Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed: Essays on Barth and Other Themes

By George Hunsinger

In this book prominent Barth scholar George Hunsinger presents fifteen essays on Karl Barth’s understanding of Christian doctrine across a wide spectrum of topics, concluding with suggestions as to how Barth’s theology might fruitfully be retrieved for the future.

Hunsinger discusses Barth’s view on such subjects as the Trinity, creation, natural theology, Christology, justification, and time and eternity. As he delves into Barth’s theological substance, Hunsinger highlights ways in which Barth’s work was evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed, illuminating the ecumenical aspects of his thought. No other volume explains Barth’s views on this range of topics with such scope, depth, and clarity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Apr 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781467443074

George Hunsinger

George Hunsinger is McCord Professor of SystematicTheology at Princeton Theological Seminary and therecipient of the 2010 Karl Barth Prize from the Union ofEvangelical Churches in Germany.

Book preview

Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed

Doctrinal Essays on Barth and Related Themes

George Hunsinger

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 2015 George Hunsinger

All rights reserved

Published 2015 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunsinger, George.

[Essays. Selections]

Evangelical, Catholic, and reformed: doctrinal essays on Barth and related themes /

George Hunsinger.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6550-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

eISBN 978-1-4674-4307-4 (ePub)

eISBN 978-1-4674-4267-1 (Kindle)

1. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968.

2. Theology, Doctrinal. I. Title.

BX4827.B3H864 2015

230′.044092 — dc23

2014043825

www.eerdmans.com

To Hans-­Anton Drewes,

archivist extraordinaire,

whose invaluable contribution to Barth scholarship

will be of benefit for generations to come

Contents

Cover

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Karl Barth on the Trinity

2. The Trinity after Barth:

Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jüngel, and Torrance

3. Election and the Trinity:

Twenty-­Five Theses on the Theology of Karl Barth (Revised)

4. Uncreated Light:

From Irenaeus and Torrance to Aquinas and Barth

5. The Yes Hidden in Barth’s No to Brunner:

The First Commandment as a Theological Axiom

6. Post-Critical Scriptural Interpretation:

Rudolf Smend on Karl Barth

7. Salvator Mundi: Three Types of Christology

8. Schleiermacher and Barth:

Two Divergent Views of Christ and Salvation

9. The Daybreak of the New Creation:

Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology

10. A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Luther, Calvin, and Barth

11. Barth on Justification and Sanctification

12. Justification: Ninety-­Four Theses

13. Barth on What It Means to Be Human:

A Christian Scholar Confronts the Options

14. Barth on Jesus, Lord of Time (Hebrews 13:8)

15. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Theologian: Reading Karl Barth from the Inside Out

Appendix A: How to Read Karl Barth:

Preface to the German Edition

Appendix B: Introduction to Barth’s God Here and Now

Index

Acknowledgments

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Some Protestant Doctrines after Barth, in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford University Press, 2012). Reprinted by permission.

The Trinity After Barth: Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jüngel, Torrance. A shorter version appeared in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. by Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford University Press, 2012). Reprinted by permission.

Election and Trinity: Twenty-­Five Theses, in Modern Theology 24.2 (2008): 179-198. Reprinted by permission.

Uncreated Light: From Irenaeus and Torrance to Aquinas and Barth, in Light from Light: Scientists and Theologians in Dialogue, ed. Gerald O’Collins and Mary Ann Meyers (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012). Reprinted by permission.

The Yes Hidden in Barth’s No to Brunner. First appeared as Karl Barth, in The Decalogue through the Centuries, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012). Reprinted by permission.

Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation: Rudolf Smend on Karl Barth, in Thy Word Is Truth: Barth on Scripture, ed. George Hunsinger (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012). Reprinted by permission.

"Salvator Mundi: Three Types of Christology," in Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders (Zondervan, 2013). Reprinted by permission.

Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology. First appeared as The Daybreak of the New Creation: Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology, in Scottish Journal of Theology 57.2 (2004): 163-81.

A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Luther, Calvin and Barth, in Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 37 (2001): 316-38. Reprinted by permission.

