TRINITY, IDENTITY, AND ELECTION IN BARTH'S THEOLOGY:

BRUCE MCCORMACK'S RADICAL REVISION

AND A PROPOSED SOLUTION

___________________

A Research Paper

Presented To

Dr. David L. Puckett

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

___________________

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for 84820

___________________

by

Rafael N. Bello

Box 720

April 30, 2015

TRINITY, IDENTITY, AND ELECTION IN BARTH'S THEOLOGY:BRUCE MCCORMACK'S RADICAL REVISION

AND A PROPOSED SOLUTION

Introduction

It is not without reason that Bruce McCormack's provocative article, Grace and Being1

is probably one of the most controversial pieces in Barth scholarship. Barth was considered a

controversial figure in himself; however, his doctrine of the Trinity was actually seen as a good

articulation of an orthodox position. McCormack's little article changed everything when, in

summary, he said that Barth's doctrine of election disturbs some important concepts of the

Trinity, as it has historically been articulated.

My goal is to show that the entailments of McCormack's interpretation are flawed. The

Princeton theologian took Barth's actualistic theology to its logical conclusions. However, can

those entailments be true to the entire theology of the Swiss theologian? My answer will be that

one cannot use use the covenant of grace2 to justify the being of God as Trinity. Trinity always

precedes the actions of God because if Trinity was preceded by something like actions, then God

would no longer be a simple God (without parts), but would become a contingent God.

In order to show that McCormack's interpretation is flawed when one takes them to its

1Bruce McCormack, “Grace and Being: The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology” in John Webster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 1st edition (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 92–110. Hereafter G&B.

2I find strange that Barth, McCormack and others involved in this debate are comfortable in using the term “covenant of grace” to describe the eternal decision of God to save sinners. Reformed theology has always used the term “covenant of grace” to describe the relationship established between God and Abraham. The decision to save sinners in eternity past is usually described as “covenant of redemption.” See Richard A Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, Ca. 1520 to Ca. 1725 vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academics, 2003), 266.

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logical conclusions, I will start by outlining his article, Grace and Being.3 Afterwards, I will

survey how is self-determination interpreted in Barth scholarship. Third, I will evaluate this

discussion by understanding both election and Trinity in Barth's corpus. Finally, I will present a

solution to the debate by proposing a different kind of historicizing, or as I will call, a “softer

actualism.”

Grace and Being

The plethora of articles and responses that have erupted after McCormack wrote G&B

is still counting. However, one can get lost in the middle of this ocean of articles, if the origin of

this uproar is not carefully read. First of all, it is imperative to understand that McCormack sees

Barth's doctrine of election as splitting from Calvin's. Nothing new here, as Barth himself said

that the reformers were fundamentally wrong in arguing for an absolute decree. The major

difference, as McCormack argues, is on theology proper.

The issue at stake is that while the Reformed tradition referred to Christ as an object of

election and passed through him in a decretum absolutum way, Barth made the innovative move

to recognize Jesus as the subject of election. It is paramount to notice here that it is not the Logos

who is elected, but Jesus of Nazareth, the first-century Jew born in Palestine – by way of

anticipation. The reason that Barth applied this doctrine of election is to “allow the church to

speak authoritatively about what God was doing – and, indeed, who and what God was/is –

'before the foundation of the world,' without engaging in speculation.”4 For the Swiss, any talk

about the Logos asarkos, apart from the self-determination to become incarnate in time would be

sheer speculation and would inevitably lead to natural theology.5

3G&B, 92-110.

4Ibid., 92.

