He does sharply criticise every form of hypocrisy. Man can play no role oppo-
site God, and cannot make himself up to be what he is not. But that does not prevent
dramatic expression from being powerfully present in the manner in which the history
of the church and faith is perceived. Creation is a stage, God the director, man both the
actors and the audience, life a pilgrimage and heaven the distant fatherland where bliss
awaits.
140 See for instance Inst. 1.5.12 and Inst. 1.6.2.
141 Philip Benedict, Calvinism as a Culture? Preliminary Remarks on Calvinism and

the Visual Arts in: Paul Corby Finney (ed.), Seeing beyond the Word. Visual Arts and the
Calvinist Tradition, Grand Rapids (MI) 1999, 1945. See also in the same collection
Daniel W. Hardy, Calvinism and the Visual Arts: A Theological Introduction, 116,
12. Cf. also William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture. The Protestant Imagi-
nation from Calvin to Edwards, Cambridge 2004, 6289.
142 Inst. 1.11.12.
80 chapter two

too the visual in the church service is suppressed in favour of hearing

and the Word. Because faith comes by hearing, the beginning of spiri-
tual life lies here, we read in his commentary to Luke 11:28.143 Calvins
underscoring the commentary of Jesus on the anonymous voice from
the crowd in the same passage is typical. Blessed is the womb that bore
you, and the breasts that you sucked! shouts a woman. When Jesus
then answers, Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep
it, according to Calvin that is an indirect reprimand. It is by way of
the word that God indeed opens heavenly treasures to us, and this is
the way through which life eternal must take root in the heart.144 The
key to the kingdom of heaven is the free acceptance, through God, that
we receive from his word.145 To this extent, our view is correct: the
source of knowledge of God is the word, and hearing. But that is not
the whole story. Anyone who wrenches Calvins concentration on the
Bible as the Word to which we must listen from its 16th century context
and brings it over to our culture, has the inclination to all too quickly
bypass the sensory web by which knowledge is fed in Calvin. His high
esteem for the Word does not permit us to shut our eyes to the extent
to which Christian knowledge is fed by all the senses in his theology,
and particularly the large role played by sight. Thus the criticism of the
role of the visual arts in worship may not result in a general judgement
that the visual plays no role of importance in his theology. Calvin does
not reject those sources of revelation that appeal to the visual faculties.
Visible signs and wonders conrm that which the ear receives, which
must penetrate to the heart.146 The sobriety of the design of the Calvin-
ist worship service must not mislead us, living as we do so much later.
It must not be misunderstood rationalistically. The point of his criti-
cism of the use of images in the cultus is not that God has nothing to
show us. Anything but! The point is that men must not let their eye
rest on things other than those which God places before our eyes. God
does indeed give us visible signs of his presence, and signs perceptible to
the other senses. The problem with the visible arises when man begins
to get involved in their design. That is the background of the ban on
images. This point of the knowledge of God, the focus on Christ, thus

143 Comm. Luke 11:27, CO 45, 349: des est ex auditu

144 Comm. Luke 11:27. CO 45, 349. See also Comm. Gen. 28:13, CO 23, 392.
145 Comm. Luke 11:27, CO 45, 349: Clavis enim regni coelorum est gratuita Dei

adoptio, quam nos ex verbo concipimus.

146 See for example Comm. Gen. 15:4, CO 23, 210.
 ways of knowing 81

does not detract from the fact that Calvins theology includes a high
degree of pictural content. There is a lot to see and experience in the world
and its order. There is a richness and a glory in creation, which man
can ignore only at the cost of the greatest possible ingratitude.
Thus for Calvin there is much to be experienced in the world and
its content. This point touches upon a subject that became the exposed
nerve in theology in the last century, namely the question of natural
theology. What is the place for the appeal to conscience and reference
to natural order in theology, and particularly the theology of revela-
tion? In such an appeal is the worship of God in fact exchanged for
the worship of idols, and is there an attempt to replace Gods free
grace? There are no tensions in Calvins own theology which reect
such questions. He maintains both that the world is Gods creation,
and the radicalness of our alienation from God. I would suggest that
the charged debate about natural theology in recent theological history
reects questions that occupy theology in a culture marked by moder-
nity. Can the proclamation and theology still appeal to the world as
creation? Or, has the inuence of a range of factorsthe epistemologi-
cal critique of Kant, the natural sciences, and later historical sciences
so made reality into something that must be understood in terms of
laws, energies, particles, human actions and thinking that the notion
of a revelation of God in the reality surrounding us has trickled away,
and Christian theology has no other choice than to radically begin with
special revelation?
The question can also be posed in other terms: does man encounter
vague traces of God as Creator before knowing him as Redeemer? Or
do men in fact know Him only as Redeemer, and after that as Cre-
ator? How are these two matters of the knowledge of God related to
each other? We are here faced with a fundamental problem in Chris-
tian theology, which is not only important for doctrine regarding God,
but also for the doctrine of revelation. With Calvin we encounter this
problem when he speaks of the knowledge of God as cognitio duplex. God
reveals himself as Creator and Redeemer. In response to the debate
between Barth and Brunner on the possibility of a natural knowledge
of God, an extensive discussion arose in the 20th century with regard
to the relationship between these two aspects of the knowledge of God
in Calvin.147 The issue in this discussion was what place knowledge of

147 E. Brunner, Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie, Zwischen den Zeiten 7 (1929), 255

276, idem, Die Frage nach dem Anknpfungspunkt als Problem der Theologie,
82 chapter two

God outside of Christi.e., knowledge based on nature or history

holds for Calvin. Both sides acknowledge that the idea that man can
learn of God from creation, apart from Christ, is problematic. How-
ever, the question which is posed for Calvins theology in the 20th cen-
tury is what place this problematic knowledge occupies. Can it serve as
a point of departure for the proclamation of Christian belief ? Or does
Calvin speak of this knowledge of God so negatively that it is entirely
useless theologically? It is obvious to both schools of expositors that in
Calvins concept knowledge of God as Redeemer is necessary to recog-
nise Gods creative role. Calvin says this clearly: It is certain that after
the fall of our rst parent, no knowledge of God without a Mediator
was eectual to salvation It would have been useless, were it not
followed up by faith, holding forth God to us as a Father in Christ.148
That however does not remove the ambivalence of Calvins view of
the creation. On the one side he asserts that God objectively manifests
himself in the order of created reality, and on the other denies with
even greater force that these manifestations really produce the spiri-
tual fruit for which they were intended. Thus we read that In vain for
us, therefore, does Creation exhibit so many bright lamps but that
[men] have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened through
faith by internal revelation from God.149 Sin thus has a negative eect
on Gods revelation for man. Only because Scripture is added as an
aidor as spectaclesdoes man again receive sight to see Gods rev-
elation in created reality. Laid out schematically, Word and Spirit are
the aids to double knowledge of God, to learning to know God as Cre-
ator and Redeemer. True knowledge of God as Creator is not available
outside Christ. Certainly Calvin is convinced that creation would have
been a sucient basis to arrive at true knowledge of God had Adam
stood upright.150 It would have been the natural course of events, we
understand him to say, for the structure of the world to have served as
our school, in which piety would have been taught, so that we might

Zwischen den Zeiten 10 (1932), 505532 and idem, Natur und Gnade. Zum Gesprch mit Karl
Barth, Tbingen 1934. K. Barth, Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner, Mnchen 1934. The
discussion was continued with some bitterness by G. Gloede, a student of Brunner,
Theologia naturalis bei Calvin, Stuttgart 1935 and P. Brunner, student of K. Barth. For an
extensive discussion and rejection of E. Brunner and G. Gloede see: W. Krusche, Das
Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Gttingen 1957, 6785.
148 Inst. 2.6.1.
149 Inst. 1.5.4.
150 Inst. 1.2.1: si integer stetisset Adam
 ways of knowing 83

have subsequently passed from that school directly to eternal life and
perfect bliss.151 Under the factual circumstances of a world fallen into
sin, however, there is what Calvin terms a conditio irrealis. In the intro-
duction to his commentary on Genesis Calvin makes it clear in an
impressive way that Christian knowledge of God does not have its cen-
tral source in the construction of the world, but in the Gospel, where
Christ on the cross is proclaimed to us.152 Notwithstanding all this, one
nds in Calvin an appeal to the universal presence of God and the
ineradicability of a fundamental realisation of God which is entirely
absent from contemporary theology. Is this an inconsistency in Calvin,
or is it precisely typical of his thought? What separates Calvins pre-
modern theology from contemporary theology is that he appeals to
an evidence for which the inward faculty now seems to have disap-
peared. The appeal to Gods evident presence appears to contradict
Calvins assertion that we will nd nothing in the world that draws
us to God, until Christ will have instructed us in his school.153 But
these words do not contradict the appeal to evidence of Gods revela-
tion in nature. Where modern, post-Kantian theology experiences an
absolute opposition, Calvin did not see one. Precisely in the school of
Christ can creation, providence and the hidden work of the Spirit be
called upon. In fact the school of Christ includes classes and grades
where initially a faint notion of God is given, then a more powerful
impression of his majesty and role as judge is imparted, and nally
Christ appears as the image of the loving Father as centre and goal
of the knowledge of God.154 Gods revelation through the inner capac-
ities of the sensus divinitatis and sensus conscientiae and the outward senses
can indeed be repressed, but never entirely eradicated. What can con-
ceptually be described as a continuing eld of tension pushes itself to
the surface in Calvins texts: only someone who himself was strongly
impressed by the givenness and irresistibility of Gods presence could
write about the world around us as he does. When one reads Calvins

151 Inst. 2.6.1.: Erat quidem hic genuinus ordo ut mundi fabrica nobis schola esset ad

pietatem discendam: unde ad aeternam vitam et perfectam foelicitatem eret transitus.

152 Argumentum in Genesin, CO 23, 10: Nam ita innuit, frustra Deum quaeri rerum

visibilium ductu: nec vero aliud restare nisi ut recta nos ad Christum conferamus. Non
igitur ab elementis mundi huius, sed ab evangelio faciendum exordium, quod unum
Christus nobis proponit cum sua cruce, et in eo nos detinet.
153 Ibidem, 10.
154 Calvins exposition of the conversion of Zachaeus in Luke 19, CO 45, 563, oers

a ne example: Sic Dominus saepe, priusquam se hominibus manifestet, coecum illis

aectum inspirat, quo feruntur ad ipsum adhuc latentem et incognitum.
84 chapter two

descriptions of the creation and becomes acquainted with his admi-

ration of the ingenious structure of the cosmic order, one does not
receive the impression that he was hindered by the conviction that
Gods work is obscured by sin. Calvin counts on the ceaseless, uni-
versal activity of God through his Spirit. The revelation of God has a
teleological structure which certainly nds its completion in the knowl-
edge of Christ, but which is not determined by Christ in all its com-
ponents. Expressed conceptually, there is indeed a soteriological Chris-
tocentrism, but not of a fundamental Christocentrism.155 In Calvins
Trinitarian concept the work of the Spirit has its own place in the acts
of God, which is certainly involved in Christ, but not congruent with
Christ. Only in this way, taking into account the separate work and
weight of the Spirit, can we understand how Calvin presents knowledge
of God the Creator to his audience as something over which the speak-
ers and hearers must be in agreement.156 Men who open their eyes must
indeed lift their eyes to the Creator of all of this. The ignorant and the
learned alike must admit that the world can not be understood without
God.
Remarks on the unproductivity of knowledge derived from nature
are thus not the only thing that determines Calvins thought and con-
cepts. Calvin proceeds from a very dierentiated, active presence of
God, and this must also have a place in our reconstruction of his
thought. It can only be understood if one takes into account that, even
in mans rebellion and estrangement, God continues to invite man and
draw him to Himself in very many ways. The fact that men cannot
arrive at a true knowledge of God on the basis of their contemplation
of the world remains an undiminished source of amazement for Calvin
and internalises the tension that is dened by Gods active presence in
the creation on one hand, and by sin as an intervening factor and the
necessity for the Spirit as a spiritus adoptionis on the other.

155 See R.A. Muller, The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A

Response to T.F. Torrance, Thomist 54 (1990), 685. See also C. Link, Der Horizont der
Pneumatologie bei Calvin und Barth in: H. Scholl (ed.), Karl Barth und Johannes Calvin.
Karl Barths Gttinger Calvin-Vorlesung von 1922, Neukirchen 1995, 2245.
156 Inst. 1.14.21. Calvins unnuanced appeal to nature has nothing to do with the fact

that something escaped the otherwise so sharp eyes of the Reformers, as Karl Barth
 ways of knowing 85

2.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and Parker

The question regarding the knowledge of God as Creator and the
knowledge of God as Redeemer was drawn into the foreground in
Calvin studies once again in the 1950s through the previously referred
to studies by E.A. Dowey and T.H.L. Parker on knowledge of God
in Calvin. At stake in the discussion was the question of how greatly
the distinction of the duplex cognitio inuences Calvins thinking in its
totality, and in particular the structure of the Institutes. In the 1559 edi-
tion the Institutes, which by that time had grown to 80 chapters, was
divided into four sections, conforming with the fourfold division of the
Apostles Creed. In agreement with older observations by J. Kstlin,
E.A. Dowey suggested that the cognitio duplex nevertheless should be
considered the true principle behind the design of the Institutes. The
division into four parts indeed took place, but the distinction which
is systematically and epistemologically of importance is the point of
view of double knowledge of God.157 Dowey sums up his thesis in the
assertion that the duplex cognitio must be considered as a double presup-
position. According to Dowey, justice is best done to Calvins positive
statements regarding the understandability of Gods self-revelation in
creation and providence, and alongside them his decisive words on the
necessity of learning to know God through the face of Christ, if one
considers them as two perspectives which stand next to one another
in Calvin in a dialectical duality, which cannot be taken up into one
higher synthesis.
Parker forcefully rejects this.158 He accuses Dowey of reforging the
theme of Gods being as Creator into a general, preparatory chapter, in

remarks in KD II/1, 140; cf. ET, 127 but with another, more subordinate place that the
concept of nature had in the intellectual climate of the day.
157 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvins Theology, New York 1952, 49. Thus

according to Dowey Book I in fact runs through Book II, Chapter 5. On page 46 he
writes: All that he says subsequently lies within the vast background he has given of the
Trinitarian God, his creation of the universe and of man in a state of perfection and
his providential care of that creation. Yet, while this background is a frame of reference
and a presupposition of the redemptive revelationit is not even known apart from
the redemptive revelation which Calvin has yet to discuss. Thus from another point of
view the redemptive revelation is actually the presupposition of the knowledge of the
Creator which in Calvins treatment precedes it.
158 T.H.L. Parker, Calvins Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Grand Rapids 1959, 121:

Dowey takes one methodological distinction made in the word and magnies it into
the leading principle to interpret the whole.
86 chapter two

the sense of a 17th century prolegomena. Through labelling the knowl-

edge that man can gain of Gods being as Creator as insucient,
Dowey would suggest that the eects of the fall to which this knowledge
is subject are much too innocuous. According to Parker, in Calvin
general ideas of knowledge of God lead only to man not being able
to excuse himself before God.
What are we to conclude about this debate? Aside from its high
quality as Calvin studies, after a half century one must admit that it
is chiey signicant for the way that modern dogmatic distinctions and
sensitivities were so directly applied by both parties. Parker correctly
draws attention to the fact that subject of creation regularly surfaces
in Calvin after Book I. It is indeed extreme to split the Institutes into
two parts on the basis of the methodological distinction of a duplex
cognitio. At the same time, it is highly curious and anachronistic when
Parker for his part feels the need to declare Calvin somewhat guilty of
interpretations such as those of Dowey. After all, Calvin does not at all
points make it entirely clear that Christ is the starting point for every
sort of knowledge of God, whether it is of God as Creator or of God as
Redeemer.159 The fact that Calvin fails to do so is no slip of the pen, but
reveals the importance of this twofold perspective. In the irresolvable
mutual involvement of both sorts of knowledge with one another, the
dierence between the conditions under which reection is carried
out on Christian belief in a pre-modern and a post-Kantian context
becomes clear. Calvin feels no need to emphasise at every moment that
true knowledge of God is Christologically determined. His theology
reects the fact that he encountered the self-revealing and manifesting
God everywhere in his world, and the conviction that appealing to this
sort of experience continued to have a purpose of its own, even though
one must the following moment stress that this source of knowledge
was insucient for faith. Knowledge of God as Creator must also be
puried through Scripture, but the knowledge of this goodness of God
retains its peculiarity alongside the knowledge of Gods mercy in Christ.
Calvin did not share the aversion against an appeal to nature or history,
issues which became so problematic as sources of knowledge of God in
post-Kantian theology.

159 Parker, Calvins Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 121.

 ways of knowing 87

2.5. Appreciation of culture

On the basis of the motif of substitution and displacement one might

get the impression that Calvins vision of human mental capacities is
overwhelmingly negative. As has already been seen, this impression is,
however, inaccurate. Calvins negative judgement must be further dif-
ferentiated. He explicitly follows Augustine when he says that through
the fall man has lost his preternatural endowments, and his natural gifts
are corrupted. That does not mean that they are entirely eradicated. As
so often, Calvin refers both to Scripture and to experience for the con-
rmation of this view.160 In one key passage he writes,
We see that there has been implanted in the human mind a certain
desire of investigating truth, to which it never would aspire unless some
relish for truth antecedently existed. There is therefore now in the hu-
man mind discernment to this extent, that it is naturally inuenced by
the love of truth Still it is true that this love of truth fails before it
reaches its goal, forthwith falling away into vanity the human mind is
unable, from dullness, to pursue the right path of investigation in the
search for truth.161
The human mind has a natural inclination to truth. That is no small
thing. The result of this desire for truth is however dependent on the
sort of knowledge that is involved. Elsewhere Calvin makes a clarifying
distinction in this connection, that is of immediate importance for his
appreciation of science and culture. There are two sorts of knowledge,
namely those of terrene and heavenly aairs:
By earthly things I mean those which relate not to God and his king-
dom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some con-
nection with the present life, and are in a manner conned within its
boundaries. By heavenly things I mean the pure knowledge of God,
the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly
kingdom. To the former belong the matters of policy and economy, all
mechanical arts and liberal studies. To the latter belong the knowledge
of God and of his will, and the means of framing life in accordance with
them.162
Calvins appreciation of culture thus depends to a great extent on the
perspective that he chooses.163 With regard to our human capacity to

160 Inst. 2.2.12: experimento sensus communis repugnat.

161 Inst. 2.2.12.
162 Inst. 2.2.13.
163 See the previously cited book by M.P. Engel, John Calvins Perspectival Anthropology,
88 chapter two

occupy ourselves with earthly aairs, with the design of society and
lawmaking, he is strikingly positive. Following Aristotle, he identies
man as a social animal, who by nature has the inclination to form
and preserve society. Undeniably in such judgements one encounters
something of the jurist who was educated within a climate shaped by
the Renaissance and Humanism, and within whose purview lie pub-
lic administration and social questions. From a cultural-historical and
social perspective this interest is easy to place. But it is also interest-
ing to inquire about this positive attitude on theological grounds. Pro-
ciency in the matter of earthly aairs can be positively valued precisely
when it is certain that man is blind in the matter of his eternal salvation.
As soon as the relation between God and man enters the discussion,
the soteriological perspective applies and we hear judgements about
man as a whole person. Sin, as loss of original splendour and identity,
has ooded over the human person like a tidal wave and has saturated
him from head to toe.164 The alienation from God aects everything.
Thus even the most ingenious are blinder than moles.165 According
to Calvin the discernment of the greatest philosophers, some of whom
can now and then provide very apt visions of God, resembles that of a
bewildered traveller, who sees the ash of lightning glance far and wide
for a moment, and then vanish into the darkness of the night before he
can advance a single step. So far is such assistance from enabling him
to nd the right path.166
Like his contemporaries, Calvin is surely not sceptical about the
possibilities of the human mind in the public domain. He is certainly
sceptical about mans possibilities for nding a way to God and his
salvation. What he says about culture, man, his skills and his knowledge
is bounded by this distinction. That is the basis of his view of freedom,
that knowledge of God is not anywhere just for the taking, but must
be found in the way which the Spirit points. And which way does
the Spirit point? With apparent pleasure Calvin tells the story of the
philosopher Simonides, whom the tyrant Hiero asked what God is. A
number of times Simonides sought to postpone answering, and nally

Atlanta 1988.
164 see Inst. 2.1.9: Hic tantum breviter attingere volui, totum hominem quasi diluvio

a capite ad pedes sic fuisse obrutum, ut nulla pars a peccato sit immunis. See also
Comm. on Rom. 7:14, CO 49, 128: Tota mens, totum cor, omnes actiones in peccatum
propendeant.
165 Inst. 2.2.18.
166 Inst. 2.2.18.
 ways of knowing 89

replied, The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears.167 The
darkness in which man nds himself with regard to heavenly things can
only be removed by the Word of God.

2.6. Scripture as accommodation

According to Calvin the world of creating and maintaining, however

positively he may want to speak of it, is still no longer sucient to draw
man to God. One could say that because of the other direction that the
human heart has turned, creation no longer has its intended eect as
a conduit for Gods revelation. Because of this the place of Scripture
must next be discussed.
Calvins doctrine of Scripture has been the subject of erce discus-
sion in Reformed theology over the past century. That should not be
surprising. To the extent that the status of the Bible as the Word of
God has been threatened in theology through the increased consider-
ation of its human dimensions, various proposals have been advanced
with respect to the question of how the inspiration of the Bible could
be further handled. With this the question of Calvins position regu-
larly arose. Is his doctrine already practically one of verbal inspiration?
Or is his doctrine of inspiration best described as mechanical, or is the
adjective organic to be preferred? For Calvin is the Bible the revela-
tion of doctrinal truths, or is it the revelation of the person of Christ?168
Such alternatives, it must emphatically be said, do no justice to Calvins
views. As mutually exclusive possibilities these bear the stamp of a later
era. In his theology the concepts mentioned here simply stand next
to one another. That the promise of Christ given in the Gospel is the
point of revelation169 does not detract from the fact that God inspired
the whole Bible with all its contents. That God uses men, including
their character and talent, does not detract from the fact that every
word of the Bible came into being under direct inuence, or even bet-
ter, under the ultimate direction of the Holy Spirit. We will go into this
more extensively.
According to Calvins concept of knowledge of God, knowledge of
God acquired on the basis of Gods Word qualitatively far exceeds the

167 Inst. 1.5.12.

168 For a discussion see B.B. Wareld, Calvin and Calvinism, New York 1931, 6065.
169 Inst. 3.2.29. Calvin literally uses the word scopus.
90 chapter two

knowledge that fallen man gains from nature. The one school is not
the other. After the fall of Adam, post Adae lapsum, man must receive
knowledge from the instruction God gives by means of verbal revela-
tion. This conviction on Calvins part is only given added strength by
the extensive place that his commentaries and Bible exegesis took in his
lifes work. In the eyes of later generations Calvin may frequently have
been the systematiser, the one who arranged the elements of the Chris-
tian faith and attuned them to one another, but in his own eyes the
Institutes was a manual for students and preachers in their exposition
of Scripture. This manual does not replace the commentary; it does
not replace the sermon; it is a genre of its own. It provides space for
dealing with subjects, loci, and discussions, disputationes, connected with
the knowledge of God granted in Scripture.170 Ultimately, however, it
is about the knowledge of God, about Gods Words and promises that
men learn from Scripture. The superiority of the Bible over every other
means of revelation is not open to discussion; in the Institutes 1.6.1 it is
termed a better aid,171 or concretely, the spectacles with which Gods
manifestations in created reality can be perceived.172 Compared with it,
Gods manifestations in nature are still only general indications. They
are dumb teachers, while in the Scriptures God opens his own holy
mouth. Creation testies that there is a God, in Scriptural revelation He
tells who this is.173 For methodological and didactic reasons Calvin does
not enter into the connection between Scripture and the revelation of
Christ as Mediator in this chapter. The disquisition on Scripture in
the chapter on God the Creator can therefore easily leave the impres-
sion of being a defence of the formal authority of the Bible. This view
however cannot be maintained when one sees to what degree Calvin
already appeals to experience in this context. His exposition of revela-
tion through the Word in Book I of the Institutes is intrinsically linked
with the content that is given in the revelation. The methodological
limitation of Book I to God the Creator can not disguise the fact that
the experience which Calvin assumes of every reader of the Scripture

170 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101117.

171 Inst. 1.6.1: aliud tamen et melius adminiculum accedere necesse est.
172 Calvin uses the image of an old man who can no longer distinguish the letters in

a book held before him. Only when someone provides him with spectacles is it possible
to distinguish the words and understand what is being said there. See Inst. 1.6.1:
specillis autem interpositis adiuti, distincte legere incipient. See also Argumentum ad
Genesin, CO 23, 10.
173 Inst. 1.6.1.
 ways of knowing 91

relates to everything that God has made known through his prophets and
apostles, and just as little can it remain unsaid that this content, as will
appear further on in the Institutes, will nd its culmination in Christ as
the real content of the Gospel.174 We will return to this point later in
this section.
What is the foundation for the authority of Scripture? Does the
Bible have authority on formal and external grounds, or because of its
content relating to faith? Such alternatives, it must be clear, say more
about later discussions than about Calvin, and are too limited. Both
positions are found in Calvin. Scripture has authority because it comes
from God, and it has authority because of its content. In Calvin studies
it is not rare to see the conclusion that there is dissonance in Calvins
doctrines on Scripture. As a matter of fact, this reproach, made by both
Dowey175 and Gerrish176 is once again most curious. It is a theological
judgement at which one might arrive on the basis of a later position,
but which has no historical basis. Calvin would not have recognised
himself for even a second in the conclusion that he considered the
Bible to be external and formal authority! The adjectives external and
formal simply do not square with the manner in which he describes
the experience that he has in his encounter with Scripture, and which
he equally assumes for his readers. In the Scriptures man encounters
the unceasing activity of God, which he, when he looks up from the
page, sees in the world around him and within himself.177 At no point
does Scripture come to man with an authority that is abstracted from
its content. After all, it is God himself who brings his message to man
in these writings, with all their diversity. The paired concepts of formal-
informal and internal-external do not t into Calvins vision of the
manner in which Scripture acquires its authority. Revelation through

174 See at Inst. 3.2.29. See also Argumentum in evangelium Ioannis, Comm. John 14:1, CO

47, 321.
175 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvins Theology, 161162. Dowey writes: We

must conclude, in fact that two interpretations exist side by side in Calvins theology
concerning the object of the knowledge of faith, because he never fully integrated and
related systematically the faithful mans acceptance of the authority of the Bible en bloc
with the faith as directed exclusively toward Christ.
176 It would appear from this statement that B.A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the

New. Essays on the Reformation Heritage, Chicago 1982, 62 also shares this view: Calvin did
not adequately relate his doctrine of faith and his doctrine of authority; for while his
faith was strongly Christocentric, he continued to work with the Bible -in the medieval
fashion- as an external and formal authority.
177 Inst. 1.10.1.
92 chapter two

the Word is a matter of Gods active instruction, and that instruction

takes place in countless separate events in which God has revealed his
will.
Calvin makes clear what it is that must be conceived as the initial
forms of divine instruction. One must think of visions, of appearances,
of voices which conrm the visions, so that at the same time the vision
is received the prophet is granted certainty that this was indeed from
God.178 In this case the Bible writer is conscious of the inspiration,
and functions as an amanuensis.179 In short, on the human side of the
process revelation receptivity is the dominant factor. Calvins theology
is governed by an orientation to the object, which means that there is
hardly any attention given to the human role.
We also nd this object orientation in a dierent form. In mod-
ern theology the distinction between revelation and revelation become
Scripture has become increasingly important. We will encounter this
pervasively in the second panel. Calvin does indeed know this distinc-
tion, but it is characteristic that it plays no signicant role in his doc-
trine of revelation. There is no gap between God in his revelation and
God who speaks through Scripture. God simply wanted to seal his rev-
elations of himself, his oracula, to the Fathers for coming generations
by in eect hanging them up in public, as on a bulletin board.180 That
public notice board is the Bible. Revelation and Scripture coincide in
the Scriptures. The terms employed by Calvin for the content of rev-
elation are telling in this connection. The terms heavenly doctrine,181
heavenly wisdom, oracula Dei,182 and the use of the word dictare183 lack
precisely that which through historical-critical research has come to be
the centre of attention, namely the human factor. The Scriptures as
they lie before us come from God, and in all their parts came into
being under the direct inuence of the Holy Spirit. In later theology
this concept is elaborated into the doctrine of verbal inspiration, and
with good reason theologians appealed to Calvin in the process. There
is however a striking dierence, which has to do with attention for the

178 See for instance Comm. on Gen. 28:12, 13, CO 23, 391392.
179 Inst. 4.8.9: certi et authentici Spiritus sancti amanuenses.
180 Inst. 1.6.2: Tandem ut continuo progressu doctrinae veritas seculis omnibus su-

perstes maneret in mundo, eadem oracula quae deposuerat apud Patres, quasi publicis
tabulis consignata esse voluit.
181 Inst. 1.7.4.
182 Inst. 1.6.2; see also Inst. 4.8.9.
183 Comm. IITim. 3:16, CO 52, 383 and IIPeter 1:20, CO 55, 457458.
 ways of knowing 93

human factor. Calvin does not deal further with the question of how
this inspiration occurred; he does not elaborate on the method of inspi-
ration. B.B. Wareld has rightly indicated what mattered for Calvin.
While it is true that Calvin did use the term dictate guratively, it
is clear that what he meant to say in doing so was that the result of
the inspiration by the Spirit is a revelation that comes as directly from
God, as if it were a letter being dictated.184 To repeat: in his doctrine
of revelation Calvin gives no explicit attention to the human factor.
All of his attention focuses on the result of revelation, which does not
belie its divine stamp. It is easy to test this proposition. Even in those
cases where, to the modern mind, the human character of Scripture is
abundantly clear (such as in the complaints, lamentations and doubts
in the Psalms), even then it is still Calvins view that these sections came
into being expressly under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That is not
because Calvin had no concept of the psychology of the inner man.
Quite on the contrary. It is, so he says, the Holy Spirit who in the
Psalms portrays the human soul in powerful lines, and who holds a mir-
ror up before the reader, with therein his own spirit and its anatomy.185
The Spirit is the great Psychologist. Still another example: When in
their presentation of the succession of events the evangelists dier from
one another, that is for Calvin no reason to examine their work further
as a human product. It is once again the Holy Spirit who has found the
question of chronology unimportant. What is important is that which is
to be learned from the history.186 Other examples are there for the tak-
ing: the dierence in style among Biblical texts is for Calvin no reason
to look further at the issue of human mediation. He draws from this the
conclusion that the Holy Spirit is the greatest of all rhetoricians. What
can be said here ultimately ts with what was said above in the section
on accommodation and language. The fact that some parts of the Bible
can measure up stylistically with the best of profane Latin literature
demonstrates that the Spirit is indeed a powerful rhetorician. But the
unaected and indeed sometimes uncouth style in which other parts

184 Wareld, Calvin and Calvinism, 6264.

185 CO 31, 16: Iay accoustum de nommer ce livre une anatomie de toutes les
parties de lame, pource quil ny a aection en lhomme laquelle ne soit yci representee
comme en un miroir. Mesme, pour mieux dire, le S. Esprit a yci pourtrait au vif
toutes les douleurs, tristesses, craintes, doutes, esperances, solicitudes, perplexitez, voire
iusques aux esmotions confuses desquelles les esprits des hommes ont accoustum
destre agitez.
186 See Argumentum in Evangelium, CO 45, 34.
94 chapter two

of the revelation have come to us equally demonstrates what is and is

not a prime concern for the Holy Spirit. Making a literary impression
is not important; what is important is the eect on the listeners. The
Spirit will pierce the heart, penetrate to the very marrow, far surpass-
ing the powers of the greatest speakers. Holy Scripture is redolent of
something divine.187 In these remarks the emphasis does not line on
the role of the mediator or the mediation, but on the authenticity of the
message. In the Bible men really encounter the message of God.
We now arrive at the following point that is important for the sketch
of Calvins concept of knowledge of God. Divine revelation through
the word and sight has a propositional value. It has content. Ultimately
that is self-evident for Calvin. As the Son is the expression and image
of God, and conversation or speech is the mark of the human mind,
revelation thus must have a content which can be described. The
Son is the speech, sermo, of God.188 Instruction and teaching with a
propositional content are an integral component of Calvins concept of
knowledge of God, although they are not identical with it. Knowledge
of God arises and exists in part in instruction, doctrina. Knowledge of
God cannot however be reduced to the act of knowing propositions
or to an attitude of submission and acceptance, which always must
be paired with certain content, with certain truths. This substantive
component in Calvins concept of faith has already been discussed in
the denition of piety. Unavoidably we here encounter an aspect of the
concept of faith that within the Calvinistic tradition has led to great
emphasis on the formulation of content. Frequently in this tradition
the condence placed in good formulation and intellectual doctrine has
been greatall too great.189 At the same time I will remind readers
once again that Calvins concept of faith can in no way be categorised
as intellectualistic. Knowledge lies within much broader connections.
The propositional is rooted in and subject to living, active experience
eected by the Spirit, of which the aective is integrally a part. The
propositional is an implication of the mystic unity with Christ. We will
return to that later, in the discussion of the concept of faith.

187 Inst. 1.8.1.

188 See Comm. John 1:1, CO 47, 1: Quod Sermonem vocat Dei lium, haec mihi
simplex videtur esse ratio, quia primum aeterna sit Dei sapientia et voluntas, deinde
expressa consilii eius egies. Nam ut sermo character mentis dicitur in hominibus, ita
non inepte transfertur hoc quoque ad Deum
189 See also B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin,

Minneapolis 1993, 8182.

 ways of knowing 95

For the rest, the foregoing makes clear how far Calvins view of
doctrine, doctrina, stands from modern views of dogmatics. For Calvin,
doctrine is instruction given by God. What he tries to do in his Institutes
and his dogmatic tracts is, in his own mind, nothing more than arrange
the given truth, which is clear in itself. He does not view doctrine
as something that is formulated by man on the basis of stories and
histories. Doctrine is not primarily a product of human intellectual
capacities formulated for the sake of preaching or the guidance of the
Christian community. These are views that t with the post-Kantian
situation. In this rst panel doctrine is a part of divine speaking itself.
At the same time it is clear that doctrine is not an end in itself. The
goal of doctrine is that man comes to worship and obedience. Even his
thinking is permeated by Calvins character as a doer.

2.7. Knowledge of God as result of Word and Spirit

With the terms Word and Spirit we stand before two key concepts in
Calvins views on the knowledge of God. They can not be separated
from one another, nor can they be resolved into one another. The
intersection here is the Bible, revelation set down in writing. Here there
is already a relation with the work of the Holy Spirit, to the extent
that all revelation through the Word is an act of the Holy Spirit, and
in the sacred volume there is a truth divine.190 Scripture arises from
the Holy Spirit. The Word, heavenly wisdom, as Scripture however
remains an outward entity. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit
does man become inwardly convinced of the truth of the message of
salvation that resounds in this Holy Scripture.191 Knowledge of God
cannot, therefore, be resolved into either Word or Spirit; it arises in the
involvement of the Word and Spirit with each other.192 In short, they
are correlates.

190 Inst. 1.8.1: divinum quiddam spirare sacras Scripturas.

191 Inst. 2.5.5.
192 Inst. 1.9.3: Mutuo enim quodam nexu Dominus verbi Spiritusque sui certi-

tudinem inter se copulavit: ut solida verbi religio animis nostris insidat, ubi aulget
Spiritus qui nos illic Dei faciem contemplari faciat: ut vicissim nullo hallucinationis tim-
ore Spiritum amplexemur, ubi illum in sua imagine, hoc est in verbo, recognoscimus.
Ita est sane. Non verbum hominibus subitae ostentationis causa in medium protulit
Deus, quod Spiritus sui adventu extemplo aboleret, sed eundem Spiritum cuius vir-
tute verbum administraverat, submisit, qui suum opus ecaci verbi conrmatione
absolveret.
96 chapter two

With this correlation of Word and Spirit Calvin takes an intermedi-

ate position between the Roman Church and contemporary spiritual-
istic currents. He emphatically defends the primacy of Scripture over
against oral tradition. Calvin considered the primacy of ecclesiastical
tradition as an usurpation and unnecessary expansion. God has made
enough known in his Word for us to live and to organise the church.
Biblical authors are cited as critical authorities against ecclesiastical
doctrine and practice.193 That is an important point of dierence in
comparison with pre-Reformation theology. The authority of the Bible
is distinguished from the authority of the hierarchic church. It is not
self-evident that divine truth coincides with an institution. One could
respond that in the situation of Geneva the authority of Scripture in
fact corresponded with the exposition and authority of Calvin, and that
this distinction thus could not have meant all that much. There will
always be people who speak in the name of God. The obvious conclu-
sion that little has therefore changed is, though, only partially true. It
is valid to the extent that in the concrete situation of Geneva Calvins
dominance was indisputable. But strikingly enough, there was at the
same time a change in the view of authority. No longer were antiquity
or tradition decisive arguments. Against Sadoleto Calvin argues that
an appeal to Scripture has more weight than an appeal to tradition or
antiquity. In other words, the authority of Scripture is not dependant
on the church, despite the famous words of Augustine that he would
not have believed the Gospel if the authority of the church had not led
him to that. Calvin denies that the authority of the church is the foun-
dation for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. According to
him, Augustine meant that the moral authority of the church was for
him the impetus for turning to Christ.194
The second front that Calvin has in mind with these terms is the
spiritualistic disparagement of the concrete text of the Bible.195 Earlier
in this chapter we briey mentioned IICor. 3:6; among the spiritualists
the text of the Bible was the dead letter and the Bible was seen as
subordinate to the immediate revelation of the Spirit. In Calvins eyes
this is an improper devaluation of Scripture as divine revelation. For
his defence he reaches back to the premise that the words of Scripture

193 See A. Ganoczy/S. Scheld, Die Hermeneutik Calvins. Geistesgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen

und Grundzge, Wiesbaden 1983, 1115.

194 Inst. 1.7.3.
195 Inst. 1.9.2.
 ways of knowing 97

speak in clear and ordinary language. There is a clarity that stands in

shrill contrast to the randomness at which one arrives as a result of the
allegorical exegesis of the spiritualists. On both fronts Calvin maintains
that God works through Word and Spirit. The Spirit binds itself to the
concrete text of the Bible, although this does not mean, as this was
interpreted against Rahtmann by the later Lutherans, that the work of
the Spirit is wholly absorbed in the Word. The Bible as the Word of
God proceeds from the work of the Spirit, and continues in union with
the Spirit, but in involvement with the Word the Spirit does not cease
to exercise its own identity. The Bible cannot be understood by man
except by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Further in this section we
will return once again to how far-reaching, but also how productive it
is to think about knowledge of God from a correlation of Word and
Spirit.
First however we must return to the historical context of Calvins
regard for the Bible. The issue here is not the question of the human-
ity of the Scriptures, but the question of where its authority ultimately
rests: in the authority of the church, or in an individual, inner revela-
tion? Against opponents who in his eyes undermined the authority of
Scripture for various reasons, Calvin argued that there were enough
grounds why the Scriptures themselves commanded respect.196 He did
not hesitate to employ the usual apologetic arguments against scep-
tics: the Bible contains the ground of its authority within itself, in the
majesty which is manifest in these writings.197 At the same time he
emphasises that the question of the authority and trustworthiness of
the Bible at its deepest cannot be decided in this way. The solid cer-
tainty in the hearts of the patriarchs that they were dealing with God
himself in the revelation which had been bestowed upon them can,
we are told, only be traced back to God himself. The certainty that
is obtained in encounters with the divine Word exceeds any derived
from human thought and opinions. Scripture is, at its heart, autopis-
tos.198 It is worth the eort to see just what Calvin says here. In the
Scripture he experiences God as an active, working person. The high-
est proof for the theopneustie of Scripture is derived from the character

196 Inst. 1.7.4.

197 Inst. 1.8.2. Calvin lists, for example, the antiquity of the Bible texts, the miracles
which attest to the truth of the proclamation, the fulllment of prophecies, the provi-
dential preservation of the books of the Bible, and the unanimous feeling of the church
regarding the truth of Scripture.
198 Inst. 1.7.5.
98 chapter two

of him whose word it is.199 Or stronger yet, the basis of trust and con-
dence lies in experience that transcends human reason and conjecture.
In faith there occurs a moment at which trust and certainty come about
in an immediate and intuitive manner, beyond anything that man can
adduce in apologetics. A somewhat longer quotation will not be out of
place:
For though in its own majesty it has enough to command reverence,
nevertheless it then begins to truly touch us when it is sealed in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on
our own judgement nor that of others, that the Scriptures are from God;
but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assuredas
much so as if we beheld the divine image impressed upon itthat it
came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.
We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement,
but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for
us to estimate we feel a divine energy living and breathing in itan
energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly, indeed,
and knowingly, but more vividly and eectually than could be done by
human will or knowledge.200

What is striking in this citation is that Calvin draws a contrast between

a conclusion in the basis of human judgements and arguments on the
one hand, and the certainty from the majesty of Scripture on the other.
Certainty arises as a consequence of the experience of divine activity.
The certainty that the faithful have regarding divine origin of Scrip-
tures is compared by Calvin with the manner in which we are imme-
diately certain of the dierence between black and white. It is beyond
all doubt.201 It is knowledge which imposes itself without the interven-
tion of reasoning or argumentation. In Calvins discussion the decisive
factor is that man is subject to an energy, carried along by the force of

199 Inst. 1.7.4: Itaque summa Scripturae probatio passim a Dei loquentis persona

sumitur.
200 Inst. 1.7.5: Etsi enim reverentiam sua sibi ultro maiestate conciliat, tunc tamen

demum serio nos acit quum per Spiritum obsignata est cordibus nostris. Illius ergo
virtute illuminati, iam non aut nostro, aut aliorum iudicio credimus, a Deo esse Scrip-
turam: sed supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus acsi ipsius
Dei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos uxisse.
Non argumenta, non verisimilitudines quaerimus quibus iudicium nostrum incumbat:
sed ut rei extra aestimandi aleam positae, iudicium ingeniumque nostrum subiicimus
sed quia non dubiam vim numinis illic sentimus vigere ac spirare, qua ad paren-
dum, scientes quidem ac volentes, vividius tamen et ecacius quam pro humana aut
volutate, aut scientia trahimur et accendimur.
201 Inst. 1.7.2.
 ways of knowing 99

Gods activity; in short, human receptivity is key in this discussion.202

H. Bavinck correctly and keenly formulates it that Christian theology
takes the believing subject as its point of departure.203 That is already
true for Calvin when he nally points to the inner testimony of the
Holy Spirit. It is however important to see how many, and what terms
are used to specify the reality of this subject. Man is the one who in the
depths of his being hears, perceives, receives, is carried along, aectively
moved through what is heard.
The answer to the question of how the believer can be certain of the
authority of Scripture is in fact found in the foregoing. The battlefront
that Calvin has in mind is not that of historical criticism, although in his
immediate environment there were sceptical voices to be heard which
asked how people could be historically certain that Moses and the
prophets had spoken for God. His remarks are directed against the view
that the acknowledgement of the authority of the Bible depends on the
judgement of the church. In the encounter with Scripture there is an
experience that exceeds all argumentation. From the human side, this
acknowledgement is however the consequence of the inner testimony of
the Spirit. The Spirit brings a believer to the certainty of the majesty of
this Word, but this certainty must be distinguished from the truth that
the Spirit binds upon the heart of man.204
In Book I of the Institutes Calvin discusses the subject of the testimony
of the Holy Spirit extensively in connection with the authority of the
Bible. For that reason Bavinck has accused Calvin and his followers of
standing at the beginning of a tradition in which the inward testimony
of the Spirit is involved exclusively with the authority of Scripture, and
is too little related to the signicance for faith and the life of faith as
a whole.205 Is Bavinck right? S.P. Dee and J. Veenhof have correctly
pointed out that at least in the Institutes the inward testimony of the

202 One should carefully note the verbs in Inst. 1.7.5: acere, obsignare, intueri,

subicere, sentire, vigere, spirare, trahere, accendere.

203 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I, Kampen 19062, 603604; ET, 564.
204 In Reformed orthodoxy this dierence is formulated as the dierence between

the authority of Scripture and certainty regarding the authority of the Scriptures. By
virtue of its inspiration, Scripture bears inspiration in itself; in the light of the Scriptures
the rm belief in this truth, that comes upon man of itself, is derived from the inner
testimony of the Spirit. See S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, Kampen 1918, 133.
205 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek I, 563. For a discussion of oldere Calvin

interpretations on this point, see W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin,
217. See also J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie. De openbarings- en schriftbeschouwing van
Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie, Amsterdam 1968, 494495.
100 chapter two

Holy Spirit is also discussed in relation to the question of the certainty

of salvation.206 The impression that the authority of the Bible takes on
a formal character with Calvin arose chiey when people reduced him
to the author of only one text, the Institutes. Anyone reading the Institutes
in relation to his sermons and commentaries will presently come to the
discovery that the work of the Spirit, the Spirit as teacher, is a constant
in Calvins thinking. The testimony of the Spirit is linked with all of the
content of faith, and with the course of a life of faith itself. Knowing
God is not just parroting the Bible; it is a learning process under the
active tuition of the Holy Spirit. It is therefore a distortion to appeal
to Calvin for the distinction between formal and material authority. For
him, belief in the divinity of Scripture is inseparable from the encounter
with God, who speaks as a person in these texts. To replace that with
a reference to the activity of the Spirit, who conrms the truth of these
texts in the heart of the faithful, is to go too far. Calvins position is
completely pneumatological. God speaks in these texts, shows his face,
opens his mouth,207 and gives his adoptive children certainty about this
truth. In order to have a correct picture, one must also bring in how
Calvin thinks about the certainty of faith and, last but not least, how
this testimony evidently functions in his commentariesthus not apart
from the content of Gods instruction. The way in which Calvin speaks
about the Scripture is identical to the way in which he speaks in Book
III of the Institutes with regard to the certainty of salvation. The things
which are expounded in Book I with respect to the whole of Scripture
as a source of knowledge of God return in connection with the point
of faith. Further, one can recall what was said previously in connection
with the metaphor of the mirror. When Calvin says that Scripture is
the mirror in which we recognise Christ, this image itself makes any
distinction between formal and material faith in the Scriptures impos-
sible. In one and the same act of looking into the mirror one also per-
ceives the image in the mirror.208 We therefore nd that there is good
reason to reject the opposition that is implied in the paired concepts of
formal and material authority. The way in which Calvin discusses the
authority of Scripture in Book I of the Institutes shows that this authority

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

136.
207 Inst. 1.9.3.
208 See once again the outstanding discussion in S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,

166.
 ways of knowing 101

comes to light in experience, and that it is conrmed by the Spirit in

that experience. It is not an a priori authority. In creation, in the per-
ceived order of things, in conscience and nally in the Scripture God
shows his face to man. Scripture acquires its authority, and certainty
grows, in the course of Gods dealings with man.209 Calvin arrives at his
characterisation of the authority of Scripture and its certainty precisely
through the indissoluble relation between Word and Spirit. The Bible
has authority because it, in all its parts, stands in the dynamic sphere of
inuence of the work of the Holy Spirit.
Of course there are obvious dierences in the present debate on
the Bible and certainty. While in contemporary biblical scholarship the
emphasis has come to lie on the historical process through which the
Bible took shape, and with that on the human form in which revelation
comes to us, in Calvin one nds hardly any specic attention for the
role of the human subject in the Bibles coming into being. To be sure,
he acknowledges that the personality and origins of the writers played
a fundamental role in the language and style they employed. He has no
problem pointing to certain faults. This is all possible, though, because
the human character of the Bible is not yet a charged issue. However
much Calvin may stresses that God makes use of the services of men
in his revelation, nowhere does he imply that the human subject should
receive an independent place in his theology as an active and shaping
subject. The roles are xed. The centre of gravity lies with God as sub-
ject of revelation, and man is the one who listens and gives heed to it.
The division of roles between God and man works through into the
metaphors that characterise the way the Bible is to be seen. The rev-
elation in the Old Testament is termed the fencing in which would
prevent the Jewish people perishing like the heathen nations.210 The
metaphor of the school, so beloved by Calvin, also ts in this context.
The believer must be a pupil of the Holy Scriptures. This is not a class
in which the students do experiments and make discoveries for them-
selves; they are there to listen attentively. Man must be prepared to
learn.211 All the way through to Calvins own biographical notes at the
beginning of his commentary on the Psalms we encounter the word
that describes this readiness to learn: docilitas.212 The development of

209 Dee refers to Comm. Acts 17:11, CO 48, 401.

210 Inst. 1.6.1.
211 Inst. 1.6.2.
212 CO 31, 21.
102 chapter two

docility in our time into a pejorative term is telling. That was not the
case with Calvin. The Bible is the school in which pure knowledge
about God can be learned. In short, the instruction that is given in rev-
elation and Scripture, the images and metaphors that are used, are not
grounded in human creativity, nor in chance historical circumstances;
they are so intended by God, and deliberately given.
Anyone who allows the foregoing to sink in will perhaps begin to
get a sense of what in the Reformed tradition has come to be termed
the Scripture Principle, and of the tremendous formative power of this
principle. Within the fence of Scripture God has said neither too little
nor too much, but precisely as much as is protable for man. It is a view
which has great consequences for both the borders and the content of
knowledge of God, as we will see in the course of these chapters. Every
deviation from this given content, every innovation is then a change
for the worse. Therefore one does not encounter a positive regard for
history and development in Calvin.213
We will pause for a moment to pose the often-heard question: can
this attitude toward the Bible be described as Biblicism?214 In view of
the short history of this concept it is certainly an anachronism, and an
unfortunate designation.215 Biblicist use of the Bible is associated with
a very simple and direct appeal to the Bible and a rejectionist attitude
toward hermeneutics. It is crystal clear that the term Biblicism cannot
be applied to Calvin in that sense. It is however also understandable
why this term is used in connection with Calvin. It is a later application
by a theology that has made an explicit issue of the humanity of the
Scriptures. In the second panel we therefore nd an entirely dierent
situation. For Karl Barth theology is something that man has to engage
in on his own responsibility, conscious of the humanity of the Scriptures
and in obedience to the Word of God that sounds therein. This making
an issue of the humanity of the Scriptures is not yet present in Calvin.

213 In this Calvin does not deviate from Renaissance culture. See Bouwsma, The

two faces of Humanism, A Usable Past, 37: As the retrospective prex in the familiar
Renaissance vocabulary of amelioration attestsrenascentium, reformatio, restoratio,
resititutio, renovatio, etc.it could only look backward for a better world.
214 For instance, Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, 1920, 4452.
215 The term Biblicism arose in reaction to historical criticism and is generally asso-

ciated with an attitude in which there is hardly any room for a conscious hermeneutic.
Calvin indeed has very much a conscious hermeneutic, and the problem of Scriptural
criticism played no role in his time. It goes without saying that Biblicism is not to be
confused with fundamentalism. See J. Veenhof, Orthodoxie und Fundamentalismus,
Praktische Theologie 29 (1994), 918.
 ways of knowing 103

Everything in the Bible is worth study because God has consciously

provided it for us. The Bible must be taken seriously and obeyed as
the revelation bestowed by God. In part this forms the background for
Calvins preference for a short and sober exegesis of the Bible. In order
to make progress in knowing God, the line must be kept short and taut.
It is in this context that the famous words come: omnis recta Dei cognitio
ab oboedentia nascitur.216 Right knowledge of God is born of obedience.
In our contemporary Western society the idea of obedience can
count on being received with a large dose of distrust. The extermina-
tion camps of the Second World War would not have been conceivable
without an underlying system that was kept going in part by a culture
of obedience. The anti-authoritarian experiments of the 1960s and the
uncertainty on the part of the generation of parents in the last few
decades not only reveal how dicult it is to unite freedom and restric-
tions, but also something of a collective trauma surrounding this con-
cept. When training in obedience is uncoupled from the simultaneous
shaping of personal, unrelinquishable responsibility of the individual,
an essential element of humanity is undermined. In this respect one
must also nd that the Reformation, with its Scripture Principle, fun-
damentally uncoupled authority from the church as institution. Calvin
does not deny that God works via means, and thus also through men.
Yet in relation to the preceding situation something has changed in the
place of the church. Its divine authority is no longer direct, but deriva-
tive, and that opens the door to discussion on the place of the church.
What does it mean that this concept of obedience surfaces in Calvins
discussion of the way to knowledge of God? It stands within the context
of the invitation to follow the direction that the Spirit points out to
faith in the Scripture. Concretely, that way leads to Christ. Obedience
obtains for the living word of God, through which men come further
than the confusing knowledge on the basis of nature, and further than
the barricade that the church erected in her cults and ceremonies.217
That is the context within which one must understand Calvins remarks
on obedience. But at the same time it is clear that the subjectivity
of man is poorly developed in this concept. It is a curtailment and
limitation if the role of man is discussed only in terms of obedience
and the space given to the creature in his answer to God.

216 Inst. 1.6.2.

217 Ibid.: aures tamen praecipue arrigere convenit ad verbum, ut melius prociat.
104 chapter two

2.8. Faith

2.8.1. A qualied concept of faith

In the preceding section Calvins concept of faith was discussed implic-
itly. It is time to make this explicit. A beginning can be found in Calvins
full denition of faith:
It is a rm and certain knowledge of the divine favour toward us,
founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our
minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.218
Each aspect of this well-considered denition deserves special attention.
First of all, it strikes us that the concept of faith is, from its inception,
a theological, content-lled denition. It is not limited to a formal
denition. Faith is dened by its content, namely Gods divine favour
towards us. Second, it is to be noted that the object of faith does not
simply coincide with God. It is, rather, Gods favour, founded in the
promise given in Christ. Faith has as its object Him who is sent by God
and the gifts bestowed in his person.
The focus on the person Jesus Christ has a polemic point, or so it
would appear in the discussion of the concept of faith. The dispute
concerns the concept of implicit faith, des implicita. One may consider
this concept as a theological solution to a pastoral problem which had
arisen for the church in the preceding centuries, with the Christianisa-
tion of Europe. This concept opens the way to argue that the benighted
folk by implication receive eternal salvation by submitting to the cultus
and rites of the church, even if they have only a very limited or dis-
torted understanding of the truths of salvation. Calvin has no sympathy
with this. Perhaps the fact that he himself was part of a culture in which
the standards for development and civilisation among the bourgeoisie
had risen sharply played a part in this.219 In any case, he can not see the
idea of implicit faith as other than a legitimisation for gross ignorance
and lack of knowledge. It conicts with the attempt to reform the whole
of society. Faith does not reside in ignorance, but in knowledge.
The sharpening that Calvin introduces in his concept of faith how-
ever goes still a step further. Faith does not focus on God as such, but
on the will of God. The object of faith is in fact that God, for the sake

218 Inst. 3.2.7.

219 H.A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought,
Philadelphia 1981, 6.
 ways of knowing 105

of reconciliation, is our merciful Father, and that Christ is given to us

for righteousness, sanctication and life.220 Calvin is conscious that he is
hereby stipulating the concept of faith theologically. He acknowledges
that in Biblical texts the concept of faith is also used in a much more
general sense. Still he quite deliberately chooses for a pointed concept
of faith that is dened by the concept of revelation. The content of faith
is not just the conviction that God exists, and just as little, how God is,
as He is in himself. Faith focuses on how God is as he is toward man, or, to
put it dierently, on Gods will.221
Yet this too is not sucient, and further specication is necessary.
According to Calvin, the focus of faith is not just any expression of
Gods will. Nor can that be the case. When Adam heard from God
that he would suer death, or when Cain heard the curse pronounced
on him, those were indeed expressions of Gods will, but at the same
time they are things at which man can only turn away. Faith is not
a formal concept, but is from the very outset a concept guided and
lled by the revelation of Gods mercy. Man will not rely upon curses
and threats, although they be expressions of Gods will; at such points
the threatened conscience nds no rest. Faith does not focus simply
on Gods will, but on His favour and mercy.222 In this context Calvin
calls on the concept of scopus, which can perhaps best be translated
as the target or point of faith. Christ is the point of faith, and this
point determines the direction of gaze. Faith then is only invited and
quickened when man has learned that there is salvation to be found
with God. Man learns this by looking to Christ and the good news he
brings. The true knowledge of Christ consists in receiving him as he is
oered by the Fathernamely, as invested with his Gospel. For, as he
is appointed as the end of our faith, so we cannot directly tend towards
him except under the guidance of the Gospel.223 According to Calvin,
in the incarnation of the eternal Son we have the deepest moment
of Gods descent toward us. This is the closest point where God has
shown himself in our reality as in a mirror, namely in the gure of

220 Inst. 3.2.2.

221 Inst. 3.2.6: Neque enim unum id in dei intelligentia agitur, ut Deum esse
noverimus, sed etiam, imo hoc praecipue, ut qua sit erga nos voluntate, intelligamus.
Neque enim scire quis in se sit, tantum nostra refert, sed qualis esse nobis velit.
222 Inst. 3.2.29.
223 Inst. 3.2.6: Haec igitur vera est Christi cognitio, si eum qualis oertur a Patre

suscipimus, nempe Evangelio suo vestitum: quia sicuti in scopum dei nostrae ipse
destinatus est, ita nonnisi praeeunte Evangelio recta ad eum tendemus.
106 chapter two

the Mediator. Further, it must be noted that the death of Jesus on the
cross is the sharpest facet of this mirror. Indeed, from the resurrection it
retrospectively becomes clear that Jesus Christ has assumed the condition
humaine in his death agony, has undergone the punishment which man
deserved, has endured the forces which imprisoned man. There the
chasm is deepest. At that deepest moment it is no longer visible that
Christ is the eternal Son. The pronouncement of Irenaeus that the
divinity of Christ is not active in His suering, but was as it were hidden
and at rest, is assumed by Calvin: the divine powers of Christ were
at that moment concealed.224 The light in this mirror comes from the
resurrection. Only then does the image become visible: Christ, who
takes the place of all, so that all can be included in fellowship with
God.225 In the resurrection God makes visible what really happened
on the cross. Even hereor perhaps precisely hereCalvin does not
shrink from appealing to the dramatic possibilities of the theatre as
a place where the spectators must be touched to the depths of their
hearts: The incomparable goodness of God his made visible before the
whole world in the cross of Christ, as in the most splendid theatre.226

2.8.2. Unio mystica

In the denition that Calvin gives for faith in Institutes 3.2.7, it becomes
clear that the content of the knowledge involved in faith is anchored in
Christs promise of the grace of God and that this knowledge is planted
in the believer through the Holy Spirit. The reference to the work of
the Spirit is essential: So long as we are without Christ and separated
from him, nothing which he suered and did for the salvation of the
human race is of the least benet to us.227 In Calvins characterisation
of the experience of faith we encounter both the experience of the
distance from God as well as Gods closeness. However, the experience
of proximity and community is decisive. While we in one place read

224 Comm. Luke 2:40, CO 45, 104: quatenus salutis nostrae interfuit divinam

suam potentiam quasi occultam tenuit Filius. Et quod dicit Irenaeus, quiescente divini-
tate passum fuisse, non modo de corporali morte interpretor, sed de illo incredibili
animae dolore et cruciatu, qui hanc illi querimonimam expressit, Deus meus, ut quid
me dereliquisti?
225 Inst. 2.12.3.
226 Comm. John 13:31, CO 47, 317: Nam in Christi cruce, quasi in splendidissimo

theatro incomparabilis Dei bonitas toti mundo spectata fuit.

227 Inst. 3.1.1.
 ways of knowing 107

that the gracious God shows himself in faith as indeed still high and
lifted up,228 further on we read the opposite: We expect salvation from
himnot because he stands aloof from us, but because ingrafting us
into his body he not only makes us partakers of all his benets, but
also of himself If you look to yourself damnation is certain: but
since Christ has been communicated to you with all his benets, so
that all which is his is made yours, you become a member of him, and
hence one with him. His righteousness covers your sinshis salvation
extinguishes your condemnation.229 As Bavinck has rightly observed,230
with these words we have landed in the midst of Calvins concept of
faith: the unio mystica. What Luther called the miraculous exchange231
takes place in the communion between Christ and men. Through faith
Christ takes up his dwelling in man.
That Christ is not external to us, but dwells in us, and not only unites
us to himself by an undivided bond of fellowship, but by a wondrous
communion brings us daily into closer connection, until he becomes
altogether one with us.232
There are several notable points in this important characterisation.
First, the present and eschatological elements of the knowledge of God
coincide. In faith, participation in the new reality is already a reality
now, and at the same time there is the potential for growth. Second,
what faith is about is anchored in the person of Christ. Christ is the
mediating person in whom man is again brought into fellowship with
God. But third and nally, I would call your attention to something
remarkable. The new reality is expressed in terms of corporeality and
growth. These are not the obvious categories of consciousness or of
personal encounter which one would expect to be used in describing
that which is new. The basis of the knowledge of God and its certainty
is not primarily cerebral, but expressly transcends that. The language
of the body has primacy. It is about powers that will be exercised. We
here encounter an element of Calvins view of the knowledge of God
that also permeates his teaching on the Lords Table and gives it its
peculiar colour. This will be discussed further in the fourth chapter.

228 Inst. 3.2.19.

229 Inst. 3.2.24.
230 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek III, Kampen 19102, 594.
231 M. Luther, WA 40 I, 443.
232 Inst. 3.2.24; quia Christus non extra nos est, sed in nobis habitat: nec solum

individuo societatis nexu nobis adhaeret, sed mirabili quadam communione in unum
corpus nobiscum coalescit in dies magis ac magis, donec unum penitus nobiscum at.
108 chapter two

For the rest, fellowship with Christ is not something about which
one can say nothing further. Calvins interest is primarily in the benet
that is found in faith in Christ. Christ and his benets is a typical
expression for Calvin. In fellowship with Christ man shares in the
benets which are contained in Christs person. Here is the one source
from which both justication and sanctication spring. According to
Dee, the terms des, unio mystica and iusticatio can be conceived as
purely logical distinctions within what is ultimately one and the same
reality.233 With Calvin, faith and knowledge of God are not formal
concepts, but are dened precisely in relation to their content. His is
a soteriological understanding of faith and knowledge.

2.8.3. Faith and certainty

In the preceding the work of the Spirit has been discussed several times.
The Spirit binds us with Christ, at the same time making man certain
of his own connection with Christ. But what kind of certainty and
condence is that which marks the knowledge vested in faith? We will
enter into that question in this section.
The work of the Spirit is the foundation for various aspects and
phases in the way faith proceeds. For the Spirit does not merely orig-
inate faith, but gradually increases it, until by its means he conducts
us into the heavenly kingdom, we are told.234 It is characteristic that
Calvin, within the context of this pronouncement about knowledge of
Gods election, contrasts the word that he uses to indicate the mind or
understanding, mens, with the Holy Spirit. The mind (or understand-
ing) is termed blind, stubborn, inclined to vanity. The human mind
may have originally been inclined to God, but once imprisoned in the
sphere of sin this capacity or keenness appears to be lost. That with
which man is equipped is simply inadequate; it has become blunt, lacks
acuteness. Therefore faith must come in the form of a gift. Calvin dis-
tinguishes steps or aspects in the work of the Spirit. The rst aspect is
illuminatio, enlightenment of the understanding. In illumination by the
Holy Spirit, man receives a new power of sight, as it were, aciem. The
second step is that the heart (or better, the soul), animus, here seen in
a more limited denition as the seat of the human aections and emo-

233 Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, 190194.

234 Inst. 3.2.33.
 ways of knowing 109

tions, is conrmed in the truth as something which applies to it.235 The

one work of the Spirit thus has a double eect, on understanding and
heart, intellectual and aective.236 In evaluating Calvins view of knowl-
edge of God, it is important to note that this work of the Spirit, both
in illumination of the understanding and the conrmation of this in the
heart, are both discussed in terms of experience.
As we cannot possibly come to Christ unless drawn by the Spirit, so
when we are drawn we are in both mind and spirit exalted far above our
own understanding. For the soul, when illuminated by him, receives as
it were a new eye, enabling it to contemplate heavenly mysteries, by the
splendour of which it was previously dazzled. And thus, indeed, it is only
when the human intellect is irradiated by the light of the Holy Spirit that
it begins to have a taste of those things which pertain to the kingdom
of God; previously it was too stupid and senseless to have any relish for
them.237
Human understanding itself is weak and incapable of grasping the
promises of the Gospel of on its own. Therefore it is rst necessary
that God through his Spirit makes these promises seen. In the midst
of the discussion of the concept of faith and the certainty of faith, it
becomes clear that it is not the concept of cognitio which must be used to
understand that knowledge which man can attain on his own initiative.
Man can attain knowledge of created reality through his faculties for
perception. The knowledge toward which faith is oriented however
transcends created reality. The knowing that is involved in faith is not
simply a matter of comprehending, comprehensio, but rather of tasting.238

235 Ibidem, Ergo singulare Dei donum utroque modo est des, et quod mens hominis
ad degustandam Dei veritatem pergatur, et quod animus in ea stabilitur. We here
follow R.A. Mullers view, in turn taken over from Stuermann. Animus can be used
as the equivalent of all the mental capacities, but used in connection with the term
mens, animus means all the aective parts of the human mental faculties, or that part
of the human mind that reaches out to that which is known. See R.A. Muller, The
Unaccommodated Calvin, 168.
236 Comm. Eph. 1:13, CO 51, 153: Respondeo, duplicem esse eectum Spiritus in

de, sicuti des duabus praecipue partibus continetur, nam et mentes illuminat, et
animos conrmat. Initium dei, est notitia: consummatio, est xa et stabilis persuasio
quae contrariam dubitationem nullam admittat.
237 Inst. 3.2.34: Quemadmodum ergo nisi Spiritu Dei tracti, accedere ad Christum

nequaquam possumus: ita ubi trahimur, mente et animo evehimur supra nostram ipso-
rum intelligentiam. Nam ab eo illustrata anima novam quasi aciem sumit, qua caelestia
mysteria contempletur, quorum splendore ante in seipsa perstringebatur. Atque ita qui-
dem Spiritus sancti lumine irradiatus hominis intellectus, tum vere demum ea quae ad
regnum Dei pertinent gustare incipit: antea prorsus ad ea delibanda fatuus et insipidus.
238 Inst. 3.2.14: Cognitionem dum vocamus, non intelligimus comprehensionem,
110 chapter two

The knowing comes from contact with a reality that one experiences
rather than understands. According to Calvin, in faith a conviction
of something which men can not understand presents itself. There
arises a degree of conviction and certainty which, he says, exceeds the
certainty that is involved in the knowing of normal human matters. In
this context we again encounter the concept of persuasio, familiar from
rhetoric. The knowledge which arises in faith is a fruit of conviction
by God. God is the rhetorician who inescapably places before us the
truth of salvation. Paul, when he spoke of the height, depth, length and
breadth of the love of God (Eph. 3) wanted to say that in faith we come
into contact with something innite, something which far surpasses all
ordinary understanding.239 The knowledge of which faith speaks, Calvin
says, is therefore more a matter of certainty than of comprehension.240
I would nd that at crucial points in his concept of knowledge of
God Calvin is not the intellectualist that he is so often accused of
being.241 The opposite is rather the case. Aective elements predomi-
nate. The moment of acceptance of the truth of faith is, we read, more
a matter of the heart than the head, of the aection than the intel-
lect.242 Trust, ducia, must not be considered as a closing phase on the
path of faith; on the contrary, it is the supporting element for the cog-
nitive in faith. When the grace of God is presented to our vision, our
truly perceiving its sweetness, and experiencing it in ourselves must
be the inevitable result. Put succinctly, experience surrounds and sur-
passes understanding. The encounter with the goodness of God calls
forth trust and open-heartedness on the part of man.243 In short, faith is
becoming convinced, persuasio, and as such that faith is a point of free-
dom. When the goodness of God is experienced, the freedom arises in
which one can surrender to it. Although the term voluntaristic brings

qualis esse solet earum rerum quae sub humanum sensum cadunt. Adeo enim superior
est, ut mentem hominis seipsam excedere et superare oporteat, quo ad illam pertingat.
Neque etiam ubi pertigit, quod sentit assequitur: sed dum persuasum habet quod
non capit, plus ipsa persuasionis certitudine intelligit quam si humanum aliquid sua
capacitate perspiceret.
239 Ibid.: Voluit enim signicare, modis onmibus innitum esse quod mens nostra

de complectitur, et genus hoc cognitionis esse omni intelligentia longe sublimius.

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

sione contineri.
241 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 171.
242 Inst. 3.2.8.
243 Inst. 3.2.15: Quae audacia nonnisi ex divinae benevolentiae salutisque certa

ducia nascitur.
 ways of knowing 111

with it the danger of easily becoming associated with decisionism and

therefore must be employed cautiously, the fact that the aective ele-
ment is the keynote in Calvins concept of the knowledge of God and
in that sense is denitive, still points in that direction. God is known as
the source of all good.
Faith has as its object something which exceeds all intellectual con-
cepts, in the sense of comprehension. It encompasses the whole human
person, with all his intellectual and aective faculties, and his will. This
does not, however, cancel out the idea of knowledge. Rather, it is knowl-
edge of and contact with a reality that men cannot comprehend, but
freely acknowledge.
The knowledge involved in faith thus implies a realisation of personal
involvement in the truths of salvation. This therefore implies a critique
on the late medieval distinction between des formata and des informis.
Faith is never a matter of intellectual armation alone; it is, from the
outset, more a matter of the heart than the head, more of the aective
faculties than understanding. The Spirit is directly present as a witness
that man is adopted as a child of God.244
Calvins discussion of the certainty of faith has moments of great
beauty. At the same time it must be noted that with his great attention
for the inwardness of faith and for self-investigation, Calvin sometimes
nds himself on thin ice. The journey inward here also serves the
distinction between true and false faith. Calvin explicitly mentions
forms of faith in which faith remains supercial. He lists the parable of
the sower (Luke 8:6) and Simon Magus (Acts 8:93). In these cases faith
means that persons are in some way impressed, in the same way one
might be impressed by a masterpiece.245 The impression is temporary,
and does not take root in the heart. Does Calvins theology, in which
man is turned back upon his own capacity to distinguish between
true and false faith, between the work of the Spirit in believers and
unbelievers, not very vulnerable, or outright dangerous? In Calvins call
to self-examination, does man not become both the protagonist and his
own audience, and is he not asked to assume an impossible distance
from himself in order to see what is real and what is hypocrisy?246

244 Inst. 3.2.8.

245 Inst. 3.2.10.
246 Bouwsma, John Calvin, 180 oers the critique that Calvin, in the call to examine

ones conscience, imposes on man the role of the contrite sinner, making it impossible
in advance to arrive at a moment of integration between role and reality. Spontaneity
112 chapter two

Election is the background for Calvins exposition of true faith; How

could it be otherwise?247 Calvin distinguishes two sorts of operations
by the Spirit. The operation of the Spirit in the reprobate is called
the inferior Spiritus operatio, which nevertheless exhibits considerable sim-
ilarity with the operation in believers. For a time the reprobate can
be subject to almost the same feeling as the elect, that even in their
own judgement there is no dierence between them.248 God can infuse
unbelievers with his grace, so far as his goodness can be felt without
the Spirit of adoption. In his concept Calvin does have the theological
category of temporary faith, which must not be identied with the con-
dence on the grounds of which the believer says Abba, father (Gal.
4:6).
With his discussion of the experience of the Spirit of God by these
two dierent groups, Calvin works himself into a tight corner theologi-
cally and pastorally. For the reprobate the discernment of grace is noth-
ing other than confused, muddled, a shadow of what is the lot of the
believers. Nevertheless he acknowledges that God is also experienced
by them as a reconciling God. They too accept the gift of reconcilia-
tion, although confusedly and without due discernment.249 The dier-
ence is that the reprobate never reach that full eect and fruition with
which God endows the elect.250 All told, we must say that Calvin, with
his call for self-examination (seipsos excutere), has laid the foundations for
a tradition in which the turn inward plays a greatnot to say all too
greatrole that is at odds with that other line of thought according to
which the apprehensive conscience must be directed toward Christ as
the mirror of Gods fatherly love and favour. For salvation it is not only
necessary that Christ has died for sinners in general, but also to know
that one has a share in that grace oneself. This certainty can be con-
rmed again through the testimony of a good conscience.251 To fairly
judge what Calvin had in mind, it is necessary to keep this succession
strictly in mind. When it comes to the foundation of salvation, faith
focuses only on the goodness of God, on the promises. This goodness is

is made very dicult, so that the person is continuously conscious of his or her own
conduct.
247 Inst. 3.2.11.
248 Inst. 3.2.11.
249 Ibid.: Merito tamen dicuntur reprobi Deum credere sibi propitium: quia donum

reconciliationis, licet confuse nec satis distincte, suscipiunt.

250 Inst. 3.2.11.
251 Inst. 3.14.18.
 ways of knowing 113

not only the starting point, but the end point. This does not, however,
detract from the fact that, once having achieved rest, someone is called
to take care in how this status as an adopted child of God works out in
practical terms. These works are, Calvin says, proofs of God dwelling
and reigning in us.252 Thus man is invited to assess his own practice of
life in the light of the work of the Spirit, his unity with Christ given in
faith.
With his invitation to self-examination Calvin indeed stands in a
longer tradition. It is apparent that in his years at the Collge Montaigu
he came into very direct contact with the piety encouraged by Modern
Devotion. This tradition of inwardness is continued in his own con-
cept of the knowledge of God. It is a rich tradition, because it bestows
attention on the way in which man inwardly relates to that which sur-
rounds him. If there is knowledge of God, then there is also something
to be experienced which will work itself out in a persons life, creating
a condence in this contact that is indissoluble. At the same time, in
Reformed Protestantism this tradition has led to the ultra-Reformed
form of spirituality, which is at odds with Calvins own admonition
to see Christ as the mirror of election. The succession can easily be
reversed:253 rst wanting to undergo an inner experience of adoption by
God, and thereafter daring to look to Christ as the image of a merciful
God.
In other words, there is a hidden revelation, a tasting of Gods sal-
vation that is shared only by Gods children. Calvin denies that the
reprobate really embrace Gods eternal will to grace; they remain at
the level of a eeting realisation of it.254 That is the one point of view
that he emphatically maintains, appealing to concrete examples from
the Bible. But now he turns to the other side and oers some pas-
toral commentary with the high adjectives in his denition of faith. In
Calvins theology psychological, pedagogical and theological elements
still form one whole. He says of faith that it is true and certain. But
who experiences that at all times? Calvin realises full well that the ame
of certainty does not always burn bright with believers. He acknowl-

252 Ibidem. See also Comm. IJohn 2:3, CO 55, 311: Tametsi enim suae quisque dei

testimonium habet ab operibus: non tamen sequitur illic fundatam esse, quum posterior
haec probatio instar signi accedat. Certitudo itaque dei in sola Christi gratia residet;
sed pietas en sanctitas vitae veram dem a cta et mortua Dei notitia discernit
253 Cf. R.C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith. Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther

and John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 222.

254 Inst. 3.2.12.
114 chapter two

edges that among believers too now and again doubt will arise about
whether this merciful God is for them. But now we suddenly hear that
this doubt should not be considered as a sign of a false faith. To the
vacillating he says that they conne [Gods mercy] within too narrow
limits.255 This grace indeed reaches others, but not themselves. Calvin
refers here to a gure from the Bible, with whom he gladly identies:
David. Contesting is possible, as the Psalms demonstrate, but faith is
not swallowed up in this chasm. As soon as a drop of true faith has
seeped into the heart, Calvin tells us that we begin to behold the face
of God as placid, serene and propitious.256 The eschatological streak
in Calvins theology and spirituality appears clearly with the certainty
of faith. Man is a pilgrim on his journey, and as he travels more closely
approaches Gods countenance. Ignorance yields slowly.257 The believer,
still in the earthly body, is like someone in a dungeon, who sees the
sun enter his prison only through a high window. A sense of limitation
dominates this image. Nevertheless, there is a radiance by which he is
illumined.
Thus, in this existence knowledge of God can only be obtained in
part. In connection with the image of the dungeon, Calvin takes up the
metaphor of the mirror from ICor. 13, to which we already referred.258
The nature of the certainty of faith that is mans share in this life is
related to the fact that man still leads an earthly existence. As we
already saw, according to Calvin corporeality and mundanity imply
imperfection. The human condition means a limitation in respect to
spiritual things, through which it is impossible to fully perceive what
is innite, and through which it becomes necessary that we have to
be taught continually. Life on earth implies a ruditas which makes it
impossible to approach perfection.259
We have previously discussed the eschatological orientation of Cal-
vins theology in this context. It can be seen at countless points in his
commentaries and sermons. It is not without reason that Calvin can so
strongly identify with Biblical gures from the Old testament, who lived
with the promise of fellowship with God through Christ, but had this
fellowship in hope, in spe.260 Faith possesses the content of the promise

255 Inst. 3.2.15.

256 Inst. 3.2.19.
257 Comm. in epistolam Pauli Ad Romanos, 26.
258 Inst. 3.2.20.
259 Inst. 3.2.20.
260 Inst. 2.10.11.
 ways of knowing 115

in the mode of hope. That did not change with the appearance of
Christ. In a certain sense the believer has indeed passed from death to
life, but it must not be inferred from that that he already possesses the
benets that are contained in Christ. Calvin here reminds his reader of
IJohn 3:2. Although we know that we are Gods children, all is not yet
revealed until we see God as He is. Therefore, although Christ oers
us in the Gospel a perfect fullness of spiritual blessings, fruition remains
in the keeping of hope, until we are divested of corruptible esh, and
transformed into the glory of him who has gone before us.261
In the light of the foregoing, it is understandable why Calvin links
faith and hope so closely with one another. Faith hopes that God will
full the promises, promises that are grasped in hope. According to
Calvin, faith has hope in eternal life as its companion.262

2.9. The limits and benet of knowledge of God

Finally, at the end of this chapter on Calvins doctrine of revelation, I

want to indicate one striking feature which has major consequences for
the content of the knowledge of God. Human knowledge in faith is a
limited knowledge. In the preceding sections we discussed the function
of the metaphor of the mirror. God reveals himself in various mirrors,
which each have dierent qualities. The mirrors in which God makes
himself knownthe natural order, Scripture, Jesus Christhave both
negative and positive functions. Positively, this means that God will
bind his creations to the revelation given. Only by concentration on
these mirrors will meaningful knowledge to be obtained. Negatively this
means that man must not attempt to go beyond the mirrors given him.
Man must not desire to contemplate God outside of the ways in which
God oers himself.
We can now summarise: according to Calvin, knowing God is from
the outset a practical matter, focused directly on the human being
as an individual person. It begins with man permitting himself to be
addressed in conscience, in his encounter with the natural world, in
his inner life, in the Word, and most important at the point where God

261 Inst. 2.9.3: Quanvis ergo praesentem spiritualium bonorum plenitudinem nobis

in Evangelio Christus oerat, fruitio tamen sub custodia spei semper latet, donec
corruptibili carne exuti, transguremur in eius qui nos praecedit gloriam.
262 Inst. 3.2.42.
116 chapter two

speaks: fellowship with Christ, and the gifts contained in Him. It is God
who, through his Spirit, invites man to begin on this path, and to move
toward ever fuller knowledge. It is a way that lasts a lifetime, a pil-
grims journey that becomes concrete in obedience, in worship, in the
certainty of faith, reverence and love: The knowledge of God which
we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satised with empty
speculation, only utters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove
substantial and fruitful wherever it is duly perceived, and rooted in the
heart.263 This path is not described by Calvin as intellectual acceptance
of truths on the authority of others. By its very nature, knowledge of
God is not limited to the cerebral. On the contrary; what comes from
God does something with man, touches his aective faculties to their
depths and calls forth a diversity of experiences. The Lord is mani-
fested by his perfections. When we feel their power within us, and are
conscious of their benets, the knowledge must impress us more vividly
than if we merely imagined a God whose presence we never felt.264
Knowledge of God does indeed include the intellectual, the concep-
tual, and at the same time is more than understanding. Knowing God
is, at its apex, aective. The Spirit moves soul and senses and opens the
way forward.

263 Inst. 1.5.9.

264 Ibidem.
 chapter three

GOD: JUDGE AND FATHER

3.1. Utility and the doctrine of God

The previous chapter describes how man arrives conceptually at knowl-

edge of God, and directly connected with that, what the nature of that
knowledge is. Answering the question of the way to acquire knowl-
edge of God did not appear easily possible without giving a provi-
sional answer to the question of the content of that knowledge. Implic-
itly it appears that the distinction which entered the conceptual sys-
tem of Protestant orthodoxy in the early 17th century, namely the dis-
tinction between des qua and des quae, between the act of faith and
the content of faith, must be regarded as inadequate.1 The miscon-
ception that faith as an attitude, as an act, can be separated from
the content of faith very quickly arises. In the previous chapter it
was absolutely clear that Calvins concept of faith, or, to be more
precise, his concept of knowing God, can not be separated from the
content, namely Christ and all the good things that the believer can
count on in fellowship with this Lord. In the context of fellowship
with Christ, knowing has the connotation of sealing, that is to say,
it engages the heart, the intellect is grounded in the aective, satu-
rated in trust. This chapter is a further elaboration of the content, or
the contents, of human knowledge of God. What are the features of
God as he appears in the mirror of Calvins theology? What are the
most important metaphors and images, and how do they relate to one
another? Is there actually a dark and threatening side to Calvins image
of God?

1 According to Karl Barth, KD I/1, 248; ET, 236, this distinction is already to

be found in Augustine, De Trinitate XIII, 2, 5, but it apparently only came to be

employed as a methodological distinction with J. Gerhard in his Loci theologiae (1610).
From that time the concept has been part of the standard armamentarium of dog-
matics, though not without risk. Barth correctly notes that the distinction indicates
the dialectic between faith and the object of faith, but contributes nothing to further
reection.
118 chapter three

Doctrines regarding God are not known for being the most fascinat-
ing part of dogmatics; they deal with matters which absolutely fail to
touch man in his day to day existence. It appears to be as the adage
which Luther uses in De Servo Arbitrio says: Quae supra nos, nihil ad
nos.2 This maxim, originally attributed to Socrates and included in
Erasmus in his collection of proverbs,3 is used by Luther as a warning
not to become engrossed with the hidden Counsel of God. Only the
deus revelatus, the revealed God, matters for man, not the hidden God,
the deus absconditus. One could say that the traditional curiositas motif
returns in a new shape in Reformation theology.4 In both the adage
cited from Luther, and in Calvins theology one can discern the desire
to concentrate on what really concerns man in his relation to God,
and touches human existence directly. With Calvin, this leads to what
is sometimes is termed his Biblicism: he wishes to strictly limit himself
to that doctrine which God in his wisdom had determined to grant.
Does he succeed in this? What we at least must say is that Calvin had
the intention not to take speculation as a point of departure. To what
degree he really succeeds in this, and to what extent such an enter-
prise is really possible, or even desirable, is another question. In the
second panel we will encounter a view of systematic theology that, seen
in the light of Calvins vision of theology, is much more speculative. On
the one hand it is much more modest in its acknowledgement of the
human status of doctrine; on the other it is more speculative because,
in its conception of fullling a regulative function, it ventures to the
limits of the discussion. That, however, will be dealt with later. I now
will simply note that Calvin, seen subjectively, believed that the eort
to maintain sobriety and moderation was a matter of obedience to the
Gospel. One repeatedly encounters such exhortations to observe limits
as a methodological rule, particularly in the case of doctrines involving
angels and devils. Since the Holy Spirit always instructs us in what is
useful, but altogether omits, or only touches cursorily on matters which
tend little to edication, of all such matters it is our duty to remain in
willing ignorance.5 The word willing reveals where his heart lies. He

2 WA 18, 685.
3 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Adagiorum Chiliades (1536). Ausgewhlte Schriften, hrsg. Von
W. Welzig, Bd. 7, Darmstadt 1972, 414.
4 E.P. Meijering, Calvin wider die Neugierde. Ein Beitrag zum Vergleich zwischen reforma-

torischem und patristischem Denken, Nieuwkoop 1980 and H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam
curiositatem. Ein Kapitel der Theologie zwischen Seelenwinkel und Weltall, Zrich 1974.
5 Inst. 1.14.3.
 god: judge and father 119

prefers to stay away from questions which it is not given to man to be

able to answer, and is, we must say, correspondingly angry when in the
polemics on double predestination logical consequences were imputed
to his position which he himself did not wish to draw.
This call for discretion and the acknowledgement of limits does
not stand by itself. The determination of limits is not a goal in itself,
nor an expression of a general timidity, but is directly linked with the
practical and spiritual utility of the content of faith. Knowledge must be
useful, we hear time and again. Knowing must result in advancement,
in worship of and life with God.6 In a manner which is reminiscent
of the rst edition of Melanchthons Loci Communes, Calvin states that
man only seeks God in the proper way when he curbs his curiosity
and worships rather than investigates Gods being. The correct path for
knowledge of God is to see Him in his works, in which he approaches
man, reveals and in a certain manner shares Himself.7
The relation between knowledge of God and experience is so strong
in Calvin that in contemporary Calvin studies a direct line is indeed
drawn from Calvin to Schleiermacher.8 In one of the few places in the
Institutes where what are termed the perfections of God are discussed,
he says for instance that knowledge of God consists more in a vivid
actual impression than empty lofty speculation.9 The context makes
clear what Calvin here views as being involved in the impression. First,
discussing Exodus 34:6, he says that the Bible is the mirror in which
God shows his image to man in the clearest way. Next he asserts that
all these qualities of God can also be experienced in the created world.
That is an assertion which may strike us as very strange, accustomed as
we are to thinking of things in an instrumental, and sometimes natu-
ralistic manner. Can man indeed really experience Gods perfections in
the physical world which surrounds us? According to Calvin, we can.

6 Inst. 1.14.4: tenendam esse unam modestiae et sobrietatis regulam, ne de

rebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamus quam
quod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum. Alterum, ut in lectione Scripturae, iis continenter
quaerendis ac meditandis immoremur quae ad aedicationem pertinent: non curiositati
aut rerum inutilium studio indulgeamus. Et quia Dominus non in frivolis questionibus,
sed in solida pietate, timore nominis sui, vera ducia, sanctitatis ociis erudire nos
voluit, in ea scientia acquiescamus.
7 Inst. 1.5.9.
8 8. B.A. Gerrish, Theology within the Limits of Piety Alone: Schleiermacher and

Calvins Notion of God in: idem, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on Reformation
Heritage, Edinburgh 1982, 196207.
9 Inst. 1.10.2.
120 chapter three

The qualities listed in Exodus do not involve only a propositional truth

delivered to us, but are conrmed in the experience that the believer
gains from human experience and the world, from nature and history.10
With experience as his teacher (experientia magistra), man once again dis-
covers the denitive features in the portrait of God.11
Subsequently, for Calvin it is simply not understandable that that
which is said about God should leave man unmoved. Anyone who
comes into contact with God also encounters himself. Repeatedly we
come upon the methodological principle of bipolarity to which we
already referred in the previous chapter. Both the terms with which
Gods qualities are characterised (goodness, wisdom, righteousness,
judgement and mercy), and the images or metaphors which refer to
God as a person (source, judge, Lord and Father), can be considered as
one focus in an ellipse. To that corresponds the second focus, namely
the answer and attitude on the human side.
Knowledge of God is thus useful knowledge. But what is useful? The
answer to the question of whether something is useful depends greatly
on culture. Use is a qualication derived from a fundamental system
with its acknowledged norms and values. If that fundamental system is
an anthropology which supposes that relation to God is by denition
not part of being human, then it at the same time decides that God
is unnecessary or even undesirable. It will become clear that the basic,
theocratic system which Calvin had in mind is fundamentally dierent
from a basic system that threatens to reduce utility to economic value.
For Calvin, that which does justice to the correct relation between
God and man, or which promotes fellowship between man and God,
and which motivates man to obedience and worship is useful.12 For
instance, in Calvins second sermon on Job 33 we can hear that which

10 Inst. 1.5.9: Atque hic rursus observandum est, invitari nos ad Dei notitiam, non

quae inani speculatione contenta in cerebro tantum volitet, sed quae solida futura sit et
fructuosa si rite percipiatur a nobis, radicemque agat in corde. A suis enim virtutibus
manifestatur Dominus: quarum vim quia sentimus intra nos et beneciis fruimur,
vividius multo hac cognitione nos aci necesse est quam si Deum imaginaremur cuius
nullus ad nos sensus perveniret.
11 See also W. Balke, The Word of God and Experientia according to Calvin in:

W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Ecclesiae Doctor, Kampen 1980, 1931.

12 Inst. 1.5.9: Unde intelligimus hanc esse rectissimam Dei quaerendi viam et aptis-

simum ordinem: non ut audaci curiositate penetrare tentemus ad excutiendam eius

essentiam, quae adoranda potius est, quam scrupulosius disquirenda: sed ut illum in
suis operibus contemplemur quibus se propinquum nobis familiaremque reddit, ac quo-
dammodo communicat.
 god: judge and father 121

is understood as useful in the rst panel of this study. At verse 12

(God is greater than man), Calvin notes that it is not sucient to
confess that God is almighty, that He has made the world and that
He guides things and holds them in his hand. Those are only confessions
volages, empty words. These confessions are of no use to us if we do
not move beyond them. According to this sermon it is a matter of his
confession regarding God having an immediate eect on the manner
in which a person relates to God. Thus, on the human side Gods
majesty translates into awe and obedience. If we declare God good, in
whatever He does with us, then we accept his will, and we confess his
righteousness. If that has a real, practical signicance, then we maintain
that God never subjects us to anything unjustied or without reason.13
Yet Calvins conviction that all that happens is in one way or another
willed by God and has a purpose and sense, also has its shadow side,
which we would rather not accept. This shadow side is that Calvin has
the inclination to seek an apparent reason for everything that occurs.
Disasters, illnesses, adversity, good fortune: everything is immediately
translated into punishment, or discipline, or blessing or undeserved
grace. We will return to this further in this chapter (3.8).
This constant focus on the practical use of the knowledge connected
with faith is linked with another aspect of this concept, namely the anti-
speculative tenor. The anti-speculative tenor and the usus motif are like
the head and tail of a coin.

3.2. The anti-speculative tenor

What is the background of this anti-speculative trait in Calvins

thought? Precisely this theme invites consideration in a theological-his-
torical context. Bouwsma points out that the focus on experience and
useful knowledge in Calvins thought ts well in the anti-speculative
mood of the Renaissance.14 His explicit anti-speculative statements can
be understood against the background of the diverse impulses in the
intellectual climate in which Calvin developed and played a role. For

13 CO 35, 62: Voila donc ceste grandeur de Dieu comme elle doit estre recognue,

cest quil ait toute authorite de faire de nous ce que bon lui semblera.
14 See Bouwsma, John Calvin, 150161, idem, Calvinism as Renaissance Artifact in:

T. George (ed.), John Calvin and the Church. A Prism of Reform, Louisville, Kentucky 1990,
2841.
122 chapter three

instance, in the sphere of French humanism in which he moved, the

critique of speculative knowledge, devoid of any practical benets, was
widely shared. In this connection it is also useful to place Calvins think-
ing against the background of the spiritual and philosophical-theologi-
cal legacy of Scotism and Modern Devotion. He came in contact with
both as a student at Collge de Montaigu. But precise lines of inuence
can hardly be proven. Several decades of research into late medieval
backgrounds for Calvin have indeed produced a mass of suggestions,
but little concrete evidence of direct inuences.15 That does not detract
from the fact that one can say there is in fact a congruence of convic-
tions, and that particularly impulses surface that are to be associated
with the via moderna. Behind the distinction between the via antiqua and
via moderna as diering directions in the late-medieval debate stands the
reconsideration of the relation between God and the world. Charac-
teristic of the via moderna, as opposed to the via antiqua, is the idea that
the relation between God and the world should no longer be thought
of in terms of necessity. The theology of Thomas Aquinas and Anselm
is still dominated by a powerful trust in the possibility of ratio, thought,
penetrating the truth of Gods existence and essence on the basis of
the created world. Or, going in the other direction, conclusions based
on a consideration of God as the highest being, of drawing conclusions
in a deterministic manner regarding nature and sacred history, the via
moderna gives way to a view in which the relation of God to the world

15 For an overview of the present state of the matter, see H.A. Oberman, Initia

Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins Reformation in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae
Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (Mi.) 1994, par-
ticularly the section The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit, 117127. The evidence is not
yet present to prove the suggestion of direct dependence upon, for instance, the Sco-
tist inuenced John Major at the Collge de Montaigu, as proposed by K. Reuter,
Das Grundverstndnis der Theologie Calvins unter Einbeziehung ihrer geschichtlichen Abhngigkeiten,
Neukirchen 1963 and by T.F. Torrance, Knowledge of God and Speech about him
according to John Calvin in: idem, Theology in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 7698,
part. 8184. Oberman himself also seems to have become more cautious with regard to
a direct contact between Major and Calvin. See the paper Die Extra-Dimension in
der Theologie Calvins, dating from 1966, in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach
Genf, Gttingen 1986, 275: Wohlmglich hat er [sc. Calvin] unter dem gelehrten
Johannes Major studiert. In his Initia Calvini Oberman limits himself to a clus-
ter of concepts that belong to the Scotist legacy and could in part form a key to the
understanding of Calvins order of salvation. The argument that I make in this study
to understand Calvins theology as a concept in which the invitation of God to man
is central, and the believer is called to hold fast to the mercy of God appearing in the
mirror of Christ, ts into this pattern.
 god: judge and father 123

is determined by his will.16 When God and the world could no longer
thought of only in terms of a hierarchy of being, this had consequences
for knowledge of both the natural world, and for knowledge concerning
salvation. To what degree this separation really stimulated freedom for
empirical investigation or formed a condition for the creation of moder-
nity, will not be entered into here. It can however be said that this
emancipation in late-medieval theology led to a reduction in the extent
of theological knowledge accepted on philosophical grounds. Knowl-
edge acquired by speculative means no longer had a place unless it was
conrmed by revelation.17 Church and theology were thrown back on
the revelation of God. Calvins theology, and certainly his doctrines of
God, stand closer to the via moderna than to the via antiqua. As this chap-
ter continues we will again discuss this with the doctrine of election and
Calvins conict with Bolsec in mind.
Calvins remarks concerning limits and useful knowledge are in a pri-
marily theological context. Apparently closely related to Kants adage
sapere aude, in which thinking reects on its own limits and possibili-
ties, in Calvin we nd the phrase nostrum vero est ad sobrietatem sapere.18
The argument for accepting such limits is however fundamentally dif-
ferent. With Calvin it is God who in his word sets a boundary, and not

16 According to Terminist logic, linguistic structures are human constructs which

only acquire their meaning within a certain context. According to the dominant view
in modalist logic, such linguistic structures belonged to the nature of things. Terminist
logic leads to a dierent view of Aristotelian categories. Only substance and quality
are still considered as res permanentes; quantity, relation, movement, place and time are
descriptions of a situation in which quality and substance nd themselves. A universal
concept, for instance the term rational being in the sentence Socrates is an rational
being, refers to nothing which exists outside of the concrete individual, in this case
Socrates. See W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars, 198201.
17 For this development, see, among others, H.A. Oberman, Via Antiqua and Via

Moderna. Late medieval prolegomena to early Reformation Thought, Journal for the
History of Ideas 48 (1987), 2340, m.n. 2628. According to a now long outmoded picture
of medieval theology and philosophy, this further distinction led to a skeptical attitude
in philosophy and to deism in theology. Moreover, the development was thought to
have had a direct consequence for the idea of God Almighty as a potentia absoluta
who worked in a capricious and arbitrary manner. Further on in this chapter we
will demonstrate that in his theology Calvin left room for acknowledging that Gods
governance sometimes takes on a form that cannot be reconciled with the confession of
His goodness. At the same time his concepts of providence and election reect the fact
that for his knowledge of God man must keep to what is presented to him in Scripture
and in Christ. In terms of the paired concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, for
his knowledge of God the believer is referred to what God has ordained as the potentia
ordinata.
18 Inst. 1.15.8: it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness.
124 chapter three

man who is to reect on the boundaries of his own possibilities. God

treats sparingly of his essence to keep us within the bounds of soberness,
Calvin writes at the beginning of the chapter on the Trinity. The things
which God indeed says are useful, because they indicate a boundary,
and indicate mans proper place.19 In short, for Calvin the resistance to
speculation does not spring primarily from a general, epistemological-
theoretical concern, but is immediately religious in its basis.
The idea of a boundary has, as we have previously noted, a double
function. On the one hand a border is something man should not wish
to transgress; on the other hand the border encloses that which can
indeed be known about God. Or put in other terms, with the metaphor
which was discussed in the second chapter, the boundary is formed by
the multiplicity of mirrors in which God himself appears and can be
seen by man, and reaches in this existence. To what degree does God
make himself knowable?

3.3. Partial knowability

How much does man actually know of God? A distinction frequently

made by Calvin in connection with the content of human knowledge
of God is that God has not revealed what He is (quid sit), but only
what He is like towards us (qualis sit).20 In recent dogmatics this dis-
tinction has been interpreted from various angles in such a way as to
open the door for the idea that there is still something more real hid-
den behind the revelation given.21 In his doctrine of election Karl Barth
expresses the fear that referring to Christ as the speculum electonis has
more a pastoral signicance than that it must be taken seriously theo-
logically. The real electing God is after all hidden behind this mirror,
and that is threatening.22 In this connection Berkouwer has spoken of a
shadow that lay over the doctrine of election,23 and this characterisation
pales in comparison with the crushing diagnosis pronounced by Max

19 Inst. 1.13.1.
20 Inst. 1.2.1. See also Inst. 1.10.2.
21 See for example H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods. Een dogmatisch hermeneutische

studie over de antropomorsmen van de Heilige Schrift, Kampen 19693, 111. See also K. Barth,
KD II/1, 208; ET, 185186.
22 KD II/2, 68; ET, 63.
23 G.C. Berkouwer, De Verkiezing Gods, Kampen 1955, 11, 25. ET, Divine Election. Studies

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

 god: judge and father 125

Weber: pathetischer Unmenschlichkeit.24 Later in this chapter, in connection

with the doctrine of election, we will return to this question. However, it
may serve as a warning for us, living in a dierent cultural and theolog-
ical landscape, that Calvin absolutely does not appear to be conscious
of the possibility that the discrepancy between what of Gods Counsel
which is concealed from human knowledge and what has been given
to man in revelation could be interpreted in terms of real and unreal.
The distinction serves primarily to bar speculation about God, outside
of his own self-revelation. With this negative attitude in regard to the
question of whether we can know what God is, Calvin stands in a long
and much-frequented tradition.25 The background is in part formed by
the tradition of Aristotelian teaching on categories. It is fundamental
for every being that it is a substance, something. The remaining cat-
egories answer questions about all sorts of aspects of that being: for
instance, quantity, quality, its relation to other beings, the place that it
assumes. The rst and most important category is that of substance,
that which makes a thing a particular thing. It is a question of what
something is, and what denes its individuality.26 That which can be
answered with regard to created things is not able to be determined
with relation to God, namely quidditas. Nor, we are given to understand
by Calvin, is this something which concerns man. What does matter for
human knowledge of God is what God has thought it tting to reveal
of himself, quid eius naturae conveniat scire,27 how He is disposed to and
conducts himself toward man and his world. Calvins interest lies more
with Gods acts than with Gods essence. It is therefore striking that the
explicit discussion of the doctrine of God remains limited. In the rela-
tively little that Calvin does say on the subject, Ex. 3:13, where Gods

24 M. Weber, Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (19041905)

in: M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung, Hamburg 19754, 122: In
ihrer pathetischen Unmenschlichkeit mute diese Lehre nun fr die Stimmung einer
Generation, die sich ihrer grandiosen Konsequenz ergab, vor allem eine Folge haben:
das Gefhl einer unerhrten inneren Vereinsamung des einzelnen Individuums.
25 See for instance John of Damascus, De orthodoxa de, Liber 1, cap. 4, PG 94, 797.

