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Incarnation Anyway: Arguments from SupralapsarianChristology. By EDWIN CHRISTIAN VAN DRIEL. Pp.xiiþ 194. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.ISBN 978 0 19 536916 8. $74.

SUPRALAPSARIANISM, the subject of Edwin Christian van Driel’sbook Incarnation Anyway (a reworked version of his doctoraldissertation completed at Yale University), is a doctrine whosegeneses reach back at least as far as the twelfth century, even ifvan Driel’s essay is concerned with its less hypothetically spec-ulative nineteenth- and early twentieth-century articulations.The first part (pp. 9–124) attempts to chart and examine threeaccents that supralapsarian Christology assumed in its nine-teenth-century revival, namely in Friedrich Schleiermacher(‘the first major supralapsarian theologian since the MiddleAges’, p. 9), in Isaak August Dorner, and in Karl Barth, attempt-ing in each case to attend to the ways in which God is thought torelate to God’s other—in redemption (Schleiermacher), in crea-tion (Dorner), and in eschatological consummation (Barth).While there are occasions when readers may feel that van Drielconstrains his subjects’ thought with a rigid logic foreign to theirprojects, in each case he attempts to expose the inner logic,coherence, and strength of each articulation while not neglectingto draw attention to any weaknesses.

Van Driel argues that the conceptual structure ofSchleiermacher’s supralapsarianism is determined both nega-tively and positively by the notion of absolute dependence andthe inferred forms of divine omnipotence. He notes that, forSchleiermacher, sin is not excluded from the scope of divinecausality—that God is the author of sin calls for a diVerentlocus for sin in the divine decree. God ordains sin in orderto make humanity receptive to redemption. This movemeans that human sin acquires determining and logicalpriority over the incarnation. Indeed, van Driel outlines how,in Schleiermacher’s schema, ‘sin and redemption are essentialparts of our relationship to Christ. We need Christ because ofour sin, and only because of our sin. If there were another reasonwhy we relate to Christ, God would not have to introduce sin inthe divine decree. We are connected to Christ only through his

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redemptive activity. There is no space for a meaningful relation-ship with Christ that is not marked by this’ (p. 25). Again, forSchleiermacher, ‘human beings will not be receptive to thedivine gifts in Christ unless these gifts address an evil in theirlives’ (p. 126). Under van Driel’s examination, the identified‘fault lines’ in Schleiermacher’s ordo salutis (especially his sym-pathy with a felix culpa account) widen as the essay proceeds.

For Dorner, the incarnation is the necessary fruit of the divinedecision to create ethical persons and of the divine determinationthat such become ‘full personalities’, a reality possible only in‘interpersonal interaction with the ethical’ (p. 49). Dorner pre-misses his arguments on the notion that God is a lover of love—the amor amoris—whose passion is to aggrandize the life of lovein God’s other. This twofold surrender (of God to humanbeings, and of humans to God) is embodied in religion, thedivine contribution to which is revelation, the consummationof which is the incarnation. For Dorner, the incarnation is abasic implication of God’s decision to create: ‘Decisive forwhether one takes the incarnation to be means or end is whatone takes to be the divine motivation behind it. For Dorner, themotivation for incarnation is embedded in the motivation forcreation’ (pp. 59–60). This move, van Driel suggests, sponsorsan unsatisfactory stepping stone in Dorner’s doctrine of creation,highlights what van Driel considers to be the most troubling anddeep-lying ambiguity in Dorner’s supralapsarian Christology,and paves the way for the author’s turn to Barth and to anassessment of the deeper traction of supralapsarian Christologyby highlighting not the beginning but the end of God’s work:‘What motivated God to create? Systematically this means thatthe argument for supralapsarian incarnation should not beembedded in the doctrine of creation but in eschatology’(p. 62). So van Driel turns to Barth’s ‘argument from consum-mation’, that requisite feature of Barth’s doctrine of electionupon which van Driel will construct his own proposals.

Barth’s supralapsarian Christology, van Driel observes, takesits shape in his actualism. God’s election of Jesus Christ isprimal in order, self-giving in nature, gracious in motivation,creative in eVect, all-inclusive in scope, and supralapsarian incharacter—the latter in terms of both predestination andChristology: ‘Divine predestination is not a first step in adivine response to sin and neither is the incarnation . . . God’selection of Christ’s human nature is thus the first action in thedivine relating to what is not God’ (pp. 67, 68). Van Driel aversthat Barth’s supralapsarianism rests upon his reading of

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Scripture as a narrative of election. Election is understood escha-tologically, and the eschaton as the first in order of the divinedecrees, the object and subject of which is Jesus Christ—notthe Son as l0go" 4sarko" but the Son as Jesus of Nazareth.The incarnation, therefore, inaugurates God’s relating to whatis not God.