5Natural Theology was Barth's greatest enemy. It is not to the scope of the present work to legitimize or not natural theology. However, Henry understood it very well when he said, “Barth resisted Modernism’s 'point of

2

It can be said that the main difference between Barth and Calvin's theology of election,

according to Bruce McCormack, is ontological.6 While Calvin speaks of an absolute decree

(regarding humans) of God in Christ, Barth rejects that completely. He says, “God's election of

man is a predestination not merely of man but of Himself. Its function is to bear basic testimony

to eternal, free and unchanging grace as the beginning of all the ways and works of God.”7 In its

basic character, election in Barthian theology is a changed version of supralapsarianism. In this

act of electing, God is establishing the eternal covenant of grace. This act is a self-determination

in which God determines to be God, “from everlasting to everlasting, in a covenantal relationship

with human beings and to be God in no other way.”8

In this self-determination, God elects to be the Christ “for us.” When he decides to be

“for us,” he is therefore defining his being. And in defining his being, God is defined by an

action. That is where Barth's language becomes even more anti-reformed. While the reformers

argued for an essential God, McCormack's proposes an “actualistic” God as an entailment from

Barth's doctrine of election. The God of the Swiss got his being from an act. Why should Barth

change so much the doctrine of election to look like this? The reason is simple, one cannot

discover an essence that exists in eternity past apart from the man Jesus. However, if the essence

is grasped from an act, then God is no longer hidden, but unhidden.9

contact' in man for the gospel, repudiating it as a damaging concession to Thomistic natural theology. Brunner, on the other hand, while equally opposed to natural theology, insisted that Barth’s formulation did less than justice to the biblical emphasis on general divine revelation. The current controversy must be related to distinctions urged by the Protestant Reformers against the medieval scholastics, and beyond that to the prophetic-apostolic teaching. Any verdict on the issue must necessarily examine implications posed by the biblical doctrine of the image of God in man.” It is also commonly argued in reformed circles that the fall did affect our moral faculties in such a way that we cannot “understand” God. However, the noetics effects of the fall did not completely affect our intellectual abilities to understand God and revelation. See Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, Vol. 1: God Who Speaks and Shows, Preliminary Considerations (Waco, Tex: Word Books Publisher, 1976), 395.

6G&B, 97.

7CD III.2, 3.

8G&B, 98.

9Therefore even though the main difference between Barth and the Reformers was ontology, epistemology plays a huge role as well. See Scott R. Swain, The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2013).213-4

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After this brief exposition, the Princetonian moves to implications, and first, he poses

the question: “what is the logical relation of God's gracious election to the triunity of God?”10

McCormack said that even though Barth had posed the question of act and being before, the

Swiss never connected the implications of act and being to his theology of election and Trinity.

Therefore, according to the theologian of Princeton, in 1936, after Barth's mature theology of

election reached his climax, he should have come back and corrected his trinitarian statements.

Why? How could Barth be so certain that God was Trinity apart from an actualistic/historicized

account? He was to be blamed of the same error he indicted Calvin, not in Christology, however,

but in theology proper. Trinity appears as a consequence of election: As God elects to be “for us”

he decides to be Trinity, because God has to be the God-man by the power of the Spirit.

Secondly, he sees that Barth's doctrine of election should have changed his trinitarian

theology, also because in the decision of God to establish a covenant of grace, the works of God

ad intra (trinitarian processions) find its ground in the works of God ad extra (viz-à-viz

election).11 The fact that Jesus Christ is the subject of election and not merely the object is what

brings humanity to the eternal Logos. And finally, men and women only become real humans

when they live in a posture of prayer that reflects the eternal self-determination of God to also be

human. Therefore, true humanity finds its ground in the eternal Logos, who is eternally,

ensarkos. The Logos ensarkos encapsulates the Logos asarkos, because Jesus is only God for us.

He could not be God without his self-determination to be human. In a sense, what McCormack is

saying is that there is no way one can see the God without the man, even in eternity.

10G&B, 100.

11Ibid., 103.

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Responses to McCormack

Several responses12 were crafted after McCormack's provocative essay. This paper

cannot look at each one of those, therefore, only two main opposing views will be considered.

Paul Molnar13

Paul Molnar crafted a well-articulated response to McCormack. He does not

misrepresent McCormack and summarizes the entire argument of the Princetonian with mastery:

If I understand McCormack’s thesis correctly, it is this: from CD II/2 onward, Barth finally became a fully fledged “post-metaphysical” theologian. And he did so by making Jesus Christ “rather than ‘the eternal Logos’” the subject of election. McCormack says there is no dispute that before CD II/2 Barth held the view that the doctrine of the Trinity logically preceded that of election. But after CD II/2 that was no longer the case. In effect then, except for a few anticipatory elements found in CD II/l, Barth’s views elaborated in the first volume on the Doctrine of God tended to show evidence of “classical metaphysics,” especially in parts of Barth’s presentation of the divine perfections. Therefore in McCormack’s mind any refutation of his position must appeal to CD II/2 and later or it is irrelevant.