See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima pars, q1, a.7. The emphasis on
the innite dierence between God and man does not serve here, as we have said,
to undermine the revelation received. It is a distinction that we nd, for instance, in
Thomas Aquinas when he asks of man is able to know God per essentiam. Thomas rejects
this view. God is known by man only in his eects. The names which are applied to him
indeed do refer to his being, and do to that extent predicate God as substantialiter, but
with regard to the modus signicandi.
26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book VII, 1.
27 Inst. 1.2.2: what things are agreeable to his nature.
126 chapter three

holiness and majesty are prominent, takes a prominent place.28 This

holiness and majesty is precisely, however, that which eludes human
understanding. Regarding Gods essentia, his essence, it can be said that
it is incomprehensible (incomprehensibilis) and innite (immensa).29 There
is good reason not to take the word incomprehensible in an abso-
lute sense. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean denying
every possibility of knowledge of God, and that is obviously not Calvins
intention. In his exegesis of the vision accompanying the call of Isaiah,
the point of the distinction between who God is in himself and who He
is as he reveals himself is not that God might be other than in his reve-
lation. The point is that in his majesty and glory God utterly surpasses
human measure. God as it were doses out the appearance of his glory
so that it is not overwhelming for angels and men. Human knowledge
of God is a matter of tasting, touching upon. It is thus certainly the
intention that men, like the angels, each behold the majesty of God and
take it in, but each within their own sphere and only to the extent that
God manifests his majesty.30
In the previous chapter there were frequent references to the impor-
tance of classic cosmology in Calvins thought. It is also important
within the context of the doctrine of God, and particularly for the
recognition of Gods sublimity. Astronomy functions here as the par-
adigm of scientic knowledge. The knowing soul measures the heavens,
counts the stars, establishes their magnitude, their distance, observes
the faster or slower speed of rotation, and calculates the deviation.31
The distances are as it were compassed by the tape measure of the
spirit. If this encompassing activity of the soul is considered as knowl-
edge, we can understand why Calvin calls the being of God incom-
prehensible. It is after all literally immeasurable and is not embraced
by any limits.32 In the encounter with God, man learns to know God
as innitely exalted above every measure.33 The realisation of Gods
majesty and sublimity is a fundamental and rst fact in the content of
revelation.

28 In Inst. 1.10.2 Calvin lists the qualities of eternity (aeternitas) and self-existence

(autousia), to be understood in the sense of aseitas. We do not nd the term aseitas.

29 Inst. 1.11.3 and 4. See also Inst. 1.13.1: spiritualis.
30 Comm. Jes. 6:1, CO 36, 128. Cf. also Calvins Comm. to 1 Joh. 3:2, CO 55, 330.
31 Inst. 1.15.2.
32 It is said of Gods Spirit in Inst. 1.13.14, Iam hoc ipso creaturarum numero

eximitur, quod nullis circunscribitur nibus.

33 Inst. 1.13.1.
 god: judge and father 127

3.4. Unceasing activity

While the sublimity of God may have a prominent place in Calvins

doctrine of God, this means anything but that man can learn nothing
more of Him. It is also clear that one can in no way reduce Calvins
image of God to mechanistic causality. That idea rests on a mani-
fest misconception, apparently determined by the stubbornly persistent
perception of a speculative idealistic reading of Calvin, that his think-
ing about God is reducible to the force of the principle of causality.
The opposite is the case. Calvin needs a multiplicity of verbs to do jus-
tice to Gods many sorts of activity. One does not persist with such a
superuity if there is no reason to do so. That God is the Living One
does not receive from Calvin a concentrated discussion of one para-
graph, such as is usual in a more scholastic treatment, but fans out over
a broad eld. God is active and involved in many ways. The reader of
Calvins texts is impressed by the many-faceted work and engagement
of God. God is the one through whom the Spirit is ceaselessly active.
The particular victim of Calvins onslaught is the Epicurean idea of a
deus otiosus, a God who withdraws into the heavens and whose work
remains limited to the creation of the world,34 or who, self-fullled, lim-
its himself to the higher reaches of the spheres.35 God, Calvin says, does
not withdraw to some distant corner.36 His power is vigilant, eca-
cious, energetic and ever active.37 Therefore man should not suppose
Gods power as only the prime movement in an otherwise automatic
and blind succession of movements, as in ordering a stream to keep
within the channel once prescribed for it. Thus there is in no way a
process closed to outside inuence; Gods power is an active regulating
inuence and is involved with each separate moment of a process or
happening. In order to remain in the picture, He guides not only a boil-
ing mass of water or a burst of energy, but each drop, at every moment.
Thus God is not only the prima causa which stands at the beginning of
a series of events; through the hidden working of his Spirit He equally
is involved in the second and every subsequent cause. It is characteris-

34 Inst. 3.20.40.
35 See Inst. 1.16.4: Taceo Epicureos (qua peste refertus semper fuit mundus) qui
Deum otiosum inertemque somniant: aliosque nihilo saniores, qui olim commenti sunt
Deum ita dominari supra mediam aeris regionem, ut inferiora fortunae relinqueret;
siquidem adversus tam evidentem insaniam satis clamant mutae ipsae creaturae.
36 In a sermon on Iob 12, CO 33, 588.
37 Inst. 1.16.3.
128 chapter three

tic of Calvins theology and spirituality that this immanent divine work
in our created world is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.38 God is spoken of
as both the innitely high and elevated God, and at the same time as
the God who through his Spirit is the power which sustains and quick-
ens all that exists, deeply engaged with the whole of created reality. The
exaltedness and the indwelling are correlates of one another. In his doc-
trines of the Lords Table Calvin directs his gaze to Christ, who, with
regard to his humanity, is in heaven since his Ascension; but this idea
is borne by the fundamental conviction that man, as a created being,
and all of creation around him, lie within the reach of the immanent
and hidden power of the Holy Spirit. This involvement of Gods acts
through his Spirit takes on ever dierent forms, and can be pictured as
comprising three concentric circles. In the outermost there is the uni-
versal action of Gods Spirit through which He supports the whole of
creation. In the second circle we nd the guidance of God in human
history, and the innermost circle is formed by the very peculiar and
preternatural action of the Spirit, who works only in the believers, or
elect.39 The hidden, bearing power of the Spirit in all creation is so
strong that Calvin is prepared to accept the view that originated with
the Stoics, provided that, as he says, it is interpreted in a god-fearing
manner.40 His objection to the Stoics is not that they say too much,
but rather too little. God is not to be subsumed in nature, but nature
rests on an ordo prescribed by God. Calvin therefore wants absolutely
nothing to do with the idea, much identied with Epicurean philos-
ophy, that Gods capacities now and then go unused. God directs all
things through his providence and arranges all things so that nothing
happens outside of his will.41 God is the moderator and conservator. In a
frequently used metaphor, God is the source of all good things, which
in very diverse ways are directly involved with his work. Calvin uses a
range of verbs for Gods work of maintaining and governing the world.
Gods actions are described with the verbs fovere, sustinere and curare,42

38 Cf. also W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Gttingen 1957,

particularly Chapter 2.
39 See his comm. on Rom. 8:14, CO 49, 147: Caeterum observare convenit, esse

multiplicem Spiritus actionem. Est enim universalis, qua omnes creaturae sustinentur,
ac moventur: sunt et peculiares in hominibus, et illae quidem variae. sed hic sancti-
cationem intelligit, qua non nisi electos suos Dominus dignatur, dum eos sibi in lios
segregat. Cf. also CO 7, 186.
40 Inst. 1.5.5.
41 Inst. 1.16.3.
42 Inst. 1.16.1.
 god: judge and father 129

conservare, tolerare, tueri.43 All these verbs express something of Gods solic-
itude. God cares, supports, preserves, protects. Gods activity is focused,
caring activity. That is His way of being Lord. Typical nouns in this
context are also nod, nutus, and rein, fraenum. All things that happen,
happen at His nod. He holds everything and everyone, even the devil,
in his reins.44 Never, on any occasion, is the movement which proceeds
from God general and disordered, as in the case of Pharaohs reac-
tion to the words of Moses.45 God always acts ttingly, and undertakes
focused action.
What man learns of God in all this is thus not simply activity; it
is not an impersonal process. What man learns to know is Gods will
in action. God thus does not reveal his essence, but his will. With this
emphasis on the unceasing activity of God in all things, Calvin does
not deny the existence of secondary causes, but in contrast to the Stoic
and Epicurean world-view, the emphasis unquestionably lies on God
as the one who through his Spirit is constantly, decisively and actively
involved in all that happens.46 Calvin describes a world which is not
deserted by God, no blind process, but a world which has the hidden
work of the Holy Spirit as the peculiar locus of activity in the Triune
being of God to thank for its unity and colourful diversity. This is
the line of Trinitarian theology which, looking back, one can connect
with Cappadocian theology, and, looking forward, one which Jurgen
Moltmann made productive for an ecological doctrine of creation.47
With this, Calvins vision of the relation of God to the world stands in
the tradition of the condemnation of radical Averroism by the Bishop
of Paris, Etienne Tempier, in 1270 and 1277. These articles are generally
regarded as a mirror in which the very fundamental debate between
Christian faith regarding the creation and Aristotelian thought regard-
ing necessity becomes visible. One of the points in that debate was,
for instance, the proposition defended by radical Averroism that the

43 See for instance Inst. 1.2.1: Hoc ita accipio, non solum quod mundum hunc,

ut semel condidit, sic immensa potentia sustineat, sapientia moderetur, bonitate con-
servet, humanum genus praesertim iustitia iudicioque regat, misericordia toleret, prae-
sidio tueatur: sed quia nusquam vel sapientiae ac lucis, vel iustitiae, vel potentiae, vel
rectitudinis, vel syncerae veritatis gutta reperietur quae non ab ipso uat, et cuius ipse
non sit causa.
44 See H.A. Oberman, Calvins Legacy in: idem, The two Reformations, 132. See Inst.

1.14.7.
45 Comm. on Rom. 9:17, CO 49, 184: universali et confuso motu
46 See for instance Inst. 1.16.2.
47 J. Moltmann, Gott in der Schpfung. kologische Schpfungslehre, Gtersloh 19934, 23.
130 chapter three

world must be considered eternal. Another sharply debated subject was

the immortality of the personal soul. According to Averroism, that was
unthinkable. If the material is the individualising principle, and the
soul the form, at death the individual soul dissolves into the world-
soul. Over against these views the Paris articles defended the proposi-
tion that the given order within which we live stems from the will of
God. The power of God cannot be limited to that which is conceivable
according to Aristotelian principles. A large number of the propositions
therefore are aimed against things that are impossible according to this
Aristotelianism. Concretely they oppose any limitation on the freedom
of Gods action. In this content, the autonomy of the causae secundae is
therefore explicitly disputed.48 This is the line in which we also suc-
cinctly nd Calvin: God, through the Holy Spirit, is involved with all
things in various ways. He is actively at work in the natural world, in
the course of history, and to a particular degree there where the centre
of his exertions lie, where man enters into fellowship with God through
Christ.

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

Calvin describes Gods dealings with and relation to man and the
world with a multitude of words and concepts. In the following para-
graphs I will try to introduce some order into this complexity, using
two mutually connected approaches to do so. We discover the rst
approach by paying attention to the perfections or qualities which char-
acterise Gods actions. The second approach to Calvins image of God
is through the most frequently used images or metaphors. The qualities
and metaphors used are connected with each other, and are claried
precisely in their mutual relationships.
We must say it again: what one does not nd discussed in Calvins
theology is as telling for it as what is found there. One does not
encounter an explicit, elaborated doctrine of God, as one nds in the
manuals of Protestant orthodoxy. Calvin does here and there provide a

48 See for a discussion of this articles a.o. D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western

Science. The European Scientic Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context,
600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago 1992, 234239. Cf. also H.A. Oberman, Via antiqua
and Via Moderna: Late medieval Prolegomena to early Reformation Thought, Journal
of the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 27.
 god: judge and father 131

list of qualities,49 nor does he fail to take up the debate with those theo-
logical currents which do not do justice to Gods presence and activity.
In Institutes 1.10.2 we encounter a comparatively extensive discussion of
the question of how the various perfections relate to one another. After
the qualities listed in Exodus 34:6 are cited (eternity and self-existence;
compassion, goodness, mercy, justice, judgement and truth), and ref-
erence is made to the treasury of Psalm 145 as a summary of doc-
trine regarding God, in connection with Jeremiah 9:24 Calvin points
to three concepts that can serve as headings under which to classify
all of the acts of God. These are the concepts of misericordia (mercy or
loving-kindness), iudicium (judgement) and iustitia (righteousness). Gods
loving-kindness accomplishes the salvation of his elect. Judgement is
that action of God which is daily exercised on the wicked, and awaits
them in a severer form, even for eternal destruction. Finally, there
is Gods righteousness, in which he preserves and cherishes those he
has justied. The other qualities, such as truth, power, holiness and
goodness, can be arranged under these three, because, as we are told,
mercy, judgement and righteousness support Gods inviolable truth.
How could one believe in Gods judgement and loving-kindness if his
power and strength were not assumed? It is impossible to imagine
Gods mercy except as a consequence of his goodness. Finally all three
qualities reveal Gods holiness.
In this paragraph from the Institutes, and equally from his exposition
of Psalm 145, it once again becomes very clear that according to Calvin
knowledge of God does not bypass human experience; it is something
that can be experienced here on earth. The knowledge that is set before
our eyes in Scripture, and that which shines in creation too, has a
double purpose. God invites man to respect or fear, and subsequently, to
trust. With these two words, fear and trust, we have the terms in which
Calvin describes the reaction which, on the human side, corresponds
with what God has made known of himself.
The three concepts of mercy, judgement and righteousness can in
turn be connected with various metaphors. That is the second ap-
proach. In the following special attention will be given to the metaphors
of Lord of the world, judge and father. The concepts of judgement and
righteousness fall into the eld of meaning surrounding the metaphor
of Lord of the world. In the judgement that the wicked and unbelievers

49 For instance in Inst. 1.14.21: sapientia, potentia, iustitia, bonitas. See also Inst.

1.1.1. and Inst. 3.20.41.

132 chapter three

experience, they encounter God in his role as judge. In the care exer-
cised for the faithful in the world, they encounter Gods fatherhood. In
a series of steps I will describe how these qualities become concrete,
and becoming concrete means, among other things, that they are expe-
rienced in a sensory manner.

3.6. Lord of the world: Gods care and goodness in the order of the world

Calvins thought is permeated by an idea that has ebbed away as one of

the certainties of life in the centuries after the Enlightenment, namely
that man and the world belong inalienably to God. He is the Creator
of this world, and as such the world is his property, literally his domain.
He is the only one with sovereignty over it. All authority, that of monar-
chs, that of the church, of parents and patrons, is therefore derived from
the authority of God. It is not without reason then that in the French
translation the title of the rst book of the Institutes calls God Createur, et
souverain Gouverneur du monde. In the introduction to the Ten Command-
ments we read that God claims for himself the authority and right to
govern.50 It is his by right, and therefore all men, the godless and believ-
ers alike, must deal with him. It also means that from the outset there
is an asymmetry in the relation between God and man. It is not a rela-
tion with equal partners. That idea is completely foreign to Calvin. The
majesty of God, his exaltation, is so great that he owes nothing to any
of his creations.51 In theory, God is not beholden to us in any way. The
competencies of the two parties are therefore incommensurate. This
idea perhaps sounds repugnant. Does God then have no obligations to
his creation? Should God not be responsible for his creation? But these
questions already betray the modern reversal of perspective in which
man summons God to judgement, rather than the other way around.
In the following sections on election and damnation I will return to this.
From the manner in which Calvin describes Gods providing for
this world, or better, His care for his creation, it seems clear that
according to him it is inconceivable that man could ever bring God
to the bar, as if man had a right to anything. The primary relation
between the Creator and the creation makes that impossible. Therefore

50Inst. 2.8.13: potestatem ac ius imperii vendicat.

51Comm. on Rom. 9.15, CO 49, 181: Hoc autem oraculo declaravit Dominus, se
nemini mortalium esse debitorem.
 god: judge and father 133

as he develops his arguments regarding Christian life and ethics, we

nd Calvin repeating the dictum nostri non sumus, sed Domini time after
time.52 Nor can unbelievers ever escape from Gods oversight, though
there is no comfort for them in this. To their eyes He appears only as
a harsh judge. For modern readers, for whom as outsiders it is hardly
possible to understand what Calvin experienced of God and the world,
this discourse is brimming with pitfalls. Terms such as property and
Lord provoke distrust in a context where the inalienable rights of the
individual have found their way into constitutions and human rights
treaties. Words like this seem to assail the dignity of man. This makes it
all the more important to investigate what meaning these concepts had
for Calvin.
First and foremost, it must be remarked that Gods being as Lord of
the world must in no sense be confused with a despotism. Calvin knew
well that earthly lords could reveal themselves to be despots, but these
are excesses and deformations of the ruler who should be caring for
his subjects justly, with moderation and leniency. It has already been
noted that it is not by accident that the Institutes are preceded by a
letter of dedication to a monarch, Francis I. This ends with a critical
exposition of the oce of the government and on the subjection of all
governmental powers to God. The Lord is the King of kings.53 The
aversion to the idea that God is a Lord who rules arbitrarily or who
allows himself to be led by his whims will occupy us again later in the
sections regarding Gods absolute power (3.12.56). In the preceding we
have already however established that Gods being as Lord becomes
concrete rst and foremost in providence. Gods caring dealings with
believers indeed take on a form that encompasses the lives of all men,
and the whole of creation. It becomes concrete in what Calvin calls
general grace, and which embraces all life on earth.
It is characteristic of Calvins world of faith that in support of Gods
goodness and care he does not appeal just to Bible passages. Gods
goodness and providence is not just a theologoumenon that one can
discover only from Scripture; Calvins premise is that it is conrmed
in everyday experience. It is clear that at this point we encounter an
unbridgeable chasm which has opened between Calvins times and our
modern sense of life, and that a direct appeal to Calvin is impossi-
ble without explicitly reminding ourselves of our altered relation to the

52 Inst. 3.7.1.
53 Inst. 4.20.32.
134 chapter three

world around us. In todays dogmatics Gods being as Creator is a con-

fession which goes contrary to what can be seen and experienced.54
That was not the case in Calvins world. For Calvin, Gods being Cre-
ator and Gods providence have an inherent plausibility. The perfec-
tions of Gods goodness and care shine forth in the structure of the
world, and are conrmed in Scripture.
Of what is Calvin thinking with regard to this visibility? What does
he have in mind? In particular, we must think of the order of the
universe. In the preceding chapter we have already cited his statement
that man cannot open his eyes without seeing the hand of God the
Craftsman in the ordering of the world.55 According to the geocentric
picture of the cosmos current in Calvins time, constructed according
to Aristotelian concepts, the earth had its place at the centre of the
universe. Around the earth were to be found the spheres, nine or ten
in total.56 Seven spheres were counted for the moon, the sun, and the
ve planets then known, and the eighth was for the stars, which had a
permanent place in the vault of heaven. Some argued the existence of
a ninth sphere, which explained the tremors of the eighth sphere, and a
tenth sphere which was identied with the waters above the heavens.
The cosmos was thus an inner space encapsulated by the vaults of
heaven. That which was between the sphere of the moon and the earth
was the sublunary or terrestrial realm, and shared in the susceptibility
and instability that is characteristic of the earth. According to the
Aristotelian view, the turning or rotation of the outermost sphere was
perpetuated by the nearness of God in the void behind the heavens.57
As the primum mobile, the outermost sphere imparts its movement to the
spheres within it. Brought into motion by this rst impulse, the spheres
move around the earth with great regularity and serenity. The closer
one comes to the outmost sphere, the greater the tranquillity and order
of the rotation is.
Calvins own picture of the universe is in general agreement with
the usual medieval concept.58 There is at least one point at which it

54 H. Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 152; Christian Faith, 149.

55 See Inst. 1.5.1.
56 C.B. Kaiser, Calvins Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Its ex-

tent and Possible Origin in: R.V. Schnucker (Ed.), Calviniana. Ideas and Inuence of Jean
Calvin, Kirksville (MO) 1988, 8183.
57 Aristotle, De generatione II,10, 333b; 11, 338b.
58 See Kaiser, Calvins Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy, 85. Cal-

vin denies the existence of a tenth sphere and does not make notice of a ninth sphere.
 god: judge and father 135

deviates, and that he brings explicitly in connection with Gods special

providence. According to Aristotelian science, as the rst mover God
exercises his inuence by means of an impulse that moves from the
outermost spheres inward. The inuence is thus mediated by interme-
diate causes, causae secundae. At this point Calvin strikes out in a dif-
ferent direction, and argues that God, in his work of sustaining and
maintaining, is not bound to intermediate causes, but can intervene
directly. He avows that it can be seen from all manner of things that
there is a direct inuence that runs counter to the regular course of
nature or which bypasses it. One example he gives is that the earth
is not covered by water, as could be expected from the principles of
Aristotelian science. The sublunary realm is constructed of four ele-
ments, namely earth, water, air and re. It is the quality of these ele-
ments that each has its natural place in the sublunary realm. As the
heaviest element, earth is the lowest, above which comes the lighter
element of water, followed by air, and nally re, as the lightest ele-
ment and therefore the highest, to be found on the upper margin of
the sublunary sphere. The moon is made of ery matter, although the
strength of its light is not so great that it can do without the aid of the
sun.59 Calvin does not appear to have been aware of other explanations
for why the oceans do not cover the land.60 It is precisely Gods spe-
cial providence that is expressed in the marvellous fact that the waters
are limited to the seas and do not spill over the land.61 Calvin experi-
enced the boundary between the sea and land as a fragile order, which
can only be explained by appealing to Gods guiding and protective
hand.
Another evidence of Gods goodness is the constancy of the earth.
The fact that it occupies the centre of the universe, in a position of rest,
is frankly to be termed marvellous. While the earth is surrounded by
lighter and inconstant elements, and is subject to the inuence of the
rotation of the heavenly spheres, it nevertheless remains anchored fast
in the centre. That is an inexplicable miracle. In this too Calvin sees
the good providence of God.62 Thus there could be still more examples
listed in which Gods visible power is made to serve his care for man,

59 See Comm. Gen. 1:15, CO 23, 2122.

60 Kaiser, Calvins Understanding, 81.
61 Comm. on Ps. 104:5, CO 32, 86 and on Gen. 1:9, CO 23, 19. See also Inst. 1.5.6.
62 See Comm. Ps. 93:1, CO 32, 1617 and Inst. 1.5.5.
136 chapter three

such as the cycle of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, and
the form of man as a microcosmos.63
Once again, we underscore the relation between power and care.
In Calvins theology the concept of might does not have the negative
association of the blind exercise of power by a Supreme Being. God
exercises his power with precision and deliberation and is in no way
the neutral Supreme Being of the Enlightenment era.64 Gods might
serves particularly for preserving the structure of the world, the theatre
of his glory. That banishes the idea of neutrality. The power with which
God pushes the seas back into the depths and holds the earth fast and
immovable in the centre of the cosmos assures that life on earth will
be possible for man. From the outset power is under the domination
of Gods goodness, and is conceived in religious-ethical terms. The
reference to a passage in the prophet Isaiah, where the evidences to
Gods might are enumerated, and this summary is to serve as a means
of quickening trust on the part of man.65 Calvin still directly feels that.

3.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the father

In the preceding we have given several examples of natural instances

in which Calvin sees Gods goodness exemplied. Can Calvin also
bring the life histories of people into this context? Part of the intel-
lectual baggage that modern readers bring with them is the idea that
Calvin teaches a rigid form of providence. The question is how this
looks and if it can still be recognised. We immediately encounter two
series of images and terms that describe the relation of Gods action
in history with various groups of men. These are the images of God
as Father and Judge, and the terms righteousness and judgement, or
iustitia and iudicium. Indisputably these terms correlate with the duality
which, according to Calvin, is perceptible in historical reality and that
has its deepest roots in the hidden Counsel of God, in the double deci-
sion of election and damnation. I will not discuss Calvins doctrine of
predestination here yet, but rst limit myself to the question of how this
dualism works out in the doctrine of providence. Or to put it dierently,

63 Inst. 1.5.3.
64 Th. de Boer, De God van de losofen en de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van losoe en
theologie, s Gravenhage 1989, 158.
65 Inst. 3.2.31. See further Comm. on Isa. 40:21, 26, CO 37, 2021, 2425.
 god: judge and father 137

the dualism has an eect on the perception of man and his fate. First,
it must be noted that Calvin does not use the term judgement in only
one sense. The concept iudicium is on the one hand used to characterise
the dealings with the damned. Calvin describes Gods dealings with his
children under the central concept of iustitia. In this context, in connec-
tion with atonement, iudicium then emerges again to express Gods deal-
ings with the elect. However, there is a sharp distinction made between
punitive judgements and corrective judgements, or iudicium vindictae and
iudicium castigationis. In the rst case there is real punishment involved,
connected with total rejection. Discipline means something very dif-
ferent, namely correction and admonition. The rst form of judge-
ment is explicitly coupled with God as Judge, and the second with the
Fatherhood of God.66 Therefore, already in this life the damned and
unbelievers must undergo Gods curse and wrath, and their life here
is already the gate to hell. God is the judge and avenger of wrong. In
Calvins eyes this is to be seen many times in history, on occasions such
as Joshuas conquest of Jericho, when the city was laid under a curse,
and all its inhabitants, man and animal alike, were exterminated. The
atrocities committed in the Old Testament are, in this panel, justied
by an appeal to the righteousness of God. God has the right to demand
obedience, and when this is not given, to punish.67 In order to endure
the aictions they will face, Gods childrenthe electhowever must
also undergo discipline, which is a blessing for them. This totally dier-
ent perception of suering that at rst sight may seem to be the same,
can be understood as an logical application of the belief that Christ has
borne the punishment for sins. If Christ has borne Gods wrath over
sin for His children, the suering that still happens to them can never
be accounted as a consequence of Gods wrath. Discipline may then be
experienced as severe, but it is not to death. For Calvin the doctrine
of providence and the doctrine of repentance to life eternal are one
whole.68 He considers the utterances of the prophets where Gods Peo-

66 Inst. 3.4.31: Iudicium unum, docendi causa, vocemus vindictae: alterum, castiga-

tionis Alterum iudicis est, alterum patris Iudex enim quum facinorosum punit,
in ipsum delictum animadvertit, et de facinore ipso poenam expetit. Pater quum lium
severius corrigit, non hoc agit ut vindicet aut mulctet, sed magis ut doceat et cautiorem
in posterum reddat.
67 Comm. Josh. 6:21, CO 25, 469. Cf. also the sermon on IISam. 8:2, Johannes

Calvin, Predigten ber das 2. Buch Samuelis, hrsg. von H. Rckert, (Supplementa Calvinia
6) Neukirchen 19311961, 235238. See also Inst. 2.8.14.
68 Inst. 3.9.
138 chapter three

ple are subject to Gods wrath (for instance Micah 7:9 or Hab. 3:2) as a
manner of speaking which does not say as much about Gods Counsel
as about the manner in which the prophet experiences Gods hand.69
One must conclude that the dualism within Gods Counsel and the
bearing of the punishment for sins by Christ is decisive for the percep-
tion and interpretation of the vicissitudes which happen to a person.
In the theological theory we encounter a duality that runs as a hidden
thread through all history.

3.8. The absurdity of life

Gods care, his wise measures with his children, and his judgement of
the disobedient are far from always visible. Thus the visibility of Gods
rule does not totally dene the picture in the panel of Calvins theology,
although it must be said that Calvin generally sees little ambiguity. At
such moments his thinking shocks us, and we experience the distance
from contemporary theology, which has come to be dominated by the
question of human suering.
There are more than enough examples of passages without ambiva-
lence. They create the impression that Gods fatherly care and righ-
teousness toward the justied in this life is already completely obvious.
God here shows himself an avenger of injustice and a defender of the
innocent.70 When in the course of the narrative of Judah and Tamar
in Genesis 38 the early death of Er is explicitly characterised as the
punishing hand of God, this gives Calvin an opportunity to once again
expound the general rule with regard to Gods governance over the
good and the bad. The death of Er shows how the hand of God rules.
The connection between the event and Gods action is very direct for
Calvinindeed, we must admit, with just as much appeal to other pas-
sages of scripture, all too direct. The conviction that all things have a
purpose, a sometimes hidden but generally undisguised meaning, has
as its down side that everything can be reduced to punishment or dis-
cipline.71 Calvin has great diculty with the mystery of Gods actions.
Anyone who cleaves too closely to Calvin at this point runs extreme

69 Inst. 3.4.32.
70 Inst. 1.5.7. See also Comm. Ps. 107: 1.5.8, CO 32, 136137.
71 Cf. H.J. Selderhuis, God in het midden. Calvijns theologie van de psalmen, Kampen 2000,

130, 304.
 god: judge and father 139

risks from the perspective of pastoral theology. The conviction that

everything which happens has a certain utility, is ordained by God with
a specic goal, is dangerous because it is accompanied with the idea
that man can generally discover what the purpose of these things is, for
what use they were intended. In this Calvins theology is inclined to a
closedness that leaves no room for the acknowledgement of the absurd,
for the experience that things happen which we, for the sake of Christ,
can not and will not identify with God.
For the rest, Calvin acknowledges that Gods just governance is far
from always obvious, because the punishments and rewards are not
always immediately dealt out. When it comes to Gods policy in history,
he leaves space for that which is not yet understood, but not for the
absurd. Calvin does say that the immediate interventions on the part
of God were more visible in the time of the law than after Christ. In
the new dispensation it is no longer tting that man be seized by the
fear of immediate death. When men who live an ungodly life live long
and prosper, this is however in no way a reason to doubt that God
will execute his judgements. Nor does their execution always happen
in the same manner.72 Moreover, the revelation of the judgement of the
godless and of provision for the elect can be pushed forward to the
consummation.73
But this is not the total picture. There are passages in which Calvin
dwells extensively on the total opacity of life, which means that doubt
can strike regarding the goodness and regularity of Gods rule. We nd
sections that strike us as modern in their trembling at the randomness
of life.
Innumerable are the ills which beset human life, and present death in
as many dierent forms. Not to go beyond ourselves, since the body is
a receptacle, nay, the nurse of a thousand diseases, a man cannot move
without carrying along with him many forms of destruction. His life is
in a manner interwoven with death. For what else can be said where
heat and cold bring equal danger? Then, in what direction soever you
turn, all surrounding objects not only may do harm, but almost openly
threaten and seem to present immediate death. Go on board a ship, and
you are but a planks breadth from death. Mount a horse, the stumbling
foot endangers your life. Walk along the streets, and every tile upon the
roofs is a source of danger. If a sharp instrument is in your hand, or
that of a friend, the possible harm is manifest. All the savage beasts

72 Comm. Gen. 38:7, CO 23.

73 Inst. 1.5.7; Inst. 3.9.6.
140 chapter three

you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even within
a high-walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpent
will sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to re, threatens you
with poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your elds, subject to hail,
mildew, drought and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and thereby
famine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which beset
us at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not man
be very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with diculty
draws an anxious and feeble breath, as if a drawn sword were constantly
suspended over his neck?74

It would appear from this quote that anxiety, fear and the experience
of insecurity were not unfamiliar to Calvin, and in contradiction to
the cliched contrast between Calvin and Luther which still surfaces
in Max Weber,75 they are not invented but primarily a matter of his
own life experience. His theology focuses on such experiences, and
owes part of its vitality and continuing worth to this. If faith has
something to do with the lives of esh and blood people, then the
poles of anxiety and desire will take their place in its theology in
a theological shape. It is the task of theology not to silence anxiety
and desire; it will rather bring these fundamental experiences of life
into dialogue with what can be said theologically. Calvins theology
too points us toward the condence in God rooted in Christ, but
nevertheless the shape of this theme in his thinking is so dierent
that in our time it is almost unrecognisable. For him the demand
for a just system in the world and history is not the all-consuming
issue that has become dominant in theology from after the Second
World War. In contemporary theology we nd a powerful tendency
to make the experience of suering mankind the point of departure for
theological knowledge. The focus on the subject has worked itself out in
the focus on the suering subject and his aporetic experience of evil.76
Suering man is the place where knowledge of God and his rejection
of suering and evil is to be won. With Calvin the human subject never
has this central function. The world is more than a man experiences
personally. He has but a limited place in the system of heaven and
earth. Therefore the theological strategy works out entirely dierently,
so to speak. The fragility of life, the constant uncertainty can only be
borne by keeping Gods providence continually before ones eyes. That

74 Inst. 1.17.10.
75 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, 121.
76 A. Houtepen, God een open vraag, 124; ET, 83.
 god: judge and father 141

means that invariability, changelessness, steadfastness receive a positive

value. For Calvin providence is not an equivalent of a blind fate, but it
is the care of a heavenly Father who never lets fall that which he takes
into his hands.77 The issue is not so much the mystery of Gods actions,
as that man might be dealing with a blind fate. That would be truly
dreadful.
In Calvins sermons on the book of Job we also nd countless pas-
sages which touch upon the terror and absurdity of life. Obviously the
subject matter of this book provides an opportunity for this, but read-
ing several sermons brings home how deeply Calvin himself is involved
with the topic. It is true, he says, that world history oers a confused
prospect. To be sure, man can sometimes see the good sense in what
happens, and in so doing endorse that God in his deeds is guided by
deliberation, wisdom and prudence. Sometimes He blinds those who
suppress the truth, and his vengeance is evident. But so often too this
clarity is absent, and neither the reason nor the purpose of Gods
actions is apparent.78 At this point Calvin comes up with the idea of
a double wisdom of God. That is to say, from the perspective of God
the wisdom with which God rules is indeed one, but from the perspec-
tive of man one must speak of two sorts of wisdom. The one sort is that
which God has taught in His Word; the other wisdom includes that
which God has kept to himself. But it is with this wisdom that he rules
the world. When tyrants rule, villainous men lead astray, the spirits of
the one group proceed to destruction and others are saved, then that
is all the wisdom of the incomprehensible Counsel of God. When we
ask about the reasons for all of this, an abyss opens up into which all
of our senses are plunged.79 Calvin takes into account a fundamental
not-knowing.
What it all comes down to, according to him, is that man, in his
desire to reconcile the events of the world with Gods goodness, is
able to stop, and not accuse God of arbitrariness and tyranny. Lim-
ited insight into the righteousness of Gods rule must on mans side
correspond to the acknowledgement of our own insignicance and lim-
itation. Calvin refers here to a discipline for faith. Faith acknowledges
rst the goodness of God, and then acknowledges that there is a wis-
dom bound up with this goodness that makes it impossible to accuse

77 Inst. 1.17.11.
78 CO 33, 581582. See also CO 35, 5166.
79 CO 33, 579580, 590.
142 chapter three

God of excessive use of his power or of tyranny.80 It cannot be doubted

that Calvin is reticent in making statements about Gods being. But
one thing is absolutely certain for him: God is not morally reprehensi-
ble. Gods might, wisdom and righteousness are inseparably linked with
one another.81
The acknowledgement of Gods majesty and his innite elevation
over man has the consequence that as a matter of principle room must
be left for the respectful acknowledgement that there are spaces in
Gods Counsel to which man has no access. In short, human knowledge
of God is literally a knowing in part. With Calvin we indeed nd
the attempt to nd explanations for most experiences of calamity and
suering, but even he falters. Suering is explicable in so far as it is
a punishment of the godless, or a pedagogical measure for the pious.
There remain cases that cannot be explained, and that cannot be
explained with an appeal to Gods wisdom and goodness.
The practical orientation of Calvins theology becomes visible when
he in his sermons time and time again impresses upon his hearers the
use of this doctrine. The sense in the disasters suered is, according
to Calvin, that man learns to exercise patience and humble himself
under the hand of God.82 The majesty and inscrutability of many
of Gods judgements make man conscious of his low standing over
against God. This nurtures respect, the recognition of the place that
the human being takes in the face of realities of life, be they delightful
or disconcerting. The disasters in our lives throw us back upon God
himself, who preserves his children through the salvation of Christ. And
then the refrain sounds: Puis quainsi est donc remettons nous en la protection
de nostre Dieu. When that is the case, let us then place ourselves under
the protection of our God.83

80 CO 33, 584: Car il faut que nous recognoissions sa vertu premierement, et puis

que nous adioustions avec sa vertu une telle sagesse que nous ne laccusions point de
tyrannie ne dexcez. Car ce nest point le tout de dire, Il est vray que Dieu gouverne
le monde, et cependant ne murmurions contre lui, que nous ne la accusion piont de
tyrannie ne dexcez.
81 CO 35, 60: Quand nous parlons de sa puissance, ou iustice, ou sagesse, ou bont,

nou parlons de lui-mesme: ce sont choses inseparables, et qui ne se peuvent point

discerner de son essence, cest dire pour en estre ostees. Car elles sont tellement
coniointes, que lune ne peut estre sans lautre.
82 CO 35, 910.
83 CO 33, 592.
 god: judge and father 143

3.9. The anchor of Gods unchanging will

It is perhaps dicult if not impossible for the modern reader of Calvins

theology to empathise with the foregoing, but the conclusion is inescap-
able: in the panel on Calvins theology the knowledge that all things
come forth from Gods hand is a source of comfort. In their need and
misery, Gods children do not fall into the hands of Gods adversary, the
devil. As fragile creatures they do not fall into an unfathomably deep
ravine, but live and have their being within the reach of God.84 What
overcomes them will ultimately appear to have been for the good. That
is comfort in the maelstrom of events.
When Gods good care is not however visible, it is all the more an
occasion to hold fast to the teaching of Scripture that God controls
everything in the life of man. That means that man is dealing with
Gods will in all that occurs and all that happens to him.85 In this line
of thought we encounter the concept of providence, though indeed in
a hard form. Gods foresight does not mean only that God knows what
will happen before the fact, but expressly also that all things in one
manner or another ow directly from his will, and are ordained by
Him.86 That is, Gods decrees in his providence are unchanging, and
seen from his Counsel all things are xed.
We here run up against those elements in Calvins theology that are
always connected with the darker side of his theology, because they
not rarely have led to fatalistic consequences and misunderstandings,87
namely, the doctrine of the decrees of God, and particularly provi-
dence and election. What does the changelessness of Gods Counsel
mean? It is necessary here to say something, because there are few con-
cepts that have so changed complexion through changes in attitudes
toward life, that call up such a dierent constellation of associations,
that they really can only be misunderstood. In the spiritual climate in
which Calvin lived, Gods unchangeableness was nothing less than his
delity. God is not capricious, not an uncertain beacon. Changeless-
ness is an unadulterated positive quality of God. From being a term
with a positive meaning, eminently suitable for describing God in his

84 Inst. 1.17.7.
85 Inst. 1.16.9.
86 Inst. 1.16.9.
87 E.P. Meijering, Voorbij de vadermoord. Over het christelijk geloof in God, de Schepper,

Kampen 1998, 96.

144 chapter three

highness and goodness, with our present outlook on life it has become
a word that calls up associations of lifelessness and inspissation, and
provokes whole-hearted abhorrence. In our climate today change, his-
toricity and vitality are positive concepts, because they give precedence
to possibilities, in place of a xation on the past or givens. In the early
Renaissance culture in which Calvin moved, innovation had a frankly
pejorative implication, and improvement was to be found in rebirth and
reformation, a return to an original situation. The change in the cul-
tural climate which has taken place since then extends over the whole
manner in which we look at and evaluate Calvins premodern thinking
in our time. Questions arise which previously were impossible: if the
constancy of God is so obvious, if regret and contrition are only forms
of anthropomorphic speech, what then are the consequences for other
concepts and images which are also undeniably anthropomorphic, and
appear to have something to say about Gods relation with man? Can
God then still love and have compassion as a father, be moved as a
mother? What does anthropomorphic speech mean for the trustwor-
thiness of the images used? Can not being hurt, not being moved, be
reconciled with loving? What sort of love is it that must be thought of
apart from such aects? Is God still love then, or does this reect more
on the iron Calvin, to use Harnacks stereotype?88 Since the cosmolog-
ical paradigm has been exchanged for a paradigm oriented to modern
psychological insights, in which the capacity for change and relation-
ality are highly valued,89 it has become impossible to iterate Calvins
doctrine of God unchanged.
These matters touch on the next subject that is connected with the
foregoing: human freedom. If everything that happens can be traced
back to Gods unchanging will, what is left of human freedom? Are
we not marionettes with no will of our own, moving across the stage
of the puppet theatre on invisible strings bring pulled from above? In
short, Calvins image of God the Father, who protects and supports his
children, seats them at his table, and urges and trains them to move
forwardimages from life that form a continuous line in his exege-
sis and sermonsappears to be threatened by the notion of Gods
unchangingness. It is quite common to nd the suggestion in theologi-
cal literature that Calvins conception of God as Father or Mother has

88 A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte Bd.3, Tbingen 19325, 773.

89 For the change in paradigms and the tension between classic theism and modern
positions, see H. Jansen, Relationality and the Concept of God, Amsterdam 1995.
 god: judge and father 145

a darker ip side, and in view of this, has little true content. The knowl-
edge that the image of God as Father or Mother appears to yield is
immediately undermined because the immutable will of God is con-
cealed behind it.90 Gods real essence would deviate from this image.
We will not try to answer these questions all at one time. If we will
come to some degree of understanding of Calvin, we will rst have to
investigate within what context and with what meaning the invariable
will of God occurs.
Calvins explication of Bible verses which speak of Gods regret and
contrition is well known, not to say notorious. In Genesis 6:6 we read
that God regretted that he had created man, and in ISamuel 15:11 we
hear that the Lord regretted that he had appointed Saul as king. We
can reach for the book of Jonah, where God, through the repentance
of the city of Ninevah, is moved not to execute his judgement on
the city. What does Calvin do with these texts about Gods regret
and compunction? He considers them as gurative language. It is a
way of speaking that is completely accommodated to the manner in
which the course of events could be understood by those who then
heard it. According to Calvin, one must read these texts in the light
of other Bible passages, such as ISamuel 15:29. There one will nd
the key. From these we learn that God knows no regret, because He
is not a man, that he should repent. In his opinion, in this verse
the Holy Spirit does not speak in a metaphorical manner, but absque
gura, and teaches straightforwardly about the invariability of God, His
immutabilitas.91 The talk of regret and compunction, in other words
about an actual response on the part of God, is an accommodation to
the way in which man hears and understands. From mans perspective
it appears as if God has had regrets and changed his mind, but this does
not describe how God is, in se, sed a nobis sentitur. According to Calvin it
is clear as day that God himself is elevated above all emotions, and that
the supposition of a change in the exercise of his will simply cannot be
contemplated. Thinking about Gods sovereignty must rather take as its
starting point a passage such as Isaiah 14:27, where we read For the
LORD of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? And his hand
is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? It will be clear that this
exposition will leave us, with our ideas, in a considerable quandary.
Can one say then that God really responds at all? Put irreverently,

90 H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods, 111.

91 Inst. 1.17.12.
146 chapter three

can prayer be anything more than speaking back to an automated

answering machine, the message in which was recorded long ago?
As we have said before, the reason why Calvin has so little hesita-
tion about rejecting the attribution of feelings, regret and compunction
to God as gurative language has become foreign to us. According to
the attitudes of that day, the feelings in question are human, charac-
teristic of terrestrial life. There is a great dierence between the heav-
enly spheres and existence in the lower spheres. Inconstancy, ignorance,
error and impotence rule the sublunary sphere. This cosmological her-
itage, already described, plays a powerful role in Calvins vision of man
and his regard for the perfections of God. From pre-Socratic philoso-
phy on, in Plato and particularly after Aristotle, metaphysics or think-
ing about the highest existence was deeply inuenced by the horizon
of contemporary cosmology.92 God as the immobile prime mover is the
scientic explanation for the regular, steady rotation of the rst heaven.
In the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, immutability is the quality of the
highest, divine being. Earthly things are compounded, and thus divis-
ible. The wholeness of an earthly object can be sundered by external
eects. Since Parmenides it was accepted that existence itself is eternal,
and therefore imperishable, unfaltering and without purpose, homoge-
nous and therefore invariable.93 These ideas were taken up into Chris-
tian doctrines regarding God, and deeply inuenced the interpretation
of Bible passages such as Psalms 102:1213 and Psalm 103:1518. The
unchanging nature of God, his immutabilitas, was taught because it had
to be denied that the being of God is divisible, as are things in our
world. Being compounded is a characteristic of the material world, and
is a mark of weakness. God is the One who is perfect in himself. For
classic doctrines of God the category of relation is therefore problem-
atic in light of this perfection, because it is associated with dependence.
With regard to divine being, relation as a category is illusory. In the
deepest sense, God has no relations. God is sucient in himself. Rela-
tions are only real for earthly things, because they are dependent on
one another in all sorts of ways, are aected by and are connected with
one another.
For classic thought the highest being is indivisible and in that sense
invariable. Nothing from outside it can impinge upon this being. That
is, the divine being is a being that is not subject to eects external

92 W. Maas, Unvernderlichkeit Gottes, 59.

93 W. Maas, Unvernderlichkeit Gottes, 3539.
 god: judge and father 147

to itself. This concept became denitive for the idea of the impassive-
ness of God. The centre of the universe, on and around the earth, is
controlled by movement, change and transitoriness. There phenomena
eect one another. The further one goes from the earth, the higher into
the heavenly spheres, the more stable Gods creation is and the more
tranquil, orderly and xed. In this model, regret and compunction are
qualities of the terrestrial. They are emotions, aects that belong to the
variability and capriciousness of human nature fallen into sin, through
which people become playthings of their own or others whims.
With the distance of history, we can indeed assess how thoroughly
this cosmological heritage permeated teaching about God. On the
basis of a doctrine of God supported by the geocentric paradigm,
Calvin was certain that God could never be tormented by emotions,
that inconstancy is excluded from God, and that transitoriness and
divine nature are irreconcilable.94 The classical Scriptural proofs of
the changelessness of God, such as Ex. 3:14, Mal. 3:16, Ps. 102:28 and
James 1:17, were interpreted in this light, and other passages that spoke
of variability in God were pushed aside. At this point the legacy of
classical metaphysics hangs over Christian tradition like a shadow, and
we will have to discount change and relation as positive qualities of
Gods being and acts. Yet, for a fair and proper understanding of the
classical concept, it will be necessary to stand by the remarks regarding
the concept of the constancy of God and the existential signicance this
has for faith. Calvin experienced the constancy of God as a reason for
condence in the steadfastness of God in the mist of the uncertainties of
human life. God does not suer from moods. God does not play games
with his children.95
This conviction assures that the history of this concept indeed will
seem chaotic, but in reality all things occur under Gods rule and
governance. In Calvins own idiom, nothing happens except by His
order, or his nod.96 No branch breaks from the tree,97 no tile falls from a
roof,98 no storm arises (Jonah 1:4) except that it comes forth from Gods
will. Calvin is able to cite countless examples of Biblical events that
are to be resolved into Gods initiative and conrm it, because they

94 See his exegesis of Ex. 3:14, CO 24, 4344.

95 Inst. 1.17.1.
96 Cf. Oberman, Calvins Legacy, in: idem, The two Reformations, 132.
97 Inst. 1.16.6.
98 Inst. 1.17.10.
148 chapter three

arise from His will. Although seen from the human perspective, the
things happen by chance, in reality they happen by Gods counsel and
disposition. Chance is therefore a human explanation, but, according to
Calvin, in the light of Gods divine teaching that must be regarded as a
false understanding.99 But this is a conclusion from a divine perspective,
not the perspective of man. In this distinction we again encounter the
importance of the limits that, in Calvins own conviction, there are
for the human mind. There is a qualitative dierence between Gods
Counsel and the human mind. However highly Calvin may speak of
mental powers, in these things man is still characterised by sluggishness,
weakness and incapacity.100 The conclusion that Calvin draws from
all thisand that is signicantgoes in a dierent direction than we
would expect. His conclusion is not that man loses all his freedom. The
accent lies on the smallness and impotence of man over against the
majesty of God. But the intended reaction is not paralysis, but trust
and security. The message is this: in the chaos of life, frail man may
know himself to be in the hand of God.

3.10. Predestination and responsibility

The concept of the changelessness of Gods will does not detract from
man being responsible for his own actions. How can that be? Is not the
truth more on the side of the critics who assert that Calvins position is
in fact that of fatalism? To what degree is Calvin bound by the thought
of the Stoic philosophy that we nd in his times? This inuence has
often been adduced in connection with the tremendous tension that this
sort of thinking implies with regard to conceiving freedom of the will.101

99 Inst. 1.16.9: quasi fortuita sunt quae certum est ex Dei voluntate provenire.
100 mentis nostrae tarditas (1559), imbecellitas nostra (1539), Inst. 1.16.9.
101 See for instance D. Nsgen, Calvins Lehre von Gott und ihr Verhltnis zur

Gotteslehre anderer Reformatoren, Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 23 (1912), 690747, who

Calvins concept of providence qualies as a mechanisches ablaufendes Geschehen
(702). Cf. more recently A. Ganoczy/S. Scheld, HerrschaftTugendVorsehung. Hermeneu-
tische Deutung und Verentlichung handschriftlicher Annotationen Calvins zu sieben Senecatragdien
und der Pharsalia Lucans, Wiesbaden 1982, 4653. I quite deliberately speak, following
W.J. Bouwsma, of a Stoic impulse, because this in fact leaves room for other inuences,
such as Augustinianism. For this see W.J. Bouwsma, The two faces of Humanism:
Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought, in: idem, A Usuable Past. Essays
in European Cultural History, Berkeley 1990, 1974. See also H.A. Obermans critique
of the suggestions of Ganoczy and Scheld that under Stoic inuence Calvin teaches
 god: judge and father 149

We would do well to remember that this is a problem that also led

to erce controversy in Calvins own day. The serious problems which
arose in Geneva surrounding Bolsec had to do with this.
It is not easy to do justice to Calvin in the matter of whether his
theology results in fatalism. It is signicant however that when this
conclusion was drawn, he always reacted against it ercely. All things
are indeed xed in Gods Counsel, and the idea that the course of
all things is established does resemble the concept of fatalism, but
Calvin disputes the conclusion that in this manner man is completely
deprived of his responsibility. The distinction which he makes again
and again in the matter of human knowledge of divine things is that
the heavenly and terrestrial must not be confused with each other.
Gods merciful and just actions are in a sphere which may not be
played against the sphere of human responsibility. He is convinced
that the Scripture teaches us that, too. With a conviction equal to
that with which he argues the decisive role of the will of God, he also
opposes resignation and passivity as attitudes on the human side. He
derives his argument from concrete Biblical examples. Again, although
God sends illness, man must resist sickness and death with might and
main, when there are means to do so.102 After all, man does not know
what the purport of Gods will is in this concrete case; he knows only
that things are ordered according to Gods will. His own acts must
however be determined by taking active responsibility for the situation.
Gods purpose will be fullled in the way of human obedience and
readiness for action. According to Calvin, they are fools who do not
see that the means of deliverance and relief that we are given come
just as much from God, and His purpose will be fullled in that way.
In other words, no conclusion regarding the outcome of any specic
situation may be drawn from the fact that Gods will is denitive in
all things. Gods deepest Counsel is never known from factuality as
such, is never nakedly obvious, but, says Calvin, by employing means,
assumes a visible form.103 In short, the doctrine of divine providence
does not mean that man is relieved of responsibility. There are two

a predetermination for evil: In Stoicism, the Deity or divinity does not interfere
with the course of an individual persons life. Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins
Reformation, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor
of Holy Scripture, 120, nt. 22.
102 Inst. 1.17.4.
103 Inst. 1.17.4.
150 chapter three

elds of action which appear to collide with one another, on the one
hand divine Counsel and on the other human responsibility. Because
divine Counsel is unchangeable and lies outside time, logically Calvin
will inevitably have diculties. He must acknowledge that, seen from
the perspective of divine Counsel, freedom of action indeed does not
exist. But it is essential for Calvins theology that precisely at this point,
when he comes to the actions of man and mans responsibility, that
he shifts the perspective. Then we are dealing with a second given
in knowledge of God, namely with the limitation that is imposed on
human knowledge of God, and the mirrors in which God chooses that
his power and will be known. The Bible witnesses to the existence of
Gods unchanging will. But it is not given to man to know how this
unchanging will looks, precisely, and how it relates to human freedom.
At that point Calvin instructs man within the boundaries of his limited
knowledge. Seen from the human perspective there is a double will.
First there is the revealed will of Gods decree. Next, Scripture informs
us of the existence of a comprehensive will of God that determines
all things. But in his revelation God has not permitted us insight into
his will. Man knows only the existence of this comprehensive will. He
knows nothing from the perspective of God; his knowledge is limited to
what is revealed to him. Finally, Calvin argues for living within these set
boundaries in obedience and responsibility.104 In accordance with this
varying perspective, Calvin accepts the distinction between of necessitas
and coactio, necessity and compulsion, from medieval theology. Post
lapsum Adae, human acts are indeed under the necessitas of sin, of a life
that is going the wrong direction. From all sides man is vulnerable to sin
and destruction. That does not however mean that in a psychological
respect one can speak of coactio, compulsion. Enchained by sin, man
is always still called to account in his own responsibility; from the
perspective of psychology there is still voluntariness.105
For the evaluation of the concept of the unchangeable will of God
as the ground of all events, the spiritual prot that according to Calvin
lies there is important. Calvins thinking and feeling is characterised by
the fact that something being xed by Gods will is not in the least to

104 Inst. 1.17.35.

105 Inst. 2.3.5. See J. Bohatec, Calvins Vorsehungslehre in: J. Bohatec (Hrsg.), Calvin-
studien. Festschrift zum 400. Geburtstage Johann Calvins, Leipzig 1909, 339. See also K. Reu-
ter, Das Grundverstndnis Calvins, 157. and F. Wendel, Calvin. Sources et volution de sa pense
religieuse, Paris 1950, 141.
 god: judge and father 151

be connected with fatalism and paralysis. The spiritual prot is that

the faithful know that in all things which happen to them, they have
to do with nothing other than with the grace and correcting hand of
the Living God, and not with blind fate. In Calvins view of life, the
constancy of God does not have the negative freight that it has taken
on in our time. Gods changelessness is a beacon or anchor in the midst
of an uncertain and constantly changing sea. We will return to this in
connection with the doctrine of election.

3.11. Father and Lord: love and fear

According to Calvin, the manners in which we know God are sharply

divergent. Gods authority and the ways he exercises his power have
a dierent form for believers and non-believers, for those who turn
toward Him in reverence and for those who refuse the relationship.
Toward believers He exercises his caring justice, while the reprobate
encounter his wrath and judgement. It is now time to turn our atten-
tion to the third main concept that we noted earlier: mercy, miseri-
cordia. The corresponding metaphor for God in this case is also God
the Father. The fact that fatherhood is the controlling metaphor within
Calvins concept of God does not exclude that believers, on their way
to Christ, also come to know of God in his role of judge. As soon as
man descends into himself and his conscience is summoned before the
tribunal of God, according to Calvin he encounters God as Judge and
Avenger. Wherever man may turn his gaze, above or below, after the
fall he encounters the curse against him.106 But that image of God dom-
inates where Christ is not known. Outside of Christ, man does not get
beyond it.
For the believer God has another face. In Christ, Gods countenance
is full of grace and kindness. He appears as Father. Only in faith in
Christ does one get sight of salvation, of eternal security with God.
We must remember here that which was said in the previous chapter

106 Inst. 2.6.1: sed post defectionem quocunque vertamus oculos, sursum et deorsum

occurit Dei maledictio. Inst. 2.16.1: Quum enim nemo possit in seipsum descendere ac
serio reputare qualis sit, quin Deum sibi iratum infestumque sentiens, necesse habeat
eius placandi modum ac rationem anxie expetere, quod satisfactionem exigit, non
vulgaris requiritur certitudo: quia peccatoribus, donec a reatu soluti fuerint, semper
incumbit ira Dei et maledictio, qui, ut est iustus iudex, non sinit impune legem suam
violari, quin ad vindictam armatus sit.
152 chapter three

about the specicity of Calvins concept of faith. Faith is that man

clings to the fatherly mercies of God toward us.107 Revelation in Christ
brings into coherence the two aspects in which God is known. Gods
disclosure in Christ makes it possible to acknowledge him at the same
time as creator and sustainer of life and as liberator and deliverer.
Human knowledge of God is therefore a cognitio duplex. Put otherwise, in
Christ man learns to know God as Lord of the world and as a merciful
Father.108 Calvin explicitly opposes the idea that God becomes merciful
and kind after Christ has borne divine wrath for sin. God himself is in
fact the primary source for the whole of the way that God goes in his
salvation. The exposition of Romans 5:10 is instructive with regard to
his doctrine of God and soteriology. How is it possible that the same
God whose benevolence and fatherly love we embrace in Christ109
in this verse is pictured as the enemy of man? Do wrath and love
coexist next to each other? The manner in which Calvin resolves this
is characteristic. First the reader is reminded of the didactic intention
that the Spirit has in stating it in this manner. The wrath of God even
appears to evaporate into an anthropomorphism, into the locutiones ad
sensum nostrum accommodatae,110 through which believers are made to
understand the miserable situation from which they are saved. Through
appearing as their enemy, God wishes to achieve an eect in man,
namely an intense desire to seize with both hands what God oers
him, and deep thankfulness for the gift given. In short, the manner in
which Scripture speaks is a way of speaking which is adapted to human
capacities, so that we can understand how things are with man outside
of Christ.111
But, what is our situation now? Is the Biblical testimony about Gods
wrath then false? Does this language correspond to something really
in God? It is as if the lines of Calvins theology become blurred when
the human eye seeks what is taking place within God. Only when the
gaze is once again directed on the mirror, where God shows his face
and to which he has tied man for his knowledge of God, does the
eye once again discover certainty and denition. Wrath is described
as a response to man. All of us have that within us which deserves

107 Catechismus Ecclesiae Genevensis, OS II, 92.

108 Inst. 2.6.1.
109 Inst. 2.16.2.
110 Inst. 2.16.2.
111 Inst. 2.16.2.
 god: judge and father 153

the hatred of God, writes Calvin. God nds in us enough to deserve

his wrath.112 In his commentary on Romans 1:18 Calvin writes that
in the Scripture wrath is a anthropomorphic manner of speaking of
vengeance, because God, when he engaged in punishing, to our con-
ception shows the face of a wrathful man. With this word therefore
[Paul] does not in any way designate a disposition on the part of God; it
is only related to the perception of the sinner who is being punished.113
Wrath as an actual conduct only bets a man who has lost control of
his emotions and is dependent on his environment. It is characteristic
of Calvin that, both in the case of Gods wrath and Gods love, he does
not ask after what corresponds to wrath and love in Gods own being.
He stops where we would want to continue questioning, and where
contemporary theology, in its initiative of self-revelation, actually does
continue to question. In the exposition of IJohn 4:8 (for God is love)
Calvin writes rst that Gods nature is to love man. Because God is
the source of love, and all love comes from God, He is called love and
light. As soon as a statement about Gods essence seems to be made,
immediately there appears to be something which must be corrected,
through shifting attention to the way in which God desires to be experi-
enced. Thus nothing is being said of the essence of God, but he is only
teaching about how we experience Him. Such a displacement marks
this concept. The attention is shifted to what God wishes to accomplish
in man. God desires that we become new creations and that we become
similar to Him.
Indisputably, here Calvin will not inquire further, and he refuses to
further dene the relation of wrath and love. There are spaces in Gods
Counsel to which the creature nds the door shut. In his disclosure,
God keeps a part of his Counsel hidden. For Calvin, secrecy does
not have the role that it would later come to have in the theology of
Barth, namely as a quality of Gods revelation. It simply means that
God withholds a part of his Counsel from man. For the believers it is
true, however, that under sin they lived with Gods wrath and at the
same time were living in Gods love. To put it in the words of Augus-
tine, thus in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when he
hated us.114 There are thus two elements in God, which in his concept

112 Inst. 2.16.3.

113 Comm. Rom. 1:18, CO 49, 2223.
114 Inst. 2.16.4: Habebat itaque ille erga nos charitatem, etiam quum inimicitias

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

154 chapter three

cannot be reduced to or connected with one another. God must con-

demn sin because he is the highest righteousness, summa iustitia. At the
same time he loves sinners according to his pleasure. There are two
elements in God, righteousness and love. The reprobate encounter the
righteousness, the elect children his righteousness and his love. Unde-
niably this doubleness has major consequences, which, considering the
present state of aairs in investigations of the Biblical concept of Gods
justice, we no longer want to accept, and that in Barths theology are
therefore related to each other.
Yet, as is evident from the quote from Augustine, according to Calvin
too the two qualities have something to do with one another. There is
a coherence in God, although Calvin neither can nor desires to make
the nature of this coherence more clear. It is of the greatest importance
to pause at this pointand not only for theological-historical reasons.
We here encounter a structureor better yet, a rulefor speaking
theologically that is still of the utmost importance. For its speaking
about God, Christian theology should take seriously the way that God
has gone in Christ, and not take as its point of departure an element
that lies behind that. What is involved here is the question of whether
what is really to be said of God lies behind Christ and the concrete
events of his life. As has already been said, Calvins theology is open to
criticism from various sides on precisely this point. Barth presumes that
in speaking of Christ as the mirror of election the real decisive moment
lies in Gods decision, and that Christ is the more or less technical
means by which this decision is carried out. Then there is no longer
an intrinsic connection between Gods Counsel and Christ. In his own
time Calvin was challenged by Laelio Sozino to distinguish between
Gods decision and the way of Christ. Sozino proposed that speaking of
the love of God as the source of human justication made it impossible
to still speak of Christs suering as being meritorious. The death of
Christ as meritorious would be in conict with the assertion that God
redeems as a result of His love.
Calvins answer to Sozino demonstrates how deeply he wanted to
hold together what was separated by Sozino. He impresses upon his
audiencethat is to say, on potential readers of Scripturethat the

quando nos oderat, diligebat. Oderat enim nos, qualies ipse non fecerat: et quia iniq-
uitas nostra opus eius non omni ex parte consumpserat, noverat simul in unoquoque
nostrum et odisse quod feceramus, et amare quod fecerat. Calvin quotes Augustine, In
Johannis Evangelium Tractus 110.6, CCSL 36, 626.
 god: judge and father 155

love of God is not the result of Christs suering for sin. Accord-
ing to Calvin, an essential element of Christian knowledge of God
is that the love of God is a disposition that arises from God Him-
self. The love of God the Father is primary, is a prima causa.115 This
remains true despite the fact that in Scripture the obedience of Christ is
termed the merit through which grace is obtained. Christs obedience
is causa secunda or causa propior. What comes rst: Gods grace, or the
merit of Christ? To our ears, speaking about a rst and second cause
very quickly sounds like the distinction between actual and apparent.
The love of God and the way of obedience and the cross are so eas-
ily played against one another. In his explanation of the doubleness,
Calvin however opposes precisely the separation of the two sorts of
cause.
As a rst step in his explanation of the doubleness, Calvin reaches
back to Augustine. Gods grace cannot be regarded as a consequence
of the work of Christ. The fact that the work of Christ can be char-
acterised as meritorious rests on Gods ordinatio.116 With this concept
from the doctrine of grace as it developed in the late middle ages, we
encounter an element that plays a decisive role in Calvins theology
at various points, namely the idea of the self-binding of God. From
his mere good pleasure God has decided that there will be a media-
tor who will purchase salvation for us.117 Two statements that are at
rst sight contradictory thus become possible. The rst is that man
is justied from the sheer mercy of God. The second is that man is
saved by the merit of Christ. These two assertions, Calvin suggests, are
not logically contradictory, if one takes in to account that they each
lie on a dierent level. After all, the meritoriousness of the work of

115 Inst. 2.16.3: Proinde sua dilectione praevenit ac antevertit Deus Pater nostram

in Christo reconciliationem. Cf. his commentary on Jn. 3:16, CO 47, 64: arcanum
amorem quo nos apud se complexus est coelestis Pater, quia ex aeterno eius proposito
manat, omnibus aliis causis superiorem esse.
116 Inst. 2.17.1: Quum ergo conscendimus ad Dei ordinationem, quae prima causa

est: quia mero beneplacito Mediatorem statuit qui nobis salutem acquireret. Atque ita
inscite opponitur Christi meritum misericordiae Dei. Regula enim vulgaris est, quae
subalterna sunt, non pugnare; ideoque nihil obstat quominius gratuita sit hominum
iusticatio ex mera Dei misericordia, et simul interveniat Christi meritum, quod Dei
misericordiae subiicitur.
117 Inst. 2.17.1. In other words, the reception of the human nature of Christ into

the unity of the divine person is the paradigm par excellence for election. Without
antecedent merit, God has chosen this human nature, in order to ll humanity with his
wealth, through his corporality. That is the way of salvation, the arrangement that God
in his grace has chosen.
156 chapter three

Christ rests upon an order of salvation which God himself ordained.

Calling upon John 3:16, Calvin terms Gods love the rst and highest
cause of salvation, and Christ the second or further cause. It is how-
ever incorrect to draw the conclusion on these grounds that Christ is
only the formal cause of salvation.118 Why? Because in many places
Scripture says more. With reference to IJohn 4:10, Col. 1:20 and IICor.
5:19, Calvin states that the substance of our salvationthat on which
man can drawmust be sought in Christ. One cannot separate causa
prima and causa secunda as actual cause and proximate means; the vari-
ous causes are aspects of the one event that man is faced with in Gods
revelation. When one separates Gods love from the way and the per-
son in which this love became concrete, one wrenches apart that which
can not be disjoined. Laelio Sozino confronted Calvin with the argu-
ment that Gods love does not permit speaking of Christs obedience as
a merit, and at a later date Barth accused Calvin that in his theology
speaking about Christ as the mirror of election is an unstable basis for
trust in God, because for Calvin Christ is merely the means of elec-
tion. Both have overlooked the fact that we may not play a prima causa
and causa secunda against each other. Both causae are aspects enabling
us to comprehend the one event of Gods salvation and do justice to
it.
Believers encounter Gods love and righteousness. Thus here the two
concepts describing the attitude toward God the Father in the life of the
believer correspond. To remind ourselves, these two aforementioned
concepts are fear and trust.119 Knowing God in Christ leads to a double
eect. Believers know God as Father, but this Father is at the same time
Lord, and deserves respect. In order to roughly sketch the content of
the knowledge of God, something must be briey said with regard to
the relationship of faith, atonement and justication.
At this point we can reach back to the concept of faith. The object of
faith is not the commandments or announcements of punishment. The
real scopus of faith is Gods loving-kindness.120 Those who are united
with Christ through the power of the Spirit know Him not merely

118 Inst. 2.17.2. See also commentary on Jn 3:16, CO 47, 64.

119 Inst. 1.10.2.
120 Inst. 3.2.29: sed misericordiae promissionem dei in proprium scopum desti-

namus. Quemadmodum iudicem et ultorem scelerum Deum debent quidem agnoscere

deles, et tamen in eius clementiam proprie intuentur: quando talis considerandus illis
describitur qui benevolus sit et misericors, procul ira, multus bonitate, suavis universis,
super omnia opera sua misericordiam suam eundens.
 god: judge and father 157

as a strict judge. In Christ his countenance beams forth full of grace

and gentleness towards poor unworthy sinners.121 But this faith, the
intercourse of God with man, has a dynamic, an irreversible direction.
The believer knows God as Lord and realises that outside of Christ
this lordship of God takes the form of judgement. Within the sphere
of inuence of Gods Spirit, faith holds fast to the image that prevails
there: God as the merciful father, who invites his children to come to
him and in Christ gives them a share in his benets. Or, following
Isaiah 49:15: Gods love goes beyond the love of a mother. If a mother
will not forget her children, how much more will God keep man in His
heart.122 There is yet something more that lies behind the metaphor
of a mother, but this analogans is not of lesser import than the familiar
elements of the analogy. Gods love goes deeper, compared to the love
of a mother or a father.
This knowledge does not however lead to stasis; it leads man once
again into the midst of life and into himself. Calvin speaks of a double
grace that is received in faith.123 On the one side there is the regen-
eration that takes a concrete form in penance; on the other side the
child of God receives forgiveness of sin.124 Christian life can be typied
from this origin and by this dual process. It is characteristic of Calvins
dynamic of knowing God that immediately after his discussion of the
concept of faith he next speaks of repentance. In this way every chance
is removed that the believer who is preserved for justication in faith
might therefore be careless in regard to renewal of life.125 Faith sets in
motion a process of life-long regeneration, a rebirth which for Calvin
is not limited to one single moment. One might say that life with the
Spirit opens a moment with him in which man particularly gets insight
into the depths and chasms of his own life. That is rebirth. Knowledge
of God in Christ implies a continual participation in forgiveness, and at
the same time a renewal that is characterised by the concepts of morti-
catio and vivicatio. The manner in which Calvin works this out however
reveals that morticatio is really a designation in which he includes new

121 Inst. 2.7.8.

122 CO 37, 204.
123 Inst. 3.3.19; Inst. 3.11.1.
124 Neither penance, nor the simultaneous morticatio and vivicatio, are conditions for

salvation, but its consequences. This does not detract from the fact that in Calvins
understanding of man the conscience is an important pedagogical path, along which
God draws the sinner to himself. This however is not yet penance.
125 Inst. 3.11.1.
158 chapter three

life. O. Weber has correctly remarked that in this manner Calvin does
not distinguish himself from a long Western tradition.126
Although faith is focused on Gods mercy, it is still characterised by
a certain doubleness. As Calvin remarks, God has within himself the
honourable qualities of a Lord and a Father. That means that love for
God the Father is constantly characterised by his lordship. The children
of God thus do not obey as servants, that is to say because they cannot
avoid doing so, but in respect. Malachi 1:6 is cited as evidence that
this fear of the Lord is a reverence in which fear and respect come
together. The fact that a believer knows himself to be an adopted child
and subject of pity thus does not detract from the realisation of Gods
majesty. In other words, the man of faith also knows the experience
of trembling, the abyss, although this diers in quality from the fear
that seizes the unbeliever when he is confronted with judgement. In
addition to the timor Dei the believer also knows of Gods mercy, and in
the orientation to that mercy he has the realisation of God as avenger
of all wrong behind him, as it were.
This is clear: Calvin disputes that in faith there is no fear whatsoever.
In doing so, he seems to atly contradict the words of IJohn 4:18,
Perfect love banishes fear. Calvin however boldly declares that this
refers only to the fears of the unbelievers. The unbeliever has an abject
spirit and his only concern is to avoid the wrath of God. The fear
peculiar to faith is that of the child, who suers from it when the
relationship with the father has been disrupted.127

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

3.12.1. A center or the core?

In the foregoing various essentials have already been discussed: in
Calvins thought, one essential part of the knowing involved in faith is
the acknowledgement that all things, including the answer that people
give to invitation which God extends to them, are anchored in Gods

126 Inst. 3.3.89. See the critique of O. Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II, Neukirchen

19775, 394: Der Ton der eschatologischen Freude, der das ganze Neue Testament
durchzieht, der in den gebundenen Formen des Rituals und der Sitte die Ostkirche
so krftig bewegt, is in der auch von Calvin nicht durchbrochenen abendlndischen
Frmmigkeit zu wenig, zu krglich zu vernehmen.
127 Inst. 3.2.27.
 god: judge and father 159

Counsel. In other words, it is time to take up explicitly the doctrine

of election. If ever a doctrine has become notorious, if ever a person
has become identied with and vilied for a doctrine, if a movement
named for that person has ever become isolated through a doctrine,128
then that has been Calvin and his doctrine of predestination.
It is as simple to describe the content of Calvins doctrine of predes-
tination and to reject it on the basis of the insights of modern Biblical
studies as it is problematic to determine the place of the doctrine in the
whole of his thinking. Responding to the question of what is at stake
existentially with this doctrine of knowing in faith is the most dicult
and at the same time most theologically rewarding direction. One can
refer to the denition in the Institutes for a characterisation. There we
read,
By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he
determined with himself whatever he wished to happen to every man. All
are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life,
others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created
for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life
or to death.129
What strikes one rst in this denition is the parallelism. Eternal salva-
tion and damnation are bound up together. A second striking element
is that the subject of election is singular: God. It is not clear from this
denition to what degree Christ plays a role in the decision for salvation
or damnation, and one can arm that Calvin oers no more clarity on
this elsewhere in his writings.130 It is exactly this which has played a
large role in the critique of his doctrine of election.

128 Cf. Oberman, Calvins Heritage, The two Reformations, 156.

129 Inst. 3.21.5: Predestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se
constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque homine eri vellet. Non enim pari conditione
creantur omnes: sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque
prout in alterutrum nem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam vel ad mortem praedes-
tinatum dicimus.
130 When Calvin speaks of God, he is thinking of the Triune God. As the second per-

son of the Trinity Christ is indeed involved in predestination, but then only as authorem
electionis of the positive pole of predestination, election (Inst. 3.22.7). Calvin appeals to
John 13:18 and John 15:19. Election is not thought through from the incarnation, but
precedes the incarnation in order. Calvin is silent on a role for the Eternal Son in
reprobation. See C. Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth. Oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leer
der verkiezing in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme, s Gravenhage 1987, 3740, who correctly
observes that Calvin, by regarding the double determination for salvation and repro-
bation as the decision of the one God, creates an enormous tension in the doctrine of
160 chapter three

What place does election have? In the previous chapter I maintained

that it is not correct to reduce Calvins theology to a doctrine of double
predestination. The invitation which God extends is primary, the mir-
ror of his grace that he holds up before the hearers of the Word. The
attempt has been made many times in research to sharply distinguish
Calvins thinking from that of his successors, where the discussion of the
loci is much less soteriologically ordered, and more logical-deductive.
While it is doubtful how much of a sharp distinction it is possible to
make between Calvin and his follower Beza,131 the fact is that on this
point Calvins theology has a certain uidity.132 As is known, in the
nal edition of the Institutes Calvin discusses predestination only in the
third Book, after having discussed the new life that comes to man in
a two-fold manner in regeneration and justication, and after prayer
has been discussed. But what importance should we attribute to this
placement? It would be improper to conclude on this basis, that elec-
tion only has a subordinate place. In handling the Bolsec aair, in the
aftermath of this aair and the elaboration that he subsequently gave
to the doctrine of double predestination, it is clear that with this doc-
trine we are indeed dealing with a core of Calvins thought. It is equally
impossible, however, to conclude on the basis of the teleological struc-
ture of Calvins theology that the most important issues come at the
end. Such a conclusion is based on the idea that systematic perspec-
tives play a decisive role in Calvins concept of knowing God. That is
not the case. Calvin desired to be a Biblical theologian rst and fore-

God. With equal justice Graaand remarks that Calvin never works out the implica-
tions of this theologically. Indeed, we are compelled to say, it is precisely characteris-
tic of Calvins concept of knowing God that man never works out certain questions,
respects limits, and turns his gaze on that which Gods actions have produced which is
benecial for him.
131 See particularly the work of R.A. Muller, who in various publications has de-

fended the continuity between Calvin and Beza. See Calvin and the Calvinists:
Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy,
Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995), 345375, and 31 (1996), 125160, now also in: R. Mul-
ler, After Calvin. Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition, Oxford 2003, 63102;
idem, The Use and Abuse of a Document: Bezas Tabula Praedestinationis, The Bolsec
Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy in: C.R. Trueman/R.S. Clark
(eds.), Protestant Scholasticism. Essays in Reassessment, Carlisle 1999, 3361.
132 Thus Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 9 and 15. A well-known example of this

uidity is the place of the doctrine of providence, which in the 1539 edition Calvin still
discussed in connection with election. In the 1559 edition the doctrine of providence is
placed in Book I, with the doctrines of creation and sustenance. Predestination is not
however placed within the doctrine of God, a step which is though taken by Beza.
 god: judge and father 161

most, and with regard to the discussion of election sought to respect the
Biblical-theological connections which he had discerned. It is for this
reason that election is discussed after he has spoken of Gods gesture of
invitation in the creation, of sin, of Christ and of the leading work of
the Holy Spirit. Predestination, Gods decisive Counsel to life or death,
is not the core of his theology, although it is undoubtedly one dening
element.
What are the consequences, however, if the aspect of Gods predeter-
mination is postulated as sharply and radically as Calvin does, without
any inclination to want to mitigate the reprobation or providing more
insight into it? As is known, Calvin was unwilling to suppress the fact
that, according to his conviction, Scripture also taught a negative coun-
terpart to election to life, namely reprobation. What does that mean for
faith? Does the doctrine of double predestination undermine the image
of the well-disposed father? For the reprobate portion of humanity, is
God not a tyrant who mercilessly destines them to remain entrapped
in total misery? One can really not dismiss these questions as ques-
tions which have only arisen in modern times. Therefore we must rst
look back into history. When Jrome Bolsec stood up in the Congrgation
(a public Bible lesson) on October 16, 1551, and attacked the concept
of predestination taught in Geneva because this doctrine would make
God a tyrant or false god like Jupiter, he undeniably laid his nger
on a sore point in Calvinist thinking. R.M. Kingdon has demonstrated
that Bolsecs accusations struck a sympathetic chord with the common
people.133 One can call the charge that with Calvin God becomes the
author of evil an easy clich, which since then has been repeated end-
lessly; the accusation points to an aporia with which everyone is con-
fronted if they wish to maintain both Gods omnipotence and his good-
ness. What were the motives that contributed to Calvin developing this
part of the doctrine as he did? Is it because he feared the response
that Bolsec received from among the common people, and saw sup-
port for the Reformation in the city being threatened?134 Is that why
he attempted to comprehensively explain what he intended? Or can
his harsh attitude against Bolsec be traced back to his personality? Was
there simply something wrong with Calvin as a person, that at deci-
sive moments he lacked humanity, which subsequently was projected

133 R.M. Kingdon, Popular Reactions to the Debate between Bolsec and Calvin in:

W. van t Spijker (Hrsg.), Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag, (Fs. W. Neuser) Kampen 1991, 138145.
134 Kingdon, Popular Reactions, 145.
162 chapter three

in his image of God? Most recently Ph. Holtrop, in his book on the
Bolsec controversy, has ascertained, to his own shock, that the doctri-
nal discussion was not only all tangled up with questions of social and
political power, but that Calvin personally also played a highly dubious
role in the aair. The appearance of Bolsec coincided with a moment
at which Calvinand with him a large number of French refugees in
Genevafound themselves in a threatening situation, in terms of pol-
itics.135 The risk that he would come o the worst against the native
residents of the city and their party, the Libertines, was great. Possibly
it was for this reason that in his trial Bolsec appealed to the magistrate
in order to seek judgement in his favour. Apparently he estimated the
situation as being such that it was denitely not a foregone conclusion
that Calvin and his supporters could be able to maintain their position
in the city. The way in which Calvin handled this situation and dealt
with Bolsec provides an insight into a number of dubious features in
Calvins personality. Although he viewed himself as moderate, in real-
ity his response was bitter, harsh and disproportionate.136 He was com-
pletely convinced that he was in the right and could only understand
Bolsecs diering opinion as a revolt against God. It is understandable
that the list of those who in the name of humanity have appointed
themselves complainants against the man has slowly grown to endless
length, and one is inclined to promptly declare in their favour. That
is all the more so because the negative verdict on Calvins role in the
Bolsec aair is not only a judgement which has been made in retro-
spect, on the basis of modern attitudes toward life. It also nds sup-
port in the reactions of Calvins own contemporaries and supporters:
Bullinger, Viret, Myconius.
The personal element thus certainly played a role, but one does not
do justice to Calvins theology when it is suggested that this is the last
word on the matter. That would be all too easy. As it happens, in his
doctrine of election Calvin is no exception. In its outlines, one nds

135 Ph.C. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551 to 1555. The Statements

of Jerome Bolsec, and the Responses of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and Other Reformed Theolo-
gians Vol.I Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter 1993, 167230, 56. See also W.G. Naphy,
Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation, Manchester/New York 1994, 172:
The lukewarm support that Calvins views received from the Swiss cities must have
undermined his position somewhat.
136 For several instances of Calvins lack of mercy and spitefulness see the study by

W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation and his conclusion
on page 68: Calvin had a particularly unforgiving side to his character. See also
C. Augustijn, Calvijn, Den Haag 1966, 7079.
 god: judge and father 163

the same teaching in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and all the major
gures in late medieval theology.137 Moreover, in his doctrine of election
Calvin takes a position that logically follows from his concept of human
knowledge of God.
Why, according to Calvin, does double predestination belong to the
fund of human knowledge of God? How did people come to conceive
election as the heart of the church? It has been correctly noted that
within Reformed Protestantism the doctrine of election has gone from
inheritance to stumbling block, and on to being an article of faith
from the day before yesterday.138 What could the foundation of this
doctrine ever have been? What was at stake here, according to Calvin?
In the past an attempt was made to answer this question by referring
to the horric inequality in opportunities in nature and history. Elec-
tion then becomes a principle that is visible in the whole of life and
which rules all existence.139 Although one also nds in Calvin an appeal
of this sort to the inequality everywhere in life, it cannot be denied
that in Calvin this does not do justice to the soteriological context of
the concept of election. Or put dierently: standing behind the con-
cept, its primary background, is the awesome astonishment that man
is not overtaken by disaster, does not disappear into his own darkness,
but is brought home by God in his love. For a part of the Reformed
world it was G.C. Berkouwer who again underscored the existential
character of election. Election has to do with the acknowledgement
of the supremacy of Gods grace, with the heart of God which seeks

137 See A.D.R. Polman, De praedestinatieleer van Augustinus, Thomas van Aquino en Calvijn,

Franeker 1936, G. Oorthuys, De leer der praedestinatie, Wageningen 1931, P. Jacobs, Prdes-
tination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, Neukirchen 1937.
138 Authors translation from Oberman, De erfenis van Calvijn, 41. Cf. Oberman, Cal-

vins Legacy, The two Reformations, 156.

139 See A. Kuyper, Het Calvinisme. Zes Stone-Lezingen in october 1898 te Princeton (N.-J)

gehouden, Kampen Tweede Druk z.j., 179181; ET: Lectures on Calvinism, Grand Rapids,
197810, 195197. Here and there in neo-Calvinism one nds others who similarly
begin with inequality. See G.C. Berkhouwers sensitive discussion of the theology of
K. Schilder in Zoeken en Vinden. Herinneringen en ervaringen, Kampen 1989, 263264.
Berkouwer refers to an otherwise undeveloped marginal comment in Schilders Preken,
Vol. I, 81: Heaven cannot be imagined without hell. Election cannot be imagined
without reprobation. Here too day arises with night, and light is linked to darkness.
This is dicult. Yet life is replete with this. This law applies everywhere. Many are
called, few are chosen. One mans death is another mans breath. Darwin: survival of
the ttest. Thousands of blossoms fall o, so that a handful can ripen into fruit. Why?
Millions of living beings are born, only a few continue in life. Berkouwer does not seem
to be aware that these remarks are a direct summary of a passage from H. Bavinck,
Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 417418; ET, 401402.
164 chapter three

ways where, from the human perspective, all ways have been blocked.
Looking toward history, Oberman has tried to anchor election in the
faith experience of a community under the cross. Where the commu-
nity is threatened, where people must ee for the sake of their faith,
living in the diaspora in the midst of a threatening world, and where
their own faith is robbed of all its certainties, there perhaps the realisa-
tion arises again that election has to do with an anchor in God, which
provides comfort. Some understanding for this doctrine can perhaps
also be found in the recognition of the structures of the existence of
refugees in our own time.140 This is the search for an existential con-
text. It is obvious that all these explanations and situations nd their
basis in the manner in which Calvin has written of election as comfort.
It is however also worthwhile to begin with the basis which Calvin him-
self identied. In this one is in no way whatsoever denying the existence
of an existential context, but beginning with that which in any case also
must be said.
The simplest justication for the doctrine of double predestination,
and the one given by Calvin himself, is the following: it is taught by
the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Scripture itself declares he [God] does
not adopt promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some
what he denies to others.141 Key texts for the concept of double elec-
tion are, for instance, Romans 9:18 and 9:22, and Proverbs 16:4. Such
texts are interpreted by Calvin in the light of the double ending of
history. Mankind is divided into two groups: one group predestined
to be damned and one group of persons who will live in communion
with God eternally. On the basis of contemporary insights from Bib-
lical research we can only observe that already, on exegetical grounds
alone, there is no longer any support for Calvins purely individualistic
exegesis of these texts and his undervaluing of the category of covenant.
Calvin did not see that in chapters 911 of Romans election is a cate-
gory of sacred history, and that the question of personal salvation is sub-
ordinate to the question of how God will remain true to his promises
and his covenant. One can conclude that Calvin introduces a symme-
try between election and reprobation that is not expressly present in
Romans 911. He mirrors the positive connection of Gods action in
the election of Jacob with the rejection of Esau as the negative counter-
part of election. For election and reprobation being parallel, he appeals

140 Oberman, Calvins Legacy. The two Reformations, 160.

141 Inst. 3.21.1.
 god: judge and father 165

to the omnipotence of God, by virtue of which all things ultimately

proceed from the Counsel of God. It is in this context that the remark
about a decretum horribile, a terrible decision, comes.142 In retrospect we
must say that Calvins concept of the omnipotence of God has led to a
paralleling that nds no support in the text itself.
The second reason that Calvin adduces for this element of Christian
knowledge of God is that it ts perfectly with the experience that
the Church has gained from its preaching of the Word of God. The
Gospel does not nd the same positive reception from all. But that
is still putting too ne a gloss on it. Calvin makes no secret that he
proceeds from the idea that the number of the elect will only be small.
He believes he reads this in Paul when in Romans 11:5 the latter speaks
of the remnant saved for God. Moreover, this word from Scripture is
conrmed by daily experience, because experience shows that of the
general body many fall away and are lost, so that in the end a small
portion only remains.143 Experience supports what Scripture teaches.
The third point is the argument that Calvin always advances as the
most important point in favour of this doctrine. Election functions as
the anchor of salvation. Salvation, becoming a child of God, is not
anchored in ones own good works; the foundation of salvation is in
God himself. God is not obliged to grant participation in salvation.
Status as a child of God is not conferred on the basis of merit, but
purely because God wills this salvation for believers. With Calvin,
election has to do with the surprise that one is safe with God, is
ultimately secure. That is the heart of the doctrine. If one wishes to
sense something of that surprise in faith, then it is advisable to read
the commentary of Ephesians 1:45, for instance, and not the Institutes.
There Calvin comes closer to the sense. In this section he speaks
expressly of the call with which the community, the hearers of the
Word, are confronted. If it is asked what is the cause of God calling
us to participate in the Gospel, why He daily invests us with so many
blessings, why He opens heaven for us, then we must always return to
this fundamental point: because He has chosen us, before the world
was made. Thus he does not speak of election apart from faith, but
always after the hearing of the good news, after men have accepted the
invitation of Christ. That men belong to Gods family, have a seat at his
table, share in the communion of the body of Christ, arises out of Gods

142 Inst. 4.23.7.

143 Inst. 3.21.7. Cf. also Inst. 3.24.12.
166 chapter three

high prerogative. It does not happen on the basis of good works or

prospective good works; it comes forth from God himself. The manner
in which Calvin speaks of this in his exegetical work radiates a sense
of surprise, relief, not that of disputatio, as in the Institutes. In Calvins
doctrine of election the element of the unexpectedness of Gods grace
is magnied and maintained in a manner that makes it impossible to
ideologise this grace, in the way that this is at least present as a risk in
the development of Barths doctrine of election.144
According to Calvin election to life has a parallel in a decision to
reprobation. What reasons does he adduce for this? Here too Calvins
reading of Scripture plays a large role. Thus in Scripture God himself
teaches man about the existence of double predestination. That does
not mean, however, that God has given man unlimited access to his
Counsel and has thrown open all its spaces to inspection. There are
matters of his Counsel that God has revealed in Scripture, and mat-
ters that he has not revealed. According to this concept, the doctrine
of double predestination is among those matters that God has made
known for a very specic purpose. Therefore Calvin had no sympathy
whatsoever for the standpoint of the preachers in Bern, who in their
response to the questions asked in 1551 about the Bolsec aair con-
tended that one would do better to refrain from discussion of this mat-
ter, because it would agitate the common people.145 What it came down
to is that Calvin did not want to introduce any distinction between
what theologians said among themselves and what they would bring
up in the presence of the laity.146 The theological reason that Calvin
holds fast to his view that one must not refrain from speaking of dou-
ble predestination is that God himself has willed that these things from
his holy Counsel be made known to people. In the preceding chap-

144 In the second panel, of Barths theology, precisely this unexpectedness is main-

tained by the actuality of Gods Counsel. The fact that all men are chosen for life in
Christ prevents grace from becoming a thing, a decree that has existence apart from
the living God who judges and establishes his justice in the present. That in the recep-
tion of Barths theology grace can indeed become a principle, and thereby an ideology
that in fact crushes the life out of the call to repentance and a change of life, is a fact
that is still too little recognised.
145 See Calvins disapproval in Inst. 3.21.4.
146 According to Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy, 28, in the Bolsec aair Calvin rea-

soned along Scholastic lines. He not only based himself on the covenant and election in
Christ, but strongly posited a causal relation between Gods Counsel and faith. While
in the Institutes he argued from the eects to the cause, in the Bolsec aair he argues
from cause to the eects.
 god: judge and father 167

ter I sought to make clear how greatly Calvins doctrine of Scripture

was determined by that idea that God, through his Spirit, is the acting
Subject of Scripture. The fact that God made use of human writers
does not dene his vision of Scripture. Those things which appear in
the Bible are precisely what God considers good and useful for man to
know. They all belong, without distinction, to the doctrina, to the teach-
ing which does not come from man, but comes to us from God. One of
the hidden things of his will that He wished to reveal is the existence of
a double predestination.147 The making known of this secret in no way
means, now that God has revealed one element from the secret things,
that suddenly all secrets will be revealed. It is just as little permitted that
man can just do what he likes with the revelation. Revealed truths must
be handled carefully.
It is a matter of historical fairness to take Calvin at his own word
on this point. Even if one is of the opinion that he too easily dismissed
Bolsecs conclusions, it is precisely then that the protest that Calvin reg-
istered must be taken up as a signal that he wished to deal with revealed
truth dierently here. Calvin saw absolutely nothing of his own posi-
tions in Bolsecs accusations that in the doctrine of predestination God
was turned into a tyrant and the author of sin. He was so vehement
precisely because conclusions were being foisted upon him that he did
not wish to draw. In his view he stopped short of the line of revealed
knowledge of God, while his opponents sought to draw him over that
boundary.

3.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination

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

147 Inst. 3.21.1: Quae nobis patefacienda censuit voluntatis suae arcana, ea verbo suo

prodidit. (Those secrets of his will, which he has seen it meet to manifest, are revealed
in his word).
148 For instance in Inst. 3.21.1 and in the Commentary on Rom. 9:14, CO 49, 180.
168 chapter three

asked to take a back seat, yielding to worship. This takes nothing away
from the fact that Calvin rejects every form of Pelagianism in the sal-
vation of man, and arms that God is the highest cause of election
and reprobation. Time and again we see how he believes that this posi-
tion is supported by Scripture. Election and reprobation take place on
the basis of Gods dispensatio,149 ordinatio,150 in arcano Dei consilio.151 Calvin
regards the argument that reprobation is based on Gods foreknowledge
of actions, or that God only permits the fall, as being untenable.152 With
appeals to Scripture, and knowing himself supported by Augustine, the
regular refrain throughout his discussion of the objections is the propo-
sition that it is certain that all things happen through Gods ordinance
and nod.153 To use other terms, there exists a direct causal connection
between Gods double decision and the eternal misery of the repro-
bate on the one hand and the eternal bliss of the elect on the other.
We noted that in this context Calvin, in addition to the more dynamic
terms nutus and ordinatio, also makes use of the term causa from Aris-
totelian metaphysics.154 In the Institutes 3.14.17 Calvin explicitly accepts
these distinctions. The mercy of God is the causa eciens, Christ with
his obedience the causa materialis, faith is the causa formalis or instrumen-
talis. The causa nalis is lastly the manifestation of divine justice and
the praise of his goodness. Contemporary theology rightly questions
whether the causa concept does justice to the nature of Gods actions
and whether as a concept it does not remain inadequate. It would
be well to remember, however, that in the Enlightenment this con-
cept of causality underwent an enormous impoverishment, gradually
being reduced to mechanical causality. Causality was pried away from
Aristotelian metaphysics, and what remained was a systematic relation
of cause and eect.155 With Calvin we encounter a concept of causa-
tion that is much richer in nature. The classic-Aristotelian concept of
causality is characterised by its distinguishing among various aspects or

149 Inst. 3.23.8.

150 Inst. 3.23. 89.
151 Inst. 3.23.4.
152 Calvins tone is very denite in designating Gods election and reprobation as

the necessary foundation for all that happens; see Inst. 3.23.8: Non dubitabo igitur
cum Augustino simpliciter fateri, voluntatem Dei esse rerum necessitatem atque id
necessario futurum esse quod ille voluerit.
153 Inst. 3.23.6: ubi constat ordinatione potius et nutu omnia evenire.
154 Inst. 3.23.8. In his Metaphysics I,iii.1, Aristotle makes distinctions among what have

gone down in philosophy as causa formalis, causa materialis, causa eciens and causa nalis.
155 See for instance G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, Grand Rapids 1960, 188.
 god: judge and father 169

principles that all form peculiar approaches to the one reality. It is char-
acteristic of the various sorts of causality that they all describe one and
the same thing from various perspectives. The danger however exists
that the causa eciens will be adjudged as the rst member in a series
of secondary causes which are dependent on the rst in a mechanical-
causal manner. There is then no place left for an acknowledgement of
the peculiarity and relative independence of the other causes. For the
evaluation of Calvins concept of Gods acts this means that no one
aspect may be isolated, but that the unity of actions is assumed. Calvin
knew the various causae and used them as aspects which can be used
to describe the history between God and man.156 To come closer to
Calvins spirituality, it seems to me we must make an important dis-
tinction, which has much to do with the limit of human knowing of
God, namely the distinction between causae remotae and causae propinquae.
Gods predestination is a cause which lies in the area that is inaccessi-
ble to the reach of human investigation; it belongs to the causae remotae.
With regard to reprobation, man rst encounters the nearer causes,
namely his own revolt and apostasy.157 If we look at election to life, then
Gods love is the summa causa, and faith the causa secunda et propior. The
various causes lie at varying levels and can not be played against one
another. In fact, Calvin is speaking of one reality. Gods love, the work
of Christ, and the faith of men, sanctication are not dierent com-
partments existing apart from one another. Gods love is realised in the
work of Christ, and Gods election is realised in faith in Christ. The
faith that takes on visible form in the world has an invisible ground in
Gods eternal Counsel. What men primarily have to deal with are the
causae propinquae.

156 This means that election and reprobation indeed can be described as causa nalis

in order to reveal Gods severity and his compassion, respectively; see for instance
the Comm. on Romans 9:2223, CO 49, 187 and Inst. 3.24.12. In the explication of
Romans 3:22, CO 49, 60, Gods compassion is explicitly termed the causa eciens and
Christ is the materia. In the Comm. on Eph. 1:5, CO 51, 148149 the pleasure of Gods
will is the causa eciens, Christ is causa materialis and the praise of his grace the causa
nalis. A bit later, at Eph. 1:8, CO 51, 150 he calls the preaching of the Gospel the causa
formalis.
157 See Comm. on Romans 9:11, CO 49, 178. See also the treatise against Albertus

Phigius, De aeterna praedestinatione CO 8, 296. See also Comm. on Romans 9:22, CO

49, 187: causam in aeterno ac inexplicabili Dei consilio absconditam esse: cuius
iustitiam adorare magis quam scrutari conveniat. What would later be called the
supralapsarian perspective thus lies further away, in a region that is closed for human
investigation. What man does have to deal with are the things of this life and the appeal
that is heard there by the providence of God.
170 chapter three

The same is thus also true for reprobation. The unbelief of men also
has an origin which reaches back to God. But God may not be termed
unjust. However contradictory it may seem, Calvin thought that on the
basis of revelation both things must be said: In the decision of Gods
own Counsel lay the deepest cause of salvation and doom, while at
the same time revelation forbids the conclusion that God is the author
of sin, or is liable to moral censure.158 The existence of good and evil
alongside one another, of light and dark, of weal and woe, has reasons
that lie in God and which are further unknown to man.