Barth on Justification and Sanctification. Entries in The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth, ed. Richard Burnett (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013). Reprinted by permission.

Justification: Ninety-­Four Theses in Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie, forthcoming. Reprinted by permission.

Barth on What It Means to be Human, in Christian Scholarship in the 21st Century, ed. Thomas M. Crisp and Greg Ten Elshof (Wm. B. Eerdmans, forthcoming). Reprinted by permission.

Barth on Jesus, Lord of Time (Heb. 13:8). A portion of this chapter appeared in Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 43 (2007). Reprinted by permission.

The Loneliness of the Long-­Distance Theologian (unpublished).

"How to Read Karl Barth: Preface to the German Edition" (unpublished). (German edition: George Hunsinger, Karl Barth Lesen (Neukirchener Verlag, 2009).

Introduction to Barth’s God Here and Now (Routledge Classics, 2003). Reprinted by permission.

Abbreviations

References to Barth’s Church Dogmatics are listed in the text by volume and part number as follows: (II/1), for example, is the abbreviation for vol. II, part 1.

rev. means revised translation.

Introduction

The title of this book points more toward Barth’s theological substance than toward his historical location. It seems more fitting to highlight some of the ways in which his work was evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed than to pin him down with historicizing classifications like modern, post-­modern, or even pre-­modern. Of course Barth was modern in some ways, post-­modern in others, and in certain respects perhaps even pre-­modern. Because his work overlapped these categories, it could not belong to any one of them in a thoroughgoing way.

Barth was modern, for example, in his concern for theological epistemology, his acceptance of biblical criticism, his tilt toward universal hope, and his stress on the unity of dogmatics and ethics, including social justice and peace. But it would be fair to say that his approach to figures from this era was thoroughly eclectic rather than thoroughly modern. To be sure, he would raid modernity to unearth usable ideas, which he described as despoiling the Egyptians. But at the same time he could also chasten modernity insofar as it attempted to establish itself as the Supreme Court before whose bar Christian theology had to bow. When necessary he felt free to unmask modernity as a false lord because he knew a different Lord. His approach to moderns like Feuerbach, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kant was therefore always a mix of openness and reserve. He knew how to say yes to them but also, famously, to say no. In recent scholarship his borrowings from such figures, and perhaps most especially from Kant, have sometimes been overstated.

Affinities with the post-­modern, on the other hand, can be seen in Barth’s eclecticism, in his non-­foundationalist approach to justified beliefs, in his ranking of the particular over the universal in Christian theology, and in his implicit sense that finite human beings have no independent access to God but always only under a received description. His eclecticism found expression in his aversion to all closed metaphysical systems or ontologies, his non-­foundationalism was connected with his rejection of natural theology, his particularism with his sense of Christ’s radical singularity as mediated by Nicaea and Chalcedon, and his soft perspectivalism with his emphasis on the absolute indispensability and yet the utter inadequacy of all our concepts for God, even those received normatively by revelation. Such post-­modern tendencies in Barth clearly have ancient roots, which only serves to underscore the limited usefulness of historicizing classifications.

Finally, the pre-­modern elements in Barth cluster around his heavy reliance on the themes of miracle and mystery. Neither modernity nor post-­modernity is prepared to accommodate such outmoded thought-­forms. Resort to them tends to elicit little more than scorn, as if God’s presence in our midst were not always an absolute miracle and as if the necessity of dialectical thinking in theology could be dismissed as mystery-­mongering. Dialectic, for Barth, was indeed a way of negotiating the ineffable mystery of the triune God who reveals himself in history while always remaining transcendent, free, and elusive. Miracle, for Barth, on the other hand, was a category grounded in the great miracles of creation, incarnation, and resurrection, to which all lesser miracles were ordered and by which they were critically grasped. New Testament stories of the Virgin Birth and the empty tomb, for example, were not so much significant in themselves as in the incarnation and the resurrection they attested. To that extent, however, they were indispensable. These pre-­modern themes in Barth were thus informed by a certain modern or post-­modern sensibility.