After summarizing McCormack's view, Molnar moves quickly to refutation. Here, he

argues that Barth did not change his views and would not be obligated to come back and change

12Probably the most important, but by far not the only ones are, James J. Cassidy, “Election and Trinity,”Westminster Theological Journal 71, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 53–81; Kevin W. Hector, “God’s Triunity and Self-Determination: A Conversation with Karl Barth, Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7, no. 3 (July 1, 2005): 246–61; Christopher R J Holmes, “‘A Specific Form of Relationship’: On the Dogmatic Implications of Barth’s Account of Election and Commandment for His Theological Ethics,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 182–200; George Hunsinger, “Election and the Trinity: Twenty-Five Theses on Theology of Karl Barth,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 91–114; Paul Dafydd Jones, “Obedience, Trinity, and Election: Thinking with and beyond the Church Dogmatics,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 138–61; Matthew Levering, “Christ, the Trinity, and Predestination: McCormack and Aquinas,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 244–73; Bruce L. McCormack, “Election and the Trinity: Theses in Response to George Hunsinger,” Scottish Journal of Theology 63, no. 2 (January 1, 2010): 203–24; Bruce L. McCormack, “Let’s Speak Plainly: A Response to Paul Molnar,” Theology Today 67, no. 1 (April 1, 2010): 57–65; Paul D. Molnar, “The Trinity, Election and God’s Ontological Freedom: A Response to Kevin W. Hector,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 8, no. 3 (July 1, 2006): 294–306; Paul D. Molnar, “Can the Electing God Be God without Us? Some Implications of Bruce McCormack’s Understanding of Barth’s Doctrine of Election for the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Neue Zeitschrift Für Systematische Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 49, no. 2 (January 1, 2007): 199–222; Paul T. Nimmo, “Barth and the Election-Trinity Debate: A Pneumatological View,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 162–81; Aaron T. Smith, “God’s Self-Specification: His Being Is His Electing,” in Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B Eerdmans, 2011), 201–25; Edwin Chr. van Driel, “Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ,” Scottish Journal of Theology 60, no. 01 (February 2007): 45–61.

13Molnar, “Can the Electing God Be God without Us?”

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his doctrine of the Trinity. For Molnar, Barth's concept of the freedom of God is central and plays

an important role in his defense. As a matter of fact, Molnar uses an interview that Barth gave as

a proof that the Swiss' doctrine of the Trinity should not be affected by his revolutionary view of

election, because the old theologian held that the being of God (ad intra) is free and not

contingent upon the existence of humans. Barth said,

God would not be any the less God if he had created no world and no human being. The existence of the world and our existence are in no sense necessary to God’s essential being, not even as the object of his love [...] God is not at all lonely even without the world and us. His love has its object in himself.14

In McCormack's proposal, election is conditioned to be the first act of the will of God. That first

act is conditioned upon the future existence of human beings, and therefore God is contingent (in

essence and not in relationship) to the creation of human beings. However, in Molnar's view,

Barth comes nowhere close to that understanding. For Barth, God is a “loving God without us as

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the freedom of the Lord, who has His life from Himself.”15

Trinity precedes election, because that is God in essence and God in simplicity.

Molnar, then, constructs four consequences and entailments if G&B was true. The first

is that God becomes indeterminate. McCormack interprets Barth as saying that there is a God,

who decides to be triune via election. However, Molnar once again, shows that Barth does not

come even close to that. The Swiss even said, “As the subject and object of this choice, Jesus

Christ was at the beginning”16

The second consequence is a collapse of the immanent into the economic Trinity. The

New York professor wants to say that McCormack is tying the identity of God with the

relationship that he has with humanity. Once again, this cannot be affirmed, because Barth sees

14Karl Barth, Gespräche 1964-1968, ed. Eberhard Busch (Ziirich: Theologischer Verlag, 1997) cited in George Hunsinger , Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth, published at the Center for Barth Studies, http://www.ptsem.edu/grow/barth/Conversational% 20Theology.htm, 7.

