Who is the Subject of Resurrection? (Part I)

Since it is one of the central questions of my current research, I am revisiting the question Who is the subject of Christ's resurrection? this week. In other words, who raised Jesus from the dead?

Well, the obvious short answer is "God." But as things go for Christian faith seeking understanding, the short answer "God" inevitably requires further reflection. Because Christians don't talk about God without soon talking about Jesus Christ,which means making recourse to some variation of the doctrine of the trinity.

Here's two main ways of thinking about the question: (1) the Son raised himself, and (2) the Father raised the Son. I'm going to sketch the first way this week. I intend to follow-up soon with a sketch of the second option, followed eventually by an approach that attempts to critical appropriate the best insights of each.

So, on to the first option.

(1) The Son raised himself.

This is the "classical" approach, inasmuch as it can be found in a number of major figures in the history of Christian theology. It is where you would tend to end up taking your cue from traditional trinitarian theology. If God raised Jesus from the dead, and Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, then Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead. Actually, to be more precise, we'd need to say that Jesus Christ as God raised himself as human from the dead. But even with these specifications in place, one cannot avoid the reflexive pronouns entirely. The bottom line is the the Son raised himself.

Now this can be expanded in two directions. The first direction expands this through the lens of the incarnation: the divine nature hypostatically united to the human nature empowers (by deification) the human Jesus to overcome death. Death can't hold this man in the grave, because he is not just a man but God incarnate. In this line of thought, the divine nature is like a bomb that goes off in the grave and so frees the human nature from death. You find this sort of line developed by Alexandrian characters such as Athanasius and Cyril -- with more sophistication, of course.

The other direction (which does not contradict but in fact complements the first) expands this through the lens of the trinity: the triune God raised the human Jesus. This line of thinking retains the reflexive sense of the Son's self-raising by following through on the rule that the works of the trinity outside itself are indivisible. Because each triune persons fully indwells the other, no one persons acts without the participation of the other two. But this line of thinking also accounts for the sense in which the resurrection is attributed to God the Father. The triune God acts upon creation indivisibly, yet on the basis of Scriptural warrant we may attribute (or, in the classical lingo, "appropriate") certain acts to certain triune persons. For example, we attribute creation to the Father, while acknowledging that the Son and Spirit also participate in that work; we attribute redemption to the Son, while acknowledging that the Father and Spirit also participate in that work; we attribute sanctification to the Spirit, while acknowledging that the Father and Son also participate in that work; etc. So, concerning Christ's resurrection, in light of Scriptural warrant we may attribute Christ's resurrection to the Father while also acknowledging that the Son himself as well as the Spirit participate in the raising of the dead human Jesus. (Note: you can find this sort of thinking in a number of medieval scholastics, most beautifully and compactly in St. Thomas Aquinas ST III, q. 53, a. 4).

Now despite the conceptual precision of this whole approach and the care with which it upholds seemingly contradictory but necessary affirmations, a big question looms large over the whole enterprise: Do the dead raise themselves? If Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead, then was Jesus Christ really dead? Isn't one of the main elements of the condition of death the loss of agency or subjectivity? Can one who raises himself from the dead really be said to have been dead? The clarifications and specifications outlined above cannot rid this whole approach of the looming suspicion that either Jesus didn't really die or God the Son didn't unite himself to the human Jesus in his death. In either case, we're in a pickle. What can be done about this?

It is in respond to these questions that an alternative view emerges, which I intend to sketch in a subsequent post. But for now:

Any thoughts?
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The Holy Spirit "resurrects" faith in us

Below is a passage in Barth that I have been busy interpreting today. What caught my eye is the pun on "awakening," that connects the resurrection of Christ and the Spirit's awakening of our faith in him, all against the implicit background of the Awakening as a technical term for German community movement (i.e., pietism). [Note: as some drulogion readers have already noticed, I'm in dissertation la la land right now and so most of what you'll get from me is Barth quotes for the next little while].

Okay here goes:

It is not he [the believer] that is strong when he believes, but rather the One in whom he believes shows himself to be strong over him when he believes: strong as the one who is raised again from the dead to awaken him first from the death of unbelief to the life of faith. Faith means to be awake on the basis of this awakening : to be awake to the strong One who awakens him and who along can awaken him; to be awake to the necessity with which he does this, a necessity which excludes all pseudo-freedoms; to be awake to the implicitness of the arising which, on the part of man, will directly follow his awakening. (KD IV/1, p. 836; ET: CD IV/1, p. 748)

And here's the my nerdy version with the relevant German words inserted:

It is not he [the believer] that is strong when he believes, but rather the One in whom he believes shows himself to be strong over him when he believes: strong as the one who is raised again (auferstanden) from the dead to awaken (erwecken) him first from the death of unbelief to the life of faith. Faith means to be awake (wach sein) on the basis of this awakening (Erweckens): to be awake (Wachsein) to the strong One who awakens (erweckt) him and who along can awaken (erwecken kann) him; to be awake (Wachsein) to the necessity with which he does this, a necessity which excludes all pseudo-freedoms; to be awake (Wachsein) to the implicitness of the arising (Aufstehens) which, on the part of man, will directly follow his awakening (Erwecken). (KD IV/1, p. 836; ET: CD IV/1, p. 748)

Any thoughts?
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What's At Stake in Christ's Resurrection? (revisited)

I've asked before on this blog, "What at stake in Christ's resurrection?" Here's another swing at it, but this time simply by quoting a series of questions Barth asks, and then quoting in brief the beginning of his answer. He pretty much puts the stakes this way: How could we come to know and so follow Jesus as Lord if he were not living one who reveals himself in the power of the Holy Spirit? But putting it so briefly doesn't do justice to how high the stake really are. So here goes:

"And it is only right that we should think of this first when we ask why the existence of Jesus Christ is so inaccessible to us. Is this the fulfilment of the covenant? Is this the Reconciler and Mediator between God and us men, the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world? Is this His revelation? What place is there in this lowliness for the true Son of God, and the true Son of Man? Was He not there only for a moment, and then no longer there; shown to us, but now--with all the appearance of finality--withdrawn; a short and beautiful dream on which we can only look back with deep disillusionment in our long and bitter waking moments? And what became, and becomes, of us if it is true that that exalted One was humiliated and shamed and put to death in our place, that the Son of God and Man asked finally in our name why God had forsaken Him? Is it that the incarnation of the Word, and therefore the existence of the Son of God as one of us, only makes clear what apart from Him we cannot do more than suspect--that we are all rejected and lost? Does it merely seal the impossibility of the human situation? And if it does mean anything more, if in His lowliness He is still the exalted One, the Lord and Deliverer, if His name still encloses the salvation of the world and our salvation, how can this be true for us when His death on the cross was His final work and Word? How can we know Him as the true Son of God and Man? How can we know His being for us in this concealment ? How can we cleave to Him or even believe that He is this, when this was His
end, and the door was slammed behind Him and bolted from within?

"The Christian community and the individual Christian believe that He was and is the Son of God and as such for us, and cling to this fact. If we assume that it is given to us to be Christians, we can and must say that we know Him even in this concealment He is our Lord and Hero, the Shepherd of the whole world and our Deliverer, even in this lowliness He has acted as the true Son of God even in His suffering of death on the cross And we are made alive and justified and sanctified and exalted to the status of the children of God and made heirs of eternal life in His execution. For it was in His humiliation that there took place the fulfilment of the covenant, the reconciliation of the world with God. It is in Him that we have our peace, and from Him our confidence and hope for ourselves and all men. Let us assume that we can believe this in our hearts and confess it with our lips. Where the Holy Spirit intervenes and is at work between Him and us as the Spirit of Jesus Christ, as the self-activation and self-revelation of the living Jesus Christ, we can believe and confess it in face of that hard antithesis Christ the Crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks (I Cor. 1:23f), but to those who are called He is the power of God and the wisdom of God."

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, pp. 349-50.

This comes from a section I am currently ruminating on while dissertating, so ...
Any thoughts?
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The Holy Spirit is not a magical third...

“The Holy Spirit is not a magical third between Jesus and us. God himself acts in his own most proper cause when in the Holy Spirit he mediates between the man Jesus and other humans. For God is not the great immovable and immutable one and all ... [but] the living God, and as such, our God, who really turns to us ... because in the first instance distance and confrontation, encounter and partnership, are to be found in himself”
- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 343

In Search of the Living God

I've been thinking about God's Life: the God who lives, the Life of God, God as Life, God's Livingness, the living God, the God of the living, etc. Here's some quotes from Barth on God's life in the context of his doctrine of God (II/1). Interestingly, "life" is not a stand alone attribute or perfection, but it emerges at two crucial points. First, as a correlate of the basal description of God's being as act (§28.1). Second, as the last word on the identify of divine eternity (§31.3). Since Barth's actualist interpretation of divine being and his unique approach to eternity are significant contributions of his theology, I think the placement of the concept of "life" within these contexts is important. Okay, here's the quotes:

The definition that we must use as a starting-point is that God's being is life. Only the Living is God. Only the voice of the Living is God's voice. Only the work of the Living is God's work; only the worship and fellowship of the Living is God's worship and fellowship. So, too, only the knowledge of the Living is knowledge of God... We recall in this connexion the emphatic Old and New Testament description of God as "the living God." This is no metaphor. Nor is it a mere description of God's relation to the world and to ourselves. But while it is that, it also describes God himself as the one he is. (II/1, §28.1, p. 262)

This is the last thing which we have to emphasise in connexion with the concept of eternity. Like every divine perfection it is the living God Himself. It is not only a quality which He possesses. It is not only a space in which He dwells. It is not only a form of being in which He shares, so that it could belong, if need be, to other realities as well, or exist apart from Him in itself* We cannot for one moment think of eternity without thinking of God, nor can we think of it otherwise than by thinking of God, by knowing Him and believing in Him and obeying Him-for there is no knowledge of God without this by loving Him in return when He has first loved us. Eternity is the living God Himself. This radically distinguishes the Christian knowledge of eternity from all religious and philosophical reflection on time and what might exist before and after time. It distinguishes it from all speculations about different aeons, all the mythologies of past, present and future worlds, their essence and their relations to one another. The Christian knowledge of eternity has to do directly and exclusively with God Himself, with Him as the beginning before all time, the turning point in time, and the end and goal after all time. This makes it a complete mystery, yet also completely simple. In the last resort when we think of eternity we do not have to think in terms of either the point or the line, the surface or space. We have simply to think of God Himself, recognising and adoring and loving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that we know eternity. For eternity is His essence. He, the living God, is eternity. And it is as well at this point, in relation to the threefold form of eternity, to emphasise the fact that He is the living God. (II/1, §31.3, p. 638-9).

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more... Especially concerning how the livingness of God relates to Christ's resurrection from the dead!

Any thoughts?
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Who is the Subject of Resurrection? Who is the Subject of Vocation?

Who is the acting subject of Christ's resurrection? Short answer: God. But to be faithful to scripture's witness to the risen Jesus, we must be more precise. Such precision requires recourse to some sort of "trinitarian" logic. We must speak of Jesus being raised by God the Father. We must speak of the rising of the Christ himself, the Son. We must speak of the Spirit by whom Jesus Christ was raised and now lives. And these three are one: the living triune God.

I have said all this before, and have shown how Karl Barth has taught me these moves. And I've tried to show some of the significance of this connection between resurrection and trinity. Let me indicate a further point of significance I just stumbled on this week. In his discussion of the event of vocation (CD IV/3, §71.2), Barth asks, who is the acting subject of vocation? Who calls humans to the service of witness? In the course of his answer, Barth draws on the trinitarian grammar of Easter:

If, in those passages which speak more generally of calling, God as well as Jesus Christ is described as the One who calls, this is not, of course, an indication that the New Testament knows two kinds of vocation, the one effected by God the Father, the other by Jesus Christ, and possibly a third by the Holy Spirit. It rather corresponds to, and is even interconnected with, the fact that in the New Testament there are also two ways of speak of the Easter event: on the one side, it is Christ's raising up by God the Father, and on the other it is his own resurrection, and a third possibility may perhaps be seen in Rom. 1:4 with its reference to the power of the Holy Spirit operative in this event. In both cases the statements are complementary. To the question of the concrete form in which God calls, the only answer is obviously that it is Jesus who does it in all the concreteness of his humanity. And to the question of how he does it, the only answer is obviously that in what this man does God is at work in his eternal mercy and omnipotence. The New Testament does not see two or three things here, but only one thing. (CD IV/3, p. 503, rev.; KD IV/3, p. 579)

So Barth argues for the living activity of Jesus Christ in the calling of humanity by reference to the triunity of God in the Easter event. Just as God in Christ is the subject of resurrection, so God in Christ is the subject of vocation. This point becomes crucial for Barth in securing the content of the doctrine of vocation Christologically: namely, that the the goal of vocation is sonship, fellowship, and union with Christ (§72.3), and that the concrete form of vocation is the service of witness to him for the sake of the world (§72.4).

Any thoughts?
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No Crying He Makes?

I have a series of questions this Christmas season...

Was the night of Jesus' birth a silent night? Did he really not make a cry?

Do we have reasons to say so? If so, what are they?

And then the real questions:

What do these reasons reveal about our assumptions regarding Jesus' identity and constitution?

What do they reveal about our assumptions regarding human nature?

What do they reveal about our definition of sin?