3.12.3. The benet of the knowledge of predestination

Why has God made these secrets known? Calvin remains true to his
conviction of the usefulness of all revealed knowledge of God. This
conviction has an axiomatic signicance in his theology. Thus somehow
the principle applies here that knowing God and knowing ourselves are
correlates. Doctrine is not complete if it remains exterior, like a droplet
on a window; it must penetrate and only then nds its purpose in the
tting response on the part of man.
What are the benets? In the rst place, knowledge that human sal-
vation is founded in Gods election aords certainty. Certainty? Indeed,
one would not suspect this after so many centuries of individuals in
some Reformed Protestant circles wrestling with the question of wheth-
er they are really children of God. Yet Calvin connects election with
certainty. It however becomes somewhat clearer when one takes into
account the forum that Calvin had to deal with. The anchor for cer-
tainty of salvation does not lie in works or in personal sanctity; the
anchor of eternal salvation lies in Gods own decision. But it is not
without reason that in the Institutes this decision is discussed after the
realisation of community between God and man in Jesus Christ is
treated. The inward work of the Holy Spirit, through which Christ is
no longer at a distance but in whom the believer grows together with
Christ, is the mystery of faith. That is in the foreground. That this
work of the Spirit has its foundation in the election to life, and that
there is even a double predestination whereby some are chosen for life

158 Inst. 3.23.8: nihil aliud quam divinae iustitiae, occultae quidem, sed inculpatae,

dispensatio sic ex Dei praedestinatione pendet eorum perditio, ut causa et materia

in ipsis reperiatur Cadit igitur homo, Dei providentia sic ordinante: sed suo vitio
cadit.
 god: judge and father 171

and others rejected, is the mysterious background of an experienced

fact that, according to Calvins rmest conviction, is entirely palpable.
The teaching of the Spirit in Scripture is conrmed in everyday experi-
ence. Remarkably enough, Calvin begins his treatment of the doctrine
of predestination precisely with this reference to experience. Preaching
is received very dierently by various persons; the eect can be diamet-
rically opposite. The depth of divine rule is revealed in this experienced
fact.159 The ordo cognoscendi, the way of knowing of faith, is paramount in
Calvins treatmentthat is to say, rst the divine mercy that is revealed
in Christ, and then the background of this faith in the decision of divine
Counsel, the ordo essendi. As opposed to the late medieval doctrine of
grace, in which merit played a fundamental role, Calvin has, as he sees
it, adduced a stronger basis.
Calvin proposes thankfulness as a second practical purpose of the
doctrine. Election points to Gods free mercy, and this evokes thank-
fulness from the side of man. In this way God is gloried. It is not
without reason that in connection with Gods eternal Counsel we hear
the phrase that is also typical of Calvins concept of knowing God: it is
tting to praise Gods judgement, rather than to interrogate it.160 As a
third point Calvin lists humility. Man must learn to know his place in
relation to God. He is being trained in humility and submission.
Once one has taken cognisance of these three practical eects, it
can then be understood why Calvin reacted furiously to the suggestion
that it is better to hold ones peace about the doctrine of election. If
election were not to be spoken of, according to Calvin then on the
contrary the honour of God would be disparaged and the faithful
would not be stimulated to thankfulness and meekness. In this case man
is being wiser than God, who indeed thinks it useful to reveal this secret.
Calvins Biblicism is here of decisive importance. He labels the advice
of the Bern clergy to practice reticence in speaking of predestination as
human pride.161 No concession is possible. Calvin indicates where the
boundary between speaking and remaining silent lies for him:
Let us, I say, allow the Christian to unlock his mind and ears to all the
words of God which are addressed to him, provided he do it with this
moderationviz. that whenever the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, he also
desists from inquiry. The best rule of sobriety is, not only in learning to

159 Inst. 3.21.1.

160 Comm. Romans 9:22, CO 49, 187.
161 Inst. 3.21.4.
172 chapter three

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

It is characteristic of Calvins position that, with Deuteronomy 29:29 in

mind, he seeks a via media with regard to predestination. At one extreme
is an excessive curiosity, in which man wants to know more than what
God has disclosed in his Word. On this side the limit is formed by a
docta ignorantia, a not-knowing that is precisely the fruit of revelation.163
The emphasis however comes to lie on the second boundary that
Calvin wants to avoid, namely that lest under the pretence of modesty
and sobriety we be satised with a brutish ignorance.164 This ignorance
is in fact ingratitude with regard to that which God has disclosed.165
In the above we have once again discovered the three fundamental
concepts that qualify human knowledge of God. Man is certain of his
salvation, not on the basis of works, but on the basis of Gods mercy, his
misericordia. Further, in this earthly existence he practices humility and
thankfulness.
Anchoring salvation in election in Calvins theology indisputably has
consequences for the place which the concept of covenant will assume.
Covenant is subordinated to election. The particularity of Gods gra-
cious acts is indeed reected in the covenant with the people of Israel,
but that does not mean that all who belong to that nation have the
Spirit of regeneration bestowed upon them.166 Gods gracious action
is focused on single individuals. For Calvin the covenant is a function
of election. The election of the one nation of Israel out of the many
nations reects the splendour of election, which takes place not on the
basis of merit, but purely on the basis of mercy. In other words, the
freedom of Gods grace and turning toward man becomes visible in the
mirror of the covenant.167
Thus all this means that far from everything is decided about the
eternal salvation of those who are included in this covenant. Esau was

162 Inst. 3.21.3: Permittamus, inquam, Christiano homini, cunctis qui ad eum diri-

guntur Dei sermonibus mentem auresque reserare, modo cum hac temperantia, ut
quum primum Dominus sacrum os clauserit, ille quoque viam sibi ad inquirendum
praecludat. Hic optimus sobrietatis terminus erit, si non modo in discendo praeeuntem
semper sequamur Deum, sed ipso nem docendi faciente, sapere velle desinamus.
163 Inst. 3.21.2; see also Inst. 3.23.8.
164 Inst. 3.21.3: ne modestiae et sobrietatis praetextu bruta inscitia nobis placeat.
165 Inst. 3.21.4.
166 Inst. 3.21.7.
167 Inst. 3.21.7.
 god: judge and father 173

part of the covenant, but in no way belongs to the elect. Salvation is

indeed oered by the covenant, but that is not to say that God seals
all for salvation.168 The invitation of a whole people into the covenant
is followed by a second act of God in which he elects a part of that
people in a special, or indeed active, manner. The rst or general
election is, Calvin literally says, a sort of middle ground169 between
the rejection of the human race and the election of a small number
of sinners. There is, we must conclude, still a large gap between Gods
invitation to and oer of salvation, and actual, personal participation
in salvation. We undeniably there encounter the tension that lies within
Calvins doctrine of God and that he, as we previously observed, does
not attempt to resolve. He only points his readers toward a way of
dealing with it.
Calvin saw clearly that people can easily blunder in the discussion
of Gods rule in election and rejection. Those who will know too
much, who are led on by their curiosity, will, he contends, end up
in questions and observations that are ridiculous and arouse mockery.
He will therefore teach his readers to respect the limits of Scripture.
There are questions which can be asked, and questions which must
not be asked. As was said earlier, one can object that Calvin him-
self does not abide by that principle when he characterises reproba-
tion as the necessary counterpart to election. His exegesis of Scrip-
ture is here crucially dened and distorted by a vision of omnipo-
tence and election that can not be defended. Calvin did not see that
in the Bible election is a category of sacred history that describes the
manner of Gods mighty acts. For him, following the tradition inau-
gurated by Augustine, election has become a category of the Coun-
sel of God, in which decisions are made about the eternal salvation
and damnation of separate individuals. It is not just the indefensibil-
ity of his exegesis of Romans 911 that has meant that Calvins the-
ology is no longer followed on this point. In our second panel, in
the description of Barths theology, we will see how deeply changing
views of the Bible and the relation between the Bible and systematic
reection have had their eects there too. That Gods acts in the his-
tory of Israel and in Christ are unconditional acts for good, in the
second panel will be seen to be a compass for the reading of Scrip-
ture.

168 Inst. 3.21.7.

169 Inst. 3.21.7: medium quiddam
174 chapter three

Calvin has gone down in the history of theology as the one who
defended the doctrine of double predestination in its most rigid form,
thereby undermining the character of the Gospel as a message of
salvation. Seen from Calvins own position, that is a most curious and
particularly ungracious outcome. The fact is that he precisely did not
want to burrow around in the Counsel of God, did not wish to obscure
the image of God, but intended to x his readers minds on revelation
as it is given, on Christ as the one in whom God comes to meet them
with his salvation. In Him Gods will is revealed.

3.12.4. Gods will as the farthest horizon

That Calvin felt himself provoked by the accusations that his doctrine
of predestination cast a shadow over the image of God as a loving
father is understandable not only psychologically, but theologically. God
himself revealed that mans eternal salvation depends on a decision in
Gods hidden and immutable Counsel.170 If anyone subsequently asks
what the reason of this decision was, what the reasons are which guided
Gods will, then he will receive no answer. Gods will is the nal point to
which knowledge in faith, instructed by Scripture, can go back. In this
matter the believer will have to live with a docta ignorantia, as Calvin,
following Augustine, termed it171 The nal thing we can know, the
extreme of human knowledge, is the will of God.
The reference to the will of God immediately calls up the question
of what it means if Calvins doctrine of God is termed voluntaristic
and is situated within the channel of Scotism.172 Is Gods freedom to
be distinguished from arbitrariness? Undeniably there are statements to
be found in Calvin that appear to give cause for the negative picture
that is given in the older manuals of the voluntarism of late medieval
theology. We are told in the discussion of predestination that there is no
sense in asking why God entered into covenant with Abraham and his
descendants. Calvin dismisses such questions with the requisite irony.

170 Inst. 3.21.7: Quod ergo Scriptura clare ostendit, dicimus aeterno et immutabili

consilio Deum semel constituisse quos olim semel assumere vellet in salutem, quos
rursum exitio devovere.
171 Inst. 3.21.2. Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 130, 15, 28, CSEL 44, 72, 13.
172 For a careful but nevertheless sure backgrounding on this tradition, see H.A.

Oberman, Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvins Reformation in: W.H. Neuser (ed.)
Calvinus sacrae scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994,
113154, particularly 117127.
 god: judge and father 175

People who try to understand such irreducible facts could just as well
ask why they were created as men and not as oxen or donkeys. God
could just as easily have made them as dogs. Calvin asks if people
who want to investigate these contingent things might also wish to
allow lower animals to expostulate with God about not having made
them men.173 Things are as they are. Gods right to make a variety
of creatures now transports Calvin to the realm of salvation. Gods
freedom to introduce diversity into creation serves as an argument for
Gods freedom to elect some and reject others. Such an appeal to the
concept of freedom is dangerous because in this context it is not made
clear how Gods freedom diers from arbitrariness. Considering such
statements in isolation, one can easily manage to separate election from
the soteriological context in which the doctrine stands in Calvin, and
make it an independent, controlling principle of the sovereignty of God.
God then becomes a duplicate of the double face of nature. A natural
observation comes to dene the image of God. Above I have referred to
remarks by Kuyper and Schilder which do not escape this danger. That
in the Bible election stands in the context of salvation and redemption
is entirely lost. If we look at the context in which these statements
appear in Calvin, then it is clear that the point of his argument is not so
much the concept of freedom, but the foolishness of some questions.
The farthest horizon of human knowledge of God is Gods will. A
boundary is drawn in the reference to Gods will, which man cannot
pass. It is not possible to ask again why God wills as He does.174 Does
this reference to Gods will as the furthest horizon open the door to
the view that God, at his deepest, is dened by arbitrariness? That is
how Calvin is often understood. I would say this is incorrect, certainly
if one takes him at his own word. Gods will is always governed by
his justice and goodness. One can not search for reasons behind that.
I have previously noted that Calvin fences o reection on Gods
being, and always has the inclination to move immediately through to
questions about the eect that God wishes to produce with man. It is
characteristic of Calvins concept that he makes thinking about God as
prima causa subordinate to the nality of Gods action. It is not without

173 Inst. 3.22.1.

174 Inst. 3.23.2: Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult,
eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit. Ubi ergo quaeritur cur ita fecerit Dominus,
respondendum est, Quia voluit. The publishers of the OS refer to Augustine, De Genesi
contra Manichaeos I 2, 4 MSL 34, 175.
176 chapter three

reason that I previously pointed out the dominance of active verbs such
as invite, awaken and draw. These verbs are more denitive for Calvins
doctrine of God than thinking in terms of primary causality is.175 His
handling of the concept of potentia absoluta also ts within this pattern.
Calvin storms furiously against the idea that God acts as a potentia
absoluta, as absolute power. The reference to Gods will as the furthest
horizon serves to remind us of the categorical dierence between God
and man.

3.12.5. God as absolute power?

Is Gods will identied with caprice? In his actions is God a power
standing above the law? Calvin thoroughly realised that this idea could
easily take root.176 Yet everything indicates that he did not wish to go
down this road. Already, in section 3.8, it was mentioned that Calvin
strongly militated against the idea that God might be a despotic power
who wielded his might arbitrarily. The rst thing to which faith clings
is the goodness of God, his grace and justice. Gods power is not
separated from justice, but is always its norm and exponent. We do
not imagine God to be lawless. He is a law to himself.177
What does Calvin mean by this? There are various places in his
works where he explicitly speaks negatively about the concept of abso-
lute power, potentia absoluta or puissance absolu. It appears to be a term
which has frankly objectionable connotations for Calvin. What did
Calvin have in mind when he rejected this term?
In the treatise De aeterna praedestinatione (1552) we nd an example. He
there disputes the papales theologastri, according to whom one can ascribe
absolute power to God. A more extensive citation is in order here:
It would be easier to wrench light away from warmth, or to separate
warmth from re, than to divorce Gods power from his justice. Thus
let these monstrous speculations be far from pious minds, that God
can do more than is tting, or that He carries out something without
measure and without reason. And I do not accept this as illusion, that
God, because he is free of law, is free of reproach, whatever He does.
Those who place God outside the law rob Him of the greatest part of

175 See Oberman, Initia Calvini, 126.

176 Inst. 3.23.4.
177 Inst. 3.23.2: Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult,

eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit Non ngimus Deum exlegem, qui sibi ipsi
lex est.
 god: judge and father 177

his glory, because they bury His truth and justice. Not because God is
subject to law, except to the degree that He is law to himself, but because
between his power and justice there is such an harmony and symmetry
that nothing can come from Him except that it knows measure, law and
rule. And it is certainly necessary that believers acknowledge that the
same One whom they confess as almighty at the same time is the judge
of the world, so that they regard the power as in this sense determined
by justice and equity.178
God does not act arbitrarily. His deeds are always determined by
his justice and goodness, although that is sometimes hidden. Other
passages too where Calvin speaks explicitly of potentia absoluta are of the
same tenor.179 By absolute power Calvin understands an actually used
capability, which stands apart from Gods justice and wisdom.180 Calvin
will have none of this. If that were true, God would indeed be a tyrant,
someone who acts arbitrarily. According to Calvin, to think of God in
that way is the equivalent of blasphemy.

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

In the following I will place Calvins negative statements regarding God
as potentia absoluta within the context of late medieval discussions on
Gods power. The term potentia absoluta refers to a discussion that was
carried on since Augustine about the relation between Gods power
and his will, and which resulted in a distinction between absolute and
ordained power. In the later middle ages, under the inuence of the
use of these terms in canon law, this distinction led to the view that the
highest authority, that is to say the pope, can act according to powers
that are not bound by any law or regulation. It will be clear that in
this context freedom rapidly takes on overtones of arbitrariness. On
the basis of recent studies I will here present a brief survey in order to
situate Calvins ideas.181
178 CO 8, 361. Cf. also CO 8, 310: nihil esse in Deo inordinatum.
179 See Comm. Isa. 23:9, CO 36, 391; and Altera Responsio de occulta Dei providentia, CO
9, 288. One will also nd frequent examples in the sermons on Job, for example CO
35, 60 (puissance absolu) and CO 33, 584 (puissance tyrannique).
180 Inst. 1. 17.2 and Inst. 3.23.2.
181 For the view of the relation between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, see

the study of H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. Gabriel Biel and Late
Medieval Nominalism, Cambridge (MA) 1963. For a critical evaluation of the older view
and a reinterpretation, see particularly 3056. Further, I have made extensive use of
W.J. Courtenay, Capacity and Volition. A History of the distinction of Absolute and Ordained
Power, Bergamo 1990, idem, Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion in: Ch. Trinkaus
178 chapter three

A good place to begin in order to understand what the distinction

was originally about is the famous table conversation between Peter
Damian and abbot Desiderius at the abbey of Monte Cassino in 1067.
The subject of the conversation was the manner in which a citation
from Jerome should be interpreted, in which he asserted that God,
although he could do anything, could not undo the loss of virginity.182
Although the question can be so conceived that the problem of the
relation between the natural order and a supernatural intervention
becomes the nub, the discussion between Peter Damien and Desiderius
focused on the rst aspect, namely the question of in what sense it
may be said that God cannot do a thing. Desiderius defended the view
that Gods omnipotence cannot be understood as the capacity to do
anything whatsoever. Discussions about Gods power apart from his
will are senseless. Pronouncements about what God can not do simply
mean that God does not will doing this. Damian thought this position
unsatisfactory. It would mean that Gods power is limited by his will.
According to Damian, God is able to do more than He in fact wills.
Outside of what God actually does, there lies a eld of possibilities that
are open to Him.
The questions which were raised in that conversation were not new;
they have their background in Augustinian tradition. Already in Augus-
tine one nds the distinction that God can do more than He wills.
Potuit, sed noluit, as he put it. It is true for God: poterat per potentiam,
sed non poterat per iustitiam.183 Divine will can, for unsearchable reasons,
choose not to do a thing which from our perspective would seem to
t better with Gods goodness, although it does not tally with what is
right. An example given by Augustine is the fall of Adam. It would
appear in keeping with Gods goodness if he had prevented the fall of
Adam; he has however, for inscrutable reasons, chosen not to do that.184
For other things which He cannot do, it is the case that He can not do

and H.A. Oberman (ed.), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion,
Leiden 1974, 2659. Further F. Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order. An Excursion in the
History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz, Ithaca 1984; G. van den Brink, Almighty God. A Study
of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence, Kampen 1993, 6892.
182 Hieronymus, Epist. 22 ad Eustochium, 5, CSEL 54, 150: Audenter loquor: cum

omnia Deus possit, suscitare virginem non potest post ruinam. Valet quidem liberare
de poena, sed non valet coronare corruptam.
183 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 28.
184 Augustine, De natura et gratia, 7.8, CSEL 60, 237 and Contra Gaudentium I, CSEL 53,

233.
 god: judge and father 179

them because they are contrary to His nature. Can not must simply be
regarded as does not will to. It is nonsense to think of Gods capacity
apart from his will.
Particularly Anselm is important for the further development of the
classical meaning of the distinction. In his writings he took several steps
that stimulated reection on the capacity of God and suggested that in
God there is an unrealised sphere of potential that is apart from his will.
One of these steps is found in the consideration of the incarnation in
Cur Deus Homo. If Christ has taken on a truly human nature, by virtue of
the communion between the two natures in the divine-human person
He has the communicatio idiomatum, the capacity to do things which are
totally out of keeping with the divine nature, such as to lie and steal.
At this point Anselm applies the distinction between being able to
and willing. God in Christ has well the bald capacity to do all sorts
of things, but on account of his divine nature he does not have the
capacity to want to do them. The step which Anselm takes here is to
think hypothetically about what God might have wanted to do.185
A further step taken by Anselm is the distinction between vari-
ous sorts of necessity. First, there is the distinction between necessitas
antecedens and necessitas consequens. Necessitas antecedens describes the cause
of a particular eect. Necessitas consequens refers to the act as it takes
place or that is a result of an act. The second distinction is related to
this, namely that between an act that is compelled by an external inu-
ence and an action that takes place on the basis of a previous, freely
made act of will which the subject imposes on himself.186 Particularly
this latter distinction was to have immense consequences for thinking
about God, man and the world in terms of covenant. In freedom God
commits himself to act in a certain manner in his creation and in sacred
history. It is in keeping with Gods honour to act in conformity with
that to which he has committed himself in creation and redemption.
To the extent that these actions of God can be described as necessary,
this necessity is characterised by his honour, or, better, by his nobility.
Nearly all the ingredients which would be denitive for the classical
meaning of the distinction are already present with Anselm. The dier-
ence is that Anselm limits himself to Gods freely chosen obligation. In
its classic form the distinction describes the operation of a covenant in
terms of a comprehensive system of causes and eects on the basis of

185 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 33.

186 Cf. Cur Deus homo, II 5.
180 chapter three

attributed value. The second dierence is that while Anselms thinking

about Gods capacity apart from his will has only a hypothetical value,
in the classic form that capacity is considered as a real, continuing,
although often unused potential.
For the subsequent debate it was important that more and more
emphasis came to be placed on what God had the power to do, apart
from his will. Against Abelard, who wanted to limit Gods potential to
what really occurred, Hugo of St. Victor, Bernard of Clairveaux and
Peter Lombard, for instance, insisted that it was unacceptable that God
could not do other, or better, than what he actually did. The idea that
divine goodness was fully realised was unacceptable.
As we have said, with that the accent shifted. If Damian and Anselm
not read non potuit as noluit, in the rst decade of the 12th century the
stress fell on the posse: potuit, sed noluit. If at rst the distinction had had
Gods incapacity as its subject, now it became a positive assertion about
Gods capability, about his power.187
Added to this was the fact that reection on the dierence between
Gods willing and capacity was increasingly used to make room for
miracles. In the 12th century, under Aristotelian inuence the world
was more and more being viewed as a place governed by laws. In
such a world, how were men to regard Gods interventions by means
of miracles? What sort of powers and causes formed the basis for
miracles taking place? Questions of this nature led to the expansion
of the available concepts. It was assumed that created things had a
receptive capacity, a potentia oboedentialis, which made possible a reaction
or response on the part of lower natural powers and causes to the
higher, preternatural power of God himself. Courtenay remarks that
when, in the late medieval debate, the term potentia absoluta was dened
as potentia extraordinaria, it already had a long history of being used in this
sense. The world was experienced as responding to God. At that time,
such an operationalising of the term potentia absoluta had not yet taken
place. Miracles were thought to belong among the potentia ordinata, as
the denition in the Summa Halensis (1250) demonstrates.
Around 1250 the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordi-
nata was taking on its classic form and meaning. The distinction must
not be regarded as an assertion about two powers in God. It is a man-
ner of speaking about the one power of God. Potentia absoluta is used for

187 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 6869.

 god: judge and father 181

speaking of Gods power apart from his will and his concrete deeds in
creation and sacred history. Potentia absoluta refers to the whole of pos-
sibilities that initially stood open for God. These possibilities are only
limited by the principium non-contradictionis. God can not will and not-
will at the same time. Potentia ordinata regards Gods power according to
what He has actually done. The adjective absoluta is thus not a state-
ment about a concrete act of God; it is his potentia considerata abstracta.188
We see that it is not the intention of the distinction to make a statement
about what God can and cannot do. The intention is rather to make
a positive statement about his relation to the world. The point of the dis-
tinction is Gods binding himself to the order that He has chosen in creation and
sacred history. Since God in his Counsel has chosen for this world and
this sacred history, he is approachable on that basis. In light of this, the
distinction rst of all says something about the contingency of creation,
as opposed to Graeco-Arabic determinism.189 The present order is a
product of Gods will. It is an order that is not necessary, and not logi-
cally deducible. It is not the only possible order, and it rests positively in
the will of God. The dierence between willing and potential in God is
interpreted as potuit per potentiam, sed non per voluntatem.
This classical form of the dialectic between potentia absoluta and poten-
tia ordinata is not the end of the debate, however. When so much empha-
sis is placed on Gods self-binding to a particular order, and when he
is thought of as the one who has appointed the laws in his creation,
it becomes more dicult to situate miracles within the potentia ordinata.
Moreover, the self-binding of Gods power to particular forms and laws
assumes an element of deliberation in God. This assumption is not easy
to square with Gods immutabilitas.
In the third quarter of the 13th century, under the inuence of a
debate carried on by canon lawyers, still another use of the distinction
emerged. Potentia absoluta was understood by analogy with papal power
and sovereignty. The pope was thought to possess the plenitudo potestatis
with which the status ecclesiae must be maintained. The principal of lex
digna, coming from Roman law, encouraged the opinion that the pope
could act ex ratione ecclesiae.190 Concretely, that meant that the pope could
grant dispensation or could act against rights which had been granted,
when larger interests or the greater good was served by doing so. Then

188 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 74.

189 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 90.
190 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 92.
182 chapter three

he acted extra or supra legem. Potentia absoluta at that moment entered

the sphere of practical actions; the concept was operationalised. The
articles of 1277 must be situated within this historical context. In fact the
condemnations involved propositions according to which God acted ex
necessitate. With the condemnations the possibility was kept open that
God acted directly and unexpectedly. According to Hendrik van Gent,
a secular priest in Paris, the pope could use his power to cancel the
privileges of mendicant orders.
According to Courtenay, this development in the meaning of the
term potentia absoluta as a means of thinking of the order of the world
and sacred history as a non-necessary, given order, according to a
model in which potentia absoluta was considered as a sphere of actually
used power, was unintentionally furthered by Duns Scotus. Duns him-
self emphatically did not regard potentia absoluta as a form of practical
action. However, the debate among the canon lawyers is undeniably
reected in the denition he gives. According to his denition, the dis-
tinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata can be applied to
every possible subject that possesses the capability to will and think.191
Duns hereby attributes an element of free choice to God. Free will
applies to God and mankind. Potentia absoluta is no longer a realm of
possibilities from which a choice can be made. It is the capacity to act
outside the given order. In this way Duns hands the pope a resource
enabling him to change his mind.
For William of Ockham the distinction has primarily the traditional
meaning. It is used to explore the boundary between the necessary
and contingent in the reality of creation and grace. Ockham rearms
the explanation that Augustine had already given of the dierence
between willing and capacity to act. God could do much more, but
He does not will it. The concept of potentia absoluta only illuminates that

191 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 101 refers to Ordinatio I. Distinctio 44. Opera

Omnia vol IV, 363369: In omni agente per intellectum et voluntatem, potente confor-
miter agere legi rectae et tamen non necessario conformiter agere legi rectae, est dis-
tinguere potentiam ordinatam a potentia absoluta; et ratio huius est, quia potest agere
conformiter illi legi rectae, et tunc secundum potentiam ordinatam (ordinata enim est
in quantum est principium exsequendi aliqua conformiter legi rectae) et potest agere
praeter illam legem vel contra eam, et in hoc est potentia absoluta, excedens potentiam
ordinatam. Et ideo non tantum in Deo, sed in omni agente liberequi potest agere
secundum dictamen legis rectae et praeter talem legem vel contra eamest distinguere
inter potentiam ordinatam et absolutam; ideo dicunt iuristae quod aliquis hoc potest
facere de facto, hoc est de potentia sua absoluta,vel de iure, hoc est de potentia
ordinata secundum iura. See also Lectura I, 44.
 god: judge and father 183

God could have acted dierently. The contingency of the given order
is underscored. After all, certain miracles, such as the three men in
the ery furnace or Elijahs oering on Carmel, demonstrate that the
laws of nature are not necessary laws, but are contingent. Fire does not
always burn human esh, and water and re are not always opposites.
The question of whether the incarnation of the Son could have taken
place in a donkey is not asked because it was a serious possibility, but as
a means of distinguishing the incidental from the essential. It however
creates confusion when Ockham regularly creates the impression of
speaking of actual forms of Divine actions, when he only intends to
speak of the contingency of the world and the order of salvation.
Nevertheless, the operationalising of the term potentia absoluta through
the debate among canon lawyers unquestionably had inuence on the
era after Scotus and Ockham. The literature refers to Gabriel Biel
and Pierre dAilly as examples where potentia absoluta was interpreted
as potentia extraordinaria.192
To return to Calvin. His use of the term potentia absoluta as actually
used powerthus in operationalised formleads one to suspect that
he became acquainted with the concept as it was being used in the
circles of canon lawyers. It is important for Calvin that an absolute
freedom can never, ever be attributed to God in his actions. Both in the
work of creation and in the order of salvation, his actions are always
connected with his wisdom and his goodness. This does not mean, we
would once more emphasise, that man always understands how Gods
action rests in his justice and goodness. The fact that they form the
pillars of Gods action is something that the believer must accept as
an axiomatic point of departure, on the ground of revelation given in
Scripture.
Calvins view of the concept of potentia absoluta also leads one to
suspect that he was not aware of the classic meaning of the paired
concepts potentia absoluta et ordinata. At least he says nothing about them
explicitly. This in no way has to be in conict with the proposition that
both terminologically and in its content Calvins theology is permeated
with the idea of the self-binding of God to a given order. This is
particularly to be seen in the discussion of the work of Christ as a
meritum. In still another manner in our study we also already came
across elements which in terms of their content are related to the

192 See for example van den Brink, Almighty God, 85.
184 chapter three

idea of self-binding. God makes himself known through a variety of

mirrors, and it is therefore logical that believers are referred precisely
to these mirrors for their knowledge of God. The importance of the
self-binding of God emerges with particular clarity in his discussion of
election and Christ as a mirror of election. Believers must derive their
knowledge of God from the means that God has appointed for that
purpose. These are the mirrors that God intentionally set up, in which
He makes himself visible. Scripture opens our eyes to Gods goodness
also being visible in nature, and, most important, Scripture points the
way to Christ as the mirror where Gods fatherhood is to be seen. Our
knowing of salvation proceeds in an orderly manner.
None of this detracts from Calvins thought that Gods power in a
certain sense is related to the late medieval view of Gods power as
a potentia extraordinaria. Gods governance of the world does not always
proceed through natural laws, through causae secundae. It is also true
that salvation does not always proceed through a given order. God
retains his freedom with regard to the normal means with which He
rules the world and draws men to him. Gods might appears as a
potentia extraordinaria which governs man and the world and draws them
to him through his secret or hidden power. It is crucial however that
this inimitable quality does not concern the trustworthiness of human
knowledge of salvation. Mans knowledge of salvation comes through
obediently looking in the mirrors God has set up.

3.12.7. Where faith must look

One could say that Calvin wishes to x the gaze of the reader of
Scripture on the image that is given in Christ. In the discussion of
the concept of faith we already arrived at the conclusion that the
knowledge of faith is an aimed knowledge. It has a scopus, a target, and
that is Christ, who is oered by the Father, as vested in the Gospel.193
In the doctrine of election we read, if we seek for the paternal mercy
and favour of God, we must turn our eyes to Christ, in whom alone the
Father is well pleased.194 The knowledge of faith indicates the source
from which believers must draw. If we are elected in Him, we cannot
nd the certainty of our election in ourselves; and not even in God
the Father, if we look at him apart from the Son. Christ, then, is the

193 Inst. 3.2.6.

194 Inst. 3.24.5.
 god: judge and father 185

mirror in which we ought, and in which without deception we may

contemplate our election.195 Calvin was aware that this reference to
Christ as mirror was threatened when the believer, on the basis of
the same Bible, seeks to get behind this mirror and open up a path
to the Counsel of God. This was discussed in the previous chapter in
connection with the question of the certainty of salvation. Precisely the
manner in which Calvin goes to work here reveals how deeply he was
convinced that believers for their knowledge of God must turn their
eyes to those sources or mirrors in which God lets himself be known,
and must not desire to go outside this appointment, this ordinatio. In
these sources He provides trustworthy knowledge, in human language
and metaphors, acting as a father who out of his own love gives Christ
and adopts men as his children. With this concept we once again
stand before the central metaphor in Calvins vision of God. But what,
however, is this term worth in Calvins conception if one considers that
this term too is the language of accommodation? How trustworthy is
the knowledge that God oers about himself in Scripture? We return to
this question one more time.

3.13. Once again: God as father

Are metaphors or anthropomorphisms such as father and mother not

endangered by the stress on the transcendence of God? Can the forms
of accommodation be taken seriously when faith itself also knows that
God is always still higher and more than the images with which He
makes himself known? In short, is the value of accommodated lan-
guage not undermined by Gods majesty, precisely because He is not
swallowed up in his accommodation?
It is my contention that Calvin gives no reason to distrust them.
Indeed, the whole of revelation to man is a form of accommodation,
a descent of God from his majesty. The already cited comparison that
Calvin makes in this connection is that of a woman feeding her child.
In the same way that a woman who communicates with her infant
does so in baby-talk, God defers to man and gives of himself in a way
that is understandable for the child. According to Calvin this descent is
involved in all revelation, but that in no way means that every form

195 Ibid. Cf. also De aeterna praedestinatione (1552), CO 8, 318.

186 chapter three

of accommodation must now be qualied as illegitimate. Certainly,

when it is said that God has nostrils, a mouth and eyes, snorts, or
is drunk,196 then Calvin considers this as excessive accommodation to
mans capacity for understanding, through which a great measure of
illegitimacy accrues to such statements. But I believe I can establish
that there are for Calvin various degrees of accommodation. There are
moments when Calvin drops these reservations regarding the language.
Some images are apparently much more precise and tting than others.
I wish to develop this somewhat further.
I do not nd in Calvin the smallest trace of fear that accommodation
and anthropomorphisms would ultimately undermine the trustworthi-
ness of the content of revelation. As we have previously noted, with
regard to revelation in the Old Testament he does express this reserva-
tion. But in a fundamental sense his doctrine of revelation rejects this
reservation about illegitimacy, and with it distrust. Man must gain his
knowledge regarding God from the mirrors that God holds up before
him; these he must consult, where the Spirit in Scripture pins him
down and where God shares the metaphors with him most radically.
According to Calvin, in Scripture God is actively leading. The student
of Scripture must keep to the pointers given, and not go elsewhere.
There is however no basis whatever to suppose that Calvin wished to
undermine the image of father. On the contraryand to conrm this
I refer to his exposition of the Lords Prayer. In his explication of this
prayer he oers a surprising perception of this metaphor. With what
condence could anyone call God his Father? he asks. His answer is
that it is not possible other than through the believers being adopted
as Gods children in Christ. The whole of the metaphor of the family
and adoption is given a key role here, and later in the doctrine of the
sacraments. The reason for calling God Father lies in God himself.
God takes us into his home as children. Hence he both calls himself
our Father, and is pleased to be so called by us, by this delightful
name relieving us of all distrust, since nowhere can stronger aection
be found than in a father. It is apparent from this quote that Calvin
realises very well that the term father is an ordinary word that has a
general applicability as a designator. There is however a substantive
reason for applying this term to God in particular. His love toward us
is so much the greater and more excellent than that of earthly parents,

196 Comm. Ps. 78:65, CO 31, 742.

 god: judge and father 187

the farther he surpasses all men in goodness and mercy.197 In this

exposition there is nothing of the image of an impassive God and of
a threat through his highness. Gods love is not less than that of earthly
fathers, but exceeds it greatly. The aection that earthly fathers have,
upon which children can call even if they have misbehaved, is applied
to God without any hesitation.
For if among men a son cannot have a better advocate to plead his cause
with his father, and cannot employ a better intercessor to regain his lost
favour, than if he come himself suppliant and downcast, acknowledging
his fault, to implore the mercy of his father, whose parental feelings
cannot but be moved by such entreaties, what will that Father of all
mercies, and God of all comfort do?198

In this quote the appeal to the sublimity of God has an extremely

practical consequence. Gods mercy exceeds that of earthly fathers.
That is the practical meaning of the deus semper maior. In the parable
of the prodigal son God has sketched out how he himself is, according
to Calvin:
By setting before us this admirable example of mildness in a man, he
designs to show in how much greater abundance we may expect it
from him who is not only a Father, but the best and most merciful of
all fathers, however ungrateful, rebellious and wicked sons we may be,
provided we only throw ourselves on his mercy. And the better to assure
us that he is such a Father if we are Christians, he has been pleased to be
called not only a Father, but OUR Father.199

The term father may have applicability as a general designator, but

from a citation like this it is clear how in the language of faith this term
becomes a rigid designator and in fact functions as a personal name.200
It also becomes clear that Calvin does not view the metaphorical use as
an initiative of mankind, but as a usage that God himself willed and
assigned. In his relation with mankind He appoints himself as father,
with whose will and whose purposes the children will deal. He commits
himself to this. Of course, the fact remains that God in Christ making
himself known as Father is a specimen of accommodation and the
term father is an anthropomorphic image, but in these images, derived
from the sphere of the family, adoption and meals, God provides very

197 Inst. 3.20.36.

198 Inst. 3. 20.37.
199 Ibid.
200 Cf. I.U. Dalferth, Religise Rede von Gott, Mnchen 1981, 577.
188 chapter three

precise information about the way in which He intends to relate to

mankind. I draw the conclusion that in Calvins thought there is a
great dierence in the precision and truth of the various metaphors
and anthropomorphisms. Calvin himself has no intention of making
these distinctions arbitrarily. Rather, he believes distinctions between
those images which are less precise and those images in which God
makes himself known to man in a precise sense, without ambiguity, can
be made on the instruction of the Holy Spirit, by means of Scripture.
The trustworthiness of God has its theological guarantee in a concept
of self-revelation, but the nal guarantee is in the Spirit who keeps men
to the Word given in Christ. God desires to give man something, to
aect him inwardly. The model of the family and adoption oers an
apt image for accomplishing this. The pre-eminent place to which God
will bring his children is the Supper. Our next chapter is devoted to
that.
 chapter four

THE SUPPER AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

4.1. Introduction

The preceding two chapters were centrally concerned with the question
of what sources give rise to and support human knowledge of God, and
of what comprises this knowledge of God. This closing chapter in the
rst panel concentrates on what is variously termed the Eucharist, the
Lords Table, or, to use the word Calvin himself used, the Supper or
la cene. The reason is that in the understanding and experience of this
sacrament several characteristic features of Calvins conception of the
knowledge of God become visible. The doctrine of the Supper reveals
in a concentrated manner how Calvin thought about the nature of the
knowledge of God, how it was mediated, and what its most important
content is. The Supper is not only an illustration of Gods invitation
to mankind to enter into communion with Him, but it is also for the
present its apex.
Although the theological perspective will be dominant in this Chap-
ter, it should be noted that this subject is interesting for another reason
as well. One can also point to the wider social function of the Eucharist
or Supper. Together with infant baptism the Supper is one of the rare
rituals that survives, in comparison with the old situation in the church.
In accordance with their nature as public events in religious life they are
moments of direct social and communal importance. Thus the changed
social and religious situation in Geneva and the demand for public obe-
dience to the Word of God somehow had to be expressed surrounding
these rituals. It is therefore not surprising that precisely in relation to
this sacrament a conict with the civil authorities broke out in 1538,
namely over the right to excommunication. It would lead to the ban-
ning of Calvin and Farel from Geneva, a period of absence that would
last until 1541.
The sociological and theological perspectives cannot be separated,
not even in Calvins own theology. It is undeniable that the sacrament
of the Lords Supper occupies a central place in Calvins own life and
190 chapter four

thought. For him, the church as a sociologically visible organisation in

fact coincides with the community at the Lords Table. There, around
the Supper, the church nds its centre. Among other points where this
can be seen is the view that every member of the church is expected
to participate,1 and the desire that the Supper should be celebrated
weekly.2
In order to clarify what is involved in the Supper and how it reects
the concept of the knowledge of God, I will trace the theological argu-
ments in the debate over the Supper. They are not entirely self-evident.
From the modern perspective the debate can perhaps be assessed as a
succession of tragic misunderstandings that could have been avoided if
those involved had had at their disposal better (that is to say, more mod-
ern) concepts. Berkhof s critique may serve as representative of this: the
dispute over the Lords Supper would not have gotten so out of hand
if people had conceived the media of transmission less in terms of sub-
stance and more personalisticly.3 According to Berkhof s own theology,
the core of the Supper as an instrument of transmission is the eec-
tive representation of Christ,4 the encounter and the acknowledgement
of the impossibility of formulating the encounter.5 Berkhof s distancing
himself from the concept of sacrament is directly related to his observa-
tion that the doctrine of the sacraments has become isolated in Protes-
tant theology. The latter is certainly true. The advantage of the new
debate sparked by the Lima report is that reection now stands in the
broader context of the question of the mediation of salvation, so that
not only the proclamation of the Word, baptism and the Lords Table,
but also the place of the other means of mediation are involved in the
discussion.6 This broader context is emphatically absent in Calvin.
Theological debates are rarely interesting only for the sake of their
arguments; there is generally much more at stake. They are not only

1 See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 8891: Church and par-

ticipation in the Supper are most closely connected with one another. In an organisa-
tional sense, to all intents and purposes the church coincides with the community at the
Lords Table.
2 Christianae Religionis Institutio 1536, Joanne Calvino autore, OS I, 150 en Articles

concernant Lorganisation de leglise et du culte Genve, OS I, 370.

3 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 347.
4 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 366.
5 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 368.
6 Berkhof himself includes what was traditionally discussed under the concept of

the sacraments in a broader pneumatological context of media of transmission. Thus

he arrives at nine institutional elements that have a conductive character, whether
 the supper and knowledge of god 191

about shifts in the arguments themselves, but ultimately they reect

shifts in the eld of spirituality, in the way faith itself is experienced.
That is certainly true for the conict around the Lords Supper, and
that is also the case in Calvin. For him, what was at stake in the Sup-
per touched on the heart of his theology and his spirituality. In order
to make the contrast with today immediately clear, Calvins spirituality,
that which he experienced in and around the Supper, is much more
distant from what has come to be called the Reformed view of the Sup-
per, and much closer to the material experience of Christs presence of
the undivided church in which he had grown up.
One can look back on this conict as an unnecessary battle, which
unfortunately arose because people did not have the right set of con-
cepts at their disposal. When today, as in the case of Berkhof, a reduced
concept of the sacrament is criticised and set aside in favour of a wider
vision of conductive elements of the revelation event, then this expan-
sion can undoubtedly be linked up with the breadth that we encounter
in Calvin in the ways by which human knowledge of God arises and
is guided. At the same time it must be feared that, once the revelation
event is characterised in a personalistic sense as an encounter event,
a standard has been established through which those elements in the
knowledge of God for which personalism has no regard will disappear.
Personalism is itself a critical oshoot of modern subject thinking, in
which only that which can be distinguished and designated by the sub-
ject within his own horizon is of value. Those things which exceed the
horizon of the personal encounter are bracketed o in advance and
reduced to that which is of concern within a personalistic perspective.
In Calvin one nds a vision of knowledge of God in which both per-
sonal terminology and substantialist and physical terminology play a
role. In faith the believer discovers himself as a child that is introduced
into a new community, a new entity. This inclusive, more encompassing
dimension of a new coherence of life established by Christ becomes a
subject of discussion in the conict about the sacrament. In the imma-
nence of Christ justice is done to the personal, but that personal dimen-
sion is not without a context, the world.

intentionally or not. See Christian Faith, 348. For a broader discussion in the context
of the doctrine of creation, see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom, Ecumenical Essays
on Creation and Sacrament, Justication and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 5790. For a recent
discussion of ordained ministry as a medium of transmission, see M. Gosker, Het ambt in
de oecumenische discussie. De betekenis van de Lima-ambtstekst voor de voortgang van de oecumene en
192 chapter four

Debates with regard to the Lords Table, Eucharist or Supper and

its meaning have been long and erce. One need not think only of the
Reformation rejection of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstan-
tiation. More painful and shameful, and at rst sight more remarkable,
is the dissension within the Reformed camp itself. These dierences
were raised in successive religious discussions, and there were moments
when it appeared that a consensus had been reached.7 But the mistrust
remained and the splits among Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvin-
ism were the result. In these discussions Calvin tried to take a middle
position, and hazarded various attempts to eect reconciliation. His
Petit Traict de la Saincte Cene (1541) and the negotiations with Bullinger
that ultimately led to the Consensus Tigurinus (1549) are prominent exam-
ples of this eort. But we must record that he did not succeed in his
aim.
It lies outside the issues being dealt with in this book to answer the
question of to what degree the cause of that failure lay within Calvin
himself. One can at the most state that he employed a terminology
which made him suspect from both sides. In the eyes of Zwinglis dis-
ciples it leaned heavily toward a substantialist view of the presence of
Christ in the Supper. In their eyes Calvin stood close to the Roman
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, or at least leaned toward the
Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. Luthers followers took a dia-
metrically opposite position. Westphal and Heshusius placed Calvin
close to the spiritualism of Zwingli, and in their own way continued
Luthers conict with Zwingli and Bucer. To their mind, with Calvin
there is nothing left of the real presence of Christ in the Supper, his
presentia realis, and they criticised him on that score. For Calvin it was
still only a matter of memory and intellect. Calvin absolutely could
not recognise his own position in these accusations, and repeatedly
defended himself.8
Our subject in this chapter is not the arguments of the disciples
of Luther and Zwingli in themselves.9 They only enter consideration

de doorwerking in de Nederlandse SOW-Kerken, Delft, 2000 and E.A.J.G. van der Borght, Het
ambt her-dacht, Zoetermeer 2000.
7 See G.W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europischen Kirchenge-

schichte, Gttingen 1979, 310318.

8 See J.N. Tylenda, Calvin and Westphal: Two Eucharistic Theologies in Conict

in: W.H. Neuser/H.J. Selderhuis/W. van t Spijker (ed.), Calvins Books. Festschrift dedicated
to Peter De Klerk on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Heerenveen 1997, 921.
9 For a useful survey see W. Khler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit ber das Abendmahl
 the supper and knowledge of god 193

to the extent that it is necessary to recognise the characteristic way

that Calvin took, since Calvins views on the Supper, together with his
experience of it, can serve as a mirror in which all that he meant by
knowledge of God or knowledge of faith appear in concentrated form.
Calvin experienced the long and debilitating dispute in Reformation
circles about the Supper as unnecessary and shameful. He ultimately
did not know how to cope with it. He characterised the doctrine of the
eucharistic meal, as it had developed since Paschasius Radbertus (832)
and been laid down by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) as the doc-
trine of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, as nothing more
than a furious attempt by Satan to deter simple believers from fellow-
ship with God.10 With this critical attitude Calvin ts into Renaissance
culture, and he has his own variant for putting paid to what had taken
place in the preceding centuries of theological debate. The miracle of
the last decades, he wrote in his Petit Traict, is that in such a short time
the Lord has brought leading gures out of the net of error in which
men had been ensnared for so long.11 But he showed his deep unhap-
piness at the discord that had now arisen. It is entirely consistent with
Calvins own doctrine of providence when he says that not only does
Satan have a hand in this, but that it is ultimately the Lord himself who
intends to humble his servants with this aiction. The Lord and Satan
can both play their role on this stage, but that does not place man in
the role of marionette or mannequin. Calvin, we might say, did all that
he could to play his own role as protagonist and take responsibility in
this debate.
Everything indicates that for Calvin this dicult dispute was not over
triing matters. With this, at least, his partners in the debate were in
agreement. The reason why the conict was carried out with so much
passion, or even bitterness, had to do with the importance of the issue
that was at stake, according to all concerned. It was about the real-
ity of salvation itself. Or more precisely, the issue was the question of
how man takes part in that salvation. Is that only through proclama-
tion and faith? All the parties were in agreement about the centrality of
proclamation. They were also in agreement that the celebration of the
Supper is closely coupled with the proclamation, and means something

nach seinen politischen und religisen Beziehungen. Bd. 1 und 2, Leipzig 19241953 (=New
York/London 1971).
10 See Inst. 4.17.1. See also OS I, 517, 527.
11 OS I, 527.
194 chapter four

for participation in salvation. The question was only, what role did it
play? Why was this precisely the sticking point? Does this not funda-
mentally call into question the church with its oces, rituals and cere-
monies? The Reformation took leave of a concept in which the ocial
church was self-evidently the embodiment of and dispenser of grace.
The presence of God was no longer congruent with the church and its
sacraments. In that case, are the church and its sacraments not among
those outward things that are of little or subordinate importance? In
this connection I wish to discuss several observations by Graaand so
as to point out some of the ambivalences that particularly dominated
Reformation theology on the church, oces and sacraments.
Graaand has pointed out that formally Calvins discussion of the
content of faith in the Institutes is within the plan of his discussion of
the themes of the Apostles Creed. This coincides with the rst three
books of the Institutes. What follows in Book IV regarding the church,
the sacraments and government is no longer the object of confession.
For Calvin church and covenant fall outside the actual content of faith.
He demonstrates that with Calvin covenant stands in order under pre-
destination. The emphasis on the invisible church as the gathering of
the elect leads to the hollowing out of the concept of covenant as a
primary theological category. Participation in the covenant is still not
participation in eternal salvation. The consequence of all this is a mea-
sured dualism in the view of the church; one unintended eect might
be disregard of the visible church.12 All this critique is just. However, it
appears to me to be incorrect to also suggest on the grounds of this that
the outward means, which are discussed in Book IV, have little weight
theologically. This brings Calvins own theology all too easily under
suspicion of spiritualism. That might be the result in a time in which
interior and exterior, inner experience and world experience are sepa-
rated from one another, or a perspective on their mutual relationships
is no longer acknowledged, but does not apply for Calvins pre-modern
theology. With Calvin there is a theological line that keeps the institu-
tional church and inward and outward communion with Christ close
to one another. In the preceding chapters we have frequently seen how
considerable and fundamental the role is that Calvin grants to external
reality in the way that knowledge of God comes. One might even speak
of a sacramental function of outward, created reality. Outward means

12 C. Graaand, Kinderen van n moeder. Calvijns visie op de kerk volgens zijn Institutie,

Kampen 1989, 51.

 the supper and knowledge of god 195

which God uses in a specic sense, such as preaching, the church,

sacraments and the authorities, are no less essential because of their
outwardness. The fourth book of the Institutes deals with the outward
means or aids through which God invites us to fellowship with Christ,
and preserves us therein.13 Reading what Calvin then writes of these
aids, one discovers that theologically they receive their stature because
God is pleased to invite man by means of them. Outward is any-
thing but synonymous with non-essential or unimportant. The out-
ward world is just as much theologically charged as the inward world.
God relates to it in an immediate way and appears in it in a certain
manner, thus in ever-changing ways. A direct line connects Calvins
theological appreciation for creation to the place of the sacraments in
his thought.14

4.2. What is a sacrament?

4.2.1. Only a cognitive advantage?

Chapter 2 discussed by which means God invites men to knowledge
of Him. One can rightly say that for Calvin the created world plays a
powerful guiding role on the path to knowledge of God. For all that,
however, the natural world is not in itself a sacrament. One can only
speak of sacraments if God has chosen the element from the created
world as a sign of his promise.15 With this it immediately becomes clear
that Calvins concept of the sacraments must be understood against the
background of a long tradition that stems from Augustine, in which
notions from a general hermeneutic or semiology go hand in hand
with specic theological or soteriological notions. The doctrine of the
sacraments is a eld where doctrines of creation and soteriology come
together. Augustine proceeded from a general ontological distinction,

13 De externis mediis vel adminiculis, quibus Deus in Christi societatem nos invitat,

et in ea retinet.
14 See Brinkman, Schepping en sacrament. Een oecumenische studie naar de reikwijdte van het

sacrament als heilzaam symbool in een weerbarstige werkelijkheid, Zoetermeer 1991, 4352. Cf. also
M. den Dulk De verzoeking Christus te representeren in: M.E. Brinkman/A. Houte-
pen, Geen kerk zonder bisschop, Utrecht 1997, 115129, which in connection with oce
points to two lines in Calvin: one line in which the oce arises from the commu-
nity, and a line in which the oce is rooted in the hierarchical structure of Gods
governance.
15 Inst. 4.14.18.
196 chapter four

namely that between thing, res, and sign, signum. For instance, words are
signs for the things to which they refer. Signs are also things themselves,
to wit res signicans. There are also, however, things that are not signs,
but simply res. These are eternal things, to which earthly signs refer.
It is necessary for man that there be powerful pointers toward eternal
things, because left to himself he would remain stuck among earthly
or temporal things. Here only the remedy of a given sign, a signum
datum, can help. At this point a distinction that is of eminent impor-
tance within the theological use of semiotics comes into sight, namely
the distinction between the natural sign and the given sign. A fox spoor
is a natural sign that a fox has been at a particular spot. A given sign
involves, for example, a gesture or a facial expression, or is more fre-
quently connected with the sense of hearing.16 Language or the spoken
word is thus the given sign or signum datum par excellence. After all, a
word can be used only as a sign. Apart from that it loses its meaning.
To the extent that signs are involved with the sense of sight, according
to Augustine we can gather them under the broad meaning of word
and language, and speak of visible words, verba visibilia. In Augustines
analysis of the sacrament these general ontological considerations enter
into connections with specic theological matters. A sacrament includes
a natural element and a word which stems from the eld of belief and
revelation. Because the verbum dei is spoken, the sacrament mediates
the enduring things that are of God. Accedit verbum ad elementum et
t sacramentum, etiam ipsum tanquam visibile verbum.17 Thus there
is a distinction made between that which mediates, the sacramentum rei
or the res signicans, and that which is mediated, the res sacramenti. With
regard to sacraments, this also makes clear what they are. The selection
of the element or sign from the created world is certainly not a com-
pletely random choice. According to Calvin it is also a general rule that
there must be a certain resemblance between the sign and thing. For
instance, it is abundantly clear that a tertium comparationis exists between
the water of baptism and the cleansing from sin, or between bread
and wine and the body and blood of Christ as spiritual food for the
soul, which makes the analogy possible.18 The emphasis is not how-
ever on the naturalness of the sign, or with the people who seek a
symbol, but on God as the One who gives it its signicance. It is not

16 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II.2.3; CCSL 32, 33.

17 Augustine, Joh.Ev.Tract. 80, 3; CCSL 36, 529.
18 OS I, 521.
 the supper and knowledge of god 197

man who assigns it signicance, reads or interprets it. He simply fol-

lows God, who at his pleasure makes all the elements subservient to
his glory.19 Calvin also points to various accounts in the Old Testa-
ment in which an element from created reality becomes a sacrament.
But this sacramental function was of a temporary or incidental nature,
such as the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:17), the rainbow for Noah (Gen. 9:13),
circumcision (Gen. 17:10) and Gideons eece (Judges 6:37). Each has
temporarily fullled a role in Gods dealings with man. For Calvin it is
beyond dispute that other elements of created reality also function to
lead to God, but that does not yet make them sacraments. Therefore
only those actions that are included by Gods ordinance can be termed
sacraments.20 Sacrament rests upon a choice by God. Sacraments are
only those actions that are instituted by Jesus Christ himself, and to
which he has conferred a particular signicance. According to his de-
nition, a sacrament is
an external sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences his promises
of good-will toward us, in order to sustain the weakness of our faith, and
we in turn testify our piety towards him, both before himself, and before
angels as well as men.21
Various components can be distinguished in this careful denition.
First, it is clear how closely the understanding of the sacraments is
linked with the understanding of faith. The content of the thing with
which the sacramental act deals is the good will of God toward us,
his benevolentia. A sacrament is therefore qualied as an act of Gods
turning toward man, with which He conrms his promises of salvation
to mankind. Only secondarily is the sacrament an action in which men
also do something, namely testify before the forum of the world and the
invisible world of the angels. With this testimony faith or piety takes on
a public character.
The peculiarity of the way in which God acts in the sacrament is
described by the words seal and sustain. What precisely are we to
understand by these notions of sealing and sustaining? As it stands
here, the sacrament primarily appears to be nothing other than a con-

19 Inst. 4.14.18: qui pro suo arbitrio elementis omnibus in obsequium gloriae suae

utatur.
20 Inst. 4.14.19.
21 Inst. 4.14.1: externum esse symbolum, quo benevolentiae erga nos suae pro-

missiones conscientiis nostris Dominus obsignat ad sustinendam dei nostrae imbecelli-

tatem: et nos vicissim pietatem erga eum nostram tam coram eo et Angelis quam apud
homines testamur.
198 chapter four

rmation by God to man, a reinforcement of the certainty that man

can entertain toward God and his promises.22 Does that mean that
the sacrament is a thick underscoring of something that man already
knows from proclamation? Or does the meaning of sealing and sustain-
ing transcend a cognitive act? It is not easy to determine precisely what
Calvins own position is. Does it consist, as Hartvelt suggests, of a cog-
nitive plus toward man?23 At rst glance one is inclined to accept this
conclusion. The fact is, from the denition of a sacrament it appears
that what is made visible to man in the sacraments has already been
received in faith. Calvin strongly opposed the idea that participation in
salvation could only be obtained by participation in the sacrament.24
Faith is and remains the central moment in the concept of knowledge
of God, because in it the Holy Spirit enables man to share in Christ.
To this extent the assertion is true that ontologically the sacraments add
nothing to that which has already been received in faith.
It seems to me however that the point of Calvins theology is being
missed if one stops with this conclusion. Anyone reading what Calvin
has to say on the Supper nds it impossible to escape the impression
that the Supper in fact meant more for him. They discover a plus that
is inadequately designated with the adjective cognitive, particularly if
one interprets cognitive in its limiting sense as intellectual. In crucial
passages it appears that what we already remarked with regard to
Calvins concept of the knowledge of God is also true for the Lords
Table. Knowing God is more than an intellectual act. In the Supper
believers are fed with the body and blood of Jesus Christ, as the
stubbornly maintained formula puts it. Anticipating the conclusion of
this chapter I will propose: In Calvins thought regarding the Supper,

22 In Inst. 4.14.13 he rejects the derivation for the word sacrament that Zwingli

had given in De vera et falsa religione. For Zwingli the sacrament is the battle ag upon
which the soldier swears loyalty to his commander. With it he arms something to
his general. Calvin argues that the Latin writers were no longer aware of this meaning
when they chose the word sacrament. They understood nothing more by it than a
sacred sign, but no longer from the perspective of the soldier who swears his allegiance,
but from the perspective of the commander, who calls up the soldiers to his ranks.
For the rest, Calvin does not consider this etymology decisive. According to him, the
word sacrament is derived from the Greek musterion (Inst. 4.14.2). As the New Testament
uses musterion for a hidden thing that God makes visible to man, so in the sacrament a
hidden thing, Gods goodwill, is made visible.
23 G.P. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus. Een studie over een centraal hoofdstuk uit de avondmaalsleer van

Calvijn, Delft 1960, 115. See also B. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of
John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 127133.
24 See for instance his commentary on John 6:47, CO 47, 151.
 the supper and knowledge of god 199

but particularly in his experience of the supper, there is an element that

has found little or no reception in Reformed theology. In the way that
it takes, both conceptually and spiritually the knowledge of God has
an involvement with the physical and sensory which has been lost in
Calvins intellectual heirs. The entrance to salvation is embedded in the
material, in the world of the senses. The Spirit is not in opposition to
the material, the external, but dwells in it, uses it and stimulates man
from all sides to permit himself to be taken along.

4.2.2. Sign and thing

The real signicance of the sacrament in addition to the preaching is
that it sets more clearly before our eyes, or better yet, internalises what
the proclamation is about. The sacraments are signs that obtain their
meaning through the word that the preacher speaks. To call on Augus-
tines denition, Accedit verbum ad elementum et t sacramentum.25
But evidently in the sacramental act something more happens with that
which has already come to people in the proclamation. The sacra-
mental act sustains the knowledge, increases and conrms it. Calvin
adduces various examples from daily life to illustrate the function of the
Lords Table. He reminds his readers of the old custom of slaughtering
a pig when a treaty was concluded. He reaches into the world of archi-
tecture: sacraments are the columns that support the roof. He reaches
for other metaphors, specically one which has been present promi-
nently in the study of the knowledge of God in this section: the mirror.
Sacraments are a mirror in which Gods benevolence becomes visible.26
That benevolence is the thing to which the signs refer, or rather, the
thing which comes along in the signs.
Calvin is classic in the distinction between sign and thing. He follows
Augustine. The sacrament is rei sacrae visibile signum.27 That is to say,
the sacramental act refers to a thing which is certainly connected to
the sign, but which nevertheless must be distinguished from it. Both
parts of this assertion, the connection and the distinction, are of equal
importance for Calvin, as we will see further on. The sign is not
independent of the thing. The sacramental act as such may thus never

25 Augustine, Homilia in Johannem 13; In Ioh. tract. 80,3, MSL 35, 1840. CSEL 25 I,

512, 19..
26 Inst. 4.14.5.
27 Inst. 4.14.1.
200 chapter four

be isolated from the word that it contains.28 This means a repudiation

of sacramentalism and magic and a key role for faith, with which the
Word is accepted.
The work of the Holy Spirit has a central place in the doctrine of the
Supper, even as it has in faith. But precisely the work of the Holy Spirit
takes multiple forms. Not everything is accomplished in proclamation
and faith. For, rst, the Lord teaches and trains us by his word; next,
he conrms us by his sacraments; lastly, he illumines our mind by the
light of his Holy Spirit, and opens up an entrance into our hearts for
his word and sacraments, which otherwise would only strike our ears,
and fall upon our sight, but by no means aect us inwardly.29 The Holy
Spirit is the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart,
stirs up the aections, and procures access for the sacraments into our
souls.30 Without this Spirit, without faith, we are like the blind in full
daylight or the deaf in a world full of sound. If there is no organ to
see or hear, images and sounds cannot reach us. The Holy Spirit thus
rst brings us to understanding. The work of the Spirit is not however
limited to enabling perception among men. There is a second aspect
to the work of the Holy Spirit: the sacraments themselves are only
eective because the Spirit takes them into service in order to convince
and persuade men. Without that they would be empty and frivolous.31
But that means that these sacraments do not stand apart, and could
actually be dispensed with, but that through the sacraments the Spirit
very much brings man along and helps him on the way.

4.3. Sacrament as a form of accommodation

The gift of the sacrament is immediately linked with the situation in

which men nd themselves as created beings. In the previous chapter
we have seen that this situation is not dened by sin alone. It also has
to do with the place that man has in the hierarchy of being.

28 Inst. 4.14.15.
29 Inst. 4.14.8: Nam primum verbo suo nos docet et instituit Dominus: deinde
sacramentis conrmat: postremo sancti sui Spiritus lumine mentibus nostris illucet:
et aditum in corda nostra verbo ac sacramentis aperit, quae alioqui aures duntaxat
percellerent, et oculis observarentur, interiora minime acerent.
30 Inst. 4.14.9: interior ille magister Spiritus cuius unius virtute et corda

penetrantur, et aectus permoventur, et sacramentis in animas nostras aditus patet.

31 Inst. 1.14.9: inane et frivole
 the supper and knowledge of god 201

The characterisation that Calvin gives of the condition humaine strikes

our ears today as frankly alienating. With endless frequency we hear the
list of what typies man, namely his ignorance, sloth and weakness.32
Through his body, man is still bound to the earth. In all sorts of
ways his existence is dened by the cares and limitations that this life
brings with it. Calvin can say that we still creep like animals along the
ground. In short, mans station is low, and God must descend deeply
to reach mankind.33 The sacraments are therefore typical examples
of Gods accommodation to the low station of man.34 God descends
and accommodates himself to mans capacity to understand in order to
draw him into fellowship in this way, by means that man understands
and in which he himself participates.
In Calvins day this positive regard for the sacraments as means of
accommodation was anything but a generally accepted idea. His posi-
tion is interesting because on the one hand it guards against objec-
tivism or sacramentalism, and on the other hand does not surrender
to the rising spiritualism. At the same time, maintaining this via media
makes his position vulnerable on both sides. On the one side he defends
himself against the spiritualist views according to which God can work
very well in the faithful without physical means. Because of his empha-
sis on the mediating work of the Holy Spirit, Calvin himself is often
understood in this sense, and from the Lutheran side identied with the
thought of Zwingli. Zwingli had emphasized that the Holy Spirit had
no need of means.35 Calvin does not contest that God would be able to
do this.36 That is not really the point. The important thing is that it has
been Gods will to make use of this means. Making use of a physical
means is in no way an oense to Gods honour.37 It is his disposition to
make use of these signs in order to convince man by means of them.
One can not forbid God to make use of these signs to illumine our
heart, Calvin says, in the same way as our eye is stimulated by a medi-
ating beam of light.38 In other words, it simply pleases God to use these

32 Inst. 4.14.3.
33 Inst. 4.14.3: quomodo nostrae ignorantiae ac tarditati primum, deinde inrmitati
opus esse Deus providet.
34 Inst. 4.14.3. See also Petit traict de la Saincte cene, OS I, 505, 520.
35 H. Zwingli, Fidei ratio ad Carolum V (1530), Corpus Reformatorum 93 II, 803804.
36 For instance, in connection with infant baptism, see Inst. 4.16.19.
37 Inst. 4.14.10.
38 Inst. 4.14.10.
202 chapter four

means in his dealings with man, and men must accept that.39 One must
not seek to deny the revelation we have been given.

4.4. The meaning of the meal

4.4.1. The family

We have suggested that one can consider the meal as an intersection
where various lines which are denitive for the existence of the believer
visibly come together. In his Petit Traict de la Saincte Cene Calvin sums up
three functions.40 The Supper is primarily intended as a gift, through
which God internalises the promises that are contained in the gospel.
Or more precisely, God binds the promises to the consciences of men.
God does this by making man a sharer of Christ, of his body and blood,
de son corps et de son sang. This expression may sound strange, not to say
bizarre, to us, but for Calvin it is essential to put it in this way, and no
other. I will return to this point.
The second purpose of the Supper is to call upon the faithful to
acknowledge Gods goodness toward them. In the Supper man nds
reason to praise God and to live a life of gratitude. From here one can
draw connections to the theme of obedience and sanctication. Finally,
the third purpose is related to the visible community in which the
Supper is celebrated, and in which people thus participate: the church.
One who shares in the Supper is thereby included in the church, and
is then called to a holy, puried life, and in particular to a living in
harmony with his or her other brothers and sisters.

39 It is this element that has gone unnoticed for a long time in the catholic recep-

tion of Calvins theology. See for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, translated by
D. Foxgrover and W. Provo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1987 (= Le jeune Calvin: Gense
et volution de sa vocation rformatrice, Wiesbaden 1966). In this study Ganoczy reaches the
conclusion that in Calvin all emphasis lies on the distinction between the human and
divine, which is expressed in a manifest aversion to linking grace to earthly elements,
237. See however the remarkable retraction in the introduction to the American trans-
lation, 11: We could say today that Calvins pneumatology serves not only to arm
Gods absolute freedom in his saving acts but also to support a dynamic understanding
of the sacraments, which in many ways is quite close to the doctrine of the Eucharist
in the Eastern Churches. It makes possible a theology of epiclesis. The closeness of
Calvins theology to Eastern Orthodoxy is something to which I would subscribe. See
further 4.4.3.
40 OS I, 505506.
 the supper and knowledge of god 203

The following paragraphs limit themselves principally to the rst

intention. The reason is anything but that the latter two purposes are
beside the point. They both have to do with the intended response from
man, and refer to the themes of the law, sanctication and the visible
church. A discussion would however lead us outside the plan of this
study.
What is the salvation, actually, that is oered in the church in the
proclamation and the celebration of the Supper? This question deals
with its reality. Images and metaphors sometimes express what people
want to say more precisely than abstract denitions do. Later theolog-
ical heirs have perhaps frequently been fascinated by Calvins deni-
tions, but his rst hearers pricked up their ears rather at the images and
metaphors with which his tracts and, above all, his sermons overow.
They evoke the concrete world of the family household, adoption, and
meals. Here we can refer back to the conclusions of the previous chap-
ter about the image of God as father. Never for a moment does one get
the impression that the thought ever occurred to Calvin himself that
the image of a father could become eroded as a metaphorical image for
the relation between God and man. Something similar is true for the
meal.
The prominent place that the metaphor of the family has in Calvins
theology of the sacraments, including in the Petit Traict, is telling.
Calvin rmly believes that the image of the family is the medium
through which God lets us see how he wishes to relate to mankind.
That is true both for baptism and the Supper. According to Calvin,
God takes man into his family through baptism, not as a boarder, but
as an adopted child, with full rights. The walls of the church are in fact
the walls of Gods house.41 The image of the family appears not only
in the discussion of baptism, but also is the background for the Supper.
God is visualised as the father who has adopted us as his children and
feeds us at his table as his children. The food consists of the life that is
found in Jesus Christ. It is given to us in Word and Sacrament. When
unpacked, this gift appears to consist of multiple giftsbenefactions, as
Calvin says. Men receive forgiveness, the promise of eternal life, a share
in sanctication, in perseverance.
What sort of people are these who are given a place at the table
in this house? The necessity for receiving a share in these benevolences

41 OS I, 504.
204 chapter four

becomes painfully clear when one sees the state, according to Calvin, of
the people to whom the invitation comes. Here we should be reminded
of what was said in previous chapters about the function of conscience
in knowledge of God. Calvin proceeds from the idea that the people
who come together for the Supper are people in need, and that they
themselves recognise this need. It is not something they have been
persuaded of; they recognise it as their own world. Anyone who looks
into his or her own heart knows very well that this is a wasted life
and that there is no scrap of righteousness to be found there.42 Nothing
from outside need be called upon to arrive at that judgement; our own
conscience is sucient to remind us that we have fallen into death and
iniquity. In short, if we take our own inner world under consideration,
we see a structure that cannot stand, one rotting away. It is at that
juncture that the Supper holds a mirror up before us, in which there
appears another image, namely that of the crucied Christ.43

4.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The discussion with the Lutherans
The body and blood of Jesus Christ are given to believers by the Holy
Spirit in the bread and wine. What does Calvin mean by this? What
did he want to say in this discussion that was carried on with concepts
derived from Aristotelian metaphysics? First we must note what he
did not intend. He did not intend any view in which the presence of
Christ is given in an immediate way in the elements of bread and wine.
The water of baptism and the bread and wine in the Supper have no
inherent power of their own. The power of the Spirit, everlasting life,
is not inherent in the substance. The eect of the sacrament does not
lie in the performance of the act itself, ex opere operato. Were that so,
sign and thing, signum and res, would be identied with one another in
an improper way, a view that Calvin encounters in Peter Lombard.44
In Calvins concept the bread and the wine that the believer drinks
remain bread and wine, and nothing else.45 The physical element never
receives a power that is inherent to the element. The acting subject

42 OS I, 506.
43 OS I, 504.
44 Inst. 4.14.16. In his research into the theology of the young Calvin, Ganoczy, The

Young Calvin, 168170 comes to the conclusion that Calvin quotes only from the fourth
book of the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, in an extremely selective manner, and with a
declared polemic intention.
45 Inst. 4.17.15.
 the supper and knowledge of god 205

remains God, who works through the power of the Spirit. We might
say that with this Calvin maintains the moment of freedom of Gods
act over against any possible form of sacramentalism.
For that reason he disputes both the Roman Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation and the position defended by the Lutherans, usually
denoted as consubstantiation. In Calvins view the words spoken at the
consecration are a magic formula through which the bread and wine
are reputed to be changed with regard to their substance. But also
the view defended by the Lutherans, the doctrine of consubstantiation,
that Christ is physically present in, under and with the elements of
bread and wine, goes too far for him. The body of Christ would thus
become omnipresent, have an ubiquity ascribed to it that supposes
that the nature of that body has undergone a complete alteration.
Because of this supposition he also separates himself from the Lutheran
position. A human body implies spatial limits, and although Jesus after
his resurrection was gloried, that does not alter the fact that Jesus,
according to his corporeal nature, could only be in one place at a time.
According to Luther and his followers, the substance of the bread and
wine remain unchanged, but Christ, according to his corporal nature,
is present in the form of the bread and wine. The capacity to be in an
innite number of places at the same time is ascribed to the human
nature of Christ on the basis of the connection with the divine nature
that there is in the unique person of Jesus Christ.46 It is a development

46 We should refer here to the development of the concept of a communicatio idiomatum

in Lutheran theology. From as early as John of Damascus, the foremost theologian of
the 8th century, the doctrine that provides a reection on the consequences of the
unio personalis has been designated by this term. Traditionally it has been accepted
that the union of two natures in the one person implies that the qualities of both
natures can be predicated for that one person. This is true, however, not only for
the being of Jesus, but also for his works. The reference is the unique person. On
the Lutheran side theologians spoke of a genus apotelesmaticum, on the Reformed side
of a genus operationum. With Luther one also however nds a development in which
the qualities of the divine nature are communicated to the human nature, the genus
maiestaticum. The human nature shares in the omnipresence of the divine nature. In the
other direction, one can argue that the divine nature must share in the limitation and
vulnerability of the human nature (genus tapeinoticum). The traditional objection is that in
this manner one arrives at the proposition that the divine nature could suer and die.
In his remarks in Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis (1528) Luther has apparently indeed
seen this objection and nevertheless is willing to accept the idea of the involvement of
the divine nature in suering, WA 26, 320:1014; 321:510: Denn wenn ich gleube, das
allein die menschliche natur fur mich gelidden hat, so ist mir der Christus ein schlechter
heiland, so bedar er wol selbs eines heilands. Summa, es ist unsaglich was der teuel
mit der Alleosi sucht weil Gottheit und menschheit ynn Christo eine Person ist, so
206 chapter four

of the idea of the communicatio idiomatum into a genus maiestaticum, as that

is found in Luther. One might say that in this concept the incarnation
denitively prescribes the manner of Christs presence. The incarnation
oers the model of Gods presence.
Calvin also wants to retain a real presence of Christ in the Supper,
but he places the accents elsewhere. Theological theory and personal
experience go hand in hand here. Distance and communication, the
Ascension and the work of the Holy Spirit are dening factors. Ascen-
sion stands for the distance, and the Spirit for the connection: with
regard to his human nature, Jesus Christ is far away, in heaven on the
throne next to God the Father. In the Supper however the believer is
fed with the blood and esh of Christ,47 even though since the Ascen-
sion the Crucied One is no longer on earth in any form whatsoever.
Calvin thus also sees the cross as the deepest point of Gods approach
and accommodation to man. It is the moment at which Gods majesty
is no longer visible. But this moment is not denitive for the nature of
Gods continuing presence. The history of the cross is made produc-
tive in the dynamics of Ascension and Pentecost. The Spirit guarantees
the connection. He is the One who ever and again spans distance and
space, connecting that which is far separated. That leads to another,
eschatological accent, reaching above and to the future.
I will go into this more deeply. In Calvins judgement, the concepts
by which the presence of Christ are linked to the physical elements of
bread and wine do not take account of the situation after Ascension.
Ascension implies that with regard to his humanity, thus with body and
members, Christ is taken away and remains in heaven. By virtue of the
power and glory that Christ since then shares with God the Father, he
exercises his rule on earth. Thereby He is, as we read, not limited by
any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ
manifests his presence in his potentia and virtus.48

gibt die schrit umb solcher personlicher einichkeit willen auch der gottheit ales was
der menschheit widderferet und widermb Denn das mstu ia sagen. Die person
(zeige Christum) leidet stirbet. Nu ist die person wahrhaftiger Gott, drumb ists recht
geredt Gottes son leidet The cross invites us to think of Gods nature as involved in
human suering and death. Correctly, theology in our time has attempted to go further
along this path. The question is how this relates to the pathos that we encounter in
Calvin surrounding the distinction between heaven and earth which is never ever given
up. Or do we nd in Calvin himself other notions when the salvation of man is the
issue?
47 OS I, 506.
48 Inst. 4.17.18.
 the supper and knowledge of god 207

Several times already we have had occasion to refer to the distinction

that is fundamental for Calvins understanding. This is the distinction
between the heavenly and the earthly, the spiritual and the physical,
between body and soul. These are fundamental dichotomies that are
based on Gods will.49 The problem with the concepts of transubstanti-
ation and consubstantiation is that, in his view, they do not respect the
boundary between heaven and earth. They mix up that which God has
separated. According to Calvin they are intellectual attempts to get a
hold on something which cannot be grasped by the human mind. The
presence of Christ is distrained by perishable elements of this world,
and in this He is robbed of his glory.50 He considers both Luthers
view and the doctrine of transubstantiation as concepts through which
Christ is in fact robbed of his concrete corporeality and turned into a
ghost.
In Calvins eyes these views thus run counter to the God-given
order. A body is dened by space and delimitation; it has a certain
place.51 If in the Supper the esh of Christ becomes ubiquitous, and
thus is present everywhere that the Lords Table is celebrated, it no
longer satises the denition of spatial delimitation. It takes on qualities
that are characteristic of the divine. This is the same as rejecting
the principium non-contradictionis. Westphal, from his side, responds by
accusing Calvin of not taking seriously the words of the Bible and
as a result underestimating the might of God. He attacks Calvin at
a point which is for him an axiomatic basic assumption, but which
precisely because of their allegiance to the concrete word of the Bible
was regarded dierently within Lutheran circles. He argues that Calvin
incorrectly declares the general laws of nature to apply to the gloried
body of Christ. Thus accusations of intellectualisation y back and
forth from both sides.
Calvin defended himself against the accusation of shortchanging the
biblical witness, and lobbed the same accusation back. Unlike West-
phal, he argues that with their concept Luthers followers impermissi-
bly overthrow an arrangement that comes from God. In fact he accuses
them of what one might call anachronistic biblicism. According to
Calvin the starting point for the reading and exposition of Scripture
must be that each word in the Bible has precisely the same meaning

49 OS I, 144.
50 OS I, 521. Inst. 4.17.19.
51 Inst. 4.17.24 and Inst. 4.17.29.
208 chapter four

everywhere. He says that with each passage the exegete with placid
docility and a spirit of meekness must make an eort to understand
the teachings that come from heaven. We do our best, he says, to
obtain understanding, not only through dutifulness, but also by pre-
cision. Westphal, he thinks, has failed in the latter. The meaning of a
passage is not the rst thing that comes into our mind. Diligent thought
is necessary, and in it we will embrace the meaning that God brings to
us through the Spirit.52 From the heights we attain we look down on
whatever opposition may arise from worldly wisdom.
Calvin felt the accusation of his Lutheran opponents that in his view
the presence of Christ in the Supper evaporated into a notion or a
memory was a total misrepresentation of his position. In the following
section we will return to how he responded conceptually to the spatial
problem that is a given with Ascension. For now it will suce to say
that Calvin to his own conviction confessed nothing other than the real
presence of Christ in the Supper. In the Supper one does not receive
only a share in the Spirit53 or the benets of Christ. Jesus Christ is
material and substance.54 Or put more sharply, what is partaken of is
the esh and blood of Christ. What did Calvin mean by this?

4.4.3. Flesh and blood

That Calvin so stubbornly insisted that we share in the esh and
blood of Christ has caused no little wonderment in the history of
research. For him, the terminology from John 6 is holy. He speaks of
caro vivica, the life-giving esh of Christ,55 of the body of Christ that
is the only food of the soul which must be vivied. In the history of
research this has led to the question of whether we are here dealing
with a Catholic remnant in Calvins doctrine of the Supper.56 In his
study on Calvins doctrine of the Supper, Hartvelt pointed out that one
denitely does not do justice to Calvin if they skip over these ideas and

52 Inst. 4.17.25: placida docilitate et spiritu mansuetidinis

53 Inst. 4.17.7.
54 OS I, 507.
55 Inst. 4.17.8. Cf. the lack of ease on this point with C. Trueman, The Incarnation

and the Lords Supper in: D. Peterson (ed), The Word became Flesh. Evangelicals and the
Incarnation, Carlisle 2003, 200201.
56 Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 27, refers for instance to J.W. Nevin, The Mystical

Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Philadelphia
1846.
 the supper and knowledge of god 209

interpret them guratively.57 Nonetheless, the metaphorical view gained

the upper hand. Through John Lasco this view has become the usual
interpretation in Reformed theology.58
Why did Calvin so tenaciously hold to the concept of the esh and
blood of Christ? Here lies the core, the vital and indispensable moment
in Calvins doctrine of the Supperor more precisely, the nucleus of his
doctrine of the knowledge of God. What Calvin says of participation
in the esh and blood of Christ is not limited to the Supper. On the
contrary, in his exegesis of John 6 he makes it clear time after time that
it would be improper to think that Jesus is speaking here only about
the Supper. In its content, the terminology from John 6 describes that
which takes place in the mystic union between the believer and Christ.
Communion with the life-giving esh and blood of Christ also takes
place outside participation in the Supper, extra Coenae usum.59
There are at least four reasons that can be given why Calvin so
tenaciously speaks of communion with the esh and blood of Christ.
First, Scriptural considerations play a tremendous role. In insisting on
the words esh and blood Calvin tried to be obedient to that which
he believed he read in Scripture. After all, the biblical writers and their
texts are the means through which God holds up divine wisdom before
men. Evidently God has found it necessary to use these concepts in all
their concreteness.
Second, it should be noted that the reference to esh and blood has
an epistemological function and thus ts within the path to knowledge
of God. Divine salvation comes to the believer through the concrete
man, Jesus Christ. Just as for Luther, the crucied Jesus is the deepest
point of Gods coming down. Salvation is localised in the physicality

57 See Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 87. Calvin indisputably wanted to say more than that

in the Supper the faithful have communion with the person of Jesus Christ. Hartvelt,
Verum Corpus, 171, cites Berkouwer as an example of a personalising interpretation. See
G.C. Berkouwer, De sacramenten, Kampen 1954, 305. Berkouwer disputes that for Calvin
it was a matter of esh and blood as an abstraction and interprets this as a metaphor
for the act of reconciliation, ibidem, 307. It is a matter of He himself in his sacrice,
ibidem, 313. I do not dispute that in Calvins view of salvation the act of reconciliation
plays an essential role, but it still appears to me most fundamental that for Calvin the
blood and esh of Christ is a source of divine, everlasting life.
58 Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 184, 194.
59 See for instance his commentary on John 6:53, CO 47, 154: Neque enim de

Coena habetur concio, sed de perpetua communicatione, quae extra Coenae usum
nobis constat and on John 6:54: Et certe ineptum fuisset ac intempestivum, de Coena
nunc disserere, quam nondum instituerat. Ideo de perpetua dei manducatione eum
tractare certum est.
210 chapter four

of this concrete person. God, in his approach to man, takes the road
of incarnation. Man does not have to climb above the clouds. No, the
gate to Gods inner chamber is on earth, in the body of Jesus.60 No one
who disregards Christ as a man shall reach God in Christ.61 Life from
the divine source reaches us in the way of a concrete man.62 Faith must
be gotten from the lowest place that God appoints in his revelation, the
most accessible to sight. That is the concrete Son-become-esh, who
was among us physically. From there faith can ascend to the source, to
God the Father as the source of life.
Third, in connection with the preceding point, the conviction that
the believer is fed with the esh and blood of Christ has immediate
soteriological content. Believers receive the esh and blood of the Cru-
cied.63 Life, you see, is in this esh and blood. It is striking that in his
exegesis of John 6 Calvin constantly links the words caro and vita with
one another. It is according Gods marvellous Will that He reveals life
to us in this esh, in which previously only substance moving to cor-
ruption, materia mortis, was to be found.64 Life, for Calvin, means ever-
lasting life. Salvation is formulated in terms of transient and eternal. In
Calvins exposition in the Institutes we nd conrmation that for Calvin
salvation means sharing in immortality. Not sacrice and satisfaction
but the antitheses transient-everlasting and perishable-imperishable are
dominant. At the Lords Table it is once more, as it were, literally
held under the nose of the mortals that mortal man, doomed to death,
receives a share of heavenly life through faith, as appears from a cru-
cial section like Institutes 4.17.8: in his Word God previously diused
his vigour into all creatures, but man became alienated from God by
sin and lost the communion with life. In order to regain the hope of

60 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.

61 Comm. John 6:56, CO 47, 156: Neque enim ad Christum Deum unquam perve-
niet qui hominem negligit.
62 Comm. John 6:57, CO 47, 156: Primum locum obtinet vivens Pater qui scaturigo

est, sed remota et abscondita. Sequitur Filius, quem habemus velut fontem nobis
expositum, et per quem ad nos vita diunditur. Tertia est vita quam nos ab ipso
haurimus.
63 Berkouwer, De sacramenten, 314, refers to Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, Locus de

sacramentis par. 24 Kampen, n.d., where he argues that the communion exercised
is with the corpus crucixum Christi, not with the corpus gloricatum Christi. Kuyper here
appears to proceed from the idea that communion with the gloried Christ would
mean cancelling out the crucixion. That is a distinction that has no foundation in
biblical witness. God has identied himself with the Crucied, and with the Crucied
clad in glory he bestows communion upon the disciples. (John 20:2627).
64 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.
 the supper and knowledge of god 211

immortality man must be restored to the communion with that Word.

This restoration began in the incarnation, that is, the personal union
that the Word enters into with the human nature of Jesus. Since that
fountain of life began to dwell in our nature, writes Calvin, he no
longer lies hid at a distance from us, but exhibits himself openly for our
participation. Yea, the very esh in which he resides he makes vivifying
for us, that by partaking of it we may be fed for immortality.65
The foregoing in part nds basis in the fourth point, namely the rela-
tion between Calvins insistence on the communion with the esh and
blood of Christ and his doctrine of the immortal soul. Because in our
culture this relation is no longer felt or seen, it seems obvious to relate
the expression esh and blood to the personal relation with Christ. I
do not deny that with Calvin one must speak of solidarity with the per-
son of Christ, but wish to also emphasize that for Calvin this solidarity
goes together with thinking in impersonal terms of power and life. If
we now try to reconceive Calvins theology in terms of revelation as an
encounter event, then we overlook an essential element in this theol-
ogy. The concept of encounter is too personalistic; it suggests that we
internally have a grip on that which happens with man in Gods acting.
The concept of power points to there being elements in the process of
renewal and salvation that exceed the grasp and control of man.
In solidarity with the person of the Mediator our soul is fed by the
Holy Spirit with the life-giving power of God himself. Calvins doctrine
of the immortal soul seems of the greatest importance here. From
the time of the polemic text Psychopannuchia it is clear that whoever
denies the immortality of the soul in Calvins view assails a principle
of salvation of the rst order. In the doctrine of the Supper we once
again encounter the importance of Calvins anthropological concept.
The soul is the created, immortal core of man, and in faith once again
becomes the possession of the everlasting life that ows from Christ.66
In the Supper this reality is bound to the heart of the believer and
inwardly impressed more powerfully than in the preaching of the word
alone. If the soul is at the same time fed with eternal life, then there is a
continuity which cannot be broken even by death.

65 Inst. 4.17.8: At vero, ubi fons ille vitae habitare in carne nostra coepit, iam non

procul nobis absconditus latet, sed coram se participandum exhibet. Quin et ipsam,
in qua residet, carnem vivicam nobis reddit, ut eius participatione ad immortalitatem
pascamur.
66 Inst. 4.17.45.
212 chapter four

Two remarks here as commentary. First, Calvins concept of salva-

tion as a whole stands much closer to Eastern Orthodoxy than to mod-
ern personalistic interpretations. Characteristic of this is the direct call
on Cyril of Alexandria.67 For Calvin the esh or human nature is not
only the place where sin is found, but thus must also be the place where
reconciliation must take place. That is the common, later Reformed
doctrine of Christs active and passive obedience, in part based on
Anselm, and we indeed also nd this concisely with Calvin.68 But it
is not the be all and end all of his teaching. In addition to thinking
in terms of right, guilt, satisfaction and reconciliation we nd that the
reection takes place in terms of transience and immortality. Possibly
this latter is even a more comprehensive frame of thought. This lat-
ter polarity is strongly present not only in the doctrine of unio mystica,
but also in the doctrine of the Supper. The esh of Christ is a channel
through which we come in contact with God. In his commentary on
John 6:51 it can be seen how close Calvin comes to Alexandrine theol-
ogy in his Christology and soteriology. The distinction between life in
God, life in this esh and the life that is our inheritance through this
source is certainly maintained. But at the same time it becomes clear
how much the humanity of Christ, which in itself would be mortal,
is permeated with immortality through the incarnation of the eternal
Son. The esh of Christ is certainly not the primary source of life in
God; that is an attribute of the being of God. But in a secondary sense
it can certainly be said that this esh is the locus of life. It rests in
a marvellous decree of God that life is presented to us in that esh,
where formerly there was only matter doomed to death to be found
Because even as Gods eternal Word is the source of life, so as a channel
his esh confers life on us. And in this sense it can be called life-giving,
because it bestows upon us the life that it takes from elsewhere.69
Next, because of the mortal-immortal polarity it is scarcely surpris-
ing that at crucial moments in his doctrine of the Supper Calvin should
speak in impersonal terms rather than in relational terms. In the Sup-
per we receive communion with the substance of Christ.70 That is to

67 Calvin quotes Cyrils Expositio in Evangelium Ioh. lib. II, cap. 8, MPG 73, 381382.

In Cyril see also for instance his Quod unus sit Christus, MPG 75, 13601361.
68 Inst. 2.17.25.
69 See Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 215226, wrongly

concludes that for Calvin, in his discussion of the eating of the caro vivica, the vere
homo is breached.
70 Inst. 4.17.3.
 the supper and knowledge of god 213

say, we receive a share of the virtus or vigour from this substance. In

faith and in the sacrament the soul of the believer stands in the imme-
diate sphere of inuence of divine power, the divine current of life,
which comes directly from the divine-human nature of Christ. The
human nature of Christ, his humanity, has this power because the
second person of the Trinity has taken on this human nature, and in
that taken in the divine sphere of inuence. Thus the esh and blood
of Christ has that life-giving property by virtue of the unio personalis.
It would be incorrect to negatively qualify this manner of speaking
with the adjective impersonal. Perhaps it is also possible to say that
Calvins theology reminds us that we, as persons, always move within
a sphere of inuence, a relationship, that does not permit itself to be
adequately expressed in personal terms. Our contemporary theology,
still very much marked by the personalism of modern subject thinking,
should be reminded by this sort of pre-modern theology that the life
of a human being, as a person, is always determined by supra-personal
categories.

4.5. The Holy Spirit and instrumentality

4.5.1. The Supper as instrument

In the preceding it has been discussed how Calvin, together with the
Lutherans, emphasized that in the Supper there is a real participation
in the esh and blood of Jesus Christ. At the same time it is clear
he held the concept of a local presence of the body of Christ to be
untenable. On the question of how the union with something that is so
high and far away could come to be, Calvin answered with a reference
to the work of the Holy Spirit. The spirit is the link through which the
divine power comes to man. Here the Spirit is the vinculum coniunctionis.71
The question is now what Calvin meant by this.
The Lutherans were of the view that through the reference to the
Holy Spirit no more could be left of a real communion with the esh
and blood of Christ than a remembrance or communion with the
Holy Spirit. The presentia realis would be lost. On the basis of Calvins
qualifying this communion as spiritualiter it has always been interpreted

71 Inst. 4.17.12.
214 chapter four

in a spiritual sense. Westphal concluded that when Calvin speaks about

a spiritual eating (spiritualis manducatio) this was in opposition to a real
and true eating (vera et realis manducatio).72 According to Calvin however,
the reality of the eating of the esh and blood of Christ is not at issue in
the adjective spiritualis, but only the manner in which this participation
in the esh and blood of Christ comes into being. Among the Lutherans
this eating is understood materially or physically (carnalis), because it is
included under the bread and wine. Among them spiritualiter means
an actual non realiter. Calvin insists that this eating, this communion, is
brought about by the Holy Spirit, and therefore speaks of a spiritual
eating (spiritualis).73
It is now time to examine another front with which Calvin was
involved in debate, namely Zurich, and particularly with the person
of Bullinger. In his negotiations with Bullinger Calvin showed himself
willing to say more than just that in the Supper we are connected to
Christ through the Spirit. The characteristic feature of Calvins position
is to be seen in the course of the correspondence with Bullinger leading
up to the Consensus Tigurinus. In essence it turns always on the question
of whether bread and wine can be termed a sign or an instrument of
Gods grace.74
Calvin is in agreement with Bullinger that bread and wine must
be termed an analogy of the esh and blood of Christ. The concept
of analogy is used to respect the boundaries of the physical and the
spiritual, earthly and heavenly. The invisible thing is given in the sign,
in the physical thing. One operation of the Holy Spirit through an
analogy cited by Calvin himself is the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan.
The visible thing that is seen is a dove, the invisible thing that is
connected with visible thing is the Spirit. A similar use of the sign also
is to be found in the sacraments. The signs are an analogy for a hidden
operation of the Spirit.75 As wine and bread connect nourishment
and the preservation of the body through eating and metabolism in
the body, so the everlasting life of the body of Christ ows over into
man and bestows the power of imperishable life upon his soul, that

72 J. Westphal, Collectanea sententiarum D. Aurelii Augustini ep. Hipponensis de Coena Domini,

Ratisbon 1555, E7a.

73 Inst. 4.17.33.
74 The following is based heavily upon P.E. Rorem, The Consensus Tigurinus

(1549): Did Calvin Compromise? in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor.
Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (MI) 1994, 7290.
75 OS I, 509.
 the supper and knowledge of god 215

immortal, eternal part of him. The promise of the resurrection of

the body is also given in this vitalisation of the soul.76 Calvin is no
gnostic.
However, the question remains how this life is conveyed in Calvins
concept. The body of Christ does not come to earth, but remains in
heaven, does it not? How then can be believer be fed by the esh and
blood of Christ? Discussions about the nature of the communion with
Christ that man exercises in the Supper are directly connected with the
discussion about the previously mentioned extra-calvinisticum.77 This
term refers to the coordinates of the whole of Calvins theological con-
cept, namely the range of works of the Triune God. Gods works cannot
be reduced to one denominator, but have a diversity in sacred history.
The work of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, is there-
fore not limited to the incarnation in Jesus Christ. The eternal Son also
works outside the incarnation, extra carnem, and also outside the Sup-
per.78 Thus, for instance, we encounter the Son already in creation. As
the incarnate Word, with regard to his body Jesus Christ is in heaven
after his Ascension. There he exercises power and rule at the right
hand of the Father. As we read elsewhere,79 this regnum is not limited
by spatial distance or dened by any dimensions. It is human nature
that is characterised by boundaries. According to his divine nature the
incarnate Son is not bound by these limits. Anywhere He wills, any-
where it pleases Him, in heaven and on earth He exercises his power,
and through this power He is near his people. He gives them life, lives
in them, sustains them, preserves them, pours out power on them. To
make this more specic, Calvin uses an older distinction between Christ
in his gloried state and everything that there is in Christ. According to
his gloried state, Christ is totus, as a person, present with his people.
But, says Calvin, not everything that is in Christ, namely his human
esh, is present in the Supper, non totum. The distinction between totus
and totum reminds one again of the eschatological import of his con-

76 Inst. 4.17.32: Quam tanta virtute tantaque ecacia hic eminere dicimus, ut non

modo indubitatam vitae aeternae duciam animis nostris aerat, sed de carnis etiam
nostrae immortalitate securos nos reddat.
77 See E.D. Willis, Calvins Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called extra calvinis-

ticum in Calvins Theology, Leiden 1966. See also the paper by H.A. Oberman, also from
1966, Die Extra-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins in: idem, Die Reformation. Von
Wittenberg nach Genf, Gttingen 1986, 253282.
78 See Chapter 2, note 46.
79 Inst. 4.17.18.
216 chapter four

cept. It refers to the completion of all things, in which mankind also

will share in the gloried state of Christ according to the esh.80

4.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit

The substance of Christs body is thus in heaven, and nevertheless sub-
stantial communion takes place. The local absence does not hinder
that the esh does its work in an incomprehensible and hidden man-
ner.81 It is the Spirit who feeds the faithful on earth with the power of
Christ, in a manner we cannot grasp. At various points Calvin makes it
clear that the limits of human comprehension have been reached. The
nature of the way in which the Spirit works is not among those things
which have been revealed to man. Calvin is very decided in his con-
viction that there must be no confusion of heaven and earth, and there
cannot be a ubiquity of the divine-human nature of Christ. He consid-
ers that distinction a foundation of human religious knowledge. With
the question of how man, here on earth, comes in contact with the
life-giving esh of Christ in heaven, he does not know how it happens,
but only that it happens. A boundary looms up before thought which
attempts to follow the working of the Spirit and experience.82 Calvin
does, however, reach for the metaphor of the sun and its rays. The sun
throws o its rays and its power onto the earth, and in this some of its
substance ows into that which grows. It is not only the power of the
sun that reaches man in this way, but the substantia comes along with
the power.83 In the same way, at a great distance Christ pours out his
power. In the image of the sun and its warmth, distance and presence
go together. But, is the distinction between the creator and the creation
not overstepped in the image of the sun and its rays? The mystical
image of communio does not cancel out the boundaries. The substance
of Christ does not merge with that of our soul. It is, Calvin says, su-
cient that Christ out of the substance of his esh breathes life into our

80 Inst. 4.17.30: Mediator ergo noster quum totus ubique sit, suis semper adest: et in

Coena speciali modo praesentem se exhibet, sic tamen ut totus adsit, non totum: quia,
ut dictum est, in carne sua caelo comprehenditur donec in iudicium appareat.
81 CO 9, 509: mysticum et incomprehensibilem carnis operationem non prohi-

bet absentia localis.

82 In the literature the reference is always to Calvins letter to Peter Martyr of August

8, 1555, CO 15, 722723.

83 See also Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 180.
 the supper and knowledge of god 217

bodies.84 With the formula used, e carnis suae substantia, Calvin attempts
to build a bridge between the bodily presence of Christ in heaven on
the one hand and the real presence of Christ in the Supper on the
other. How successful is the metaphor of the sun and its warmth? Is
Christ not just as far away as the sun stands above us? Is the knowledge
of Christ not marked by distance? It fed the suspicions of the Lutheran
side if it came down to Christ being far away.
What did Calvin accomplish in a theological sense with the reference
to Ascension and the bridging work of the Spirit? I will attempt to list
several points. First this: these are the conceptual means of his day for
establishing that the believers on earth do not out of their own power
command the life-giving esh and blood of Christ.85 Ascension empha-
sizes the distance from mankind, still pilgrims on this earth, under way.
The work of the Holy Spirit stands for the bridge building, the reacha-
bility on earth. Second, this concept is the means of preserving knowl-
edge of God on earth through its eschatological structure. The gloried
body is not here; the completion has not yet arrived. Through the Spirit
God comes near to his children living in this world with his power to
life, but the presentia realis does not cancel out the state of incompletion.
Within Calvins theology lies a strong sense of the incompleteness of
Gods way with man, of that which is not yet realised. Those who follow
Calvin have the room theologically to say that there is still much that is
not nished in Gods work. God makes life hard for his children with
a range of things that lay claim on their daily existence. There is still a
way to go, the most important is yet to come. Things that cause di-
culty and that stand in shrill contrast to the promises of the Kingdom
do not have to be polished up or ironed out. This theological notion
is important, in part because it can be productive in other dimensions
and relationships. It is of direct importance for pastoral care, for pol-
itics, for what we demand of ourselves and of others. Seen positively,
with Calvin faith has the form of hope. The body of Christ in heaven is
the guarantee of the renewal of man and the world at the end of time.

84 quia nobis sucit Christum e carnis suae substantia vitam in animas nostras

spirare: imo propriam in nos vitam diundere, quamvis in nos non ingrediatur ipsa
Christi caro. Inst. 4.17.32.
85 See O. Weber, Calvins Lehre von der Kirche in: idem, Die Treue Gottes in der

Geschichte der Kirche. Gesammelte Aufstze II, Neukirchen 1968, 76.

218 chapter four

4.5.3. The way of knowledge of God

If the Lutherans suspected an evaporation of the content of concepts in
Calvin, from his side Bullinger feared an impermissible objectication
of grace with Calvin. Succinctly put, that which distinguished Calvins
doctrine of the Supper from Bullingers is the instrumentality of the
outward reality of the signs. While in their written discussion Bullinger
time after time repeats that the bread and wine are signs which form
an analogy with that which is done for the believer by the Holy Spirit,
Calvin advances a powerful argument that the signs also be termed an
instrument.
We previously encountered this theme of the instrumentality of the
created in the way to knowledge of God. We nd it again here. Calvin
agrees whole-heartedly with Bullinger that the proclamation of the
Word brings man into communion with the eternal life that is in Jesus
Christ. In receiving the bread and wine this reality is once again, and
now more strongly, inwardly impressed and bound upon the heart of
the believer. Previously we have already argued that Calvin thinks in
spatial terms. That is also true for the Supper. In the sacraments it
is not the intention that mans eye should continue to rest upon the
outward signs. His gaze must rise to the Giver himself. To the extent
that this movement can be thought of with the aid of an analogy,
there is no dierence with Bullinger. The characteristic feature and
distinction for Calvin is that he reserves a more fundamental place
for the outward and visible sign by terming it an instrument or chan-
nel. Therein resides the added value of the sacrament. Bullinger fears
that in the use of this term something that can only come from God
will be assigned to that which is created. He fears an objectication
or materialisation of the grace in the qualifying instrument. Bullinger
wanted to emphasize the role of God and the Spirit as acting sub-
jects in such a radical way that the close relation between the sign
and the signied actually became looser. Bread and wine are signs in
so far as they are taken into service by the Holy Spirit. Calvin does
not disagree with this. He also takes the active use of these signs by the
Holy Spirit as his point of departure. He however adds that the Spirit
moves in this particular way, through the createdness of the outward signs.
In this sense they are also instruments, means accomplishing some-
thing. It is Gods choice, his disposition, to carry man along upwards
in that way. It is Gods freedom to feed and to cleanse man, living
in the depths, through these instruments. This dynamic view of the
 the supper and knowledge of god 219

sacrament is in agreement with what I previously said about the role

of outward things and the senses.