The substance of Barth’s theology was certainly evangelical, but more nearly in the European than the American sense. That is, it was more nearly confessionalist than conversionist, being oriented essentially toward the Protestant Reformation, to which he attempted to provide a new interpretation. The discussions of justification by faith in this book, as found in chapters 10, 11, and 12, reflect Barth’s approach to this, the Reformation’s central theme. How Barth also appropriated the key Reformation maxim of sola scriptura is suggested by chapter 6 on post-­critical scriptural interpretation.

At the same time, Barth understood his dogmatics to be ecumenical in intention. His profound appreciation of Nicaea and Chalcedon represents the Catholic substance of his thought. The Reformation shared with Catholicism a Nicene Christianity for which the doctrines of the Trinity, the creation, a high view of the person of Christ, and Christ’s resurrection were all equally indispensable. Indeed, I myself think that from an ecumenical standpoint we might do well to start thinking of the world’s Nicene Christians as falling into Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Reformational Catholic subdivisions, seeking to recover a lost unity. In any case, the Catholic themes in Barth regarding the Trinity, the creation, a high Christology, and Christ’s bodily resurrection are discussed in chapters 1, 2, 4, 7, and 9.

The doctrine of election has always been a distinctive aspect of Reformed theology, while Friedrich Schleiermacher and Emil Brunner were distinguished modern Reformed theologians. An important element in Barth’s approach to the doctrine of election is discussed in chapter 3. Schleiermacher and Brunner make appearances in chapters 5, 8, and 13. These chapters defy tidy classification, however, since they include much in substance that is Catholic or evangelical (or both) as well. Barth knew that Reformed theology could not really be Reformed without these latter elements.

Also resisting a tidy classification are the chapters in the final portion of this book. Nothing in Barth is more challenging or more jaw-­dropping than his conception of time and eternity. An aspect of this important theme is developed in chapter 14. Although Barth was highly influential in his day, he was also paradoxically isolated at the same time. Chapter 15 attempts to capture his own sense of loneliness, while also providing some suggestions about how his theology might be fruitfully retrieved for the future. The appendixes to this volume offer further guidance about how to read Karl Barth along with a sketch of his theological profile.

Chapter One

Karl Barth on the Trinity

Prior to Karl Barth the doctrine of the Trinity had played a minor role in modern Protestant theology. The tone was set in the eighteenth century by Immanuel Kant, who stated that trinitarian doctrine offered absolutely nothing worthwhile for practical life. Friedrich Schleiermacher, in turn, would relegate the doctrine to what was essentially an appendix because he could find nothing in it of constitutive significance for the consciousness of God. All this dramatically changed after Barth. By front-­loading the doctrine, jarringly, at the very outset of his dogmatics, he not only managed to reorient Protestant theology back toward the great catholic tradition. At the same time, he also sparked a major revival of interest in the ancient doctrine itself, one that surged in the second half of the twentieth century and that shows no signs of abating to this day.

Barth’s own treatment of the doctrine was characteristically subtle, deep, and idiosyncratic. It has not always been well understood. Synthetic attempts to summarize his views invariably tend to miss a great deal. Perhaps the best procedure would be to unpack his account by following the order in which he presents it (I/1, 295-489). His later use and development of the doctrine did not depart from these basic outlines.

God in His Revelation: The Place of the Doctrine

of the Trinity in Dogmatics (I/1, 295-304)

Barth was well aware that the doctrine of the Trinity had rarely been accorded the prominence he allotted to it. In putting the doctrine of the Trinity at the head of all dogmatics, we are adopting a very isolated position from the standpoint of dogmatic history (I/1, 300). By way of precedent he could unearth only Lombard and Bonaventure. He considered it strange that Christian theology should so often have begun by developing a principle of knowledge (principium cognoscendi) divorced from the triune God as the actual content of faith. This approach could only mean that God’s existence, nature and attributes were dealt with apart from the concrete givenness of what Christians call ‘God’ (I/1, 300).

Barth proposed the following axiom: The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian, and therefore what already distinguishes the Christian concept of revelation as Christian, in contrast to all other possible doctrines of God or concepts of revelation (I/1, 301). This proposition, which yoked the Trinity with revelation, would be of seminal importance for everything Barth went on to say.