15CD II/l, 257.

16CD II/2, 102.

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God as free in his dealings with humanity.17 The covenant of grace is per se, a gracious

relationship and not a forced essential one, in which God is forced to be who he is by the

existence of human beings.

Thirdly, McCormack created an unknown God by arguing that the Logos asarkos is

only a Logos incarnandus by anticipation.18 Or as Molnar said, “an indeterminate deity behind

the God revealed in Jesus Christ.” Because the Princetonian collapsed immanent and economic

Trinity, then he falls into an unknowable God, that if history would not happen, then God in

himself would not happen. Therefore Molnar concludes by saying,

When Barth says that in himself and as such he [the Son] is not revealed to us and is not God for us either ontologically or epistemologically, that is exactly his attempt to distinguish between the immanent and economic Trinity - not materially of course since it is the triune God who exists in pre-temporal eternity and again for us in time and history and post-temporally - rather he wishes to make a heuristic distinction.19

Fourthly, is what Molnar calls a problem of Omnipotence/Omnicausality, Being and

Will. He sees McCormack suggesting that God created God, a concept that can hardly be

conceived. For the New York professor, God does not need an origin. He has His being in

himself. Here, for the first time, Molnar defines his doctrine of freedom by distinguishing from

independence. God is independent from creation, but that is only an expression of his freedom, in

which His relationship is mainly related to the immanent Trinity. The immanent Trinity

expresses its freedom in the positive independence from creation and also by creating out of

nothing. When McCormack proposes that the creation of humans and election of Jesus are

17See CD Π/2, 155 “We must guard against disputing the eternal will of God which precedes even predestination. We must not allow God to be submerged in His relationship to the universe or think of Him as tied in Himself to the universe. Under the concept of predestination, or the election of grace, we say that in freedom (its affirmation and not its loss) God tied Himself to the universe. Under the concept of predestination we confess the eternal will of the God who is free in Himself, even in the sense that originally and properly He wills and affirms and confirms himself.”

18Here is probably one of the most radical proposals of Barth according to McCormack: the Logos incarnandus is both asarkos, in his existence in eternity, but also ensarkos, by way of his self-determination to become incarnate. The Logos incarnatus is ensarkos because he is living through the flesh in the incarnation, but also asarkos by the function of the extra. However, Molnar seems to reject this interpretation because he understands Barth as not seeing any kind of Logos asarkos. Any Logos asarkos would entail an unknowable God.

19Molnar, “Can the Electing God Be God without Us?,” 211.

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moments of the same will, then he not only conflates immanent and economic Trinity, but also

misapplies the concept of freedom as historically understood.20

George Hunsinger

George Hunsinger, works at Princeton at the same department as Bruce McCormack.

Hunsinger also called his colleague's interpretation revisionist.21 Hunsinger's interpretation can

be found at Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology. Here, he raises twenty-five theses on

the theology of Barth as it relates to election, Trinity, time and eternity, Creator-creature

distinctions, and aseity. The main points that he raises against McCormack's view are:

1. Barth never said that God's being is constituted by God's act;

2. Barth explicitly said that the life of the Trinity ad intra grounds the ad extra

(election) life of the Trinity: “The triune life of God ... is the basis of his whole

will and action also [auch] ad extra.... It is the basis [ist begründet] of his

decretum opus ad extra ... of the election of the human being to covenant with

himself; of the determination [Bestimmung] of the Son to become human, and

there- fore to fulfill the covenant.”22

20Molnar cites Barth as support for his position here: The freedom in which God exists means that He does not need His own being in order to be who He is: because He already has His own being and is Himself [...] this being does not need any origination and constitution. He cannot ‘need’ His own being because He affirms it in being who He is. CD II/l, 306.