4.5.4. Experience and tasting

For Calvin, the concrete experience, tasting, eating and drinking of the
bread and wine had an added value that we can scarcely conceive any
more. The evaluation of Calvins doctrine of the Supper by Berkhof is
typical of todays vision and perception. He primarily has an eye for
the sensory nature of the sacraments being a concession of divine Prov-
idence.86 Calvins doctrine of sacraments is held up against the light of
what is essential for Berkhof, namely personal encounter. The sensory is
taken as a form which God chooses to actually descend to human level.
But in this the positive reasons for the sensory that are also to be found
in Calvin threaten to disappear from view: the material sacrament is
a tting tool for God. He is in no sense ashamed of it. In Calvins
theology we encounter thought in which our physicality is taken com-
pletely into account. Without our physicality, without employing our
senses, we will never come into contact with God. The bread and wine
make the believer heedful of the life-giving presence of the life that
is in Christ. They are concrete signs of the hidden nearness of God,
which through his Spirit now already are awakening the soul to life
and in a hidden way now already pour out the gifts of God upon the
believer. The presence of hope, patience, the striving for righteousness,
the capacity to oer resistance to temptations: these are all nothing
other than the eect of the inuence of Christs life upon us. Through
these instruments the believer comes under the inuence of the abun-
dant and eternal life that ows through the esh and blood of Christ
as a channel, not exclusively, but certainly more powerfully.87 The eat-
ing and drinking of the bread and wine are in direct relation with the
thing, life eternal. Calvins fear is that the outward sign will become only
a sign, a nuda gura. The thing itself and the truth are connected with
the sign.88 One can also say that it is in keeping with Calvins theology
to have an eye for the nature of Gods acts as means of knowing Him.
The knowledge of God does not arise in abstracto, not through the Spirit

86 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 348.

87 Comm. John 6:51, CO 47, 152.
88 OS II, 282: res ipsa et veritas coniuncta est See also OS II, 509: The dove

at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is no vaine gure.

220 chapter four

alone, apart from means, but through a multiplicity of ways, leading up

to the Supper, where in the most powerful way man is pointed to the
place where the spring of life is.
I would add a second observation to this. The experience, the con-
rmation, the certainty comes into being in the connection between
sign and thing. It is not enough to be a spectator to the breaking of the
bread. It is also not enough to leave things at the moment that faith
comes into being. Faith itself leads to activity, to a manducatio of what
comes from this source.89 But there is also progress, a driving force,
a hidden working of the Spirit connected with the concrete eating
and drinking that leads to experience. As has already been remarked
in passing, this experience is more than a cognitive plus. The sacra-
ment does not internalise anything dierent from what one receives a
share of in faith, but it internalises it dierently. Gods promise is linked
in a very special sense with the graphic moment, the concrete experi-
ence of eating.90 It is intended to refer to the experience that can only
be acquired by participation. It [the sacrament] calls to remembrance
that Christ was made the bread of life that we may constantly eat him,
it gives us a taste and relish for that bread, and makes us feel its e-
cacy.91 The Holy Spirit therefore sees to it that what is outwardly signi-
ed reaches the believer inwardly. The language that points to an expe-
rience of reality, of eect, that the believer undergoes in all intensity,
is signicant.92 The way in which the Holy Spirit through his hidden
operation brings the believer into the presence of Christ conceptually
remains a mystery. The mystery is too sublime, Calvin says, for us to
conceive with our understanding.93 Directly thereafter he confesses, I
rather feel than understand it.94 At the apex of his doctrine of the Sup-

89 Comm. John 6:47, CO 47, 151: Quod quidam ex hoc loco colligunt, credere in

Christum idem esse atque edere Christum vel carnem eius, non satis rmum est. Haec
enim duo inter se tanquam prius et posterius dierunt, sicuti ad Christum venire, et
ipsum bibere. Praecedit enim accessus. Fateor non manducari Christum nisi de: sed
ratio est, quia de eum recipimus ut habitet in nobis simusque eius participes adeoque
unum cum ipso. Quare manducatio eectus est aut opus dei.
90 Cf. also Oberman, Die Reformation, 263.
91 Inst. 4.17.5: sed dum in memoriam revocat, panem vitae esse factum, quo assidue

vescamur, eiusque panis gustum et saporem nobis praebet, ut vim panis illius sentiamus
facit.
92 Inst. 4.17.1 and Inst. 4.17.4: dum ecaciam mortis eius vivo sensu apprehendi-

mus.
93 Inst. 4.17.32. Cf. also Inst. 4.17.10.
94 Inst. 4.17.32: atque, ut apertius dicam, experior magis quam intelligam.
 the supper and knowledge of god 221

per Calvin seems to base himself not only on Bible exegesis, but his own
experience also speaks powerfully. Above all, for him knowledge of God
is not limited to what a human being can understand, comprehend or
formulate.
To sum up: In faith there are no inward or outward contradictions.
The Holy Spirit uses external things, the world that comes in through
the senses, for inward purposes, and provides what is there signied, the
life-giving esh of Christ. In this way the soul already receives a share
of coming glory. With regard to the sacraments one may summarise
that the way runs from outward to inward, and from within to above.
God desires that our senses be carried from the elements to on high, to
heaven. In the Supper the believer himself is carried on high. With his
soul already in heaven, he is conveyed into the neighbourhood of the
majesty of God. The dignity is amply enough commended when we
hold, that it is a help by which we may be ingrafted into the body of
Christ, or, already ingrafted, may be more and more united with him,
until the union is completed in heaven.95 In this citation it becomes
clear once again to what extent the knowing of God transcends the
intellectual. Faith has its point of concentration around the Supper
because there, in the midst of the community, what is already the
truth is experienced in faith, and will come to its full unfolding, namely
inclusion in the perfect communion with Christ, in the completion of
all things.

95 Inst. 4.17.33.
THE HINGE
 chapter five

THE TURN TO THE SUBJECT IN

KANTS PHILOSOPHY

5.1. A watershed

In this study, Kants philosophy serves as the hinge between the two
panels of Calvin and Barth. There is a risk involved in proceeding in
this manner, not so much because the interpretation of Kants writings
is a matter better left to philosophers, but because it might easily
be thought that in this study Barths theology is being considered as
a direct and conscious response to Kant. Such a suggestion is not,
however, the intention. Barth was rst and foremost a theologian who
sought to make a contribution to Christian theology in obedience to
revelation. If he was directly responding to someone in a theological-
historical sense, then Schleiermacher would be a better candidate to
serve as the hinge here. The connection between Barth and Kant
is looser, less direct, but not therefore less profound. In making this
choice I arm the widely shared conviction that Kant de facto marks
a watershed in Western theology. Whether this role belongs to him
de iure is another question, which will not be discussed here. I will
limit myself to noting that his thought fulls this role for the main
stream of Western theology. He is a watershed, and indeed in two
senses. First, one can regard his philosophy as a mirror in which a
number of the shifts in the history of thought which are characteristic
of modernity become clearly visible. In his thinking, and in particular
in his epistemology, the turn from a theocentric view of the world to
an anthropocentric point of departure comes to be seen. Knowledge is
henceforth no longer knowledge of the preternatural, of divine truth.
Within modern philosophy knowledge comes to be ever more strictly
regarded as knowledge that is limited to human, earthly things, and
has the status of an object, which does not extend beyond the limited
horizon of human faculties.
The second manner in which Kant is a watershed is connected with
this latter. It concerns theology directly. Modern theology has become
226 chapter five

fundamentally uncertain. It lives with the uncomfortable feeling that

there is something not quite right with knowledge in faithor better,
there is something wrong with it. Modern theology is for the most
part post-Kantian, in the sense that it has taken over the fundamental
denial that is contained in Kants epistemology: God cannot be the
object of human knowledge. Men will always continue to think and
talk about God, because for various reasons they simply cannot stop
doing so. But strictly speaking, we are then dealing with god or the
divine as a concept, idea, or as a word from our language, sometimes a
disturbing word that reminds us that we have no hold on it, because at
the same time we use it we are reminded that god or the divine does
not have the status of knowledge. In post-Kantian theology the idea of
knowledge has become that problematic with regard to God. That God
exists, lives and works is no longer beyond question, as was the case
from the early church through to the Renaissance culture of Calvin.
For Calvin there was certainly the realisation that God is greater and
more than human concepts of Him, but that did not detract from
the reality claim that knowledge of God made. On the contrary: that
God existed, that He revealed certain things about himself, was a deep
conviction. The evidence did not lie in the visible, in the swarm of
commonplace things, but in that which withdrew from them, in the
spiritual, in heavenly things. In modernity, as it developed, where one
looked to nd the evident would shift. That which is evident no longer
lies above man, but below him. The poles of proof were reversed. To
an increasing degree in modernity the fundamental attitude would be
that of agnosticism.
Once again, the observation that this is a watershed is a de facto
observation. Whether this watershed is also justiable, de iure, is another
question, which will only be addressed indirectly in this hinge chap-
ter.1 I will limit myself to approaching the matter from the history of
thought. For Barth it is the case that his theology, and in particular his
concept of knowledge of God, cannot be understood without some real-
isation of the barriers that Kant erected, and the responses to them by
F.D. Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, A. Ritschl and W. Herrmann. Karl
Barths earliest theology is still entirely in line with that of Schleier-
macher and Herrmann, and in the baggage of his own critical theology
there is still a good deal present that is in part dened by Kantian struc-

1 See N. Wolterstor, Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover from

Kant?, Modern Theology 14 (1998), 118.

 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 227

tures. When in his second Rmerbrief Barth labels knowledge of God an

impossible possibility and begins with mans problem of doing justice
to God in human language, that is not only a radicalisation of the Ref-
ormations realisation that knowledge of God is a matter of grace, but
also a shared assumption with regard to the limitedness of all human
knowledge.

What are the broader changes in intellectual history? It has become

customary to characterise modernity as a cultural-historical constella-
tion typied by a number of qualities such as anthropocentrism, anti-
traditionalism, rationalisation, individualisation, democratisation, and
dierentiation of spheres of life.2 Summed up in one comprehensive
denition, modernity is characterised by the turn to the subject and
a shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric view of life. In the

2 See for instance the analysis by H. Kng, Christianity. Its Essence and History, London

1995, 650770. a) Beginning with man as subject and the development of empirical
research as the entry to the world has led to modern culture being impressed by the
power of instrumental reason. Knowledge is power, according to Bacons maxim. It is no
longer primarily theoria, reection. Like the natural sciences and technology, knowledge
has become a domain of its own. That has made an enormous expansion possible in
the technical and economic sense, and created a new myth which still maintains itself,
even now that the original condence in the omnipotence of reason has evaporated,
namely the myth of growth and progress.
b) As the polar opposite of the ideal of control and unication, modernity is
characterised by a process of constant individualisation of spiritual life. The value of man,
of the individual, was always already there in the Christian concept of creation, but
viewed theologically is a secondary, and not a primary element. Within modernity
regard for the individual as a moral and spiritual being moves up into rst place.
The problem of personal identity and maintaining that personhood over against a
systematic and impersonal world becomes a concern of the rst order.
c) The preceding point is directly linked with the universal perspective of modernity.
The question of identity develops more and more into a question of humanity. The
concept of humanity cannot be viewed in terms of particularity; in principle, humanity
comprises not some men, but all mankind. This cosmopolitan, universal perspective,
the explicit desire for a humanity that reclaims and includes all people, is an essential
element of modernity. It conicts with every view that excludes any particular group of
people for whatever reason.
d) The primacy of the individual has consequences for the relation of the individual
to social institutions and to society as a whole. The primacy of the individual over
against the institutional on the one hand implies a demand for tolerance, but there is
also present at the same time an element that is corrosive to society. Tolerance has its
price. Europe initially had diculty becoming accustomed to the break up of the unity
of society as a religious entity, but since then has embraced with conviction the hard-
won ideal of tolerance as being of paramount importance. The separation of church
and state in the 19th century was the result of this at the political level.
228 chapter five

long run this has had consequences for the place of religion in Western
culture in general, and for Christianity in particular. Increasingly a pro-
nounced agnosticism and secularism has become the mental trademark
of our culture, and knowledge of God has become a problem. Kants
thought serves as a mirror of this development.3

5.2. The tradition-critical attitude

The self-condence with which modern men, unlike in previous gener-

ations, take up a position over against tradition, and indeed over against
any sort of knowledge that rests on tradition and whose authority is
represented by the church and governmentin short, anti-traditional-
ismis a characteristic of the mental attitude of modernity. The well-
known adage of Kant, in his 1784 answer to the question Was ist Auf-
klrung, reects this attitude and radiates condence and self-assurance:
Enlightenment is the human beings emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minor-
ity is inability to make use of ones own understanding without direction
from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack
of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without
direction from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your
own understanding! Is thus the motto of enlightenment.4

Kant expresses here what was a collective assumption and shared ideal
of a small elite of geographically diuse and, in a social perspective,
very diverse minds: the present era is not a time in which the mind
and humanity already stand high above the landscape like a sun, but
it is indeed a time in which we see the light dawning. It is not an

3 For another point of departure in the case of, for instance, Spinoza, see D. Schel-

long, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und
die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973 or for the point of departure for Descartes, see E. Jngel, Gott
als Geheimnis der Welt, 146167; ET: God as the Mystery of the World, 111126.
4 I. Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklrung? Werke in Sechs Bnden, Bd. VI,

hrsg. Von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19644 =) 1983, 53 (A 481): Aufklrung ist der
Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmndigkeit. Unmndigkeit
ist das Unvermgen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen.
Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmndigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Man-
gel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschlieung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne
Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Ver-
standes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklrung. ET in: Cambridge Edition
of the Works of Immanuel Kant (eds. P. Guyer and A. Wood): Practical Philosophy (translated
and edited by Mary J. Gregor), 17.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 229

enlightened era, but is indeed a time of Enlightenment.5 That marks

one of the striking dierences with the preceding period. This is no
longer a culture or era for which the ideal model lies in the past;
man now looks forward for amelioration. Progress now becomes a
social virtue. Like the concept of Enlightenment itself, the progress
that with Calvin had its place in the realm of personal consecration
of life, as expressed in the way the pilgrim from day to day changes into
the image of Christ, is lifted out of its Christian and pneumatological
context and receives cultural status.6
One could easily misunderstand the passage cited above from Kant
if one analyses it in isolation and does not take the political-social con-
text into account. The last thing Kant intended was to defend epis-
temological solipsism. Man is in fact dependent on a community of
persons for knowledge. What Kant has in mind in the above citation is
the process of public discussion of faith and theology, intellectual free-
dom, the necessity of a public domain where debate can be carried on
without interference from the authorities. Kant too was addressing
albeit indirectlya ruling monarch, Frederick the Great, but now not
to appeal to the monarch as defender and protector of the true faith,
but on the contrary, to praise him for his tolerance. In all matters of
conscience, Kant says, a person must be free to avail himself of his
reason. Kant was speaking in a situation in which public debate on
theological and moral subjects was still controlled by the government
apparatus. He deliberately takes an intermediate position, and makes a
distinction between the responsibility that people have as scholars and
that which they have as holders of ecclesiastical oces.7 When clergy
are bound to an ecclesiastical tradition or confession by their oce,
there are still curbs on thinking for oneself. It is however clear which
direction things must go. As matters now stand, a good deal more is
required for people on the whole to be in the position, or even able
to be put in the position, of using their own understanding condently
and well in religious matters, without anothers guidance.8 With that a
line of demarcation is drawn, and a characterisation is given of those
thinkers who belong to the Enlightenment. Kant demands that peo-

5 Was ist Aufklrung, 59 (A 491); ET, 21.

6 The term Enlightenment in itself already betrays how much, in the period of the
Enlightenment, the light of reason and the light of revelation were identied with one
another, for instance in J. Locke and G.E. Lessing.
7 Was ist Aufklrung, 56 (A487), ET, 19.
8 Was ist Aufklrung, 59 (A491), ET, 21.
230 chapter five

ple think for themselves, as John Locke and David Hume argued that
they should, and that tradition and authority must be answer to reason.
Only on that condition can religion exist.
The intellectual climate of modernity, with its ideal of autonomy, is
unmistakably anti-traditional. This anti-traditionalism at the same time
applied the axe to something which had been accepted as self-evident
in European culture, namely the role of Christian tradition as the
fundamental source of vitality and truth for the whole culture. However
inadequate, rancorous and malicious the image sometimes was that was
given of the Middle Ages in the time of the Enlightenment, according
to Peter Gay in one regard it was right, namely that the Christian
narrative had been the deepest driving force and ultimate goal of this
civilisation.9 In the era of the Enlightenment and the developments
which followed it, this certainty and its acceptance as natural falls away.
The Christian legacy is more critically received. No longer do people
automatically regard themselves as exponents of this tradition, but see
themselves as emancipated from the religious and metaphysical matrix,
and indeed question the matrix itself.

5.3. For the sake of humanity

Kants investigation of the conditions for human knowledge marks a

moment that deeply aected Western theology. It changed the view
of the boundaries of knowable, it transformed metaphysics from a
material to a formal discipline, and all of this had great inuence on
the theological questions of from whence man derives knowledge of
God, and for what may we hope.
Kants investigation of the possibilities of the human mind and its
faculties is divided into three critiques, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781),
the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) and his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790).
For the status of religion, it is particularly the rst two studies that are
important. Kants own existential interest unquestionably lay with the
second critique, the investigation of practical reason, its range, validity
and conditions. For him, this involves what makes a man human,
humanity itself, and what makes a culture humane.10 In order to obtain

9 P. Gay, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation. Vol. 1: The Rise of modern Paganism, London

1973, 212.
10 Thus morality, not understanding, is what rst makes us human beings, I. Kant,
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 231

clarity in this question, he radicalises the distinction between the order

of being and the moral order. In the pre-modern panel the natural
order and the moral order still lay within the same sphere. A certain
meaning can be found for all things that exist. Everything that isbad
things, good things, the beautiful and the uglyhas a certain sense yet
within Gods Counsel and governance, although it is not always given
to man to understand what that is. With Kant this unity is shattered. In
contemporary language: being and meaning are not the same. There is
not even a link between being and meaning.
I wish to outline Kants position in several broad strokes, and will
focus primarily on the rst critiques. The human mind has at least two
ranges; man is a citizen to two worlds: by means of his power of reason
and physical senses man is able to acquire knowledge of the natural
order. Scienceor to be more precise, empirical scienceestablishes
what is. It operates in the world of phenomena. In addition, the human
mind has a second range or capacity, by virtue of which it has access
to the world of freedom. That capacity is practical reason. Practical
reason is the deepest motivation of human acts. It is likewise a power
of reason which produces generally valid knowledge, namely moral
knowledge. Practical reason is not dependent on the outside world. On
the contrary, this reason focuses on that which transcends the sensory,
namely on that which should be. Kants critiques have their point in
nding a peculiar domain for morality. To this end, the reach of pure
reason must be limited, and those limits are in fact space and time.
Morality supposes freedom, and this freedom is only guaranteed when
a particular act is not considered from the viewpoint of the phenomenal
world (the world of phenomena), but as noumenal, that which cannot
be known, but which can be conceived.11 The positive result of the
restriction on speculative reason is aimed at being able to continue to
use God, freedom and immortality as ideas, as convictions, which are
indispensable for man, that is to say, for man as a free being. God,
freedom and immortality are postulates of practical reason. That is
to say, according to Kant, these are convictions which are entirely

Der Streit der Fakultten, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd. VI, hrsg. Von W. Weischedel,
Darmstadt (19644=)1983, 344 (A122); ET (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant, Vol. Religion and rational Theology), 291.
11 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bnde, Bd.2, hrsg. von W. Weischedel,

Darmstadt (19565=) 31 (B XXVI); ET: Critique of Pure Reason, tr. and ed. by P. Guyer/
A.W. Wood (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Cambridge
1998, 115.
232 chapter five

warranted on the basis of human reason. It is here that the famous

citation comes: Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to make room
for faith; and the dogmatism of metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice that
without criticism reason can make progress in metaphysics, is the true
source of all unbelief conicting with morality.12 This indicates the
positive point, aiming at humanity, that Kant unquestionably had in
mind. This is the order of humanity.
For a proper estimation of Kants place in the history of modernity, it
is important to grasp the order of importance. For Kant in his critiques,
this issue is not merely epistemology as such. His critiques are in the
service of seeking that which is denitive for humanity and meaning, in
the service of the search for human dignity in a remote corner of the
cosmos.
In this last, mans place in the cosmos, one can also immediately
see the distance from Calvin. For Kant there is a sense that man no
longer lives in a discrete, closed space. The globe is somewhere in a
remote corner of an immeasurable space. While for Calvin our space
was still enclosed within the rotation of the heavenly spheres, and the
revolving whole experienced as orderly and inspiring condence, as an
evident reference to Gods care, in Pascal we nd a totally dierent
experience. The eternal silence of these innite spaces terries me,
he writes.13 And although even in his critical period Kant still deems
the teleological proof of God the the oldest, clearest and the most
appropriate to common human reason which makes belief in a Highest
Causer compelling,14 he denies the faith that arises as a result of awe
the status of objective, generally valid knowledge. Only the moral law,
which is manifest in men, oers man an escape from the crushing
realisation of cosmic innity and his own insignicance. With Calvin
man received a central place within Gods order of created reality; he
is a pilgrim on earth, on his way to heaven. With Kant man has lost
that anchor, and the physical extent of the universe oers no possibility
to ascertain ones place in it any more. The experience of the silent
cosmos and a harsh universe, where man has become a derelict, has
increasingly marked our understanding of life since Kant. It is no
longer the experience of guilt or mortality that forms the background
for questions about God in our culture, but the realisation of our bereft

12 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 33 (B XXX); ET, 117.

13 B. Pascal, Penses, 206: Le silence ternel de ces espaces innis meraie.
14 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550551 (B 651); ET, 579580.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 233

state in innite space. Man is doomed to living as a nomad in the

endless reaches of the universe. The only thing that remains is life itself,
the uninterrupted stream of impressions and vital moments that one
must seize, embrace in the pleasure and terror that they oer, which
one can also let go of again, reject if one must. With Kant, however, we
are far from reaching that point. The natural sciences oer no solace,
the earth has indeed been displaced from the centre of the universe,
but in him we nd the development of a new answer: the turn to
the subject. The new centre is found in man himself, as the thinking,
willing, feeling subject. Man, and particularly his morality, becomes the
anchorage for humanity.

5.4. The turn to the subject

How does Kant go about achieving space for the moral order and lim-
iting of the reach of theoretical reason? Let me begin with the famous
sentence from the start of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft: But although
all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that
account all arise from experience.15 One can regard this sentence as
programmatic, because there are echoes in it of both Kants critique
of his predecessors and his own solution. Kant is seeking an answer
for the problem which he sees has been created for epistemology by
the empiricism of Locke and Hume. This problem involves the ques-
tion of how necessary or apodictic knowledge is possible. Kants oth-
erwise very questionable interpretation of Locke is that Locke would
also derive mental concepts from experience, because he encounters
them there.16 Moreover, he reproaches Locke for going far beyond
the boundaries of experience in his use of mental concepts.17 Kants
judgement of Locke is that he opened the gates wide to enthusiasm
because, when once reason does prove to have some competence, he
does not permit it to be limited by any exhortation to moderation.18

15 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 45 (B1); ET, 136.

16 According to N. Wolterstor, this customary interpretation must be characterised
as historically incorrect. The core of Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding must
be sought instead in book IV. See N. Wolterstor, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief,
Cambridge 1996, 10: The undeniable empiricist strands in his thought will be seen to
be balanced, if not outweighed, by the rationalist strands.
17 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 132 (B 127); ET, 225.
18 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 133 (B128); ET, 226.
234 chapter five

The way of empiricism, as Kant maps it out, leads to a number of

unsolvable diculties. It is Hume who, in the eyes of Kant, deserves
the honour of having called attention to these diculties. According
to empiricism, all our concepts must be based on observation. Hume
noted that, on the contrary, one of the most important concepts that
we use, namely causality, is not based on observation. We do indeed
observe the order in which events occur, or the state of aairs, but
not causality itself. The conviction that we possess apodictic or gen-
erally valid knowledge can not be accounted for from the standpoint
of empiricism. Empiricism never gets further than the observation of
facts, never arrives at the formulation of general validity. Thus, Kant
says, the realm of metaphysics has been thrown into anarchy. An agony
of doubt prevails regarding the foundation of knowledge, and the scope
of intellectual concepts. Opposite a dogmatic (for Kant, that is to say
an uncritical) use of reason and its concepts, as was customary in the
school of Leibnitz and Wol, are the sceptics, who, as far as Kant is
concerned, are a kind of nomads who abhor all permanent cultiva-
tion of the soil.19 The problem for Kant now is how it can be that we
indeed take the existence of generally valid, or as he calls it, apodic-
tic knowledge as a point of departure. Kant proposes a radical reversal
of perspective, that is, one with reference to the reversal in perspec-
tive which occurred in cosmology: in epistemology it is also necessary
to perform a Copernican revolution. Our capacity for thought is no
longer aimed toward things, but things are aimed toward our capac-
ity for thought.20 In thinking about human knowledge of the world,
the central point is no longer a given, ordered world that invites us
to discover how it is arranged, but rather is the subject who, with his
capacity for thought, imposes an order on the world. In other words,
Kant breaks with the idea that knowledge at its deepest is a matter of
imitation, in which the subjects role is chiey receptive. Mans role in
acquiring knowledge is not passive, but rather highly active and con-
structive.21
With this, Kant assigned a large role to reason, and shifted the bal-
ance in the realm of epistemology, something which would in a certain
sense nd its substance in the social and cultural development of the
18th century. One can detect an intellectual change which rst emerges

19 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 12 (A IX); ET, 99.

20 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 25 (B XVII); ET, 110.
21 Der Streit der Fakultten, 341 (A 116); ET, 299289.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 235

among natural scientists and the philosophes as a slowly unfolding real-

isation that life here on earth can be improved. The circumstances
of life in the 18th century might still be bad everywhere and the life
prospects for most slight, but the applications of the natural sciences,
rapidly being translated into technical inventions, nonetheless opened
vast perspectives. Man discovered that he could bend nature to his will.
James Watt discovered the principle of the steam engine, medical sci-
ence raised the hopes of a life with less aiction, fewer complaints.22
Such developments and possibilities put life in a dierent light. Man
is no longer powerless in the face of his lot in life, in the face of life
itself, but creator of his world, or, in the words of one of Thomas Jef-
fersons favourite maxims, faber suae quisque fortunae.23 Knowledge is no
longer rst and foremost insight, contemplation; knowledge is power
(Bacon). It is this evocative idea of the constitutive role of reason that
penetrates epistemology with Kant. The way in which reason comes to
weigh more and the world less is nicely visualised by Kant. Reason is
no longer in the position of a pupil who repeats precisely what his mas-
ter says, but takes the role of a judge who interrogates and demands
answers.24 This famous dictum is diametrically opposed to what we
saw with Calvin, for whom man has to assume the role of pupil in
all things. This is a new attitude that is the consequence of develop-
ments in the natural sciences, their application in technology and in
medical science. Reason is an active and creative force in opening up
our world. Reason considers only that which it brings forth according
to its plan. Kant argues that one will only get around the aporia of
empiricism if one realises that only that can be considered which one
has apriori brought along oneself through ideas, and is applied to that
which is a given in the observation. According to Kant, only through
a change in perspective, that is to say, a Copernican revolution, is it
possible to explain the existence of apriori knowledge and apodictic
knowledge.

22 Cf. P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, London 1973, 423.
23 See P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, 7.
24 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 23 (B XIII); ET, 109: Reason, in order to be taught by

nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which
alone the agreement among appearences can count as laws, and, in the other hand,
the experiments thought out in accordance with these principlesyet in order to be
instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants
to say, but like an appointed judge, who compels witnesses to answer the questions he
puts to them.
236 chapter five

Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft thus fulls the role of a treatise on
method,25 and does not proer itself as a system of knowledge. The
realisation of a boundary for human theoretical knowledge is highly
developed for Kant, but this realisation has primarily a positive, anti-
sceptic intention.

5.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as methodological

investigation into the conditions of knowing

In classic and early modern thought metaphysics is not only knowledge

of being as such, ens qua ens, thus what we today would term ontol-
ogy, but also knowledge of the world of rst things, the highest being,
or God.26 Thus classic metaphysics also comprises knowledge of the
preternatural world, of God, the soul and human consciousness which
can be acquired with the aid of reason. In other words, the metafys-
ica specialis covers in part what is handled in classic theology under
the headings of the doctrines of God and creation. Calvins theology
already reects the development in late medieval theology toward a
sharper distinction between philosophical knowledge of God and theo-
logical knowledge. But with Calvin too all knowledge is still rooted in
a metaphysical context. The soul, which through its capacities is able
to gather knowledge, operating outside the limits of its own body, is
a bridgehead to the higher, divine world. This metaphysical rootage
for knowledge did not disappear overnight. In the school of Leibnitz
and Wol metaphysics is still in an inclusive theological framework,
comprising metafysica specialis alongside metafysica generalis. A part of our
knowledge of God is obtained by rational means, and can be regarded
as generally valid knowledge. Kants thought can be regarded as the
moment in Western thinking when this interweaving of theological and
philosophical knowledge is broken once and for all. Thought comes to
stand on its own, and no longer refers to a higher world for its cat-
egories and its own operations, but exclusively to itself.27 According
to Kant himself metaphysics changes from a material to a transcen-

25 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 28 (B XXII); ET, 113.

26 See O. Duintjer, De vraag naar het transcendentale, vooral in verband met Heidegger en Kant,
Leiden 1966, 52.
27 E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Bd.

I (Berlin 19223=) Darmstadt 1991, 1314 en Bd II, 662.

 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 237

dental discipline, and henceforth occupies itself with the conditions for
human knowing, with the systems and properties of human reason as
such. That is an enormous turnabout. The content of metaphysics is
no longer being, or the highest being, but thought and the knowing of
being.
These conditions for human knowing no longer lie in a world behind
this world. Kant proposes that the conditions belong to the equipage
of man. Authoritative knowledge from the natural sciences can only
be accounted for if we make a distinction between knowledge that we
already possess apriori, and knowledge which is obtained aposteriori.
Apriori knowledge is composed of the concepts and categories with
which the mind works in its operations from the outset. This apriori
knowledgein other words, knowledge which one arrives at apart
from experience, thus in pure formis found in mathematics and
logic. Apriori concepts and categories thus are the apparatus of human
capacity for thought.
Kant also postulates such a constitutive role for time and space,
but now with regard to the faculties of perception. While in the Mid-
dle Ages and Renaissance space and time were conceived as created
qualities that had an objective existence apart from man, in Kants
philosophy they were regarded as being part of the equipage of the
human subject. They are the forms of observation, that is, conditions
that impart structure to the sensory capacities of man. Perception and
thought now mesh with one another and together produce knowledge,
or better, ideas. Kant terms the capacity to produce ideas, thus the
spontaneity of knowledge, understanding. The dierence with Calvin is
palpable. In its constitutive function for perception, human reason has
taken on itself a role that, in Calvins concept, still belonged to God.
For Calvin, God is the One who imposes ordo; for Kant, that is the role
of pure reason.
There is no perception apart from the forms and concepts that
are anchored in the human mind. This last becomes very important.
There is, in other words, no knowledge of things as they are in them-
selves. Kant states in his Prolegomena that the natural sciences can never
permit us know the inward nature of thingsthus, that which is not
phenomenalbut still can serve as the highest ground for explaining
phenomena.28 What we know is the shape of things as that is produced

28 I. Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden knftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten

knnen (1783), Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd.3, hrsg. von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt
238 chapter five

by the combined action of thought and perception. There is indeed a

connection between the Ding an sich and our knowledge of the thing, but
only as impetus. The Ding an sich is indeed unknowable, but at the same
time it is unavoidably the correlate to the phenomenon. Obviously this
position of the Ding an sich in Kants concept gives rise to a tremen-
dous diculty, not to say a contradiction that problematises the whole
concept. If causation is rst termed an intellectual category, which can
only be applied to ideas, how can one then speak of a Ding an sich as
the ground for explanation, or impetus? Once again, this chapter is not
intended as a systematic critique of Kant, but to provide some insight
into the consequences for the status of knowledge of God within his
concept. These consequences were in no sense slight.
We have knowledge of all things only to the extent that they present
themselves as objects of sensory perception, namely as phenomenon.
The interest shifts from the reality that comes in to the thought pro-
cess that brings things in. After all, there is always the lter of its own
operations between the human subject and the world. In knowing, man
unavoidably must deal with his own activity. If there is contact with
reality, it is at the most indirect. According to Kant, there is no per-
ception without the forms of perception and the concepts of the mind
imposing coherence upon it. In other wordsand here we encounter
the legacy with enormous consequences for theologyexperience is
always interpreted experience. Perceptions nd their interpretation
within the forms of time and space, and the conceptuality of reason.
This shift of the balance to the thinking subject has the not insignicant
consequence that there is a break in reality: not that this reality can no
longer be the subject in the sense that it addresses us, but the direction
is reversed. The thinking man shapes a world for himself, forms impres-
sions, speaks language: in short: human acts are the centre of our reach.

5.6. Knowledge as human construction

Kants philosophy is an salient example of the anthropologisation of

human knowledge. Knowledge is a product of the human mind, in
which the data of experience is processed into knowledge by the mind.
It is a critical idealism that ascribes a large measure of constructive

(19565=) 1983, 227 (A 168); ET: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge 2002, 142.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 239

function to the mind. Kants constructivism, as he develops it in his

critical philosophy, leads to knowledge being regarded as a completely
human activity, no longer supported by or rooted in a relation between
God and man. Knowledge is the creation of conceptual relationships,
from which the subject constructs reality. With this, the construction
of reality has become a human endeavour. The starting point and ori-
gin of the reality that we are dealing with in our knowledge lies in
the human mind, which has been discovered in its independence and
autonomy. This contrasts with Calvin, where in its activity the soul dis-
plays evidence of its divine origin. With Leibnitz human thought is still
derived from Gods thought. With Kant thought and human knowing
is fully anthropologised. Barth, in his concept, does not retreat from
this anthropologisation. The Bible, confessions of faith, doctrine: these
are human words and constructs that are sounded for their congru-
ence with the Divine Word, and as such have a heuristic function. In
themselves they are however human givens, which in comparison to
the situation with Calvin have lost their status as heavenly teaching or
divine word.
The consequence of this anthropologisation is that a rupture appears
in the sensory foundation for knowledge, between phenomenon and the
Ding an sich. As a scheme, the world as it is described by the natural sci-
ences is the world of man. This split permitted a deep scepticism to take
root within the channel of modern intellectual history with regard to all
our knowledge, and in particular with regard to any presumption to
knowledge of God. The question that arises in Kants concept is, in any
case, to what extent we in our knowing still have knowledge of things
themselves. Or is human knowledge comprised only of consciousness of
mental states? For Kant, knowledge consists of mental representations.
Let me take an example from sensory perception.29 In our knowledge
we are conscious of looking at a tree. But all concepts that I use in this
mental representation are derived from my own reason. According to
Kant, the statement I see a tree is to be understood as I am conscious
of being aware that a tree stands before me. He no longer understands
this statement as expressing the consciousness that I am aware that a
tree outside of me furnishes me with the impression of a tree. Nothing
can be said about the reality of the objects observed. They fall outside
of human reach.

29 See Wolterstor, Is it possible and desirable for Theologians to recover from

Kant?, 17.
240 chapter five

The fundamental problem that this split produces for all speaking
about God, for every presumption to knowing God, is not dicult to
appreciate. The things that we know are of our own design, shaped
by our own mind. Whether reality corresponds to these designs, is
a question that becomes more dicult to answer. The correctness of
our designs is demonstrated as they work, when our knowledge proves
applicable to reality. It is however fundamentally impossible to have
knowledge of that which is found on the other side of our niteness.
That is the epistemological problem that history has created in modern
theology. What was not accepted was the manner in which Kant sought
to resolve the problem: God, soul and immortality as convictions which
are warranted for man on the basis of pure reason. With Kant, the idea
of God is still present as the keystone. The question was, however, how
long thought that simply referred to itself, would still need, and would
still tolerate, being circumscribed in this way.
In knowledge the gap continues to exist between Ding an sich and
phenomenon. The relation between ontology and gnoseology is re-
versed in this concept. The consequences have been gigantic. What
is real is determined in epistemology. The ever-expanding natural sci-
ences provided a model for this turnabout. In his Logik Kant writes of
nature, The whole of nature in general is really nothing but a connec-
tion of appearances according to rules, and ther is no absence of rules
everywhere. If we believe we have found such a thing, than in this case
we can only say that we are not acquainted with the rules.30 In other
words, if reality can be ascribed to particular phenomena depends on
whether they can be thought of in relation. The judgement of reality is
only given then when a phenomenon, with the aid of rules derived from
the mind, can be brought into connection. The judgement of reality is
determined by rules that the mind itself has introduced. That which
cannot be included within this relationship is not known, or does not
exist to be known. Knowledge can only possess the status of certainty if
we have internal access to the conditions under which this knowledge
arises. That this form of foundational thinking has had radical conse-
quences for the epistemological status of knowledge of God is not at all
surprising.

30 I. Kant, Logik, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd. 3, 432 (A1); ET: (The Cambrigde

Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Lectures on Logic, tr. and. ed. by J.M. Young,
Cambridge 1992, 527.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 241

5.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in God

According to Kant, at rst sight the subjectivation of knowledge has a

very disadvantageous result for metaphysics, namely that we with our
capacity are brought to the conclusion that we can never transcend the
limits of possible experience, though that is precisely what this science
is concerned, above all, to achieve.31 It is clear that Kants limitation
of human knowledge (i.e., knowledge from the natural sciences) to
experience that is dened by space and time has consequences for the
status of classic proofs of God, at least to the extent that these avail
themselves of causality. On the basis of this principle the acceptance
of a rst principle or God as the prime mover obtained as a general
or authoritative proof of God. The reasonableness of belief in God, its
general acceptability as the content of human knowledge, was thrown
into doubt by the Kantian critique, although Kant indeed made it
clear that in his own view, the cosmological proof of God should be
regarded with the greatest esteem: It is the oldest, clearest and the
most appropriate to common human reason.32 Notwithstanding this
commendation, as far as Kant was concerned there had to be a break
with a long tradition in European intellectual history. In this tradition
the concept of God as the highest being had been a fundamental,
and foundational element. Ones own relative, unstable existence could
only be considered as dependent on God as the highest, unchangeable
being. Men could be more certain of that highest being than they
were of themselves; it was among those things which, according to the
expression we found in Calvin, were extra controversiam, beyond question.
But slowly god or the concept of God took on another function for
thought and human knowledge. While in pre-modern thought thinking
about the faculties of cognition was still entirely in the context of a
religious understanding of the world and dependent on this metafysica
specialis, in the early-modern philosophy of Descartes we see that God
becomes a prior condition for the trustworthiness of reason.33 Kant goes
still a step further: the concept of God fulls the role of a regulative idea
for reason.
What does Kant mean by this? By a regulative idea Kant means
something that one can not know, but just as little can avoid think-

31 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.

32 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550 (B 651); ET, 579580.
33 See Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 111125.
242 chapter five

ing about and working with it. In thinking itself, he says, there is the
tendency to go beyond all experience, namely the unconditioned, das
Unbedingte.34 There is something in reason itself that seeks this uncondi-
tioned in things in themselves, or in a series of conditions which reason,
by necessity and by right, demands in things in themselves, as required
to complete the series of conditions.35 There is a unity demanded as
a regulative principle for theoretical reason.36 In any case, reason has
the inclination to venture to the farthest bounds of knowledge and to
seek for a unity in which it can nd rest.37 Knowing seeks an idea that
lies on the far side of all transcendent conditions, and this idea must
become the ground of unity. According to Kant, the concept of God is
necessary rst of all as an intelligible ground for the world of our expe-
rience, and then as the highest element behind the eciency of nature,
and nally as the idea of unconditionality, in order to think of all expe-
rience systematically as unity.38 As soon as one begins to regard this
regulative idea or Unbedingte as an object that man can know, as a con-
stitutive principle about which men can form a concept, one falls into
antinomies. The regulative idea is not an object that can be dened
by thought; it is nothing more than a necessary framework that makes
thinking in its unity possible.
Kant himself interpreted the regulative principle of Unbedingte as the
idea of a highest being.39 Within Kantian studies the question is being
asked if within his own philosophy that is really necessary. It is striking
that in interpretations of Kant the necessity of God as a mental concept
can be explicitly denied.40 Once reason had discovered its own role in
the attempt to understand what knowledge is and what humanity is, it
appears that in the long term the concept of God will disappear from
reason as a material or constitutive principle. That is not yet true for
Kant himself. For him, the concept of God as a postulate of practical
reason has the status of objective reality. But that does not detract from

34 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.

35 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112.
36 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (A 699, B 727); ET, 620.
37 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 671 (B 825); ET, 673.
38 K.H. Michel, Immanul Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes. Eine kritische Unter-

suchung der transzendentalen stetik in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft und ihrer theologischen Konse-
quenz, Wuppertal 1987, 211.
39 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (B 725); ET, 619.
40 Michel, Immanuel Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes, 231. Cf. also W. Stoker,

Kants visie op de betekenis voor kennis en wetenschap, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift

35 (1981), 218. See also Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 1920.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 243

the fact that in Kant the balance has already shifted. Once reason
perceives its own autonomy, it no longer has to appeal to God, and
this no longer has to very quickly becomes no longer may, and in the
case of Nietzsche even can no longer bear to. Although the logical rule
applies that necessity can no longer be concluded from possibility
e posse consequentia non valetculturally modernity has gone down this
path. In any case Kant ushers in a period in which theological notions
are removed from the sciences. Within the natural sciences there is no
longer any room for a reference to God. The nature of its knowledge
is neutral in the sense that no value judgement can be derived from it,
nor is there any reference possible to another order. General knowledge
and knowledge of God go their separate ways.
Can we then still speak of knowledge of God within Kants phi-
losophy? What does the word God mean when the concept of God
becomes a regulative idea and no longer a constitutive concept? The
manner in which one can still speak about God in Kant reveals the dis-
tance from Calvin. In Calvin readers are tied to the anthropomorphic
image of Gods fatherhood. That is what God desires; that is how He
wishes to be addressed. In the distinction that Kant makes in his Pro-
legomena between the symbolic anthropomorphism he defends and dog-
matic anthropomorphism,41 God himself has become the Unknown.
Only his relation to the world can be spoken about, and then only in
terms of a category that we ourselves employ in our relation to the
world, namely causality.
How does Kants reasoning run? He asks how our reason in its appli-
cation to experience relates to that which this same reason expels to
above experience, transcendental ideas. He then suggests that one can
indeed unite the prohibition against the speculative use of pure reason
with the command to form ideas that provide our knowledge with its
ground and unity, and indeed to do so by limiting itself to the relation of
a highest being to the world. From the world of experience we learn to
know certain relationships, and consider these relationships commen-
surate with the relation of a highest being to the world. Kant terms
this symbolic anthropomorphism, in contrast to dogmatic anthropo-
morphism. Symbolic anthropomorphism makes metaphorical use of a
relationship that we know; dogmatic anthropomorphism presumes to
also know this highest being itself. Kant wants to absolutely avoid the

41 Prolegomena, 233 (A 175); ET, 146.

244 chapter five

latter. We look at the world as if it were the work of a higher intelli-

gence and will. Kant points to the relationship of a watch to its maker,
a ship to its builder, and a regiment to its commander. He is of the
opinion that one can make an analogy of relationships of things that
are further entirely unknown. The result of this analogy for knowledge
of God is illustrative.
E.g., the promotion of the happiness of the children = a is to the love
of the parents = b as the welfare of humankind = c is to the unknown
in God = x, which we call love: not as if this unknown had the least
similarity with any human inclination, but because we can posit the
relation between Gods love and the world to be similar to that which
things in the world have to one another. But the concept of the relation
is a mere category, namely the concept of cause, which has nothing to do
with sensibility.42

In terms of the types of analogy, Kant characterises the relation of

God and the world as an analogia proportionalitatis: the equivalence in
the relationship is the object of the analogy. The only thing that can be
expressed in human language and concepts is that God is a premise
for the world. To my mind, Jngel is correct when he argues that
within this concept God only comes into the discussion as an unknown
causer.43 Our knowledge of God is in no way increased; only the
relationship is known. Kant writes explicitly that that which is unknown
in God, which we term love, shows not the least equivalence with any
human propensity. The relational term here is merely a category in
human thought, namely the concept of causality that we employ for the
sensory world. Here we can see very sharply the extent to which God
can only be spoken of in his unknowabilty within Kants concept. What
Kant then does say of God falls far short not only of what the Bible says
of God, but is a tremendous, not to say terrible, abstraction with regard
to the images that we encountered in Calvins theology.44 God permits
himself to be thought of as a premise, analogous to the causality that
we employ as a category within the world of our experience. That
men might also be able to learn to know something that did not arise
from the world of experience itself, but that accrues to them within

42 Prolegomena, 233 (A 176); ET, 147.

43 Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 277278.
44 Because of this abstraction the concept of causality has gotten an enormously bad

name in contemporary theology. See for example Th. de Boer, De God van de losofen en
de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van losoe en theologie, s Gravenhage 1989, 105 and
Houtepen, God: an open Question, 360361.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 245

that world of experience and is mediated by that world of experience

by virtue of Gods condescension and turning toward man, is ignored.
God remains the Unknown.
Does this negative judgement change when in his Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft Kant advances the ideas of freedom, immortality of the soul
and the existence of God as the three postulates of practical reason?
Kant is prepared to term these postulates knowledge, but we must note
carefully what he means when he says this. They are ideas, concepts of
pure reason, to which no reality can be attributed by means of theo-
retical reason. Practical reason, the discovery of morality, demands the
existence of a highest good, and these three ideas are postulated on the
basis of this requirement for moral sense in man. Their objectivity is
however only postulated with an eye to practical reason, to morality.
Therefore no use of these ideas can be made apart from this relation
to morality, as though these were knowledge in the theoretical sense.45
In the domain of practical reason, they become immanent and consti-
tutive inasmuch as they are grounds of the possibility of making real the
necessary object of pure practical reason (the highest good), whereas apart
from this they are transcendent and merely regulative principles of specu-
lative reason which do not require it to assume a new object beyond
experience, but only to bring its use in experience nearer to complete-
ness.46 It is a cognition of God, but only with practical reference.47
One can conclude that Kants philosophy marks the moment at which
knowledge of God loses its status as generally valid knowledge.
The conclusion that for Kant God in fact is unknowable, is con-
rmed by his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft. Religion
is (subjectively regarded) the recognition of all duties as divine com-
mands.48 What Kant termed statutarische Religion or Kirchenglaube occu-
pies a secondary place with regard to the secret that is present within
men themselves. It is something which can indeed be known by each
single individual but cannot be made known publicly, that is, shared

45 I. Kant, Kritik der praktische Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd.4, hrsg. von

W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19565=), 266268 (A 241243). ET in: Practical Philosophy,

tr. and ed. by M.J. Gregor (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant),
Cambridge 1996, 247249.
46 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 268 (A 244); ET, 249.
47 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 270 (A 248); ET, 250.
48 Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bnden, Bd.4,

822 (B 230, A 216). ET in: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant)
Religion and Rational Theology, tr. and ed. by A.W. Wood/ G. di Giovanni, Cambridge
1996, 177.
246 chapter five

universally.49 An archetype lying in reason is the foundation of histori-

cal, empirical faith. Belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God is one expo-
nent of it.50 Indeed, all religion rests not on knowledge, but on the need
to conceive the relation of a highest moral ruler to mankind in this way,
namely as an unchanging, omniscient, good and all-powerful being.51
Within Kants own concept God is a ideational thing, a quantity which
appears within the horizon of pure reason as the Unbedingte, and within
the horizon of practical reason as the guarantee of the moral order.
Can one pray to such a quantity, or call upon Him?

5.8. After Kant

In epistemology, Kants critique of knowing marked a trend that was

increasingly asserting itself in Western culture, namely the diminishing
self-evidence of belief in God. Therefore Western theology has taken
the Kantian subdivision of the various sorts of knowledge as its starting
point. To determine the status of a certain sort of knowledge, the
conditions or the transcendental potential of the knowledge must rst
be determined. If an assertion is to be acceptable as knowledge, then
the conditions for such a statement must rst be claried. Since Kant,
Western theology has accepted that one of its responsibilities is to make
clear what the peculiar domain of faith is, or with which domain it
must be associated. In short, the question regarding the possibility of
knowing God was henceforth regarded as a question of the rst order.
Where are the anchorages or bridgeheads for knowing God?
Now, the faith that is summoned up by the Bible, that is confessed
and experienced in the Christian community, is not dependent on a
philosophical or conceptual system. Every systematic consideration of
the content of faith does however take place in a climate that is inu-
enced by changes taking place in philosophy or in the realm of cul-
ture. To this extent the post-Kantian situation has also been one of the
inuences in shaping the theology of Karl Barth. There have been var-
ious responses to Kant and his removal of knowledge of God from the
domain of generally valid knowledge. The responses are generally to
be connected with three names. First we can mention the response of

49 Die Religion, 803 (B 208); ET, 164.

50 Die Religion, 782 (A 165, 166); ET, 149.
51 Die Religion, 806, (B 211, A 199); ET, 165166.
 the turn to the subject in kants philosophy 247

those who with Albrecht Ritschl wished to go further in the footsteps of

Kant, and give religion a place as an extension of the domain of moral-
ity. A second response is connected with the name of Hegel. Hegel
sought to win the universal domain of knowledge of God back again.
According to him, Kant thought too little and too narrowly of reason.
All of history and its development were expressions of reason, that in
essence is nothing less than divine reason, the Spirit that comes into its
own in the thinking of philosophy. The third way, which became very
important for Barths own development, stems from Schleiermacher.
To Schleiermacher belongs the honour of having gotten theology back
on its own feet again after Kant by designating belief as an irreducible
experience. In the famous words of paragraph 3 of his Glaubenslehre,
Die Frmmigkeit, welche die Basis aller kirchlichen Gemeinschaften
ausmacht, is rein fr sich betrachtet weder ein Wissen noch ein Tun,
sondern eine Bestimmtheit des Gefhls oder des unmittelbaren Selbst-
bewutseins.52 In this way he prevents piety from being swallowed up
in the acknowledgement of articles of faith or in ethical acts. Knowl-
edge of God is accorded a place in the concrete life of every person
as it is lived. Schleiermacher conceives men as beings who as such, in
the pre-reexive layer of their consciousness, are already linked to the
divine. Schleiermacher accepted Kants view of scientic knowledge,
but he pointed to a realm, to a particular domain for the religious,
where man as it were is at home. For him too there is a turn toward the
subject, but it is a concrete subject, living in history, the living person,
who is characterised by receptivity precisely in his or her connection
with the universe.53 Christian doctrine is the articulation of the self-
consciousness of the Christian community of faith, as it was dened by
Jesus consciousness of God. In Schleiermacher, the turn to the subject
is made concrete in the individual person living in communitythus in
the Christian community of faith.

52 F.D. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundstzen der evangelischen Kirche

im Zusammenhange dargestellt, Bd.I (hrsg. von M. Redeker), (Berlin 18302=) Berlin 19607,
14.
53 Cf. F. Schleiermacher, ber die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verchtern

(1799), Gttingen 19917, 49: Sie begehrt nicht, das Universum seiner Natur nach
zu bestimmen und zu erklren wie die Metaphysik, sie begehrt nicht, aus Kraft der
Freiheit und der gttlichen Willkr des Menschen es fortzubilden und fertig zu machen
wie die Moral. Ihr Wesen ist weder Denken noch Handeln, sondern Anschauung
und Gefhl. Anschauen will sie das Universum, in seinen eigenen Darstellungen und
Handlungen will sie es andchtig belauschen, von seinen unmittelbaren Einssen will
sie sich in kindlicher Passivitt ergreifen und erfllen lassen.
248 chapter five

It can with some right be said that Schleiermachers foundation

for religion in Anschauung und Gefhl works out an element of Calvins
concept of knowing God, namely the notion of the sensus divinitatis.
When Schleiermacher speaks of the universe, we encounter the same
dynamism that we found in Calvin in his description of Gods opera-
tions. The dierences are however obvious. What for Calvin is a more
or less self-evident faculty within an aggregate of faculties in Schleier-
macher becomes the cork on which the whole of knowledge of God
is adrift. From the perspective of the history of theology, it is this tra-
dition of experiential theology that Barth appropriates, as a student of
W. Herrmann. It is also this point of departure in the actuality of given
knowledge of God to which Barth held fast in his theological devel-
opment. In an early article he describes religious experience as.54 In
other words, religion has the stream of history in which men participate
as persons to thank for its origin and existence. The core of human
existence is this immediate reality, which, from the perspective of phi-
losophy of life, is to be conceived as dynamic. In his acceptance of this
religious reality as the fundamental datum of theology, one can charac-
terise Barths position as a form of realism. In nding foundations for
this facticity, he would go his own way with regard to the experience-
based theology of Schleiermacher and Herrmann.

54 K. Barth, Der kosmologische Beweis fr das Dasein Gottes, Vortrge und kleine

Arbeiten (19051909), in Verbindung mit Herbert Helms herausgegeben von Hans-Anton

Drewes und Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe III, Zrich 1992, 407.
 part two

KARL BARTH
 chapter six

THE WAY OF KNOWING GOD

6.1. Introduction: theology and society

From the perspective of intellectual history, Barths concept of knowl-

edge of God can be considered as a theological counterproposal to
modernity, to its ideals and, it must immediately be said, to its failures.1
If modernity initially cherished the expectation that humane conduct
and human happiness were attainable if only we were resolute enough
in following a rational course in dealing with reality, in which only that
which was completely clear for the human mind was acceptable, it has
been some time now since we became much less hopeful, and the opti-
mism about the success of this eort has yielded to a proper distrust
of the potential of mankind and a staggering loss of comprehensive
ideal objectives. Independent of the change in mood and ideals, how-
ever, the conviction has remained that men in the last analysis dene
themselves, set their limits, articulate their values and design their exis-
tence.2 In that regard, post-modernity is nothing more than a ripple in
the pond of modernity.
What face does Barths theology show against this background? The
curious thing about Barths theology is that he does anything but deny
the formal denition of man as a self-determining being. Indeed, he
integrates it into his own view of what it is to be human.3 Through his
theology he does implicitly confront the church and culture with the
claim that absolutising the human subject is a threat to humanity. It is
the implicit assumption that mankind is better protected and served if

1 See for instance the previously mentioned essay by D. Schellong, Karl Barth als

Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen
1973, 34102 en T. Rendtor, Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verstndnis der
Theologie Karl Barths und ihrer Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-
theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gthersloh 1972, 161181.
2 H.J. Pott, Survival in het mensenpark. Over kunst, cyborgs en posthumanisme, Rotterdam

2000, 29.
3 KD I/1, 206239; ET, 198227.
252 chapter six

man understands himself as constituted and dened by Gods turning

toward man. It is sounder if man lets himself be interrupted, and nally
lets himself be dened by that which does not coincide with his own
projections, namely, by God and His gracious care for man and the
world. The claim of this theology is that any thinking which does not
on every occasion seek its point of departure in Gods approach, no
matter how bold or modest its further development may be, runs the
risk of actually embracing demons or idols. Or, still more concretely,
and now with terms that gradually crystallised in Barths theology, man
is well served, and does justice to his deepest vocation if he understands
himself as being included in and dened by the history of Jesus Christ
as the history of Gods approach to man. In this history man learns
to know his own situation as dwelling with Jesus Christ. That is to say,
man is intended for a life that shares in the glory of God. No one claims
that for himself; it is declared to us.
With this we encounter a theme that was also briey discussed in
the rst panel with regard to Calvins theology, namely the relation
between knowledge of God and social questions. Barth has a massive
theological oeuvre to his name, in which he continually and protract-
edly ploughed over the theological landscape. One could make a very
good case that Barths inuence can be credited more to his smaller,
occasional writings, in which he often addressed the social and political
questions of the moment, than to his Kirchliche Dogmatik, unquestionably
his main work.4 One can ask if there is a relation between the sever-
ity with Barth persists in presenting the theological questions in KD
and the fact that he continually could surprise (and irritate) his con-
temporaries with very pointed and, from a political perspective not
rarely controversial positions. It becomes increasingly clear that this
question must be answered positively. Barths main work is not the
monolithic block that it perhaps appears to be, unread and from a
distance. In fact parts of this central work are also products of a dia-

4 The lecture Der Christ in der Gessellschaft, presented in 1919 at a meeting

of religious socialists in Tambach, and included in Anfnge I, 337, is an example of

such a paper; the lectures and letters in which Barth as a Swiss citizen took a clear
and immediate position in regard to National Socialism and the political and military
dangers in Germany of that day, in part collected in Eine Schweizer Stimme, 19381945,
Zurich 1945, provide others. See also K. Barth, Oene Briefe 19351942 (ed. D. Koch),
Zurich, 2001. Because of these stands, Barth helped shape opinion among a broad
range of Christian intellectuals. The interplay between his two roles as an opinion
leader and theologian intensied both, and formed a eld of inuence with great
impact.
 the way of knowing god 253

logue, results of an often behind the scenes debate with contemporary

positions and persons.5 The fact that Barth generally refrained from
making this debate explicit is an omission that unnecessarily increases
the inaccessibility of the KD, and thereby its monolithic image. Barths
church theology is explicitly intended as a public theology. The theo-
logical breadth and depth is immediately connected to the questions of
the day.
Although the relations between church and state, and between theol-
ogy and the various domains of modern society have undergone enor-
mous changes with the comparable constellation in 16th century culture,
the public character of theology and its wider inuence as such does
not appear to have been lost. The course of Barths life, and the eects
of his theology in diverse contexts, are a rich source for illustrations of
the changed, but for all the changes no less broad social and political
function of theology.6 That he puts his readers on the wrong track is
connected to his vision of the place and task of the church and theol-
ogy in the public context. The unity of church and state, of church and
society, which was briey contemplated and attempted in Zurich, Basel,
Bern and Geneva at the time of the reformation in the Swiss cities, is
in Barths eyes something long in the past, not only sociologically but
theologically. It had become unthinkable to dedicate a theological text
to a ruling monarch and to call upon the government to maintain the
purity of religion, as Calvin does. The modernisation of society, as this
presents itself in the separation of church and state among other things,
is manifest in his theology. Barth thinks of the church as a small group
which by Gods grace has become engaged in a countermovement, and
which is of importance to the whole society only as a countermove-
ment. But in his theology this engagement does not obviously take the
form of an hierarchically structured, broadly based peoples church;
his view inclines rather to congregationalism. The strategy of a small
group, the shaping of an elite of inwardly engaged individuals who have
a realisation of the actual relations of things and who can act from this

5 See S. Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and the

History of Theology, University Park (PA), 1998 for an illustration of how Barth found it
necessary to engage in a direct dialogue, in order to work out a thesis by Eberhard
Busch.
6 For the Dutch context, see M.E. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth: dynamo

of dynamiet voor christelijk handelen. De politieke en theologische kontroverse tussen Nederlandse

Barthianen en Neocalvinisten, Baarn 1983.
254 chapter six

stance, ts with this.7 It also ts with this strategy that Barth enforces
a strict separation between politics and theology. Sometimes he makes
this separation so rigorously that readers got the impression that theol-
ogy could go its way unperturbed, although the world was ablaze.8 The
reader will nd, however, that he is on the wrong track if he believes
that for Barth theology can be separated from its public function. On
further examination the imperturbability proves to have a clear theo-
logical and strategic reason behind it, as can be seen in Barths response
to Hitlers coming to power. According to Barth, the eort of the Nazi
regime to bring all political, social and ecclesiastical organisations into
line, which was greeted in National Socialist and conservative circles
with their romantic vision of the past as a vitally necessary restoration
of the unity of church and state,9 does not stand by itself. In his eyes
this was merely the rank shoot of a poisonous plant that had for much
longer grown rampantly in Western theology. Barth did not choose to
view the struggle over the churches as an isolated event, but as the
frothing tip of a wave that had travelled much further and was pro-
pelled by hidden forces. He therefore worked on the development of
a theology and Christian doctrine, in the conviction that there would
only be a productive relation between theological positions and con-
temporary situation if this theology provided comprehensive clarica-
tion and had the courage to follow the rhythm of its own objectivity,

7 See, for instance, how already as early as 1919, in the Preface to the rst edition of

The Epistle to the Romans, Barth describes his work as a preliminary undertaking [which
makes] further co-operation necessary, and the characterisation of the church in
KD IV/3 780 (ET, 681) as the provisional representation of the calling of all humanity
as it has taken place in Him. See particularly the study by G. Peiderer, Karl
Barths praktische Theologie, Tbingen 2000, which places Barths theology in the context
of attempts to shape a theological elite, a strong acting subject, which understands
itself and, in doing so, is enabled to discover what the Word of God is within a given
situation (426428). Here with Barth the professionalisation of life, so characteristic of
modernity, the roots of which Max Weber suggested lay in modern Christianity, reaches
Christianity itself (440).
8 The sharpest example of this is Barths response in 1933 when he was asked to

comment on the assumption of power by Hitler. By his own admission the most decisive
thing that he had to say was the simple statement that he would continue his theological
teaching als wre nichts geschehenvielleicht in leise erhhten Ton, aber ohne direkte
BezugnahmenTheologie und nur Theologie zu treiben. Zie K. Barth, Theologische
Existenz Heute (1933). Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Hinrich Stoevesandt,
Mnchen 1984, 26.
9 For the historic context, see L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Die Kirchen zwischen

Anpassung und Widerstand im Dritten Reich, in: W. Hmeier und M. Sthr, Barmer
Theologische Erklrung 19341984. Geschichte, Wirkung, Dezite, Bielefeld 1984, 1129.
 the way of knowing god 255

so that it would become clear what the real problems of the day were.10
Focusing on the subject that is central to this chapter, Barths reection
on the theme of knowledge of God, and the accompanying rejection of
natural theology in KD II/1 as the mortal enemy of all Christian the-
ology, must be read as opposition to the acceptance and glorication of
Nazism in Germany. Subsequently, the radical re-evaluation of the doc-
trine of election in KD II/2, which we will discuss in the next chapter,
can not be seen apart from the conviction that God is never a tyrant to
whom mankind essentially does not matter, and who has overseen the
destruction of a part of humanity. In short, on further examination the
impression of timelessness does not appear to tally with the evidence.
According to Barth, theology fulls its task most adequately when it
has the courage to concentrate on Christian doctrine as an unceasing
exercise in listening. Barths presupposition is that the principle of the
primacy of God in his revelation makes it possible to include everything
that happens in the social and political sphere in a constant interaction
between the Word of God and everyday reality.11
The conviction that Barths theology is not a timeless theology, and
thus can not be studied in that way, has become deeply rooted in
Barthian studies of the last decades, in large part through the eorts
of T. Rendtor and F.W. Marquardt, however open to challenge the
remainder of their views may be.12 However, there is still no deni-
tive answer to the question of how the relationship between Barths
theology and its context must be dened. A number of possibilities
or approaches present themselves, through which one can discuss or
expound his theology as an engaged theology involved with its times.13
As was indicated above, the arrangement of a diptych of pre-modern

10 KD I/1, XI; ET, XVI.

11 W. Krtke, Die Christologie Karl Barths als Beispiel fr den Vollzug seiner
Exegese in: M. Trowitzsch (Hrsg.), Karl Barths Schriftauslegung, Tbingen 1996, 19, note
74.
12 F.W. Marquardt must be accorded the honour of having powerfully placed the

discussion of the historical and social rootage of Barths theology at the heart of the the-
ological agenda with his study Theologie und Sozialismus: das Beispiel Karl Barths, Munich,
1972. This resulted in a large number of studies that all had Barths relationship with
the history of his time and, in particular, with modernity as their subject. See, among
others, M.E. Brinkman, Karl Barths socialistische stellingname. Over de betekenis van het social-
isme voor zijn theologie, Baarn 1982.
13 See H.J. Adriaanse, Die Barthrezeption in den neuen hermeneutischen Entwick-

lungen, Zeitschrift fr dialektische Theologie 14 (1998), 5264.

256 chapter six

and post-Kantian theology followed here implies that Barths theology

in any case must be viewed against the background of intellectual
history, which has been disrupted by the Kantian critique of the means
of knowing, and that his Christian theology responds to the problematic
of modernity. This is anything but an assertion that Barth has been
directly inuenced by Kant in all sorts of ways, or is responding directly
to him. One must rst take Barths theology as a Christian theology
which attempts to speak of the matter of Christian faith, God in his
turning toward man, in a responsible way. That is its primary intention,
and it is rst of all on this point that one must measure it. But that does
not eliminate what was previously argued with regard to background
and context. On the contrary, the critical acuity and value of a theology
lies precisely in the manner in which it implicitly or explicitly carries
on the debate with its own environment and its own soul. Barths
theological labour took place in a constellation in which the ideals,
possibilities and limits of modernity also had enormous consequences
for theology. In part he accepted these possibilities, limits and ideals,
and in part he critically reworked and corrected them in his theology.
Moreover, he very deliberately wished to connect with the notions
that are distinctive for Reformation theology. Church and theology
have their ground and criterion in the Word of the Living God and
therefore display an orientation to the Bible and Jesus Christ. The dual
sounding boards of Reformation theology and modernity dene the
methodological problem in this dogmatics, for which Barth sought an
answer. How must we speak about God so that we are still speaking
about God? With that the question of content comes to the fore. What
must we say about God, and what is the guarantee that what we are
saying is still about the God of the Bible?
The choice Barth makes in terming his dogmatics a church dogmatics
is directly related with the foregoing. The term church has a critical
point, with reference both to the prevailing theological traditions as
well as the institutional church. In Chapter 8, in the rejection of infant
baptism, we will encounter an example of a critique of the latter; here
we are rst dealing with the rst critical sense of the term church.
Barth discovered more and more that Christian thinking about God,
man and the world was never a free occupation, but in a spiritual
sense is tied to the space of the church. In short, in Barths own more
mature theology tradition is the space in which systematic reection
nds, learns and reformulates its material. Society as a context and
reference point for theology does not drop out of sight in Barth. The
 the way of knowing god 257

assumption is that society will best be served if theology expressly takes

its place in the space of tradition, and attunes its ear to listen to the
Word.14
Barths concept of knowledge of God leads to a critical stance in,
and over against, ones own culture. He proposed a theology that struc-
turally keeps alive the realisation of the dierence between man and
God, between human experience and knowledge on the one hand
and God, who continues to speak through his Word, on the other. It
is an attempt to assure at the conceptual level that ones own experi-
ence, words and concepts can never become more than secondary phe-
nomena, answers with respect to the primacy of Gods own approach
and revelation, which can never be cancelled out. Barth himself was
always allergic to social and political positions in which this distinction
between what he called the penultimate and ultimate was forgotten.15
The critique is obvious. Is Barth then himself above this reproach
when he, in his sometimes very decidedly political positions, identies
the cause of Christ with a certain position, as he does in the famous
letter to Hromadka?16 And applied to the foundations of his theology:

14 With an eye to the various contexts of theology it is worthwhile to distinguish

between that which theology says directly to its time, on short wave, one might say, and
on the other side a theological reection that enters into debate with the underlying
motives and structures of a culturelong wave, so to speak. Long wave is slower, but its
strength is all the deeper and more powerful for that. Dogmatic reection will have to
nd the courage to rst of all be of service in long wave. Only then can it be productive
in short wave. Barths theology and life is an example of both.
15 The examples are well-known, and are gradually being documented in Barth

studies. One may think of Barths consternation at the identication of the German
cause with Gods purpose at the outbreak of World War I, of his critique of Leonard
Ragaz, who in his eyes identied socialism too closely with the Kingdom of God, and
of the manner in which Hitlers assumption of power was greeted in leadership circles
in Germany as a direct intervention by God, but also of positions in which either
Western capitalism or Eastern European state communism was too directly identied
with the will of God. For a brief and popular overview, see F. Jehle, Lieber unangenehm
laut als angenehm leise. Der Theologe Karl Barth und die Politik 19061968, Zrich 1999 and
T.J. Gorringe, Karl Barth against Hegemony. Christian Theology in Context, Oxford 1999. See
also my Anfngliche Theologie, 6372.
16 K. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme 19381945, Zrich 19853, 5859: Jeder tschechische

Soldat, der streitet und leidet, wird es auch fr unsund, ich sage es heute ohne
Vorbehalt: er wird es auch fr die Kirche Jesu Christi tun, die in dem Dunstkreis der
Hitler und Mussolini nur entweder der Lcherlichkeit oder der Ausrottung verfallen
kann. The exchange of letters is also included in M. Rohkrmer (Hrsg.), Freundschaft
im Widerspruch. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Karl Barth, Josef L. Hromdka und Josef B. Soucek
19351968. Mit einer Einleitung von J.M. Lochman, Zrich 1995, 54; now also included in
K. Barth, Oene Briefe 19351942, 114.
258 chapter six

are his thesis of the primacy of the Word, of Gods immutable subjec-
tivity, and yes, even the prophetic pronouncements of the synod at Bar-
men,17 not equally human acts, the work of man, and therefore subject
to all ambivalence? To ask the question implies the answer. No human
act whatsoever escapes this ambivalence. What can be given concep-
tual form is that ones own words and judgements always remain uid.
Over against the primacy of Gods Word the human subject is con-
stantly made aware of his own secondary position. Man is the one who
is called to obedience, to an attitude of prayer, which results in this
dependence on God.
The concept of this second panel is no less theocentric and no
less focused on culture and society than was the case with Calvin.
It is certainly theocentric in a dierent way, and focuses dierently
on culture and society. Theology is useful and worthwhile when it
confronts the church, the Christian community and, at its deepest, the
world with the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially
changes, all things and everything in all thingsthe fact that God is.18
With this we nd ourselves at the hub, on which, we would emphasise,
all Christian theology turns, and through which its exercise within an
agnostic and anthropocentric cultural climate becomes a astonishing
and at the same time hopeful phenomenon. Audacity is necessary to
look at the world and man, at ourselves and our history, in the light of
a living God.

6.2. Not without audacity: the primacy of revelation

Without audacity there can be no foundation for theology. This ax-

iom, once meant ironically by F. Overbeck and cited by Karl Barth
in his review of Overbecks posthumously published book Christentum
und Kultur,19 could be used as a motto for Barths own theology in gen-
eral, and his concept of the knowledge of God in particular. The back-

17 For the text of the Barmen Declaration and a commentary by H. Asmussen, see

EB 2, 255279. Barth very decidedly experienced, and wished to see the Declaration
valued as prophetic speech. In his deepest conviction it regarded it as more than a
Theologenfndlein. See KD II/1, 198; ET, 176: not merely a pretty little discovery of
the theologians.
18 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.
19 Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie in: Karl Barth, Die Theologie und

die Kirche, Mnchen 1928, 23.

 the way of knowing god 259

ground of Overbecks remark was his conviction that Christian the-

ology had had all the ground cut away from under it by historical
investigation. The expectation of the rst Christians that Gods king-
dom would quickly descend from the heavens to earth is of such a
totally dierent structure from the expectation of modern Christian-
ity, namely that the Kingdom will be realised by way of a humani-
sation of their own culture, that there is simply no relation between
the them. Concrete eschatological expectations and cosmological con-
ceptions separate the two. If Overbeck can stand for the voices that
maintain that Christian belief has been fundamentally problematised
on historical grounds and argue that people can no longer adhere to
Christian belief without losing their intellectual integrity, Barth is the
model of the attempt to reect on the premises of that Christian faith
anew, even after the problematising of Christian faith in Western cul-
ture.
He does not begin his theology by taking up general problems.
Swelling prolegomena were one of the characteristics of the theolog-
ical projects that initially were developed in response to the break in
Europe between Rome and the Reformation, and later in reaction to
the process of continuing dierentiation among domains of knowledge.
That Barths theological concept belongs in the second, modern panel
is clear simply from the fact that the Kirchliche Dogmatik begins with an
extensive prolegomenon entitled Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes. Prolegomena zur
kirchlichen Dogmatik. What is found in this prolegomenon is however as
surprising as it is pregnant. If it had been customary for prolegomena
to discuss questions which have to be answered rst before one comes
to the content of the project, Barth makes clear that he will not sep-
arate the way of knowing God from the content of the knowledge of
God. Prolegomena are not the things which must be said rst; they are
the rst things which need to be said. One can not rst speak about
the way of knowing God, as if this involved only formal considerations
of a general nature. Speaking about the way and nature of knowing
God is not possible without discussing the content of the knowledge of
God. Or, to put it better, the way and nature of human knowledge of
God are completely dened by the content of the knowledge of God,
that which God himself reveals. In doing this, Barth relativises the dis-
tinction within the concept of faith that had made itself at home in
Protestant orthodoxy as the dierence between des quae and des qua:
one cannot think about the way of knowing God without Him who
is the content of what is known in human religious knowledge. In KD
260 chapter six

I/1thus in his prolegomenonBarth formulates the unity of the way

(or form) and content of knowledge of God in the thesis God reveals
himself as Lord.20 This elementary thesis is clearly what the content
of the revelation is. Revelation is essentially the self -revelation that is
further characterised as the revelation of Gods lordship or the revela-
tion of the basileia theou. One can hear the modern rejection of revela-
tion as the imparting of preternatural truths reverberating through this
denition of revelation as self-revelation. But there is more to it: one
arrives at human knowledge of God only because God reveals himself
as the Lord, the Kurios. The relation is constructed from Gods side.
He is the acting subject. In its whole, the thesis says something about
the ambivalence toward the idea of divine revelation and knowledge
of God. In this thesis the question of whether God can be known on
the basis of human faculties or experience is radicalised and integrated
by powerfully denying it. In thisparticularly in his early dialectic
phaseBarth follows a strategy of negative association. He sides with
his times in the assumption that there is nothing that can be known
of God with certainty on the basis of experience in nature and his-
tory. The latent agnosticism is exposed and intensied into a radical
denial. This radicalisation has a theological basis, however. Knowledge
of Godknowledge of God that really saves and liberatesis a gift of
God, an act of grace. It is an act through which Gods divinity and
being as Lord are known. It is this dominion of God in his revelation
which Barth points to in KD I/1 as the root of the doctrine of the Trin-
ity.21 That is to say, as a construct the doctrine of the Trinity is a human
product; the ground in which this construct has its roots are the acts
of God. In this way, within theology itself Barth drives home the reali-
sation that the presence of God can not be proven. Only God himself
can himself produce the evidence by being present. In this way Barth
makes a connection with the question which faced theology after Kant,
namely the question of where the anchorage and mediation of Gods
revelation is to be found in this nite reality.22 In the phase of his dog-
matic theology, the strategy of negative association recedes more and

20 KD I/1, 323; ET, 314.

21 KD I/1, 324; ET, 314.
22 See H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven. Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuit-

spraken, Baarn 1977, 210215, according to which Barth thereby exposes the subjectivism
of liberal theology. The appeal to revelation serves as legitimisation for his own religious
thinking. See also B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de
 the way of knowing god 261

more into the background in favour of the eort to formulate the per-
spectives in which speaking about God has a chance of really remaining
speaking about God.
In this second panel we will focus on this later phase in Barths the-
ology. A few words will not be out of place regarding the limitations
which accompany this. For the purposes of this investigation, there are
highly defensible reasons for limiting the study to the Kirchliche Dogmatik,
because in this opus magnum Barths concept of knowledge of God is
found in its most mature form. But this context is still too broad, and
therefore two chief points of reference have been chosen. Attention will
be focused on the main outlines of the second part of the KD, Die
Lehre von Gott (KD II/1), where knowledge of God is discussed as
both way and event, and in its content, namely the being of God and
his qualities.23 The investigation continues on into the doctrine of elec-
tion, because it is here that Barths thinking nds its substantive heart
(KD II/1). Barths thinking on baptism (KD IV/4), where the epistemo-
logical implications of Barths doctrine of the prophetic oce of Christ
from KD IV/3 make themselves felt, will be taken as the second point
of reference. However, a discussion of continuity and discontinuity in
Barths development will not be a focus of the study in this second
panel.24 Only where this is useful for a sounder understanding will we
now and then, by way of an excursus, sketch the lines through for the
course of Barths development.

problematiek van de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich
Bonhoeer en Wolfhart Pannenberg, Kampen 1999, 204, which supports Kuitert on this.
23 For a very dierent sort of investigation, where Barth is followed step by step, see

the studies of J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en de geldigheid
van Karl Barths strijd tegen de natuurlijke theologie, Amersfoort 1983 and R. Chia, Revelation
and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, Bern/Berlin 1999.
24 Investigation of the development and phases of Barths theology has become

a genre all of its own within Barth studies. See, among others, I. Spieckermann,
Gotteserkenntnis. Ein Beitrag zur Grundfrage der neuen Theologie Karl Barths, Mnchen 1985;
M. Beintker, Die Dialektik in der dialektischen Theologie Karl Barths. Studien zur Entwicklung
der Barthschen Theologie und zur Vorgeschichte der Kirchlichen Dogmatik, Mnchen 1987; C.
van der Kooi, Anfngliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barths 19091927, Mnchen
1987; H. Anzinger, Glaube und kommunikatieve Praxis. Eine Studie zur vordialektischen Theologie
Karl Barths, Mnchen 1991; J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption
des Neukantianismus im Rmerbrief und ihre Bedeutung fr die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie
Karl Barths, Berlin/New York 1995; Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barths critically realistic
dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 19091936, Oxford 1997.
262 chapter six

6.3. Human knowing of God as theological datum

As Barth begins in his prolegomenon with the phenomenon of the

proclamation of the church, in order from this to move back to revela-
tion as the prerequisite for this proclamation, he also begins his doctrine
of God with a localisation of theological thinking. Theological thought
has its place within the space of the church, where people speak about
and hear about God. What the church does in all its activities and
everything it undertakes, presupposes God as the subject of everything
that is to be said and heard. The point of departure for the church and
its acts is the reality of God, who lets himself be known to men and
practices community with them.25
Starting from the actual knowing of God has a number of conse-
quences that deserve attention. First, the question is not whether God
can be known and how far our capacity to know reaches. A question
of that sort, Barth says, can only arise from the perspective of an out-
sider. The community lives within the circle of the movement that God
has set in motion by making himself known to man. The whole raison
dtre of the church depends on whether God is indeed present with the
people who speak and hear within the church. Christian theology exists
thanks to the truth of this insiders perspective, or it does not exist at all.
That is the rst point.
The second, which is connected with this, involves the order of the
modalities of reality and possibility. What is revolutionary about Barths
concept is his reversal of the usual order. In classic foundational think-
ing, the question about the possibilities of knowing comes rst. The
rst thing asked is what man, on the basis of his faculties for know-
ing, can know. The primary question is about the reach of human
reason. The extent to which things visible and invisible can actually
be known depends on the answer to this question. Barth reverses this
order. The question is not whether it is possible to know God. The
starting point for the theological concept is the reality of knowledge
of God, which presupposes that God actually permits himself to be
known. Man already stands in this reality. He has already been reached,
he already stands before God, and God already has him in sight. In
short, the facticity of knowledge of Godand thus the modality of
realityprecedes questions of possibility. In this respect Barths theol-

25 KD II/1, 1; ET, 3.
 the way of knowing god 263

ogy is a form of realism. He asks rst about that which is known, that
which we are in fact confronted with in our knowing, in order to then
pose questions about the possibility that serves as the foundation for our
knowledge.
It is at this point that Barths position is at odds with all positions
which, appealing to Kant, regard it as impossible that God could be
the object of human knowledge. Revelation means that this barrier has
been liftedand is continually being liftedfrom Gods side. Accord-
ing to Barth, the only theologically legitimate question is therefore to
what extent God can be known.26 The question of whether God can
be known is immediately ruled out. This question implies a search
for what has already been found, namely God. In situating itself this
way, Barths theology takes the standpoint of faith. From the outset, the
reader is invited to take his or her place within the circle of faith. Ques-
tions about what constitutes knowledge of God are already entirely
within the movement of the knowledge of God.27 It is understandable
that this starting place for Barths concept makes it attractive for believ-
ing atheists. From this world there is only one way that authoritatively
leads to God. Were it not that they every now and then stumble across
Him, feel themselves forced to call on him, Christian belief would not
be an option. Further along we will still see how Barth does all that he
can to grant human knowledge of God, in all its elements, a conceptual
raison dtre only to the extent that it is supported and guided by Gods
own turn toward man. Without this vital speaking and acting by God,
human knowledge of God is an empty husk, in which there is nothing
to be found. Knowledge of God cannot be summoned up by man; man
nds himself in it, or it is not found at all.

6.4. Knowledge of God as event

The characterisation of knowledge of God, as it is given in the title of

25, The Fullment of the Knowledge of God, is crucial for this con-
cept. Knowledge of God is not a static entity, and for Barth, as a good
student of the post-Kantian, modern tradition, as represented by the
names of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Herrmann, it is not comprised

26 KD II/1, 3; ET, 5.
27 By G. Peiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie, 141 formulated as prinzipialisierte
invertierte praktische Transzendentaltheorie.
264 chapter six

primarily of articles of faith; it can best be characterised as a move-

ment, an event that has its origin in God, and in which man is given a
part. The relation between God and man is constituted in this move-
ment proceeding from God. It is a circle, in which man moves forward
from faith to faith and from knowledge to knowledge.28 In this move-
ment man is given a role in the self-knowledge of God. It has the nature
of a personal encounter in which God shares part of himself. With such
a great emphasis on knowing as an encounter event, as an activity, of
course the question naturally arises of whether it can be designated by
the noun knowledge. What role do observation, propositions, notions,
concepts and texts play in this concept? We must acknowledge that
Barth has no intention of allowing knowledge of God to be reduced to
an action. In knowledge of God, God is the object of an act of know-
ing. Barth formally characterises the act of knowing with terms such as
observation, perceiving and understanding. The Kantian background is
unmistakable. Observation stores up unprocessed sensory data; percep-
tion and human faculties for understanding lead to knowledge.29 Con-
cepts and propositions play a role; man must use them to interpret, but
only so far as they are included in the context of a personal contact,
a contact in which God opens himself to be addressed as Thou, and
the human being knows him or herself to be addressed as a person.
Barth recognises that these are human words, ecclesiastical doctrine,
conceptsbut none of these factors within our history and on the axis
of time are of primary interest for him. What is theologically important
is the vertical relation of Gods acts to these concepts, words and narra-
tives as signs. Theologically situating that which has a role as a means
on the horizontal axis is overshadowed by the vertical element in which
all forms and concepts of our knowledge are included in the movement
and mental activity of knowing.
The assertion that man has no access to this event from his side,
and that it does not have its origin in man, is fundamental for Barths
concept. The decisive conclusion is that the basis of this movement
which leads to knowledge of God on the part of man must be sought
in the openness of God himself. Theologically one must return to that

28 KD II/1, 40; ET, 3738: In love we are set on the circular course in which ther

is no break, in which we can and shall only go furtherfrom faith to faith, from
knowledge to knowledgenever beginning with ourselves (and that means, with our
own ability for faith and knowledge) but therefore also never ending with ourselves
(and that means, with our inability for faith and knowledge).
29 Cf. J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie, 21.
 the way of knowing god 265

sphere which is closed to man as man, but which, once God involves
man in knowing Him, is de facto not closed. This characterisation of
knowledge of God does not infringe on a sphere to which we as men
have no access. On the strength of Gods willingness, in the opposite
perspective one can however say that God breaks in on our sphere.30
Put in other words, knowing God is a grace, is a sui generis event for
which there are no analogies. It is the mystery of divine pleasure, to
which no earthly analogies lend us access. Gods breaking into our
sphere, his choosing to live in unity with the man Jesus, is an act
which is not accessible for us on the basis of any other earthly data.
The accessibility rests, without any restrictions, in Gods own act, and
certainty of it is only to be found in the actual interaction of God
and man. To put it in Barths own words, In it rests the undialectical
certainty of the realisation of the true knowledge of God.31 In short,
if man looks to himself, to the ow of his own thought, to his own
psychological state, then he will nd varying moments of certainty
and uncertainty. In the circle of knowing God, he is summoned to
also look to the other side, to Christ. In that name he stands before
divine pleasure, before grace, that transcends and lls the fragility of
knowledge of God on the human side.

6.5. Knowledge of God as participation in Gods self-knowledge

Now it is also possible to further characterise what the relation is of

God and human knowledge of God: on the human side, the knowing
of God is participation in Gods self-knowledge. On his way toward
man, God shares his self-knowledge in impartation, Anteilgabe.32 It is
one of the essential characteristics of this concept that God permits
himself to be known wholly, and not merely in part. Even when God
makes himself known through the mediation of an earthly element, the
sharing is not partial in the sense of a certain quantity or segment.
Barth has already explicitly described revelation as the repetition of
Gods being,33 as the representation of the event that takes place in God

30 KD II/1, 72; ET, 67: We therefore have to go back to a sphere which, since wee

are men and not God, might be entirely closed for us, But in the fullment of the true
knowledge of God, it is not actually closed.
31 KD II/1, 81; ET, 74.
32 KD II/1, 5556; ET, 5152.
33 KD I/1, 315; ET, 299: Revelation in the Bible is not a minus; it is not another over
266 chapter six

himself. If man knows God, God is known entirely, or not at all. In this
movement the emphasis lies therefore on the cognisance of God, as He
exists in the mystery of his threefold being.34 That does not mean that
in the knowing of God there cannot be movement or growth. There
is a movement that leads deeper into the whole of this knowing and is
expressed in the term mystery. The word mystery serves to characterise
the depth and inexhaustibility of this knowing of God.
It should be clear that at this point there is a huge dierence dis-
cernible from Calvins vision of knowledge of God. For Calvin, revela-
tion is a form of accommodated speaking. In his speaking God adapts
himself to man and human measure. For Calvin it is most certainly pos-
sible that God holds certain matters hidden in his Counsel. Accommo-
dation means that revelation is also viewed quantitatively. For Calvin,
revelation is composed of revelations, announcements. If in the second
panel revelation is thematised as self-revelation and knowledge of God
is basically participation in Gods self-knowing, a quantitative view is no
longer possible. Human knowledge of God then always has the quality
of being seized by what God essentially is, and coincides with Him.
This seizure can certainly deepen, but only within the relation of the
participation.

6.6. God as the object of knowledge

If knowing God is participation in Gods self-knowledge, this immedi-

ately has implications for the content of the knowing. Knowing means
that God is in some form or another the object of observation, perceiv-
ing and understanding. Barth is not willing to accept less than these
terms, although further along he will specify what the content of the
observation, perception and understanding means with regard to God.
After all, God is not an object like other objects.35 From the perspec-
tive of the objectness of God, we have the fundamental assertion that
God, whatever the case, falls within the horizon of man as an object
of knowledge, and that the categories of observation, perceiving and
understanding, as they are normally found in epistemology, are applica-

against God. It is the same, the repetition of God. Revelation is indeed Gods predicate,
but in such a way that this predicate is in every way identical with God Himself.
34 KD II/1, 56; ET, 52.
35 KD II/1, 13; ET, 16.
 the way of knowing god 267

ble. The reality of religious knowledge stands or falls with the reality of
this appearance of God within the human horizon. If one cannot speak
of observation, perceiving and understanding, the life of the church,
the calling of people to God, their being moved, their protest, their
gratitude and daily prayer are all to be viewed as a dream world, an
illusory world of concepts which correspond to no reality.36 That people
hear about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about grace and truth, of
promises and commandments, that there is something of the nature of
observation, perceiving and understanding on the human side of God
in his works, has its reality in Gods making himself the object of human
knowledge.37 In terms that are reminiscent of the German idealist tradi-
tion, Barth says Only because God posits himself as the object is man
posited as the knower of God.38 The constant dependence of reality
on Gods acts comes across clearly here. Man can only have and know
God as an object that postulates itself.39 The believing subject exists
only in the act of Gods own self-revelation. This is Barths manner
of expressing that faith does not lie within the control of man himself.
If he encounters himself as believing, as knowing, that is a matter of
grace, a transition from non-being to being, the creation of an I that
dares to say yes to a God who gives himself. Once that is said, then it
must follow that God makes himself knowable as an object, to man as
a subject.
In this phase of Barths theology, the acknowledgement that God
makes himself the object of human knowing means a high regard
for indirectness of all knowledge of God. Over against Augustine he
maintains that no one can transcend language, concepts and other
human images.40 God meets man in the midst of this world, as creature.
This means that words, terms, concepts, preaching and ecclesiastical
acts have a legitimate place in Barths concept. He no longer stresses,
as he did in the dialectic phase of his theology, human impotence to
speak Gods Word. In the foreground of his doctrine of God stands
the contention that God himself permits people to speak his Word, gives
them his Erlaubnis.

36 KD II/1, 2; ET, 4.
37 KD II/1, 1; ET, 3.
38 KD II/1, 22; ET, 22.
39 Ibidem: nd so man can only have God as the self-posited object.
40 KD II/1, 911; ET, 1012.
268 chapter six

6.7. Faith as a form of knowledge

As was the case in the rst panel, the concept of knowing thus plays
a key role. Because in religious knowledge we are not dealing with
an ordinary object from created reality, but with God, knowledge of
God must be further particularised. Faith is the positive relation of man
toward God, in whom the believer trusts. It is the yes by which a
person acknowledges that he is completely committed and declares that
God is God and He is his God.41 That yes is central to this denition
of faith as the movement of the whole human person. Faith is surrender
of the whole person to God, whose being and holiness is expressed in
the tautology God is God. Along with the term knowing, words such
as love, trust, obey and obligation also belong to the characterisation
of the act of faith. These words can all be used to describe the total
reality of faith. It is, however, characteristic of Barths concept of faith
that, with express reference to Calvin, he makes the concept of knowing
central.42 In fact, the concept of knowing not only makes it possible to
involve all the other concepts mentioned, but more than all else it is
valuable because it guarantees a structure in mans relation to God that
Barth emphatically wishes to retain. The characterisation of faith as an
act of knowing expresses that in his faith man forges a link between
himself and God, but at the same time makes a distinction between
himself and God. In the relation with God, man acknowledges himself
to be the one loved and blessed; he recognises God as the one from
whom this love and blessing comes. Knowing is an act which links and
separates, one in which the duality is not lost in an undierentiated
unity, but which creates association and connection, which nonetheless
respects the peculiarity of each of those linked in it.43

6.8. The place of the human subject

Starting from Gods approach to man implies that a decision has been
taken about the place of the human subject in relation to God. With
the fact that God places himself within the human horizon as an object

41 KD II/1, 11; ET, 12.

42 KD II/1, 12; ET, 13.
43 KD II/1, 12; ET, 13.
 the way of knowing god 269

of knowledge, there is implicitly a link forged,44 and a requirement of

obedience. From these givens about the reality of faith, Barth comes
to the conclusion that not all questions can be asked any more. There
are questions which become meaningless in this context. For example,
the question of whether God can be known becomes absurd, if God has
already provided his self-evidence. Put dierently, in the living rela-
tionship to Gods Word, in the experience of being spoken to, uncer-
tainty and doubt are banished. It is important to remember in relation
to this that Barths arguments on this point are primarily theological,
and that it is not his intention to give a psychological characterisation.
He consciously avoids the question of which psychological experiences
or emotions man encounters in his dealings with God. He limits himself
to a purely theological characterisation. His contention that true knowl-
edge of God is is not and cannot be attacked; it is without anxiety and
without doubt can only be understood in this way.45 This characterisa-
tion appears to be true only to the extent that the tie to the living Word
of God is reality. The concrete believing individual just surfaces at the
edge when he writes, The battle against uncertainty and doubt is not
foreign to man even here.46 But the psychological aspects are deliber-
ately left out of consideration as much as possible. The purpose of this
theology is the characterisation of an objective reality from a strictly
theological perspective, in which psychology (although perhaps not in
theory) is granted hardly any role in practice. Theoretically Barth does
indeed leave room for human experience as a secondary and depen-
dent element in the relation between God and man. However, the pri-
mary attention for the objective element in knowledge of God is the
critical mass of his theology, and fosters a practical mistrust of the expe-
riential element. That mistrust, and the obstructive eects it has had,
are something which has continued to haunt this theological current.47
In implementing a rigid and deliberate dierentiation between var-
ious domains, Barths concept is an exponent of the dierentiation
which is so characteristic of modernity. He provides an analysisor

44 KD II/1, 5; ET, 7.
45 KD II/1, 5; ET, 7.
46 KD II/1, 6; ET, 7.
47 In retrospect we have to say that the hostility to psychology that is connected

with this has had deep and, where it has taken on an independent existence, damaging
eects in the wider realm of church and theology. If the only thing that be done is
to stake out danger signs around any interest in human experience and psychological
processesin other words, around anything that lies in the horizontal planethis leads
270 chapter six

if one may choose to call it that, a phenomenologyof the strictly the-

ological element of faith. From the theological perspective, uncertainty
and doubt are part of an entirely dierent process, namely that of man
going in search of God entirely outside of this link with the Word. Only
when tied to the living Word can the good ght of faith be fought.48
Barth therefore speaks of two circles, or two closed systems, which do
not touch upon one another. It should not therefore be surprising that
prayer has an essentialthat is to say, a theologicalplace in this con-
cept of knowing God. Conceptually, prayer is wesensnotwendig, of essen-
tial necessity.49 Because knowledge of God is a gift, a gift that God
freely gives, this relationship correlates with a continuing dependence
on human side, and thus with prayer. In prayer man acknowledges that
he is reliant on God and evidences his position as a subject over against
God. In this way prayer also becomes the place that oers a prospect
on another word which in Barth has not so much an ethical as a theo-
logical signicance, namely obedience. Prayer is a visible sign that one
does not stop with that which one already knows or understands on the
basis of previous encounters, but that one is thrown back on the com-
ing of God. The actions on the human side which correlate with Gods
saving grace are obedience and prayer.50 In this context we encounter a
concept that to an increasing degree will dene the structure of human
knowing and response, namely Entsprechung, correspondence or analogy.
Human subjectivity takes on its colour and character in this concept.
Because man has been given a role in knowing God, he is no longer an
objective outsider, but an involved participant. Knowing God involves
man as a participant and constitutes him as an answering and respond-
ing partner. In this panel knowing does not move toward a fullment in
imitation; it is active participation and response. Ethics and dogmatics
are extensions of one another, and it is impossible to say where the one
ends and the other begins.

to a damaging isolation of Barths theological legacy. On this obstructive eect see M.

den Dulk, Als twee die spreken. Een manier om de heiligingsleer van Karl Barth te lezen, s
Gravenhage 1987, 112, 226231.See also the overview of the inuence that Barth has
had in the eld of Biblical studies provided by J. Barr in The Concept of Biblical Theology.
An Old Testament Perspective, London 1999. For a powerful defence of Barths objectivism
and anti-psychological stance see N.T. Bakker, Miskende Gratie. Van Calvijn tot Witsius.
Een vergelijkende lezing, balans van 150 jaar gereformeerde orthodoxie, Kampen 1991, 4765 and
idem, Geschiedenis in opspraak. Over de legitimatie van het concept geschiedenis, Kampen 1996.
48 KD II/1, 7; ET, 7.
49 KD II/1, 23; ET, 22.
50 KD II/1, 27; ET, 26.
 the way of knowing god 271

6.9. Mediation and sacramentality

In his revelation God makes himself the subject of human knowledge.