How was the doctrine of the Trinity related to the concept of revelation? Barth’s answer was deceptively simple. Many interpreters have been misled by it. They have assumed that he intended to derive his doctrine of the Trinity from his idea of revelation. Although not entirely wrong, this assumption misses the central point. It must be admitted, however, that Barth could have been clearer about what he was trying to accomplish.

Take, for example, the centerpiece of his opening section: "God reveals himself. He reveals himself through himself. He reveals himself" (I/1, 296). One and the same God reiterated himself in a threefold way as the Revealer, the act of revelation (objectively), and the perpetual impartation of that revelation (subjectively). The point of these formulations was not primarily that the doctrine of the Trinity derives from revelation. The point was rather that revelation has a trinitarian structure. The first statement alluded to the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit. Barth was unpacking the idea that the Father reveals himself through the Son and in the Spirit. Apart from his act of revelation, God would remain hidden to us. But the hidden God who reveals himself is none other than the triune God. The acting Subject in the event of revelation is the Holy Trinity.

Barth was not attempting to derive the dogma of the Trinity from these observations. The force of his argument was not so much epistemological as logical or analytical. He was not trying to explain how the dogma of the Trinity is acquired. He was presupposing the dogma and using it to interpret revelation. Of course, he also believed that it is only through revelation that the dogma arises. Nevertheless, the question of derivation was secondary to his concerns. He was not deriving the dogma, but explaining revelation by making explicit its trinitarian grammar.

A weakness in Barth’s presentation may be mentioned at this point. When discussing the doctrine of the Trinity, he never paid sufficient attention (arguably) to the question of derivation. Had he done so, he would have been required to place more emphasis on at least two other matters, namely, reconciliation and worship. The doctrine of the Trinity arises for the church because it confesses the full deity of Jesus Christ. Along with its biblical attestation, the mystery of Christ’s deity is indispensable to the doctrines of revelation, reconciliation, and worship. Barth’s relative neglect of reconciliation and worship in this context, alongside his heavy emphasis on revelation, left his trinitarian doctrine with a certain imbalance.

God in His Revelation:

The Root of the Doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 304-33)

Barth was not only presupposing the dogma of the Trinity, he was also testing and confirming it. Was it just a hoary museum piece from the past, as much modern theology had presupposed, or was it essential to the faith of the church? Despite the objection that the dogma as such could not be found in the Bible, Barth wanted to show that it was materially valid and legitimate — that it was a good interpretation of the Bible (I/1, 310). His strategy for demonstrating this point was both biblical and theological. Along with several lengthy and ingenious excurses of biblical exegesis, he turned again, theologically, to the concept of revelation. The basis or root of the doctrine of the Trinity, if it has one and is thus legitimate dogma — and it does have one and is thus legitimate dogma — lies in revelation (I/1, 311).

The question of legitimacy, as Barth tackled it, was, once again, more nearly logical than epistemological. Analysis would show that the dogma of the Trinity was rooted in revelation because revelation could not be understood apart from it. Although it was the Trinity’s epistemological source, revelation was here set forth from the standpoint of being its conceptual basis. (The word root, by the way, was misleading insofar as it pointed interpreters in an epistemological direction. Root as used by Barth in this context meant primarily logical or conceptual basis.) Revelation presupposed the doctrine of the Trinity, even as the Trinity interpreted the concept of revelation. Barth’s argument was essentially coherentist. It made a case that the doctrine of the Trinity was logically necessary to the concept of revelation.

Barth presented the doctrine as an interpretation of revelation (I/1, 312). "We arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity by no other way than that of an analysis of the concept of revelation. Conversely, if revelation is to be interpreted aright, it must be interpreted as the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 312; italics added). The doctrine and the concept, Trinity and revelation, were mutually implicated in one another but were not to be seen as identical. Revelation was not to be confused or equated with the doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 310), nor could the doctrine be seen as an exhaustive interpretation" of the concept (I/1, 312). Barth was offering a trinitarian interpretation of revelation, not a revelational doctrine of the Trinity.