21Hunsinger says that “For the 'revisionists,' the driving force has been Bruce L. McCormack. In Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), he first proposed that in 1942 Barth's doctrine of God underwent a sea change with the appearance of his doctrine of election (ET: Church Dogmatics, Vol. II, part 2 [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957]). The full force of what McCormack had in mind did not start to emerge, however, until "Grace and Being," in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2000), pp. 92-110. Even so, matters still remained fairly cryptic until his case was stated more recently in "Seek God Where He May Be Found: A Response to Edwin Chr. van Driel," Scottish Journal of Theology, 60 (2007), pp. 62-79. The revisionist line now pops up in a growing number of younger scholars. See for example Matthias Gockel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine ofElection: A Systematic-Theological Comparison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). See also Kevin W. Hector, "God's Triunity and Self-determination: A Conversation with Karl Barth, Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar," International Journal of Systematic Theology, 7 (2005), pp. 246-261.”

22CD IV/2, 386.

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3. There is no difference in the temporal relations of the cross of Christ, the Last

Judgment and the eternal election/reprobation of the Son. They are, in some way

the same events, that happened in three different forms;23

4. “When Barth writes about the logos asarkos, he always does so in a certain

respect (secundum quid). He does not reject the idea absolutely. On the contrary,

he affirms it as necessary in principle. What he rejects is the idea that, as a matter

of contingent fact, we might still have access to a logos asarkos above and

beyond the logos ensarkos.”

5. There is a contingency on the Logos. However, that contingency is to be

identified only with the Logos ensarkos, never with the Logos asarkos. The Logos

ensarkos reflect the act of the covenant of grace, but the Logos asarkos is God in

being and essence from eternity, who is contingent upon nothing;24

6. The Logos is asarkos, but the asarkos is only a representation of the Son in his

primary objectivity. The Logos is ensarkos, but this mode is the secondary

23This is what Hunsinger called, grammar of perichoresis. It seems to me that this understanding of time relations is poorly developed in Hunsinger's theses. There is a sense in which temporal relations are reflected of transcendent essence, but this does not entail the same actions. Although it sounds somewhat poetic, it cannot make sense of the Biblical data as it relates to God's impassibility. Rob Lister puts it this way: “Thus I believe that atemporality is one way in which God is ontologically other than us. And yet, I also maintain that God’s temporal participation with us, following creation, is reflective of his voluntary and gracious immanence. This finding, in turn, portrays an instructive symmetrical duality between God’s in se atemporality and his in re omnitemporality, and what we might call his in se impassibility and his in re impassionedness, on the other.” What Lister is saying here is that God acts as reflection of his character, but the actions in time are not necessarily the same as the actions outside of time. God outside of time is impassible, and God in time – at the incarnation – as he acts in his human nature is not. Of course then, you get to thorny issues of nature and person. But the communicatio idiomatum makes sense of these issues, by permitting the theologian to speak plainly that the Son is ignorant in one sense, but omniscient in another. See Rob Lister and Bruce A. Ware, God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion, Reprint edition (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2012), 229.

24Hunsinger adds, “To say that the Incarnation is 'eternally contingent' means that it rests entirely in the free grace of God. 'When it says that the Word became flesh, this becoming took place in the divine freedom of the Word [I]t does not rest upon any necessity in the divine nature or upon the relation between the Father, Son and Spirit, that God becomes human.' CD II/2, 135. He also adds that there can be no question that Barth later changed his mind, because, He also said later in Church Dogmatics "In this free act of the election of grace, the Son of the Father is no longer just the eternal Logos, but as such, as very God from all eternity, he is also the very God and very man he will become in time." CD IV /1, 66. See Hunsinger, “Election and the Trinity,” 191.

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objectivity of the Logos. In this sense, he is hidden in the first mode, but unhidden

in the second mode.

Evaluation

From the point of view of orthodoxy, it seems that Molnar and Hunsinger are much

closer to the Nicea-Chalcedonian formulations than McCormack. The question that needs to be

posed here then is: Who is doing justice to Barth? The basic assumption in the debate is that to

understand the identity of the Godhead one needs to understand election in Barth, because this

actualistic doctrine is the basis or not for the identity in the eternal immanent Trinity.