Any thoughts?
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Resurrection as Sanctification

Last time we addressed the trinitarian grammar of Christ's resurrection under the rubric God's verdict. But this is not the only vantage point from which we may and must consider the trinitarian grammar of Christ's resurrection. For the Father's justification of the Son and us in him by the power the Spirit is only one side of the coin. If we flip the coin over, we also see Christ's resurrection as the revelation of his exaltation, which had been hidden in his life of obedience unto death on a cross. The risen Christ reveals himself as the exalted human being, the one true covenant partner of God. This living Son gives to us direction: in the power of the Spirit he re-orients us and sets us on a new trajectory. The direction of the Son discloses our slothfulness and santfies us for a life of love. So Christ's resurrection is not only the verdict of the Father, but also the direction of the Son. In raising his Son Jesus from the dead, God not only pronounced a verdict for us but also gives a direction to us. [Note: here we continue to follow the train of Barth's thought, but now drawing on CD IV/2]

Just as with God's verdict, God's direction is in the first instance self-referential. This can be seen initially in the dual meaning of the genitive phrase "the direction of the Son." Genitives can either be subjective or objective. A subjective genitive renders the prepositional noun the subject of the main phrase, whereas an objective genitive renders the prepositional noun the object of the main noun. So, in this case, "the direction of the Son" as a subjective genitive means the direction which the Son gives, while the "direction of the Son" as an objective genitive means the direction given to the Son himself. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the Son's direction is given both to himself as the exalted human being and to us as those set apart to live lives that correspond to the exaltation achieved in him. The Son steps forward from among the dead and moves along the path from himself to us. He lives with this orientation and along this trajectory. And so the New Testament says not only that the Father has raised the Son but also that the Son rises, and even at times that he raises himself (cf. John 12). This is the self-referential activity of the Son in the event of the resurrection of Christ.

As is already evident, such self-referential language requires a trinitarian grammar. Just as with the resurrection as justifying verdict, so also the resurrection as sanctifying direction we must speak not only of "God" and "Christ" but also of "Father" and "Son." And the triune grammar of direction is both parrallel to and dialectically juxtaposed with the triune grammar of verdict. Christ's resurrection as divine verdict speaks in terms of humiliation: the Father in his omnipotent grace raised the humiliated Son of God. Christ's resurrection as divine direction speaks in terms of exaltation: the Son in his majesty rises as the exalted Son of Man. This two-fold trinitarian grammar of resurrection is grounded in the very mystery of God's life as triune: just as the "fatherly fellow-suffering of God is the mystery, the basis, of the humiliation of his Son," so also the "majesty of the Son of God is the mystery, the basis, of the exaltation of the Son of Man" (CD IV/2, pp. 357-8).

Now we cannot speak of the self-referential activity of God in abstraction from the action of God toward us, since the point of this self-referential activity is the revelation of our reconciliation and redemption. But we cannot make this turn without reference to a third piece of the divine puzzle: the Holy Spirit. We cannot understand Christ's resurrection as the direction of the Son without reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. But this post is already too long. So we will address this piece of the puzzle next week. For now, let us consider the risen Christ as the one who not only was raised for us and our justification but also rises toward us and our sanctification.

Any thoughts?

Resurrection as the Justification of God, Christ & Us

As some drulogion readers may already know, my dissertation research is focused on the relationship of Christ's resurrection to the doctrine of the Trinity in constructive conversation with Karl Barth. One big piece of this doctrinal puzzle is the extent to which the resurrection is a self-referential event for God. Does God act upon himself on Easter morn? I believe that the answer to this question is yes: God raised himself through himself. For such an answer to work, God must be a self-differentiated subject: the Father raised the Son through the Spirit. In other words, a triune grammar is necessary for resurrection proclamation, which in turn suggests that a triune ground is necessary for the resurrection event.

But this whole line of thinking might be taken to mean that the resurrection is some sort of divine self-enclosed event that has nothing to do with us. Nothing could be further from the truth! The point is that divine self-referential activity is good for us. God is good for us by first enacting himself in history. In so doing God actualizes his goodness to us and so assures us. In raising his son from the dead, God the Father confirms himself as the creator and in so doing secures us as his creatures. In being raised from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ receives grace from God the Father on our behalf, and so comes to us as one of us. The Spirit who testifies with our spirit that we are children of God does not assure by merely speaking as one more voice demanding blind trust, but by pointing us to the living risen Jesus Christ in whom God has acted for us.