In conclusion Barth stated:

We have been asking about the root of the doctrine of the Trinity, its root in revelation, not in any revelation, not in a general concept of revelation, but in the concept of revelation taken from the Bible. We have been asking whether revelation must be understood as the ground of the doctrine of the Trinity, whether the doctrine of the Trinity must be understood as having grown out of this soil. (I/1, 332; italics added)

Barth had subjected the idea of revelation to a detailed conceptual analysis. He had found that the biblical witness to revelation, when examined from several different standpoints, regularly involved three elements, which always say the same thing three times in three indissolubly different ways (I/1, 332). Various triadic formulas were set forth: unveiling, veiling and impartation, or form, freedom and historicity, or Easter, Good Friday and Pentecost (I/1, 332). From each standpoint, God was God three times as the objective act of revelation, the Revealer, and the subjective imparter of revelation (Son, Father and Spirit). As these varied triads confirm, Barth had been asking primarily about a conceptual basis for the doctrine as opposed to its epistemological source. As he would go on to note, the doctrine of the Trinity has not yet encountered us directly (I/1, 333). That would come later.

What Barth had established so far was that, from a logical point of view, assertions of trinitarian doctrine ought to be regarded as indirectly, though not directly, identical with those of the biblical witness to revelation (I/1, 333). Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity — being rooted, deeply and inextricably, in revelation — could not be dismissed as a non-­Church construct, i.e., one which was not necessary as such in the Church, one which did not arise in its day on the basis of Scripture — of the faith in God’s revelation to which Scripture gave rise — a doctrine dealing merely with a theme of pagan antiquity (I/1, 333 rev.). That was the point Barth had set out to prove on dogmatic theological grounds when he asked about the root of the doctrine.

God in His Revelation: Vestigium Trinitatis (I/1, 333-47)

The preceding discussion turned on distinguishing between a source of knowledge and a logical or conceptual basis. It was suggested that Barth’s metaphor about the root of the doctrine had more to do with the latter than the former. At the same time, however, care was taken not to rule out the idea that root could also mean source of knowledge, even though that meaning seemed to be secondary. If so, then a shift now needs to be noted. In discussing Vestiges of the Trinity, the root metaphor is employed to mean origin or source, not logical basis. If Barth moved between these two different meanings, as he seems to have done, he may not have been fully aware of it, nor did he clearly signal it to his readers.

Barth’s point in the new section is relatively simple. The doctrine of the Trinity, he argued, has only one source, not two. Not even if the two sources were ranked as superior and inferior or as primary and secondary could a second source be permitted. The mystery of the Trinity was unique, and its source of knowledge in revelation was likewise unique. Despite any superficial similarities, the Trinity stood beyond all analogies with anything in the created realm. Apart from God’s revelation in Christ, nothing in the created order could function as a source or basis by which God’s triune identity could be known. No line of continuity could be traced from any triadic features of worldly phenomena to the transcendent mystery of the Trinity. Therefore, no worldly features could function as a secondary source for knowledge of the triune God, and even illustrations were considered dubious.

Barth stated his point with some precision. There was no essential trinitarian disposition supposedly immanent in some creaturely realities, he argued, quite apart from their possible conscription by God’s revelation (I/1, 334). That would require an analogia entis, whereby traces of the Trinity would be found in being as such (I/1, 334). We would therefore need to assume a second root for the doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 335). Quite apart from biblical revelation, or alongside it, these worldly traces would function as a root or ground from which to develop the trinitarian dogma. It would then have to be asked, which of the two roots is primary and which secondary? Does the biblical doctrine simply confirm or supplement a knowledge of God that could be gained apart from biblical revelation? If the Trinity were somehow grounded in natural revelation alongside and independently of biblical revelation, then the worldly reality could easily overtake the transcendent reality, so that trinitarian ideas would finally be a determination of human existence in the world, and thus we would be back, Barth argued, in the realm of myth. It would be a matter of anthropology and cosmology but not theology (I/1, 335).