Election and The Logos Ensarkos

In its basic character, election in Barthian theology is a different version of

supralapsarianism. Michael Horton outlines Barth's doctrine of election as: 1. A rejection of any

notion of a hidden will of God; 2. Make Christ rather than individuals the subject of election and

therefore collapse anthropology into Christology.25 Barth himself says,

Now this secret [of double predestination] concerns not this or that or that man, but all men. By it men are not divided, but united. In its presence they all stand on one line – for Jacob is always Esau also, and in eternal 'Moment' of revelation Esau is also Jacob. When the Reformers applied the doctrine of election and rejection (predestination) to the psychological unity of this individual, and when quantitatively to the 'elect' and 'damned,' they were, as we can now see, speaking mythologically.26

In adopting this view of election the eternal Word has lost a place in history. It is impossible to

speak of Christ and human history, because then everything is collapsed into this eternal realm

that has all the significance for Barth's dialectical method. And in turn, when time is created, it is

25See Daniel Strange, Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques, ed. David Gibson, 1 edition (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2009), 365.

26Karl Barth and Edwyn Clement Hoskyns, The Epistle to the Romans, (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1933), 347.

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a reflection of this actualistic eternal significance. G. C. Berkouwer said that “Barth's revised

supralapsarianism blocks the way to ascribing decisive significance to history”27 Also as it will

be seen here, this decisive move to a different kind of supralapsarianism determined how the

Swiss saw the Logos asarkos as non existent and consequentially, the extra28 (a doctrine that is

arguably Chalcedonian)29 would become unnecessary. Election in “Barth's hands, comes to refer,

not to a decision of God in which the human race is divided into the elect and the reprobate, but

to God's self-election and the election and the election of humanity, both actual in Christ.” 30

It could also be argued that Barth's Christology is tied to a self-assertion of God (still

to be determined of what kind). While in Calvin, the Son chooses by the character of his divine

nature in eternity (in the instrumentality of his being – as the object of election), in Barth the

main focus of election is the identity of Christ as human (being the subject of election). Because

27G. C Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1956), 256.

28As it has been efficiently proven, the extra-calvinisticum is not a doctrine that started with John Calvin. This doctrine states that the divine Son of God was not exhausted in the flesh when he added to himself human nature. Crisp points out that the reason for this formulation is because while the second person of the Trinity was incarnate as Jesus Christ he was still sustaining the world by the power of his word. Then the extra-calvinisticum is needed in order for the Word to “(a) remain divine and (b) retain his divine role of upholding the cosmos in being while incarnate.” So, in order to elucidate even more this doctrine is necessary to understand what is happening at the Hypostatic Union. See also Richard Muller's definition in Richard A Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1985), 111. “The Reformed argued that the Word is fully united to but never totally contained within the human nature and, therefore, even in the incarnation is to be conceived of as beyond or outside of (extra) the human nature.”

29I argue that the doctrine is chalcedonian because it can be seen that the minimum parameters of the chalcedonian formulation are met.Crisp has provided a minimal outline of the chalcedonian definition on the hypostatical union with a short axiom (hereafter, CA) that flows from it: 1. “Christ is one person. 2. Christ has two natures, one divine and one human. 3. The two natures of Christ retain their integrity and are distinct; they are not mixed together or confused, nor are they amalgamated into a hybrid of divine and human attributes (like a demigod). 4. The natures of Christ are really united in the person of Christ; that is, they are two natures possessed by one person. This yields the following Chalcedonian Axiom: (CA) Christ has one of whatever goes with the person and two of whatever goes with natures.” It is important, then, to move from affirmation to implication here. The one person, Jesus Christ, the Logos embodied, possesses two natures and whatever is predicated to the two different natures is true of the one person of the Son of God incarnate (communicatio idiomatum). Jesus has two wills, two centers of consciousness, because those issues have always been attached to the natures. See Oliver Crisp in “Desdiderata For Models of the Hypostatic Union” in Oliver Crisp et al., Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 32.

30J. B Webster, Barth (London; New York: Continuum, 2000), 91.