Certainly, Barth’s supralapsarian narrative recalls that creationforms the stage for covenant’s story—a story authored in theloving event called triune being, and whose meaning requiresboth soteriological and eschatological achievement—and thatthe creation which makes covenant possible does not exist foritself but for the gracious God upon whose will its future andbeing is contingent. However, van Driel identifies some adverseconsequences of Barth’s account; most copiously, a concernregarding creational entropy, that ‘creation, in and by itself,will necessarily lapse into evil’ (p. 85) by ontological necessity.This elicits a helpful discussion by van Driel of time, eternity,and history (pp. 111–17), and of the relationship between supra-lapsarianism and das Nichtige (pp. 118–24).

Building on Barth’s work, which he finds to be the most satis-fying of the three accents, van Driel turns in the second part(pp. 125–70) to sketch that the gospel logic of the incarnationentirely discards felix culpa and points to a divine will for(i) eschatological superabundance, (ii) the beatific vision, and(iii) divine friendship. The first of these attempts at a construc-tive argument is premissed on the relation between the eschatonand the proton of creation, contending that the eschaton birthsan abundance and richness in intimacy with God and in humantransformation which the proton did not know: ‘In Christ wegain more than we lost in Adam’ (p. 151). And because felixculpa makes such a promise contingent upon sin (which by itsvery nature only alienates us from God), eschatological fulnesscan only be understood in supralapsarian terms. Van Driel’ssecond argument directs us to the visio Dei. Here he extendshis first argument and defends supralapsarianism on the basisthat full enjoyment of the beatific vision for bodily beingsrequires sensory contact such as we are given sui generis in theincarnation, resurrection, and ascension of the human God.Finally, van Driel attends to the notion of friendship withGod, again arguing that the logic of supralapsarianism providesthe fullest account of divine availability. Such friendship, vanDriel avers, is not dependent finally on God’s desire to reconcileestranged humanity but rather in the opposite truth: God’sdesire to reconcile estranged humanity finds its origin in the

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divine will for friendship. Throughout, van Driel resists con-cerning himself with the hypothetical situation voiced by themedievals of whether the incarnation would have taken placehad humanity not sinned, and concerns himself with ‘Christ aswe have him’ (p. 164). Against those who would defend someversion of felix culpa (here van Driel names Schleiermacher,Gregory, Milton, and Barth), Incarnation Anyway challengessupralapsarians to ‘explore the meaning of the incarnation, thepresence of God among us, as an excellent good in and of itself,and not take refuge in a doctrine of sin to beef up incarnation’smeaning. We do not need the bad to enjoy Christ’ (p. 131).

A final section (pp. 171–5) oVers a brief, but helpful, genealogyof supralapsarianism. Some readers may benefit by reading thissection first.

Incarnation Anyway could have been a better book.Unfortunately, it sometimes reads like a collation of disconnectedpieces. It is unclear, for example, why van Driel reserves dispro-portionate space (pp. 90–101) in this forum to continuing hisdebate with Bruce McCormack, or why he includes a discussionon ‘more-dimensional reality’ (pp. 167–9). As interesting as bothconversations are, as they stand they contribute little to his over-all thesis. More substantially, I remain incredulous of van Driel’sarticulation of the distinction between incarnation as gift tohuman nature and that as gift to human persons. (He suggeststhat for those who contend that the Word’s assumption of fallenflesh changes the ontological status of humanity from the insideout, the ‘logic of assumption’ does all the work, and Christ’sover-againstness of our human natures is undermined.) Whilethe distinction remains valid, the inclination to separate themis unfortunate, the description and analysis oVered for each isunclear, and the available resources for holding both together inthe tradition (not least the Reformed tradition out of which theauthor speaks) are also ignored. Finally, this study most properlybelongs to a larger project (as the bibliographical appendix indi-cates), and would have been strengthened had its author attendedmore fully to the genesis and developments of supralapsarianthought in Rupert of Deutz, Robert Grosseteste, Alexander ofHales, Albert the Great, and, perhaps especially, in John DunsScotus and his theology of election. That said, van Driel’s essayremains a welcome and too lonely contribution to a topic of greatimport, and leaves the reader eagerly anticipating more from his

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pen on this topic, especially in those areas where he oVers hisown constructive proposals.

doi:10.1093/jts/flq099 JASON A. GORONCY

Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, Dunedinjgoroncy@knoxcollege.ac.nz

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