Barth dealt with the question of theological knowledge through the Reformation doctrine of grace alone. Grace and grace alone made possible what was otherwise impossible, not only with respect to salvation, but also with respect to knowledge of God. Although God’s radical transcendence of all things creaturely had been exacerbated by the abyss of sin, it was not sin and the fall but creation that Barth had in view when asking about vestiges of the Trinity. The condition for the possibility of knowing and speaking about God, he argued, resided solely in grace, not in any creaturely realities. When those realities were conscripted by grace, despite their radical incapacity, it could only be explained as a miraculous event grounded in God’s transcendent freedom.

In principle, therefore, language about God could not be fatally reversed (I/1, 334). It could not be changed into language about the creature, though in practice that danger would always loom (I/1, 344-46). We can only try to point to the fact that the root of the doctrine of the Trinity lies in revelation, and that it can lie only in this if it is not to become at once the doctrine of another and alien god (I/1, 346). It was always a matter of letting revelation speak for itself (I/1, 347). In adhering to this principle, Barth reasoned, we shall not be accepting a second root alongside the first, but just the one root of the doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 347).

The Triunity of God: Unity in Trinity (I/1, 348-53)

The word unity as given in the translation is potentially misleading here. Unity can carry the connotation that otherwise diverse elements have been unified or brought into harmony. However, although sharing the same possible connotation, the German word Einheit might more literally be translated as oneness. It is God’s oneness that Barth had in view.

God is one, for Barth, in three different senses: personal, ontological, and dominical. In the personal sense God is one as a single acting Subject. The God of the biblical witness, he urged, is always indissolubly Subject (I/1, 348). As the divine Thou, this personal, living God encounters the human subject as an I in order to establish with it a relationship of communion or fellowship (I/1, 348). God’s oneness as a personal acting Subject is always presupposed by God’s threeness and expressed in it. There is no divine threeness without this oneness.

In and with being irreducibly personal (I/1, 351), God’s oneness is also ontological. It is, wrote Barth, as well to note at this early stage that what we today call the ‘personality’ of God belongs to the one unique essence of God which the doctrine of the Trinity does not seek to triple but rather to recognise in its simplicity (I/1, 350). The notion of divine simplicity is underscored by quoting from the seventeenth-­century Leiden Synopsis: Now the essence of God is absolutely one, undivided and singular, and so to this extent our idea of the three persons cannot in any way be said to be that they are separate individuals (I/1, 350). God’s essence, or ousia, for Barth (as for the mainstream tradition) is ontologically simple and indivisible. God’s oneness is simple as well as personal.

Finally, God’s oneness is the oneness of the Lord. His essence is identical with his sovereignty and freedom. The essence of God is the being of God as divine being. The essence of God is the Godhead of God (I/1, 349). From the biblical standpoint, it is God’s essence that makes him what he is, namely, "the One he describes himself to be by this name [Yahweh], the name of the Lord" (I/1, 349). To say that God’s essence is his lordship means that his essence is personal, sovereign, and free. Modern naturalism and pantheism treat God as though God’s essence were impersonal, or personal only metaphorically in human experience (I/1, 351, 358).

Finally, in a way that remains to be explained more fully, God’s oneness consists in God’s threeness.

It may be said of this essence of God that its oneness is not only not abrogated by the threeness of the persons but rather that its oneness consists in the threeness of the persons. Whatever else we may have to say about this threeness, in no case can it denote a threeness of essence. The triunity of God does not mean threefold deity either in the sense of a plurality of Gods or in the sense of the existence of a plurality of individuals or parts within the one Godhead. (I/1, 349-50 rev.)

What is true of God’s self-­revelation in time is true antecedently of God’s being in eternity (I/1, 350). God is always God in threefold repetition, and not otherwise. The eternal God’s personal, ontological, and dominical oneness subsists in and through (and only in and through) his eternal threeness, never above it or behind it. This eternal equality of essence, and the full mutual implication of God’s threeness and oneness, rules out both subordinationism and modalism (I/1, 352-53).