In this way He becomes present with man. Barth however introduces
a restriction into this, one which is reminiscent of the distinction which
was made in classical dogmatics between theologia archetypa and theologia
ectypa, although because of the content of the theologia, namely Gods
self-knowledge, the distinction has much less eect.51 The nature of
Gods presence with man varies, Barth suggests, according to the way
in which God himself is present. To distinguish the two manners of
objectivity or presence, Barth introduces the distinction between pri-
mary and secondary objectivity.52 Gods knowledge of himself is imme-
diate, in no way veiled. That is Gods primary objectivity. That knowl-
edge which man has of God is veiled. That is Gods secondary objec-
tivity. The latter thus means that God makes use of things of this earth
in order to reveal himself. More precisely, God makes use of what is
not-God in order to reveal himself, God. No element in our reality is
in itself able to reveal God. Gods explicit acts therefore also play a
role in the revelation of God by means of what is essentially not-God.
Barths verb here is active, the language directive. At the appointment
of God, a piece of reality becomes operative for him. He determines
and sancties certain elements from our reality as symbols, to clothe
his presence.53 In this event an object from our created reality becomes
more than it is in itself. Without that object becoming identical with
God, it represents God. It clothes his acts, becomes a symbol or temple
for them.
This characterises the manner in which knowledge of God arises
and exists as being very specic and dened. God does not reveal
himself in everything and everyone. For its knowledge of God the
Christian message does not refer man to the eternal, the innite, the
unfathomable. Those who wish to know God are directed to a concrete
history, the history of prophets, apostles, of the man Jesus Christ. God
teaches men to know him from his works, performed in specic places,
at specic times. By this, knowledge of God in this concept is tied to
concrete acts and spaces. It is not the world which as such coincides

51 R. Chia, Revelation and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, 104105.
52 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.
53 KD II/1, 16; ET, 16.
272 chapter six

with Gods presence, but on the basis of Gods choice and sanctication
his work does indeed take place within this sphere.54
Barth has explicitly further qualied this concreteness of Gods self-
revelation by linking it with two other concepts that are important
within this study, namely sacrament and Christology. Christian knowl-
edge of God is thus given a Christological foundation. Just as in the rst
panel, in the second too there is a deep coherence between thinking
about the sacramental and Christology. The centre and inclusiveness of
the sacramentalilty of Gods act is the human nature of Jesus Christ.
Through union with the Word of God this creature is distinguished and
appointed as the work and symbol of God. In other words, the human
Jesus is localised as the place where Gods condescending to man occurs
pre-eminently. That suggests that it is a unique occurrence, but this is
a uniqueness that corresponding occurrences permit and suppose. The
incarnation, the taking on of the humanity of Jesus by the eternal Word
is indeed, according to Barth, a unique event, but that does not deny
the possibility of continuations of it, proceeding from it as a centre,
moving both forward and backward in time. In his doctrine of God
he explicitly terms the humanity of Jesus the rst sacrament, and as
such the ground of reality and circumscribing concept of a sacramental
repetition. Other sacramental realities are the people Israelthis was
written in 1940!and the church built upon the apostolate. They are
denoted as the created realities that can bear witness to that which was
real in Jesus Christ in a unique sense, namely the unity, or better, the
union of Creator and creature.55 True knowledge of God therefore nds
its origin in this extraordinary act of God. It is explicitly knowledge of
the gracious act of God; it goes without saying that it is dened soteri-
ologically. In this concept revelation is not thought of as a plurality of
parts, but is each time singular and whole, because it is ultimately God
himself who reveals himself as sacred reality.
For a good understanding of Barths concept it is of the utmost
importance to grasp the elementary dierence between revelation and
the means of revelation. In the incarnation a sharp distinction contin-
ues to exist between Jesus humanity as the means and Gods revelation

54 KD II/1, 21; ET, 20: Christian faith as knowledge of the true God lets itself be

included in this area of objectivity, and allows itself to be kept in this area, which in
itself and as such is certainly not identical with the objectivity of God. But in it Gods
work takes place, and hence Gods own objectivity gives itself to be known and is to be
known, and this on the the strength of the choice and sanctication of His free grace.
55 KD II/1, 5859; ET, 54.
 the way of knowing god 273

which makes use of this man Jesus. For this Barth reaches for terms
from early Christology, namely the terms anhypostasis and enhypostasis.
The humanity of Jesus is understood anhypostatically. That is to say,
in itself the humanity of Jesus does not reveal God. Only by virtue of
the taking on of the human, the assumptio of Jesus Christ by the eter-
nal Son, thus by virtue of the enhypostasis of the human nature in the
Son, is Jesus the revelation of God.56 Enhypostasis however is conceived
of in as dynamic a manner as possible. It never under any circum-
stances becomes a condition or takes root as nature. In this way Barth
keeps the gap between the man Jesus and his revelation as the Son as
open as possible. The words of ICorinthians 13 about knowing in part
and seeing through a glass darkly are identied by Barth with his pos-
tulating the hiddenness and indirectness of revelation. Even the man
Jesus as such is always enigma as well. If He is not only enigma, if as
enigma He is also illumination, disclosure and communication, then it
is thanks to His unity with the Son of God and therefore in the act
of the revelation of the Son of God and of the faith in Him eected
by the Holy Spirit.57 What Barth wishes to say is clear. One does not
arrive at knowledge of God on the basis of a human and historical
knowledge of Jesus. The earthly Jesus becomes a sacrament of Gods
presence through Gods grace. Historical and literary investigations in
themselves will never lead to faith.
There are indeed some questions that must be raised systematically
about this rigid divisionand indeed separationof domains. The
question which arises in the exposition in KD II/1 is whether the
relationship between Jesus and his revelation as the Son of God is
then completely arbitrary. While there may be no necessary connection

56 Barth used the concepts of enhypostasis and anhypostasis in his own way. In the

early church anhypostasis meant that the man Jesus had no existence apart from the tie
with the Word, the Logos. That did not mean that as a man Jesus would not have had
any individuality; that is not included in the word hypostasis. What the early church did
intend to do with these dual terms was insure the unity of the person of Jesus Christ.
If it is said that Jesus Christ as a unity is a true divine person (unio hypostatica), then
that unity would be threatened if people subsequently spoke of two persons in Jesus
Christ. The doctrine armed that no, this one person had his existence in the Word,
in the second person of the Trinity. Therefore, the point of the concept lay in keeping
together the true God-being and the true man-being of this one person. See A. van de
Beek, De menselijke Persoon van Christus. Een onderzoek aangaande de gedachte van de anhypostasie
van de menselijke natuur van Christus, 4849 and G. Hunsinger, Karl Barths Christology:
its basic Chalcedonian Character in idem, Disruptive Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl
Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 131147.
57 KD II/1, 61; ET, 56.
274 chapter six

between the earthly actions of Jesus, his historic Gestalt, and who He in
fact is through Gods revelation, his Gehalt, does that at the same time
mean there is no connection whatsoever? Is the means of revelation
only the opportunity for Gods revelation, or, in view of the content of
the revelation, is there in retrospect, is there indeed a connection with
the means of revelation? In terms of Augustines semantics, is there a
connection between Jesus life and actions as signum and the revelation
in this life of the kingdom of God as res, or is the connection entirely
random? Barths use of the image of seeing through a glass darkly
seems to indicate that for him the opacity of the symbol is the only
viewpoint that he will allow in this phase of his theology. He is still
moving along a track that is antithetical to the eort of the Leben Jesu-
Forschung to arrive at a generally accepted appraisal of Jesus on the basis
of historical and psychological investigation. The point of the insistence
that Jesus is a riddle is that historical investigation cannot function as a
basis for faith in Jesus. The only reason why Jesus Christ has theological
signicance and is an object of faith is the act of God in Him, the power
of the Word of God. Within the programme of KD II/1 one can see this
as a means of cutting o every attempt to arrive at natural theology.
It would however bear witness to a certain folly to reject ohand every
inquiry into the relation of this revelation with the actions of Jesus as
the Gospels bear witness to them. The presence of the genre of gospels
as part of the canon testies to the perfect right, indeed the theological
importance, of this inquiry.

6.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth

In his thought Barths approach to knowledge of God is severely ana-

lytic. If human knowledge of God is genuine and real, it has its pre-
requisite and source in what God himself says. Because of this, this
concept of religious knowledge can dened as revelation theology in
a strict sense. It will do no harm to spend a moment examining this
concept, which is called upon so easily by contemporary theologians.
At rst glance it is a remarkable term. Every Christian theology will in
one way or another appeal to revelation, to a transcendental element,
but this appeal does not justify calling it revelation theology. That is
true, and thus a narrower denition is required. One can only speak
of revelation theology in a terminological sense if the subject of reve-
lation is explicitly taken up as a theme and becomes the starting point
 the way of knowing god 275

of the thought. This is the case with Barth. That is a point which dis-
tinguishes this second panel from the rst. As Barth himself indicates
in 27, under the title The Limits of the Knowledge of God, his the-
ological thinking on the existence and origin of human knowledge of
God takes place between two limits, as it were. The terminus a quo any
time God is spoken of is revelation, God himself, and that is also were
we end up. The terminus ad quem is once again the knowledge of God.
Possible human knowledge of God lies between these two limits. The
section involved has two parts. The rst part deals with the hiddenness
of God as the terminus a quo of all that is said of God. The second part
of this section is entitled The Truthfulness of Human Knowledge of
God. In fact section 27 is once again an exposition of the thesis God is
known through God. The beginning of knowledge of God has its ori-
gin in the recognition that God himself is the subject of this knowledge.
Negatively, this means further emphasis on the proposition that it is
not our own faculties for knowing which are the foundation which sup-
ports knowledge of God. For any evaluation of Barths view of human
capacities this is of great importance. While it is quite true that knowl-
edge of God cannot exist without human faculties, but it does not owe
its existence to these human faculties.58 The emphasis in this concept is
deliberately placed not on our own human capacities, but on the singu-
larity of God as subject. In this concept revelation, Gods own act is the
only element which is acknowledged as basic.
From a general epistemological perspective this exclusive xation on
the element of revelation is to be regarded as inconceivably lopsided.
It can however be understood as a form of theological reductionism in
which only those elements which are constitutive for knowledge of God
as such are acknowledged as fundamental. The concept of the second
panel implicitly recognises that niteness as such, including man with
his faculties, can not produce knowledge of God. God, in his otherness
or his holiness, is hidden from man.
It must however be emphatically stressed that with Barth such an
assessment of niteness is justied indirectly, by theological argument.
The hiddenness of God is not the result of a general ontology. At this
point we see in this second panel an attempt to keep general ontology
and theology strictly separated. Barths concept is an exponent of the
aspiration that welcomes the disjunction of culture and Christian faith

58 KD II/1, 205; ET, 183.

276 chapter six

as a purication of Christian belief. Again we see the strategy with a

negative association. Philosophical critique of classic metaphysics and
the thinking about God as the highest being which accompanied it
is drawn into theology as a blessing in disguise. The eld in which
Barth wants to carry out this purication is marked by the concepts of
hiddenness, incomprehensibility and ineability. He pauses to provide
an exhaustive examination of how these concepts are a familiar and
wide-spread theme throughout the tradition of Christian doctrine,59
and that Gods incomprehensibilitas is even counted among his qualities.
In his judgement it however remains veiled in the mist whether the
tradition wishes to have the incomprehensibility of God regarded as
an assertion of Christian belief, or whether it simply annexed a theme
from philosophy. To his mind, it can not be ruled out that with the hid-
denness and ineability of God one is saying about the same as what
the Platonic ideal or Kantian regulative idea stood for.60 The attempt
at purication and to separate out a general philosophical ontological
concept at any rate says enough about the new self-condence that
appears in this second panel. Barth seeks to regard the incomprehensi-
bility of God and his hiddenness not as a general truth, but considers
them as a truth of faith with its roots within Christian knowledge of
God. Barths exposition of the boundaries of knowledge of God thus is
denitely intended to exert a critical and cleansing function with regard
to Christian doctrinal tradition. The incomprehensibility of God is not
one of the qualities of God standing alongside the others, but is a con-
stant which accompanies and qualies everything which is said of Gods
virtues.61 The incomprehensibility of God expresses that human think-
ing and understanding are not as such in the position to comprehend,
conceive and understand God.62 It must be repeated again: knowledge
of God is a matter of grace.
In summary, in this concept of knowledge of God, hiddenness is not
a predicate which can be ascribed to God on the basis of a general
ontology. It is to be regarded as a quality which accompanies the acts of
God from the outset. God himself is not hidden; in his being as Father,
Son and Spirit He is himself obvious. However, the veiling is a direct

59 For example Augustine, Sermo 117, 3.5: De Deo loquimur, quid mirum, si non

comprehendis? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus.

60 KD II/1, 207208; ET, 184186.
61 He names H. Bavinck as one of the few who have realised this. KD II/1, 208; ET,

186.
62 KD II/1, 209; ET, 187.
 the way of knowing god 277

consequence of his revelation. Because God becomes present with man

in a part of our reality, seen from His perspective he at the same time
renounces his manifestness to the extent that this involves concrete
means. In this context, Barth labels this humiliation. Compared with the
unveiled way in which God himself is manifest, he degrades himself
and becomes alienated from himself in the mediation of revelation.63
Applied to the incarnation, this means that because God revealed
himself in Jesus Christ, in a piece of earthly reality, he at the same time
hides the glory with which He himself is present. In the incarnation
he indeed does reveal his glory, but in the doctrines of God the accent
still rests primarily on the veiling and hiddenness that revelation ipso
facto implies. Revelation, incarnation, is limitation. The form in which
God reveals himself is not the revelation itself. It is form, not content.
The question that we earlier sketched out is whether the form of the
revelation, the means of revelation, also has any connection with the
content of the revelation.
With this question we again pick up the thread which was dropped
at the end of the previous section. Barth refused to draw a positive
connection between form and content in revelation. One can ask if
Barth did not employ a dialectic of veiling and unveiling that was not
so much the result of an investigation of Biblical concepts and forms of
revelation, but which rested rather on his reection of the concept of
revelation as such. If revelation means that God makes himself known
to man who is not-God, and in that revelation makes use of that which
is not-God, then from the outset the medium of the revelation stands
over against what must be revealed. The medium of the revelation,
the Gestalt, is opposed to the content, the Gehalt. What is the relation
between them? In the Bible, is the form of revelation only contradictory
to the content? One can ask to what extent Barth took into account the
fact that the nature of the veiling diverges sharply in various forms of
revelation. The relation of signum and res may not be a necessary one,
but that is far from saying that this relation is arbitrary. In revelation
the ambivalent symbol begins to speak a language that removes the
ambivalence and unveils the referential function of the symbol for
once and for all. A connection is constituted and unveiled through
the revelation that elevates the symbol above randomness. When Jesus
heals, restores, encounters people, these actions do not compel one to

63 KD II/1, 59; ET, 55.

278 chapter six

the conclusion that this is more than a prophet. The acknowledgement

of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel is something that esh and blood does
not have the capacity to reveal (Matt. 16:17). But once involved in Gods
revelation the symbol begins to speak, and its symbolic power becomes
integrated into Gods act. The nature of the veiling in the case of the
signs of Gods coming kingdom diers fundamentally from the manner
of veiling in the cross.
Did Barth later correct himself ? In KD IV/2 Barth will describe the
way of the Son in depth in his signicance for mankind, namely as
elevating. In this context he indeed does not leave the closed circle of
self-revelation.64 But it is certainly more than a detail that Barth in his
exposition of the royal man devotes substantial attention to the witness
of the New Testament. Precisely within the circle of revelation, within
knowledge of God, paying attention to the witness regarding the earthly
Jesus is of theological importance.

6.11. A look back. From impossibility to reality

With his thesis that knowledge of God precedes the question of its pos-
sibility, Barth chooses a position in the debate that dominated theol-
ogy since the Enlightenment and which in part dened his own the-
ological development: how can we think about Gods relation to our
earthly reality? Where do the connections lie, the points of anchorage
that invite us to knowledge of God? Has the world as a mirror become
clouded, or even lost its reective quality all together?
In his dialectic period Barths method of doing theology was still
strongly dominated by the conviction that human words and thoughts
can not make the living God of whom the Bible speaks present. In the
second edition of his Epistle to the Romans Barth characterises revelation
as an impossible possibility.65 The method of his theology is dened by
the human situation, the given world in which God is not immanent.
Time and eternity are characterised as mutually exclusive.66 Seen from
this life, Gods eternity is separated from the nite by a Todeslinie, a

64 KD IV, 2, 174; ET, 156.

65 See for example Rmerbrief 2, 80, 89, 142, 256; ET, 79 105, 114, 273.
66 It is this static view of the duality of time and eternity that has saddled Barths

dialectic theology with a number of aporias which were not easy for him to escape,
for instance with regard to the incarnation. That the word became esh (John 1:14)
can, according to the Epistle to the Romans, only be thought of as a crisis and negation
 the way of knowing god 279

chasm which cannot be bridged from this side. All religious possibilities
for arriving at God, at sacred reality, die in the no-mans-land that
separates us from Gods eternity. Considered from the reality of this
world, God, revelation, salvation and all words that intentionally refer
to the divine mystery can be termed impossibilities. An example of
Barths early dialectic theology is the 1922 essay Das Wort Gottes als
Aufgabe der Theologie.67 The essay is developed through three theses:
1) As theologians, we ought to speak of God; 2) We are, however,
human and as such cannot speak of God; and 3) We should recognize
both our ought and our cannot and by that recognition give God the
glory. In this panel theologians are not just professional theologians or
clergy. In principle, the term includes anyone wishing to speak of God
and his Word. The rst and second theses are antithetical. The third
does not bring the two preceding thesis into synthesis, but argues that
one must hold fast to both in order to honour God. Only God himself
is able to speak his saving word, the Word of God. Methodologically
and that is what this is aboutthe starting point for his argument is
located in the human situation.68
This methodological point of departure in the human situation is
still the foundation of Barths 1927 Christian Dogmatics. The summons by
Gogarten, Bultmann and others to rene the attention for the human
situation by making it an explicit theme convinced him that this starting
point was precisely a fundamental weakness in his concept. Gogarten
asked for a clear anthropology as the entrance to the theology; Bult-
mann likewise considered Barths analysis of human existence unclear.
For Barth, this criticism was the reason to methodologically no longer
begin the whole project with the human situation. He allowed his con-
cept of knowledge of God to be dened methodologically by the insight
that the truth of God is a concrete fact. Theology has its reality and
possibility in the Gods revelation. Or, in terms he used in his study of
Anselm, in revelation lies an ontic rationality that is reected upon by
a noetic rationality. The ontic precedes the noetic.69 A theology which
acknowledges that permits itself to be guided by this realisation in the

of history (Rmerbrief 2, 5; ET, 2930). In the idea of the analogia dei and enhypostasis
Barth found means for thinking of Gods revelation in a more satisfactory manner.
67 Included in: Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Aufstze, Mnchen 1925,

156178.
68 For a sketch of the development of Barths dialectic, see M. Beintker, Die Dialektik

in der dialektischen Theologie Karl Barths, Mnchen 1987.

69 K. Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang
280 chapter six

manner in which it orders the modalities of possibility and reality. The-

ology is intellectus dei.70 Putting the human problematic rstin other
words, putting the question of how man can arrive at knowledge of
God rsteven summons up the misunderstanding that a particular
anthropology or epistemology would be fundamental for knowing God.
In Barths eyes that is both to overrate human potential and undervalue
Gods power and freedom to reveal himself. In his study of Anselm
Barth thus arrives at an explicit development of what I just term the
apriority that, seen in retrospect, had already asserted itself in his the-
ology very early on. Much earlier Barth had expressed the idea that
knowledge of God is to be considered only as something that nds its
ground in God as subject, without this subjectivity being able to be
brought into synthesis with human subjectivity.71 Undoubtedly even in
its dialectic period Barths theology was already dominated by a theo-
logical apriority and universalism. In this context, that means that the
conclusion has already been reached about truth. Christ is the driv-
ing, motivating power in society, the resurrection is not at hand, but
in its imperspicuity still the denitive and disquieting driving force in
history.72 In dialectic terms, the power of the thesis and antithesis are
rooted in a preceding synthesis.73 In his life, man encounters the living,
all-dening God. In his dialectical phase, when he also used the real-
ity of revelation as his methodological starting point, Barths theology
developed more and more into a theology of condence. The theology
could proceed from Gods revelation and try to follow the ontic or inner
rationality of what is discerned in faith. This trust is not determined by
a condence in human faculties for knowing, but happens im Blick auf
die Mchtigkeit der objektiven, durch die summa veritas von oben her
erleuchteten und erleuchtenden ratio des Glaubensgegenstandes selber,

seines theologischen Programms (1931), hrsg. von E. Jngel und I.U. Dalferth, Zrich 1981,
4952.
70 Fides quaerens intellectum, 55.
71 See for instance Spieckermann, Gotteserkenntnis, 6970, who locates this relinquish-

ment of a synthesis in a letter from Barth to Thurneysen of August 6, 1915. Faith, the
kingdom of God and knowledge of God become realities that one does not simply
experience and have, or make present. See also my Anfngliche Theologie, 71, where
I point to an echo of the lecture Kreigszeit und Gottesreich, given in 1915 but not
preserved.
72 See for instance his Tambach Lecture (1919) Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in:

Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 3369, also included in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfnge der
dialektischen Theologie I, Mnchen 19774, 337.
73 Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in: Anfnge I, 33.
 the way of knowing god 281

der Anselm es zugetraut hat, da sie zu lehren vermge und immer

wieder lehre, was kein Mensch den andern lehren kann.74 The formal
expression of this power and dominion of God to make himself and his
presence known is the tautology God is God. This tautology is not
empty or closed. Barth understands it as a reference to Gods reality
which, through the power of the Spirit, is open to man. In this way the
proof that can be given in this theology for the truth of knowledge of
God is linked with Gods own speaking and coming. Outside of that,
according to him, all is illusion.75 This brings us to the question of what
the place of dogmatics is in this panel.

6.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God?

With Barth, dogmatics is not only a way of checking up on, but also
an exercise in biblical speaking. Exercise is to say that Barth does
not begin from a collection of Bible texts, but in the various parts
of Christian doctrine concentrates on the connections and movements
that are in his view characteristic. This altered view of the relationship
between Bible text and dogmatic discussion comes to the fore in the
way in which Barth goes to work methodologically in his dogmatics.
He begins with relatively short and open statements, which sometimes
serve as the title for sections, and holds them up to the light in the sec-
tions involved. Among the examples of such short statements are his
diverse section titles, such as Gods being in Act, Man before God,
God before Man and Gods Being as Loving in Freedom. They are,
as Welker noted,76 statements that taken by themselves are ambiguous
and incomplete, and not rarely they could be conceived as a question.
They are integral in nature and in the course of the argument are clar-
ied in multiple steps or courses. The clarication is achieved by means
of negations, shifts in stress and distinctions. For example, statements
which are in themselves vague and open become more focused in a
number of steps, and gradually gain denition. It is because of this
manner of working that Barths dogmatic has a relatively high medi-

74 Fides quaerens intellectum, 71.

75 Fides quaerens intellectum, 70: Die via regis der gttlichen Einfalt und der Weg uner-
hrtester Illusion sind in der Geschichte der Theologie in allen Zeiten und Entwicklun-
gen nur durch Haaresbreite getrennt parallel gelaufen.
76 M. Welker, Barth und Hegel. Zur Erkenntnis eines methodischen Verfahrens bei

Barth, Evangelische Theologie 43 (1983), 307328, 322.

282 chapter six

tative character. His expositions can be read as a meditative exercise

in listening to and testing the decisive elements and structures that lie
at the foundation of knowledge of God. Short sections of Bible text,
parts of abstract concepts and pronouncements that have a rather high
metaphorical and evocative character can also serve as starting points
for this meditative process. It is not so strange that this method, par-
ticularly where Barth makes use of abstract notions, provokes questions
and creates the impression of being highly speculative. It is obvious
that Barth here gives good reason for critical questions. Pannenberg
has expressed the critique that the manner in which Barth develops
his doctrine of the Trinity, to wit, as an exposition of the words God
reveals himself as the Lord, can be understood as a logical derivative
from the Hegelian subject concept. The Trinity in Barth could be con-
ceived as the self-unfolding of God as absolute subject, with the Chris-
tological legitimisation as an afterthought which as such could have
no inuence on the argumentation.77 E. Maurer has argued, perhaps
in response to such critiques, that one should not take such formal
derivatives from the concept of self-revelation at face value.78 Follow-
ing the lead of Wittgenstein, he draws on linguistic philosophy to inter-
pret formulations of this sort. According to Maurer, they render their
hermeneutic service only in dealing with the Biblical narrative itself.
They are, like all dogmata, to be considered as a form of grammar for
the language of faith. In this view, they add nothing to knowledge, but
only dene the rules for unlocking the narrative and speaking about
God. Dogmatics provides the rules and examples by which one tries to
empower the language. Understood this way, the scheme of unveiling,
veiling and impartation is purely an tool to be taken up in order to lay
open the dynamic of a Bible text and its content. Such schemes are
useful to the extent that they are subservient to the knowing of God, to
following the movement of God in his revelation. They must be made

77 W. Pannenberg, Die Subjektivitt Gottes und die Trinittslehre in: idem, Grund-

fragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufstze, Bd.2, Gttingen 1980, 110. Barths man-
ner of speaking of the Father, Son and Spirit as manners of being would therefore not
do justice to the fact that in the Trinitarian concept of God personality is gained from
the mutual involvement of the persons with each other. The Son is a person because
He surrenders himself to the Father and his mission. The Father is a person because
he identies himself with the Son. The Spirit is once again nothing in himself, but is a
Divine person because in the Spirit the unity of Father and Son works for the renewal
of the world.
78 E. Maurer, Grammatik des biblischen Redens von Gott. Grundlinien der Trini-

ttslehre Karl Barths. ZdTh 14 (1998), 113130, 117.

 the way of knowing god 283

transparent until the encounter with God, until the moment at which
the Word of God himself breaks through the human aids.
To what an extent is such an explanation satisfactory? Perhaps we
must conclude that an approach like this from linguistic philosophy
indeed succeeds in turning the spotlight on the function of the doc-
trine of the Trinity for the whole of Barths theology. At the same
time it must be stressed that one turns aside from Barth if one con-
sistently functionalises dogmatic concepts and formulas. They receive
their peculiar content precisely in connection with concrete biblical his-
tory.79
In the meantime, the above will certainly be helpful in understand-
ing that dogmatics for Barth is still something more than a summary
of doctrine. Dogmatics is the systematic self-investigation of the church,
with an eye to the content of what it has to say about God. It is an
activity which, when done, is done on a meta-level. Therefore dogmat-
ics seeks the conditions for the underlying structure for speaking about
God. The relation between dogmatics and what the church has to say
about God can indeed to a certain degree rightfully be seen as the
relation between grammar and language. I say to a certain degree
because this comparison only holds true in limited measure. The fact is
that within dogmatics there are solid statements made which, although
they have a regulative function, are also intended to have substantive
content. This does not detract from the fact that Barths theology to
a great extent rightly leaves a formal impression, and as reection is
intended to have a regulative function in regard to that which is said
about God in the space of the church and in its proclamation. Dog-
matics is no longer, as it was for Calvin, a transcription and ordering
of the content of what God has communicated. It is an arrangement
of perspectives and coordinates which together delineate a eld, in the
condence and with the expectation that God himself as Lord of his
revelation will make himself present, and that entrance to Him will
be opened up through the subjective work of the Holy Spirit. In both
Calvin and Barth, systematic reection is in service of the reading and

79 Perhaps one must say that in the rst parts of the KD Barths thought still

moves strongly from abstract formulations and concepts to biblical history. Later he
thinks more from the concrete history to the concepts, thus preparing the way that
Pannenberg and Moltmann were to go. When in the second part of his doctrine of
reconciliation Barth selects a starting point, he chooses the history of Jesus Christ, thus
choosing a point of departure in the opposition of the Father and Son, it becomes clear
that thinking in terms of the Trinity springs from this history.
284 chapter six

exposition of Scripture. But the connection that is made by each of

them between Bible and systematic reection also reveals a deep and
radical dierence. The truth and truths for which Calvin is seeking a
tting ordo in his Institutes are direct, divine truth. Barth neither can nor
will deal with the Bible in this manner. Gods speaking, Gods Word
in the singular, is a category all of its own, an event which can indeed
make use of human words, but which still remains categorically distinct
from mans word. The theology of the second panel is strongly con-
scious of its own distance from Gods own speaking and coming. The
tiny space that there was in the rst panel between Biblical words and
Christian doctrine on the one side and Gods Word, His speaking on
the other, has become a categorical dierence.
On the one hand, that means that for Barth dogmatics is on the
one hand more modest in tone, to the extent that it is the word of
man. At the same time it has more space and freedom to arrive at
its own design. To the extent that dogmatic theology boldly occupied
the space that opened up, it broadened out and exhibits less modesty,
indeed becomes speculative.
The method followed in this second panel is the method that was
developed in the systematic theology of the 19th century by Schleierma-
cher and the idealistic thinkers. Slowly the accent shifts from an entity
made up of revelations to an entity that is the collective of revelation. Dog-
matics is the individual, personal attempt, with ones gaze directed to
the Bible and tradition, to trace adequate lines and establish perspec-
tives which, in its unfolding, connecting and specifying, invites one to
go that way. It is an attempt to do justice to the whole. That is to say,
the point of departure in this method is no longer words and revela-
tions, plural. That is the level of the Bible, a human text. The level of
knowledge of God is God in his revelation, singular. Systematic reec-
tion and faith are more sharply distinguished, and the space between
them becomes greater. Barths dogmatic work represents this change in
a paradigmatic manner. Dogmatics understands itself as labour on a
meta-level with respect to the way of knowledge of God itself, as a pos-
sibility that in some way is grounded in the given, and still being given
participation in Gods self-knowledge.
A dierentiation of tasks has taken place in theology. While in the
rst panel, for Calvin the real task of theology lay in Bible exposition,
and systematic reection had no greater aim than the judicious and
orderly arrangement of subjects and content, in the second panel sys-
tematic theology has lost its direct access to knowledge of God, and
 the way of knowing god 285

it must formulate the perspectives through which the knowing of God

takes place. With Calvin Bible exposition and the search for a tting
ordo for the main points of Christian doctrine were distinguished, but
in the second panel we see how just how much dogmatics and Biblical
investigation have drifted apart, like two continents which were once
united. This observation may be surprising because it is precisely Barth
who emphatically called upon biblical studies to be a theological dis-
cipline, but this summons is itself an expression of a realisation of the
peculiar responsibility and space of dogmatics.
Barths answer to a written query by Brunner in 1924 asking how the
discipline of dogmatics should be conducted in that time, is interesting
in this context. Barth chooses two of the various options that Brunner
lays before him.80 The rst way for dogmatics is prophetic, that is to say
going its own way under constant scrutiny by the Bible, the ancient
Church and the Reformation. The second option is what he calls
confessional. The material of dogmatics is dogma, which perhaps has
wasted away as the church has become modern, but that must again be
sought beyond the confessional texts of the apostolicum. The confessional
texts full an heuristic function and the authority of Scripture as the
origin of the whole is termed self-evident. It would appear from this
exchange that Barth viewed his own work as a renewing Reformation.
Selbt Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen,81 he calls it, that is to
say, daring to speak on ones own account, while allowing ones own
ideas to be checked constantly against Scripture and tradition. Such

80 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 19161966, Hrsg. von der Karl Barth-For-

schungsstelle an der Universitt Gttingen, Zrich 2000, 8796. Brunner lists four
possibilities: 1. Dogmatik, als Auslegung eines christlichen Bekenntnisses. 2. Biblische
Theologieetwa wie Beck oder Hofmann. 3. Lehre von der christlichen Religion als
Ausschnitt aus der allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft. 4. Spekulative Theologie, die von
vornherein wei, da sie bei christlichen Resultate endet. In his answer Barth responds
with the following possibilities: Loci im Anschlu an den Rmerbrief (Melanchton). 2.
Biblische Theologie la Beck. 3. Spekulative la Biedermann. 4. Scholastische (anstelle
des Petrus Lombardus: Calvins Institutio oder der Katechismus Genevensis 1545). 5.
Prophetische, d.h. selber Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen und unter bestndiger
Kontrolle 1. durch die Bibel, 2. durch das kirchliche Altertum + Reformation einen
selbstgewhlten Weg gehen. 6. Konfessionelle: Sto der Dogmatik ist nun einmal das
Dogma; gibt uns die verglunggte modern-reformierte Kirche kein solches an die Hand,
so stehen wir oenbar wieder am Anfang der reformierten Reformation, haben zu fra-
gen, was dort Dogma war vor den Bekenntnisschriften, kmen also auf das Apostolikum.
Bekenntnisschriften heuristisch zu verwenden. Autoritt der Schrift als des Ursprungs des
ganzen Krams selbstverstndlich. 7. Der helle Unfug: Schleiermacher und, was hinter
ihm kreucht und eucht.
81 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel, 95.
286 chapter six

statements are characteristic of this new constellation in the second

panel. With regard to the Bible and confessions, dogmatic reection
steps back to take a tertiary position. At the same time it is aware of its
own freedom and obligation to be of service in its way to the speaking
of the church.
By keeping this categorical dierence between the word of man and
Gods speaking in mind, an answer can at the same time be given
to the constantly recurring question of whether in this concept the
subjectivism of the 19th century is not brought to a head.82 If there is
no basis whatsoever in history to which we can point for our knowledge
of God, and if we are then as a result thrown back on Gods speaking
in Jesus Christ for our knowledge of Him, then this always takes place
clothed in theological, human words and concepts. In other words,
has Barths own theology not become the mediating body? That is
the critics argument. To ask the question is to answer it. Barth is
completely aware of his role as the subject of theology. Theology is a
human endeavour, an attempt to do justice in thinking and speaking
to an event which never coincides with the thinking, but that one
can at the most follow and attempt to do justice to in the thinking.
It is characteristic of Barths theology that this categorical dierence
between knowledge of God and the knowing of the knowledge of God,
or reection on the knowledge of God, is included in the thinking itself.
That in his dogmatic work Barth should exhibit a considerable reluc-
tance to provide concrete examples of the knowing of God is consistent
with the foregoing. Dogmatics is not proclamation; it sets up rules for
proclamation. Dogmatics is not knowledge of God, it points the way to
the knowledge of God. It indicates the way in which God himself has
and continues to maintain dominion in his revelation, but consciously
avoids the suggestion that its indications coincide with revelation. It is
not without reason that a reproduction of the picture on the Isenheim
altarpiece, where John the Baptist points to Christ on the Cross, hung
above Barths desk.83 Theology does nothing more than point. Precisely
in its referential structure, Barths theology possesses a strongly sugges-
tive and meditative power, because the presupposition always is that
God makes himself present in the lives of men.

82 Zie H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven? Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuitspraken,

Baarn 1977, 210215.

83 See R. Marquard, Mathias Grnewald und der Isenheimer Altar. Erluterungen, Erwgun-

gen, Deutungen, Stuttgart 1996.

 the way of knowing god 287

One of the few personally coloured examples of the conviction that

God himself provides for his presence found in the KD is Barths
childhood experience with the songs of Abel Burckhardt.84 Barth writes
about this in connection with the distance in time which separates us
from the incarnation. How is it possible that this history also lls the
present day and denes life now? How is it possible that the distance
in time is a factor which disappears in Christian feasts? Barth tells of
the experience that he had with these songs as a child, in which the
content of the ecclesiastical feasts was sung about in a simple manner.
In that there was no gap, no historical distance. Jesus was as close as
if he still walked the streets of Basel and the events had happened that
very morning in his own city. In other words, God himself sees to his
presence through his Spirit. The hermeneutic problem is taken care of
by the work of His Spirit making Christ present. For this theological
reason the hermeneutic problem is not to be regarded as the horribly
wide grave of which Lessing spoke with so much pathos. One does not
understand Barths theology if one does not see that he wishes to reect
upon the reality of this mysterious eect with which God himself makes
himself known to men in the present.
Of course, one can ask if Barth here has done justice to the ques-
tion of historical distance and the estrangement that one can feel with
respect to biblical stories as a problem which can be brushed aside
so simply. What interests me now is that this way of dealing with the
Lessingfrage is theologically based and displays a form that is also char-
acteristic of Barths concept of knowledge of God. In its modern form
the problem is dominated by the question of how human knowledge
of God is possible. In Barths concept this form of the problem is over-
taken and trumped by a dierent statement of the problem. It is not
God and his act that is the problem, but man and his answer.85 God and
his approach to man constitutes the situation in which man is already
being confronted, and from which he constantly wishes to escape. The
theme of human knowledge of God does not take on the colour of a
general epistemological problem; it is a matter of life and death, being
saved or being destroyedand with that, we nd ourselves in the realm
of soteriology. It is therefore the fact that God turns his face toward
man which denes the force eld toward which dogmatic reection has

84 KD IV/2, 125; ET, 112113.

85 See particularly Barths answer to the Lessingfrage in KD IV/1, 321322; ET, 292
293.
288 chapter six

to orient itself. Or, in other words, the object of reection, God who jus-
ties sinners, at one and the same time determines the way of knowing
and the method that must be chosen theologically in order to do justice
to this object.86 From beginning to end, knowledge of God is a matter
of saving grace; Barth makes this clear in his prolegomenon,87 and it is
this opposition between the general epistemological interest and a the-
ological, soteriological input that is decisive. Thus it is also made clear
that in Barths concept knowledge of God must be discussed entirely
from an inward perspective.
With this Barth took a fundamental position in a discussion between
himself and his friends in dialectical theology that nally lead to the
break-up of their common front, and which became concretely visible
in the cessation of the periodical Zwischen den Zeiten. The forum in which
dogmatics is practised as reection on what the church says regarding
God is not primarily dened by the public fora of the academy, society,
or even the church itself. Faith, and therefore reection on what the
church says, must focus on the reality that has already been given,
and continues to be given, in revelation.88 Dogmatics as a discipline

86 Already in the foreword to the second edition of the Epistle to the Romans Barth

speaks of the Sache that must dene the method. But even earlier, in the preceding
period, we encounter the realisation that the usual methods of reading the Bible are
totally inadequate to do justice to its content. The Bible is not a moral tract, not a book
that one can do justice to through historical methods. The is found something other,
the Word of God.
87 KD I/1, 2; ET, 3. It is surprising and unusual to encounter the word grace

already in the rst pages of the prolegomenon in this dogmatics, and to realise that
this word is not used guratively or as embellishment. Theology, which is characterised
as a measure of the church to meet this double need, is only possible and worthwhile
in the light of justifying grace, which here too can alone make good what man as
such invariably does badly (p. 4 in the English translation). This statement is not an
easy, pious formula. It fundamentally characterises how in this theology all knowing of
God outside of Gods act of salvation has ceased to oer any certainty. If God is to
be known, that is knowledge of salvation, and not knowledge. This reveals how much
the core question in Barth is immediately and completely theological. It is identied
with the justication of sinners. Epistemology is no longer an antechamber to the
doctrine of justication. Or better, the rupture between God and man is so total that
knowledge of this God, because he is a God of redemption, is knowledge of salvation.
We will return to this in a later section on natural theology. I will now limit myself
to the following. Barths immediate stress on the gracious character of knowledge of
God implies a negative judgement on all attempts to search for signs or grounds for
knowledge of God outside this gracious act. Such searching is denial of the real state of
aairs between God and man.
88 KD I/1, 2; ET, 4.
 the way of knowing god 289

is focused on something that continues to give itself. The soteriological

denition of all knowledge of God now enables us to move toward an
understanding of Barths evaluation of and handling of human faculties
and scientic knowledge in general.

6.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage of Marburg

With Calvin, the question of the possibilities for human knowledge of

God still lies in the framework of a general concept of human knowing.
Man is connected with the world through inner and outward senses,
and particularly through his inward cognitive faculties is embedded in
the hierarchy of things visible and invisible. Generally acknowledged
facts, arranged according to the insights of natural science in that day,
point to the existence of God. As we saw in the hinge, in Kants phi-
losophy the extent and tenability of human knowledge is determined
by critical investigation into the human cognitive faculties. God is no
longer the object of generally accepted knowledge. Since Schleierma-
cher, theology has responded by postulating a dualism between gen-
erally accepted knowledge and faith. The pretence that knowledge of
God as creator and sustainer of the world is compelling was declared
groundless. If we look to Barth, then his vision of the relation of the
sciences and faith is deeply inuenced by the Marburg neo-Kantianism
of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. It is an heritage that was deeply
inuential not only in the dialectic period, but, in the judgement of
J.F. Lohmann in his thorough and convincing study,89 also reached on
into the Kirchliche Dogmatik through to the section on baptism.90 It is, one
might perhaps say, the most important handling of the Kantian legacy
with which Barth came into direct contact.91 It presented him with an
extremely dynamic vision of science in general. Science is not so much
a le of knowledge, but is rather to be viewed as a process in which the
coherence within our reality is constantly dened by the human mind.
A short resume of this critical idealism therefore will not be not out of
place.

89 J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianis-

mus im Rmerbrief und ihre Bedeutung fr die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths,
Berlin/New York 1995, 399.
90 Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus, 382383.
91 See also my Anfngliche Theologie, 3638 en 155157.
290 chapter six

Particularly in Cohens philosophy of science Barth came in touch

with a view in which scientic knowledge was conceived as entirely
and totally the creation of the human mind. In contrast to Kant,
Cohen did not formulate scientic knowledge as the collective result
of two heterogeneous sources, namely the senses and cognition, but
exclusively as the product of thought itself. According to his philosophy,
an appeal to the given, as it plays a role in all sorts of irrationalism
and materialism, has no legitimacy. In his epistemology the given is
regarded an element of thinking itself. Only that which can be found
by thinking itself can be considered as a given.92 Extra-mental reality is
accorded only the role in thinking that the letter X has in mathematics.
X is that which can be dened by thinking. The given is therefore no
longer an unalterable thing, but an object in the literal sense, namely
the Vorwurf of thinking itself.93
For Cohen philosophy is not focused on material reality, but on the
sciences that study this reality. They are in fact the given around which
philosophy is oriented. The laws with which reason works are deposited
in the sciences. By expressly focusing on the science which is in fact
at hand, Cohen disassociates himself from speculative idealism, which
believes that it can develop a system of pure knowledge a priori. His
own system is then that of critical idealism, which attempts to follow and
discover pure thinking itself on the basis of the historical realisations of
thinking. The relation with reality and experience is thus very indirect.
Der echte Idealismus macht sich zwar nicht abhngig sonder durchaus
unabhngig von der Wirklichkeit und von der Erfahrung; um so energi-
scher aber und grndlicher achtet er auf den Zusammenhang mit der
Erfahrung.94
What, now, are the structural points of agreement between Barths
theology and this philosophy of science? First I would note the highly
dynamic view of scientic knowledge, which Barth apparently took over
from Marburg neo-Kantianism in his earliest essays.95 With regard to

92 H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Werke Bd.6. System der Philosophie 1. Teil, hrsg.

von H. Holzhey, (Berlin 19142=) Hildesheim/New York 1977, 82: Dem Denken darf
nur dasjenige als gegeben gelten, was er selbst aufzunden vermag.
93 Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 67.
94 H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens. Werke Bd.7. System der Philosophie 2.Teil, hrsg. von

H. Holzhey, (Berlin 19072=) Hildesheim/New York 1981, 391.

95 See, for instance, Ideen und Einflle zur Religionsphilosophie in: K. Barth,

Vortrge und kleinere Arbeiten (19091914), hrsg. von H.-A. Drewes und H. Stoevesandt,
Zrich 1993, 126138. In his essay he distinguishes between three forms of human
knowing, to wit, theoretical science, ethics and aesthetics. Together they form what is
 the way of knowing god 291

theology Barth proceeds from a particular given, namely the fact of the
church and its proclamation. He takes the reality of the proclamation
and doctrine as the matter of theology, in order to theologically dene
reality a posteriori, in a return to God or his Word as the beginning
and source of all knowledge of God. This linkage of the a posteriori
method and objectivism also appears in the way that thinking proceeds
for Cohen. In his critiques he takes as his point of departure the given
science, but scientic objectivity is made dependent on the judgement
of the source. In Barths dogmatic method too, theological objectivity
is only reached in a consistent retrogression toward the divine Word,
judgement and election. The judgement of what is theologically real,
possible and impossible is dependent on and determined by this divine
act, speaking and election. It is only knowable if men participate in
this Word as a vital event. By proceeding in this way, there is no room
left in this concept for nature or history which is encountered outside
of this act and election God. Man, his history, his world, his destiny
are the X that must be dened through an ever rejuvenating return
to the beginning, namely Gods speaking. Barths rejection of natural
theology, his design of a theological view of time, space, man and
history, ows from this.
A second agreement can be noted in the objectivism, and the anti-
subjectivism that accompanies it, which is characteristic of Cohen, and
which we likewise nd as a characteristic of Barths theology. The
objective element, represented theologically in the concept of the Word,
and in his later theology represented by the history of Jesus Christ,
is primary. The work of the Holy Spirit is entirely contained in this
element. Nor does this change as in his later doctrine of reconciliation,
and very strikingly in the doctrine of baptism, Barth emphatically
makes room for man as the answering subject.

termed Kulturbewutsein. This Kulturbewutsein seems to be a formal concept. It includes

the laws and rules toward which the various elds of human knowledge must orient
themselves. This scientic consciousness is therefore to be sharply distinguished from
a concrete, empirical I. It contains exclusively the rules which must be observed by
thinking in a reconstruction of what men believe they know scientically. For us it is
important that Barth follows Cohen entirely when he gives knowledge of God no place
within the structure of Kulturbewutsein. Knowledge of God is not a matter of generality,
something which can be enforced. Science as such is agnostic, or better, atheistic. In
this essay Barth locates knowledge of God in the reality of the concrete subject. Where
there are living men one can speak of experiencing life in all its mystery, of Erleben, and
there one immediately encounters a realisation of God.
292 chapter six

It is clear that Barths acceptance of the legacy of Marburg neo-

Kantianism brought with it the problem that Kants criticism presented
theology, namely how one can still defend a form of realism involving
revelation while accepting a theoretical epistemological idealism. At the
same time one has to give an answer to the pressing question that
continues to pursue this criticism, namely the question of the relation
of human knowledge to reality. Does this knowledge that men acquire
for themselves by means of scientic methods bring them in touch with
reality in any way? To begin with the latter problem, at the least one
has to say that the status of the surrounding reality has become unclear
in neo-Kantianism. As soon as man has acquired knowledge, he is
dealing with creations of his own mind. Nature becomes the knowledge
of nature. Nature itself has become a precondition, an undened X. In
comparison to what we found in Calvin regarding reality as a mirror
of Gods glory, it has here become pure materiality, without the power
to bear testimony. If nature is a mirror, in this thinking it is a mirror
of the human mind. The world has become empty, undened, and
can only speak again if man begins from his life and mind, as things
are understood in the process of forming judgements. As such, in his
knowledge man encounters only himself. Reality, with its structures and
connections, will never contain a reference to God, because at their
deepest level the structures and connections arise from the mind of
man, are a matter of human understanding. Between the way theology
understands creation and the way science understands nature lies an
unbridgeable gulf. The role of the reality which is investigated by the
natural sciences in the development of knowledge of God has here
become extremely problematic. Barth had learned from Herrmann
that nothing could any longer be expected from the sciences, and that
one had to begin somewhere entirely dierent. With this we reach the
second problem, namely to what reality in revelation theology points.
According to Herrmann (and the young Barth) knowledge of God
arises in the centre of the Ur-experience of the human person, the
immediate reality in which he or she nds themselves as a living per-
son. The knowledge which arises there, or better, that is a reality there,
is dynamic in nature, a vital current of life, Erlebnis. This designates the
anchorage in this world where man is sensitive to God and his action,
where there is a synthesis of divine and human reality. It is precisely
at this point that Barth separated himself from the liberal theological
tradition without, for the rest, distancing himself from a certain form of
revelation realism. However, he no longer speaks of there being a xed
 the way of knowing god 293

bridgehead for Gods revelation in human consciousness, in human

capacities, or of a synthesis with the reality of individual lives. Knowl-
edge of God rests on a personal act carried out by God. That is why
his theology refers to a moment, an origin, conceived geographically
as the vanishing point that falls outside the frame of the picture. Only
those acts of God, outside the grasp and sight of man, bridge that gulf
and assure that man in the last analysis is not left alone with himself in
his niteness. To this end, in KD II/1 Barth develops the concept of the
analogia dei. This concept enables Barth to retain revelation as a very
dynamic form of reality.

6.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia dei

Knowledge of God can not be derived from the existence of the world
and given things. With this, the status of universality and rational
demonstrability is lost for ever. In this respect Barth belongs to the
mainstream of post-Kantian theology. But this does not yet mean that
his theology has a sceptical tenor epistemologically. One the contrary,
one must say. The purpose and direction of Gods revelation is that
He himself becomes the object of human knowledge. In his revelation
God permits this, commands it and grants the means.96 For Barth these
three assertions are constituents of the positive proposition that real
and true knowledge of God with reliable content indeed exists. First,
the three all remind us of the fact that God Himself must act and
speak. Human knowledge can be conceived as a cycle that nds its
start in God. God is however not only a point of origin, He is also
the initiator of the movement, through whom the cycle arises and is
sustained. Second, conceptually this is a form of objectivism which is
expressed in the thesis God is known through God.97 As Father, God
is the subject of knowledge of God, and as God the Spirit He is the
movement itself. Any human knowing of God is only conceivable so
far as man is included in this movement. To the extent that through
the work of the Spirit man is made a participant in this movement,

96 KD II/1, 213; ET, 190.

97 KD II/1, 230; ET, 204: A circular course is involved because God is known by
God, and only by God; because even as an action undertaken and performed by man,
knowledge of God is objectively and subjectively instituted by God Himself and let to
its end by Him; because God the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit is its primary
and proper subject and object.
294 chapter six

one can speak of real knowledge of God. Third, this position makes
clear what the content of the revelation is. The content of knowledge of
God is nothing other than God Himself . In this denition the Son of
God stands for the content of knowledge of God. What does this mean
for human knowledge of God? Is the subjectivity and activity of man
himself in faith wholly absorbed in an action of God? If one begins by
thinking of the relation of God to man in competitive terms, that could
easily be the conclusion. But that is emphatically not what is intended.
According to Barth, because God appears He creates the subject of
knowledge of God.98 Or perhaps we could express it this way: the eye
of faith, in the sense of the acte through which man discovers God in his
works, is not an extension of other acts of knowing, but is an element
of its own, distinguished from them, in which the person becomes a
subject that once again begins to see and receive, but now dierently.
Jngel has described the characteristic of the experience of faith as an
experience with experience, in which all the experiences acquired, and
experiencing itself, are once again experienced anew, from scratch.99
In the experience with God, man is as it were constituted anew as a
believing subject.
Does not faith in this way take on the form of an esoteric closed
circuit? Is access not denied except to those to whom it is given? Epis-
temologically that conclusion is correct. The movement which Barth is
thinking of with the words knowing God can not be compelled. It rests
upon an encounter brought into being by God, on a moment in which
He comes and makes himself the object of human knowing. The rela-
tion which arises here is therefore not symmetrical. He is the Lord who
in his revelation declares himself as the Lord of mankind. Barth there-
fore guards against conceiving the acts of God and the acts of man, the
work of the Spirit and the human act of knowing, as points on the same
plane. Whether the reality of knowledge of God is closed is however a
dierent question. Would it not be better to term Barths theology an
attempt to point to an open mystery? In that case his theological theory
provides a framework where the reader and hearer have their attention
drawn to a possibility that long ago ceased to be an unactualised possi-
bility, but became a reality that presents itself in the lives of people, in
proclamation, in the work of a comforting mother, in the simplicity of
a childrens song. If that is true, must the congurations of the second

98 KD II/1, 22; ET, 21.

99 E. Jngel, Entsprechungen: Gott-Wahrheit-Mensch, Mnchen 1980, 196. Cf. also 176.
 the way of knowing god 295

panel, abstract though they may appear, not rather be considered as

a form mystagogy, which in all their apparent emptiness precisely are
intended to leave room open for the living God himself ?
It is within the context of this question about the veracity of human
knowledge of God that Barth arrives at the unfolding of his doctrine
of the analogia dei. The movement which proceeds from God gains a
hearing among men and achieves its goal. Barth couples this insight
to a number of qualities which should characterise reection regarding
dogma. The constant, unceasing dependence of the work on the Holy
Spirit demands (1) intellectual sobriety, and further, (2) certainty and (3)
trust with regard to human knowledge of God now also are given a
place. We have here arrived at an important motif in Barths theology.
Since Kant the insight into the human character of everything that is
said of God has become widely accepted in Western culture. If people
speak about God, then these are human words, concepts and schemes.
But in the presence of the Biblical witness one now has the room
to speak boldly about human knowledge of God as a undertaking
which succeeds.100 It is important to note the present participle
here. Barth quite deliberately does not speak of a successful undertaking.
Knowing God is not a matter of the past tense. Completing the work
of truth is a matter for God alone. In this way the boundary between
Gods work and our human work is maintained, but without the poison
scepticism. Our work can only be work which succeeds within its
own natural and impassable limits; that is to say, a work which strives
towards its perfection as fullled in God alone.101 In our knowing we
are on the way to the knowing of God. Because it moves between the
two limits of Gods hiddenness and veracity, theology is a theologia via-
torum.102 That means that our attempt to understand something of God
is not self-deception or something with which we deceive others. This
attempt is on the way to success.
It is important here to note carefully the stress that is put on the
trustworthiness of revelation. God desires to let himself be known and
he has the power to accomplish this. In the moment of revelation God
lays his hand on man, and it is from the recognition of that moment
that human thinking and speaking begin to develop. Once Gods voice

100 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208.

101 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208209.
102 KD II/1, 235; ET, 209.
296 chapter six

is heard, it is the responsibility of men to speak that which is heard in

the presence of God, themselves and their fellows.
For a good understanding of Barths theology, it is important to
remember that the accents have shifted in comparison to the dialectic
period. There the inadequacy of all human methods when it came to
speaking about God was central. The dogmatic, critical and dialectical
methods were all limited means which, complementing one another,
gave a description of the task of theology. In KD II/1 the emphasis has
shifted to a positive relation between revelation and human knowing
of God, between human words and concepts on the one side and the
object that is intended with these words and concepts on the other:
God. Barth therefore explicitly states that the dialectic of veiling and
unveiling must not be conceived as static. If veiling and unveiling are
equated with each other as entirely analogous elements, they would
simply neutralise each other as a plus and minus. That is emphatically
not what is intended. It is not a case of something being given with
one hand that is taken away with the other. Gods revelation has an
irreversible direction, namely toward unveiling. The mode of revelation
is hiddenness, but the sense is its truth, or as Barth expresses it, its
veracity.103 One could once again say, in the expression borrowed
from Jngel, say that veiling and unveiling come together in favour
of unveiling. The dialectic movement has a nality. This does not in
any way decrease the fact that the dialectic of veiling and unveiling,
which occurs in ever new forms, makes his theology something like
walking a tightrope. In his earlier work Barth indeed used the image of
the unsuspecting rider on the Bodensee.104 The image comes from a
story by Gustav Schwab. A horseman on his way to a village close to
Lake Constance spurs his steed on and gallops across the snow-covered
plain before him. On arriving in a village he asks directions, and hears
that he has already passed Lake Constance. Without suspecting it, he
has taken the clouds lling the natural bowl in which the lake lay for
a snow-covered plain. It is a striking image. It impresses us with the
thought that, seen from the human perspective, knowledge of God, all
human speaking about God, has no solid basis, like the absurd story of
a ride over the clouds. But the fascination with the absence of a human
foundation slowly makes way for another emphasis, namely the truth
and reality of human knowing of God.

103 KD II/1 242; ET, 215.

104 Romerbrief 2, 276; ET, 293; Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, 24.
 the way of knowing god 297

This does not mean that what Barth intended with the dialectic of
unveiling and veiling disappeared from his theology. In Chapter 8 we
will see yet that the point of this is denitive for his doctrine of baptism.
In his theology Barth was in search of the true connection between
Gods revelation and human knowledge of God. That this connection
is there, that there are links made in all sorts of ways, is for him beyond
dispute. That God and man, regarded conceptually, are incongruent
entities, and human knowledge of God is never to be acquired by
way of direct derivation, is likewise beyond doubt. The question that it
comes down to, theologically, is how human knowledge of God relates
to Gods self-unveiling. If, after the autumn of 1915, it was incongruence
which was in the foreground in the theology, now this incongruence
has been absorbed into a thought which henceforth takes its theological
starting point in the recognition that God imparts knowledge, that God
speaks.
Barth analyses at great length what the consequences are once the
veracity of human knowledge of God is recognised. The terms which
emerge here are thankfulness and worship. Both of these are words,
we must rst note, which t with the new paradigm which makes its
appearance with Barth, namely knowledge of God as the result of an
encounter. In his doctrine of God the reality of knowledge of God is
characterised as a spatial confrontation: man stands before God and
God stands before man. When the possibilities of knowing God are
discussed, Barth does not point to anthropological data. It is rather
under the heading of the readiness of God. Only secondarily does it
rest on the readiness of man, but it is clear that Barth considers the
readiness of man as a possibility that only exists within Gods readiness,
and nowhere else.105
Within the question of the truth of knowledge Barth arrives at an
exposition of the implications of his theory of analogy for theological
language. The entrance to human knowing of God lies exclusively in
the free initiative that proceeds from God. From the side of man there
is no analogy which could connect him with the being of God and with
His majesty. Our knowledge rests on a special permission, command
and capacity for such knowledge. God imparts the event of his self-
knowledge. Barth has described this movement as an analogia dei, and
sharply distinguished this analogy from the analogia entis which he nds

105 KD II/1, 142; ET, 128.

298 chapter six

in its most acute form in the dogmatic constitution Dei lius of Vatican
I. This constitution takes a position against the denial of the general
knowability of God.106 According to Barths interpretation this consti-
tution makes a distinction between God as principium omnium et nem on
the one side and God as dominum nostrum on the other. This erodes the
unity of God. Knowledge of God is divided up into a knowing that can
be gained outside of revelation, leading to a knowing of God as origin
and goal, and a knowing of God as Father that is gained through rev-
elation. What makes Barths interpretation interesting is not so much
whether he is right or wrong, but his evaluation of this duality in the
knowledge of God. Any form of dierentiation in the ways of knowing
is interpreted by Barth as an attack on the unity of God in his revela-
tion. Once it has been established that Jesus Christ, witnessed to by the
prophets and apostles, is the being of the church and the one Word
of God, then any other sort of knowing is an alien and hostile element
in Christian doctrine.107 The confession that God is one must also be
expressed in the answer to the question of the way of knowing. On the
basis of this principle, there can only be one way to knowing, namely
the self-unveiling which coincides with Christ. Within this concept one
can not give credence to the idea of an initial notion of God, a rst
realisation or trace of his presence or mystery, because from the outset
it is considered a competing approach. Once brought inside the gates
of Christian theology, it will reveal itself as a Trojan horse. The know-
ing of the one true God does not have its origin with man, in his reason
or imagination; it has its origin in an act, a revelation of God. Knowl-
edge of God does not have its ground in a conclusion which is drawn
on the basis of a predicate which can be attributed to both God and
man. According to Barth that is the sin, the mortal sin, of the analogia
entis doctrine: the same concept of being which is attributed to God as a
predicate in a sublime sense is also attributedto be sure, not in equal
measure, but indeed in a similar mannerto the creature. Therefore,
according to Barth, thinking about the relation of God to man becomes
a miscalculated arrogance on the part of man. We will return to this in

106 H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum denitionum et declarationum de rebus dei et morum

(ed. P. Hnermann), Freiburg i.B. 199137, Nr.3004: Eadem sancta mater Ecclesia tenet
et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et nem, naturali humanae rationis lumine
e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse en nr. 3026: Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum,
creatorem en Dominum nostrum per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae
lumine certo cognosci non posse, anathema sit.
107 KD II/1, 87; ET, 80.
 the way of knowing god 299

the subsequent section on Barths crusade against natural theology. But

it is suciently clear now that Barth allows no room for the traces of
divine presence that played such a prominent role in the rst panel.
Calvin left no doubt that man, through his capacities, stimulated by the
signs of the presence of Gods Spirit, really could not help but be aware
of the living God, were it not that under the inuence of sin his fac-
ulties had been thrown out of joint and these signs become hidden. In
Barths concept, knowledge of God rests at all times on a gracious act
of God, not on a reference structure intertwined with what is earthly,
but on a relation which is being created by God. Nature, or what is
given, is not a priori a creation of God, not a priori a mirror. If there
is an analogy between God and the creature, it is an analogy that is
created ever anew by God in his gracious act.108 We can here refer back
to what was said earlier when we discussed Jesus as sacrament. Knowl-
edge of God is based on a relation that is created through Gods act in
Jesus and through the work of the Spirit being unveiled to man. Knowl-
edge of God is saving knowledge, it is a consequence of an salvic act,
has the structure of a covenant of grace. It is this act that now denes
Barths view of theological language, thus of the words, concepts and
statements that are used to speak of God.
First of all, it is striking how much Barth radicalises the incongruence
between God and man in comparison with traditional doctrines of rev-
elation and God. He regards it as half-hearted in the tradition that the-
ologians had the inclination to exercise a thoroughgoing critique with
regard to anthropomorphisms in the Bible, but then did not see that
the apophatic manner of speaking about God, by using terms such as
incomprehensibility, unchangeableness and eternity, in fact was equally
anthropomorphic.109 The core of his critique is that, by a methods of
spiritualising the incongruence between men and God, the impression
has been created that it can be transcended.
According to Barth, the truth of our knowledge of God is only con-
ceivable if God in his coming also supplies the means of our thinking
and speaking. In his coming He incorporates the means of our thinking
and our language into his own speaking, thereby making thinking and
language good, whole and tting for a task for which it in itself is inad-
equate.110 The dierence with Calvin is remarkable. In Calvins empha-

108 KD II/1, 92; ET, 85.

109 KD II/1, 250; ET, 222.
110 KD II/1, 252; ET, 223224.
300 chapter six

sis on the accommodation of God, the stress on the humility of human

knowledge of God is maintained. Gods majesty stands front and cen-
tre. In Barth the stress lies on the permission and command of God, on
the taking on of human words and concepts. We may use language in
the condence that God himself involves our language and accommo-
dates it in his work. In this, the tendency of Barths theology becomes
unprecedentedly positive and turns against the agnosticism that doubts
the possibility of knowledge of God. He develops the reality of this
acceptance through his interpretation of analogy, the analogy of faith.
What does analogia dei mean? The meaning of the words which we
apply to God and to earthly reality is neither completely congruent nor
complete incongruent, but there is a similarity, a partial agreement.111
Revelation makes it clear that we can speak of such a congruent rela-
tion between our words and Gods being. As always, here too Barth
emphasises the element of incongruence. An example is already found
in the word analogy. In revelation man not only receives knowledge
of God (x) but also knowledge of the relation Gods being and this
human word (x:a). In short, the word analogy presents itself as a suit-
able word. Yet Barth is quick to add that this relation does not simply
coincide with what we normally term analogy. When we choose the
word analogy, the element of dissimilarity with what obtains for anal-
ogy within earthly relationships is always greater than the similarity.
What we mean by words used for God and his acts does not coincide
with the meaning of the word with God. The polemic against the idea
that knowledge of God could be derived from human words brings
Barth to the pronouncement that everything that we know as similar-
ity is not identical with the similarity meant here.112 That is to say, the
singularity of this similarity is primary, but acknowledgement of this sin-
gularity does not prevent there evidently being something in the word
similarity that makes this word suitable to use for the relation created
by God. Is this logical? It is characteristic of Barths concept that he
does not work this aspect out entirely, but concentrates all attention
on the event of revelation in which a human word or concept is taken
into the service of Gods revelation. God himself is the one who in his
revelation, in his coming, captures the words, as it were, and makes
them suitable.113 The element of incongruence, of not being obvious,

111 KD II/1, 254; ET, 225.

112 KD II/1, 255; ET, 226.
113 Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 285 in this connection speaks of the analogy
 the way of knowing god 301

of not being capable of representation is retained, but as a qualier

of a succeeding indicator. The relation that is created in revelation
between Gods reality and our world is the active principle that draws
this word to it, as it were. Something like a shift of subjects takes place.
A word which normally describes a relation of an object in our world to
another object in our world (b:c) becomes caught up in the force eld
of revelation. The relation of similarity created by God (x:a) is reected
in what we ordinarily call similarity, so that what we usually denote by
the concept of similarity becomes similar with the similarity constituted
in revelation.114 Language comes home in the force eld of Gods reve-
lation. In contrast to what we saw with Kant in Chapter 5, in this view
of proportional analogy not only is a relationship revealed, but one also
comes to know the identity of the X. Once again the example of the
concept of fatherhood can be of service to us here. The term father
is an indication of a relationship, namely the relationship of a father to
a child, and in revelation is applied as a mirror to make a relation in
God visible. God, Barth says, comes to meet us in our language, and
makes a choice, which we must accept in obedience. Thus, the words
and concepts chosen by men in the tradition of Christianity are not
random; they are ultimately not based on human construction, but are
a matter of obediently following what God has done in his revelation.115
Barth goes still a step further. When it comes to consonance between
our language and Gods being, according to Barth one must assume
that this consonance already previously existed in God. The possibility
of a successful indicator lies in God himself. He is in himself the
onefor instance, the fatherwho loves. If the human activity, the
application of words to God, is moving toward success, that success is
not based on a lie or a ction or on the illegitimate use of these earthly
words. The opposite is the case. Our earthly words are not alienated
from their real milieu; rather, God brings home terms which belong to
him in the truest sense. He came to his own, as John 1:11 puts it.116
At the very least this is a remarkable and certainly contrary vision
of language, which can give rise to all kinds of speculation. What

of advent. God is not an unknown X, but he makes himself known. The relation
between x:a is not a static relationship; it is a movement through which it comes to
be known.
114 KD II/1, 255; ET, 226227.
115 KD II/1, 256; ET, 227.
116 KD II/1, 257; ET, 228.
302 chapter six

does Barth intend with this view of language? In the most original
sense language, the words which we apply to him, belongs to God.
If words succeed in expressing who God is and what He does, then
that is because these words are in the truest sense His. What this
concept comes down to, one can note, is a tremendous turn about, a
theological reversal of the concept of language. The assertion that God
is ineable and incomprehensible dominates the pre-modern panel.
God makes himself known in his revelation, and the question of how
this operation relates to God in himself is not a subject for reection.
That is something which is forbidden to man. The recognition that
God is always more than he allows be seen in his working does not
threaten the trustworthiness of his works and promises; that was the
conclusion in Chapter 3, on the basis of the discussion of Calvins
doctrine of God. But we must realise that the proposition Deus semper
maior does not directly result in the view of God as deus absolutus. In
the second panel there is explicit reection on the way in which Gods
working is anchored within his inter-Trinitarian being. Here too there
is a theocentric perspective, but the background against which the
discussion is set has fundamentally changed. If speaking about God
in the pre-modern panel was discussed in terms of accommodated
speech, and with that the stress lay on the limitedness and inadequacy
of human language with respect to divine reality, now human words
and concepts are placed within the perspective of God, who has power
over human language and captures the language again and again, to
prove his power and dominion over it. The point of Barths theology
is the veracity of knowledge of God. In the hinge section on Kant
we noted that God is essentially the unknown, who stands outside of
language and concepts. This dogma of modernity is now powerfully
contradicted in this concept. God is not the ineable; God himself
ultimately speaks in the language of men, takes possession of it, dwells
in human language and words, and can do that because the Word,
which is characteristic of Him, has its deepest being in language, is
communicative. Compared to that, our use of words such as father,
son, love and mother is after the fact.
Barth formulates this in legal terms. In this he reminds us of Calvin.
God has a lawful claim on our language.117 Father, son and love only
receive their true meaning in their application to God, who in his

117 KD II/1, 259; ET, 229.

 the way of knowing god 303

own deeds imparts content to these terms. According to Barth, this

is likewise the case for concepts that have passed in the tradition for
illegitimate anthropomorphisms, such as hearing and seeing. Hearing
and seeing are in the truest sense qualities of God, and he cites the
familiar passage from Psalm 94:9, Does he that planted the ear not
hear, he that moulded the eye not see? These terms too come home in
revelation.
Its point of origin is decisive for Barths teaching on analogy. The
analogy does not have its origin in this world; ontologically it has its
origin in God. It exists because God draws a relation between his
own being and our being. The analogy is thus not a latent quality of
earthly reality. One may not, as with an analogia entis, rst place God
and man in a comprehensive relation of being in order to subsequently
climb to God from the common being of things. The analogy only
exists as an event if it pleases God to reect his own being in our
human relations. The analogy is created each time that God brings
the words and concepts home. We recognise what is rightly termed
Barths actualism. One can not speak of the analogy outside of Gods
deeds. Knowledge of this act, of the created relationship, then also
belongs to this deed. Barth clearly separates this from what he regards
as the error of natural theology, both in liberal Protestant and Roman
Catholic theology. According to Barth, in these currents the nature of
the analogic relation as an act is transformed into a latent quality of
being, and this transformation would spell the end for the realisation of
a constant dependence on Gods act.
Here we encounter the hidden cultural presupposition of the discus-
sion of analogy in KD II/1. The actualism presupposes a culture in
which nature and history are experienced as ambivalent or empty. A
part of the attractiveness of Barths concept of the knowledge of God
is apparently that it ts with the experience of the emptiness of things.
The experience that reality is pure materiality, and man as a part of
this materiality is confronted with his niteness, is given full play. Were
reality not to receive a new character in its critical involvement with
God and be experienced afresh, it would remain essentially dumb and
meaningless. Only in the search for this relation will be truth be found.
Our critique on this point is conrmed by the discussion that Barth
engages in with the teaching on analogy found in Quenstedt (1617
1688).
Barth unfolds his own position in thinking about analogy by means
of a critique of Quenstedt, whom he regards as a spokesman for what
304 chapter six

Lutheran Protestant orthodoxy has had to say on this point.118 What

are the grounds for applying the same concepts to God and man?
Quenstedt suggests that the truth of human knowledge of God rests
on an analogia attributionis intrinsecae. The attribution of qualities to both
God and man takes place on the basis of the fact that they originally
have their existence in God, and likewise exist in man, to be sure in
unequal degree (inaequaliter). In Quenstedt Barth descries the threaten-
ing shadow of an analogia entis doctrine. This would mean that in princi-
ple the reasoning could be reversed and could lead to assertions about
God that were not dependent on Jesus Christ, on Gods salvic revela-
tion, but on a being that encompasses both God and man. This could
have been avoided if Quenstedt had spoken of an analogia attributionis
extrinsecae.119 Indeed, according to Barth, Quenstedt could have avoided
this if he had handled the rst article of the Apostles Creed similarly
to the second, that is to say, had he in fact subsumed the article on cre-
ation under the doctrine of justication. Barths critique of Quenstedt
can hardly be taken seriously historically. It would suggest that in his
time Quenstedt actually could have written dierently. Barths critique
ts entirely within his thesis that Protestant theology has fallen into
decline. It is precisely this thesis however which indicates that Barth
himself had too little awareness of the way his own systematic reection
was shaped by the culture in which he lived. He appears not to have
seen that his own argument for the external and injected character
of analogy is deeply linked with an intellectual climate in which the
presence of God in creation, the connection of creation and man with
God, is seriously problematised. The immanent critique that McCor-
mack presented of Barths argument in this connection is worth not-
ing.120 Barth would not have had to reject Ouenstedts intrinsecae, if he
had interpreted it within the possibilities that his own concept oered
him. If Barth had kept in mind that God also acted as the God of the
covenant in his acts as creator, there would have been no need to reject
the intrinsecae. In that case there is, as it happens, also an analogia attribu-
tionis intrinsecae with regard to the creation, thus at the ontological level,
which exists protologically and eschatologically by virtue of Gods gra-

118 KD II/1, 267275; ET, 237243.

119 KD II/1, 270; ET, 239.
120 Bruce McCormack, Par.27 The Limits of the Knowledge of God. Theses on

the Theological Epistemology of Karl Barth in: ZdTh 15 (1999), 7586, part. 8385.
 the way of knowing god 305

cious act, and not by virtue of a power residing in the creation itself.121
This permits us to conclude that Barth speaks more negatively about
creation and the world than is necessary within the framework of his
own theology. That critique deserves support. Further on in Barths
doctrine of God, in his discussion of the doctrine of qualities, the out-
lines of his doctrine of creation as the outward ground of the covenant
already become visible. Creation is then no longer alien to grace, and
the possibility arises for a further expansion of the theories on analogy,
as does take place in the doctrines regarding creation.
Despite these possibilities for an immanent critique and emendation,
the function of Barths rejection of intrinsecae as a double signal must
not be underestimated. On the positive side, the rejection of intrinsecae
serves to protect the dialectic of veiling and unveiling. Barth is appre-
hensive about every kind of thought which believes that it can rea-
son back to God from the generally human, from an already present
and transferable identity. Negatively, the rejection is a signal of his
view that theologically there is hardly any place for the notion of the
indwelling of Gods Spirit, for the traces and channels that are instru-
ments of Gods Spirit, for theological perception of horizontal struc-
tures and phenomena that begin to speak precisely in the gospels eld
of inuence. Theologically there is a place for the coming of Gods Spirit,
but in terms of geometry that is a vertical event which eclipses every-
thing which happens on the horizontal axis and stands independent of
it.
Barths interpretation of the metaphor of the mirror in ICorinthians
13 is connected with this. The world is not in itself a mirror, nor is
the life of Jesus a mirror. Earthly things become mirrors at the moment
God is pleased to reveal himself in them. Words such as father, mother,
love, care and punishment become mirrors at the moment they are
overtaken and taken over by Gods deeds. God goes after the reality
which is estranged from Him and brings it again into the domain where
it originally belonged.
Barth has been followed on this point by countless others: there is
no way from our reality to knowledge of God. The world is not a
mirror of Gods goodness and care. This negation, directed by Barth
against every attempt to acquire salvation apart from God, can also
set itself up as an autonomous principle. This can occur, for example,

121 McCormack, The Limits of the Knowledge of God, 84.

306 chapter six

when the denial that the world as such, in itself is a direct reference
to God is presented as a truth of faith, and the world is regarded
as empty and in itself meaningless for this theological reason. While
Barths thinking was intended to impress upon his public that speaking
of the world as a mirror can never be separated from Gods active work,
imperceptibly the emphasis can shift to the conviction, possibly with a
reference to Nietzsche, that the world is cold, meaningless and God-
forsaken. A theological convictionnamely that saving knowledge of
God is always a work of the Holy Spiritthen keeps company with a
view of nature in which nature is a self-referential reality determined by
patterns, which as such has nothing to do with God.
The barriers thrown up in KD II/1 with respect to the way in which
the natural reality which surrounds us was traditionally brought into
theology reveals Barths own rootage within the post-Kantian tradition.
Reality is only used theologically in strict relation to, and in participa-
tion in the movement of revelation. Only there, where human knowing
participates in the manner in which God makes himself known in sec-
ondary objectivity, can there be theological objectivity. Outside of this
movement there is, theologically speaking, no true knowledge. Thus
one can also understand theoretically why Barth says he feels uneasy
with the strange generality with which the tradition speaks of Gods
relation to the creature. If we dare to speak of God on the basis of
the creation, then, according to him, that is on the basis of an addi-
tional revelation which illuminates it. Barths completely idiosyncratic
and contrary view of what are termed the nature psalms aords a good
illustration of where this theological conviction can lead in exegesis.
For instance, with regard to Psalm 104, he asks how the joy over the
works of creation can be distinguished from the optimism of 18th cen-
tury physio-theology, which collapsed like a house of cards as a result
of the 1754 earthquake in Lisbon. The reading of the nature psalms in
the second panel represents an attitude of mind and mentality that is
more dismayed by the horrors of an earthquake than it is amazed by
a rey. The spectre of Darwin appears on the stage as we hear that
nature yields a spectacle of the struggle of every creature against every
other for mere existence.122 Within this new constellation there is no
intrinsic relation between this, our familiar reality, and God. Where,
asks Barth with an eye to Psalm 104, where does the image of the world

122 KD II/1, 126; ET, 114.

 the way of knowing god 307

that the psalmist has bear witness as such to an order and harmony in
which one can immediately read the divinity, wisdom and goodness of
the Creator?123 In his view one cannot for a moment read the joy of
Psalm 104 without the eschatological key of Revelation 21:15, Behold,
I make all things new. According to Barth there is only one conclusion
possible: the goodness of creation, its intention, is a divine judgement:
it is good in Gods eyes. Goodness and pleasantness are not qualities of
the creation; their reality lies entirely in Gods judgement. This judge-
ment of God does not for a moment reect things as they are. The
starting point for judging and knowing theologically is the covenant of
grace. Such an evaluation betrays not only the presence of a dierent
mentality, but in terms of theory of knowledge, a neo-Kantian legacy.
Reality as it is perceived by the senses is no longer as such ontologically
dened by its relation to God. It no longer has its existence in a hier-
archy of being, in which this existence as such must be thought to be
dependent on God. There is a relation, but it must time and again be
made by God and be revealed to man through the work of the Spirit.
It is a relation which can only be spoken of theologically in reference
to the extraordinary judgements and acts of God. Thus Barth makes
it clear that creation is a theological concept which is only meaningful
and receives objectivity in the light of Gods particular acts. The con-
cept of creation is never in any way an immanent quality of this world,
and has no continuity within this context.
The dierence from Calvin seems at rst sight only a matter of
degree. For him too the Creator-creature relationship is not something
which proceeds from creation. Calvin conceives God as the highest
active force which, through the hidden operation of the Holy Spirit,
works and supports creation everywhere, at all times. But the dif-
ference is nevertheless fundamental, if one recalls that Barth explic-
itly must postulate what is self-evident in Calvin: for Barth reality
is in itself dumb, meaningless and highly ambiguous. In the second
panel, in contrast to the rst, there is no manner of conceiving Gods
indwelling. Therefore Barth begins with the event of revelation. It is
his conviction that something is read into the nature psalms that is not
present in reality as such. It is an eschatological reading of the world
of creation. Phenomena are in fact seen in the light of the world to
come. The denitive moment that invites us to see the phenomena

123 KD II/1, 126; ET, 114.

308 chapter six

as praise of the Creator and as the work of his wisdom is not con-
nected with any element that is intrinsic in that creation, but lies on
the other side of it. God himself must make his works into the content
of his Word and his judgement. Only then does one arrive at knowl-
edge.
One can ask whether, in his battle against natural theology, Barth
has not arrived at a more radical standpoint than was necessary on
the basis of his own theological point of departure. He embraces a
view of life and the world according to which the works of God are
incomprehensible, opaque, indeed dark and strange, in their being
and nature.124 Nature is blind and coarse materiality, and sneers at
man rather than being a smiling source. Speaking theologically, Barth
stresses the absence of God from the world. If phenomena do speak,
they proclaim their own insuciency.
Reality only becomes a mirror to the extent that there is ontologi-
cally an analogia dei.125 The relation that leads to knowledge of God is
a separate event, which indeed takes place in the sphere of creation,
but which is not interwoven with this created reality. The ambiguity of
the world in which we live is thus theologically founded, and the expe-
rience of the world as creation can only be understood as theological
designation.

6.15. Faith and certainty

At the end of the discussion of the truth of knowledge of God Barth

comes to speak about the certainty of faith. Considered systematically,
knowledge of God is participation by man in the movement that is
expressed in the thesis God is known through God. What does this
mean for faith? Can a guarantee be given that the reality described
is the circulus vertitatis Dei and not a circulus vitiosus? Peculiar to Barths
radicalism is that in his answer he maintains the dialectic that we

124 KD II/1, 127; ET, 115.

125 Later, steered in that direction by D. Bonhoeer, in his creation doctrine Barth
would speak of a analogia relationis. As there is in God a calling I which relates to a called
Thou, so God relates to the persons He calls, and so these persons also relate to one
another in the human estate, I and thou, man and woman. The world is understood
as a series of relations that have a correspondence in the divine being Himself. See
KD III/1, 219220; ET, 195196. Following this line one may expect a more positive,
non-tragic recognition of otherness.
 the way of knowing god 309

always encounter in his doctrine of revelation, namely the dialectic of

veiling and unveiling. Now, in the description of faith, it takes the form
of faith and disputation.
The dierence between disputation and doubt was mentioned ear-
lier. Disputation stands within the circle of faith, indeed itself lives from
the contact by God. Doubt, on the contrary, falls outside the correla-
tion of faith and revelation. In disputation the believer is aected by
the question of whether he or she is really indeed involved with God,
or whether he or she has been fumbling around in the dark. Barth
emphatically rejects every attempt to provide a support or guarantee
for faith outside the reality of faith. He regards the solution of spec-
ulative idealism, which would have our thinking correspond with the
thinking of an absolute spirit, or that faith is conrmed because it is
associated with the highest good, as escape routes that only call up
doubt. There is a vast dierence between doubt and disputation. Doubt
seeks for grounds outside the encounter with God. Only in disputa-
tion do things get serious, because disputation searches for and asks
of God.126 Disputation itself appears to be a phenomenon that belongs
precisely in the circle of faith and encounter with God. Disputation
expects an answer from God himself, dies of the question and precisely
in this dying, in this way, is there a chance that God himself speaks and
acts.
Only the way of faith, in the asking of God himself, will faith ulti-
mately nd rest and ground under its feet. This also means that the
reassurance that faith gives, Sicherung, is accompanied with an unset-
tlement, Entsicherung.127 Faith knows that it can not be founded on the
strength of autonomous thinking, on evidence of a moral order, on the
hypothesis of an abstract Spirit. Barth emphatically screens faith o
against such things. Faith renounces these things when it sees God, and
expects and receives an answer from him. The systematic unfolding of
knowledge of God can thus in turn not nd its support in any other
systematic construction; it can have its foundation only outside itself, in
Gods speaking. Barths theology leaves no other way out. Faith refuses
to grasp after any axioms and guarantees.128
It will be worthwhile, by way of evaluation, to glance back at the rst
panel. Practically, one nds a similar radicality in Calvin too, when

126 KD II/1, 281; ET, 248.

127 KD II/1, 281; ET, 248.
128 KD II/1, 282; ET, 249.
310 chapter six

he points one to the realm of Word and Spirit for the certainty of
faith. One receives certainty of God and his salvation only because the
content of the Gospel is personally impressed on the believers heart.
The element of being convinced, persuasio, and commitment, are the
work of the Holy Spirit. It is also obvious that there is a dierence. For
Calvin human knowledge of God is still supported by a number of self-
evident cultural and intellectual truths. That God exists, that He works,
is so evident in the rst panel that only the malevolent would deny it.
It is part of the colour scheme of the whole painting. With Barth it
is no longer malicious and stubborn folk who deny these self-evident
truths; the unsettling is a subject which becomes a theme within the
discussion of faith itself. Every philosophical support or conrmation
is suspect in advance of being natural theology. The grounds that
faith itself gives on the one side, and the cultural and philosophical
evidences on the other, have been dispersed like a school of sh, and
no longer bear on each other. Is that a purication of faith, or also an
impoverishment?
Barth undoubtedly saw the Entsicherung as a necessary purication.
Purer means that it is now clearer than before what faith ultimately
rests upon, namely on Gods own Word, on Christ. Religious knowl-
edge has its own source and cannot be derived from other evidence
than that which supports faith itself. And yet, as the further develop-
ment of Barths own theology reveals, the question of the universality
of God cannot be suppressed. Even as Christian theology in its modern
form acknowledges that it ultimately lives from Gods own speaking,
from his Word, then one teeters on the edge of esoteric insularity if
one refuses to examine the question of how this Word relates to the
world of experience shared with other human beings. It is not without
reason that the viewpoint of Gods universality has once again been
thought through from various sides, for instance by Pannenberg and
Jngel, the former by demanding that the question of truth be explicitly
taken up by theology, the latter by developing a theological anthro-
pology that can also make meaningful and plausible pronouncements
about mankind outside of faith. Such attempts are theologically linked,
because they take into account the fact that in the Christian creed the
Father of Jesus Christ is the same as God the Creator.
 the way of knowing god 311

6.16. Natural theology

Within the context of the question of the knowability of God, in KD

II/1 Barth settles the score with natural theology. For him, the term
natural theology represents the negative ip side of his revelation
theology. He discusses the matter in the sections The Readiness of
God and The Readiness of Man, thus as a phenomenon that deserves
attention precisely at that point, because in his eyes natural theology
is diametrically opposed to the foremost thesis of revelation theology:
knowledge of God is possible exclusively on the basis of Gods gracious
revelation. Why does Barth so vigorously contest natural theology,
and why should the pages that he devotes to this dispute be among
the ercest in Kirchliche Dogmatik? It is because natural theology stands
for the attempt on the part of man to justify himself before God. If
it has once been recognised that knowledge of God exists only as a
reality that is summoned up and maintained through Gods readiness,
any suggestion that there could be true knowledge of God outside this
movement of Gods action cannot even be discussed in principle.129 It
is in this way, and no other, that Barth interpreted natural theology:
as a denial of the fact that knowledge of God is a grace. In his eyes
natural theology is nothing but a theologoumenon; behind the concept
of knowledge of God outside grace stands the concrete subject of the
natural man, who wants to be justied in this life without God. The
natural man is inclusive of enmity toward God, the resolution or
veiled refusal to live from Gods grace. Barth paints the debate for us as
a spiritual struggle. In these pages of his dogmatic work, Barth comes to
the strongest identication that one can arrive at in theology. He terms
the Barmen declaration a miracle which can not be dismissed as a
pretty little discovery of the theologians.130 It is likewise no less than
a judgement of faith when in this context Barth assigns to the church
the role of a witness which found itself guarded by the Word of God
in contemporaneous self-attestation.131 These designations reveal the
degree to which prophecy and theology can coincide in this concept.
They are among the rare moments within his dogmatic work when
Barth forthrightly passes judgement on a historical situation, and in the

129 KD II/1, 93; ET, 85.

130 KD II/1, 198; ET, 176. See also note 17.
131 KD II/1, 198; ET, 177.
312 chapter six

light of this situation illuminates a tradition that that for more than 200
years now has prepared the destruction of the church.132
As Birkner has convincingly demonstrated, with his pejorative use
of the term natural theology Barth stands in a longer tradition in
which natural theology functioned as a designation for heresy and to
stigmatise those to whose thought it was applied.133 It became a polemic
term and an imputation of theological error. The struggle against the
natural man has a function similar to Calvins struggle against the lack
of pietas, the lack of an adequate life style. While Calvin appeared to
be constantly confounded by the tenacity of human hypocrisy, by the
feigned obedience to God, by the pockets of resistance in the recesses
of the human heart, Barth descries the natural man134 as far as the
eye reaches,135 who refuses to expect everything from God. In KD II/1
the empirical man and the subject living from Gods grace do not
entirely coincide. The incongruence is maintained with regard to the

132 KD II/1, 197; ET, 175. Literal citation from the commentary that was spoken by
Hans Asmussen as explanation with the theses.
133 See H.J. Birkner, Natrliche Theologie und Oenbarungstheologie. Ein theolo-

giegeschichtlicher berblick, Neue Zeitschrift fr systematische Theologie 3 (1961), 274295,

287. The term natural theology has a very long history of polemic use. As appears
from the overview of theological history oered by Birkner, since Kant the term has
had a pejorative signicance, serving to characterise the inadequacy of the position
of those whose theology was so identied. In modern theological history the term has
become a stereotype in disputes, useful for pillorying ones opponent. Already in Ritschl
the term functions to denote that theology which in his eyes remains stuck in a heathen
morass because in its doctrines of God it remains connected with Greek metaphysics.
For Ritschl true Christian theology is therefore characterised by explicitly taking its
point of departure from the spirit, as opposed to nature. For Barth the term incorpo-
rates a denition of what Christian theology can not be, namely a domestication of
revelation, giving it a middle-class outlook: the Christian as bourgeois (KD II/1, 157;
cf. ET, 141). Despite the pejorative connotation the term took on in modern theological
history, there is unmistakably a continuity which can be observed with its pre-Kantian
meaning. As was already sketched above, in the name of natural theology reection
on the relation or connection with contemporary thinking receives a place in theol-
ogy. The question is not if there should be this connection with modern culture, but,
as Gestrich correctly notes, how this connection takes place. Barths rejection of nat-
ural theology therefore anything but excludes all sorts of connections being made in
his theology too with what presents itself as acceptable or plausible in his own culture.
A famous example of such a connection within Barths theology is his reception of
the religious critique of Feuerbach and Marx: religion as an absolutising of a human
construct or as legitimisation of bourgeois society. From the rst edition of the Epistle
to the Romans Barth was applauded by the critics of historical Christianity because he
incorporated their critique of religion in his own theology.
134 KD II/1, 93; ET, 85.
135 KD II/1, 148, 150, 157; ET for example 133, 134, 137.
 the way of knowing god 313

believing subject. It can be observed historically that men proceed

from the assumption that God is already present in one manner or
another in their domain and sphere, God as a being of consequence
with whom we are directly related. Natural theology proceeds from
a direct connection between God and man, and on the basis of this
direct connection can hypostatise or identify itself in whole or in part
with God.136 The image which Barth gives is a closed circle. It is a
circle which will not permit itself to be broken open, and in which
from the onset all that appears is a manifestation of something human,
something of this world. The system is from its inception immune to the
notion of God as the Other, as alterity, because everything that appears
is immediately encapsulated and vitiated within its own system.
There has been an immense amount said and written in modern
Barth research about the function of Barths dispute with natural the-
ology. If anywhere, it is in this polemic that it becomes clear just how
much diculty modern Christian theology has coming to grips with
the relation between faith and knowing, church and culture, the con-
nection between the two entities. That there is a relationship between
faith and culture is not a point of discussion, the question is only how
and where this connection runs. Barths argument with Brunner reveals
the extent to which a starting point in creation theology had become
impossible for Barth.137 Barth could only consider the use of concepts
from creation theology as a cover for the autonomy of earthly powers
and processes in opposition to God. That Barthand in his footsteps
the Barmen Declarationbroke with the two-source theory of Refor-
mation tradition is a signal that concepts such as nature, creation and
history have become ambivalent and closed entities in post-Kantian
theology. With Barth an experience of reality becomes visible, we might
say, which lacks the inner mental capacity to see more in nature than
an alien reality, an unknown X, which rst and foremost is the object
of scientic denition and description.
Several conclusions are now in order. We conclude that Barth, in
expounding knowledge of God, chooses a way that makes it clear that
theological epistemology is anything but a neutral prolegomenon. Epis-
temology is in fact already a part of the content of doctrines of God.

136 KD II/1, 151; ET, 136.

137 Brunner still worked with notions from creation theology. He proceeded from the
distinction between an imago Dei formalis and imago Dei materalis, the former of which also
continued to exist after the fall and could be used theologically.
314 chapter six

One cannot speak about the knowing of God in general, outside of

revelation itself. How knowledge of God comes to be and is replen-
ished can only be conceived as a result of Gods own coming; in Barths
own terminology, it is a consequence of revelation. The way of reve-
lation is not received without the content (Christ) and the subject of
this revelation. In a certain sense, in his thought Barth carries through
a movement which dierentiates theology and makes it self-sucient,
which was completed for philosophy in the epistemology of Kant and
his followers. In the history of philosophy, epistemology liberated itself
from a theological framework. Barth completes this process of emanci-
pation for theology. In his theological concept of knowing God, he no
longer looks to explicit support from observations of a general episte-
mological nature. That does not say that his concept can not implicitly
include all sorts of insights and elements from its cultural and philo-
sophical environment. The process of inclusion is in principle eclectic
in nature. Every form of a preambula dei as a necessary entrance to the
really theological is replaced by the conviction that God in his majesty
is able to use any means, without this having the result that means
and methods can be chosen at will, as if it made no dierence. In his
principled eclecticism Barth does anything but defend indierence and
capriciousness, although he does go to cudgels with regard to making
any particular method or epistemology a matter of principle. There is
hardly any reection on human capacities, let alone support for their
having any separate place in his theology. They are entirely secondary
in comparison with the speaking and acts of God. In Barths personalis-
tic and voluntaristic language, all attention is focused on the command
and permission that God gives, and the person who in obedience seeks
to follow God in his revelation.
A second conclusion is that no status of perfection can ever be
attributed to the concepts and images that we form and apply to God.
They are in themselves never a work of God, but mans work. There
remains a distinction between the speaking of God and the speaking
of men. Dogma is thereby characterised as an eschatological entity; the
incongruence continues to exist from the side of man. We can indeed
call on and use human words, concepts and images in the intercourse
between God and man. Through Gods grace they can become mirrors
of Gods greatness and his turn toward man. Within a theologia viatorum,
they are to be esteemed as means of blessing.
Third, Barths teaching on analogy is a radical theological answer
to a vision of reality presented by Kants philosophy. His concept of
 the way of knowing god 315

the reality of knowledge of God is an attempt to give the reality of

knowledge of God a place in the face of post-Kantian agnosticism. This
world in itself has no gateway to God, and there are no bridgeheads
where men can get a foot on the ground. The only possibility of
knowing God lies in God himself building the bridge, creating the
analogy, and making himself knowable in our reality, granting signs of
himself.
 chapter seven

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

7.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of Gods being.

The anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision

With whom or what is man dealing? Since modernity penetrated West-

ern cultural circles in scores of ways, inhabitants of the West have been
made deeply aware that it is chiey themselves they are dealing with,
in one sense or another. Humanity is alone by itself in the world, in
all its niteness. This realisation is revolutionary in comparison to the
rst panel. Here, the hinge holding the two panels together represents
a fault line. The consequences for faith and theology were paradigmat-
ically already to be found in the thinking of Kant. The turn to human
actions, to humanity takes primacy, and doctrines regarding God and
salvation serve at the most as exponents of the question of what man
must do. The demand for freedom, for the actualising of mankind,
the concern about the fragility of life begin to dene the horizon of
all questions, all thinking and action. In the context of post-Kantian
culture every form of attention to beliefs about God must therefore
reckon with responses of surprise, scorn, distrust and, especially, indif-
ference. The autonomous discussion of doctrines of God very quickly
raises suspicions that what is being talked about neither touches nor
concerns life. All things considered, this is something one can do with-
out, not because the truth of falsity of these claims must be disputed,
but because they have simply become irrelevant. If discussions do turn
to God, then it is as a somehow unavoidable question within the ques-
tions of life, within the context of ethics and humanity. It is not without
reason that one of the points of discussion in Christian theology after
Kant has been to what degree an autonomous discussion of doctrines
of God is responsible. Does not such an approach lead to talking about
God as an object, as a thing among things? Barths teaching on knowl-
edge of God could be read as an attempt to escape that accusation
of immediate objectication. Both the doctrine of the Trinity in the
Prolegomenon and the emphasis on the hiddenness of God in the dis-
318 chapter seven

cussion of knowledge of God function to point back to an inalienable

sovereignty that God exercises in his dealings with mankind, without
thereby denying the possibility of knowing God.1
Notwithstanding the tenor of his time, Barth dared to undertake a
broad, systematic development of a doctrine on God. Already in the
rst move in this chess game in his eort one nds the answer to the
question implicit in the previously mentioned adage, Quae supra nos, nihil
ad nos. Theology has to give an account of the fact that not only sheds
new light on, but materially changes all things and everything in all
thingsthe fact that God is.2 This assertion is problematic. It does not
place ethics and the acting man in the limelight; it is not the project
of freedom and self-realisation that forms the horizon. According to
Barth, the long and short of it is that theology is about the exposition of
the sentence God is, and thus is about nothing less than the being
of God.3 All of theology is a form of knowledge of God. Theology
deals with the whole sum total, about man, his world, his fears and
yearningsbut deals with all of this in the light of the sentence God
is. That is not an insight alongside other insights; it is the given through
which all the others come to stand in a new and dierent light. But the
existence of God, his work, what he says, his acts are characterised
as things that do not only throw a certain light on life. They indeed
do that, but Barth says much more. The being of God, his acts, his
deeds as such are denitive for being. The being and acts of God have
ontological implications and are therefore relevant for man and his
history. The question of the meaning of life, who man is, the question
of his humanity and responsibility, all of life is set on one track, is newly
constituted as it were, when one understands these questions within the
acts of God.
After these introductory sentences it will be clear that in this chapter
we are not entering totally new territory. The decisive lines toward
an answer to the question of who man is dealing with in faith have

1 The other way was chosen by another of W. Herrmanns pupils, R. Bultmann. In

his essay Welchen Sinn hat es von Gott zu reden in: R. Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen
Bd.I, Tbingen 19727, 2637, he denied the possibility of a separate, material doctrine of
God. For the rest, in both cases there is a deep agreement: God does not permit himself
to be objectied in the same way a normal object in the world is objectied. What
Barth achieves with his doctrine of the Trinity and his discussion of the hiddenness of
God is what Bultmann means by his programme of demythologisation. See E. Jngel,
Gottes Sein ist im Werden, Tbingen 19763, 3334.
2 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.
3 KD II/1, 288291; ET, 257259.
 the doctrine of god 319

already been sketched out in the preceding chapter. It must once again
be emphasised that the distinction between the way and content of
knowing God can only be conceived as strictly a matter of logic. The
theme of the way and the theme of the content of knowledge of God
together form an inseparable whole. In this chapter then we will nd
only a shift of the accent within one and the same eld. Attention will
shift to God as the content of human knowledge. Barths concept of
knowing God permits itself to be seen as a circular movement, from
God to God, with man being involved in this movement.
Barths exposition makes it crystal clear that from the start he ies
straight in the face of undeclared or open agnosticism, any suggestion
that there is nothing which can be said about God and His being. In
part as a consequence of the Kantian reconsideration of the bound-
aries of human knowledge, Christian doctrine has been suspected of
reaching beyond its grasp. Does not Christian theology speak about an
order that transcends the limits of time and space? When it speaks of
God and His being does it not assume a reality that in fact means a
duplication of the existing order, a world behind this world? Barth is
well aware of these suspicions, and for his part in fact uses them against
esoteric tendencies.4 The answer in the second panel betrays its moder-
nity by making it clear in many ways that Gods being is not simply a
duplication or extension of earthly reality. God is not an object in the
normal sense of that word.5 But this otherness of God does not detract
from the fact that one must indeed speak of a form of objectivity. Faith
takes on shape because another order that does not coincide with ours
presents itself.
For the rest, it is not only the modern Kantian tradition that assures
that there is an extreme reticence in making pronouncements about
Gods being. We also encountered this reticence in the rst panel.
Calvin takes a stance close to the position that Melanchthon took in his
Loci in 1521, when he argued that men should not seek to understand
the basis of the incarnation, but must have reverence for the blessings
of Christ. We stand before a tension which is not rarely felt to be a
contradiction. Barth says explicitly, with a reference to Melanchthon,
that never on any occasion may investigation, vestigare, be separated
from reverence, adorare. Even if one will investigate the blessings, ben-
ecia, of Christ, there is a chance that the investigation will in fact run

4 See for example Rmerbrief 2, 82; ET, 107108.

5 KD II/1, 15; ET, 12.
320 chapter seven

toward irreverence.6 It is clear that Barth, in contrast to Calvin, does

not shrink from questions about the essence of God. That is a signi-
cant dierence. Calvin indeed provides a structure of terms that obtain
as qualities of God, but it is deliberately very summary. He oers, as
we saw, a rational order, but as soon as the question begins to move
in the direction of a question about Gods eternal being, separate from
his revelation, this is a question which he will not pursue. Man must
know God only as God wishes to make himself known. The content of
the knowledge of God has its bounds. There are spaces and subjects in
Gods Counsel that man does not know, and does not have to know. It
is enough that God adopts believers as children and is known by their
as their loving Father.
With Barth we have entered another climate. Revelation is self -
revelation, and consonant with this, knowledge of God is nothing less
than knowledge of God Himself. The question about the essence of
God is no longer conceived as a question about Gods substance, but
as a question about who we are dealing with. The image of spaces in
Gods Counsel to which man is denied access, makes way for an image
of a personal encounter, in which man comes out as a person, and
enters into a relation with an other. In the second panel it will thus also
gradually become clear that faith does not reduce people to children,
but makes them adults who are called to partnership. In the Kirchliche
Dogmatik the stress comes more and more to be on man as a partner in
a covenant, a mature adult who precisely in the knowing of God is not
excluded, but included as a whole person and a subject.
This must be clear: Barths doctrine of God oers a modern reinter-
pretation, not a reversion. In respect to terms, he seeks as much con-
tinuity as possible with the patristic and orthodox Protestant tradition,
but that produces anything but a simple repetition of an inherited body
of thought. Barth has his theological reasons for making such exten-
sive use of the vocabulary of orthodox doctrines of God: the history of
theological thinking may be approached with the presupposition that
God speaks to man in His freedom, and takes man into service, inclu-
sive of mans thought.7 It would testify to an unbelievable impudence
and an indierence toward Gods Spirit to scorn the development of
doctrine in the Church as merely a defection from original Christianity.