All this serves as an introduction to a quote I'd like to place before you for your consideration. It comes from one of Karl Barth's discussions of the resurrection entitled "The Verdict of the Father" (Chuch Dogmatics IV/1, §69.3). In this summative statement, Barth displays the inner connection of God's self-referential and other-referential activity as they find their unity, distiction and order in Jesus Christ. The argument is put in terms of justification (befitting the forensic context of CD IV/1): God's justification of himself, of Jesus Christ, and of us in him. Here you go:

To sum up, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the great verdict of God, the fulfillment and proclamation of God's decision concerning the event of the cross... In this [acceptance of the act of the Son of God] the resurrection is the justification of God himself, of God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, who has willed and planned and ordered this event. It is the justification of Jesus Christ, his son, who willed to suffer this event, and suffered it to the very last. And in his person it is the justification of all sinful humans, whose death was decided in this event, for whose life there is therefore no more place. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ his life and with it their life has in fact become an event beyond death: "Because I live, you shall live also" (Jn. 14:19). (CD IV/1, p. 309, rev.)

Any thoughts?

• To what extent are we permitted and encouraged to speak of God's self-referential activity? On what basis can we do so? What are the dangers?
• Does hearing of God's self-referential activity give you a greater sense of assurance? Why or why not?
• What other pay-offs might there be in rooted God's activity on behalf of us in God's self-referential activity?

Total Depravity and Parental Discipline

From time to time I hear new parents say that they did not believe in original sin until they had children. Although this is meant partially in jest, it is also meant as a theological claim. It ought to be considered as such, for at least some parents either explicitly or implicitly draw disciplinary implications from this claim. Children are born totally depraved and therefore parents may and must execute harsh discipline, or so the argument goes. Is this a legitimate practical inference from the doctrine of total depravity? I contend that it is not, because said inference betrays a misunderstanding of the meaning of total depravity.

What does depravity mean? The term comes from the Latin verb depravare which means to bend or make crooked. Augustine used the term for the universal human inclination toward evil. More precisely, humans are bent or inclined toward misuse of the good, to use God and God's creatures for the enjoyment of one's self rather than to use one's self and other creatures for the enjoyment of God. To be depraved, despite its contemporary connotations, merely means to be bent or inclined towards one's self at the expense of God and others. So, for my son to be depraved doesn't necessarily mean his intentions and actions are sinister, but rather that he has a bent-ness or inclination towards himself at the expense of others.

But what does total depravity mean? There is a long Christian tradition that goes back at least to the fourth century of distinguishing between different aspects of the image of God in which humanity was created (e.g., moral image, intellectual image, volitional image, etc.). These distinctions served, among other things, to identify which aspects were affected by the fall and in what sense. So, for instance, we lost the moral image but retain our intellectual or volitional capacities. The notion of "total" depravity found in some radical Augustinian traditions emerged as a critique of such a use of this tradition, claiming that all the aspects of humanity have been tainted by the fall. So the "total" in total depravity is extensive not intensive. It's not as though we are as bad as we possibly could be, but rather there's no "safe" part of us that we can count on as innocent and good over against our fallen parts. We are bent as wholes. So, for my son to be totally depraved doesn't necessarily mean that he is as bad as he could possibly be, but rather that he as a whole person has an inclination or bent-ness toward using others for his own enjoyment.

So, does total depravity underwrite harsher discipline of children? No. Total depravity refers to a general inclination toward disorder that affects the whole person. And so a totally depraved child is not necessarily sinister in every intention or as evil as he or she possibly could be. An argument for harsh discipline cannot be made on this ground alone. One could in fact argue the reverse: that the inclination toward self-seeking at the expense of others will be fed by the threat of harsh discipline. A totally depraved child would require caution and care as much as if not more than force and discipline. Furthermore, one could argue that the universality of total depravity would function self-critically to call into question the purity of parental disciplinary intentions. Could it be that much of what passes for disciplining is actually self-serving? If the doctrine of total depravity is true, parents have as much reasons to question their own motives as they do their children's.

But one would not need to make these further moves to at least accept that total depravity alone does not warrant harsher discipline. That's the bottom line of this argument: the doctrine of total depravity does not in itself justify harsher discipline of children. In making this contention I do not claim to have defended the doctrine of total depravity, nor was that my design. Rather, I merely intend to block an illegitimate (and dangerous!) practical inference. This blockade is aimed both at those who might act out this unfortunate inference and at those who would object to the doctrine on account of its deleterious effects. So, the purpose of my argument is that those who affirm total depravity ought not execute harsh discipline on account of it and that those who reject total depravity ought not use this so-called practical implication as an argument against it.

Any Thoughts?

• Have you heard someone make the connection between the doctrine of sin and methods of parental discipline?
• Have I described the doctrine of total depravity correctly in terms of its classical sense?
• Do you find the extensive/intensive distinction helpful?
• What kind of parental implications might flow from the doctrine of total depravity rightly understood?

N.B.: For clarity's sake, please keep original guilt and total depravity conceptually distinct for the sake of discussion despite their intimate relation. In other words, do not presume an objection to one applies automatically to the other.