The Triunity of God: Trinity in Unity (I/1, 353-68)

The threeness of the eternal God is no less constitutive, for Barth, than his oneness. Without God’s eternal threeness God would not be the God that he is. God’s oneness is logically but not ontologically prior to his threeness. Although the three cannot be defined without reference to God’s indivisible essence, they are nonetheless ontologically intrinsic to that essence. God’s essence, on the other hand, insofar as it is simple and indivisible, can be defined (provisionally) without reference to his threeness. The abstract logic of definitions is not to be confused with the concreteness of God’s essence as intrinsically trinitarian. The co-­equality of the three in status, dignity, and majesty depends, by definition, on their individual, mutual, and co-­eternal identity with God’s concrete, indivisible (and non-­generic) divine essence. Barth agreed with the Athanasian Creed: The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God (I/1, 349).

The three are not subordinate to the essence, nor is there any higher divine essence apart from or behind the three. The three subsist in and only in the essence, even as the reverse is also true. The threeness is grounded in the one essence of the revealed God (I/1, 360). Therefore, in denying the threeness in the oneness of God we should be referring at once to another God than the God revealed in Holy Scripture (I/1, 360 rev.). The three are not just an appearance to human perception with no independent or eternal reality. This threeness must be regarded as irremovable, and the distinctiveness of the three modes of being must be regarded as ineffaceable (I/1, 361).

When it comes to naming what sort of entity the three are, Barth concluded that there is no suitable category. In this respect he was in agreement with the broad tradition, as represented for example by Augustine and Anselm (I/1, 355-56). They all understood that the three are necessarily unique in kind and therefore ineffable. Neither the Latin term persona nor the Greek term hypostasis is without liabilities (I/1, 355-60, 365). The former can tend toward tritheism (if it suggests three centers of consciousness), and the latter toward modalism (if it cannot distinguish itself from ousia). For lack of a better option, Barth finally settled for mode of being as a literal translation of the concept πρόπος ὑπάρχεως or modus entitativus (I/1, 359). Nothing could be more superficial than to accuse Barth of modalism for this choice.

No analogies can be found for the mysterious identity of God’s threeness with his oneness, and of his oneness with his threeness. This is the unique divine threeness in the unique divine oneness (I/1, 364 rev.). For Barth as for the tradition, the three — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — are distinguished by their relations of origin (I/1, 363). The threeness in God’s oneness is grounded in these relations (I/1, 364), and these relations subsist eternally in the identity of God, not just in his relations to the world (a move that directly blocks modalism) (I/1, 364).

How can a concrete, indivisible essence repeat or reproduce itself eternally as three, while still remaining eternally one? How can relations of origin still be identical with the essence itself? Finally, how can they all be identical with the essence and yet remain indissolubly distinct? These questions, Barth suggested, point to matters that are inconceivable (I/1, 367). Theology means rational wrestling with the mystery, he wrote, and good theology will see to it "that the mysterium trinitatis remains a mystery" (I/1, 368).

The Triunity of God: Triunity (I/1, 368-75)

The doctrine of the Trinity pertains to oneness in threeness, and threeness in oneness (I/1, 368 rev.). These antithetical formulations, Barth proposed, must be held together in a tension of unity and distinction in their mutual relations. There can be no higher synthesis. Barth explained:

We cannot advance beyond these two obviously one-­sided and inadequate formulations. They are both one-­sided and inadequate because a slight overemphasis on the oneness is unavoidable in the first and a slight overemphasis on the threeness is unavoidable in the second. The term triunity is to be regarded as a conflation of the two formulae, or rather as an indication of the conflation of the two to which we cannot attain, and for which, then, we have no formula, but which we can know only as the incomprehensible truth of the object itself. (I/1, 368 rev.)

When he observed that the doctrine requires sharp tensions and peculiar modes of thought, Barth was approaching, in his own way, the stance that the poet Keats had called negative capability, the ability to accept that not everything can be resolved. Barth felt that this stance was exemplified, among others, by Gregory of Nazianzus, whom he quoted: I do not succeed in contemplating the one without being illumined on all sides by the three; I do not succeed in grasping the three without being led to the one (Ora. 40.41). I am unable to think of the one without being quickly surrounded by the brilliance of the three; nor am I able to discern the three without being immediately referred to the one (Ora. 40.41). The significance of statements like these, Barth suggested, is that they display a proper dialectic in the knowledge of the triune God (I/1, 369). They point to something beyond themselves that remains ineffable and utterly beyond speech (I/1, 369).