6 KD II/1, 290291; ET, 259.

7 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvtern zu Karl Barth. Das altkirchliche Dogma in der
Kirchlichen Dogmatik, Amsterdam 1993, 1922.
 the doctrine of god 321

For Barth the Church has wide boundaries, and therefore the possi-
ble partners with whom one can enter into discussion are many. The
source material for a dogmatics as training in listening to God is found
in that which the Church has thought and said, thus in that which
is provided in doctrine and reection on doctrine. But the criterion
remains the Word of God, and thus critique is always possible. The
attention and respect for Protestant orthodoxy thus did not stop Barth
from arguing the thesis with great conviction that Protestant ortho-
doxy was in declinea thesis the eects of which still permeate our
theological-historical conception. In Barths eyes the coalition between
a general ontology and Christian belief had had fatal consequences in
liberal theology, and had its climax and apotheosis in natural theol-
ogy, which asserts that God can be known from nature and history. In
Barths depiction of natural theology, nature and history, or the gener-
ally accessible, becomes the actual gangplank to knowledge of God. But
the presupposition of Barths doctrine of God is the continuing diver-
gence between God and man, which he argues was obscured in 19th
century theology when it accepted there was a demonstrable point of
identity between God and man.8 Barth does not deny that there is such
a point of identity, an element of participation; the critical question is
how this point must be conceived. For Barth, it is a gift, a relation con-
stituted by the act of God, and as such a grace. The situation in which
man is no longer alone, but is confronted by the living God with sal-
vation in his train, does not arise from man. When God comes out to
encounter man, the next step must follow: one can begin to think about
Who shares himself in this revelation.
With this we come to a key element in the theology presented in
the second panel: the relation of Gods revelation and his being. There
must be a distinction between Gods being and his work, between es-
sence and revelationbut they certainly must not be separated. When
in faith people recognise that in Jesus Christ they share in Gods reve-
lation, through the mediation of that name a prospect on Gods being
opens up for them. According to Barth that is not speculation. It might
be termed speculation if there were a gap between being and work, but
one of the pillars of his theology of revelation is precisely that such a
gap does not exist in revelation. In the previous chapter we saw why it
does not exist: namely, because God himself creates an analogy, because

8 See for example Barths critique of Ph. Marheineke in Die protestantische Theologie

im 19.Jahrhundert. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte, Hamburg 19753, 423; ET, 497.
322 chapter seven

in his revelation in Jesus He himself reveals his Lordship, and thus him-
self. Barth does indeed make a distinction between Gods essence and
his revelation, but expressly guards against that essence and revelation
becoming divided into two ontological layers which would be separated
by a gap.9 Barths fundamental assertion is that God is who He is in
his works.10 That opens the possibility for human knowledge of God.
Within the reality of faith as participation in Gods self-knowledge, who
God is can be further particularised on the basis of his works.

7.2. Gods reality: being and act

The title of the rst section of the chapter in which Barth discusses
the doctrines of God in a narrower sense presents itself rather formally:
The Being of God in Act.11 For the rest, the intention and scope of this
statement is far from modest: it proposes to present a reinterpretation
of what is discussed in traditional theology under the concept of the
being of God. Two terms are brought together with one another here,
which in the history of classical metaphysics represented two unequal
orders, namely being and act. Being refers to the highest being, and as
such the eternal, enduring and foundational. Act refers to the world of
human action, to the imperfect and inconstant. With the Hebrew word
dabar in mind, Barth engages them with one another when he says The
Being of God in Act. Gods being is not a foundational, immovable
being; it is Ereignis, event, and more to the point, the reality of God
himself is the act. In the picture of God it is no longer the foundational
and the immovable that is primary, but God as the acting subject. It is
not without reason that Barth presents his doctrine of God under the
title The Reality of God. The word reality here must be understood
as containing the double meaning, namely as act or deed, and as being.
Act and being are both intended as specications of Gods being. With
respect to God, being and act are not antitheses, and neither one has
any logical priority over the other. This too must be read as critique
of thinking which asserted that one must rst and foremost speak of
God as the immobile mover, as being at rest. Gods being is typied by
acting.

9 Cf. E. Jngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden, 45; ET, 4647.

10 KD II/1, 291; ET, 260.
11 KD II/1, 288; ET, 257.
 the doctrine of god 323

Barth research is very well aware that, in choosing to go in this

direction in his reinterpretation of the concept of God, Barth sought
to connect with the modern concept of the subject. As a subject, man
is someone who creates and shapes the world by has actions. In Barths
picture of God, man can easily recognise the homo faber, the creative
and acting man, or more strongly, in an adapted form, the attempt to
maintain Gods autonomy. Certainly the latter concept, used by Trutz
Rendtor,12 calls up the suggestion that in this concept there is in fact
no room for the peculiar responsibility of man, and for the mediating
and sustaining function of ecclesiastical and cultural institutions. Now,
the critical point cannot be whether a theologyin this case Barths
conceptmakes use of the means of thought that our times and culture
oer. The critical point is whether such use does justice to what must be
spoken of there, namely God as he manifests himself in the history of
Israel and Jesus. The answer to that can only be given by investigating
the meaning of the content of the terms used. It is the presumption of
this second panel that these modern terms precisely do justice to the
content of Biblical revelation.
The further specication of the being of God takes place through the
terms event, act, life, love and person. The content of these termsso
Barth never tires of repeatingmust not be drawn from the meaning
that these terms have in general, but must be derived from a critical
reading of revelation, and concretely, from Jesus Christ. The content
of revelation and the way to knowledge go together. That indicates the
direction theological thought must go, and it can be connected with
what was said in the preceding chapter about Barths vision on lan-
guage. The fact that particular terms are already part of the language
is not totally denitive. Barth takes the basic assumption that a term
is entirely dened by the thing or content of revelation so radically
that he sometimes suggests that the meaning of a word which has been
captured by revelation has hardly anything to do with its ordinary
meaning. The polemic point of this accentuation of discontinuity has
already been discussed in the preceding chapter. The point is that the
words which we apply to God are not purely extrapolation from what
we already know. Theology always and in all circumstances has to listen

12 T. Rendtor, Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verstndnis der Theologie Karl

Barths und ihrer Folgen in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien
zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Gtersloh 1972, 161181 and idem, Karl Barth und die
Neuzeit. Fragen zur Barth-Forschung, Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986), 298314.
324 chapter seven

to God in his Word, and the words will receive their meaning within the
realm of Gods speaking. As the ground of its knowledge, Christian the-
ology has the encounter in revelation through which Gods own being
distinguishes itself as the self-motivated person.13

7.3. Love

In the substantive description that Barth gives of the being of God as a

further specication of the formal characterisation The Being of God
in Act, the term love comes rst: The Being of God as the One who
Loves is the second section.14 Why, one could ask, is precisely this term
chosen, which in the usual series of qualities in traditional doctrines of
God is generally subsumed under the holiness or goodness of God?15 It
is because this term describes Gods being most comprehensively and
inclusively. Love, according to Barth, is the qualication that follows
from the revelation of the Name, and also the revelation of the Father,
Son and Spirit. Love is the word that indicates the structure of how
God is in Himself, and how He is also in his works, namely as the one
who exists in fellowship, who creates relations. The lines which Barth
sets out in this subsection are therefore denitive for the whole of his
doctrines of God and of salvation. A longer citation is therefore not out
of place:
He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God. In as
much as He is Himself and arms Himself, in distinction and opposition
to everything that He is not, He places Himself in this relation to us.
He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in this
relationship In Himself He does not will to exist for Himself, to exist
alone. On the contrary, He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and therefore
alive in His unique being with and for and in another. The unbroken
unity of His being, knowledge and will is at the same time an act of
deliberation, fellowship and intercourse. He does not exist in solitude but
in fellowship.16

The fellowship that he seeks with mankind is not alien to Him, but is
founded in the Divine being itself. Although the word election is not

13 KD II/I, 304; ET, 271.

14 KD II/1, 306; ET, 272.
15 See for example H. Heppe/E. Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche,

Neukirchen 19582, 52.

16 KD II/1, 308; ET, 274, 275.
 the doctrine of god 325

used in this passage, it is still clear that the will to fellowship with man
ows froth from the depth of divine life itself and therefore is most inti-
mately connected with elements in it, namely with the will to fellowship
or the love that is peculiar to divine being. Put another wayand here
we encounter the central element of the second panelliving in fellow-
ship or love is not incidental for God, but is essential, a characteristic
trait for Him.
What does Barth hope to achieve by postulating the concept of
love in this way? Two points should be listed: First, that the content
of human knowledge of God is determined by God, who in Himself
exists in community and love. God is a God who exists in fellowship,
in love, and therefore seeking fellowship with mankind is not foreign
to Him, or something incidental, but is essential to His being as God.
Later in this chapter we will discuss this further. In this way Barth pre-
vents knowledge of God being threatened by the ultimate mystery of
God, a threat which Barth saw hanging like a dark cloud over patris-
tic, medieval and Reformation theology. One can ask how justied this
charge is, and as a consequence place a question mark after the image
Barth himself so successfully created of his own theology as a libera-
tion from the centuries-long bondage to pagan philosophy. Has there
ever been a time that faith and theology did not avail themselves of
contextual means and were thus free of them? Barth would be the last
to deny this, but in his polemic has not escaped the suggestion that a
pure stance, listening only to revelation, can only be developed through
a fundamentally Christological method.
Second, through the primacy of the characteristic of Gods love,
Barth makes clear that Christian thinking does not conceive God as
a lone, monolithic subject. God has distinctions within Himself, and
the fellowship of Father, Son and Spirit. This builds in a critique from
the very outset against an ideal of existence as a subject that does not
have its existence in analogy with this God. More to the point, Barth
posits that Gods being as a person not only illuminates what being a
person implies for man (a knowing, willing and acting I), but that only
in the love of the God for man does man become a person.17

17 KD II/1, 319; ET, 285286.

326 chapter seven

7.4. Freedom

The second central term with which the doctrine of God is unfolded
is freedom. Barth brings precisely this term, which was of such para-
mount importance as a beckoning ideal and driving force for modern
humanity, into his theology in order to incorporate a number of char-
acteristics that classic theology subsumes under Gods incommunicable
qualities. Dealing with the term freedom after that of love is quite delib-
erate. Freedom qualies Gods love.18
For Barth, freedom is not primarily to be dened negatively. It
is crystal clear how critical Barths attitude on this point is toward
metaphysical doctrines of God, where Gods majesty or exaltation is
articulated primarily in negative terms. In Barths eyes terms such as
aseitas and independentia have a good sense in so far as they indicate
that God is not dened by others. But precisely in their negativity
these terms are too weak, and are incapable of expressing that which
must be expressed. Freedom is a positive concept that refers to the
depth dimension of Gods acting and being. It expresses that what God
does happens out of Himself, has its ground in Him. He is Himself
in his act, and his act arises from the depths of his own being. In
this context Barth refers very concretely to the self-evidence of Gods
existence. In his revelation God himself provides the evidence of his
existence, so that theology can only study this after the fact. Every
time man stands before the reality of God, he perceives the freedom
with which God demonstrates his own existence within the reality
which is distinguished from Him.19 Freedom means that God is the
one who has his origin within himself, each time beginning again
from that same depth and source. What the tradition expressed in the
concepts of sovereignty, exaltation, aseitas, for Barth will be discussed
under the heading of freedom.20 Freedom therefore primarily means
something positive; it is a qualication of Gods love. The positive
thrust of the concept of freedom in the sense of a free choice to
do something has great consequences, and argues against the idea
of independence, independentia. God must not only be unconditioned
but, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can

18 KD II/1, 334335; ET, 296297.

19 KD II/1, 342; ET, 304.
20 KD II/1, 340; ET, 302.
 the doctrine of god 327

and will also be conditioned.21 In other words, Gods freedom and

sovereignty do not prevent him entering into a relationship in his
revelation, seeking a form and binding himself to it. His revelation in
Christ is a form of self-denition, covenant, a commitment, which He
will not abandon.
This linkage of freedom and love in turn has major consequences for
thinking about Gods necessity. It is customary in classic metaphysics
to think of God as the highest being in terms of negation. But accord-
ing to Barths critique, by speaking of God as the innite, absolute or
unconditioned we are still speaking of God in terms of our own limita-
tion. When man wishes to transcend himself, God can only be spoken
about as a puried human limitation, from an anthropocentric per-
spective.22 According to Barth, when this is done it does not take into
account Gods own revelation as a reality which places itself opposite
man in freedom, which is to say, in a contingency of its own. He there-
fore attempts to interpret Gods freedom as a further qualication of
that which God does in his act, namely the creation of fellowship. He
must close o the possibility of Gods freedom being discussed solely
and only as a term reecting human boundaries. It must be clear in
theology that human existence understands itself to be secondary and
made possible by something outside itself. To this end Barth makes a
distinction between primary and secondary absoluteness and freedom.
In his own being and act God exists in primary freedom and absolute-
ness. Therefore in God absoluteness and freedom coincide as qualiers
of Gods own Wirklichkeit. The way in which God exists in his own
being and act is the actuality, or better, the Wirklichkeit which theology
can not get behind or reduce to human categories. Only when that is
said can one then speak of freedom or absoluteness in relation to the
reality created by God.23 The predicate ens necessarium therefore cannot
be applied to God. The decisive objection against the concept of neces-
sity is that in this concept Gods being is associated with need, with the
inevitable, while that precisely ignores the sovereign freedom in which
God is who He is. The word faktisch, actual, is essential for Barth. Men
cannot see behind the actuality of God. Our thinking with regard to
God is a posteriori. When God conrms his own being in his act, it
is not because there is a necessity that God conrms his own being or

21 KD II/1, 341; ET, 303.

22 KD II/1, 342; ET, 303304.
23 KD II/1, 347; ET, 308.
328 chapter seven

that God bring forth his own being out of the void, but it is simply the
actual conformation of his being.24
That God begins from himself each time in his act does not say
that God must separate his own being from non-being and needs
a foundation, or that God must realise his own existence. Such an
armation does indeed say that He, because He is who He is, is his
own foundation, causa sui, and with his foundation is also the separation
from what He is not. Formulated in other terms, the being of God is
exalted above the alternative that originates from human experience
of mans own fragility, namely of not-being or being necessary. With
respect to God, man can only takes as his point of departure the
actuality of God, the empirical decision in which God is who He is.25
The location of Gods being as beyond the opposition between the
necessary and not-necessary has great consequences for considering
relationships and aections with regard to God. Traditional doctrines
of God have great diculty ascribing real relationships to God, because
relationships express situations of dependence. For that reason too the
attribution of aections to God was problematic in the rst panel.
By placing Gods own being beyond this opposition, in this panel
the existence of aections in God is something which is no longer
really unthinkable. It is no longer a pudendum. On the contrary, love,
sorrow, being moved, pity and suering are not illegitimate manners
of speaking about God. They have their possibility and reality in God
himself.
We can draw still another conclusion. We men can not reach God
through our concepts, by our thought. The starting point for theology,
for human knowledge of God, is the actual: God, who in His revelation
is who He is. Barth thinks from eternity to time, never the other
way around, not even in his doctrine of election. What then is the
appropriate way to knowledge, which ts with this actuality? It is not
without reason that in this context Barth refers to prayer, to the hearing
of the Word of God, and speaking in Pauline terms, to the struggle
between esh and spirit. Only there can the real contest be won. On
the human side, the primacy of hearing the Word, obedience and
prayer as an answer by man to this Word t with this facticity. The
reality of knowing God thus plays itself out on a eld that dogma
designates as the reality of the Word is that is spoken and heard.

24 KD II/1, 344; ET, 306.

25 KD II/1, 345; ET, 307.
 the doctrine of god 329

7.5. Multiplicity and unity

The next major consideration to which Barth turns for the whole of
the doctrine of God is the unity of Gods perfections with his being.
The peculiarity of this approach is that the antithesis between diversity
and unity, which in the tradition led to an assumption of Gods unity
at the expense of diversity, does not hold true for God. God exists in
the multiplicity and wealth of his perfections. Barth explicitly recalls
the dierence of opinion that has existed since 1351 between the West-
ern and Eastern churches on this point. Eastern Orthodoxy, follow-
ing George Palamas and the Hesychasts, teaches that man encounters
Gods actions, with energies that are eternal, uncreated and yet com-
municable to the creature. However, according to Barth, the Hesychas-
tic teaching separates that which cannot be separated. He prefers to
hold fast to the idea that the perfections of God in their multiplicity,
individuality and diversity from each other not only exist because of
Gods relation to the world, but in his own being as the God who loves
in freedom.
This means that in thinking about Gods qualities, multiplicity and
unity must be held together. It is precisely in a coherent unity that the
multiplicity comes to its full expression. This coherence is however no
static unity; it is a concrete unity through the act of God. In Gods
dealings with man, man encounters a unity of act, with ultimately the
one person who in all his acts is himself. Put in other words, there is no
dierence between the questions of who God is and how He is.

7.6. Revelation as self-revelation?

According to Barth, revelation is self-revelation. We here encounter the

central substantive core of his doctrine of God: knowledge of God
is nothing more or less than knowing God Himself. Negatively this
means that it is not primarily insights, statements, articles of faith
and promises and commandments that are given to us in revelation.
At its deepest, the content of revelation must be expressed in the
singular. Not that Barth leaves behind the multiplicity of concepts
as components of that which is given in knowledge of God, but the
one common denominator of all revelation is self-revelation. Promises
and commandments are derived, further specications of Gods self-
revelation. In his revelation God makes known what is within Him,
330 chapter seven

what constitutes his self,26 namely his love, his will to fellowship with
man. Self-revelation is therefore much more than an expression of
insights or truths; it is sharing in fellowship with God himself and
thereby sharing with the salvic, good God, above whom no other good
exists. For this reason the content of revelation can not be characterised
in the plural, but in the singular. Knowing God is fellowship with him
as a person.
That is undeniably a shift, we must acknowledge, in comparison with
Calvins substantive denition of knowledge of God. It is a concentra-
tion on the personal, relational element in knowing God. As a concen-
tration it is productive to the extent that it makes it clear that God,
in turning toward man and the world, places himself into relationship.
To the extent that the focus on the singular implies a turn away from
the plural, it is however also possibly a reduction, which runs the risk
of impoverishment. This judgement of the shift deserves further discus-
sion.
The reduction in this second panel becomes obvious if we turn back
to the rst for a moment. In Calvins denition of faith the content of
knowledge of God was at its deepest dened by knowledge of Gods
gracious gifts to man, as bestowed in Christ. That implies plurality.
The believer comes to realise the state of aairs in the visible andto a
modest degreein the unseen world, knowledge of Gods care, of good
and evil, of promises, commandments, of security with God in this life
and the life to come. Calvins concept of faith is not, however, absorbed
into this plurality. Faith is more pointed, focused on Gods will to salva-
tion. In simple terms, communication goes together with information
and these two can not be separated from one another. What God does
in the cosmos, in human history, in dictates of conscience and com-
mandment, in the Bible, in Christ, in the sacraments, clearly has to do
with the triune God who desires to enter into fellowship with strayed
man, to draw him to Himself as an adoptive childbut this is in itself
not be to be characterised as self-revelation. Calvins denition of faith
takes more account of a multiplicity of ways God speaks.
With Calvin facts that point to God in a wider sense also belong to
knowledge of God, thereby forming ways through which God comes to
man, and alongside these, in a closer circle, commandments, precepts,
promises and threats. These are ideas and distinctions which disappear

26 KD II/1, 308309; ET, 274.

 the doctrine of god 331

from the modern panel. Barths characterisation of revelation as self-

revelation reects a typically modern development in which revelation
as revelation of truths was increasingly experienced as problematic, and
revelation slowly came to be reduced to self-revelation. With Barth,
human knowledge of God arises through personal communication. The
informative aspect of revelation has been shoved to a lower shelf. It is
still there, but as something implicit in the communication.
Theologically and historically, the further denition of revelation as
self-revelation, thus that God himself is the content of the revelation,
runs through Hegel. Barth was conscious of the importance of the
speculative, idealist tradition for his own theology, and experienced the
direction that theologians such as Ph. Marheineke and I.A. Dorner
took as they followed Hegels lead as compelling and productive in
may respects. Parallels can be found particularly in Barths doctrine
of the Trinity. In his description of the history of Protestant theology in
the 19th century he has therefore written in remarkably positive terms
of Hegels philosophy. Hegels thought is characterised by Barth as
a philosophy of condence.27 One might suggest that Barth brought

27 K. Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (19603=) Hamburg 1975, 318
350, esp. 325, 330; ET, 384421, 391, 397. In their thinking, in their perception of the
world, in forming a notion of the world and the multifarious stream of phenomena
in it, men do not stand outside the mystery of reality, but are themselves a part of
the process of the Absolute or the Spirit. Between the human mind and God there
exists an ultimate identity, so that self-condence and condence in God coincide at
their deepest. Hegel sought to reconcile Christianity and culture in his own manner. In
Hegels system, and in the sense of life that bore the stamp of Romanticism, the chasm
that prevailed in Kant between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between the world
of freedom and humanity on the one side and reality as it is perceived in the sciences,
was not acknowledged. Ultimately this reality arises from one source and becomes one
again. Hegel would not accept the unhappy awareness which reason reached after
Kant. Kants fundamental realisation was that human knowledge is still isolated in all
of its constructions of this reality, having no knowledge of the Ding an sich. Although
man is part of a higher order of life, that of practical reason, in a certain sense he
moves around lost in a world which is strange and unknown to him. Hegel thinks from
a dierent view of life, not that of dualism, but of one all-inclusive whole. History is
a holistic process, where contradictions are overcome precisely by historical diversity.
In terms borrowed from the hinge section on Kant, in Hegels philosophy the turn to
the subject becomes even more profound. Thinking of historic reason is identied with
the way of the divine Spirit itself. According to Barth, in Hegel culture was liberated
once and for all from the power of the church. Barth felt that in his philosophy Hegel
had been better able to defend and actualise the general truth that is locked up within
Christian doctrine than was possible for Christian dogmatics. Thus, in his eyes, Hegel
was the philosopher who avowed openly that knowledge which really matters and is
universally valid, divine truth, is identical with the human self.
332 chapter seven

this attitude of condence over into the eld of theology. The Word
which resounds in the Bible and is heard in faith is the Word of God
himself. In the Word, in revelation, God makes himself known. That
is to say, the ridgepole of theological thought is the condence that
in the Word men are encountering God himself as the subject and
content.
As has been said, in terms of intellectual history the thesis of the self-
revelation of God is unthinkable without the background of modern
subject thinking. In modernity the notion of the subject, in connection
with the concept of the person, has assumed primacy, a position that
until then had been occupied by the concept of substance. The subject
is the creating principle that realises itself in its acting and shapes a
culture. At the end of a long development, the concept of substance
is slowly dissolved in and superseded by the concept of the subject
as a fundamental notion.28 Barths theology in the second panel is an
example of this development.
The increasing emphasis on the individual as a unique person is
illustrated in the relation between the artist and his artwork. In me-
dieval art the artist was in the background. He or she is hidden behind
the artwork, or is wholly unknown. Since the Renaissance the accent
has no longer been exclusively on the work of art, on the product, but
more and more on the maker, the craftsman or artist in the foreground.
Within some branches of handicraft the craftsman or woman has been
renamed an artist. Art has freed itself from ordinary life. Notions such
as authenticity, originality and genius are typically Romantic concepts
which, via idealism, have lodged themselves in the centre of modern
views of life. The artist is no longer anonymous, behind his or her work,

28 W. Pannenberg, Person und Subjekt, in: idem, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie.

Gesammelte Aufstze Bd. 2, Gttingen 1980, 8095. The denition of person, as it is found
in Boethius, still testies to the prevalence of the concept of substance. A person is an
individual substance (persona rationalis naturae individua substantia). Under the inuence of
the Trinitarian and Christological debates the term hupostasis, person, gradually comes
to be used more independently as a concept for which relationality is constitutive. With
Richard of St. Victor this relationality and autonomy are conrmed in the denition of
the divine persons: the persons possess an incommunicabilis existentia through their relation
to one another. With that, according to Pannenberg, the step is taken that is analysed
by Hegel, but that he essentially does not go beyond. The relation to the other is
constitutive for the person. However, with Hegel the concept of substance is included
in, and, with that, replaced by the concept of the subject. The primary function that
was accorded to substance in the Aristotelian doctrine of categories is now taken over
by the concept of the subject.
 the doctrine of god 333

but signs the work, and defends his or her authorship as a personal
expression. The work is something from his or her self. Rather than a
beautiful specimen of skill, it has become art. The artwork is part of
the way of the subject, and is therefore his or her unalienable mental
property.
Earlier in this section the critique was already raised that the concept
of self-revelation runs the risk of resulting is a certain impoverishment.
It was rst substantiated by noting that in comparison to the concept
of revelation in Calvin there is historically a reduction. It is however
also necessary to indicate the risk entailed by an unthinking use of the
concept of self-revelation in the current system. The point is not to
dispute the proposition that in its focus and intention revelation has
to do with God and with his intention to bring us into his salvic
presence, but to note that the modern identication of revelation with
self-revelation reduces the perspective on the ways in which God in fact
moves in his turn toward man. Already in the Bible we see that not all
the speaking, commands and acts of God can immediately be labelled
as self-revelation. The person of the Revelator is not in the foreground
in all forms of His speaking and acting. When in the Bible there is
the gift of the Law, when Israel gains experience with judgement and
Gods absence, when harvests and seasons are received as a grace,
when prophets bring their message to man in the name of God, men
encounter the acts of God in diverse forms. But not all these things
are immediately understandable as revelations that give us knowledge
of God himself. In the course of coming to know God and the history
of Gods dealings with man, for a long time human knowledge is in
fact focused on knowledge of Gods will, his commands. The content
of Gods speaking is not primarily God himself, but rather how man is
to act. These forms of Gods speaking are indeed connected with who
God is, but that connection frequently remains in the background. One
can rightly speak of self-revelation only when this connection between
the variety of Gods speaking and God in Himself is thematised. The
revelation of the Name of God in Exodus 3, the numerous I am
pronouncements and other statements in the Gospel of John29 and
in his epistles that concern the identity of Jesus Christ, where the
connection and identication is made explicit, can rightly be termed
self-revelation. It is not without reason that it is precisely in the latter

29 Jn. 1:14; 4:26; 6:35; 10:11; 15:5.

334 chapter seven

text that we are expressly reminded that the eschatological completion

of our knowledge of God is still to be awaited (IJohn 3:2).
If we should stop here in our excursus regarding the concept of
self-revelation, we would however miss the essential function of the
notion. The concept of self-revelation has aeven thekey role in the
anti-agnostic project of Barths theology. We have already noted that
Barth characterised Hegels philosophy as a philosophy of condence.
This adjective can be applied to Barths own theological concept. That
is particularly true for his doctrine of God, when he deals with the
theological assessment of the qualities of God, or as Barth deliberately
puts it, the perfections of God. The term perfection points in the
direction that is taken in this doctrine. The classic terms (proprietates,
attributa, virtutes) easily create the misunderstanding that one is dealing
with qualities that if necessary can be done without. Of even more force
is the objection against the term appellatio, or naming. By opting for the
concept of perfection Barth opposes what we might term the nominalist
tendency in doctrines of God: the wealth of Gods qualities disappears
if what is basically an illegitimate manner of speaking of God is used,
one which does not guard the unity of God as that which can ultimately
be said of Him.30 Echoing behind the concept of perfections is the
assertion that the diversity of qualities that we encounter in Scripture
and tradition has another foundation in addition to our perception. It
is not just a matter of human perception which may not correspond to
something in God himself. Barth puts paid to a long tradition that he
sees running from Eunomius to Ockham and Eckhart. The statement
of the last may be held representative of this whole tradition: It is not
possible there be any distinctions in God himself, nor can we conceive
them.31 In the words of Thomas Aquinas, the diversity with which
God appears to man has its ground in acceptatione intellectus nostri.32 Barth
likewise detects this view in Calvin. It is revealing that in this context
a pair of 19th century German theologians are introduced as positive
exceptions, namely H.R. Francke and J.A. Dorner.33 Barth will, like
them, consider the virtues or attributes of God as characteristics which
really exist in God himself. Faith can hold together what for human
understanding perhaps seems a contradiction, namely Gods unity and

30 KD II/1, 368372; ET, 327330.

31 Cited in KD II/1, 368; ET, 327.
32 KD II/1, 369; ET, 328.
33 KD II/1, 371; ET, 330.
 the doctrine of god 335

the multiplicity of terms in which Gods greatness is expressed. In other

words, the qualities are immanent, have a fundamentum in re, and are not
only distinctions that merely have their being in Gods outward acting,
in his approach to man. Thus we once again encounter the motif
which we earlier identied. In revelation we encounter God himself,
not as he is toward us, as Calvin put it, but as He is in himself. It is
a decisive motif in Barth. When God does something in his works, in
his revelation, he can do that because it has a ground in Him as He
is. There is not something or someone dierent behind the revelation.
God does not have two faces, one for the outside world and one for
himself. God is no Janus-faced despot. Calvins addition quoad nos is
a limitation, which in Barths eyes forms a straightforward threat to
the reality and trustworthiness of revelation. At the same point Barths
theology is a theology of condence, that revelation is revelation of
Gods essence, of how He himself is. In our knowledge of God we
encounter Him as He actually and unreservedly is.34 If man is to be
able to trust God, God must enter his revelations without reservation.
He must be there entirely, or not at all. Barth works this out in his
doctrine of the qualities of God.

7.7. Two series

In accordance with the denition of God as The One Who Loves

in Freedom, in this panel the two terms love and freedom form the
two poles around which the whole of Gods acts can be considered.
In sections 30 and 31 of KD the qualities of Godor in the term
Barth uses, the perfectionsof God are discussed as the perfections
of his love and the perfections of his freedom. This creates two series of
qualities, which traditionally have been conceived as opposites, namely
as communicable and non-communicable qualities. The rst series that
Barth chooses consist of grace, mercy, patience, holiness, righteousness
and wisdomall communicable qualities, according to classical views.
That is to say, man can also share in them, albeit to a lesser degree.
Barths creative intervention is that he subdivides these six according
to the previously mentioned division, namely love and freedom. The
rst three he qualies as terms of Gods love, the second three as
terms of Gods freedom. He discusses them in their mutual connections

34 KD II/1, 365; ET, 325.

336 chapter seven

in section 30 as the perfections of Gods love. In the second series

he discusses qualities which have traditionally been regarded as non-
communicable: unity, constancy, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence
and glory. Here too Barth applies his own principle for subdivision.
The rst three (unity, constancy and eternity) are qualities of Gods
freedom. Omnipresence, omnipotence and glory are connected to these
as qualications of Gods love.
What does Barth achieve with this rearrangement? First, in none of
the qualities do we encounter a side of God which is turned away from
us and unknowable for us. The qualities of his love are further qualied
and the qualities of his freedom are qualities of a God who loves in his
freedom. These two series delineate the whole eld of Gods being and
acting, as it were. Precisely in their mutual involvement with each other,
each pair of terms gives a view of the whole of Gods being and act, each
time however from a dierent perspective. It is like making a circuit
around a mountain, which remains constantly in ones eld of vision,
but always from a dierent vantage point. The circling movement is
necessary to enable us in our thinking and speaking to do justice to
or, as Barth puts it, to followthe dynamism and motion in which
God is and acts as God. The asymmetry between our speaking and
Gods act is expressed precisely in the verb to follow. Human thinking
is following at a distance. The element of non-identity is maintained.
Second, in this way it is made clear that in his outward works and
revelation God is nothing other than in his being. Our time, our space,
our history has its ground and possibilities in God.
The choice of these two groups and the decision to place their ele-
ments in this particular order is very deliberate and reects a critical
approach of the orthodox Protestant heritage. In Lutheran orthodoxy
there is a sharp distinction between attributa absoluta on the one side
and attributa respectiva or operativa on the other. In the Reformed tradition
the terms dier, the non-communicable qualities over against the com-
municable qualities, attributa incommunicabilia. In these old divisions the
absolute, immanent, foundational or non-communicable qualities had
primacy. They were in fact considered as the qualities that described
the side of God that is hidden from us, and in Protestant orthodoxy
were accounted the actual qualities. They are the terms from above.
A deep reluctance and ultimate refusal to make the qualities of God too
much a subject of reection was typical of the rst panel. In terms of
chiaroscuro eects in the rst panel, the qualities of God lie in the shad-
ows, and the light falls on mankind, and the things of this earth. In the
 the doctrine of god 337

second panel one can conceive knowledge of God as a ray of light that
penetrates from above to below through the one centre, Jesus Christ,
so that one can follow the light in two directions, namely upwards and
downwards. For Barth too knowledge of God is bipolar. Who God is
becomes knowable through Gods self-revelation, and it also becomes
clear who we are and what this world is. The question of how God is
immanent is no longer a matter of satisfying curiosity, of our curiositas.
It has an eminently practical signicance. If one cannot take as ones
starting point that God in his own inner life is the same as He permits
himself to be known in the history of Jesus Christ, then we are groping
around in the dark. The light runs from above to below through the
centre; clear colours predominating on both sides.
In the following two sections (7.8 and 7.9) I provide a surveyalbeit
very summaryof several elements of Barths doctrine of the perfec-
tions of God. What is oered is neither comprehensive nor simple. It
is an exercise in which several points of Barths reinterpretation of the
doctrine of God are taken up. In this manner some insight is given into
the development that led to the rearrangement of the qualities in KD
II/1. These sections are not of the greatest importance in the whole of
this study; they are a interlude which can perhaps be skipped by the
reader who wishes to move directly ahead to what can be considered
the heart of Barths doctrine of God, namely his doctrine of election
(7.107.15).

7.8. The perfections of Gods love

7.8.1. Grace and holiness

The rst two qualities dealt with are grace and holiness. Grace obtains
as the rst perfection of Gods love, and is further specied by the per-
fection in which the high freedom of His love shows through, namely
holiness. Grace is the fellowship seeking and creative act of God. Barth
emphatically distinguishes this from the Roman Catholic doctrine of
grace, because this has the inclination to consider grace as a tertium
between God and his creation. No, in revelation, in Gods movement
toward man, He makes himself the gift.35 With the concept of grace,

35 KD II/1, 397; ET, 353354.

338 chapter seven

however, the fundamental point of departure in the construction of

Barths doctrine of God, the rootage of Gods works in his being, imme-
diately leads to a problem. How can it be said that grace is rooted in
God himself, if there is no opposition or conict in God himself ? Is
there in God himself then a movement that is analogous to the grace
that sinful creation experiences? Barths argument here takes the form
of a postulate. If Gods grace toward us is revealed and operative in
our midst as divine being and act, Barth proposes, it can not be denied
that it is real in God Himself in a form which is concealed from us
and incomprehensible to us, namely as the pure love and grace which
binds the Father with the Son and the Son with the Father by the Holy
Spirit.36 One can understand this to mean that Gods own being can-
not be comprehended in neutral terms. Gods own Trinitarian life is
salvic reality par excellence. Later, in KD II/2, in the doctrine of elec-
tion, Barth will further specify this rootage of Gods gracious act as the
original form of self-denition.
The term grace is linked with the term holiness. The content of
this term is not dened phenomenologically, but theologically as a
perfection of Gods loving. It indicates that God, in his turn toward
man, himself remains the Lord and presses ahead despite all resistance.
Holiness is another designation for the high freedom that we nd in
God as he perseveres in his will to salvation.37 It is in this context
that the idea of judgement is also taken up. When God in his holiness
presses ahead in his grace, there arises a disjunction between God and
man, a conict between God and his creature. Faith recognises this
disjunction and bows to it. In other words, the idea of judgement is only
to be approached and examined from faith. Only from the internal
perspective of knowing God does it become visible that Gods holiness,
and thus also his judgement, at its deepest concerns the preservation
of man. Barth is sharply critical of Ritschl, because the latter would
turn the contingent event of Gods grace into a notion. If grace were to
become a notion that could be developed further deductively, there is
no room for something like judgement. Indeed, Barth says, if looked at
from a denition of the concept of judgement that is separated from the
act of God, the notion of judgement becomes unbearable.38 By however
taking Gods act as the starting point, that act can be recounted as

36 KD II/1, 402; ET, 357558.

37 KD II/1, 404; ET, 360.
38 KD II/1, 411; ET, 366.
 the doctrine of god 339

a history that runs through a movement. In that act one perfection

does not stand next to another, nor is one set o against another to its
disadvantage, but the vitality of God becomes visible in it.

7.8.2. Mercy and righteousness

Grace, as the will to fellowship, necessarily takes the form of mercy. We
are literally dealing here with a forced intervention. The creature nds
himself in distress and Gods will to fellowship with this creature moves
Him to pity. An essential characteristic of God is also addressed in this
movement. God has a heart and is touched, aected by the distress of
man. What was previously said in regard to Gods primary and sec-
ondary absoluteness is important in this context. Can God be aected,
touched, by the distress of man? Does God have feelings emotions?
In this second panel this question is answered with a resounding yes. In
the rst panel oered hardly any possibility for thinking of the existence
of emotions in God. This would make Him into a dependent, vulnera-
ble being and rob Him of his divine freedom. If there is one being who
does not get upset, it is God: that is how we understand the tradition.
For the rest, Barths critique of the image of God that begins from gen-
eral notions does not limit itself to pre-modern theology. Schleierma-
chers understanding for the reluctance of tradition to ascribe emotions
to God is met with the ironic remark that indeed God as the source of
the feeling of sheer dependence has no heart.39 Beyond this, however,
Barth acknowledges the point that tradition wished to preserve: Gods
emotions are not a sign of weakness.
The foregoing also means that in this second panel an attempt is
made to take anthropomorphism seriously theologically, in a manner
entirely dierent from the tradition did. Barths basing anthropomor-
phism in the being of God has gained wide following in theology. Once
again there is critique addressed to Schleiermacher, who still regarded
it as impossible to think of God as one who could be moved by the
suering of another. In contrast, it is now proposed that God has a
heart and can be touched or moved. For Barth however it obtains that
this being touched by an outside force does not have priority. Sensibil-
ity is peculiar to God. The distinction between primary and secondary
absoluteness becomes productive with regard to anthropomorphisms.

39 KD II/1, 416; ET, 370.

340 chapter seven

Sensibility, feelings and emotion all have their being in God himself,
arise out of the depths of his own divine life, and are not just sum-
moned up by a force outside Him.40 That is the rst point. To that it
must be added, that this being touched and moved does not take place
in powerlessness; it is a matter of strength. According to Barth, that is
where the dierence with man lies. A man can be so aected that he
sinks under the experience. Being too sensitive involves risks, which are
met by the human mind by defensive responses and isolation. Among
human beings, being excessively sensitive can lead to the destruction
of the self. Is that not the case for God? In this respect there must be
a distinction between God and man. God possesses the capacity for
sympathy, sympathy in the highest sense of syn-pathos or suering with.
He can therefore expose himself without risk. For him it is a matter of
capacity.
The preceding can be understood as an attempt to put paid to the
image of God as the Great Outsider. That is the practical intent of the
proposition that revelation is self-revelation and the ecumenical Trin-
ity has its basis in the immanent Trinity. These theologoumena are
the theological means for conceiving Gods real involvement. In short,
we nd here in the doctrine of revelation the building blocks for the
theopaschitic position. God does not remain detached from suering,
but is involved in it in an original mannerand can, through the life
and death of the Son, become involved in a new manner in that which
would otherwise be foreign to Him. Before we have called down wrath
upon ourselves, we have already encountered God, who permits him-
self to be touched by human resistance.41 In practical terms that means
that the summons arises from this theology to stop regarding the suf-
fering that men bear as divine, eternal or inescapable. Because human
suering becomes involved with the inner life of God himself, at the
conceptual level Barth accomplishes a relativisation of the absolute-
ness and immutable blackness of all human darkness. Before man tastes
and experiences this darknessincluding the darkness they themselves
causeGod, in his heart, has already been touched by their plight.42

40 KD II/1, 416; ET, 370: The aection of God is dierent from all creaturely

aections in that it originates in Himself .

41 KD II/1, 420; ET, 374.
42 KD II/1, 420; ET, 374: In the recognition and confession of the mercy of God,

what we are accustomed to take so serously as the tragedy of human existence is

dissolved. There is something far more serious and tragic, viz., the fact that our
distressthe anguish of our sin and guilt is freely accepted by God, and that in Him,
 the doctrine of god 341

Can one label this idealism? Are we dealing with a position that does
not take evil and suering seriously enough, theologically? Or should
we esteem this position as a genuine Christian protest against our con-
temporary culture, which permits itself to be crushed under its own
experience of suering?
It is also worth noting the development of the term righteousness
and the polemic Barth repeatedly entered into with Ritschl. Gods
righteousness is dened as a further qualication of Gods love. His
righteousness is the perfection with which He accomplishes his search
for fellowship with man in a way that is worthy of Himself. God
retains his dignity in his love.43 The impression from the rst panel is
that Gods righteousness remains rather separate from his mercy. The
connection between the two qualities is not visible there. The notion
of judgement, punishment and wrath thereby becomes autonomous,
creating a certain doubleness in the image of God. Barth has tried to
understand Gods righteousness and judgement in light of His mercy.
As a consequence of this, however, the notions of wrath, judgement and
acquittal do not disappear as terms which no longer really have a place
in a humane theology, and of which any humanely conceived theology
should be ashamed. For Barth Ritschls theology is the paradigm of
such a theology, tailored to human measure.44
For the rest it is however fascinating to see in how many respects
Barth is connected with Ritschl. Both are undeniably heirs of the
Enlightenment in a religiously dened ethos. Both proceed from the
unity of mankind and could not accept there being an ultimate twofold
division of humanity. The Enlightenment has a universalistic perspec-
tive in the search for the humanum, for meaning and the potentiality of
life for all without distinctions of race or class. It accepts the equal-
ity of all men as its basic principle. This realisation of unity, which
in Calvins theology and culture still obtained for only certain areas,
namely within the sphere of creation, the law and civil authority, where
all fall under the same regimen of God the Creator and sustainer, in
post-Kantian theology expands to become dominant in the doctrines
of salvation and God as well. The doubleness that is an intrinsic com-
ponent of Calvins theology, namely that by decisions in Gods Counsel
men are consigned to one of two groups, to wit the elect or repro-

and only in Him, it becomes real agony.

43 KD II/1, 423; ET, 376.
44 KD II/1, 429; ET, 382.
342 chapter seven

bate, and that, corresponding to this, two sorts of outcomes are possible
for human existence, namely being denitively taken in or denitively
cast away, contrasts sharply with the most fundamental realisation that
modernity has made its own. All men are one before God, including in
the intention for their salvation. The same unity that governs the realm
of creation, also governs the order of salvation. Perhaps we must say
that the Enlightenment, with its vision of lasting peace and prosperity
for all, was the catalyst for the universal perspective on salvation that
permeates the theology of the second panel. Both Ritschl and Barth
are in their every atom a part of an intellectual culture that no longer
has any inner capacity to think in terms of a double outcome for his-
tory. Even those forms of contemporary orthodox Protestant theology
where it is the custom to buttress arguments by direct appeal to Scrip-
ture are slowly losing their capacity to think in any other way than that
salvation for all is the one aim and purpose of God.45
There is however a profound dierence in the way in which Ritschl
and Barth approach a solution to this problem. While Ritschl drops
the idea of a wrathful judgement and sentence or permits it to evapo-
rate in the light of Gods mercy and reconciliation, Barth attempts to
hold the two together by plotting out the way in which Gods mercy
develops toward its goal. In his discussion of the crucixion of Christ
Barth can even say, The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is that
there Gods condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, really
smiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel.46 The
righteousness of God can indeed properly be considered as a iustitia dis-
tributiva. Man is there confronted with Gods verdict. He has forfeited
his life, stands in that judgement stripped bare before God, all his fail-
ings revealed.47 Gods mercy is not something alongside and apart from
his righteousness, but it is precisely as the righteous God that He exer-
cises mercy. He gives justice, absolves those who cannot clear them-
selves. Thus one cannot do without reward, punishment and judge-
ment. Barth too does not see a double outcome for history,48 but that
can only be the case if the Biblical relationship of this judgement with

45 A good example is J. Bonda, The One Purpose of God. An Answer to the Doctrine of eternal

Punishment, Grand Rapids 1998. Cf. also the remarkable debate between D. Edwards
and J. Stott in: D.L. Edwards/J. Stott, Essentials. A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue, London
1988, 312319.
46 KD II/1, 446; ET, 396.
47 KD II/1, 434; ET, 386.
48 KD II/1, 441; ET, 392393.
 the doctrine of god 343

Gods mercy is recognised. The notion of judgement thus is not found

on the periphery, but points to the depth of Gods mercy. According to
this concept, the unity of this act of judgement, wrath and mercy must
be read from Him in whom Gods mercy became visible, from Christ
Jesus. In short, Gods righteousness can not be understood as an idea.
It must be derived from the history of Good Friday. That is what it cost
God to be righteous, without destroying us. Only through substitution
without exception can man be saved.
Barth reaches the perspective of universal salvation not through
relativising the element of Gods wrath against human rebellion, but
by having it fall in its totality on God himself. The gure of the
enhypostasis functions practically as a key to illuminating two sides of
the cross event. The humanity of Jesus has its existence in the person
of the eternal Son. Our contrast with him is apparently so great so
great that He enters into this opposition and must endure what is to
be suered in it. This means that on the cross the Son of God, and
in Him God himself, bears the judgement. Barth literally speaks of it
as this sternness of God against Himself (English, p. 397). But it is
also true that God can in Christ subject Himself to this sternness and
conict precisely because He is God. The conict is localised there, the
only place where it can be localised productively and with hope.49 The
conict that plays itself out on the cross can be read as a conict in God
himself, without there being a split or division in God.
The place given to the issues of theodicy in this concept should
hardly be surprising any more. The question of Job, the question of
the why of evil and suering, does have a place, but it is a place that
is bounded on all sides by the foregoing. That people and nations
encounter Gods judgement does not have to be denied. There is a
hidden connection between the judgement on Golgotha and what indi-
viduals, nations and the church suer. But this suering may no longer
be seen as absolute, of itself. The cross of Christ oers a possibility

49 KD II/1, 449; ET, 399: It consists in an alienation from God, a rebellion against

Him, which ought to be punished in a way, which involves our total destruction, and
which apart from our annihilation can be punished only by God Himself taking our
place, and in His Son taking to Himself and bearing and suering the punishment.
That is what is costs God to be righteous without annihilating us. The opposition to
Him in which we nd ourselves is so great that it can be overcome and rendered
harmless to ourselves only by God and indeed only by His entering Himself into this
opposition and bearing all the pain of it. And KD II/1, 450; ET, 400: Because He was
God Himself, He could subject Himself to the severity of God. And because He was
God Himself He did not have to succumb to the severity of God.
344 chapter seven

to regure all the other forms of judgement, namely as an announce-

ment or as an aftershock of that one judgement. Around Golgotha all
forms of suering are still signs, foreshadowings or afterpains of that
one judgement.50 In a Christian perspective, the history of the cross is
the reason to reread ones own history and world history.
Again the question presents itself: is this not an idealisation, an
attempt at amelioration, resulting in a distortion of what we experi-
ence in daily life? Has not grace here become a principle which is cast
over all experiences of misery like a re blanket tossed over a blaze
to smother it?51 The fear that for Barth grace has become a principle
through which concrete history in fact evaporates and is stripped of
its decisive character, has followed this theology like a shadow. West-
ern European, continental theology in the last decades has gone other
directions and has, unlike Barth, taken the absence of God, suering,
Auschwitz, or temptation as its constant reference point. Barth leaves
many with the impression that for him the experiences of emptiness,
terror and temptation immediately lose their power once one is taken
up into the movement of faith, of knowing God. His theology would
then lead to a sort of pastoral naivety, because it leaves no room for
the experience of suering and temptation. Is this conclusion correct?
One is at least bound to say that this does not have to be the conse-
quence of the conguration in the second panel. Barth, in his answer
to Berkouwer, resisted the suggestion vehemently. According to him, as
man one can only think of these things if one thinks from the history
of Jesus Christ.52 The disposition of facts that we encounter in Barth
is a variation on the theme that the apostle Paul expounds in Romans
8:3235: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? If, according to
the proclamation of the Church, since the history of Christ the powers
have lost their autonomy before God, then that is a judgement which
can be applied in one of two ways. On the one hand, it can be taken
as being an objective, established fact, which denies the reality of the
experience, and indeed the existence, of suering. But there is another
direction possible, namely to regard this conguration as a matter of
proclamation, a promise, which precisely as promissio does not pretend
to be a description of the present, generally observable condition. It can

50 KD II/1, 456; ET, 405406.

51 G.C. Berkouwer, De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth, Kampen 1954, ET,
The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids 1956.
52 KD IV/3, 198206; ET, 173180.
 the doctrine of god 345

be a statement that has its existence and justication exclusively in the

movement of faith, within the circle of what is reserved for us in Christ,
and responded to in prayer and obedience.
One more thing must be added for the interpretation of this theol-
ogy: one should here take Barth strictly on his theological intention and
not read him as psychology or pastoral psychology. He is not describ-
ing how believers feel, how they should feel, or how to approach them
pastorally or in terms of promoting their personal well-being. It is, as
we have said above, necessary to continually distinguish between the
various elds of dogmatic reection, psychology, pedagogy and pas-
toral care. Dogmatics or doctrine has consequences for pastoral the-
ology and pedagogy, but the translation from the former to the latter is
anything but a simple one-to-one matter. The question which is posed
theologically is, what can be considered the horizon? If theology con-
gures what it has to say in such a way that God at the most can be dis-
cussed as the horizon for personal experience and questions, then ones
own experiences are primary, and perhaps ones own questions and
temptations become understandable and bearable in light of this hori-
zon. That is the way that the largest part of theology has proceeded, in
keeping with the turn to the subject. With a rigor bordering on being
uncompromising, Barth has begun on the other side. He takes the light
which colours the horizon as his starting point. In reality the history
of Christ is the centre around which the concentric circles of our life-
histories spread. In reality it seems that man and his experiences are
taken up within the horizon of Gods work. That is the objectivism
which is at the heart of this conguration.

7.8.3. Patience and wisdom

The third pair of terms with which the eld of Gods operation is
explored are patience and wisdom. Barth here broaches a question
which is highly pertinent in light of Albert Schweitzers discussion of
the failure of the imminent expectation of the Second Coming, and
particularly in light of the concrete experience of suering. Why has
God allowed history to go on so long? One might suppose that Gods
mercy would be realised through putting an immediate end to our
history. The immediate destruction of all creation and its passing into
non-being might well be a realisation of Gods mercy. According to
Barth, the question of the meaning of the continuation of time after
Easter and Ascension has its theological justication in Easter itself. It
346 chapter seven

is a theological question, which is answered bynote carefullythe

actual continuation of history. Again, the answer is given with reference
to Gods acting in the world. Theological thinking is fundamentally a
posteriori, not a priori. Gods patience means that God gives the other,
creation, its time and space, grants it an existence next to His own
being, and carries out his will with regard to this other so that he does
not suspend or destroy this other, but accompanies and sustains it, and
allows it to develop in freedom.53 The patience of God, his patientia, is
thus dened as an extremely active quality. It is a patience that does
not diminish his majesty; it is indeed a peculiar form of his majesty, of
his being involved with mankind, that He gives them time and space in
freedom. What Barth will later develop more broadly in his doctrines
of creation and reconciliation we nd here in outline in his doctrine of
God.
In this pair of concepts too the distinction between what God is in
himself and what he does in history appears to be of practical impor-
tance. It becomes vital in the question of what within Gods own being
corresponds to judgement being by turns carried through and sus-
pended. It is fundamental throughout Barths doctrine of God that the
motivation to act in God does not arise in response to man and his his-
tory. In the encounter between God and his creature God remains the
one with power, who in his strength and power sustains man, and even
permits him to go his way. In this connection Rendtor has spoken
of the autonomy of God, which for Barth is elevated to the dominant
principle on the theological level.54 One can hardly deny this interpre-
tation, although the term autonomy suggests a certain cold dominance.
The way in which Barth lls in the concept of patience makes it possi-
ble to interpret the word autonomy as an inner divine attachment that
expresses itself in delity to the creation and creature. The idea that
creation and the creature is never without God is thus fundamental.
The decisive element in Gods patience is that God sustains all things
by his Word of power (cf. Heb. 1:3). Or to put it otherwise: He is not
brought into action by our response, through what is visible on our
side. He sustains all things through his own Wordthat is, through his
Son.

53 KD II/1, 461; ET, 410. In fact, Barth has here entered into the subject of the

doctrine of the convergence of all things, which he will discuss in KD III/3, 102175;
ET, 90154.
54 See note 12.
 the doctrine of god 347

The patience that God exercises therefore serves not only for mans
salvation. This might be called a theocentric motif. Barth makes clear
that the progression of time has its ground in God himself. God is
the principle source of the latitude in which time develops, in his
patience moves in ways that are tting for Him and which do jus-
tice to Him. Barth expresses this in rather abstract and Platonic lan-
guage. The progression of time means time for eternity. What he
means by that is that God does not will that his acts should run out
into nothingness, that his words be spoken to no eect. The contin-
uance is for the satisfaction of God himself. It is not surprising that
Barth should cite Isaiah 55:1011: the Word which proceeds from Gods
mouth shall not return to him without result. It shall not return to
me fruitless, without accomplishing its purpose. God gives himself time
and space to do what He wills to do with his creature. For his own
sake Gods word is spoken eectively, and only then, once it is said
that this is tting for God, can it also be said that this is done for
the sake of man.55 Gods honour implies the salvation of man. Against
the background of the beginning of the Second World War Barth in
this way provides a vision of history which is completely theological,
and is reminiscent of the theocentric perspective of the rst panel.
The intention of God, and not the human experience of nonsense,
senselessness, power run amok, must be denitive and dominant in all
thought.
Within this context of the patience of God Barth also then speaks of
time: Gods yes to himself happens in such a manner that He also says
yes to man. Because we are taken up in the will of God, we are given
time. For the sake of Jesus Christ there is time for the multitude. That
also denes the concept of time. Our time is participation in Gods
time. The meaning of time is the active patience of God, through which
he calls us to active participation, to assent. Anyone seeking a meaning
for time outside of this denition of time as time for repentance, assent
to God, in fact ignores Gods turn to mankind, and there is nothing else
left then but to see the patience of God as a cruel game, unworthy of
Him.56

55 KD II/1, 469; ET, 417.

56 KD II/1, 469; ET, 417.
348 chapter seven

7.9. The perfections of Gods freedom

7.9.1. Unity and omnipresence

In section 31 Barth once again traverses the doctrine of God, now from
the other perspective, namely that of Gods freedom. As has already
been said, under the heading of freedom he takes up the qualities that
classic doctrines of God term incommunicable. In fact, these qualities
were held to be the true essence of God. Barths correction implies that
he reinterprets these qualitiesor, to remain within his own vocab-
ulary, these perfectionsas predicates that arise from the contingent
revelation in Jesus Christ. Put dierently, he attempts to extract these
qualities from the embrace of a general, philosophical concept of God.
One might also say that Barths doctrine of God in this way itself
makes a contribution to the continuing dierentiation and distinction
of theology and philosophy. What can be said of God on the basis of
the revelation events witnessed to by the Bible goes in a whole dier-
ent direction from a general philosophical concept of God.57 As with
the rst series of qualities, the perfections of love, here too Barth con-
stantly makes a connection between two qualities. The rst particularly
emphasises the freedom or the divinity of Gods act, and the second
perfection Gods approach or love.
The rst quality of Gods freedom taken up is Gods unity, the
simplicitas Dei. Barth wishes to consider the unity as a qualication that
can be read from the revelation itself. That means that the unity as a
perfection of God is not postulated as a reection on being as such. It is
not the unity which is divine. Unity is the conclusion of the encounter
which is brought into being by God.58
In the previous panel it appeared that in the tradition the unity of
God was directly linked with notions of indivisibility and constancy.
Barths reinterpretation consists in no longer considering the unity as a

57 Barth in his own way participated in the consciousness that the god of the

philosophers is other than that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To what degree theology
is really able to go its own way in the freedom of the Gospel is a question in itself. It
says something about the self-understanding of dogmatics that it will go this direction.
For the rest, we have noted that in his concept of knowing God Barth is linked into
his historical context in all sorts of ways. At the same time, his theology is precisely of
paradigmatic value in the second panel because he reminds theology that it has its own
sources for knowing Godalbeit that it does not have them, but must listen to them
each time anew.
58 KD II, 507; ET, 450.
 the doctrine of god 349

qualication of the rst being,59 but as being linked with Gods love.
Gods unity then becomes His trustworthiness, His faithfulness and
delity.60 The unity of God therefore does not mean that God is a
unique or single. His unity reveals itself precisely in the history of Jesus
Christ. In this event, not only caused by God but also identical with his
being and act, He reveals himself and He becomes known as the One.
Unity thus is not in conict with Trinity, but the confession of the unity
of God is a description of the concrete unity of God in this history. The
New Testament can speak of the one God in the same breath with faith
in the one Lord Jesus Christ (cf. ICor. 8:6 and ITim. 2:5).
The term omnipresence is linked with the unity of God. Omnipres-
ence is among the qualities of Gods freedom because by virtue of this
perfection He can be close to his creation. Barth develops this con-
cept by presenting an analysis of the spatiality that is a factor with the
concept of omnipresence, and then interpreting the term of love in spa-
tial categories. Barth tells us that Gods omnipresence in fact means
the confession of Gods capacity for proximity.61 Because God incorpo-
rates proximity into his own being, He can be close to his creature. For
the spatiality of creation this means that there is no remoteness that is
not without Gods proximity. Because this creation is Gods creation,
there must already be a basis in God for the notions of remoteness and
proximity. In God himself, however, remoteness and proximity are one.
Things that are next to one another in creation, or far apart, are one
for Him. There is no distance or proximity that is without His prox-
imity. What Barth produces here is an analysis of spatiality which in its
highest sense can be ascribed to God. In fact it is literally speculation,
a reection based on something known to us, being attributed to God
himself. God is able to be present with the other, indeed with everything
that is other. God does not coincide with the other; but He is nearby.
Gods capacity for proximity is at its deepest founded in the theology of
the Trinity. In the event of Father, Son and Spirit love is dened as a

59 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvtern zu Karl Barth, 186 draws attention to a theo-

logical-historical idealisation on the part of Barth. Since Augustine the simplicitas Dei
had metaphysical foundations; according to Barth that was not the case in the earliest
Church. According to Meijering, that is an idealisation which has no historical founda-
tion. The earliest Church too, when dealing with polytheism and Marcionism, always
defended the unity of God with rational arguments.
60 KD II/1, 516; ET, 458.
61 KD II/1, 519; ET, 461.
350 chapter seven

unity of remoteness and nearness.62 God not only exists, but co-exists in
His Three-in-One being. Presence is dened as being together within a
distance.63
In an extensive excursus Barth corrects Protestant orthodoxy when
it makes Gods omnipresence and eternity derivatives of his innity.
The boundaries of time and space that apply for man do not apply to
God, and thus man arrived at aeternitas and ubiquitas. Barths response
is that in this way Gods being is again discussed in terms of human
limitation, that is to say, in terms of a problematic within creation. In
this manner eternity and omnipresence threaten to become only nega-
tions, namely timelessness and non-spatiality. It is this sort of abstract
thinking about God that Barth criticises in Schleiermachers denition
of eternity and omnipresence. For Schleiermacher God is absolutely
timeless (non-spatial) divine causality.64 That is saying too little, or even
false. Space and time as categories can not be handled in parallel with
one another. Gods omnipresence is primarily a quality of Gods love.
In contrast, unlike Schleiermacher Barth predicates Gods eternity as a
perfection of Gods freedom, a perfection that expresses his sovereignty
and permanence. Gods acting, internally and externally, has an abid-
ing quality, and in analogy with this quality for his external operation
God creates what we call time.65 Thus, for Barth time becomes predi-
cated as the form of creation through which it becomes the scene of the
acts of divine freedom. Precisely for this reason, creation is not eternal.
Otherwise it could be no arena for the acts of Gods freedom.
Barth will not say this latter about Gods omnipresence. Omnipres-
ence too falls under the perfections of Gods freedom for Barth, but
a further specication is necessary. Gods omnipresence is a perfection
of the freedom at work in His love. Because this freedom works itself
out in love inwardly and externally, in his external work God creates
space. This space is the form of creation by virtue of which creation, as
a reality which diers from God, can be an object of Gods love.
Let us pause for a moment with this analysis. It is, as I said already,
literally speculation, reection, in which love is interpreted in terms of
spatiality. Here we already nd a preguration of Barths later doctrine
of creation in nuce. Creation is the outward basis of the covenant, and

62 KD II/1, 521; ET, 463.

63 KD II/1, 527; ET, 468.
64 KD II/1, 524; ET, 466.
65 KD II/1, 522523; ET, 464465.
 the doctrine of god 351

within this creation there is again a distinction between the form of

time and the form of space. Time is connected with Gods freedom
acting in love, and space with Gods love acting in freedom. This
reection has no small consequence. In pre-Kantian theology, in the
rst panel, time and space were still absolute quantities. Eternity and
omnipresence were in fact thought of as a negation of the limitations
that time and space form for man. In Protestant orthodoxy these
considerations of omnipresence and eternity led to the notions of non-
spatiality and timelessness, thus to purely negative denitions. In the
concept of God prevailing in Kant and taken over by Schleiermacher,
Gods eternity is reduced to a timeless and non-spatial causality. Barths
achievement is that Gods revelation in time and space, or better, His
condescension, comes to be understood as a movement, a real coming
that is not alien to God. The movement, the approach, the coming
to man is to be conceived as an event that has its ground and the
conditions for its possibility in Gods love. If from the beginning God
has existed as Father and Son, as love, then co-existence, a conuence
of nearness and distance, is characteristic of Gods being. This structure
receives a consonant shape in one of the forms of creation, space.
Why, we might ask, does Barth seek to so anchor the forms of
creation, time and space, in the being of God, in his immanent life? Is it
a hunger for speculation? Does Barth suer from the (to quote Berkhof)
South German disease of wanting to speculatively root everything in
Gods being? It is striking that Calvin did not display this same need
for speculative reection. With him there was a rational handling of
what he believed he found in Scripture, but no speculative reection
seeking to penetrate to the being of God. We would have to say that
while Calvin could still call upon Scripture as a mirror, as the place
where Gods will and disposition toward man could be seen, for Barth
this territory as the last ground had become something relative. Human
knowing of God can not rest until it has found an absolute, irreducible
ground. That ground is only there when faith discovers its own peculiar
knowledge, given in Christ, as a participation in Gods self-knowledge.
Only then is what is known no longer something accidental, not a
vagary, but something that is anchored in Gods own being.
In regard to space, there is still a second dierence between the
two panels to be noted. For Calvin the world is the theatrum gloriae;
existence itself, in its coherence and hierarchical construction, testies
clearly to God. For Barth the natural world can no longer be the
point of departure for real knowledge of God. Only the life disclosed
352 chapter seven

in revelation provides a theological siting for the concepts of space and

time. Nature, or better, things from the world which surrounds us, cease
to be primary concerns for theology. Only after the theme of revelation
has been explicitly discussed can they re-enter theology and receive a
place in theological discourse.
Our space is thus not Gods space as such, but a creation of God.
God can be in created space himself. According to Barth there is
therefore a dierentiation in the nature of divine presence, but God
does not have to relinquish or diminish himself. It is worth noting
that in this context Barth clearly separates himself from the concept
of accommodation: This dierentiation of the divine presence does
not depend on its adaptation to the nature of creation. To be sure,
it is indeed adapted to it, but that is another matter. It is adapted to
it because it is truly grounded in the essence of its Creator 66 In
other words, in his revelation God does not leave any part of Himself
behind; he is fully Himself. He can be near the other because otherness
has its basis in himself. Gods condescension, his approach to man, has
nothing of the nature of concession.
Barth ultimately gives omnipresence a Christological foundation.
God is present with us gratia adoptionis, but with Jesus however gratia
unionis, and the latter is the foundation for the former.67 Barth draws
from this the conclusion that he will later develop in his doctrine of
reconciliation. If Jesus Christ is Gods dwelling in creation, then God
not only gives space to the creation but the space that is most peculiar
to Him. In doing that, God has elevated man to the throne. The most
characteristic space is the space that man occupies near God. If the
fullness of God dwells in Him physically, then man has in Christ shared
in the space that is most peculiar to God. Then the manger becomes
Gods space, thereby establishing a fact which can never be reversed.68
Barths exposition can be understood as a frontal attack on the
modern axiom of the non-spatial essence of God. The perspective must
be reversed. It is peculiar to God that he takes a place, or constitutes it
a better place. He does this in our history in Jesus Christ, in his body.
The God who dwells in heaven dwells by us symbolically, sacramentally,
spiritually.

66 KD II/1, 532; ET, 473.

67 KD II/1, 545; ET, 485.
68 KD II/1, 546547; ET, 486.
 the doctrine of god 353

7.9.2. Constancy and omnipotence

The concept of constancy as a quality of God is intended to transcend
the opposition between movement and immovability. It is clear that this
concept is intended to be both distinct from, and a reference to the
concept immutabilitas. If God was really the one who was not moved,
either by himself or by another, then, we read, this would be death
par excellence. Barth accuses Protestant orthodoxy of having paved the
way for the deterioration of the church and the anthropologising by
Schleiermacher and Feuerbach by including the axiom of immutability
among the qualities of God. In his life and action the living God is
however also the one who remains and sustains himself. Therefore
Barth very deliberately chooses another word than immutability. In
Barths eyes the term immutabilitas is derived from the concept of being.
He himself opts for the word constancy: it is more personal, and
implies God is a willing, knowing and acting subject. God is the living
Person who transcends the antithesis of changeable-unchangeable. In
that, God is the Constant One, the one who in his deeds does not
abandon or turn against himself, but in his love and freedom conrms
and reiterates himself.
It will not be surprising to here encounter a concept which we like-
wise found in the rst panel, namely the repentance of God. In analogy
with what was earlier discussed with regard to anthropomorphic lan-
guage in the Bible, repentance is not regarded as an illegitimate man-
ner of speaking, which only says something about the changed relation
of man to God. If Calvin had the inclination to regard anthropopathic
expressions as language secundum hominem recipientem and to fend o the
thought that something happened in God himself, Barth places the
change rmly in God himself. If God repents of a judgement that pre-
viously had been declared over the residents of Nineveh, this indicates a
movement and change in God himself. It is, Barth insists, blasphemous
to deny God the capacity to change in his acts and intentions.69 God
himself does not change when his intentions or plans change. Rather,
in these changes He perseveres in his love and freedom.
It is essential for Barths doctrine of God that he tries to nd a
solution to the problem with which classical theology always wrestled,
namely in what way one can speak of a decision in God with regard

69 KD II/1, 560; ET, 498.

354 chapter seven

to, for instance, creation, if He at the same time is immutable. In order

to synthesise both elements into a higher unity Barth opts for active
constancy. Creating is a free act of Gods love. That means that this
Setzung is not new in an absolute sense. It is not a surprise for God. God
alone is the One who is eternally new, but in the choice between being
and non-being God has chosen for being.
Two elements follow from the fact that God has committed Himself
to the creature. First, such a commitment is a free decision. God was
not forced to do this. Second, it is a decision. That means that man,
in thinking about God and man, cannot disregard this decision or
decree.70
In Barths classication of perfections the term constancy is paired
with the term omnipotence. With this concept we undeniably here
touch upon a nerve in modern debates regarding God. That God
should have the quality of might attributed to him was regarded as
self-evident in the rst panel. Gods might stood for Gods care. God
could care for creation, because He was powerful. In contemporary
theology such a prominent position for the concept of might would be
unthinkable. Might stands for the power to make decisions regarding
control, and therefore a God who has power can hardly be exempted
from responsibility for excesses or atrocities and suering. Nevertheless,
this historical and cultural factor regarding this concept is no reason
to abandon the concept of might as such. In fact, we might say it
is anything but a reason to do so. There is however indeed a shift
in perspective that has to do with this historical background. Gods
might is not a concept which can be derived from cosmology, from the
hierarchic design of a closed universe. The orientation has shifted to
the history of Jesus Christ as the crossing point where all lines come
together and, above all, proceed from.
An abstract discussion of Gods omnipotence therefore is not in
order. Theology can not reect on omnipotence as such. What Gods
omnipotence is, is to be lled in and limited by the subject, namely
God himself. A second point reminds us of something which we also
encountered in the rst panel. Gods power there is not only a matter
of potentia, of capacity, but also a matter of His right, legitimacy and
authority, of potestas. The world is Gods world. God is the rightful
owner of this world.71

70 KD II/1, 583; ET, 518.

71 KD II/1, 591; ET, 526.
 the doctrine of god 355

The third decision that Barth takes in his discussion of the concept
of power is the most important, because it formulates his critique of the
development of the power concept. The thesis runs that Gods power
is not exhausted in his works. As usual, Barth chooses his direction
by entering into discussion with Protestant orthodoxy and reinterpret-
ing the denitions found there. He upbraids Polanus for identifying
Gods omnipotence with his omnicausality. In so doing, omnipotence
becomes a concept that is applicable in the realm of Gods opera ad
extra. In Quenstedts denition the potentia Dei is the principium exsequens
operationum divinarum. Polanus still distinguishes himself from this posi-
tively by speaking yet of a potentia personalis in addition to the omnipo-
tence of God, thus of a power which prevails outside of the Trinity.
Barths critical point is clear: by connecting omnipotence with Gods
external works orthodoxy has contributed to power being considered
as the characterisation of the highest world principle. In other words,
orthodoxy is in part responsible for Gods omnipotence being labelled
a might that has its place in his acting toward the world, in creation. In
Barths view, with Schleiermacher this results in God vanishing as the
dening subject, and becoming instead the concept of might. That is a
tremendous reduction. Causality now becomes the only, real and com-
prehensive description of Gods power. Gods capacity is exhausted in
Gods actual willing. Nature, that which is, henceforth coincides with
Gods power. Barth descries a development which had become the
dominant view in liberal theology, namely that Gods omnipotence and
omnicausality were congruent qualities.
It is precisely at this point in the second panel that the guration
is readjusted. Nature, that which is, the sum total of actuality, is not
identical with Gods omnipotence. Certainly, God is the cause of all
things. Let there be no misunderstanding that Gods knowing and
willing must be discussed as part of the concept of omnipotence. His
omnipotence is not however exhausted by his omnicausality. Gods
acting and his being are not exhausted by what is. That would rob
Him of his freedom. The liberal identication of omnipotence and
omnicausality makes a fatal reversal possible. It becomes possible to
simply interpret all power that man encounters as Gods will. This
view leads to an apotheosis of history, nature, and of man himself.72
God becomes an exponent of history and nature, and that is precisely

72 KD II/1, 597; ET, 531.

356 chapter seven

what Barth is battling against. That which is salvic in God can be so

precisely because He does not coincide with what we experience in this
world.
Finally, I would mention Barths view of the relation between potentia
absoluta and ordinata. I would particularly note his critique of the thesis
that there is a potentia ordinaria alongside a potentia extraordinaria. What
has been understood under potentia extraordinaria also falls under the one
power of God. He reproves the bringing of the potentia extraordinaria into
the essence of God. This reproof tallies with Calvins critique. The real
point for both is their objection to the idea that an actual, operational
power of God is concealed behind the potentia ordinaria, namely a potentia
inordinata, or arbitrary power.73
Despite the altered conguration of elements, the doctrine of God
in this second panel can in no way be labelled a polished extrapo-
lation of the modern sense of life. The gures in this panel become
contrary and stubborn when it comes to Gods knowing and willing.
Gods omniscience, and the omnicience of his will, are maintained
tenaciously. Gods will is also constitutive and determinative for what
He does not will.74 In this respect Barth is no less radical than Calvin,
when he derives everything from Gods knowing and willing. That does
not however mean that God is the actor peccati. Death, the devil and
sin would indeed have no existence outside God, but they are char-
acterised as that which God has not willed, ant thus has rejected. As
divine judgements, Gods yes and no are the constituents of all that is
and occurs. There is no third, neutral realm outside the verdict of God.
This means that Gods prescience is indeed the presupposition of evil
and sin, but not the cause. Nothing escapes from Gods knowing and
willing, but that does not mean that sin and the devil have their cause
in God. That would express a positive relation.75 God is involved with
evil in a dierent manner than He is involved with good. In no case
however can Gods involvement be considered as a form of response
that does not do full justice to Gods sovereignty. One can indeed also
speak of a God reacting, although that is not a reaction that is in the
same plane as human action. Human acting and reacting are always

73 KD II/1, 609610; ET, 541542.

74 KD II/1, 625; ET, 556: But it is by Gods refusing and rejecting will that the
impossible and non-existent before Him is, since it is only by Gods rejecting will, His
aversion, that it can have its particualr form of actuality and possibility.
75 KD II/1, 627, 630; ET, 557, 560.
 the doctrine of god 357

encompassed by the wealth and depth that is peculiar to God. This

means that on a very signicant point the two panels do not diverge
from one another. Although in dierent ways, all things are subject to
Gods knowing and willing. The problems to which this proposition
leads are no less strongly present in the second panel than they were
in the rst. If all is subject to Gods knowing and willing, can one still
speak of man having any responsibility? Does not the foreknowledge
of God cancel out the real possibility of human will and responsibil-
ity? It is not without good reason that Barth reiterates and endorses the
distinctions that were made in Protestant orthodoxy between the vari-
ous forms of knowing in God, because these explain that the relation
of Gods knowing and willing to things varies in nature.76 But all these
rational exercises are of little use in defending the proposition that man
is really a subject if one rejects the fundamental proposition: divine and
human action can not be involved on one and the same plane.77 Gods
response to man is a real response, but is not purely a response as men
respond to one another. It is encompassed by Gods Lordship, his glory,
and that means that conceptually two things must be kept clearly in
mind. Gods acting is true communicative acting, and to that extent
reaction, and it is also more than human response to the extent that it
is supported by and arises from Gods Lordship over and grasp of all
things.

76 KD II/1, 638639; ET, 567568.

77 It is for this reason that Barth rejects the post-Tridentine doctrine of the scientia
media: KD II/1, 640661 (ET, 567586). Scientia media is a category between scientia neces-
saria and scientia libera. God knows things that can happen under certain circumstances.
Scientia media involves the collective result of Gods gratia preveniens and human freedom.
The point of this concept is of course to secure the possibility of the real existence
of human responsibility. Barth commends later Thomistic theology for not wanting to
telescope the action of God and the action of man together in this manner. In the
words of Aquinas, it obtains for God that operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius
proprietatem S.Th I.q.83, art.1 ad r3. Gods knowing is never an empty exercise or
envisaging. Doing, knowing and willing can not be separated from one another. In the
argument about a scientia media the Molinists and Jesuits make the error of regarding
Gods knowing and human acting on one level. Man therefore constitutes a riddle for
divine knowledge (KD II/1, 654; ET, 580). Man is what he is by God and before God.
In its relation to God it exists simply in virtue of the fact that God establishes and
maintains this relationship, and therefore simply by the grace of God. This alone is the
way in which the creature exists in its oneness with God in the person and work of Jesus
Christ (ET, 585). Gods foreordination, his priority for all our acting, changes nothing
in the denition of human existence as self-determination: We are foreordained and
perceived by God in our genuine human self-determination. That it is under divine
foreordination does not alter the fact that it is genuine human self-determination. The
358 chapter seven

Analogous with the foregoing, we also nd in this panel the distinc-

tion between a voluntas eciens and a voluntas permittens. Obviously, the
distinction between the two will play a prime role in the question of
theodicy. On the basis of his voluntas permittens God takes up in his will
evil, the revolt, the limitation of being by non-being (English, 594).
The voluntas permittens is however no less divine than the voluntas eciens,
for one is no less within the sphere of God within his permitting than
when one is within Gods voluntas eciens, but only within it in a dierent
form. What then is the purpose of this distinction? To excuse evil, or to
attribute it to God in a terrible manner? That might be the conclusion
if this concept were presented as a conclusion drawn from events in this
world. There is, one must say, only one possibility for adequately read-
ing this sort of distinction, namely from a concentration on the story
of Jesus. Only when our gaze shifts from world history to the history of
Jesus Christ can this distinction be read to say that Gods freedom does
not stop at the point where we most need Him. The distinction formu-
lates how God still has a relation to his creation when it nds itself in
realms of horror.78 Barth even advances an argument which outside of
the domain of faith, outside of the relation to God, must be seen as the
greatest blasphemy, and that can only be understood from inside, from
the way of prayer: Gods highest goodness blazes forth precisely where
it appears that obedience and bliss are not simple nature, but that his
goodness consists in rescue from the abyss.79

7.9.3. Eternity and glory

In a last movement the perfections of Gods freedom are explored with
the aid of the paired terms eternity and glory. Barth terms eternity
the sovereignty and majesty of Gods love so far as this has and is
pure duration. With God, beginning, succession and end are not three
separate elements, oating apart from one another, but are one. Eter-
nity is thereby characterised as the principle of Gods unity, uniqueness
and simplicity. The thread of Barths critique of traditional doctrines of

reverse is also true: On the other hand, that it is genuine human self-determination
does not alter the fact that it is completely under Gods foreordination and does not in
any way include a foreordination of God by men (KD II/1, 660; ET, 586).
78 Cf. the quotation from Augustine: Nec dubitandum est, deum facere bene etiam

sinendo eri quaecunque unt male. Non enim hoc nisi iusto iudicio sinit; et profecto
bonum est omne, quod iustum est. Augustine, Enchiridion 96, CCSL 46, 99100.
79 KD II/1, 672; ET, 596.
 the doctrine of god 359

God runs through his reection on the concept of eternity: the concept
must be freed from its Babylonian captivity to the absolute confronta-
tion between time and eternity.80 Seen from a certain perspective, eter-
nity can well be viewed as non-temporality. But this non-temporality is
related to the fact that in time past, present and future are separated
and pull apart from one another. The characteristic of duration that
eludes them is precisely what accrues to God. Thus, as pure duration,
God is free in his acting, constant and trustworthy. Eternity is there-
fore the principle of Gods inherent unity, uniqueness and simplicity.
That this eternity must not be dened primarily in contrast to time, but
rather says something positive about the wealth of life that is peculiar
to God, can also be seen in Boethiuss famous denition: Aeternitas est
interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. Gods eternity is
a perfect and at the same time consummate quality of unlimited life.
It is His principle of abundance, through which he can relate precisely
to our time, and underpin the separate times. Again, the reversal of
perspective is applied: God in himself is the foundation for time. If in
Barths early theology the pregnant confrontation between time and
eternity was in the foreground and revelation was only conceivable
as a cancelling out of time, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik the opposition is
replaced by something which underlies and connects. Therefore Barth
can also say, God has time for us. In Gods self-revelation time partici-
pates in divine duration, in the abundance of Gods time at the moment
of the revelation. The analogical form prevails. Thus there also remains
a dierence between Gods time and our time, but human time is not
cancelled out, but rather receives a foundation and is brought to per-
fection.
Barth has a Trinitarian foundation for eternity. God the Father is the
source, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father
and Son. That implies a unity of movement. Next, in the incarnation
God not only gives time as the form of our existence, but God also
takes time: He becomes time.81 He permits created time to become the
form of his eternity.
The lines which Barth later develops in his doctrine of reconciliation
become visible here in this movement. Because God himself becomes
creaturemanin his Son, He does not cease to exist in His glory,
but at the same time He humbles himself. However, for man this move-

80 KD II/1, 689; ET, 611.

81 KD II/1, 694; ET, 614.
360 chapter seven

ment, which has its ground in God himself, means an opposite move-
ment of elevation. Barth therefore terms the incarnation a fullling
and surpassing of creation (English, 616). Time is elevated to a form of
Gods eternity. The eternal God is clothed in time. Here too, I would
once again note, it is no longer distance, but similarity, analogy, which
prevails. Who God is, is made clear in time by his revelation. The Eter-
nal is able to make time a form of his presence and in doing so exalts it.
The dierences from the rst panel are obvious. Accommodation as
the possibility for human knowledge of God is an adjustment to the
low state of man. In view of Calvins emphasis on the majesty of God,
accommodation has always also had the smack of condescension to lost
mankind. With Barth the accent lies elsewhere. For him too revelation
is a matter of grace from beginning to end, of benevolence, and here
too the incarnation can be termed an estrangement with regard to
Gods own being. This however does not detract from the fact that
Barths concept tends rst of all to understand revelation in time as
something which is in keeping with Gods nature, something which
does not run counter to but which tallies with Gods being. In being
gracious God does something that is most deeply characteristic of Him,
which has always been present in his own being. God is so powerful
that He is able to do this.
Thus eternity is no longer to be understood in opposition to time,
but in Christ, in the incarnation, where God becomes the mystery
of time. Time and space are not the forms in which in which man
regards and shapes the world, but lie within God as structures of
his omnipresence and eternity. Time is not alien to Him. With Kant
time and space were anthropologised; Barth responds by theologising
them, understanding them as forms within God. Thus this concept
fundamentally yields a positive relation between Gods eternity and our
time. If God, in his unlimited life, did not embrace our time on all
sidesthus before and behind, above and belowthen, Barth tells us,
this reality would be a dream, a reverie or a nightmare.82
Finally, a few words about the nal term, the glory of God. If in
the second panel there is anywhere that the meaning of creation is
discussed, as opposed to our experience of emptiness and absurdity,
it is on the basis of this perfection. The glory of God, Barth tells us,
is His competence as the omnipresent to exercise His omnipotence.

82 KD II/1, 699; ET, 620.

 the doctrine of god 361

Glory is to be understood as the inclusion of all Gods perfections, His

capacity, rooted in himself, to make himself known. Among the terms
given, it is striking how great the consequences of this perfection are
for man. Gods glory is a joy which shares itself. The works of God are
all performed as a movement of self-delight and the communication of
joy. God desires his works, his creation, not because they would have
meaning in themselves, but because however inadequate they are, they
will still grant faithful passage for and respond to the joy that is in God
himself.
It is a strange and provocative thought in a world which has become,
before all else, a riddle to itself: God willed creation, including man, in
order for the communication and expansion of joy to become a fact.
At the same time this throws light on the place that man and his being
as a subject assumes in this conguration. Man is not an autonomous
being, sucient in himself. In this concept we encounter the modern
humanist ideal, though from its formal aide; the content is however
dened wholly by the concept of analogy. Formally, being human is
to possess self-determination, Selbstbestimmung. The decisive question on
the material side is of course what the self is. Through the work of the
Holy Spirit, in faith this self-determination undergoes a change. The
self-determination is not annulled; in the typical double meaning of the
word Aufhebung (revocation and closure) it is fundamentally critiqued
and at the same time taken up into a new context.83 Through the work
of the Holy Spirit the human existence is determined as the act of our
self-determination in the totality of its possibilities.84 Gods work does
not force man to a halt, does not reduce him to an attitude of passivity.
It is characteristic that the believer is characterised as a fully active and
acting being. In his acting he is however no longer autonomous, but is
taken up into the operation and acting of God. Barth reaches for the
image of a choir member who comes too late to the weekly practise: the
one who nds himself in the history of Jesus Christ is like a late-comer
slipping shamefacedly into creations choir in heaven and earth.85
In this connection we encounter the metaphors of the mirror and
theatre, though less frequently than we did in the rst panel. It is in

83 Cf. also KD I/2, 342; ET, 313; Faith in the New Testament sense does not mean

merely the superseding but the abolishing of mans self-determination. It means that
mans self-determination is co-ordinated into the order of the divine perdertermina-
tion.
84 KD I/2, 290; ET, 266.
85 KD II/1, 731; ET, 648.
362 chapter seven

those elements in life which correspond with Gods acts that God is
gloried, and only in those elements; then and only then is this exis-
tence a mirror. The dierences from the rst panel are considerable.
There, in the light of revelation the whole of reality is intended to
glorify God. As God is known, man begins to share in God and the
whole of creation again begins to shine. Therefore the whole of cre-
ation can again become a mirror of God going his way.86 But, we
must acknowledge, it is always the eeting, pale movement of a shadow,
which man can not grasp. Human existence is only the mirror of God
in this movement, in the living connection that God creates between
himself and things. For Barth it has ceased to be self-evident that cre-
ation is a mirror. He makes no appeal to evidences of God. It is an
image that is only true to the extent that Gods claim is heard. Jesus
Christ is the centre and compendium of this history. Reality is involved
in a series of reections or corresponding actions. In his doctrine of
creation Barth develops this still further. The relation of the Father to
the Son in the Spirit nds an analogy in Gods covenant with man,
and this relation is the found of the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is
this reality of a relation within Gods own being that is repeated as
an analogia relationis in countless refractions and is reected in a mul-
titude of relations: man and wife, parent and child, man and fellow-
man.87
In the concept in the second panel, man as homo faber is not fated to
unemployment. The modern view of man as an active, acting being,
who does not act under compulsion or as a slave to another, but acts
in freedom in such a way that it gives shape to his own individuality,
is not swept away. Rather, it is taken up into a larger context of Gods
work, Gods self-determination. It is Gods choice to live in relation
to man, in delity to and in solidarity with the human creature. That
creates the horizon for the content of the human self. It is the identity of
man, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to live in fellowship with the eternally
abundant God. Thus there is a space indicated where man can learn
to know himself better than he can understand himself outside of
it.

86 KD II/1, 760; ET, 674675: In this sense the way and thatre of the glorication

of god is neither more nor less than the total existence of the creature who knows God
and oers Him his life-obedience.
87 KD III/2, 261263; ET, 219220.
 the doctrine of god 363

7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God

Who is God, with whom man is dealing? The discussion of Gods per-
fections served as a rst round in answering this question; the discus-
sion of the doctrine of election will be the occasion for a second round
toward an answer. For Barth, the doctrine of God ows out into the
doctrine of election, which is in its turn the core of the doctrine of rec-
onciliation. As compared with the dogmatic tradition, Barth takes the
far-reaching step of no longer dividing reection on Gods being and
on His acting into two separate compartments, instead considering the
one as an extension of the other. Being and revelation do not coincide,
because it must be assumed that God, by his nature, is not obliged to
reveal himself. Once God has decided to reveal himself, this revelation
takes the believer entirely into the mystery of Gods being. For Barth,
Gods actingconcretely the acting in election in the history of Jesus of
Nazarethis the window through which one can look into the heart of
God. As a result, as compared with the rst panel, in Barths theology
the concept of election has moved up to a place within the actual doc-
trine of God. Election describes not only Gods action toward man, but
also his own being. We could also put that dierently: the positioning
of the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God is theologically
the conceptual model for breaking the centrality of the human subject.
After the turn to the subject, the only possibility left appeared to be to
discuss God as an element within the human horizon. By making the
doctrine of election the spearhead of the doctrine of God, a reversal
takes place. Man and his world receive their place and meaning con-
ceptually within Gods horizon.88
Barth never avoided making use of the word election theologically. In
his early theology the word however does not function as a description
of the content of revelation, but of the nature and manner of revelation.
Election and rejection are the designations for the two categories into
which man comes in the light of revelation. In the second edition of his
Epistle to the Romans man is empiricallythus according to the visible
ordernever more than Esau, that is to say, the rejected, someone
to whom God says no. In the light of revelation the same man can
however become Jacob, the child of election, over whom the light of
Gods love and eternal life shines, although this is never directly visible,

88 Cf. Jngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden,Tbingen 19763, 45; ET, 4647.
364 chapter seven

but at the most being perceptible as the yes that lies hidden behind
the visible no. Election and rejection in this way coincide with the
actual reality in faith of man himself. In the rst parts of the Kirchliche
Dogmatik election also functions as an element of Gods call, without
that expressly referring to an eternal ground in God himself.89 That
changes in the doctrine of God. In KD II/1 election refers to a content
in God himself.90
In this process, in the second volume of his doctrine of God (KD II/2)
Barth develops, of all things, precisely the concept that in theological
history had been associated with an arbitrary and tyrannical God,
with the threat of destruction and inhumanity and with the tragedy
of Reformed theology,91 into the concept that serves as the summary
of the Gospel. The formulation of the Leitsatz for 32 permits no
possible mistake about it. It is a clarion call: The doctrine of election
is the sum of the Gospel because of all the words that can be said
or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too
the One who loves in freedom.92 What Barth wants to achieve is that
the word election become a concept of salvation without any darker
associations.93 He accomplishes this by exercising a sharp critique on
the Biblical exegesis of preceding theology. For a moment I would recall
the undervaluation of the covenant in Calvin, how the covenant is
there termed something in the middle and all the drama of sacred
history which is unfolded in Romans 911 is reduced to a decision
about the salvation of individuals. Barths critique is as follows: there
has been too little awareness in the tradition that in Scripture election
is a category of sacred history, which must be wholly understood in light
of the relation of God with his people. The core of this history is the
yes that speaks to this people, and through this people to the nations.
The key to the exposition of the sections of the Bible that provided
the traditional Biblical basis for the doctrine of predestination is Gods
choosing for a relation with his people, their choice for discipleship or
other, and Gods choosing to permit them to share in the messianic
future. It is from this perspective that chapters 911 of the epistle of the
Romans must be read. In these chapters Gods election and rejection

89 See also McCormack, Karl Barths critically realistic dialectical Theology, 456.
90 KD II/1, 308; ET, 274.
91 C. Graaand, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 593f.
92 KD II/2, 1; ET, 3.
93 KD II/2, 1213; ET, 1314.
 the doctrine of god 365

are in the service of his intention to salvation. For Barth this point
Gods intention for salvation for all mankindis the reason to take
election as the concept in which numerous threads of his theology come
together and become interwoven. In this concept election has a topical
function.94 Within his dogmatic concept the doctrine of election forms
the transition and threshold from Gods own being to his works. As
such, Gods election belongs in both subsets. Election is the core of the
doctrine of reconciliation, which follows on the doctrine of God, but at
the same time this election is part of Gods free self-determination.
It is important to note that as much as possible it is not the noun
election that Barth employs, instead constantly using the active verb.
Barth speaks of Gods electing and willing. It is not a decision, a
will, a choice that is central, but the emphasis lies on the acting, the
movement: God is the One who himself chooses, wills. Pointing back to
the acting of God in this way is characteristic. In faith, in our existence
in the world, we are not dealing with a decision, with an intention
that, once taken, becomes a self-standing entity apart from the living
God. Strictly speaking, there is no decision that one can take from the
press like a printed decree; one is dealing with the living God in his
willing and decreeing. We see again what we have already noted: the
reality to which dogmatics refers is a movement, an event, the acting
of God. Human knowledge of God can therefore only be the result of
this acting and willing of God, which becomes knowable in the history
of the one person Jesus Christ. There, in a real sense, one sees into the
heart of God.

7.11. Election as the basic decision of God

Barth calls this willing and deciding of God the primal history or pri-
mal fact.95 The term Urgeschichte had previously played a prominent role
in Barths theological development. He derived the concept from the
posthumous work of Fr. Overbeck, for whom Urgeschichte stood for a
dening phase in the life of a people or movement, which none the less
remains shrouded in darkness.96 Barth took up the concept in the sec-
ond edition of his Epistle to the Romans to denote the incomprehensibil-

94 KD II/2, 15; ET, 15.

95 KD 11/2, 6; ET, 89.
96 Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie, 5.
366 chapter seven

ity of revelation. It surfaces again in Kirchliche Dogmatik, in the doctrine

of election, but now with moreand specically theologicalcontent.
This electing and willing of God is primal history in the sense that it is
there that the structure of Gods acting becomes visible. The prex Ur-
refers to the logical and objective priority of Gods electing of the man
Jesus to live in unity with his Son. The history of Jesus Christ stands
for this turning of God toward mankind. The history connected with
the name of Jesus Christ thereby becomes a centre which is the den-
ing origin of everything which lies around it. Jesus Christ is, Barth says
quite literally, the centre of the cosmos,97 and as such the primal deci-
sion of God.98 The decision to be in relation to man in the person of
Jesus Christ is the primal relation, which is fundamental to the being
of God himself.99 Election thus becomes the word that represents the a
priori of Gods gracious proximity to Jesus.
The inclusion of the relation with man in the discussion of God
can be termed fundamental for Barths theological concept, and has
far-reaching consequences. First, the primal history taking place in the
essence of God is denitive for those who are linked to this man Jesus
as his fellow humans. The electing and lling of God is something
which characterises man. In Jesus Christ, man is chosen as a partner
in covenant.100 Cosmology falls away as the xed space of orientation,
to be replaced by a spiritual point, the decision in God in favour of
man in Jesus Christ. The whole of reality is rebuilt anew, reconstituted
around this point.
Second, election is never an inherent religious or moral quality of
man; it is anchored in Gods own being and can only be read from the
history of Jesus Christ. Here too the term primal in primal history
and primal decision functions to indicate a movement that has its
point of departure in God and remains a quality of Gods acting. The
opposition to every attempt to make Gods reality psychologically or
historically manifest and controllable is continued in the KD. God and
his salvation can not be represented directly.
There is a sharp contrast here from the rst panel. For the truth
of double predestination Calvin called upon an ordinary observation,
entirely perceptible: many are indierent to the Gospel. There are

97 KD II/2, 6; ET, 7.
98 KD II/2, 53; ET, 51.
99 KD II/2, 55; ET, 52.
100 KD II/2, 10; ET, 11.
 the doctrine of god 367

only a handful of people who are conscientious in the service of God.

Barths response to this is telling in many ways: he tries to respond
on the theological level and at the same time he will not in any way
disguise his aversion. He ascribes the fact that Calvin is able to draw the
dividing line between the small ock of the elect on the one hand and
the rira on the other to a streak of nastiness. Barth clearly sees little
in Calvins personality to recommend him. His foremost objections
however are theological in nature. According to Calvin, election is an
immanent quality, a private relationship between a particular person
and God,101 while according to Barth election and rejection are rst
of all verbs that indicate the structure of Gods acting and manner of
dealing with that one man, Jesus Christ. Only within the outlines of
that one is there anything which can be said about all the others.
Third, we must be aware that Barth, by including the election of
Jesus Christ, and with it that of man, in the doctrine of God, makes a
suggestion that has still other far-reaching consequences. It is an inno-
vation in the doctrine of God that can be interpreted as the attempt
to include the humanity of God denitively within the denition of
God himself. In classical dogmatics the decisions to create, to redeem,
and to send His Son into the world belonged to the doctrines of the
decrees of God, which followed after discussions of God and his quali-
ties. Barth breaks with that tradition. He borrows the notion from the
Reformed tradition that election is the ultimate, or actually the rst
word that describes the salvic relation of God to man, but then makes
this doctrine the heading under which all of the action of God can
be subsumed. Creation and providence, including the vulnerability, the
pains and the unbelievable risks of suering and guilt that are attached
to this human existence: these are all surveyed with Gods election of
the man Jesus of Nazareth in mind. Put in other words: theologically
this earthly reality can only be regured as Gods work if one begins
with the actions of God in Jesus Christ. The covenant is the inside, the
point of Gods actions. That means that incarnation, the approach to
man is not additional, not incidental to our world history. Since the
name of Jesus Christ, since his history was given to the Church, think-
ing about God and about man and the world can no longer get around
that name.102 Barth summarises this in two short assertions, namely that

101 KD 11/2, 4042, ET, 4144.

102 KD II/2, 57; ET, 54; There is no greater depth in Gods being and work than
368 chapter seven

Jesus Christ is the electing God and He is the elect man.103 His doc-
trine of election is comprised of the further development of these two
propositions.

7.12. Election as the core issue

One can consider Barths doctrine of election as the substantive core of

his theology. If it is true for God as a person in the consummate sense of
the term, that He determines himself, and that nothing external to Him
denes him, then it is in the concept of election that we subsequently
nd the answer to the question of how God determines himself. He
elects the man Jesus of Nazareth to be in unity with his Son. Thus,
in the name of Jesus and in his history the Church discovers that
God has chosen his Son to exist in unity with this man. With this, it
becomes possible to interpret the concrete life history of Jesus from two
perspectives. One can follow the ray of light that is this history in two
directions, to God, and to mankind. In the former, this history oers
an entry to God for those who go upward. One can no longer think of
God outside of the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is not something
extra for the Christian image of God, not an adjunct, but essential.
Thus the proposition in 33 is Jesus Christ is the electing God.104 It is
in his life that it becomes knowable who it really is from whom election
proceeds. That is the ray of light which returns to the electing subject.
But one can also follow the beam of light downwards to the elected
object. The same light characterises Jesus of Nazareth and the people
represented through him.105 The second proposition is therefore Jesus
Christ is elected man.106 Through Gods election of the man Jesus
of Nazareth heand the people represented by himbecomes the
object of Gods election. The gracious approach of God in Jesus of
Nazareth becomes the decisive horizon for mans existence. Through
that electing and willing of God, man is the chosen one, says Barth,
and who is chosen nds a Lord.107 Put in other words, in election the

that revealed in these happenings and under this name. For in these happenings and
under this name He has revealed Himself.
103 KD II/2, 63; ET, 58.
104 KD II/2, 111; ET, 103.
105 KD II/2, 5; ET, 5.
106 KD II/2, 124; ET, 116.
107 KD II/2, 11; ET, 12.
 the doctrine of god 369

decisive lines are drawn for man and his destiny. God chooses to exist
in proximity to mankind, and man is thereby the one for whom the
proximity of this God has become the denitive factor.
We will have to develop these brief pointers further. First, with regard
to God: in Jesus Christ it becomes clear who God is and what He is
like, to the very remotest corners of His being. That God chooses for
man, turns His face toward him and seeks his life, is not a movement
or decision that comes from God the Father alone. It is a decision,
work that is attributed to the Father, Son and Spirit.108 Barth attempts
to carry the Trinitarian perspective through to its extreme. The Son
is not only the object of election. From one perspective it can appear
that one must speak of the Son primarily in passive terms. It is indeed
the case that the Son is elected through the Father to exist in unity
with and in the same form as mankind. But the Son himself and the
Spirit are also involved in this choosing. The term which here indicates
the nature of the connection and structure of the relation of God in
his acting to the man Jesus, and in Jesus to the whole of creation, is
Entsprechung, analogy or correspondence. The movement in which the
Son of God himself becomes a co-subject of the choice to exist in unity
with the man Jesus corresponds to the obedience of Jesus Christ. Or,
going the other direction, the choice of the eternal Son himself reects
Jesus obedience and the commitment of his life.109
Then the second proposition must be developed: Jesus Christ is
elected man.110 Calling upon Ephesians 1:4 and John 1:12, Barth rst
argues, quite in line with tradition, that in the electing of the man
Jesus we see what election is at its deepest. Because God through his
Word decided to live in unity with this man, He shows what grace
is, what impartation is to living, to glorication. In terms of content,
electing means that God makes the life of the creature his own life, or
metaphorically, God makes himself Father and man his child. This is
yet too weakly expressed in words such as goodness and mercy; this
is self-surrender. God gives himself in the fellowship. The most radical
change that all of this brings with it for the second panel is the breadth
of election. Gods decision does not involve an abstract entity such as
humanity, mankind, or individuals as exemplars of mankind, but in the
person of Jesus involves all the fellow men of this man. The electing of

108 KD II/2, 112; ET, 105.

109 KD II/2, 112; ET, 105.
110 KD II/2, 124; ET, 116.
370 chapter seven

all is mediated in the person of Jesus Christ. In this there is a corrective

to Calvin, who was quite willing to speak of election of the human race,
but emphatically stated that the preservation of the human race did not
imply the preservation of all men.
We must not only see this concept presented by Barth as a critique
of the traditional doctrine of election which left space for the hidden
decision of election; this consideration also tables a counterproposal
to the ideal of our modern and post-modern culture. In modernity
the subject begins with himself, and from there formulates his world.
Barths doctrine of election permits itself to be read as the proposal that
man and his world must be seen in light of divine electing, as that can
be followed in the history of Jesus Christ. God does not ask us to realise
or maintain ourselves; from the outset man is to be understood as the
one who is the object of Gods electing and approach. Barth continues
to think from eternity to time, from the a priori of grace. It is not
absolute self-realisation that is asked of man, but acknowledgement of
that which God in His grace has decided regarding him, and promised
him. Thus there is a decision which precedes all else, a willing from
Gods side. Before man searches for himself, seeks to unfold and full
his life, he is already in relation to Jesus, to this history. The history
of Jesus is the space in which every human creature may discover
that God already had reserved a place for him or her with himself.
A formulation of this sort ts with Barths own exposition of John 1:1
2. It would be an incorrect interpretation of matters to say that the
history of Jesus is projected in God, and that history on earth is only an
unreal, automatic representation of that. The Logos of John 1:1 holds
a place open for Jesus. The houtos of verse 2 does not refer back to the
logos, but to Jesus.111 His acting on earth (below) takes place by virtue of
the mystery and proximity and power from above. Jesus fulls the logos
concept fully and totally. Man cannot speak of the above outside of that
which happens on earth in this history. Here that which is from God,
that which comes from above, takes place under our eyes.
We must acknowledge that the doctrine of election developed in
this manner provides a foundation for a theological anthropology. The
secret of man and his humanity does not lie within himself. The mys-
tery of man, of his being born, living and dying, is Gods coming
toward us, is being addressed by name. Second, the uneasy dream

111 KD II/2, 105; ET, 98.

 the doctrine of god 371

that man ultimately stands all alone in a cosmic void and in complete,
bleak abandonmentand Barth himself had such dreamsgoes hand
in hand with this on the theological level.112 The history of Jesus shows
that man has a place with God, that being human is from the very
outset being together with God. Third, the human subject does not dis-
appear if Gods Lordship is acknowledged. The alternative between life
as a design and life as subjection is a false choice.