The idea of triunity was associated, for Barth, with two further ideas. The first involved God’s internal relations as described by the doctrine of perichoresis. Perichoresis meant that each of the divine modes of being participated in the others without any of them losing its distinctiveness. It meant their dynamic and eternal co-­inherence. The distinctions among them led, through mutual interpenetration, to their being in communion. The divine modes of being mutually condition and permeate one another so completely that one is always in the other two and the other two in the one (I/1, 370). The three dwell completely in and with one another in concert as modes of being of the one God and Lord who posits himself from eternity to eternity (I/1, 370).

The divine triunity also involved God’s external relations as described by the doctrine of appropriations. Some of God’s works are appropriated, for the sake of convenience, to a particular person of the Trinity. Creation, for example, is appropriated to the Father, reconciliation to the Son, and redemption to the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, it is understood that all three persons are involved in each of God’s external works because God himself is totally present in all his external works. In the famous phrase associated with Augustine, which Barth affirmed, the external works of the Trinity are indivisible (opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa) (I/1, 375).

These two ideas, Barth concluded, should be seen in dialectical contrast. On the one hand, perichoresis signifies God’s unity in Trinity (unitas in trinitate), while on the other hand, the appropriations show God’s Trinity in unity (trinitas in unitate). Together they represent a dialectical outworking of the concept of triunity (I/1, 375).

The Meaning of the Doctrine of the Trinity (I/1, 375-83)

Barth summed up his findings with a dialectical flourish. The oneness of God is constituted by his three modes of being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the same time, God’s threefold otherness is constituted by his ineffable oneness. In the doctrine of the Trinity the divine mystery must be expounded through oneness in threeness and threeness in oneness (I/1, 375). Dialectic is the technical device by which to set forth the mystery.

God’s ontological oneness entails that the persons of the Trinity are co-­equal. No more or less exists in God’s being. Subordinationism must therefore be rejected (I/1, 381). God’s ontological threeness, on the other hand, entails that the divine persons are also co-­eternal. No higher being exists in which God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Modalism must be rejected as well (I/1, 382).

In short, God is eternally God in his three modes of being as Father, Son, and Spirit. As manifest in his self-­revelation by which he wills to be ours, his external works of creation, reconciliation, and redemption have their basis and prototype in himself, in his own essence, in his triune being as God (I/1, 383).

God the Father: God as Creator (I/1, 384-90)

Each divine person would now be examined in detail. Barth began by stating his thesis about God the Father. The one God, he wrote, reveals himself according to Scripture as the Creator, that is, as the Lord of our existence. As such he is God our Father because he is so antecedently in himself as the Father of the Son (I/1, 384). On the basis of scriptural revelation, God is disclosed as our Father, Creator, and Lord. What God is for us (historically) is always based on what God is in himself (eternally). God can be the heavenly Father of his historical creatures because he is eternally the Father of the Son.

God the Father is our Creator and Lord. As Creator, God belongs to a different kind and order than the creature (I/1, 384). He is at once absolutely distinct and yet also absolutely related to the creature (I/1, 389), existing in a sphere beyond human history (by nature) and yet also at history’s very center (by grace) (I/1, 384).

As the beyond in our midst, God the Creator is also our Lord. Although he is absolutely superior to the creature, he does not remain aloof, but claims the creature with the same absoluteness (I/1, 384). God’s lordship cannot be reversed, as though the creature could claim lordship over God (as the benighted creature would attempt to do). The creature depends absolutely on the Lord for its existence and on the same Lord for its deliverance from death.

Death in all its severity is the radical crisis of human existence. Yet through it the Lord God intends to lead us by a new birth to eternal life (I/1, 388). This benevolence in all its strangeness shows that the Lord God is also our Father. Human existence, Barth explained, has an Author who calls it into existence and sustains it in existence, out of free goodness and according to his own free will and plan (I/1, 389 rev.). God our Father is the Creator who posits us as well as the Lord who judges us and delivers us from death. Our existence, wrote Barth, is sustained by him and by him alone above the abyss of non-­existence (I/1, 389).

That our Creator and Lord is also