7.13. The decretum concretum

In conscious debate with the Reformed tradition, Barth no longer

wished to begin with an eternal and unchanging decree in Gods Coun-
sel with regard to salvation and damnation, from a decretum absolutum,
but from Jesus Christ as decretum concretum.113 In this Christian speaking
receives an orientation point which is not a vanishing point behind his-
tory, nor an idea, but one in the history which is connected with that
name. Jesus Christ is the beginning of all things, from which Gods will,
His eternal will, develops. It is Gods own decision, taken in his own
eternity, to live in indissoluble relation with man. In Jesus Christ the
eternal Son gives Himself to the Son of Man and the Son of Man is
wholly one with the eternal Son.114 This movement, this decision, is a
history, a history to which we can point, that in all its concreteness, all

112 It is not purely as a matter of biographical interest that we refer to Barths dreams

here. Eberhard Busch tells of a dream from the last year of Barths life: Eines Morgens
traf ich Karl Barth niedergeschlagen an. Aber was ist Ihnen denn zugestoen? fragte
ich. Er sagte: Denken Sie, ich hatte heute nacht einen argen Traum. Mir trumte, da
mich eine Stimme ansprach: Willst du einmal die Hlle sehen? und ich antwortete
noch wohlgelaunt: Doch, das mchte ich gern einmal sehen; das hat mich schon lang
interessiert. Da nete sich vor mir ein Fenster, und ich sah hinaus in eine endlose
Wste, deren Anblick Mark und Bein erschtterte; und mittendrin sa steineinsam ein
einziger Mensch. Da schlo ich das Fenster, und die Stimme sprach: Und das droht
dir!. Ich sagte etwas leichthin: Ein Traum er wehrte dem heftig: O nein, Trume
sind in der Regel ernst zu nehmen. Er schwieg eine geraume Weile und fuhr dann
zgernd fort: Und da gibt es noch Leute, die mir vorwerfen, bei mir fehle das Wissen
um solche abgrndige Bedrohung. Ich wei nur zu gut davon. Aber was bleibt mir
gerade darum anderes brig, als alles darauf zu setzen: Gott schwrt bein seinem
Leben, da er dich nicht verlt? Cited with W. Schildmann, Was sind das fr Zeichen?
Karl Barths Trume im Kontext von Leben und Lehre, Mnchen 1991, 168.
113 KD II/2, 172173; Cf. the english translation 159, which by mistake reads decre-

tum absolutum for decretum concretum.

114 KD II/2, 171; ET, 157.
372 chapter seven

its mundanity, at the same time arises from and is grounded in the life
of God himself. It is therefore this particular history, this concrete per-
son, who becomes the centre for telling the story, thinking, doing, hop-
ing and expecting. That is how one can characterise Barths concept
of the decretum concretum. The speaking of the Church does not begin
with an elusive above; the above makes itself known in the below, in
the history of Jesus Christ. The a priori starting point that Barth once
postulated outside of time in the concept of Ursprung, enters the world
of time and space, in a concrete human history. In the early Barth the
eye of faith is drawn to a point which itself no longer belongs to time
or space; in the later Barth of the doctrine of election Gods eternal,
sovereign Counsel coincides with a history in space and time. After
the doctrine of election Barth will increasingly formulate his a priori in
terms of the history of Jesus Christ, the living person himself.
We must underscore that particularity continues to belong to the
vexing, surprising and provocative points of Christian belief. When
matters concern us, there are references to a specic people, Israel,
and a specic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and his history. Does Chris-
tian faith then have nothing more to oer, something that is closer, that
happened yesterday? The concretely historical, that took place some-
where in time and space, which we know about through stories and
texts, is the point of departure for thinking and speaking. For Kant Jesus
was the exemplary gure for a moral ideal; with Hegel the concretely
historical is taken up and elevated in the concept; with Barth the con-
cretely historical is no longer something which must be transcended: it
is the origin and criterion.
Barth expresses the shift in perspective which the appearance of this
point of departure brings with it by proposing that this starting point in
the decretum concretum makes possible and activates human knowing and
questioning.115 In his view, confrontation with a decretum absolutum as the
nal limit of belief and thought strikes us dumb. One can only ee into
ethics or mysticism. Not-knowing is then the highest attainable. When
however we have God and his will before us in concreto in Jesus Christ
and his history, all knowing is a further occasion for new, and this time
more specic questions. The believer does not silence questions, but
is prepared to pose all questions anew in the light of this answer, and
thus bring the space he or she inhabits, personally or collectively, into

115 KD II/2, 173174; ET, 160161.

 the doctrine of god 373

the sphere of inuence of this answer.116 I would conclude that it would

be dicult to harness Barth to the wagon of the post-modern insight
that men, for all their attempts to know reality, ultimately do not know.
Certainly, beginning from themselves men can not reach the liberating
and salutary truth of God. In Christ, in his person, however a door
is opened for him to an open secret, an open mirror. In confrontation
with this history we stand before a mystery that gives itself. Again the
perspective on the asymmetry between God and man opens up. The
answer that is given in the Gospel is not the end of the questioning.
Each answer is the overture to a new question; in each answer the space
toward the source, toward the beginning, toward the abundance in God
himself opens up, space which man never had, but which is given to
him. Facing this source, man as the knower is always one who does
not know. Revelation is thus a mystery that sets the process of knowing
in motion, and keeps it going constantly. This means that knowing in
faith, and theological reection, can never reach a resting place, that no
speculative leap will ever succeed in comprehending the coherence of
Gods deeds, the meaning of the events. In the continuing orientation
to the source, to the beginning of all knowledge of God, Barth in his
way shows the limitations of human knowing. It remains dependent on
God, on his Spirit.
With the word mystery we encounter a concept that has been pro-
ductive in more recent theology for characterising knowledge of God
according to its structure.117 In Barths theology it is a concept that
maintains the unity of veiling and unveiling, revelation and conceal-
ing. In contrast to a riddle, a mystery is not something which can be
solved by knowledge and then disappears. Once a solution is found, a

116 KD II/2, 174; ET, 160: Genuine and open questioning begins with the knowledge

of the mystery of the election of Jesus Christ, for in this mystery we are confronted
with an authority concerning which we cannot teach ourselves but must let ourselves
be taught, and are taught, and can expect continually to be taught.
117 The word mysterion appears at various places in the Bible, indicating something

which was hidden and has now been brought to light. It can be applied to the Kingdom
(Mark 4:11) or Gods Counsel (ICor. 2:7, Col. 1:27, Eph. 3:4). In all cases mysterion
is not the event of revelation itself, but refers primarily to the content of revelation.
It is indeed however constitutive for the Biblical concept that at a certain time this
content is unveiled through Gods gracious act. One does not come to see the content
without being aware of Gods absolute power. The content of the knowing is not
without a certain nature of knowing. It is in this more general sense, as a term for
the relation between content and way in knowing God, that the term has taken root in
contemporary theology. See, for instance, the title of E. Jngels book Gott als Geheimnis
der Welt.
374 chapter seven

riddle ceases to be a riddle. A mystery is something that is always out

of our reach.118 Mystery is characterised by an abundance that is not
exhausted as one delves into it, but rather becomes deeper and vaster
through new complications, new connections.
Christian existence does not have its centre of gravity within itself,
not in man as a subject; rather, this subject is determined by another
reality which has come to light. Purpose can only be found by man time
and again emerging from himself, venturing over the threshold of his
being in a questioning attitude, in order to let himself be dened by the
mystery of Gods good-pleasure, concretely through this history. This
means that existence comes under the power and sphere of inuence
of what Barth further on in his doctrine of reconciliation will describe
as the two movements of the one act of God. In Jesus Christ the Lord
becomes servant. The way of the Son leads to a foreign land, and in
unity with the man Jesus the Son himself bears the judgement (KD
IV/1). At the same time the election of the Son to an existence in unity
with the man Jesus has as its consequence that man is exalted to a
royal dignity. The servant becomes Lord; man is elevated (KD IV/2).
This structure is already found in the doctrine of election. In short:
Man benets, God assumes the risk. For God, the election of the man
Jesus means placing a question mark after His might, His majesty, that
these are placed in a danger zone. For man this choice, this election
means a gain, an unheard-of advancement. In words that remind one
of Irenaeus, God willed to lose, in order that man win.119
What is it that Gods decision will cost Him? He has, Barth says,
given up something, namely His untouchability. Because of his divine
nature, within his own sphere He Himself is not aected and threat-
ened by a will that opposes his. Man, whom He chooses as a partner, is
however the one who is overwhelmed by sin, and God exposes himself
to this resistance, to these opposing powers. In Jesus Christ He him-
self moves into the eld of the opposing powers, of rejection.120 The
tendency toward theopaschitism in Barths theology is already patently
obvious here in the doctrine of election.121 The choice for man means
that God himself puts his majesty at stake and enters into confrontation

118 KD II/2, 172175; ET, 158161.

119 KD II/2, 177; ET, 162.
120 KD II/2, 177178; ET, 162163.
121 See A. van Egmond, Theopaschitische tendensen in de na-oorlogse protestantse

theologie in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, edited by D. van
Keulen and C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 923.
 the doctrine of god 375

with the opposing force. The opposing force of sin is therefore not just
something that has its claims on earth, here below. It has an eect that
reaches to the very being of God.
The dierences with the rst panel of Calvins theology become very
manifest at this point. With Calvin all emphasis lies on the proposition
that the divine and human must remain separated. In his discussion
of the ignorance of Christ, in the portrayal of his fear and of his
death, the divinity of Christ is regarded as in abeyance or hidden.122
For Calvin too the crucied Christ is the most profound point of Gods
mercy, but Christ bears sin and its punishment according to his human
nature. With the suering of Christ, Calvin emphasises the dierence
between the two natures. At this very crucial point Barth follows not
Calvin, but Luther,123 thereby becoming an important marker in the
present orientation to the Cross as the origin and criterion for Christian
thinking about God.124 In this, Barths doctrine of God marks what may
well be termed the great substantive dierence between the rst and
second panel: the involvement of God in this world is not primarily
understood in terms of creation theology and pneumatology, but begins
from Christology, from the Cross and resurrection as the places where
God decides about man and Himself.
Gods choosing is conceived as a double predestination. Election and
rejection, yes and no, do not however involve groups of men, nor are
they qualities of Gods revelation; they refer to the content of salvation,
namely God who in his Son brings down the judgement on Himself
and thus precisely through the judgement maintains the fellowship and
gives Himself. In Barths words, God himself tasted damnation, death
and hell.125 It is still more radical when we read that the incarnation of
God can mean nothing other than that He declared Himself guilty
of the contradiction against Himself in which man was involved.126
From such formulations one might conclude that in this concept God

122 For the abeyance, see for instance Comm. ad Matth. 24:36; for being hidden or

covered, see Comm. ad Matth. 27:45. See also Inst. 4.17.30.

123 Cf. G. Hunsinger, What Karl Barth learned from Martin Luther in: Disruptive

Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 288.
124 One of course thinks of the theology of E. Jngel, Vom Tod des lebendigen

Gottes. Ein Plakat, in: idem, Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Bemerkungen, Mnchen
1972, 105125 and J. Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, Mnchen 1972. See also A. van
Egmond, De lijdende God in de britse theologie van de negentiende eeuw. De bijdrage van Newman,
Maurice, McLeod Campbell en Gore aan de christelijke theopaschitische traditie, Amsterdam 1986.
125 KD II/2, 179; ET, 164.
126 KD II/2, 179; ET, 164.
376 chapter seven

declares himself responsible for the situation of man, and that God
nds himself at fault for the failure of the project of man and creation.
This idea, which can take root if the theodicy question dominates the
discussion of the question of God,127 is not however to be found in
Barth. He places the stress on the voluntary solidarity with which God
declares himself guilty. It is assumed guilt, suering born in solidarity,
which is the result of the decision of election taken in full freedom.
By now it should be clear that with questions of this sort we nd
ourselves in the centre of the themes that one deals with in every
concept of Christian theology. How should we conceive Gods relation
to human failure, human sin, human suering? How does the decision
to create man and the world relate to the fact that man as creature
chooses his own way, to mans freedom, that he can turn away from
God? How does Gods plan for salvation relate to human obstinacy,
to the closed nature of the vicious circles of evil? These are the great
themes that man can indeed push around conceptually, but which can
never be pushed away. Nor can one escape from the problem by not
attributing the quality of power to God. Recent theological history
teaches that man loses the concept of God if power is not in some way
predicated to His acting, if one denies that He is Lord over time and
space. That is not the case in either of the panels here. Gods Lordship
denes the colour scheme for both Calvin and Barth. In both we
nd substantive lines that point in the direction of supralapsarianism.
It is necessary to spend a few words going into the debate between
infralapsarians and supralapsarians.
Although from a distance the conict between infralapsarianism and
supralapsarianism may largely seem a case of theological fatuity and
inanity, examined more closely it is one of the battles in which funda-
mental judgements occur that have direct connections with the ques-
tion of the boundaries of knowledge of God and spirituality. It is a
dierence in emphasis which transcends pure curiosity. In infralapsar-
ianism election has more the nature of a response to the fall, of an
action towards restoration. Creation, as a work of God, has greater
independence. The spotlight is on the seriousness of sin, its absurdity
and the deep lostness of the sinner. According to infralapsarianism the

127 This is the direction taken by A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart

van de theologie, Kampen 1998, 155157; ET: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology
(Studies in Reformed Theology. Supplements I), translated by P.O. Postma, Zoetermeer
2004, 168169.
 the doctrine of god 377

object of predestination is the homo creatus et lapsus.128 The decision about

election follows the decision about creation. In supralapsarianism the
accent is on election as a manner of glorifying God. In infralapsarian-
ism the emphasis is on the variety of decisions and their causal order;
in supralapsarianism the stress is on the unity of the decisions, and
the other decisions are teleologically subordinate to election.129 In this
case the object of predestination is the not-yet created man in all his
fallibility, thus the homo creabilis en labilis. Barths theological concept is
unmistakably in line with supralapsarianism. But for him that means
that God makes the decision about the fall not so that man falls, but
so that man in his fallen state is witness to His gracious acting, to His
glory.130 God wills for us in this life as it is lived, with all the given
limitations and shadows. He wills an answer from man not beyond of
this life; He places man within the boundaries of this existence, and in
his revelation opens up this existence as the space for the covenant. In
this respect too Barths theology ts in with this second panel, in that
it situates the covenant on earth, wanting to remain true to the earth
in that way. For Barth, the foregoing implies an answer to theodicy. It
implies that the shadow, the darkness does not fall outside the sphere
of action and outside the proximity of God; but it equally implies that
in no case do people themselves fall outside the presence and care of
God. Therefore, in his extensive historical excursus on this dogmatic
conict he indicates his sympathy for supralapsarianism, after he has
stripped it of its inhumane characteristics.131 Double predestination no
longer means that a part of humanity forever remains excluded from
the proximity of the God who is rich in blessing. The phrases duriores, for
which supralapsarianism became so notorious, and that the represen-
tatives of infralapsarianism sought to avoid by taking the boundaries of
theological speaking more into account, become impossible in Barth.
The severity in all its weight is absorbed by God himself in his Son.
Barths concept of electing is a means of combining the relative truth
of supralapsarianism with the universal perspective of salvation for all
men who are born on earth alongside the one man Jesus of Nazareth. I
speak here of relative truth, because supralapsarianism does not shrink

128 KD II/2, 144; ET, 134.

129 See H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, Kampen 19082, 399; ET: The Doctrine of
God, trans. and ed. by W. Hendriksen, Edinburgh/Carlisle 1979, 393.
130 KD II/2, 153; ET, 134.
131 KD II/2, 136157; ET, 127145.
378 chapter seven

from the consequences of seeing all things in life, all decisions, as being
under the sovereignty of God, under his dominion. Anyone who will
not accept that inevitably arrives at a form of Pelagianism, in which
Gods majesty is reduced or where in one way or another, precisely in
the eort to safeguard God from every form of responsibility for evil,
a form of dualism is created.132 In that case, the remedy for defending
Gods moral inviolability is worse than the disease.
Barths theology teaches that creation and the fall can not be spoken
about other than from the perspective of deliverance. Anyone propos-
ing to consider sin, the alienation of the world and the riddle it is,
apart from the God who comes to meet us in Christ, is thinking in the
abstract. According to Barth double predestination means that all peo-
ple, as fellowmen of the man Jesus, as people under sin, are intended
to become witnesses to His glory. The centre of gravity and core of this
theology does not lie in the decision to create. Creation is not the last
of Gods deeds. It has in it the potential for the fall, and is therefore
not the highest achievable. This dierence in the place and content of
the concept of creation was among the issues which Barth himself in
discussion with Brunner pointed to as noteworthy dierences between
Lutheran and Reformed thought.133 Lutheran theology can still think of
grace as restitutio ad integrum, restoration of an original and sinless con-
dition; in agreement with the old Augustinian line of thought, in the
Reformed doctrine of a creation covenant with Adam and Eve the idea
of the surplus of the eschaton, and with it the eschatological tenor, is

132 Calvin and Barth are both theologians for whom the theological perspective of

the glory of God predominates. God is gloried in the salvation of his children. Calvin
felt he had to speak of the extent of election to life in a restrictive sense, and therefore
his theology appears so much more inhumane. Within dogmatic reection however it
is advisable to be careful with such judgements, which can result is a feeling of moral
superiority. Even within the perspective of universal salvation in Barths theology the
questions are no less serious, human existence no less enigmatic, and the dark place no
less dark! Barth also must give a place to the darkness that pervades life, to the reality of
sin, alienation, suering, pain for what will not be fullled, was cut short, never came to
be. Within his unitary perspective he postulates the darkness in the idea of the Nichtige,
which is connected with Gods positive creative will under a negative portent. But his
locating evil and sin in this way and dening it as the impossible and unreal as opposed
to the reality of grace shows that Christian theology cannot avoid giving a place to sin
and evil in some way or another.
133 See Karl Barth/Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 19161966, hrsg. von E. Busch, Zrich

2000, 135141. Cf. also Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, 616; ET: In the Beginning.
Foundations of Creation Theology, ed. by John Bolt and trans. by John Vriend, Grand
Rapids 1999, 208.
 the doctrine of god 379

much more pregnant. With Barth the doctrine of creation is however so

totally dominated by and integrated into thinking about salvation that
creation can nowhere come to be discussed as an independent theme.
It is here that, so far as I can see, a dierence exists between Barth
and Calvin. Barth never intended the thesis of creation as the external
foundation for the covenant to suggest that creation would have been
sucient in itself. For Barth creation is a provisional and extremely
vulnerable reality which, as he develops the idea in his creation doc-
trine in KD III, is undeniably endowed with beauty and praises the
Creator. At the same time there is a fragility to it, it borders on the
void and is an ambiguous entity. Creation implies the possibility of fall,
of risk. Creation implies man, a being which is not-God, an existence
bordering on the possibility of non-being, which is exposed to a tempta-
tion that is excluded within God Himself through his divine nature, but
that with regard to man can only be answered by the Word and com-
mandment.134 However, Barth says in his defence, in no case can this
incredible risk be raised as an accusation against God, because He has
taken on Himself the rejection, the no that He has spoken against sin.
Because in double predestination God himself stands in for man, lets
the estrangement come down upon Himself, He is justied in taking
that risk. It is in this light that Barth, later in his doctrine of creation,
can discuss creation as justication: creation is good as it is. Within
the order of creation, as space and outward ground for the covenant,
creation is good, including the light and shadow sides that are givens
within it.135
In light of revelation, the world of time and space becomes trans-
parent with regard to the work of God, transparent with regard to the
intention of the covenant, but precisely in the light of this revelation it
becomes clear that deliverance can never consist of restoration of that
which has been created. Brunner writes to Barth that for him creation
is so weak, so separated from God, that creation itself, as creation,
must already be delivered. Brunners insight was accurate. In Barths
thought creation is so regarded as provisional, as separated from God,
as an overture to His covenant, that deliverance can by no means be
conceived as a mending or restoration. The heart of this theology lies
not in creation, in so far as that is understood as an untroubled and
blissful reality in childish naivety. Thinking about and experiencing the

134 KD II/2, 180; ET, 165.

135 KD III/1, 418476; ET, 366414.
380 chapter seven

created world is entirely in the light of divine steadfastness, as that is

seen in the history of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation is, Barth says literally,
the deed by which God justied his own creative work of creation. God
takes responsibility for the work that He himself has conceived.136 The
possible accusation against God for his creating a world under threat
is answered by Barth pointing to the fact that God in Jesus Christ lets
the negative forces called up in the movement outward come down on
himself. Double predestination therefore no longer means that people
are lost for eternity, but that the threat to that which is created and
the actual estrangement is taken on by God himself. In this way Barth
makes it clear who, in his understanding, God is. Posited as a reality
outside of God, this world is a threatened reality. In the double move-
ment of election and rejection God takes responsibility for this reality.
The double decree of election and rejection is the background in God
Himself which becomes visible and transparent in the history of Jesus.
It is characteristic of Barths theology that the exalted, Gods eternal
glory, becomes visible, and more, transparent, in the lowly, in the
history of Jesus. Jesus becomes the testimony to that which God wills
and of that which he does not will, of Gods yes and no. This yes and
no do not stand next to one another as equal judgements; the no is
a consequence of His yes. Because God chooses for an existence in
fellowship with man, He chooses for the creation of man; at the same
time He draws a line against that which goes counter to fellowship,
and wills its elimination. The points of departure for speaking of the
steadfastness of God are provided by the resurrection and prayer of
Jesus.137 These two elements are the windows, so to speak, the icons
which aord a perspective on divine and human steadfastness. The
content of predestination is this: that divine steadfastness regarding
creation and the problems which accompany it comes rst.
According to Barth, Christian thinking and life therefore can only
unfold as an answer to this steadfastness of God. That God unveils
Himself in the history of Jesus as the One who defeats these problems
becomes the foundation for this theology. Believing in Jesus, we read in
Barth, means keeping his resurrection and his prayer in our minds and
hearts.

136 KD II/2, 134135; ET, 126.

137 KD II/1, 135; ET, 126127.
 the doctrine of god 381

7.14. The critique of Calvin

Arriving at this point, we can try to understand why Barth exercised

such a vehement critique on the way Calvin spoke of Christ as the
mirror of election.138 The heart of the matter is that Christ is indeed
referred to as the mirror of election, but that subsequently the actual
electing still appears to be the work of God, dismissing Christ. Can it
indeed be taken seriously theologically, he asks, when it is proclaimed
to the people in the Church that they know their election in Christ? Is
the reference to Christ as the mirror of election not a pastoral medium
which keeps open the possibility that the real electing God is a God
hidden behind Christ? Then Jesus Christ is an instrument or organ of
election, and the real decision about salvation or doom comes in an
eternal, absolute decree that is separate from the incarnation.139 In the
rst panel the freedom of God is powerfully emphasised, and that is
positive. But the actual election is the hidden work of the Father. Christ
does not come into the matter when the issue is the content of election.
The electing itself is a work of God the Father and is hidden behind
the concrete person of Jesus Christ. Calvins refusal to admit man to
the depths of Gods Counsel meets with the sharpest critique from
Barth. According to him, in this manner a space is opened up in the
being of God behind revelation that is threatening, a space in which the
rejection, a no to concrete persons can echo. Then Jesus Christ is not
Gods self-revelation. A revelation does take place, but God himself still
remains the Unknown. Barth meets this obscurity with his proposition
that Jesus Christ is the electing God.
In the historical space between the two panels however quite a
bit changed, certainly when it came to thinking about God and his
being. For Calvin, the question of who God is in Himself was not
thought to be answerable. It was still conceived as a question about
Gods substance, as a question about the essential nature or quidditas of
Gods being. All we knew of this essential nature, this nature peculiar
to God, is that it was innitely exalted above man, entirely dierent,
spiritual. It was eminently possible though to say how God is in relation
to us: how he presents himself to us, how he wishes to be served
and worshipped. For Calvin God is the one who is our Father par
excellence, and in baptism and the Supper He enters the picture as

138 KD II/2, 6668; ET, 6264.

139 KD II/2, 6869; ET, 6365.
382 chapter seven

Father. That is how He wishes to be known by man; that is how He

wishes to be addressed: as an Father who takes the elect into his family
as adopted children. The questions about Gods substance and the
inner structure of his Counsel are rejected as dangerous speculation.
The nal horizon for believing mankind is the will of God, the way
in which he makes Himself known in the mirrors of his instruments of
revelation.
In the second panel we are in a dierent era. God as a person
is thought about in frameworks and structures which were shaped by
Romanticism and idealist philosophy. Increasingly the concept of per-
son is no longer thought about in terms of substance, but in terms of
a subject with self-awareness and active self-determination. In the era
of Romanticism and idealism the subject was the ground and source of
all expressions in life. All such expressions of a higher order were con-
sidered as external expressions, creations of a person as a determining
and self-determining being, realised in his acting. As Pannenberg and
others rightly argue, with this development revelation became increas-
ingly limited to self-revelation. The idea that God in His revelation also
revealed matters that could not be situated directly under the heading
of self-revelation was experienced as problematic by 19th century liberal
theology. This legacy has become the collective inheritance of Western
theology down to this day. Revelation can no longer be thought of as
the revealing of values, of the state of aairs; revelation can only be
thought of in terms of the teleological goal of Gods revelation, his self -
revelation. Anything which falls short of being self-revelation does not
deserve to be considered revelation.
In view of these cultural-historical shifts and the need within theol-
ogy to reect explicitly on the concept of revelation, it is historically
understandable that Barth takes the step to revelation as self-revelation.
Once it is accepted in a culture that someone is only known when
one can trace his or her expressions back to, and characterise them as
providing insight into their person, then for that reason alone it will
be understandable that in the eld of theology too the question must
be asked about the relationship between the expression of Gods will
and his innermost self. In the language of the doctrine of election, it
must be clear that the electing God is no deus absconditus, but that Jesus
Christ must be thought of as the electing God. If the expression is not
anchored in the self, that expression is accounted false. The surprise
that Barth exhibits about the fact that in particular Calvin not only
did not answer the questions which are here, but did not even expe-
 the doctrine of god 383

rience or see them as questions,140 says less about Calvin than it does
about the changed cultural and intellectual constellation in the second
panel. This is not to say that the identication of revelation with self-
revelation in the second panel is wholly and totally a matter of changes
in intellectual history involving culture and mentality. The development
of the concept of revelation as self-revelation can also be connected
with essential notions in the Old and New Testaments themselves. It
is easy to defend the proposition that the altered constellation in intel-
lectual history awakened a sensitivity which enabled theologians to see
essential elements in Scripture and think through their implications. In
the Christian tradition we have been taught to speak of God as a per-
son. He is no it; He is approachable, we can call upon Him, and in
this encounter man, for his part, also becomes more and more a per-
son.
In the second panel the nal horizon for theological knowledge no
longer coincides with the will of God, but is the person of God, His
self-gift in Jesus Christ. Barth attempt to prevent that the will of God
remain an abstract entity. Jesus Chris is not only the application in
the search function for man seeking salvation, but is also the content
of this salvation. The will of God as the last horizon increasingly
coincides with a concrete name, and a concrete history: Jesus Christ.
Only by reading this story and taking it seriously theologically as the
history in which the depths of God as a person speak to us, will all
anxious doubt be banished. In this history, above and below, eternity
and time coincide through Gods grace.141 The question of whether life
will ultimately still end in darkness, is merely a bad dream in which
man is unwanted and left behind alone in a bleak cosmos, is answered
by pointing to that which came close to us in our reality.
For the rest, the concretising of Gods will does not mean that the
distinction between Gods eternal will and the decision of predestina-
tion falls away. Barth emphatically retains this distinction conceptually,
because only in this way can the freedom of God be preserved. If the
distinction was not there, God would be absorbed into his relation to
man and the world. The dierence from the rst panel is however that
Barth focuses this eternal will most precisely on the life story of Jesus

140 KD II/2, 119; ET, 111.

141 B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de problematiek van
de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeer en
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Kampen 1999.
384 chapter seven

Christ. This story provides perspective and insight into the sovereignty
and glory that God has in himself.142 The agreement with the tradition
is that Barth wants to hold fast to the unsearchable majesty of divine
good-pleasure. But he deviates from the same tradition by not consid-
ering this eternal will as an obscurity into which we cannot see. On the
contrary, we can indeed see into it, we understand Barth to say. Gods
eternal will is transparent in the history of Jesus Christ. It has taken
concrete form there, and come to dwell among us.

7.15. Eternity, time and Gods acting today

It will be clear that in the above the relation of time and eternity has
been a constantly recurring theme. It is necessary here to briey reach
back to what was previously said about God as the Eternal One. For
the concept of eternity it is essential that Gods being Lord of time
is expressed. The words vorzeitlich, berzeitlich and nachzeitlich indicate in
spatial terms that God transcends in all possible ways the time which is
familiar to us, is involved with the forms of our existence, encompasses
themin short, is Lord of Time. For Barth eternity is not primarily
a concept related to time; it is rst and foremost a characterisation
and indication of Gods majesty and sovereignty over the forms of our
existence. That means, therefore, that any concept in which time and
eternity are discussed as opposites to one another will from its inception
fail to engage what is being said here. Barths actualism means that in
Gods acting in time and space man encounters the dominion over our
time and space that is peculiar to God. The fact that in the history
of Jesus Christ Gods eternal will is made visible and comes about
does not however imply that earthly history is only the performance
of a scenario that is decided somewhere else. Barth terms that a deistic
misconception. In deism the acting of God is something that precedes
history, and not something which denes it in the here and now. The
latter is however precisely what Barth wishes to express in his actualism:
at every instant God is involved in every moment of time as the living,
the choosing and judging One. In every moment of temporal existence
we stand before the God who chooses, determines, surrounds and call
us, and who precisely in that calling and determining summons man

142 KD II/2, 171; ET, 157.

 the doctrine of god 385

to freedom. Never on any occasion does God become a principle,

He never remains behind in the past, nor is He an element far in
the future. Gods decree is His acting to us, so that every moment of
our history is dened and surrounded by the depth of Gods glory and
majesty.143
With his interpretation of the actuality of Gods eternal will, Barth
seeks to resolve a dilemma to which the doctrine of predestination gave
rise traditionally. The one horn of the dilemma is that the salvation
of man in time could only be thought of as the outcome of a one
time decision lying further behind it. In that case the relation of Gods
active willing and deciding, and the decision as an eect of his will, is
conceived as a mechanistic relation. The other horn of the dilemma
is that one permits Gods deciding to become so wrapped up with
the existential situation in which man is put by Gods summons, that
actuality in this case means that God would progress from decision to
decision and there would be no constancy or certainty. In the latter case
Gods acting is coupled to the outcome of what man does in response to
the appeal. In this view, which Barth in his doctrine of election discusses
as a view defended by his brother Peter,144 it is also easy to recognise the
vision that he himself still defended in the rst and second editions of
the Epistle to the Romans. Election is there still a quality of Gods acting.
In this period election and rejection coincide with the moment of faith
when Gods yes breaks through the concealment and the no.145 Now
he breaks with this concept. After all, it implies a rened form of
synergism, and does not square with the relation between God and
man. If it were true, the relation between God and man would have
to be conceived as an ellipse with two foci, in which the human focus
has the same sort of independence as Gods acting does. Barth opts
for a dierent image that well represents the objectivist tenor of his
theology: the circle, with one centre. The primacy of Gods electing
act is preserved in this image, while human acting is conceived as
the drawing of concentric circles around that one centre. In that way
human action conrms and repeats Gods electing. What man is called
to, is a life that has the structure of a corresponding answer, a life in

143 KD II/2, 170, 200201; ET, 157, 182183. A good illustration is found in the words

of O. Noordmans: Eternity is precisely the string that drives the arrow of deliverance
on to its target. Gods eternal decision is taken at the last moment. See O. Noordmans,
Het koninkrijk der hemelen, (Nijkerk 1949, 110=) Verzamelde Werken II, Kampen 1979, 493.
144 KD II/2, 207214; ET, 188194.
145 See Karl Barth, Rmerbrief 2, 331332; ET, 346348.
386 chapter seven

Entsprechung. In the image of the circles, Gods gracious electing remains

the a priori of human life, the axis with which every point of the circles
remains involved.
The thesis of the actuality of Gods willing means that Gods decree
is a spiritual life charter, which on the one hand precedes all human
acting, but which does not have the nature of a dead letter despite its
priority. In Christ it is not only a revealed mystery, but also a present
mystery, which leads the way and remains close, as God preceded his
people and remained close to them in the pillars of re and cloud.146
This Counsel manifests itself in the history of Jesus Christ, is history
in the life of Israel and the Church. It is at this point that Barth
emphatically sets the priority of the events, of the concrete history of
Jesus Christ, over against a form of thinking in which Gods Counsel
and human acting are cast into a xed system. This history is the reality
of Gods electing, it is the history where the reality of Gods electing,
his ruling and guidance take place. The earthly history of Jesus Christ
thus has its anchorage in the life of God, forms one whole with Gods
life and relates to it in a manner which further eludes us. Eternity, the
fullness of the life of God, thus becomes the power of the proclamation
of the Kingdom. The asymmetry between God and man forbids that
man here, beginning from himself, creates a concept in which he has
any hold on the relation of time and eternity. Thinking theologically
means ascribing the priority, the glory, to God. Therefore Who or
what He is cannot be regarded as a system, not simply embedded in
a concept; it must be told to us again and again.147 The category of
the story, history as narrative to be told, here comes explicitly into the
picture for Barth as a theological category par excellence. The history
of Gods acting itself is the object on which all theological reection is
focused. Narration, history, the Word is then not an illustration, a gure
for eternal truth. The image, history, this narrative is the reality of God
himself, of his Being in Act, of his coming. Knowledge of God arises
when men permit themselves to become involved with this history,148
when men, hearing and answering, take their place as participants.

146 KD II/2, 210; ET, 191.

147 KD II/2, 206; ET, 188: Who and what Jesus Christ is, is something which can
only be told, not a system which can be considered and described.
148 Especially E. Jngel has developed this notion into a theology where the conceiv-

ability of God is made dependent on speakability. See Jngel, God as Mystery of the
World, 300.
 chapter eight

NEW SPACE FOR HUMAN ACTION:

BARTHS VIEW OF THE SACRAMENT

8.1. Doctrine of baptism as mirror

To round o the second panel we will discuss Barths doctrine of

baptism as he himself had it published as a fragment of his doctrine
of reconciliation. Paralleling the discussion of Calvins theology, we will
also take a subject from the doctrine of the sacraments and use this
as a mirror to reveal the tenor and direction of Barths theology. The
parallel is not perfect, however. Unlike the rst panel, it is not the
doctrine of the Supper, but of baptism which will be discussed. An
important reason for this change is simply the fact that we do not
have before us a fragment from Barths later theology dealing with the
Supper. There are other reasons, though. For Barth it was evidently of
great importance to once again speak out on the theme of baptism.
In his Preface he explains that the doctrine of reconciliation, like the
doctrine of creation, would have been followed by a section specically
on ethics.1 For reconciliation, a section would have followed on mans
answer, beginning with baptism. It would then have been developed
on the basis of the Lords Prayer,2 and closed with a discussion of the
Supper. The introduction makes it clear that the context within which
Barth wanted to discuss the sacraments was that of mans response.
Prayer is accounted the basis of that human response, and it is this
basic attitude toward God which takes on paradigmatic form in the
actions of baptism and the Supper.
The choice of rounding o the examination of Barths view of know-
ing God with a discussion of his doctrine of baptism is thus not moti-

1 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Das christliche Leben (Fragment). Die Taufe als Begrndung

des christlichen Lebens, IX; ET, VIIIIX.

2 These fragments were later published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jngel under the

title Das Christliche Leben. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Fragmente aus dem Nachla. Vorlesungen
19591961, Zrich 1976.
388 chapter eight

vated by the fact that Barth once again rearmed his reputation as
an enfant terrible in the ecclesiastical and theological establishment by
his rejection of infant baptism. It had been common knowledge for
many years that Barth was extremely critical of infant baptism; he had
already previously expressed himself on the subject in a document from
1943.3 At that time he had already connected the retention of infant
baptismand particularly the fact that it appeared to be a topic on
which no discussion was possiblewith the stubborn refusal to recog-
nise that Christianity had ceased to be the corpus christianum, and accept
the sociological consequences of the new minority situation.4 That he
later, in the present fragment from 1967, characterised infant baptism
as an abuse5 and once again vehemently rejected the custom, was thus
nothing new. As he had done in 1943, he suggests that the retention and
defence of infant baptism, even in liberal theological circles where peo-
ple acknowledged that the exegetical basis for infant baptism was shaky
and open to dispute, had more to do with the fear of a sociological and
social horror vacui than with faith. Infant baptism belongs too much to
the structural pillars of a church for which the totality of the population
was identical with the totality of its members, with a state church or a
national church, than people would dare to admit.6
Although the continued debate on infant baptism is one of the in-
triguing elements in this fragment, the importance of this text, which
was in fact the capstone of the KD, is theological in nature. The struc-
turing lines of Barths theology are radicalised in a direction which has
left the theology which came after him with great questions. Is the
rejection of the sacramental principle indeed the nal consequence of
this theology? Is it even perhaps the nal consequence of the Reforma-
tion, in which all knowledge of God depends on the Word, and this
Word is characterised by discontinuity with respect to historical and

3 K. Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, Zrich 19473.

4 Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 3940: Irre ich mich nicht, wenn ich denke, da
der eigentliche und durchschlagende auersachliche Grund fr die Kindertaufe schon
bei den Reformatoren und seither immer wieder sehr schlicht der gewesen ist: Man
wollte damals auf keinen Fall und um keinen Preis auf die Existenz der evangelischen
Kirche im konstantinischen corpus christianum -und man will heute auf keinen Fall
und um keinen Preis- auf die heutige Gestalt der Volkskirche verzichten? Wo steht
denn eigentlich geschrieben, da die Christen nicht in der Minderheit, vielleicht sogar
in einer sehr kleinen Minderheit sein drften.
5 KD IV/4, XI; ET, X.
6 KD IV/4, 184185; ET, 168.
 barths view of the sacrament 389

mediating forms? Or can one with equal justication turn and go in

another direction?
Among the lines which structure Barths theology is the emphasis on
the dierence between God and man. In his revelation God remains
free. In his gracious turning toward man, in his holiness, he is never
determined by history. This means that the church or a social move-
ment, a people or culture, may never under any circumstances declare
itself the proud possessor of salvation and the humanum. In this respect
the baptismal fragment is, as Schellong has correctly argued, a true
continuation of one of Barths deepest purposes.7 But the reference to
these fundamental lines must be supplemented with a second accent
that received increasingly more focused form in the further develop-
ment of Barths theology. Barths early theology, his rejection of liberal
theology, was set out programmatically in two theses: God is God and
Man is Man.8 If in his early publications these tautological statements
served primarily to prevent any possible annexation of the word God
and its content, now space is created for a change of course, to give
man and his subjectivity a place in the room that is freed up. One can
read the baptismal fragment as a treatise that makes the counterpro-
posal to modernity more specic with regard to the place and space for
man. The baptismal doctrine specied how, in view of the participa-
tion in the new being in Christ brought about through the Holy Spirit,
human existence is broken open and man in baptism can commit him-
self to and become involved with this new being.

7 D. Schellong, Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong,
Karl Barth und die Neuzeit, Mnchen 1973, 72: Ich bin der Meinung, da KD IV/4
die Probe aufs Exempel ist, oder man begrien hat oder wenigstens ahnt, was in der
theologischen Arbeit Karl Barths passiert und intendiert ist, welcher Weg es ist, den er
suchte. Es geht um die Absage an das Verwirklichen und Haben des Gttlichenum
die Absage an die Vergegenwrtigung des Heilsgeschehens, wie man spter zu sagen
liebte und damit Neo-Orthodoxie trieb.
8 For all practical purposes, these two theses appear in a report of Barths Novem-

ber, 1915, lecture in Basel, Kriegszeit und Gottesreich, that P. Wernle wrote to
M. Rade. According to Wernle Barth described the Christians consciousness in faith as
follows: 1. die Welt bleibt Welt, vom Teufel regiert, alle Versuche in allen verschieden-
sten Richtungen, etwas zu bessern & helfen, sind wertlos & folglos, 2. Gott ist Gott, das
Reich Gottes mu kommen, dann wird alles anders, 3. was haben wir zu thun, an Jesus
Christus zu glauben & zu harren auf das Gottesreich. See F.W. Kantzenbach, Zwis-
chen Leonard Ragaz und Karl Barth. Die Beurteilung des 1.Weltkrieges in den Briefen
des Basler Theologen Paul Wernle an Martin Rade, ZSK 71 (1977), 393417, 406. See
for a discussion my Anfngliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barth (19091927),
Mnchen 1987, 7172.
390 chapter eight

Already in Barths early theology the emphasis on the freedom of

God in his revelation, in the sense that God refuses to be annexed, is
accompanied by an equally strong emphasis on the universality of God
and Christ. Compelled by his experience at the time the First World
War began and by renewed Bible study, around 1915 Barth came to the
conviction that the big word God, with all its meanings of whole-
ness, deliverance and cancelling out alienation, might no longer be
introduced as an integral part of any historical movement, ideology
or church. The entities God, the kingdom of God and Christ are
indeed present in Scripture, but almost as a sort of jamming apparatus,
not as realities to be realised in human activity. That does not mean
that God or Christ are dead. Quite on the contrary! Even as his lib-
eral opponents do, Barth believes that Christ is at work in the society,
is the secret source of power for human searching and the striving for
humanity. The lecture Der Christ in der Gesellschaft, written against the
background of a social situation in which a selection of groups and
movements were calling for renewal, resounds with the hope that soci-
ety is not abandoned to its own resources:9 Christ is the secret motor,
the origin of human searching. The dierence with other voices that
are searching for the presence of God is that the divine, or the Spirit,
can no longer be t into the relation between God and man. The fun-
damental asymmetry in the relation between God and man surfaces in
this lecture, so that Christ in us is interpreted as above us, behind
us and beyond us. The Christ in us is that which we are not.10 Here
it becomes visible for the rst time that the relation between God and
man is to be characterised as a relation of non-identity. There are all
sorts of ways in which this lecture can be read productively along-
side the baptismal fragment. The reason is not only that baptism with
the Spirit is termed an incommensurable element I am also referring
to another aspect that continues to make the 1919 lecture fascinating
reading, namely the universal perspective that is carried through in all
directions. Christ involves everyone. He is free to be present with, and
enter into relation with all men. What in the neo-Calvinist tradition
was discussed under the term catholicity,11 also remained a cantus r-

9 Der Christ in der Gesellschaft (1919) in: Anfnge I, 3.

10 Anfnge I, 4.
11 H. Bavinck, De katholiciteit van kerk en christendom (1888), Kampen 1968; ET: The

Catholicity of Christianity and the Church, trans. by John Bolt, Calvin Theological
Journal 27 (1992), 220251.
 barths view of the sacrament 391

mus in Barths theology. In the struggle with natural theology regarding

the criterion and site of Christian knowledge of God, it might have
appeared that this universal perspective was forgotten. An appeal to
creation, to a wider concept of experience, is no longer possible. Subse-
quently Barth attempted to comprehend under Christology all that for
Calvin fell under the broader horizon of the work of the Spirit. And, as
has already been said, through Christology and the doctrine of election
Barth attempted to give shape to a view of creation and history. As a
matter of fairness in judgement, we must acknowledge that the concen-
tration on Jesus Christ as the only Word in life and death (Barmen) has
as its point the question about the criterion for knowledge of God, not
its range. In the sections which follow the doctrine of God in KD II,
within this new starting point it really does appear that a vision of cre-
ation, man and history is possible. The doctrine of election oers the
fundamental, substantive denition for the divinity of God. This means
that man cannot overlook Gods proximity to all people in his Son Jesus
Christ, but must regard this rst as a theological fact, and only then
in its anthropological and soteriological implications. The sending of
Jesus Christ breaks through the isolation of manthrough our human
isolation; God has come near to all, all of mankind are brought within
his actual sphere. These are the fundamental themes that bring this
concept of human knowledge of God under the denominator of hope.
More than in the preceding section of the KD, in KD IV/4 Barth
wants to sharply distinguish between actions of God and actions of
man. The doctrine of baptism is no alien element, but a ripe harvest of
Barths theology. In sending his Son, God reverses mans situation, and
the reconciliation and forgiveness of sins this involves is made inwardly
accessible to man through Gods Spirit. Then it is up to man to respond
to this divine act. Man lets himself be baptised, lets himself become
involved. This distinction between the acting of God and the acting
of man has far-reaching consequences for the place and theological
meaning of the sacraments. Barth breaks with the classic sacramental
doctrines in which God is actively present in the administration of the
sacraments by man, so that the sacrament is a means of salvation.
With Barth, all the emphasis is placed on man, who permits himself
to become involved with the sacrament, and in this passivity is himself
active. The subjective element is given room within the objective work
of Christ and the Spirit.
392 chapter eight

8.2. Developments

8.2.1. Regard for the humanity of Jesus

Barths doctrine of baptism reects the development in his thought.
The question which is of theological interest is whether the conclusions
drawn by Barth are necessary, and follow as a matter of course once
one subscribes to an asymmetry in the relation between God and man.
Within the doctrine of God in KD II the concept of the sacraments
still has a full place. The humanity of Jesus Christ is termed the rst
sacrament.12 This is not to say that Jesus Christ is the one sacrament.
There is a place for the sacraments of the Church alongside this rst
sacrament. As already emerged in 6.9, one can interpret Barths view
of the relation between God and man with the pair of concepts from
the early Church, anhypostasis and enhypostasis. The term enhypostasis
is intended to comprehend the unity of the person of Jesus Christ
according to the divine perspective. In Jesus Christ the divine Logos
or the eternal Son is the supporting ground for the unity of divine and
human nature which exists in Him. With Barth enhypostasis comes to
characterise the dynamic of Gods veiled revelation in Christ. The man
Jesus is the place where God reveals himself, and in the event of the
revelation he can be characterised as the Son. For Barth anhypostasis is
indicative of the revelation: it refers to the event of the Word, outside
of which the man Jesus is nothing. In the rst parts of the KD the
humanity of Jesus fulls no role of its own; the humanity, like all history,
is predicated upon revelation.13 All the space is taken up by the God
who acts. There is no room for the question of whether in Jesus Christ
man also stands facing God. The stress on the revelation of God in
Christ is in fact at the expense of attention for history, for mankind.
The fact that in Jesus Christ God and man come together, and that
therefore the person of Jesus Christ can be termed the mediator, is
actually pushed aside. In the later parts of KD there comes more and
more space for man as the partner of God. This can be seen in the
terminology alone. If the rst parts of the KD are dominated by the
category of the Word, the later parts deal with Jesus Christ as a person,

12 KD II/1, 58; ET, 53.

13 KD I/2, 178; ET, 162: His manhood is only the predicate of His Godhead,
or better and more concretely, it is only the predicate, assumed on inconceivable
condescension, of the Word acting upon us, the Word who is the Lord.
 barths view of the sacrament 393

or with the Son of God who is also the Son of Man. Within his concept
of knowledge of God, in which the primacy continues to lie with God
as subject, Barth attempts to expound the revelation as concrete history,
the history of Jesus Christ, which must be understood as the way of the
Son of God into the far country14 and as the exaltation of the Son of
Man.15 Theological thought remains the ontological ground for faith,
in an analogy for which no analogue can be identied in our world:
the unio hypostatica as the assuming and assumption of human nature
into unity with the Son of God is an event which is self-evident and
unparalleled.16
The development in Barths view of the sacraments runs parallel
with his recognition of the humanity of Jesus. Baptism and the Supper
are sacraments analogous to the anhypostasis of the man Jesus. For all
practical purposes, the only place for that which is human is as an
exponent of the event of revelation. The sacraments are human actions,
which by virtue of Gods free and electing act can become a means for
His revelation.

8.2.2. The one sacrament

Barth undeniably intended the fragment on baptism as a retractatio of
his earlier exposition of baptism in 1943. It was not without reason that
he gave this earlier brochure the title Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe.
Already at that time the title was critically intended. It becomes clear
in the title how from the outset Barth intended the adjective kirchliche
for his dogmatics as a critical term which invites one not to declare
the status quo holy, but rather to repeatedly place the givens under the
critique of the living Word of God. In Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe
baptism is still called an Abbild of renewal through the Spirit.17 As an
element of the proclamation of the church its power lies in its being a
free Word and the work of Jesus Christ himself.18 The way in which the
concept of the sacraments is forced into the background is documented
in the fact that in KD IV/2 he terms the history of Jesus Christ the
one sacrament. From this point the accent is placed on the singularity

14 KD IV/1, Par. 59.1.

15 KD IV/2, Par. 64.
16 KD IV/2, 62; ET, 58.
17 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 3, 8.
18 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 11.
394 chapter eight

of the self-witness and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Risen One is
present as a force in history, and makes all things testify to Him. With
his power He is assured of a response, He opens a way with peoples
and nations. Particularly in KD IV/3 this aspect is worked out in length
under the heading of the prophetic oce of Jesus Christ. This section
is therefore important for Barths later theological epistemology. God
makes his sovereign way through history in Christ as the Living One.
Jesus as Prophet proclaims Himself and His own history. Sovereignly,
he comes nearby, creates the link.
Barth described the content of the history for which the name of
Jesus Christ stands as being a double movement. He makes creative
use of two doctrines distinguished by Protestant orthodoxy, namely the
doctrines of the oces of Christ and of the estates of Christ. According
to the doctrine of oces, one can regard the work of Christ under the
three oces of prophet, priest and king; according to the doctrine of
estates, Jesus moves from the state of humility to a state of exaltation.19
Barth interprets the doctrines of estates and oces together, in terms of
each other. The priestly oce of Christ is connected with his state of
humility, and the oce of king with the state of exaltation. By sending
the Son into the world below, God does something with himself and
to himself. He enters the depths, the Lord becomes Servant (KD IV/1).
At the same time this history can also be regarded as an exaltation for
man. What seen from the perspective of God is a road to the depths,
for man it reveals itself in the opposite direction, namely a road to the
heights: in the life of Jesus the outline of the royal man becomes visible
(KD IV/2). Debasement and exaltation are both poles through which
the history can be characterised. In addition, according to Barth in KD
IV/3, there is a third aspect which can be distinguished in this history.
The history of Jesus Christ nds its perfection, its peculiarity and its
divine glory in the fact that He reveals Himself and makes Himself
known.20 Independent of the question of whether this revelation will be
understood and accepted by man subjectively or noetically, it is true of
the history of Jesus Christ that it is in and of itself a communicative
and transeunt event.21 This history is not only light, it is in itself a

19 Cf. Heppe/Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, Neukirchen 19582,

355403: locus XVIII, De ocio Iesu Christi mediatorio en locus XIX, De Iesu Christi
statu exinanitionis et exaltationis.
20 KD IV/3, 6; ET, 8.
21 KD IV/3, 7; ET, 8.
 barths view of the sacrament 395

source of light. Put in other words, what Barth in this third part of the
doctrine of reconciliation says under the heading of the prophetic oce
of Christ touches directly on the question of the way to knowing God:
reconciliation is not a closed event, but a history which opens out from
within itself, which shares itself. Reconciliation, the signicance of Jesus
Christ, does not still have to be applied; every application exists by
virtue of the fact that Jesus Christ himself is the Living One who opens
up the signicance of reconciliation. What does Barth do with this?
In the following sub-section two manners in which Barth develops this
self-disclosure will de discussed.

8.2.3. The living Christ

We will rst here consider his Lichterlehre. Barth makes a distinction
between, on the one hand, the direct testimony of apostles and proph-
ets, the continued action of the Gospel and its eects, and on the
one hand, lights which glow outside the circle of the Church and
the Gospel.22 The confession that Jesus Christ is the one Word of
God does not, according to Barth, prevent God in His freedom from
proclaiming Himself elsewhere, outside the familiar circles. In Barths
terms, Christ speaks this Word directly. The other true words and
lights that men can descry extra muros ecclesiae23 in world history, among
peoples and movements, do not take precedence over the one Word
of God, but can only witness to that one Word. Barths Lichterlehre has
provoked the question of whether he really here is saying something
more than in the rst sections of the KD. Is the Lichterlehre only a
further clarication of what was articulated in the Barmen Confession?
Or does something thrust its way to the surface here for which there
is hardly space in his theological concept?24 Do we not here run up
against the limits of the fundamental Christocentrism, and would the
concept not be better served here with a stronger distinction between

22 KD IV/3, 107; ET, 9697.

23 KD IV/3, 122; ET, 110.
24 H. Berkhof, Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und

Welt in: H. Berkhof/H.J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre, Zrich 1978, 36, 48, Zurich
1978, 36, 48, is inclined to this view. Berkhof rightly points to remarks in the fragments
from the years 19591961 published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jngel, Das Christliche Leben,
197 on God being objectively known in the world. This concession, which sounds
so much like Calvin, regarding objective acquaintance with God in the world and
subjective ignorance of Him as a result of human slowness and fault, does not receive
any theological development.
396 chapter eight

Christology and pneumatology? Whatever the case, the Lichterlehre is an

indication that for Barth there is now more space than was implied
by the statement in KD I/1, which sounds so much like a concession,
that of course God can also reveal Himself in a Mozart concerto or
through a dead dog.25 Evidently he regards the question regarding
criteria for the speaking of God as answered now, and it must be said
to the Church and Christianity that God has the freedom to reveal his
truth outside the Church. Therefore one must take into account that
there are lights which witness to this great Light.26 In short, however
much believing Christians and the institutional Church may then feel
themselves cornered in modernity, theologically it is the case that no
profane sphere left to its lot exists. It may therefore be true that while
there are many people who live without God, within the concept of
man and the world in Christian knowledge of God, God does not exist
without man.27 One can detect a tone critical of the church in such
remarks, but it is perhaps more productive to note how much the motif
of the sovereignty of Christ and of hope sounds out. Christ as the Living
One continues to lead us and go ahead of us.
As a second development of this self-witnessing of Jesus Christ as the
Living One, we can refer to the 1843 account of exorcism involving
J.C. Blumhardt and Gottliebin Dittus of Mttlingen, which is cited
by Barth. It is the story of a young woman who is freed from an
alien power by which she has been overwhelmed and controlled. Barth
considers it of particular importance that Blumhardt did not think
of the phrase Jesus ist Sieger himself, but heard the words from the
mouth of Gottliebins sister Katharina. It is a desperate cry, uttered
in the midst of a struggle with demonic forces.28 This experience led
Blumhardt to once again take seriously the reality of the Living Lord
and his dominion. Throughout his life Barth himself felt the appeal of
this realism of belief, which in the midst of conict places more faith
in God and His gracious rule than in the powers, and in KD IV/3 he
again reaches back to it.
In this third part of Barths theology his a priori point of departure
increasingly comes to coincide with the name Jesus Christ, the Living
One who makes Himself present. His theology becomes more and

25 KD I/1, 5556; ET, 55.

26 KD IV/3, 128; ET, 114.
27 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.
28 KD IV/3, 192196; ET, 168171.
 barths view of the sacrament 397

more a concentration on and exploration of the history of Jesus Christ

as the Living Lord, and of His dealings with his people as a battle lled
with the expectation of victory.29 The critical function that the category
of the Word fulls in the prolegomenon of the KD is specied in the
doctrine of reconciliation as the self-witness of Jesus Christ. The same
critical distance that in the prolegomenon distinguishes the category of
the Word from all human words, in KD IV/3 accrues to Jesus Christ as
the Living Lord of history.

8.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment

Barth developed the concept of the prophetic oce of Christ into a
critical manner of dealing with the way that this had taken form in
Protestant scholasticism. He critiqued the inclination to make Christ
only the Revealer of a truth or principle. That is too little. By that a
truth comes to occupy the place of the Person of Christ and his history.
Barth explicitly attributes to the Enlightenment the role of having been
a catalyst for reection on self-revelation as the content of revelation.
In his eyes, classical theology continued to deal with the authority of
the Bible, dogma and tradition in a rather naive manner. A critical
investigation of these givens, of their relation with the speaking of
God, was lacking. According to Barth, a rst realisation of the vital
and living speaking of God could be seen in the Reformation, but
the Enlightenment has to be given the honour of having forced the
Church to press on to a deeper understanding of that living speaking.30
In fact, Barth deems that the development of modernity, far from being
a misfortune for the church, the eects of which must be rectied as

29 The role of G.C. Berkouwers critique appears to have played in this connection

is remarkable. In his book De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth, Kampen 1954,
(ET 1956) Berkouwer had accused Barth of turning grace into a principle. According to
Berkouwer, for Barth grace had become so much the basis for all thinking that it in fact
had led to a speculation about grace, eternity and sin. Berkouwers accusation was that
Barth actually taught the resurrection of all things, and had trivialised the seriousness
of sin and evil. In his reply Barth shows that this had hit home, and at the same time
protests that it is a misunderstanding to say that in his thought grace has to do with
a principle, and not a living Person. See KD IV/3, 198206; ET, 173180. See also
the discussion with the Tbinger Stiftlern in: Karl Barth, Gesprche 19641968, Zrich
1997, 80: Ich habe es ja nicht umsonst als einen Kampf beschrieben, aber -als einen
siegreichen Kampf.
30 KD IV/3, 33; ET, 32.
398 chapter eight

quickly as possible, is a way in which the church is being forced to

better discern its identity.
It goes without saying that the eect of the gap that modern times
have created between the church and culture is positively assessed.
Because the church was being driven ever more into isolation with
its message, it sought a new entrance to this same world. In order to
speak, it has to know. Furthermore, that knowing has to be a knowing
with certainty.31 Now, according to Barth, that knowing can only be a
certain knowing if it is based on the self-witness of Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ is the one Light of all lives, the one Word that makes itself
known. The dierence with the rst parts of the KD, it would appear
from this, is that the word of man, including the speaking of the church
in its preaching and dogma, is no longer characterised as a form of the
Word, but exclusively as a sign and witness. In all its forms the word of
man refers to Jesus Christ; it is not itself that speaking. This points to
the way that Barths critique of the classical concept of the sacraments
will go.

8.3. Baptism with the Spirit

Previously, in Chapter 6, we already noted that modern systematic

theology is characterised by a relatively large and conscious liberty
with regard to Biblical words and concepts. In the case of Barth,
among the points where that liberty can be seen is in his terminological
specication of the concept of baptism with the Holy Spirit. There
is indeed some connection with texts which speak of baptism with the
Spirit (Mark 1:8, ICor. 12:3 and Acts 1:5, 11:6 and 19:2), but Barth also
acknowledges that he has permitted himself some exegetical freedom.32
For him, baptism with the Spirit refers to a work by God through
which men become objectively and subjectively involved in salvation.
Thus under this head fall both the objective revelation of the meaning
of Jesus Christ in the resurrection and the work of the Spirit as the
subjective application for particular individuals. It does not mean a
separate gift of the Spirit that has an existence alongside faith.
In this way Barth distinguishes between baptism with water and
baptism with the Spirit. In contrast to baptism with the Spirit, water

31 KD IV/3, 34; ET, 32.

32 KD IV/4, 33; ET, 30.
 barths view of the sacrament 399

baptism is an act of man. By so separating baptism with the Holy Spirit

and baptism with water, Barth has taken a radical step in comparison
with the rst panel. The doubleness that is so characteristic of the
classical view of the sacraments is abolished.
For the rest, with this terminological specication it is tting to recall
the critical commentary that Jngel oers at this point. In a certain
sense the collective term baptism is a confusing word to use for both
acts, because the meaning of the word baptism is so dierent that
as a collective term it has become almost empty. At rst sight Barth
appears to want to maintain that these are two sorts of the same class,
but that seems to be precisely not his intention. He is using the same
word to denote two entirely dierent actions, a divine and a human,
which nonetheless together form one entity. It is however not easy to
see what the unity is that would justify the collective term baptism.33
The terminological problem does not stand alone, however. It is
symptomatic of a problem which becomes visible upon examination of
the content of Barths concept. He wishes to make a clean distinction
between the work of God and the work of man, so as to do justice
to both. It is vague, though, whether Barth, in his desire to keep the
relation clean and pure, does not ignore the symbolic power that is
already connected with the elements water, bread and wine. Baptism
and the Supper are actions of the Church which cannot be imagined
without the symbolic power that these elements have as signs, and
that they already had when they were transformed by the earliest
communities into their own rituals. In the rst part of this study we
have already referred to the fact that any doctrine of the sacraments
is interwoven with general semantics (4.2). Within the cultus the sign,
the signum sacramentale, is on the one hand used to unlock the meaning
and content of the sacrament, the res sacramenti. On the other hand,
the story, the word, serves to focus the meaning of the sign more
precisely. The cultic action of a sacramental event is already interpreted
by Paul, being further dened in terms of Gods act in the cross and
resurrection.34 That God can use the symbols of water, bread and wine,
from the creation and ambivalent in themselves, is an idea that drops

33 Jngel, Barth-Studien, 265.

34 Thus, for instance, in Romans 6:111. Baptism does not bring about death for
the believer, but a dying to sin on the basis of the justication that the sinner receives
from God. What is accomplished here is exclusively the work accomplished by God in
Christ.
400 chapter eight

out of the second panel. Gods acting is swallowed up in baptism with

the Spirit. What does Barth mean by this?
Barth understands the concept of baptism with the Spirit as meaning
that an individual comes to faith. Put dierently, and now in a manner
which expresses that faith is secondary, it is the event through which
a human being shows faithfulness towards Gods faithfulness to him.35
Faith, the fact that men know and acknowledge God in his faithful-
ness, is termed incommensurable, and we are told it cannot be co-
ordinated.36 We have heard words like these before, and they will con-
tinue to appear in his theology. Once again the reader is made aware
that faith in God is not a possibility that derives from already existent
possibilities or capacities.37 It is characteristic of the concept of theology
in this second panel that faith is a unique, irreducible element. Faith in
God is not am expression of the possibilities of human existence in gen-
eral or of mans spirit in particular. The emphasis is on its irreducibility.
Once the fundamental or irreducible character of knowledge of God
is acknowledged, there is indeed space to acknowledge that all human
possibilities are used in the process by which knowledge of God comes
into being. There are also anthropological structures that are not dam-
aged by, or have not disappeared in sin,38 but these structures are not
the means through which man is able to respond to Gods Yes with
faithfulness in return. Here too Barth is not interested in investigating
the human capacities for knowing as such. The one thing it all comes
down to, the one thing that is fundamental theologically, is Gods act-
ing, through which man becomes the free subject of his faith.
In his exposition Barth summarily reviews the positions that, accord-
ing to him, have not succeeded in making it clear how one arrives at
faith, at partnership with God. He rst lists the Roman Catholic view
of grace, which views the renewal as an infusion. The second view is
that of liberal theology, namely grace as the actualisation of human
impulses. Finally, Barth mentions a third way that he associates with
the early Reformation view of Melanchthon and Luther: the renewal
exists in a divine judgement, which introduces the otherwise unchanged
man adjudged afresh and in grace: grace as a divine predicate. Barths
own critical distance from the their way is interesting in theological-

35 KD IV/4, 4; ET, 4.
36 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
37 KD IV/4, 12; ET, 11.
38 KD IV/4, 4; ET, 4.
 barths view of the sacrament 401

historical terms, because it at the same time means a distancing from

his own earlier view in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. In
the baptismal fragment his interest is in man, who as an empirical sub-
ject endorses Gods faithfulness. He now acknowledges that all of the
previously listed views contain a particula veri that however can only be
integrated if justice is done to that which is most important in the order
of faith. Faith is in the rst place a possibility of God himself that pro-
vides for man assenting to be a partner, ceasing to be an outsider and
beginning to take part in the fellowship not only passively, but actively.39
Thus Barth identies a divine initiative which turns man around,
making his response possible, as the only origin of the Christian life.
With this reality in mind, one can use the terms realism and objec-
tivism. The Christian life becomes possible in answer to a new being
that is created by God in Christ. The images in which the Biblical wit-
ness speaks of this new being are not merely images, Barth argues. The
metaphors of the new garment, of being born again, of the transition
from death to life, not only point to the radicality of the new state that
God brings about, but it comes in them, according to Barth.40
Barth wishes to understand this turning by man which is brought
about by God as dierent from other religious conventions that also
involve renewal and change, but which he interprets as expressions of a
general religiosity in which God or the divine is a normal component
of a coherent world order. We can leave aside here the question of to
what extent Barth here does justice to the self-understanding of other
religions. The argument is obviously not phenomenological; Barth is
arguing theologically, on the basis of the incommensurability of the
turning about that only God himself produces. The intention is clear.
Human knowing of a living God is not derived from being in general,
not a conclusion on the basis of a desire for God, but a unique event,
not derived from anything else, which is constituted by God himself.
Barth terms this new being as the history of Jesus Christ. What does
he mean by this? First, the content of this term must be distinguished
from that which can be historically known of the earthly Jesus. With
this history Barth means not just a series of events that took place
in the past. For Barth, history of Jesus Christ is a theological term.
Certainly, it also does refer back to events that took place in time and
spacein other words, to earthly historybut since their conrmation

39 KD IV/4, 6; ET, 56.

40 KD IV/4, 7; ET, 67.
402 chapter eight

by God the Father in the resurrection of Jesus, for faith they have come
to be understood as the history of Gods acting and being. This history
is the complete representation of the new being, because He is the
one within time who answered the faithfulness of God in all places
with his human faithfulness. That new being is the divine truth for all
people, apart from the question of whether these people acknowledge
and accept it in their own life.41 This new being is the objective reality
that can be characterised as Christ pro nobis. Baptism with the Spirit
implies a second step, namely the explicit acknowledgement from the
side of man that the new being which has come into existence in Jesus
Christ denes our lives. Barth characterises a Christian as a man from
whom it is not hidden that his own history took place along with the
history of Jesus Christ as the decisive event which establishes his life
as a Christian. He himself in the midst of all other men can see himself
as one of those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what He
did.42
It is of fundamental importance here to realise the universal import
of the history of Jesus Christ. Barth does not say that man potentially
has a share in this history. Mans participation is a fact, a situation
brought about by God. However, through baptism with the Spirit,
that which from the perspective of God we have pro nobis, is now an
event in us, in nobis. In an event faith becomes an actuality within
man, a turning of the heart through which man becomes a believer,
becomes an empirical subject of faith.43 In his discussion of baptism
with the Spirit Barth in fact reaches back to what he had written in
the preceding sections on the doctrine of reconciliation with regard to
the ontological connection between Jesus Christ on the one side and
all other human beings on the other. When God sends his Son, he
objectively alters the situation of being human. Barths interpretation
of the incarnation continues to make itself felt. The primary meaning
of the incarnation is not assumptio hominis, but assumptio humanae naturae.
The Son does not primarily take on the shape of a man, but of that
which is human, of humanitas.44 It is the possibilities and givens that are
inherent in our being human, in our humanitas, that God accepts in
Christ. The early Church expressed this in the term anhypostasis. What

41 KD IV/4, 23; ET, 21.

42 KD IV/4, 15; ET, 1314.
43 KD IV/4, 24; ET, 22.
44 KD IV/2, 5051; ET, 4748.
 barths view of the sacrament 403

God assumed was an impersonal human nature, the essence of being

human, which however only can have its existence in a concrete person.
In the case of Jesus Christ this human nature has its concrete existence
in the person of the Son, expressed though the term enhypostasis. It is
this assumption of human nature by God in His Son that for Barth
becomes the denite centre of nature and history. We have previously
indicated that the nature of the unio hypostatica cannot be claried by
other analogies, but is itself the Grundwirklichkeit, the ground on which
all other analogies are possible. In other words, the irreducibility of
the unio personalis already required that Barth regard the incarnation as
the one, unique sacrament performed once and for all, which can not
repeated another time, or be represented in baptism or the Supper.
It is well to pause here for a moment. Barths rejection of the sacra-
mentality of baptism and the Supper does not rest on the premise that
God really remains alone in the heights and does not take pity on our
human condition. He presents it here as a consequence of the solus
Christus, of the uniqueness of the incarnation. The question he poses
is suggestive and rhetorical: Was it a wise action on the part of the
Church when it ceased to recognise in the incarnation, in the nativitas
Jesu Christi, in the mystery of Christmas, the one and only sacrament,
fullled once and for all, by whose actuality it lives as the one form of
the one body of its Head, as the earthly-historical form of the existence
of Jesus Christ in the time between His ascension and return? Is it really
not enough to occupy it in the giving and receiving of this one sacra-
ment.45 These words would suggest that Barth saw the rejection of the
doubleness in baptism and the Supper as an extension of the discoveries
of the Reformers. The mediation of this one sacrament is entirely and
totally the work of God. The divine and the human become hopelessly
mixed if one suggests that in the actions of baptism and the Supper
something extraordinary, something supra-human, something divine
occurs. Barths desacramentalising raises no small questions: should we
view this desacramentalising as an attempt at theological purication,
in order to permit God to be God and man to be man? Or is it in fact
a limitation of the condescension of God, who is also free to mediate
himself in the ambiguity of the created symbol?

45 KD IV/2, 59; ET, 55.

404 chapter eight

8.4. Baptism with water

Barth attempted to defend his rejection of baptism with water as a

sacrament, that is, as a ritual in which Gods salvation is mediated and
eected, with exegetical arguments. An explicit discussion of Barths
exegesis of familiar baptismal texts, such as Acts 22:16, Hebrews 10:22,
Eph. 5:25, etc., Titus 3:5, Romans 6:34 and Mark 16:16, would take us
outside the bounds of this study. I will limit myself here to the negative
conclusion to which Barth comes: exegetically, there is no compelling
reason to expound these texts sacramentally. The cleansing and rescue
of man happens in the history of Jesus Christ, and the New Testament
knows no duplicate of this event.46 With this he rejects the manner in
which the tradition defended the sacrament with anthropological or
Biblical arguments. Calvin and Luther broke with the anthropological
orientation of the doctrine of the sacraments in the medieval church, in
the conviction that the sacraments had an explicit ground in the Bible,
or more precisely, must have had their foundation in the institution by
Christ Himself.47 Barths altered attitude toward the Biblical texts and
his acceptance of modern critical tools in Biblical studies clearly imply
that he no longer subscribes to what is in his eyes a Biblicistic criteria
of that sort. It is important to note that in his critique of the classical
concept of the sacraments it is a theological argument which forms
the touchstone, so to speak, for the Biblical argument. The theological
argument is the insight that the only reality which can exist alongside
the one new being that is reality in the history of Jesus Christ, is
human witness. The classic view of the sacraments is characterised
by a doubleness: the sacrament is both acting by man and acting by
God. Calvin and Luther both took that over, although there are clear
dierences between them.48 For Barth this view arouses the suspicion
that here something is being lifted heavenwards that can better be done
justice to if one considers it exclusively as human acting.

46 KD IV/4, 140; ET, 128.

47 Among the reasons Thomas Aquinas advances for the several sacraments are
the underlying anthropological structures: Summa Theologiae III, q.65 a.1. The seven
sacraments are each in themselves symbols that form the bridge that runs from sen-
sory and physical things to a spiritual world capable of being apprehended by the
mind.
48 In baptism the dierence between the Lutheran and Reformed views is striking.

In his Small Catechism Luther makes a very immediate connection between baptism
 barths view of the sacrament 405

With Barth the rejection of the sacramentality of baptism and the

Supper is accompanied by an astonishing absence of attention for
the relation between symbol and sacrament. That water, bread and
wine also have symbolic meanings and are profoundly related with
creatureliness in all its ambiguity, receives no attention at all.49 He limits
himself to several remarks that make it clear that he does not intend to
go in the direction of a doctrine of the sacraments that makes use of
symbol theory. The water of baptism is chosen because water is what
one washes with. Water makes one wet; it does nothing more. The
Bible oers no basis for a theology of water, Barth declares.50 Barths
opposition to a doctrine of the sacraments such as that of G. Van der
Leeuw, which observes the ambivalences of phenomenon and makes
use of them, is powerfully expressed in this rejection. However, I would
suggest, it is not clear why phenomena, in all their symbolic power,
can not be called upon in a concept of knowing God. In the classic
view of the sacraments the language spoken by the elements of bread,
wine and water is not a language that they speak purely of themselves.
Their eloquence comes only because they are brought into relationship
with the history of Gods acting and are employed to open up and
translate the meaning of salvation. With Barth however this possibility
disappears entirely. How is it then that God acts? God acts directly, we
are told. What does that mean?

8.5. Directness

The question arises of what Barth had in mind with his pronouncement
that Jesus Christ acts directly in baptism with the Spirit. Does he mean

and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death
and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and
promises of God declare (I, Baptism, II). In the Reformed tradition the Heidelberg
Catechism follows the line of Calvins view of the sacraments by explicitly denying
that the reception of the sacrament would be identical with the forgiveness of sins
or participation in Christ. In baptism man is reminded and assured that the one
sacrice of Christ on the cross avails for [him] (Q. 69). See Dr. Martin Luthers Small
Catechism (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1943), 16, and the Heidelberg Catechism, trans.
Miller/Oosterhaven, as it appears in The Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America (New
York: Reformed Church in America, 1968), 475.
49 See for example M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation

and Sacrament, Justication and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 5770.

50 KD IV/4, 50; ET, 45.
406 chapter eight

that in baptism through the Spirit no use of any instrument whatsoever

is made? This possibility would turn baptism through the Spirit into a
mystical event, not mediated by any earthly means. As it happens, the
term direct is anything but simple, and Barth fails to explain precisely
what he is thinking of.
When can we speak of direct contact? Is contact by means of a letter
direct? Is telephonic contact direct? When we send a message to a
friend through a another friend, we would say it is an indirect contact.
Then there is another person who is an intermediary. Someone who
maintains contact by letter could say that in this case the letters are
the means by which the contact is made. The contact does not take
place without this instrument, and in this sense it is not direct. Yet
in this case it is not the medium through which the contact is made
that is of decisive importance. The concept of immediacy generally
does not involve the fact that certain technical means are used, such
as paper, ink, a postman, or an electronic infrastructure. The concept
of immediacy is rather related to the question of whether the contact is
made via a third party. If the contact is not through a third person, then
we are inclined to term it direct. Thus in the case of a power of attorney
indirectness prevails. Power of attorney permits the person authorised
the right to perform acts or proceed in the name of the person who
grants it. In this case, indirectness means that another person represents
the principal person.
In the case of telephonic contact it is clear that it is not the infras-
tructure that is decisive in the question of immediacy. The telephone
and the whole infrastructure that is connected with it serves as the
instrument through which the contact is made. Yet in this case we still
speak of direct contact, because the instrument acts as the conduit for
a contact, by which a person to person conversation takes place. As we
experience it, the directness of the contact is paramount. We could say
that it is indirectly direct.
To return to Barth. Must we interpret Barths speaking about direct-
ness as the absence of any conduit or mediation? The premise of his
theology is always that there is a Church, which witnesses, and so acts.
That would argue for indirect directness. In comparison to 1943, the
way that acting is characterised has changed. We are told the church is
present, ministering and assisting. What changes is the way that act-
ing is qualied. In the baptismal fragment this acting is now specically
distinguished from the acting of God. The church is neither author,
dispenser, nor mediator of grace and its salvation. It is the subject nei-
 barths view of the sacrament 407

ther of the work of salvation nor the Word of salvation.51 The cen-
tral concepts are Selbstbezeugung and Selbstmitteilung (translated as self-
attestation and self-impartation). Unmittelbar therefore does not mean
that Barth denies witness and service by men. The immediacy of which
Barth speaks, one can interpret, implies that he no longer wishes to
give human service the theological qualication of a medium through
which God makes Himself present in a hidden manner. Assistance is not
representation. The concept of representation disappears. The intercourse
between God and man has the form of directness, in which the earthly
factors no longer are qualied theologically as representation, but at
the most as assistance and reference. One can regard this as relieving
the human actors. Human actions no longer have to represent. Oces
and the sacrament lose their nimbus. Thus the direction of our ques-
tion will also have to be reversed. Does Barth still oer the conceptual
possibility of thinking of condescension? Are there still sucient possi-
bilities oered here to draw attention to Gods using various means to
make Himself known, and taking persons into service as assistants?

8.6. Baptism with water as answer

Barth wished to emphatically distinguish baptism with water from bap-

tism with the Spirit. For him water baptism is a secondary element in
which man answers the new reality created by God. We now encounter
concepts with a power and signicance that they did not have in his
earlier theology, or to which they had not yet developed then. Man
becomes a partner, a free subject in the covenant of grace.52 Man
goes from being an outsider to being a participant. The participation
consists in the fact that man chooses what God has chosen for him.
We must not understand the word partner to imply an equal com-
peer. God remains the rst, from whom the covenant proceeds and by
whom the new being of Christ is constituted. What is new here is the
accent. The relation of God and man, with all the inequality between
the two partners, is one of true bipolarity.53 Barth underscores the pecu-
liar subjectivity of man in the relationship by the proposition that while
according to Christian doctrine there is indeed an omnicausality of God

51 KD IV/4, 35; ET, 32.

52 KD IV/4, 56; ET, 5.
53 KD IV/4, 21; ET, 20.
408 chapter eight

posited, this must not be construed as His sole causality.54 The concept of
partner implies that there is room for real intercourse between God and
man, and for a real answer. Through the power of the Holy Spirit the
history of Jesus Christ, which is revealed in the resurrection, is manifest
for a particular individual. Barth rejects the objection that Gods omni-
causality and the freedom of man are irreconcilable. A contradistinc-
tion of this sort betrays a way of thinking which places God and man
on the same plane, thereby making them competitors. If one begins
with Gods omnicausality, then there would be no room left for human
freedom. If one begins with the assumption of human freedom, Gods
omnicausality can not be maintained. In both cases, Gods omnicausal-
ity and the freedom of man are absolutely antithetical, and become
abstractions which then can not tolerate each others existence. But this
is thinking from outside. One only obtains insight into their polarity
and mutual relationship by taking up the insiders perspective of faith.
It is the same point of departure that Barth takes in his actualism, by
which the extremes of both determinism and a complete historisation
are avoided in the doctrine of election. Dogmatic reection has to pro-
ceed from the meeting between God and man in Jesus Christ. Such
reection must follow what is seen by the eye of faith in this encounter,
namely God as the partner who appears within the horizon of man as
the other partner in the covenant.55
Barth has blocked every idea of a mediating function for baptism
with water. The acting subject in baptism by water is the community
of Christ, which by its administration of baptism acknowledges that
the baptismal candidate is someone who knows Jesus Christ.56 The
candidate is also present in this event as subject, because he or she
approaches and wishes to be baptised. In short, baptism is only con-
ceivable as adult baptism. The ambiguity that is characteristic of the
sacramental acts in Calvin and that is anchored in the classic doctrine
of the sacraments is renounced in favour of man as subject. Baptism
is an act of obedience, a rst act with which the baptisand acknowl-
edges that he or she wishes to respond to the history of Jesus Christ.
As such, baptism is the beginning of ethics, and as such is also still an
integral part of the doctrine of reconciliation.57 In receiving baptism,

54 KD IV/4, 25; ET, 22.

55 KD IV/4, 22; ET, 20.
56 KD IV/4, 54; ET, 4950.
57 KD IV/4, 9497; ET, 8890.
 barths view of the sacrament 409

the candidate assents to the decision of God about his or her life, with
its judgement and grace.
Barth founds the dichotomy and distinction between God and man
Christologically. In his judgement, the baptismal commission in Mat-
thew 28:19 is in fact an extrapolation of Jesus own baptism by John
the Baptist. Barth here adopts as his view an interpretation of the
passage in question which is defended in Biblical studies by form-
historical arguments. What is remarkable though is that he transposes
this literary-historical judgement into a dogmatic argument without fur-
ther discussion. For the rest, this form-critical manner of dealing with
the baptismal commission is perfectly congruent with Barths vision of
the resurrection. According to Barth, the resurrection adds nothing; it
is the revelation or unveiling of the meaning of Jesus life. But to return
to baptism: in this way baptism is anchored in the acting of Jesus. Jesus
own entry into the water of the Jordan is an act of obedience, by which
the man Jesus places himself under the command of God.58 In the way
which he goes he confesses his sins. In this way Jesus applies Gods
command to himself and thereby is exemplary for every human being.
Baptism is not performed on the basis of the consideration that it is
a means of salvation, a medium salutis,59 but because it is commanded
by God, ex necessitate praecepti.60 In the same way that Jesus testies to
his obedience to God by his baptism by John, accepting Gods service
and thereby fullling the covenant between God and man, so Christian
baptism is to be understood as the step by which a person acknowl-
edges living this new life, within the space of this history. In this way
the community follows in the way that the Messiah himself went, tak-
ing up the command of God, acknowledging His judgement and grace.
Barth no longer wants to understand the phrase in the name of
Jesus, which frequently occurs in the New Testament in connection
with baptism, as having sacramental implications. He suggests that
this phrase does not have to be expounded sacramentally, and can
simply mean to baptise with the name of Jesus in mind. With this
exposition he creates room for his own non-sacramental interpretation.
The baptismal formula is not an invocation, but a summons to the
believer. It is of great importance to Barth that baptismand, we
might add, also the Supperbe qualied as an act of man. These

58 KD IV/4, 60; ET, 5455.

59 KD IV/4, 171; ET, 156.
60 KD IV/4, 59; ET, 54.
410 chapter eight

actions are not channels of Christs gracious work, are no longer forms
of the Word. Christ is not the subject of these actions; in baptism as
an act of obedience man opens himself up and begins on the way to
the Kingdom of God, or better, he opens himself up within the new
existence brought about by Jesus Christ. Human subjectivity, mans
obedience and answer have their place within the realm created and
controlled by God. It is one event with two subjects. This is a vision
in which the things of this world do not take place outside of God. All
disorder and horrors in history may not in themselves be viewed as if
they were the only reality to be taken seriously. They must be seen in
the light of God, who has come close to all men in the history of Jesus
Christ. The worst thing that the Christian community can do is to live
in denial of this new being. Faith means regarding and accepting the
whole of human life, the darker sides no less than the bright spots, in
the light of Gods approach in Christ.
Can one accept this emphasis on man as the acting subject in the
sacrament without adopting Barths rejection of the sacramentality of
baptism and the Supper? In a critical sense, opposing Barth, the fol-
lowing could be said: If God reaches us by various means, through the
power of the Spirit, through historical mediation, then the sacraments,
in all their sensoriality and corporeity, could also be regarded as means
through which we are given a share in something that is not other than
that which we share in the proclamation and in faith. In the hearing
of the Gospel, in Baptism and the Supper, the community lets itself
be involved in that history of which Jesus Christ himself is the subject.
That which was said in the rst panel can here be critically advanced
against Barth. In the sacrament, as a condensed and sensory mediation
of the story, we do not come in contact with anything other than the
history of Jesus Christ, nor do we stand before a repetition or actuali-
sation of the salvation event, but, to use Jngels formulation, we come
in contact with the same thing in a dierent way.61 The notion of the
sacramental has to do with the fact that Gods approach embraces and
touches our spatial and temporal, physical existence. Should this not
mean that a doctrine of the sacraments must have its place within pneu-
matology, and cannot be developed without consideration of anthropo-
logical notions?

61 E. Jngel, Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verstndnisses der Taufe in: idem,

Barth-Studien, 310.
 barths view of the sacrament 411

8.7. The norm for humanity

The positive intention of Barths denial of the sacramentality of baptism

and the Supper may be now be clear: he wants to take the character-
istic nature of the acting of the community and the individual believers
with utter seriousness. According to Barth the view that baptism and
the Supper are in essence forms of divine expression obscures the eth-
ical meaning of these actions. This leads to the human answer being
mued so that the peculiar subjectivity does not adequately come to
light. One can interpret Barth on this point as being the gure who
sought to fully honour modernitys challenge to take man as subject
seriously, and integrate the concept in theology.
His view has massive consequences. This vision of the community, its
oces and the sacraments breaks with the hierarchical way of thinking
that is so denitive for Calvin and the tradition he shaped. The oces,
sacraments and the life of the community: all are the work of man,
through and through, human answers to the work that God has done
in the history of Jesus Christ. Barth breaks with the basis on which the
sacraments, and also the oces of the church, are built. But man is
not left to his own devices as a result. After all, the answer of man will
be structured, because it will be the answer to the history and work of
Jesus Christ. Man and his answer are situated within a bigger story, into
which man has been introduced by the incarnation. Barth confronts
his era with the reminder that mankind must not be conceived in
abstracto. The Christian vision of man is dened by the history of Jesus
Christ. Being human is being together with Jesus Christ, nding our
vocation within the covenant that God has established and brought to
its fullness in Jesus Christ. Man nds his norms, arrives at his purpose,
as he follows this act of God, responds to it, gives to his life the form
that ts with this act of God. The possibilities that accompany that
which is human are thereby actualised. It appears that the concept of
analogy is productive in order to clarify the elementary structure of the
view of knowing God and human life. When a man has learned to
know God as nearby in Christ, and has discovered his own life as an
existence that may be lived out within Gods proximity and sphere, it
can result in arriving at answers and going along ways that correspond
to this structure of proximity. Answering does not mean repetition or
imitation. In his own place, as a creature, in his own culture, man is
invited to assent to, receive and make use of the work that God has
done for him. The theological primacy of the history of Jesus Christ
412 chapter eight

as a history in which all men have a part preserves us from thinking

that we mustor even couldestablish the kingdom of God ourselves.
Man does not have to be God, but man must let God be God. Letting
God be God is submitting to the nearness of God in Jesus Christ. In the
human perspective, it is letting oneself be dened by this history within
the boundaries of time.

8.8. The meaning of the term noetic

In connection with the place that Barth wants to create in his late the-
ology for man as subject, it is important to yet discuss the meaning of
the term noetic. As was said above, in his doctrine of reconciliation
Barth speaks of the ontological connection of Christ with all mankind.
The dierence between believers and non-believers is that the former
have knowledge of this connection and the second group do not yet
know of this correspondence. What they lack is not the real proximity
to Christ. That is the hidden secret of every child of man. Jesus Christ
as the great Yes of the goodness of God62 is the One through which
every man is made a christianus designatus or christianus in spe.63 What is
lacking is knowledge of the correspondence. But what is knowledge?
Just how much territory does the intellectual-sounding word noetic
cover? Does it cover the necessity and evangelical demand for a per-
sonal answer?
First, it must be noted that the term noetic ts with the proposition
that all salvation is given in Jesus Christ. All newness is contained in his
history; nothing of substance has to be added. The work of the Spirit is
not creative, but it unveils and implements. Pneumatology falls within
the circle of Christology, or coincides with it. In those cases where a
certain peculiarity is ascribed to the work of the Spirit and it is thought
of as the wider perimeter of the acting of God, as is the case in Calvin,
the term noetic is insucient. Next, in Barths case it will be well for
us to not dene the term noetic too statically. As was the case for
Calvin, it is also true for Barths theology that for him knowing is more
than just an intellectual matter. Learning to know oneself in connec-
tion with Jesus Christ and discovering that ones own existence plays
itself out in the proximity of the living Christ is indeed a dangerous

62 KD IV/3, 922; ET, 805.

63 KD IV/3, 927; ET, 810.
 barths view of the sacrament 413

knowledge. It is a knowledge that produces conict. How dangerous it

is can be seen in Barths handling of the Lessingfrage. Lessings question
regarding the historical chasm that separates us today from the earthly
Jesus was interpreted by Barth as a denial of the fact that the Scripture
tells us that Christs proximity to every man in time and space has long
been a fact. In Barths eyes Lessings question was an escape hatch,
because with this question people could provide themselves with space
to keep the hazards of the proximity of Christ at bay.64 In fact, since
then the questions of who man is and what his destiny is can no longer
be answered in abstractothat is to say, without taking into account the
history of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Church and the content of
Christian doctrine is that this question has already been answered, and
can not be asked again quietly and philosophically, as though nothing
had happened. The real issue which presents itself in the circle where
the proximity of Christ is denied is the request of Peter: Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
For Barth then noetic is not the same as having only intellectual
knowledge of something. Anyone who learns to know Jesus Christ as
the Yes of God discovers how much his own existence in fact con-
tradicts this. I propose that at this point there has not been even a
beginning made in digesting Barths theology. One can say that in fact
Barths reinterpretation of the doctrine of election and his thesis of the
universal meaning of salvation in Christ have had the eect of an anti-
spasmodic, relieving the cramped situation into which the church and
theology had come.65 That can be assessed positively. But the point of
this theology is only just half understood, and thereby distorted into a
total lie, if subsequently the necessity of communicating the Gospel also
disappears under the table. As if it is no problem and maintaining a lie,
if we close the door on this Yes of God! Barths irritated reaction when
it was suggested to him in an interview, that for him faith was merely
a question of becoming acquainted with Gods eternal grace, is telling.66
In the rst part of the doctrine of reconciliation we hear that it is one
thing to acknowledge the pro nobis of Christ, and quite another to hear
the pro nobis not merely as an assertion, but to explore its range and

64 KD IV/1, 320; ET, 290291.

65 For the eect on the Dutch situation, see C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 329
365 en 533592.
66 See the conversation already cited, in Gesprche 19641968, 7480.
414 chapter eight

implications as man, and let it resonate against the walls of ones own
life. Learning to know is making the rst steps on a way; it is a battle,
even though in the light of the priority of grace it is a battle lled with
the expectation of victory.67

67 Gesprche 19641968, 80.

EVALUATION
 chapter nine

PROFIT AND LOSS

9.1. Christian theology as a counterproposal

What is prot and what is loss, as we draw up the closing balance?

Looking back over both panels, what are lines that are important for
todays theology when it comes to the question of what knowing God
means? What does Christian theology point to, and what does this
mean for life as it is lived? First I would recall to mind the point of
departure from which we began in the introduction. Christian theology
does not start from zero; it exists within an historic space and therefore
has to take into account the empirical fact of the Church, where
God is invoked, where prayers are said and hymns are sung. It must
deal with the fact that there are believers, half-believers and doubters
who, sometimes in spite of themselves, can not stop speaking of God,
seeking Him, suspecting His presence, who are responding to an appeal
that has moved them. How can that be conceptually and theoretically
explained theologicallythat is to say, from within? And how can this
theoretical and conceptual explanation be of use? It seems obvious
to assume that the theology of the second panel will yield the most
in such a closing evaluation. After all, that is closest to us; we are
practically contemporaries of Barth. We are ourselves an active part of
a cultural climate and intellectual framework for life that one can label
post-Kantian, modern or post-modern. That already produces one
immediate conclusion, which is of great importance for contemporary
reection: whatever the dierent responses to modernity, this much is
certain: that Christian belief in God has lost its self-evident political,
social and cultural dominance, so that the task of accounting for the
hope that is in us (see IPeter 3:15) is necessarily undertaken under
conditions dierent from those in the rst panel. Ours is a society which
is dominated by the realisation that man is alone in his niteness and
left to his own devices. That is the context of this evaluation.
Does the evaporation of that sense of life in the rst panel, that we
belong not to ourselves, but to our Lord, involve only the loss of a
418 chapter nine

burdensome idea and a conviction that has become superuous? Or is

more at stake? Does this loss constitute a threat to humanity? Does a
denial of this really do justice to man? What are the consequences if
the horizon of personal life and the horizon of public space is no longer
dened by the story of the Gospel, if man is thrown back entirely on
himself and must write his own story? Or are these questions them-
selves already a testimony to unbelief, owing their existence to a Euro-
pean culture grown weary? Barths theology is a voice in opposition
when on theological grounds he announces that there is no secular
sphere abandoned by Him or withdrawn from His control [i.e., to Jesus
Christ].1 Nothing profane in its origin is abandoned! If that is true,
men can look at their world and themselves through dierent eyes, and
cut short the lease that despondency and lethargy have taken out on
their lives.
To put it succinctly: Christian theology oers a counterproposal, a
counterproposal in an agnostic climate, to a culture that believes that
it has been abandoned to itself. That was the tenor of the preceding
chapters on Barth, and that is worth bearing in mind. Barths doctrine
of reconciliation does not end up as a lament, but as a theology of
hope. Christian theology can full that function as a theology of hope
if it provides an elucidation of man and the world from the recognition
that God is. And, to recall another quotation,2 that not only produces
a certain explanation; it changes things. Knowing God means a trans-
formation of the world. It means that men need no longer reect, but
that they have already been addressed, and thereby have become par-
ticipants, gures in a narrative, a drama with various actors. Christian
theology therefore refers to a story in which God acts for the benet of
man. This acting is not at the expense of man and the world. It rather
gives it precisely the lustre that was intended. The story of Jesus Christ
provides the possibilities for this life, in all its niteness, as the object
of Gods grace and care, possibilities to once again learn to know the
world and ourselves in the presence of God. Formulated in terms of
drama: by the actions of the protagonist the other actors nd them-
selves in an altered position, and they are invited to explore their own
positions anew as coram Deo.

1 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.

2 KD II/1, 289; ET, 258.
 profit and loss 419

9.2. Knowledge of God and theology

One of the most obvious dierences between the pre-modern and post-
Kantian panels involves the relation between faith and theology, or, in
the language of this investigation, the relation between knowledge of
God and theology. The manner in which a distinction is made in the
second panel between the act of knowing God on the one hand and
confession and dogmatic reection on the other diers radically from
the rst panel. In this case, that means that the relation is regarded as
qualitatively dierent. In the rst panel what we now would call dog-
matics or dogma is indeed present, but as a human activity it regards itself
very dierently, and much more modestly. That perhaps sounds strange
and implausible, because at the mention of church dogma and con-
fession one today thinks immediately of authority and imposed belief.
With their incredible arrogance, doctrine and confession are superior
to faith. Still, it is true and worth the eort to recall what was said in
Chapter 6 about the dierence in the self-image of doctrine and reec-
tion on doctrine. For Calvin, dogma, doctrina, is not a human given, not
doctrine; it is divine teaching. It denitely does not include all that is
present in Gods thinking and willing; it is a deliberately limited but
adequate selection of that which man must know to serve God, obtain
blessing and live in a manner worthy of Him.3 Doctrine is not intended
to know all things; it is intended to produce to the right attitude in
man, a sincere disposition toward God. Man can closely follow what
God has to say in revelation in Scripture itself. The discussion of the
doctrine of election in the rst panel aorded a striking example of this
idea. To our mind, Calvin may have gone much too far by mirroring
election in a negative decision which runs parallel to it, reprobation,
but in his own view he was only providing a rational arrangement of
Biblical data, a deduction which one simply could not avoid. If we our-
selves no longer make such deductions, honesty compels us to say that
this is something which was not decided merely on the basis of altered
insights from Biblical studies. It is true that the discussion of election
and reprobation in Romans 911 are categories in sacred history. It is
true that the announcements of judgement and damnation as found in
Matthew 22:114 can not be uncoupled from the situation of preaching,
debate, threat and denial. But all these altered insights are not enough.

3 R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101117.

420 chapter nine

They are themselves already a sign that more is going on. The path
from the Bible text to doctrine has for us become longer, more indirect.
The character of the text as a human, historical product is prominently
in the foreground. How the earthly, the human, can be a vehicle for
Gods speaking, an instrument in His hands, is raised for discussion in
the second panel. Barth provided an answer for this which gradually
became still more radical. Must we follow him in this radicality, and
is his position perhaps the most extreme consequence of the Reforma-
tion choosing the free grace of God as its starting point?4 These are
questions which not only continue to make Barths theology interesting
for interconfessional discussion, but also point back to the fundamental
questions for all Christian theology within the oecumene.
As we have said, theology in the second panel begins from a sharp
distinction between the reality of knowing God on the one side and
the reality of human words, texts and reection on the other. The
realisation that knowledge of God is absolutely not self-evident runs
like a thread through this thinking. Already in his early theology Barth
cites Ecclesiastes 5:2: God is in heaven, and thou upon the earth.5
What we encountered in the fragment on baptism (KD IV/4) is a
variant of the same theme: Gods grace is an incommensurable element
that cannot be coordinated.6 The uniqueness and complete originality
of the acting of God with respect to man recurs everywhere in the
theological structure in the concept. This peculiarity does not preclude
the presence of God and the reality of intercourse between God and
man, any more than it supports an agnostic vision. The structure
of the theological concept is already in itself a continual reminder:
God as the object of human knowing is never negotiable, never at
our disposal, never capable of being built into structures of wood,
stone, language, liturgy, sacraments. His presence remains His deed,
His holiness continues to be guarded by His mystery. Knowledge of
God is a reality, a movement, the secret of Gods own dealings, and
as such does not permit itself to be xed in words. Theology and
preaching can point to that mystery and bear witness to it; they do
not have the power in themselves to make it present or demonstrate it.

4 Zie H.U. von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Olten

1951, 32: Wir mssen Karl Barth zum Partner whlen, weil in ihm zum erstenmal der
echte Protestantismus eine -seine- vllig konsequente Gestalt gefunden hat.
5 Rmerbrief 2, XIII; ET, 10.
6 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
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It is not without reason that the pointing nger of John the Baptist on
the Isenheim altarpiece, focusing attention on the suering Christ, is
the model for the relation that Barth conceives between theology and
knowledge of God. Biblical texts testify to Gods dealings with man, and
dogmatics also in its way points to this acting of God. In all its elements
the reality of these dealings, of knowing God, remains a matter of grace
and a gift. Barths doctrine of the Trinity in KD I/1, the doctrine of
the analogia dei in KD II/1 and the doctrine of election in KD II/2 are
three attempts to point, from dierent vantage points, to the always
elusive mystery of the relation initiated and constructed by God, to a
becoming attentive to God who seizes man and the world for Himself
in Christ. Dogmatic reection must keep space open for this living
reality. That is the anti-agnostic import of this theology. Theology no
longer pretends to be a demonstration of this reality; it intends to be
of service to faith and proclamation by providing a listening exercise in
reection, assuming an attitude toward the Bible that makes it possible
to hear the Word in the dialogue with the texts. That is prot.
I would wish to emphasise that in the presence of this second panel it
is dicult to accept a view of dogmatics that isolates only one function
that was very prominent in the rst panel, namely a summary of all
that God had made known about things visible and invisible. The
function of ordering material, of distinguishing and connecting the
content of belief, remains indispensable. But Christian doctrine and
dogmatics as reection on the body of belief is more than a classical
garden where the paths and beds are laid out neatly and need only
be raked and weeded by future generations. The word dogmatics and
the adjective dogmatic still call up such associations. Barths concept
of theology is modern in that it emphatically places the human and
subservient nature of dogmatic reection front and centre. Reection
on faithand what is dogmatics other than thinking about faith in
a more or less orderly way?has to serve the knowing of God, to
be useful to the relation between God and man, to equip people to
name the experiences in their lives, and to bring these into connection
with the story of God. That can not happen without all the great
themes coming into play, being examined again with regard to their
content and eloquence. But doctrine, and reection on doctrine, do not
have the function of binding the individual believer; their function is
to point the way for people, to provide words and concepts that can
help them unlock and name their own experience, and invite them to
mindfulness. In this there is a parallel between Kant and Barth. The
422 chapter nine

unusual emancipatory streak in Kants philosophy toward thinking for

oneself is recoined by Barth as the consequently maintained invitation
to discern for oneself, in the trust that the living Christ himself speaks,
comes, presents himself and lets himself be known.
In Barths theology there is an explicit distinction made between the
specic gravity of knowledge of God as an event between God and
man, the spiritual reality of trust, knowing and above all, being known
by God on the one side, and on the other the levels of confession,
dogma and theological doctrine derived from this. The latter do indeed
share in that knowing, but at a distance. In the modern panel the dif-
ference between the reality of knowing God and all forms of mediation
and objectication of knowledge of God is explicitly thematised as a
gulf between the two.
In Barth we therefore encounter a thoroughgoing relativisation of
language, but this relativisation does not stand alone. All language we
use is human language. As we heard in the preceding chapter, knowl-
edge of God therefore exists only as God himself, without assistance,
lets Himself be known in human words and terrestrial means. In this
concept relativisation is paired with high regard. The high regard con-
cerns the fact that God makes himself known; the relativisation con-
cerns human power over Gods works. Human language and words are
always and everywhere dependent on Gods Spirit, on God who makes
himself available for man. That results in an enormous relativisation,
and at the same time a relief in the service that man can perform.
This is a double movement which we can place in the prot column.
Words, sentences, stories and concepts must always be interrogated in
regard to their content, with regard to the event which precipitated
them and which can again become reality. Beginning from man, Gods
truth cannot be made present, be made visible immediately. That is
the one side. But according to Barth this does not lead to there being
no knowledge of God. Certainly, in knowing God the unveiling takes
place in the modus of veiling. The veiling is not cancelled out in the
unveiling, but the veiling or hiddenness is a qualication of the unveil-
ing and revelation. However, it is fundamental that the veiling does not
bolt the door to unveiling. Veiling and unveiling describe a movement,
together reveal a teleological structure through which knowing God is
an undertaking which succeeds.7 That is the other side.

7 KD II/1, 234; ET, 208.

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For the rest, in my opinion this teleological structure of revelation in

Barth, and with it the reality of knowledge of God, require the exercise
of the utmost restraint in attaching the label of postmodern to Barths
thought. In any case, it is impossible to use that term for Barths con-
cept of knowing God if postmodernism means that man, in his know-
ing, fundamentally remains confronted with an unknown and continues
to fumble in the dark.8 Barths concept of knowing God indeed has a
dimension of the hidden, of what withdraws from human grasp. But
if postmodernism means the abandonment of a demonstrable centre
from which reality is formulated and understood, then there is some
sense to it.9 In that case it refers to the undemonstrable in knowledge
of God, to the constant openness to correction, and does not refer to a
period but to a theoretical critique of modernity itself. The stress must
be on that which can be said positively here: that which is veiled here,
or the One who is veiled here, withdraws in the furtherance of a new
relation with man and the world. Gods self-concealment happens to
further his coming.
There is however a question which arises here. What does it mean
when in Barths later theology all human actions are characterised as
assistance? How does human acting participate in the acting of God?
The term assistance leads one to suppose that Barth wishes to empha-
sise that the role of man is extremely modest. It seems to me incor-
rect to interpret what Barth has to say about the immediacy of the
work of the Spirit to mean that God, in his dealings with man, works
entirely outside all that is human.10 For Barth human knowing of God
also remains connected with language, with stories, is concrete in the
Bible, in liturgy and its confessional language, but he is vigilant against

8 Cf. L. Karelse, Dwalen. Over Mark C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999, 71, 106.
9 Used in this sense by W.S. Johnson, The Mystery of God, 184191. G. Ward baptises
the meaning that Lyotard assigned to the term postmodernism and applies it critically
to Barth. See Barth, Modernity and Postmodernity in: J. Webster (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Barth, 276, 291 (= K. Barths Postmodernism, ZdTh 14[1998], 35,
49): But postmodernism concerns that which Lyotard terms the unpresentable, the
repressed, the forgotten other scene that modernity both needs and negates in what
Barth will call its will for form, its absolutisms, its rational utopias That which
comes before, constitutes the other scene of and follows after the modern. In fact,
this statement pitches Christianity outside the stories of premodernity, modernity
and postmodernity. Christianity transcends our history-making with its epochs and
periodizations. In this way the concept is placed in the service of an indeed very
idiosyncratic supra-historical interpretation.
10 See 8.5.
424 chapter nine

terms which would suggest Gods dependence. In neo-Calvinism the

fundamental relativisation of the Bible and confession was initially
and I would add, quite understandablysubject to critique and dis-
trust. After all, Barths theology abandoned the direct identication of
the Bible as text and the Word of God. In the rst parts of KD he
indeed still speaks of an indirect identication between Gods Word and
the Bible. This is however only really to the degree that God has him-
self taken these human words into his service. But Barth increasingly
comes to emphasise the human character of all Scripture, and aban-
dons the possibility of any identication. By his later theology there is
no longer any suggestion of even an indirect identication of the word
of man with Gods Word. The man or woman in the pulpit must not
add anything, however weighty the element, however striking the word,
however solemn the gesture. Proclamation is bearing witness.
Barth has undeniably contributed to the desacralising of the Bible,
church oces, preaching, sacrament and ritual. Has he ended up where
one inevitably comes out once God and his Word are accepted as free
gifts, as a purely spiritual event? Do we nd in Barth the spirituality
that Noordmans, with reference to Calvin and Kuyper and J.H. Gun-
ning Jr., once characterised as a basic line in Reformed spirituality?11
For Barth, all things that lie on the historical, horizontal plane are
the work of man. What one can learn from Barth is theological mod-
esty with regard to human capacities and high esteem for the incompa-
rability of God. Yet it is precisely at this point that there is something
that Calvin can teach us. The rst panel is dominated by the reali-
sation of the incomparable majesty of God no less than the second.
Because of this majesty it is necessary that God accommodate himself
to the measure of man. Precisely this accommodation on the part of
God, the movement from above to below, is for Calvin the foundation
of his high esteem for and expectations of the earthly means through
which God makes himself known. Accommodation means that God
comes close up through His Spirit, not eschewing the sensory and ter-
restrial. In the rst panel the gaze of the viewer is drawn from above
to below, to the places where the earth is illuminated by divine light.

11 O. Noordmans, Gereformeerd ethisch in: Verzameld Werk, deel 3, Kampen 1981,

392: This stance before God, without any mechanism, without arrangement, without
solemn intermedium, gives Reformed life its characteristic seriousness. God is close by,
because it is above all the work of the Holy Spirit that is in the foreground. For the
whole argument see A. van der Kooi, Het Heilige en de Heilige Geest bij Noordmans. Een
schets van zijn pneumatologisch ontwerp, Kampen 1992.
 profit and loss 425

The means through which God speaks and the mirrors of His reve-
lation are in direct relation to His acts. God instructs man through a
range of means, among which Scripture as his Word takes rst place.
Scripture came into being under the direct auspices of the Holy Spirit,
and Gods will is made public in it. For Calvin Scripture is indeed the
criterion for knowledge of God, but not the only place where God lets
himself be known. Under the guidance of the Spirit the whole of the
world that surrounds us becomes an instrument of Gods dealings with
man. The heavens, the rmament, birds, sh, the scent of owers, these
are the decor of the theatre in which Adam found himself. The natural
world is not regarded as a product which came into being as part of
an unimaginably long, mysterious and unrened evolutionary process,
as the result of an interaction of energies, forces and chance. Scripture
is not the fruit of human reection, not designed by a group or peo-
ple which wished to promote its collective interest, but is the deliberate
creation of the Spirit. Monarchs are given to rule and care for peo-
ples and men; parents are given to care for and raise up their children;
and all other groups have their place, and according to their respon-
sibilities are to be mirrors of Gods goodness and care. In its every
corner this world bears the stamp of divine intention and providence.
The sheen of Gods favour and goodness lies over ordinary life.12 Here
everyday living is still traditionally a part of a hierarchy of life, sacra-
mental.
How should be regard this? Is not Calvin too harmonious here, too
hierarchical, and has his experience of life not become alien to us for
precisely these reasons? Or, on the contrary, does his hierarchically
structured theology not preserve for us the realisation of the goodness
of God that one can encounter, precisely in the ordinary, the given?
How dierent is Barth on this point! Barths preference for idealism
above realism, noted in the introduction, is signicant: there is no
direct access to the reality of God. His theology is dominated by a
fault line, by discontinuity. Knowing God consists of breaking with
the ordinary, familiar, human. Making the dierence between God
and man an explicit theme however also presents an opportunity to
integrate an insight into this concept that must be called modern, par
excellence: namely the human character of all religion. No one would

12 It may be that a compelling connection between the Dutch masters of the 17th

century and this idea cannot be conrmed, but it did create the conditions under which
ordinary life in its splendour and beauty could become the subject of attention.
426 chapter nine

want to retreat from that insight. Nor would I deny the risk. Making
a theme of the human nature of knowledge of God can call up the
suggestion that there is no real reference in the whole of being who
speaks and lets Himself be known. In this constellation, it can be readily
understood why the concept of revelation has acquired such a key
function in post-Kantian theology. That there is really something like
human knowledge of God, nds its theological anchor in the concept of
revelation becoming a theme. We will return to this shortly.

9.3. From cosmological rootage to self-suciency

We practice Christian theology in a public space in which belief in

God is not absent, but in which, from a cultural and sociological per-
spective, the plausibility structures of Christian belief are diminished or
have even to a great extent disappeared.13 Whatever judgements one
may wish to make further regarding the manner in which continental
theology has processed the legacy of Kant,14 that is one of the great
dierences from the situation in which Calvin lived and worked. For
Calvin knowledge of God was still rooted in a more or less generally
accepted cosmological framework which comprehends God, man and
the world in one overarching metaphysical concept. Nature in its var-
ious parts is considered as pointing to God as the highest Being, to
the source of all good, from which all things come. We nd the direct
recollections of this in Calvin. The inward and outward world are mir-
rors in which God in various ways makes Himself perceptible through
His Spirit. Man is a microcosm which as such refers to the macro-
cosmological coherence. Man is not just material. He is that as well,
but that he is more than just material and has an immortal soul is
to Calvins mind beyond question. Man in principle has access to the
spiritual world through all his mental capacities, a world which cannot
simply repose in itself, but betrays its origin and basis in a higher, eter-
nal world. The rootage of existence in a higher coherence which points
to God does not mean that man has free access to truethat is to

13 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufstze und Vortrge zur Religionsphilosophie,

Kampen 1995, 3537, 243247.

14 For a challenge to this assertion on purely epistemological grounds, see the work

already mentioned by N. Wolterstor en A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, New

York/Oxford 2000, 363, 412419.
 profit and loss 427

say, salvicknowledge of God. Calvins thought is dominated by the

idea that sin has had a decisive noetic eect on life with God. Briey
summarised, his concept of knowing God is interwoven with a general
cosmological framework, but this cosmological framework is dominated
theologically by soteriology.
Barths theology shares with modern theology the fact that the cos-
mological and metaphysical rootage has disappeared. What Christians
have to say about knowing God no longer nds support in a generally
shared horizon in which God is the self-evident keystone in a concept
of life and the world. This process becomes visible in theology in the
way that the concept of revelation becomes a key and central theme.
One can only speak of knowledge on the human side if this knowing of
God is not purely a matter of human guesswork and conjecture, but is
really the fruit of divine revelation. The disappearance of a metaphys-
ical framework has its counterpart in the promotion of the theme of
revelation. It is no longer accounted as a support for a general doctrine
of being; an irreversible dierentiation has been made between the cos-
mological framework and theology.15 For the rest, that does not imply
that Barth, in the manner in which he raises the theme of a knowing
of God that is founded on revelation, has no debt to contemporary phi-
losophy. We have noted the role that the neo-Kantian, critical-idealist
philosophy of H. Cohen played in this regard. Barth derived a struc-
ture of thinking from this form of idealism which made it possible to
acknowledge as theologically true and pure only that which is gained
from returning to the origin and the judgement of the origin. God is
the origin which never coincides with that which is empirically percep-
tible in human experience, but which indeed occurs in this experience
as a critical and productive element. Theological objectivity is achieved
by going back to God in His revelation. The particulars of life in time
and space, of man, of evil and alienation, are subjected to critical exam-
ination for their theological content, and reconstructed starting from
the being and acting of God.

15 It is widely recognised that it would be incorrect to say that Barth puts paid to

every form of ontology. Ill will toward ontology as such is simply not a part of this
concept. Exactly when theology focuses on the concrete history of God with Israel and
Jesus Christ for its knowledge of God, exactly when the object of theology thereby
is the Word or story that God himself speaks in this history, it becomes possible to
discover the ontological implications in this way of thinking, which itself leads to a new
perception of reality. For such an attempt see I.U. Dalferth, Existenz Gottes und christlicher
Glaube. Skizzen zu einer eschatologischen Ontologie, Mnchen 1984.
428 chapter nine

Barth increasingly expressed this a priori in the structure of his the-

ology too. The starting point in his early theology, of human questions
about for God and human incapacity to speak of God, is in itself not
a sign of a natural theology in which men try to nd traces of God
outside of revelation. In the dialectic period the human demand, the
search for meaning and life is considered a signal of the hidden activ-
ity of Christ.16 Barth increasingly removed from his theology all that
was a reminder of this starting point at the existential situation of man.
The theme of the incapacity of man is no longer the point of depar-
ture in Kirchliche Dogmatik. The theology of Barths principle work is
thus so much of a model for the second panel, because it begins with
the acknowledgement that one can only speak of knowledge of God
under the condition of Gods self-revelation. What was self-evident in
the rst panel, namely that God through his Spirit spoke through the
mouths of the prophets and apostles and conrmed his Word by signs,
in the second panel becomes the theme of the question about the basis
of knowledge of God. That is to say, knowing God is only possible and
real under the condition that God has revealed himself. Outside of that,
it is nonsense.

9.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation:

guarantee for knowledge of God

How are we to appraise this making of the concept of revelation as

a theme, indeed a principle, in the second panel? Is it something to
be retained? Should we reject it because of its authoritarian implica-
tions? The critique by W. Pannenberg is well known. He has repeatedly
pointed out that in the post-Kantian context the appeal to revelation
can not be regarded as anything other than a sublime form of sub-
jectivism.17 Others, such as the Dutch theologian H.M. Kuitert, have
joined in this critique and tried to nd a way out through seeking
a criterion for good religion, for the truth of statements about God,
because all statements about above come from below, even the state-

16 See Der Christ in der Gesellschaft in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfnge der dialektischen

Theologie, Teil I, Mnchen (Kaiser) 19774, 337, for example. 4: Christ der Retter ist
dasonst wre die Frage nicht da, die der heimliche Sinn all der Bewegungen unserer
Zeit ist
17 For example W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie. Bd. I, 142; ET, 127.
 profit and loss 429

ment that something comes from above.18 The distance that has grown
up in the culture of the Enlightenment with regard to all appeals to
divine authority, and that was also posited as such in Barths concept,
echoes through this aphorism. But does it get us anywhere? Applied
consistently, it ultimately becomes meaningless and negates all religion,
all aection, all life. It is a screw that ultimately turns but no longer
holds. Even if one sustains an approach from history and comparative
religion, based on texts and experience, for as long as possible, one
must at some moment ask the question of their truth content. At some
point one nds oneself facing the question of whether god is the prod-
uct of mans creative faculties, of religious need, or whether there is
a real referent.19 The word revelation is, so to speak, the other side
of the coin of feeling spoken to. In his concept of knowing God Barth
took this step in all its radicality: knowledge of God is only true and real
under the assumption that God himself is speaking, comes, makes Him-
self present in all sorts of ways, reveals Himself and in this way makes
Himself the object of human knowing. Where theology methodologi-
cally evades or refuses this step, it changes into the study of religion,
literature or culture,20 and theology disappears as an entity. The prot
of Barths doctrine of revelation is that it works out this circle of faith,

18 H.M Kuitert, Zonder geloof vaart niemand wel. Een plaatsbepaling van christendom en kerk,
Baarn 1974, 28. Thus Kuitert began a long search which has run through a series of
books, each of which begins in the eld of the history of religions and ends in the eld
of Christian doctrine. In the repetition however it also becomes clear that in fact each
time two books are being written which are published inside one cover, namely one
on history of religion and one on dogma, in which the assertions that are made in the
dogmatic section are no less reections of subjective belief than what Barth is accused
of. In a recent book, Over religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars, Baarn 2000, 188 he
arrives at the experience of feeling himself spoken to as the core and germ of Christian
faith.
19 See Houtepen, God, een open vraag, 24; ET, 10.
20 I will add a critical observation to this: theology which follows the example

of Cliord Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York 1973 and
G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia
1984, in taking the nature of Christian faith as a cultural-liturgical phenomenon as
its starting point, is in danger of becoming totally uninteresting theologically. An
approach of this sort regards religionand Christian religionprimarily as a human
construction, and undoubtedly this perspective leads to a multitude of valuable insights
regarding the anthropological and cultural function of religion. Christian faith aords,
as do other philosophies and religions, an orientation in life and possibilities for action,
and can therefore be studied meaningfully under this aspect. Such an approach can
also however ignore the most fundamental assertion of Christian belief, namely that
the rite, the prayer, the act at their deepest honour God and do justice to Him. In a
culture where the attempt is made to dene and understand all phenomena exclusively
430 chapter nine

the circulus veritatis Dei, in a totally consequent manner, while pointing to

its vulnerability.
The prot from Barths concept lies in his having consistently taken
the fundamental theological insight of Gods revelation as the point of
departure for his theology. Knowledge of God nds its nal basis in
nothing other than in God himself. That does not exclude elements in
creation playing a role in knowing God. The doctrine of the analogia
dei which Barth developed in the rst parts of KD and which in the
subsequent parts he gradually elaborated into the analogia relationis oers
the possibility for anthropological and cultural phenomena to also have
a function as witnesses. Quite properly, other theologians have followed
Barth in this.
I began this section with a positive evaluation and acknowledgement
of the function of the concept of revelation. That said, there is how-
ever also room for critique. It can not be denied that the concept of
self-revelation as principle of doctrine has become a shibboleth in con-
temporary theology. It is familiar to the initiates, and opaque to the
rest. Without further explanation, the term cuts corners and is unclear.
What threatens to remain unmentioned are the multiplicity of ways and
means by which God relates to man and knowledge of God comes into
being.

9.5. The place of the faculties of knowing

What are the paths by which we arrive at knowledge of God? Is it

worthwhile to begin with a broad concept of experience, as is for
instance the case in Reformed epistemology? According to this episte-
mological theory it is possible to start with a wide range of sensory and
mental faculties, which if functioning well produce trustworthy knowl-
edge.21 This approach to knowledge does not mean that all that people
claim to be knowledge is warranted knowledge. This perspective does
have the advantage that human knowledge cannot be reduced to a nar-
rowly scientic or instrumental understanding of knowledge. There is
a wide range of various kinds of faculties which all play a fundamental
role in the acquisition of knowledge.

in terms of human actions and capacities, theology, should it join in this point of
departure, is doomed to speak of God only between inverted commas.
21 See A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, New York/Oxford 2000.
 profit and loss 431

It is characteristic of Barth that he avoids the general epistemolog-

ical debate as much as possible. The goal of his theology is a strictly
theological judgement regarding Christian knowledge of God. He does
acknowledge that humans are indeed equipped with faculties for gath-
ering knowledge, but this acknowledgement plays no fundamental role
in his theology.22 The discussion of the problem of human knowledge of
God by way of a theory of capacities is tainted by its association with
experience-based theology in the line of Schleiermacher and W. Herr-
mann. The question about human faculties is identied with natural
theology, where man searches for points of anchorage for faith out-
side of the acting of God. As a student Barth had learned from Cohen
that human faculties had to be regarded as the abstract conditions for
human culture. Therefore already in his early theology the theological
centre of gravity lay totally in the living reality of faith itself, in which
man discovered himself as being in proximity to God, as being borne
along in the Gottesgeschichte. In KD II/1 this theological method is given
form as Barth begins with the reality of the true knowledge of God
where man stands before God and God before man. The reality of faith
is not anchored in a general epistemology, but founded in a Trinitarian
and Christological argument. In conformity with that point of depar-
ture, Barth has localised revelation, the place where human knowledge
of God comes into being, in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ stands for the
place where God makes Himself known. He is the symbol, the unique
sacrament that speaks for God. Barth does not intend this to deny that
other people also have knowledge of God; he only intends to focus the
theological relationships sharply. Theologically, all of our knowledge of
God can only be considered true when it is thought of as participation
in Gods revelation in Jesus Christ. Outside of that rst sacrament of
Jesus Christ there are indeed extensions, premonitions and sequels, but
these extensions are real because God makes Himself present in the
testimony of men, of Israel and the Church. In KD II/1 Jesus Christ
is designated as the rst locus and, more important, the anchorage for
Christian knowledge of God. The truth of human knowledge of God
has its foundation in His history.
As we said, with Barth this rigorous theological anchorage takes con-
ceptual form in his interpretation of the doctrine of enhypostasis and

22 For a development of this, see C. van der Kooi, The Assurance of Faith: A

Theme in Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantingas Epistemology, Neue

Zeitschrift fr Systematische Theologie 40 (1998), 7792.
432 chapter nine

anhypostasis. Negatively, these concepts are intended to say that no ele-

ment in this world whatsoever, not even the man Jesus, is in itself capa-
ble of revealing God and leading to the knowledge of God. As a prin-
ciple, all things are insucient. For knowledge of God, it is necessary
that God reveal himself. In Calvin we still nd an interest in the vari-
ous faculties of knowing because they are the channels which are links
with God and the invisible world, even if man, under the inuence
of his alienation from God, suers from what one might call a seri-
ous form of blindness. With Barth interest in a theory of epistemology
has been entirely sidelined. Or better: interest in reection on human
capacities has disappeared from the pitch, onto the terraces. The real
game is being played on a theological pitch, whereby only the fact that
there are human faculties and that they are in principle insucient,
count as boundary conditions for the theological debate. The ques-
tion of what these faculties are and how they are called upon in our
knowing of God, is irrelevant. Against Brunners interest in man as the
formal image of God, Barth says merely that it is entirely self-evident
that man is man, and not a cat.23 In other words, according to Barth,
that human beings possess certain capacities is beyond doubt, but it
is theologically uninteresting. In agreement with neo-Kantian philoso-
phy this is regarded as purely descriptive of various human functions,
belonging to human self-denition. With this, as we said, Barth takes
over an image of what it means to be human that has its roots in mod-
ern subjectivity thinking. The point of departure is the human subject,
which through capacities of all sorts denes itself, is founded on itself,
and gives shape to its own existence. Of course, this formal denition of
what it means to be human still provides no answer to the question of
human identity. According to Barth, investigation of the cognitive facil-
ities, into psychological and pedagogical data in no way helps one to
go further in the question about knowing God. Knowledge of God is a
matter of grace, and theologically can be identied with the justication
of sinners.24 Where men learn to know God, where God reveals himself
in the countenance of Christ, is where men come into contact with sal-
vation, with the most unexpected, new and surprising thing which can
happen to them. That is what Barth intends when he grounds knowl-
edge of God in grace or denes it as the most incommensurable event,
whereby everything [man] was before or is apart from this, though

23 K. Barth, Nein. Antwort an Emil Brunner, Mnchen 1934, 25.

24 KD I/1, 2; ET, 4.
 profit and loss 433

not expunged, is totally relativised, bracketed, and overshadowed.25 At

a conceptual level Barths notion of knowledge of God testies to the
surprise and discovery that can overcome people when they perceive
themselves as creatures on whom Gods eye has fallen, who have been
known, who are no longer alone by themselves. That is where the prot
of this concept lies. That Barths theology gives minimal attention to
the human faculties that play a role in faith coming into being, and
maximum attention for that which is basic and constitutive in a the-
ological perspective, namely the work of the Holy Spirit, thus has an
internal-theological ground. The general-epistemological stands in the
shadow of what must be said theologically. It is a form of theological
ascesis. In the following section we will clarify this ascesis further, in
order to critique it.

9.6. The theological element

In his later work Barth radicalises the fundamental distinction between

God and man which denes the structure of his whole theology. In the
rst sections of KD the proclamation of the church in preaching can
still coincide in an indirect way with the Word of God itself,26 in the
doctrine of baptism the lines from the rst portions of the doctrine of
reconciliation are extended: the acting of the church is testimony. What
men do, what the community does in all its expressions and actions, are
termed assistance, aiding and abetting. The real work through which
man is reached and comes to know God takes place in the immediacy
of Gods acting. We do not have to take the meaning of immediacy here
as if Barth denied that we come to know God within a web of human
relations and eventsin other words, through education, through the
stories of others, through liturgy and music, in short through witness in
history by concrete individuals. In the way that God deals with man,
in His coming, these means are however not constitutive, but only of
relative importance. It is a relation that is indirectly direct.
An important dierence between the two panels is to be found in
the scant interest shown in human capacities, and the rigorous concen-

25 KD IV/4, 3; ET, 3.
26 KD I/1, 52; ET, 52: Proclamation is human speech in and by which God Himself
speaks like a king through the mout of his herald, and which is meant to be heard and
accepted as speech in and by which God Himself speaks
434 chapter nine

tration on the theological element in knowledge of God. Anthropolog-

ical, psychological and biological factors are indeed found in Barths
theology, but ocially only under the discipline of a theological judge-
ment. A strong distinction is made between the theological and the
non-theological.
How dierent matters are in this regard in the rst panel! For Calvin
knowledge of God and its ground, structure and development can in a
certain sense be indierently spoken of in connection with createdin
other words, cosmological, biological, psychological and pedagogical
structures and arrangements. We nd this in the metaphors used to
speak of the life of man in relation to God, his fellow man and himself.
Metaphors of the theatre, school, pilgrimage, exile in a foreign land,
the metaphor of God as a father, as an adoptive parent, as a mother
with a baby at her breast, and of the unfathomable depths into which a
mortal falls should he encounter God as his Judge in the severity of life
and the chaos of his own psyche, are not merely decorative in Calvin,
not adornment which could be left out. The metaphors and images are
expressions of a theological perspective, namely that the Spirit seeks us
in created structures and approaches us in that way. The metaphor of
the theatre stands for the space in which we are actor and spectator,
of the school for the interest in the phases of life and growth, that of
the exile for the intense alienation which can overtake man and the
desire that drives him as a pilgrim. Not to mention the frequent image
of adoption, referring to the surprising fact that men do have a home
they can go, a table to which they can pull up their chair, and as a
particularisation of this, the image of the wet nurse: God as the giver
of what is needed rst, and most radically. These are images that are
full of implicit attention for the biological and psychological, for the
aective elements in knowledge of God.
The presence of such picturesque and metaphorical elements is not
only a result of biographical and cultural peculiarities. In part following
on from the study by W. Bouwsma on Calvin, recently there have been
the expectable claims made regarding Calvins person and his psycho-
logical make-up.27 Although the dangers of psychologising should not
be underestimated, it is not wise to avoid questions about the connec-

27 See Oberman, Calvins Legacy, 125134; Selderhuis, God in het midden, 2348. See

also A.J. Jelsma, De ziel van Calvijn, Kampen 1998, who for the rest does not escape an
extremely pedantic tone. For a critical consideration of the literary basis for Bouwsmas
thesis, see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 7998.
 profit and loss 435

tion between a certain theology and psychological aspects. It is not hard

to defend the fact that the web of sociological, anthropological, psycho-
logical connections within which we live are also theologically impor-
tant. With Barth the emphasis on intellectuality and the immediacy of
the Word is so strong that its physicality, its relation to our own life
histories, is, to my mind, undervalued. Theologically, all these things
still only assist. That the physicality of the world in which we live
can also become an instrument in Gods hand in its attendant role, and
that in the sphere of inuence of the Word it can begin to speak in a
very real manner, thereby taking on a sacramental function, assisting in
unlocking the mystery, is insuciently expressed in his theology. That
the Word of God is also natural-physical, enjoys sacramental medi-
ation, is not something to be ashamed of, a pudendum,28 is a concession
which in the rst parts of KD is still at the edge of the table; by KD IV/4
it has fallen o the edge. For all the space that Barth in his doctrine of
baptism wants to give to man as a subject of his history, the theologi-
cal structure continues to be dened by the insight that man may not
make that which is human, that which comes from his own life history,
a factor that actually overshadows or annexes divine action.
In Calvins theology the connections and factors are used theologi-
cally. Calvin makes a theme of the way to faith which men take. The
paths along which man comes to the realisation of Gods power, Gods
care, Gods command and justice, and is brought by the Holy Spirit as
an inward preceptor to embrace Jesus Christ, have a fundamental place
in his theology. God deals with man in a dynamic involvement of Word
and Spirit.

9.7. Word and Spirit

With the paired concepts Word and Spirit, derived from Calvins theol-
ogy, I take up two words with which some justice may be done to the
way to knowing God and its actual intertwinement with human experi-
ence. The linking of these two concepts goes farther toward expressing
the historic involvement of Gods turn toward man, and the diversity
and plurality of various forms of revelation which arise from it, than
does the single concept of self-revelation. The dominant position of the

28 For example KD I/1, 138; ET, 134.

436 chapter nine

concept of self-revelation with Barth and in contemporary theology is

the result of the thought that all approach by God at its deepest coin-
cides with a relation in which He is not only the subject, but in which
He also is entirely present as object. God holds nothing of Himself
back in His relation to man. The concept of self-revelation is to be
assessed as a word that stands for the personal nature of the relation
God creates, for the relationality of knowledge of God, and for Gods
unconditional commitment to his relation to man. It is to be under-
stood as a denitive putting paid to a deus absconditus, a God who in
fact still remains an unknown entity behind his revelation. We can cite
several Biblical texts, such as Matthew 11:27, John 1:1, John 1:18 and
Hebrews 1:1. With these texts in mind, one can indeed speak of Gods
self-revelation in Jesus Christ. God declares Himself in Jesus Christ,
commits Himself to His history, the history of the Cross. But as a term
for all revelation, this does not express the fact that many forms of
the approach of God to man do not have Him Himself as their pri-
mary content, but rather His will, His care, His grace, His command,
His demand for obedience, judgement and promise. In short, God is
indeed the subject in all His speaking, but not necessarily the object.
What men come into contact with in their lives is a multitude of ideas,
notions, experiences of astonishment, perplexity and joy, an appeal. It
is the task of theology to make this varied palette of experiences trans-
parent, identiable, perhaps not immediately but at least in retrospect,
as moments in which we came in touch with Gods majesty, command,
care, protest, wrath, promise. It is the task of theology to foster a critical
attention to how in this varied palette of experiences we encounter God
as Father, as Son and as Spirit. The pair of concepts, Word and Spirit,
t better with this diversity, this school, than only the concept of Word
or self-revelation.
In their continual involvement with each other, Word and Spirit
describe the force-eld of Gods acting. The concept of Word has to
do with the words of the prophets, with the person of Jesus Christ as the
incarnate Word, with the words of the apostles, with the Bible as Word,
with what the Church has to say about God. The concept implies
a certain concreteness, because it refers to events, to the speaking
of persons, to the acts and person of Jesus Christ, to the Bible as
document. Beside it we have the concept of Spirit to indicate that this
Word, in all His concrete forms, stands in the sphere of Gods acting
and dealings. Not that the Word receives its content only through the
Spirit. The paired concepts of Word and Spirit point to the dynamic
 profit and loss 437

conduct of God himself with man, by means of concrete instruments.

The Spirit is the One who invokes this Word, points to it, binds those
who hear the Word to it. It is the Spirit that binds the individual
believer to Christ and Himself in a life-long journey of learning to
believe, and, together with others, brings the believer further. The work
of the Holy Spirit is necessary on the one hand to provide man with
insight into the wealth and coherence of the truth of salvation, and on
the other to inwardly assure the person that he or she participates in the
reality of this salvation. Calvins view of the work of the Spirit can be
theologically productive in this. The work of the Sprit does not mean
an experience that stands apart from the actual path of faith which a
person travels. No, it is precisely in this path of life, in the processing
of life experiences, in listening to the openings that God provides there,
in hearing the stories and the message of the Scripture, that the Spirit
calls up desires, breaks the unshaken self-image, and inclines the heart
to an inward assent and thankful acceptance of the invitation to sonship
and daughtership that God extends. The Holy Spirit is the inward
perceptor under whose tutelage we sit throughout our whole lives, and
under whose supervision we may grow toward competence. Thus the
Spirit witnesses to the truth of the Gospel in an inward and hidden
manner. Word and Spirit circumscribe the dynamic eld of concrete
life history and oer the possibility for integrating insights from other
elds of knowledge. Through His Spirit God is also involved in the
horizontal, with the orders and processes interwoven with creation,
with events and phases in life.29
What must be accepted as a plus-point from the struggle against
natural theology which must never be forfeited, is the criterion for
Christian knowledge of God. According to the New Testament, Chris-
tian knowledge of God nds its key and content in the person of Jesus
Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom
of the Father, he has made him known (John 1:18). According to the
apostle Paul the believers in Corinth are brought into relation with
Jesus Christ through Gods action: But of Him you are in Jesus Christ,
who God has made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctication
and redemption (ICor. 1:30). Pointing out this criterion is a prot never

29 See the work of H.C.I. Andriessen, Volwassenheid in perspectief. Inleiding tot de psy-

chologie van de volwassen levensloop, Nijmegen 1984, idem, Oorspronkelijk bestaan. Geestelijke
begeleiding in onze tijd, Baarn 1996. A. Lanser-van der Velde, Geloven leren. Een theoretisch en
empirisch onderzoek naar wederkerig geloofsleren, Kampen 2000, 206208.
438 chapter nine

to be given up. But this criterion is far from saying all there is to be said
about the ways and places where man learns to know God. This is the
question about the universality of Gods revelation.

9.8. Lights, lamps and their fuel

Anyone who interprets Barths Christological concentration to mean

that according to this concept God would not make himself known
anywhere except in the proclamation of the Church, has an all too
meagre understanding of this theology. But that does not detract from
the fact that with regard to the constellation in the rst panel the fun-
damental Christocentrism of Barth at rst sight appears to oer many
fewer possibilities for conceiving Gods ecacious presence with all cre-
ation. That is precisely the reason why Barths theology is so attractive
within the constellation of an agnostic or even atheistic climate. This
theology resonates with the notions and assumptions of the surrounding
culture. According to these notions the world, outside of explicit reve-
lation, outside of the coming of God to his creation, is dumb, expres-
sionless, and by far supports the preference for an agnostic or even
materialistic worldview. It is undeniable that we nd an echo of this
modern attitude in Barths theology. That is what makes this theology
attractive in a modern culture inuenced by the shadow of Nietzsche.
The discussion of knowledge of God no longer is approached through
creation. Indeed, the world is not a creation at all; it is primarily a
strange, bizarre chaos of forces, energies, from which anything except
the countenance of God as caring Father shines forth. The world in the
second panel is dierent from in the rst. It is no longer the mirror of
an overarching, higher context. That the world is the creation of God,
that this lump of rock circling in space is more than a God-forsaken
bit of matter somewhere in a distant corner of the universe, that in its
enigmatic niteness it is actually a space in which God makes Him-
self known, for a life in relation to Him, to the glory of God and the
salvation of man: these are notions that are gained rst by means of,
through the only port of Gods revelation in Christ. In comparison with
the rst panel, Barths theology marks a shift in the relationships of the
structural elements in theology. Calvin can still conceive Gods entering
the world through the conscience of man, through self-knowledge that
arises as soon as man engages in some introspection; Barth abandons
this structure. His theology marks the movement to the central element
 profit and loss 439

of Christian theology, Christology, the history of Jesus Christ, as that

which is fundamental for all speaking about God.
Does this mean that for Barth God reveals himself nowhere else? It
is easy to forget that Barth, with his making Christology fundamental,
wanted to present a criterion for Christian proclamation. This crite-
rion does not mean that God can not manifest Himself in all sorts of
places and all in all sorts of ways. Barth explicitly opposed the under-
standing of this Christological concentration as a curtailment of the
universality of Gods revelation. It does not mean that God can reveal
Himself only within the Church, in its proclamation. That is a vulgar
misunderstanding. What Barth writes about this universality in his Pro-
legomena is both well-known, and enlightening: God may speak to us
through Russian Communism, a ute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or
a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does. But, unless
we regard ourselves as the prophets and founders of a new Church, we
cannot say that we are commisioned to pass on what have heard as
independent proclamation.30 The core of this citation is in the rejec-
tion of an independent proclamation. The criterion here is not with
regard to what God can do, but what the community is given as its
standard.
In both panels, for both Calvin and Barth, we nd the productive
distinction between the locations where knowledge of God can be
obtained and criteria for knowing God. It is this line which, to my
mind, deserves elaboration, both with an eye to events in life and
experiences, and with an eye to discussions with other religions. In a
certain sense Barth has himself already plotted out this line with his
Lichterlehre. In his Lichterlehre he treats phenomena that speak, true words,
which are found in the world outside the circle of the Church and its
proclamation.31 These are not true words and lights that have their
light in and of themselves. Barth wishes to understand these true words
and lights as witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Light of the world.32 This
Light shines in the world, the witness to itself. This one light nourishes
all lamps and lights. With this Barth creates the conceptual possibility
for considering the universality of God. Christian knowledge of God
implies that men must be observant and open for all these places where
truth is spoken, where light is spread, where life-giving insights break

30 KD I/1, 5556; ET, 55.

31 KD IV/3, 108; ET, 97.
32 KD IV/3, 132; ET, 118.
440 chapter nine

through. In the world reconciled by God through Jesus Christ, there is,
as we quoted earlier, no one abandoned to themselves, to a profaneness
outside Gods dispensation.33
Barths acknowledgement of universality is nothing new. In his ear-
lier theology too Barth ventured to trace personal questions about
the meaning of life and the social dynamics of the search for justice,
peace, political equality and personal happiness to God and Christ, by
considering them as the unseen source and motor of these questions.
That he withdrew from this position after the end of the 1920s, in the
course of the debate over natural theology, almost goes without saying.
Strategically, he no longer had room for it. The Church instructs the
world, not the other way around. Only after the Second World War,
in his doctrine of creation, is the attempt made to bring all sorts of
general anthropological phenomena back into theology through Chris-
tology. The various relations and arrangements in which man lives
man/woman, parent/child, fellow menare understood through the
analogia relationis. In the light of revelation they become mirrors of the
way in which God relates to Himself within His own divine being, and
has a place for the other within Himself. Berkhof correctly suggested
that Barth also wanted to give all these things, which for him had
become places where divine light was found, a place in his theology.
Speaking theologically, the work of the Spirit in creation and history
is indeed involved with Christology, but does not wholly coincide with
it. In fact a certain instruction of the Church by the world also does
exist, and it is not only the opposite that is the case.34 Theologically
this openness and acknowledgement does not lead to a relativisation of
the criterion that the Church was given in the history of Jesus Christ.
It does however throw light on the relation of pneumatology, the doc-
trine of creation, and Christology. To the very end Barth structured
his thought so that theologically seen, all knowledge of God is derived
from revelation in Christ. He had no intention of retreating even a step
from the Barmen confession. Pneumatology is entirely comprehended
in Christology. There is thus no room any more for a relatively inde-
pendent place for the work of the Spirit, for an appeal to an order
given in creation, as we saw that in Calvin. As we have said, it becomes
clear in Barths own theological development that the comprehensive

33 KD IV/3, 133; ET, 119.

34 H. Berkhof, Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und
Welt in: H. Berkhof/ H.-J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre, Zrich 1978, 46.
 profit and loss 441

centralisation in Christology as a matter of principle cannot be main-

tained. I would add to that, that it does not need to be maintained in
order to nevertheless defend the position that Christian knowledge of
God has its criterion in the revelation of Christ.
In saying that, I am not arguing that we simply return to a forthright
appeal to order. The straightforward appeal to creation and its order
has become a problem, both historically and systematically. The notion
has become compromised historically,35 and systematically a direct ap-
peal to creation is connected with a theology in which the development
from the starting point of creation denes its whole structure. When
we realise that creation itself suers from alienation from God and
itself must be freed, there is good reason to join with Barth and dene
the structure of Christian theology from its centre, the appearance of
Gods salvic proximity in Jesus Christ. Then creation is not only an
extrapolation from the centre, but is theologically involved with the
centre.
A straightforward appeal to the notion of creation and the order in
it yields numerous problems. The structures found often turn out to be
uid, malleable, hard to trace and strongly culturally dened. But this
is not to say that we can aord to lose the notions of order or of wisdom
as theological categories, or that they should continue to be suppressed
because of previous abuse.36 An appeal to the idea of creation and
a created order has returned again in the debate on ecology and
theology, in the contention that there are limits, structures and systems
which cannot be broken except at mans peril. In the course of our lives
we glean fragments of knowledge, notions of truth, of wisdom37 from
outside the visible circle of light from the Gospel, which theologically
can better be linked with the work of the Spirit. This does not separate
the work of the Spirit from, or make it independent of Christ, but it
points to Him, is subject to Him, and reaches its fullment in Him.

35 See for example J.C. Adonis, The role of Abraham Kuyper in South Africa. A

Critical Historical Evaluation, in: C. van der Kooi/J. de Bruijn, Kuyper Reconsidered.
Aspects of his Life and Work, Amsterdam 1999, 259273.
36 See C. van der Kooi/A. van Egmond, Het beroep op scheppingsordeningen. Een

wisselend getijde in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, bezorgd door
D. van Keulen/C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 157172; ET, The appeal to creation
ordinances: a changing tide, in: REC Theological Forum 21/4 (December 1993), 1325.
37 That in the Old Testament the theme of creation has a certain autonomy along-

side the motifs of exodus and liberation has been defended again for Biblical studies by
G. von Rad, Weisheit in Israel, Neukirchen 1970, 189239. See also J. Barr, The Concept of
Biblical Theology, 468496.
442 chapter nine

In His history, in an order that is theologically marked by moments of

resurrection and ascension, creation is not cancelled out, but its order
is transformed and, in this transformation, conrmed.
With these questions, we stand before a challenge to nd a theo-
logical place for the debate about Church and world, faith and culture,
which is actually going on. This debate is not new, something which has
arisen only in a pluralistic situation. Gods message to men has never
yet reached them without elements of witness, debate, opposition and
unexpected assent, not in the course which proceeded the composition
of Scripture38 and not in the course which the Gospel has taken among
the nations. There are good theological reasons to proceed in openness
with other philosophies and religions, from the realisation that Christ
in His majesty is given the power to have men participate through His
Spirit in His light and life, wherever He wills to do so. In dialogue
with other religions, this fundamental theological distinction between
places where true knowledge of God is found and the criterion for its
truth can contribute to an attitude of openness and a realisation of the
uniqueness of the Christian tradition of faith.

9.9. The content of knowledge of God: saving proximity

What is prot, and what loss, with regard to the content of knowledge
of God? In both the rst and second panel Christian knowledge of God
has its substantive criterion in the history of Jesus Christ. For Calvin the
promises that are contained in Jesus Christ, in his life and his death on
the cross, form the content of faith. The believer is invited to behold
Gods will and plan in this very limited mirror. The source of saving
knowledge is in this way precisely localised: namely, the countenance
of Christ. Particularly in the Cross of Christ Gods majesty shines forth
the most, because it is here that it becomes clear that He desires to save
sinners fallen into distress. One of the most signicant images in the
rst panel is that of the Father with his adopted children. Outside of the
Scripture and outside of Christ the world is alternatively a spectacle of
retribution and obscure injustice, and a theatre of tender and wonderful
care. But all these notions, of a strict judge and a caring king, undergo
a reguration when one has once learned to know Gods compassion

38 See, for instance, for the Old Testament, W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old

Testament. Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Minneapolis 1997.

 profit and loss 443

and mercy in the face of Christ. As the sources of knowledge about his
salvation, Calvin wanted to pin the believer to Scripture and Christ as
the mirrors which the Spirit held up for man. The possibility that the
Counsel of God which lay behind them would become a threat would
only arise when the Bible lost its status of evident divinity. The binding
to the Biblical promises as mirrors of Gods mercy would then lose their
its anchor.
In the foregoing we have given one of the reasons why the concept
of double predestination could undergo such fundamental correction
in the second panel. Calvins view imposed a premature limitation on
the seeking love that is held up to us by Scripture in the actions of
Jesus and in his resurrection as the rstborn of all creation. Like the
theology of his time, Calvin did not see that in the Bible election
is rst and foremost a category of sacred history. Election describes
the way that God goes about searching for and recovering man. In
this regard, the second panel of Barths theology represents a prot
which can not be abandoned. As an extension of Barths reading of
scripture we can say that God chooses for men, chooses for them in
order to involve them in the things of His kingdom in the interplay
of Word and Spirit. He invites them to this, urges them to this, and
men stand under judgement if they turn aside. The word election
means that God in his own proximity makes room for man and the
world. The relation between God and man can therefore be formally
expressed as a creative proximity which realises itself in various forms
of acting which are to be ascribed to the Father, Son and Spirit. In
Christ as the Son the nearness of the one God becomes concrete in
deliverance and liberation; in the Father the acting of the one God
become concrete in creation and sustaining; in the Spirit the work of
the one God becomes concrete as renewal and sanctication. Barth
wanted to read Gods choice for man in terms of the history of Jesus
Christ. The relation to the man Jesus is thus a part of the manner in
which God elects to be God. With it Gods salvation is promised to
man, the history of Jesus Christ becomes a symbol and sacrament of
Gods choosing fellowship. At the same time, something is said about
God. There is no longer anything that can be said about God outside
of the history of Jesus, outside of his Cross, outside of the threat of death
and ultimate abandonment. Such a change of tracks, as compared
with the rst panel, has abundant consequences, both for thinking
about God and for thinking about man. I will enumerate several plus-
points.
444 chapter nine

1. As opposed to the modern axiom of human self-determination, the

second panel introduces the idea that everything is decided about man
and his destiny in Gods self-determination in Christ. From Gods side
being man is dened as being together with Jesus Christ, and as such,
as being together with God. This being together of God and man
is not a condition that man is entitled to on the basis of immanent
qualities; it is exclusively the freedom of God to make this choice in
love that is decisive, and that also maintains it against resistance. It
is basic to this thought that the abundance of the divine being will
be denitive for man, even as it was denitive in the appearance of
Christ.

2. At the same time, the opposite must also be said. It is Gods choice
not to will Himself without man. It is His choice not to will Himself
without the consent of man. God exposes Himself and His love to con-
sent by man, to rejection. In the doctrine of God it will have to be
made clear that He is not an apathetic God, but that in the incarna-
tion as the deepest point of identication with the human condition,
with His resurrection, God exposes Himself to rejection and defensive
gestures by creation. If there is something in the abundance of His life
that God may not be denied, it is the highest sensitivity. That means
the possibility of injury, of suering in God.

3. The content of Christian knowledge of God is lled in through

the fact that within the Church the history of Jesus Christ is told as
the history in which God gives Himself as the One in whose fellow-
ship creation may exist denitively. Christian theology speaks about
man as someone who lives and moves in the close proximity of God.
Whether he experiences that, or desires it, is secondary. The princi-
ple secret of peoples lives is the closeness of God. Because the fel-
lowship is with the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, this fel-
lowship can be called a salvic fellowship. True freedom is found
only in this fellowship. If man is intended to be in this fellowship
and to live from this reality, the origin and purpose of man has been
decided.

4. Gods electing in his Son to be in fellowship with the man Jesus is

a decision that extends to all Jesus fellow men. Being a man is being
together with this particular man. In this way Barths theology oers a
radical correction to the doctrine of election in Calvin, where election
 profit and loss 445

is ultimately the election of specic individuals, and the covenant is

a link in sacred history between Gods Counsel and the election of
individuals.

The decisions in God about man, about his salvation, death and life
fall ultimately in the order of Gods eternity. In this choice Calvin and
Barth stand side by side, and we stand before the spiritual and theo-
logical core of Reformed theology. However much accent may fall on
further human responsibility, on renewal of life and the appeal to man
to respond to Gods invitation, it remains a problem for contempo-
rary theology as well how one can reconcile the subjectivity of God
and the subjectivity of man without conceiving them as competing, in
other words without the alternatives of determinism and historicising.
Once one premises the primacy of eternity over time, are mans actions
not then determined, and does the order of time and history still have
any weight? At a conceptual level, how can one keep human history
and responsibility from being trivialised? And, from the other side, how
can one prevent God from being trivialised? Or must we leave things
with the observation that there are limits to our knowledge of God
and our thinking about God? Of course the latter is true. The terms
infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism were mentioned several times
in preceding chapters. They are terms that theology has left to gather
dust. Yet, like pales sticking out of the sand, they remind us of a ten-
sion that seems to be inherent in the spirituality of Reformed theology,
namely the refusal to either trivialise Gods sovereignty and gracious
supremacy, or to dispose of human responsibility. The historic debate
between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism confronts us with the
limits that we would rather avoid, but in fact always run up against.
Barth sought to avoid the trivialising of the order of time by terming
the decision for electing a decretum concretissimum. The eternal decision
of God to live in fellowship with man is taken with an eye to a histor-
ically dened person, the man Jesus Christ. Eternity is not primarily
a concept of duration; it is primarily the designation for the order of
Gods life and acting. Behind the words decretum concretissimum we hear
again how Barth wished to think of God and His plans, proceeding
from Jesus Christ and his history. There the order of Gods sovereignty
and human history coincide, and that co-incidence must be the point of
departure and criterion for Christian theology. This Name and this his-
tory are the counterweight that is necessary to prevent human history
from become nothing more than a projection screen for an eternally
446 chapter nine

established scenario. By calling upon the name of Jesus, Barth seeks to

do justice to the peculiar weight of time. Thinking from the perspec-
tive of eternity coincides with the opposite movement, namely thinking
from time toward eternity. That is what is properly called Barths actu-
alism.
By working this way Barth tries to avoid both the danger of deter-
minism and that of historicisation, where everything depends on man.
He does this by always taking the history of Jesus Christ as his starting
point. His history is the moment, the point where time and eternity
come together. His history is, as it were, the true icon from which we
can read who God is, how He has chosen to liveand at the same time
we can read from this history that which in the light of this history is
the secret of Gods history with all men. At the same time it grants us
an insight into the role of man in history.

9.10. The role of man in knowing God

If we compare the rst and second panels with regard to the role of the
human subject, the dierences are immediately obvious. With Calvin
the metaphors expressing mans relation to the Holy Spirit are those
of the school and pupil. A pupil deserves to pay careful attention to
the material which is oered him. Man remains to the end of his days
in the school of the Holy Spirit, who teaches and instructs him. At
this point we touch another metaphor that is of great importance in
Calvin, namely that of man as the alien, the pilgrim passing through a
strange land. Here, unquestionably, lies a dynamic, eschatological fea-
ture in Calvins concept of knowing God. God showers his creatures
with countless signs of His providence. Moreover, in the sacraments this
care and grace is once more impressed upon man, by tangible means,
not that this stop with the symbols, but that they might be mindful of
the promise of solidarity with Christ and everlasting life in God. The
purpose of these accommodations is that man now already reaches out
for a life in perfect union with Christ in Gods glory. In the fellow-
ship with Christ which is now already a hidden reality man is called to
consecrate himself and practice a life that corresponds to that high pur-
pose. In Calvins theology the person who knows God himself comes to
renewed activity, to deeds of thanksgiving. Sanctication and progress
thereby become one of the key elements in Calvins thought. Yet it is
unmistakable that the role of man is worked out in a dierent manner
 profit and loss 447

in the second panel, namely through the modern ideal of human self-
determination. The larger place which the Enlightenment demanded
for the human subject is for Barth no misfortune, the eects of which
must be rectied as quickly as possible. The place which is given to
man as subject should be entered on the prot side of the ledger. There
is increasing space given in Barths concept for man as an answering
being. In the rst two volumes of KD, in the development of the concept
of revelation, the stress lies on the majesty of God, on Gods sovereignty.
In that period Barths theology maintained something of a barrage that
was to constantly remind its readers that man always, in various ways,
had to deal with God as Lord in His turning toward man. The change
that was already evident in KD II/1, the rst volume of the doctrine
of God, to electing as a movement that was ontologically decisive both
for God Himself and for man, made it increasingly possible to develop
the aspect of the humanity of God. The locus of knowledge of God is
specied as the history of Jesus Christ, in which the concrete human
person of Jesus Christ is distinguished from the Father, and is involved
with Him. Characteristic of this new accent is that anhypostasis now no
longer serves to disqualify every form on inquiry into the life of the
earthly Jesusin other words, every form of manifestation in history
as theologically unprotable. It can be asked how the assumptio carnis
the assumption of what man is, of the condition humainetakes form in
this one person. In Barths later theology the unio naturarum or the unio
hypostatica no longer mean that the life of the man Jesus is merely an
enigma. Gods special relation with this man does not elbow out what
happens in time and space, but creates room for it. All the theological
constructions within Barths concept, such as the Trinity and election,
that are used to impress upon us that in His plans and intentions God
is not the dupe of our history, change in colour to concepts that remind
us that God does not cease to seek man in his acting and aspirations
and refuses to permit him to become the victim of his own conduct.
Two terms dene the image of the new man in Barths concept: self-
determination and analogy (or correspondence). Self-determination is
the formal concept under which man with all his capacities is under-
stood; the concept of correspondence or analogy provides it its substan-
tive content. Man and his capacities do not go by the wayside in grace,
but are redened.39 Man is called to give an answer in his actions that

39 In KD 1/1, 213; ET, 204 the experience that man becomes a participant under

the inuence of the Word is interpreted with the concept of self-determination. All
448 chapter nine

agrees or corresponds with the choice for life that was made by God
in His electing. The gure of analogy comes increasingly to the fore in
Barths theology as a productive category for understanding the rela-
tion between divine and human acting.40 In this way it becomes clear
that ethics is not a second eld which lies next to dogmatics, but rather
occupies the same space. In terms of structure, Barth has given shape
to this insight by closing his doctrine of God, his doctrine of creation
and his doctrine of reconciliation each with a section on ethics.
In this study the altered position of man became visible in the doc-
trine of baptism. As we already said earlier, the desacramentalisation
of baptism and the Supper was intended to give full measure to the
answer from man, to his acting. Barth wished to distinguish more
sharply than was possible in the traditional concept of the sacraments
between the acting of man and the acting of God. Unquestionably this
contains elements which connect with modern attitudes toward life. But
in this counterproposal man does not realise himself in a vacuum. He
is already in fellowship; the decision has already been made about him,
and about his destiny. The sharp distinction in Barth between Gods
work and mans work is the result of the Christological concentration,
through which the singularity and immediacy of Christ, the Word and
the Spirit are powerfully emphasised over against the human work of
testimony, proclamation, baptism and the Supper. The destiny of being
man is known, namely existence in fellowship with God and his salva-
tion, which means in fellowship with Jesus Christ. This in turn means
that in this fellowship direction is given to self-determination.
Can we take over this linkage with the principle of subjectivity just
like that? I would make two observations, the rst positive, the second
critical. The continuing positive feature in the concept is rst of all that
man is regarded as actor. In a culture in which man as a responsi-
ble actor appears to be losing ground against the background of eco-
nomic and social processes, technological advances and communities
in change, an emphasis on the responsibility of man is quite necessary.
Furthermore, we have already established that Barth has blunted the

human capacities together form the possibility for self-determination. In faith this self-
determination is redened once again, namely by the Word.
40 See particularly the work of E. Jngel, in particular his essay Die Mglichkeit

theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zum
Analogieverstndnis Karl Barths in: idem, Barth-Studien, Mnchen 1982, 210245. Cf.
also H. Veldhuis, Een verzegeld boek. Het natuurbegrip in de theologie van J.G. Hamann (1730
1788), Dordrecht 1990, 347350.
 profit and loss 449

ideal of autonomy, or better, given it content. The contours of mans

self can be read from the history of Jesus Christ. Finally, it must be
remembered that Barth, by giving a full measure to human subjectiv-
ity, has provided an answer to the problem of Pelagianism. Freedom is
primarily dened by its content. People are free when they arrive at
the point where the possibilities are realised that being human bears
with it. Jesus Christ is the true man. From the very beginning Barths
concept of being human is dened as being in fellowship with Jesus
Christ. That means that human subjectivity, mans acting and respon-
sibility, do not exist outside of this relation, but only t within it. Ethics
as a question of human acting is found in the same space with dog-
matics. In a Christian perspective, ethics is the question of how men
must act now that they participate in the history of Jesus Christ. Man
does not have to make or constitute the covenant that God has con-
cluded in Jesus Christ; man is rather invited to take his place within
this covenant. Thus one can not speak of a sole causality of God. The
prot of Barths baptismal doctrine is that he gives a clear answer to the
alternative of Gods omnicausality and synergism.41 The new reality in
which the believer shares is constituted entirely and totally through by
God in Christ, and the meaning of baptism is that it is the rst answer
from man to the revolution accomplished by God.
Precisely this locating of human existence in answer to the history
of Jesus Christ however raises the question of suitable terms. The
question is whether the manner in which Barth takes over the prin-
ciple of subjectivity can indeed be maintained. In modern culture self-
determination and self-discovery are all too closely linked with frag-
mentation and ecological problems. The terms have become compro-
mised. When man takes himself as his point of departure for achieving
his social or economic goals, there is no critical brake built in against
economic and ecological exploitation. The concepts of correspondence
and analogy imply that man does not enjoy primacy, but is in a sub-
sidiary position. But this secondary position does not come through in
the term self-determination. The Biblical concept of stewardship would
t better in this connection. The subsidiary role of man, and his nor-
mative responsibility, are immediately clear in this image.42 It conjoins
precisely with a concept which is strongly emphasised by Calvin. God

41 KD IV/4, 180; ET, 163.

42 B. Goudzwaard, Kapitalisme en vooruitgang, Assen 19824, 293297; ET: Capitalism and
Progress: a Diagnosis of Western Society, Toronto/Grand Rapids 1979, 242245.
450 chapter nine

has the potestas, the power is His, and when man takes this in, it is clear
that the freedom of man is not adequately conceived if it is thought
of as only formal freedom of choice. Man becomes free when he goes
in the ways that are already represented in the history of Jesus Christ.
Man is free when his decisions bring him to the ways that correspond
with the lines that were already set out by God himself in Jesus Christ.

9.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a dierent way

What is the role of the sacraments in knowing God? In the second

panel of Barths theology we are dealing with a desacramentalising of
baptism and the Supper; one could even speak of demythologisation.
The denial of the sacramentality of baptism and the Table is, for Barth,
closely connected with the greater accent on the subjectivity of man.
Preaching, baptism and the Supper are acts of witness by man, and
no longer means of grace, not a medium salutis, and just as little a
conrmation and strengthening of human knowledge regarding Gods
promises. The work of the Holy Spirit indeed does come to man with
the assistance of means of all sorts, but Barth no longer wishes to term
these sacraments. True baptism is performed by God, in the work of
the Spirit, and what happens alongside that, through the community,
through the baptisand, has the nature of a testimony or an answer.
The acting of the community in the various forms of witness is not
disowned in this concept; we must understand the contesting of the
sacramental character of human actions as an attempt to give full room
to human subjectivity as an answer to Gods work in the history of Jesus
Christ.
Are we forced to come to the same conclusions as Barth did? Could
it not belong to the freedom of God in His turning toward man, in His
speaking, to make use of the created as a means of approach, in such
a way that the notion of the sacramental nds its justication precisely
with this in mind? Calvin and Barth both agreed that neither baptism
nor the Supper could be termed a medium salutis. Both also agreed that
the fellowship with Christ is the centre and object of human knowledge
of God. Faith involves us in the history that God wrote in this Name,
and we are called to set forth our journey within the horizon of this
history.
What place do the sacraments have then in this way? In the intro-
duction of this book I suggested that thought regarding the sacraments
 profit and loss 451

functions as a mirror for the whole of knowledge of God. That means

that a vision of the sacraments must t within the whole scheme of a
concept of knowing God. If it is part of the freedom of God to make
Himself known to men through a multiplicity of earthly means, in prin-
ciple this provides space for a broad view of sacramentality. This is a
breadth which we encountered in the rst panel. God draws man to
Himself through a wide range of means. In Calvin we found the paired
concepts of Word and Sprit for this. This pair of concepts rst point
to the central element of the Word, the Bible and the history which is
narrated in the Bible. At its deepest, the Word is the designation for the
acting of God himself, who declares himself in his Son, who has written
his history with man in the history of Jesus Christ. And, once again, by
God we mean God who, through the power of His Spirit, involves us
with Christ and what is concealed in His life.
In order to bring us and the things of our lives in contact with Him,
to give us a taste of it, God has various means. First, there is the
narrative which refers to Jesus Christ as the Word of God in person,
and that is told in a multiplicity of accounts, of Bible stories. Once these
become Scripture they have a potency, through the work of the Spirit,
to become alive, the Word of God speaking to the present, to become a
Word that touches men, seeks them out, and takes them along into the
secret of Gods dealing with man. The Scripture, as a literary reality,
derives its high status in the Church from this: that by the grace of God
it has the potential to become the Word of God ever anew. Calling the
Bible the Word of God is only meaningful if we continue to focus on
that way of exposition and proclamation as Word that gives life and
direction.
In the rst panel we found that not all of the means that God uses
can be termed sacraments. With the Reformation, Calvin reduced the
number of sacraments to baptism and the Supper, with the argument
that these were the two which were instituted by Christ Himself. Today
it does not appear wise to take this argument over without giving it
serious thought, if only because it has the result, as Berkhof correctly
stressed, of very quickly placing baptism and the Supper in an isolated
position. If we wish to give a place to the sacrament, this will have to
happen in the context of a comprehensive concept of knowing God
and a broader view of the sacramental, in which all of the acting of the
Triune God in creation, reconciliation and renewal of life is reected.
The point of departure for the acceptance of baptism and the Sup-
per as central acts of the Church is rst the historical fact that in the
452 chapter nine

early Church these acts had a place in connection with the account of
Jesus death and resurrection. The theological justication and found-
ing of these acts as meaningful acts lies in that connection. They have
their place in church life primarily with the salvation that was a gift in
Christ and the promise of His kingdom in mind.43
Next, in the connection that is made in the actions of baptism and
the Supper between ambivalent signs or symbols on the one hand
and the history of Jesus Christ on the other, the symbol begins to
speak a language that it does not possess of itself. That is the decisive,
theological justication for these actions. They are actions in which an
appeal is made to the senses as ways to knowledge, to contact. In the
Supper the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste are brought into
service. In baptism by immersion it is particularly the sense of touch
which plays a role, alongside hearing and sight. It is characteristic
of these ritual actions that created elements are taken into service
by the story. They interpret the history of Jesus Christ. The reverse
is also true. In the Pauline letters we see that Gods acting in the
Cross and resurrection interprets these rituals and thus protects against
sacramental misunderstanding.44 A mutual hermeneutic involvement
arises between story or word on the one side and the symbol on the
other. In the dynamic between word and symbol Gods acting is made
known, man is brought into the presence of God and his acting, and
man commits himself to that acting by letting himself be baptised and
by participating in the Supper. Created elements here full the role of
symbols, of visible words that refer to the thing, to Gods judging and
life-giving proximity. The content of the sacraments, the thing before
which we stand, does not dier from that which is received in faith. In
the sacramental mediation man comes in touch with the same thing,
but the same thing in a dierent way. Precisely the sacraments in all

43 Discussions regarding a broad, theological, Trinitarian rootage of this sort for

the sacraments are already well under way as a response to the BEM Report of
the World Council of Churches and the reactions which followed it. See Baptism,
Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111), Geneva 1982; Baptism, Eucharist
and Ministry 19821990. Report on the Process and Responses (Faith and Order Paper No.
149), Geneva 1990. For a similar broad treatment of the concept of the sacraments,
see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament.
Justication and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999.
44 See the extensive note by E. Jngel, Barth-Studien, 285287. See also at greater

length the article Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verstndnisses der Taufe, in: Barth-
Studien, 295314.
 profit and loss 453

their connections with the sensory and physical point to dimensions of

knowing which go further than intellectual comprehension, because the
aective possibilities are brought into play and included too.

9.12. As in a mirror

There is one nal step. That God lets Himself be known and therefore
men can know God, is a vulnerable proposition. It is not vulnerable
because something could go wrong with the epistemological status of
knowledge of God. The warrant for belief in God and the epistemo-
logical grounds for defending it have gained rather than lost ground in
recent years. When I speak of it being vulnerable, I just as little have
in mind the implausibility of belief in God in Western culture. That
is indeed manifest in important sectors of these cultural circles and it
forces adherents of faith to adjust, willingly or unwillingly, to status as
a minority. However dicult that is, however much theologians, church
members and people in social organisations often still act and think as
though they are a majority, from the desire to occupy the cultural mid-
dle (or the illusion that they still do so), these are only side issues. The
vulnerability that I have in mind has internal grounds. It is felt within
the knowledge of God; it has to do with the fact that the promise of the
perfect unveiling of Gods majesty and mercy is still outstanding. The
concept of self-revelation expresses that in the appearance of Christ one
is encountering God Himself. This does not exclude the incomplete-
ness of knowing, the enigmas and things not yet understood, as this so
pointedly is expressed in the image of the mirror in I. Cor. 13:12. Put in
another way, Christian knowledge of God is vulnerable because it is a
form of Christian hope. In this context vulnerability is not so much a
sign of weakness, but is a sensitivity, a new attitude of discernment. In
the mirror of the history of Christ, it appears that man and the world
are not abandoned. Nourished by this hope, faith does not remain by
itself, but reaches out. In Christian hope men reach out to the coming
of Him who already came in Christ. That hope would not exist if God,
through His Spirit, had not already reached man through his Word,
through a multiplicity of ways and means. The hope would be extin-
guished if mankind was not still constantly being invited and reached
by Gods Spirit as the great bridge builder, the pontifex maximus, and in
response, began moving toward the future.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Opera Selecta Vol. IV, Ed. P. Barth/W. Niesel, Mnchen 19261936.
Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. W. Baum, E. Cunitz et W. Reuss, Brunsvigae
18631900.
Advertissement contre lastrologie judiciaire, Crit. ed. par O. Millet, Geneve 1985.
Des Scandales, ed. par O. Fatio, Geneve 1984.
Iohannis Calvini Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T.H.L. Parker,
Leiden 1981.
Psychopannychia, hrsg. von W. Zimmerli, Leipzig 1923.
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Der kosmologische Beweis fr das Dasein Gottes, Vortrge und kleine Arbeiten
(19051909), in Verbindung mit Herbert Helms herausgegeben von Hans-
Anton Drewes und Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe III,
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Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Aufstze, Mnchen 1925.
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Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner, Mnchen 1934.
Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang seines
theologischen Programms (1931), hrsg. von E. Jngel und I.U. Dalferth.
Die Protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte, Ham-
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Theologische Existenz Heute (1933). Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von H.
Stoevesandt, Mnchen 1984.
Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf (1927), Hrsg. von G. Sauter, Zrich 1982.
Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie in: idem, Theologische Fragen und Antworten.
Gesammelte Vortrge III, Zrich 1957, 5492.
Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Mnchen 1932-Zrich 1967; ET: Church Dogmatics, Edin-
burgh 1975.
Eine Schweizer Stimmme, 19381945, Zrich 1945.
Die Kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, Zrich 1947.
Oene Briefe 19351942, (hrsg. von D. Koch), Zrich 2001.
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Das Christliche Leben. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Fragmente aus dem Nachla.
Vorlesungen 19591961, (Hrsg. von H.A. Drewes und E. Jngel), Zrich 1976.
Gesprche 19641968, Hrsg. von E. Busch, Zrich 1997.

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, Geschiedenis in opspraak. Over de legitimatie van het concept geschiedenis. Een
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 INDEX OF NAMES
Aalders, M.A., XI
Adonis, J.C., 441, 456
Adriaanse, H.J., XI, 10, 255, 426
Agrippa of Nettesheim, 37, 54, 66
Agrippa d Aubign, 57
Ailly, Pierre d, 183
Alston, W.P., 76
Andriessen, H.C.I., 437
Anselm of Canterbury, 122, 179, 180,
280, 281
Anzinger, H., 261
Aristotle, 68, 88, 125, 134, 146, 154
Asmussen, H., 258
Athanasius, 44
Augustijn, C., XI, 162
Augustine, 87, 117, 154, 155, 163,
168, 173, 174, 177, 178, 182, 195,
196, 199, 267, 274, 276, 349,
358
Austin, J.L., 11
Bacon, R., 58, 59, 227, 235
Bakker, N.T., 270
Balke, W., 120
Balthasar, H.U. von, 420
Barr, J., 270, 441
Barth, Karl, 29, 57, 102, 117, 124,
153, 154, 156, 166, 173 passim
Barth, P., 385
Battles, F.L., 25, 42, 56
Bauke, H., 28, 102
Baur, F.C., 28
Bavinck, H., 2, 7, 14, 52, 99, 107,
163, 276, 377, 378, 390
Beek, A. van de, 273, 376
Beintker, M., 261, 279
Benedict, Ph., 79
Benin, S.D., 49
Berkhof, H., 9, 134, 190, 191, 219,
351, 395, 440, 451
Berkouwer, G.C., 12, 124, 163, 168,
209, 210, 344, 397
Bernard of Clairveaux, 180
Beza, Th., 160
Biel, Gabriel, 183
Birkner, H.J., 312
Blumhardt, J.C., 396
Boer, Th. de, 136, 244
Bothius, 332, 359
Bohatec, J., 24, 36, 150
Bolsec, Jrome, 23, 28, 74, 123, 160,
161, 162
Bonda, J., 342
Bonhoeer, D., 3, 308
Borght, E.A.J.G., 192
Bouwsma, W.J., 22, 28, 52, 55, 64,
67, 78, 79, 102, 111, 121, 148
Breen, Q., 55
Brink, G. van den, 178, 183
Brinkman, M.E., 191, 195, 253, 255,
405, 452
Brueggemann, W., 442
Brunfels, O., 54
Brunner, E., 9, 81, 285, 313, 378
379, 432
Brunner, P., 82
Bucer, Martin, 26, 32, 192
Bud, Guillaume, 24, 36
Bullinger, H., 162, 192, 214, 218
Bultmann, R., 279, 318
Burckhardt, Abel, 287
Busch, E., 253, 371
Busson, Henry, 37
Caligula, 71
Calvin, Antoine, 34
Cassirer, E., 64, 236
Castellio, Sbastien, 23
Chia, R., 261, 271
Cicero, 24, 71
468 index of names

Clement of Alexandria, 49 Gay, P., 230, 235

Cohen, H., 289292, 427, 431 Geertz, C., 12, 429
Courtenay, W.J., XI, 59, 123, 177 Gerhard, J., 117
183 Gerrish, B.A., 91, 94, 119, 198,
Cusveller, B., 8 208
Cyril of Alexandria, 212 Gestrich, Chr., 312
Gloede, G., 82
Dalferth, I.U., 187, 427 Gogarten, Fr., 279
Damascene, John, 44, 125, 205 Gorringe, T.J., 257
Damian, Peter, 178, 180 Gosker, M., 191
Darwin, Ch., 306 Goudzwaard, B., 449
Dee, S.P., 99, 100, 108 Graaand, C., 159, 194, 364,
Descartes, R., 241 413
Desiderius, 178 Grabes, H., 60
Dittus, Gottliebin, 396 Gruet, Jacques, 23
Dolet, E., 37, 66 Grnewald, Mathias, XI, 286
Dorner, I.A., 331 Grynaeus, Simon, 53
Dorner, J.A., 334 Gunning J.H., 424
Dowey, E.A., 21, 85, 86, 91
Duintjer, O., 236 Hardy, D.W., 79
Dulk, M. den, 195, 270 Harnack, A., 144
Duns Scotus, 59, 68, 182 Hartvelt, G.P., 57, 198, 208, 209, 212,
Dyrness, W.A., 79 216
Hegel, G.W.F., 27, 226, 247, 331, 334,
Eckhart, 334 372
Edwards, D., 342 Hendrik of Gent, 182
Egmond, A. van, XI, 374, 375, Heppe, H., 324, 394
441 Herrmann, W., 226, 248, 263, 292,
Eicher, P., 21 318
Engel, M.P., 70, 87 Heshusius, T., 192
Erasmus, Desiderius, 24, 118 Hesselink, I.J., 74
Eunomius, 334 Hieronymus, 178
Holtrop, Ph.C., 162, 166
Farel, G., 189 Houtepen A., 9, 140, 244, 429
Fatio, O., 37 Hromdka, J.L., 257
Febvre, L., 37 Hugo of St. Victor, 180
Feuerbach, L., 312, 353 Hume, D., 230, 233, 234
Fert, Anne le, 34 Hunsinger, G., 273, 375
Fichte, J.G., 48, 49
Ficino, Marsilio, 69 Irenaeus of Lyon, 49, 62, 106,
Franck, Sbastian, 51 374
Francke, H.R., 334
Francis I, 22, 23, 25, 133 Jansen, H., 144
Frederick the Great, 229 Jacobs, P., 28, 29, 163
Jehle, F., 257
Gadamer, Hans G., 68 Jeerson, Th., 235
Ganoczy, A., 31, 96, 148, 202 Jelsma, A.J., 434
 index of names
Johnson, W.S., 5, 423
Jones, S., 55
Jong, J. de, 42
Jngel, E., 9, 12, 13, 45, 48, 241,
244, 294, 296, 300, 310, 318, 322,
363, 373, 375, 386, 399, 410, 448,
452
Kaiser, C.B., 134135
Kamphuis, B., 260, 383
Kant, I., 81, 123, 225248, 314, 372
passim
Karelse, L., 5, 423
Kattenbusch, F., 3
Kingdon, R.M., XI, 33, 34, 35,
161
Keulen, D. van, XI
Khler, W., 192
Kstlin, J., 85
Kooi, A. van der, 424
Kooi, C. van der, 8, 66, 261, 280,
289, 389, 431, 441
Korsch, D., 5
Krtke, W., 255
Kroon, M. de, 26, 28
Krusche, W., 82, 99, 128
Kng, H., 227
Kuitert, H.M., 124, 145, 260, 286,
428429
Kuyper, A., 7, 163, 175, 210, 424
Lanser-van der Velden, A., 437
Leeuw, G. van der, 405
Lasco, Johannes , 209
Leibnitz, G.W., 234, 236, 239
Leisegang, H., 58
Lessing, G.E., 229, 287, 413
Lienhard, M., 51
Lindbeck, G.A., 12, 429
Lindberg, D.C., XI, 58, 66, 130
Link, Chr., 84
Locher, G.W., 192
Locke, J., 229, 230, 233
Lohmann, J.F., 261, 289
Lombard, Peter, 180, 204
Luther, Martin, 31, 47, 107, 118, 205,
206, 400, 404
469
Maas, W., 49, 146
Major, John, 60, 122
Marheineke, Ph., 321, 331
Marquard, R., 286
Marquardt, F.W., 255
Martyr, Peter, 216
Marx, K., 312
Maurer, E., 282
McCormack, B.L., 3, 261, 304, 305,
364
McFague, S., 12, 55
Mellin de Saint Gelais, 36
Meijering, E.P., 118, 143, 320, 349
Melanchthon, Ph., 119, 319, 400
Michel, K.H., 242
Millet, O., 36, 52, 55
Moltmann, J., 129, 283, 375
Mozart, W.A., 8, 396
Muller, R.A., 4, 5, 28, 55, 67, 68, 84,
90, 109, 110, 160, 419, 434
Myconius, O., 162
Naphy, W.G., 34, 162
Natorp, P., 289
Nevin, J.W., 208
Nietzsche, Fr., 243, 306, 438
Noordmans, O., 385, 424
Nsgen, D., 148
Oakley, F., 178
Oberman, H.A., XI, 31, 32, 45, 61,
104, 118, 122, 129, 130, 147, 159,
163, 164, 174, 176178, 215, 220,
434
Ockham, William of, 60, 182, 183,
334
Oorthuys, G., 163
Origen, 49
Osiander, Andreas, 43, 45
Overbeck, Fr., 258, 259, 365
Palamas, G., 329
Pannenberg, W., 2, 21, 282, 283, 310,
332, 382, 428
Parker, T.H.L., 85, 86
Parmenides, 146
Pascal, B., 232
470 index of names
Paschasius, Radbertus, 193
Peiderer, G., 5, 254, 263
Phigius, A., 169
Philo of Alexandria, 49
Pico della Mirandola, 69
Pinnock, C.H., 28, 29
Plantinga, A., 7, 426, 430
Plasger, G., XI
Plato, 146
Polanus, A., 355
Polman, A.D.R., 163
Pomponazzi, Pietro, 65, 69
Pott, H.J., 251
Quenstedt, Andreas, 303, 304, 355
Rabelais, F., 37
Rad, G. von, 441
Rade, M., 389
Ragaz, L., 257
Rahtmann, Herman, 97
Randall Coats, C., 57
Rendtor, T., 5, 251, 255, 323, 346
Reuter, K., 122, 150
Richard, L.J., 25
Richard of St. Victor, 332
Ritschl, A., 226, 247, 263, 312, 338,
341, 342
Ritschl, O., 28
Rohkrmer, M., 257
Rorem, P.E., 214
Sadoletus, Jacopo, 40, 96
Sauter, G., 3, 76
Schellong, D., 5, 228, 251, 389
Schilder, K., 52, 163, 175
Schildmann, W., 371
Schleiermacher, F.D.E., 119, 225,
226, 247, 248, 263, 284, 289, 339,
350, 351, 353, 355, 431
Schreiner, S.E., 66, 68
Schwab, Gustav, 296
Schweizer, Alexander, 28
Seguenny, A., 51
Selderhuis, H.J., 138, 434
Selinger, S., 253
Servet, Miguel, 23, 37, 65, 66, 74
Siegele-Wenschkewitz, L., 254
Siger of Brabant, 65
Simonides, 88
Socrates, 118
Sozino, Laelio, 154, 156
Speelman, H.A., 31, 33, 190
Spieckermann, I., 261, 280
Spinoza, Baruch de, 228
Stancaro, Francesco, 44
Steck, K.G., 5, 228, 251, 389
Stoevesandt, H., 248, 254
Stoker, W., 9, 10, 242
Stott, John, 342
Tachau, K.H., 58, 59
Tempier, Etienne, 129
Thomas Aquinas, 44, 60, 122, 125,
163, 334, 357, 404
Tillet, Louis du, 31
Torrance, Thomas F., 59, 60, 122
Tracy, D., 2
Trinkaus, Ch., 69
Tylenda, J.R., 192
Veenhof, J., 99, 100, 102
Veldhuis, H., 448
Verhoogt, J.P., 9
Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 216
Villeneuve, see Servet
Vroom, H.M., 10
Waldenfels, H., 21
Ward, G., 5, 423
Wareld, B.B., 89, 93
Watt, James, 235
Weber, O., 32, 158, 217
Weber, M., 76, 125, 140, 254
Welker, M., 281
Wendel, F., 24, 150
Wernle, P., 3, 389
Westphal, J., 192, 207, 208, 214
Williams, G.H., 65, 66
Willis, E.D., 44, 215
Wirth, J., 54
Wissink, J., 261, 264
Wittgenstein, L., 282
Wol, Chr., 234, 236
 index of names 471

Wolterstor, N., 7, 11, 226, 233, 239, Zachman, R.C., 113

426 Zimmerli, W., 66
Woudenberg, R. van, XI, 8, 64 Zwingli, H., 31, 32, 192, 198, 201
Wright, D.F., 42
 INDEX OF TERMS

Absoluteness, 309, 327 Barmen confession, 258, 311, 313,

Accommodation, 4148, 72, 145, 391, 395, 440
185186, 299300, 352, 360 Biblical studies, 270, 285, 404, 409,
As a concession, 47, 185186, 219 421, 441
Actualism, 17, 303, 383384, 408, Biblicism, 102, 118, 171, 207, 404
446
Adoption, 100, 165, 186, 203, 434 Calvins personality, 76, 140, 161
Aects, 15, 94, 109, 144147, 187, 163, 367, 434
339 Caro vivica, 208211
Agnosticism, 291, 418, 438 Categorical dierence, 42, 43, 257,
Agnosm, 12, 226, 319 286, 299, 389, 422
Anabaptism, 66 Categories, aristotelian, 123, 125,
Analogy, 214, 265268, 360362 146, 236, 332
Analogia proportionalitatis, 244, Causality, 28, 127130, 135, 155156,
301 168169, 447
Analogia dei, 293, 300301, 430 Certainty, 9899, 108115, 170, 398
Analogia entis, 298, 303 Christology, 4345, 105106, 204
Analogia attributionis, 303305 210, 446
Angels, 46, 118, 126 Anhypostasy and enhypostasy,
Anthropology, 4546, 6470, 88, 89, 273, 344, 392393, 402403,
132, 440 432, 447
Anthropologisation, 225226, 238, Assumptio carnis, 4344, 273,
360 352, 403
Anthropomorphism, 152, 185, 299, Communicatio idiomatum, 179,
303, 339, see also accommodation 206
Apriorism, 280, 428 Eternal son, 43
Arbitrariness, 133, 143 Light of life, 398
Artist, 75, 332333 Logos ensarkos, 45
Ascend, 43 Mediator in creation, 4344
Ascension, 42, 128, 206207, 217 Mirror, 100, 114, 154, 381
Assistence, 406, 423, 435 Natures of, 44
Astronomy/astrology, 36, 126 Status exinanitionis et exaltatio-
Asymmetry, 294, 299, 373, 385386, nis, 394
390 Unio mystica, 106108, 212
Atheism, 37, 38, 72, 263, 291, 396, 438 Unio personalis, 155, 210211, 403
Augustianism, 64 Church
Averroism, 37, 66, 130 And government, 30, 32, 34, 227,
254, 255
Baptism, 6, 387414, 451452 As institute, 194
Infant, 387388 Authority, 103
474 index of terms
Cognitio intuitiva et abstractiva, 59
60
Communicatio idiomatum, see
christology
Conscience, 3539, 73, 105, 205
Consistory, 24, 3234
Consubstantiation, 205
Contingency, 163, 174
Corporality, 65, 107, 435
Cosmology, 78, 84, 126, 134135,
146147, 232, 354, 366, 426
Cosmopolitism, 227
Counsel of God, 2729, 50, 57, 125,
141142, 159, 166, 170, 173, 381
Covenant, 4951, 164, 166, 172174,
178179, 194, 299, 304307, 320,
327, 350, 362, 364, 366367, 377
379, 407409, 411, 445, 449
Creation, 195, 305308, 440
Outward ground, 305, 379
Vulnerable, 378379
Cross, 40, 41, 47, 105, 210, 375
Curiositas, 49, 62, 118119, 167, 172
173, 337, 376, 466
Deism, 37, 123, 384
Descend, 38, 4142, 47, 102, 105,
210
Despotism, 133, 141, 161, 335, 364
Determinism, 27, 29, 122, 181, 385
386, 408, 445446
Devotio moderna, 122
Ding an sich, 237240, 332
Disputation and doubt, 309310
Docta ignorantia, 172, 174
Doctrine, 11, 38, 9495
Dogmatics, 1, 1112, 94, 240, 255
256, 281289, 417426
Church, 10, 255256
Loci, 90
Training in listening, 321, 421
Dream, 69, 72, 267, 360, 370371, 383
Eastern orthodoxy, 212, 329
Eclecticism, 314
Election, 363383
Shadow, 124, 143, 375
Empirism, 233235
Epicurism, 37, 66, 127128
Epistemology, 720, 6465, 209,
232250
Reformed, 8, 7475, 430431
Eschatology, 14, 27, 66, 107, 114, 132,
175, 259, 307
Eternity, 358360, 384
Ethics, 14, 26, 35, 133, 270
Ethos, 23
Excommunication, 35, 189
Ex opere operato, 204
Extra calvinisticum, 44, 209, 215
Extreme, 56, 118, 445
Faculties of knowing, 8, 59, 62, 67,
68, 109, 111, 225, 241, 260, 262,
275, 289, 299, 375, 428, 430433
Faith (des), 104106
Fides qua et des quae, 3, 259
And knowing, 713, 268
Fall, 46, 87, 376377
Family, 165, 188, 203
Fatalism, 143, 148151
Fear, 39, 46, 131, 156158
Foundationalism, 240, 246
Freedom, 29, 145
Freethinker, 37
God
Aseitas, 126, 326
Being and act, 322
Competency, 132, 348
Constancy, 51, 353
Creator, 134
Deus revelatus et absconditus,
118, 381, 436
Dynamism, 71, 127
Essence, 125, 152154, 175, 319
320, 381
Father, 83, 131, 136137, 145, 150
155, 187188
Fountain, 25, 210
Freedom, 175, 326328
Glory, 42, 360361
Goodness, 7677, 121, 131
Grace, 157, 337339
 index of terms
Hiddenness, 139, 274276
Holiness, 46, 337338
Immutability, 51, 141, 143148,
181, 353
Incomprehensibility, 126, 276
Judge, 131, 138139
Judgement, 338
Knowability, 1213, 124126, 225
226, 266267, 271
Lord, 131132
Love, 324325
Mercy, 131, 151158, 341
Mother, 144145, 185186
Nearness, 3839, 106107, 349,
442
Objectication, 317
Omni-activity, 407408
Orator, 48
Patience, 345347
Personhood, 382384
Power, 131, 355
Presence, 350
Providence/Care, 7677, 133135,
143
Qualities, 119, 130131, 333, 334,
336
Regret, 145
Righteousness, 131, 348
Self-binding, 155, 181, 183, 184
Sublimity, 47, 107, 126, 187, 302
303
Subtance and subject, 331332,
381
Unity, 348
Will, 105, 129, 143, 149151
Wisdom, 141
Hierarchy of Being, 123, 200, 289
Historisation, 385, 408, 445
History of Jesus Christ, 11, 252, 373
374, 386, 394, 401402, 444445
Hope, 115, 217
Humanity, 1, 32, 227228, 243, 417
Humility, 171
Idealism, 238, 340, 341, 425
Critical, 17, 289293, 427
475
Speculative, 2829, 267
Images, ban on, 7981
Immortality, 37, 6470
Incarnation, 38
Insiders perspective, 262
Inspiration, Doctrine of, 8990
Instrument, 214, 218
Intellectualism, 22, 67, 92
Invitation, 3, 6, 15, 16, 2729, 47, 55,
6263, 84, 113, 116, 131, 157, 176,
195, 206, 263, 307, 393, 411, 421,
442443, 449, 453
Jesus Christ, 40, 43, 45, 204, 205,
246, 252, 265, 271, 272, 393
397
Knowledge
Scientic, 7, 30
Construction, 239
Cognitio et comprehensio, 109
Relational, 8
And senses, 77
Imitation, 5762, 234
Knowledge of God
Bipolarity, 14
Clarity, 60
Cognitio dei, 7, 319
Cognitio duplex et simplex, 81,
82, 8586
Fountains, 14, 21, 424, 425, 439
God known by God, 275, 282,
293
Immediate, 75
Notitia, 25
Soteriological, 1415, 40, 287
Partial, 13
Participation in, 264265, 347
Practical, 27
Proofs of, 232, 241242
Self-knowledge, 24
Senses, 8, 15, 7584
Succeeding, 294
Labyrinth, 167
Language, 5257, 282283, 422
Lex naturalis, 74
476 index of terms
Libertines, 54, 162
Lichterlehre, 395, 439, 440
Limits, 1617, 29, 115116, 124
Means, 74, 103, 184, 194, 271, 420,
425, 435, 451452
Mediator, 43
Merits, 155156, 171, 183
Metaphysics, 10, 147, 233236, 241,
321
Millenialism, 50
Minority, 228
Mirror, 6, 1517, 45, 57, 63, 93, 100,
105106, 112115, 117, 119, 122,
124, 150, 152, 154, 156, 160, 172,
184186, 199, 201, 204, 225, 228,
278, 292, 299, 301, 305308, 314,
351, 361362, 373, 381382, 387,
419, 425426, 438, 440, 442443,
450, 453
Modality, 262263
Modernity, 5, 226, 251, 256, 270,
417418
Early modern, 5, 64, 241
Postmodern, 5, 422, 423
Premodern, 4, 5, 143, 144, 194,
256
Morticatio-vivicatio, 157
Mystagogy, 295
Mystery, 266
Nature, 240, 291292, 303
Natural theology, 81, 255, 274, 288,
299, 303, 308, 310313, 391, 428,
437, 440
Nature psalms, 306307
Necessity, 150, 168, 327, 328
Necessitas antecedens et conse-
quens, 179
Coactio, 150
Negative connection, 256, 261
Neo-orthodoxy, 4, 312, 389
Noetic, 71, 279, 412414
Noumenal world, 231
Obedience, 103, 328
Objectivism, 12, 201, 293, 385
Oce, 194, 393, 407
Prophetic, 393394
Ontological connection, 402, 412
Opacity, 139
Optics, 59
Ordo/ordinatio, 59, 147, 155, 168,
185, 440
Ontological and moral order,
231
Ordo salutis, 61, 62, 108, 122
Paris articles, 130, 182
Partner, 132, 270, 320321, 366, 392,
400401, 407408
Pedagogy, 49, 345
Perlocution, 53
Personalism, 191, 213
Persuasion, 53, 110, 310
Piety, 2526, 75, 82
Pilgrimage (peregrinatio), 60,
66, 79, 114, 116, 217, 229, 232,
434
Pneumatology, 2, 1617, 84, 291,
391, 440
Postulates, 231, 237, 245
Potentia absoluta et ordinata, 123,
176, 185, 356
Oboedentialis, 78, 180
Decretum concretum, 371
Decretum horribile, 165
Predestination, 18, 27, 111, 138, 158
174, 443
Parallelism, 164166
Reprobation, 161, 363364
Presentia realis, 107, 206, 213
Profane sphere, 396, 418
Prolegomena, 2122, 86, 259
Providence, 128, 133138, see also
God
Power, see potentia absoluta et
ordinata
Prot, 2526, 110121, 123, 139, 170
174
Psychology, 93, 113, 265, 269, 270,
345, 433434
Public interest, 18, 23, 3031, 217,
253254, 417
 index of terms
Rationalism, 37
Realism, 248, 263, 292, 396, 401,
425
Regulative idea, 242
Relationality, 144145, 212, 333
Reprobation, see predestination
Respect, 25
Rhetoric, 52, 93, 109
Revelation
Dialectic of veiling and unveiling,
276278, 282, 296297, 305,
309, 373, 380, 409, 422
423
Encounter, 9, 10, 190191, 211,
219, 264, 294, 297, 320
Mystery, 9, 266
Plural, 92, 259, 266, 284, 331,
333, 382, 397
Positivism, 4
Propositional, 56, 94, 397
Realism, 248, 293
Self-revelation, 11, 260, 265, 293,
320, 329335, 382, 436
Singular, 272, 284
Sacrament, 6, 44, 195221, 271
272, 299, 387, 391401, 450
453
Doubleness of, 404
Cognitive plus, 197199
Flesh and blood, 196, 202, 208
213
Means of salvation, 409
Satire, 37
School, 83, 101102
Scientia media, 357
Scopus, 89, 105, 156, 184
Scotism, 122, 174
Scripture, 55, 8493, 102, 424
Authority, 91, 9697
Mirror, 62
Self-examination, 3637, 111112
Senses, 10, 47, 6869, 7584, 198,
219220
Sensibility, 339, 453
Sensus divinitatis, 7074, 83,
248
477
Sensus conscientiae, 70, 73, 83
Signum, 195200, 399
Soul, 37, 6470, 6769
Spectacles, 6263, 90
Speculation, 43, 56, 62, 116, 118120,
124, 176, 301, 318, 321, 349351,
382, 397
Spirit, 4041, 45, 63, 78, 90, 93103,
106, 127128, 200, 218219, 284,
398, see also pneumatology and
means
Inhabitation of the, 7778
Sealed by the, 98, 108, 171
Spiritualism, 51, 194, 201
Stoicism, 64, 75, 128129
Story, 386, 451
Student, 186, 235
Subject, 11, 47, 5657, 7778, 99,
103, 191, 227, 232, 258, 267,
293, 313, 369, 401, 410, 447
448
Absolute, 282
Substitation motif, 73, 87
Supper, 46, 49, 189
Supra- and infralapsarianism, 376
377, 445446
Synergism, 385386
Teaching, 56, 92, 94
Terministic logic, 123
Testimony, 11, 264, 398
Theater, 7778, 111
Theodicy, 78, 140, 142, 341443,
375376
Theologia archetypa et ectypa, 271
Time, 319, 347, 384385
Tolerance, 74, 228
Transsubstantiation, 192193, 204
Trinity, 124, 129, 260, 282, 371
372
Trust, 131, 148, 156158
Ubiquity, 205, 216217
Universality, 227, 341342, 391
Of God, 83, 310, 440
Of grace, 369370, 377378, 413,
444
478 index of terms

Via moderna et antiqua, 122 Wet nurse, 47, 434

Visual Arts, 8081, 332333, Will (Voluntas), 67, 105, 356358
425 Word, 8995, 258, 392
Voluntarism, 67, 110, 174 And Spirit, 82, 95103, 436437
 Studies in the History
of Christian Traditions
(formerly Studies in the History of Christian Thought)

EDITED BY ROBERT J. BAST

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2. GOERTZ, H.-J. Innere und ussere Ordnung in der Theologie Thomas Mntzers. 1967
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5. MILNER, Jr., B. Ch. Calvins Doctrine of the Church. 1970. Out of print
6. TIERNEY, B. Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350. 2nd ed. 1988
7. OLDFIELD, J. J. Tolerance in the Writings of Flicit Lamennais 1809-1831. 1973
8. OBERMAN, H. A. (ed.). Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era. 1974. Out of print
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10. FARR, W. John Wyclif as Legal Reformer. 1974
11. PURCELL, M. Papal Crusading Policy 1244-1291. 1975
12. BALL, B. W. A Great Expectation. Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism. 1975
13. STIEBER, J. W. Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Empire. 1978. Out of print
14. PARTEE, Ch. Calvin and Classical Philosophy. 1977
15. MISNER, P. Papacy and Development. Newman and the Primacy of the Pope. 1976
16. TAVARD, G. H. The Seventeenth-Century Tradition. A Study in Recusant Thought. 1978
17. QUINN, A. The Confidence of British Philosophers. An Essay in Historical Narrative. 1977
18. BECK, J. Le Concil de Basle (1434). 1979
19. CHURCH, F. F. and GEORGE, T. (ed.). Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History. 1979
20. GRAY, P. T. R. The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451-553). 1979
21. NIJENHUIS, W. Adrianus Saravia (c. 1532-1613). Dutch Calvinist. 1980
22. PARKER, T. H. L. (ed.). Iohannis Calvini Commentarius in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos. 1981
23. ELLIS, I. Seven Against Christ. A Study of Essays and Reviews. 1980
24. BRANN, N. L. The Abbot Trithemius (1462-1516). 1981
25. LOCHER, G. W. Zwinglis Thought. New Perspectives. 1981
26. GOGAN, B. The Common Corps of Christendom. Ecclesiological Themes in Thomas More. 1982
27. STOCK, U. Die Bedeutung der Sakramente in Luthers Sermonen von 1519. 1982
28. YARDENI, M. (ed.). Modernit et nonconformisme en France travers les ges. 1983
29. PLATT, J. Reformed Thought and Scholasticism. 1982
30. WATTS, P. M. Nicolaus Cusanus. A Fifteenth-Century Vision of Man. 1982
31. SPRUNGER, K. L. Dutch Puritanism. 1982
32. MEIJERING, E. P. Melanchthon and Patristic Thought. 1983
33. STROUP, J. The Struggle for Identity in the Clerical Estate. 1984
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36. GUY, B. Domestic Correspondence of Dominique-Marie Varlet, Bishop of Babylon, 1678-1742. 1986
37. 38. CLARK, F. The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues. I. II. 1987
39. PARENTE, Jr. J. A. Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition. 1987
40. POSTHUMUS MEYJES, G. H. M. Hugo Grotius, Meletius. 1988
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43. KIRBY, W. J. T. Richard Hookers Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy. 1990
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49. MARTIN, D. D. Fifteenth-Century Carthusian Reform. The World of Nicholas Kempf. 1992
50. HOENEN, M. J. F. M. Marsilius of Inghen. Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought. 1993
51. OMALLEY, J. W., IZBICKI, T. M. and CHRISTIANSON, G. (eds.). Humanity and Divinity in
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53. STUMP, Ph. H. The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414-1418). 1994
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56. TRIGG, J. D. Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther. 1994
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61. BROWN, M.L. Donne and the Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England. 1995
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63. SNOEK, G. J.C. Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist. A Process of Mutual Interaction. 1995
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69. BOLAND O.P., V. Ideas in God according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Sources and Synthesis. 1996
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