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Barth can speak of Jesus as electing God and elected man from eternity, his Christology is

wholly dependent on the humanity of Jesus from eternity. He says, “Jesus Christ, then, is not

merely one of the elect but the elect of God. From the beginning (from eternity itself) as elected

man.”31 The empathy that Jesus constructs with humanity in his self-determination is basis for

the election of an entire humanity. The ontological differences between Calvin and Barth are

clear. As David Gibson said, “Calvin's exegesis rests on and reveals traditional conceptions of

the shared work of the persons of the Trinity and the extra-calvinisticum; Barth's exegesis rests

on and reveals his radical understanding of the eternal being of Jesus Christ.”32

So, when one comes back to the doctrine of the incarnation, Barth's doctrine of

election, the humanity of Christ is central because that is the reason why Barth is able to preserve

the immutability of God in Christ in time. He, as elected man, has always held to some sort of

humanity, whatever that means, and was not liable to any changes when passed from Logos

incarnandus to Logos incarnatus. However, as Paul Helm suggests, “for Calvin 'becoming

incarnate as the Christ is an apt and consistent expression of the character of the Word' and the

'incarnation expresses the divine essence without exhaustively revealing it.'”33 Once again, Helm

proves that the main point where Barth errs is at ontology. Barth's ontological recount of the

election affects his doctrine of the incarnation, and the eternal essence of God.34 While Calvin

talked about continuity in terms of consistency of expression of the character of the Logos

(image), Barth expressed his thought by flattening the economic and immanent Trinity. If there is

31CD IV.2, 116.

32David Gibson, Reading the Decree: Exegesis, Election and Christology in Calvin and Barth, T & T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London ; New York: T & T Clark, 2009), 81.

33Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 63–4.

34This is clear even to people who are more sympathetically inclined to Barth. See Paul D. Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, T & T Clark Theology (London ; New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 96–7. Jones says, “Barth does not compromise his belief in a unsublatable contrast that separates God and humankind; he holds fast to this 'complementary dialectic' (Beintker). But he now puts it to work in a manner unforseen in Romans and in a way that upsets the classical Reformed commitment to the extra-calvinisticum...The Logos asarkos directs itself towards, and ultimately embraces an identity inclusive of the genuine human existence of Jesus of Nazareth, the human assumed by the simple person of God qua Son.

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no way one can know the Christ apart from his determination to be man in eternity, then there is

no way the immanent Trinity can be different from the economic Trinity, at least

epistemologically.

In summary, it can be said that the Swiss' view of time/eternal relations influences his

theology of the incarnation to an extent, that history and eternity are almost like two siamese

twin brothers. They are different, but practically the same. Hans Urs von Balthasar said that “too

much in Barth gives the impression that nothing much really happens in his theology of event

and history, because everything has already happened in eternity.”35 The Logos ensarkos

incorporates the asarkos in eternity,36 because as Cassidy said, “Jesus Christ, as the God-human,

has always been. In this way, the incarnation is an eternal act of God that makes God who he is.

In other words, Barth, far from divinizing the humanity of Jesus Christ, has humanized God.”37

However, the Swiss did not say that election is the first logical act of God. Surely, in Barthian

theology election works as some kind of humanization of the divine, but it does not seem that

this approach to a Logos ensarkos leads to an understanding that election is basis for trinitarian

generation/procession.

Trinity A Se: In Essence or In Act?

It seems clear that Barth's doctrine of election has problems for the understanding and

relationships of the economic and immanent Trinity. However, the issue at stake in this debate is,

in what sense does this view of election should precede even God's essence to be Trinity? Or as

van Driel summarizes,

35Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 94.

36Michael Horton said that “the effect of this dialectic is that the history and reality of both nature and history are rendered questionable. Only God and divine action are accorded this unqualified ontological weight. See Michael Horton in Strange, Engaging with Barth, 351.

37Cassidy, “Election and Trinity,” 63.

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If (a) Jesus Christ is the subject of election, and (b) election is the logically first act of the divine will, then there is no Logos which is not incarnandus, to be incarnate.38 And if trinity precedes the divine decree of election, Barth would posit 'a mode of existence in God above and prior to God's gracious election' which in McCormack's argument, is excluded by the eternal existence of Jesus Christ. Therefore, God's triunity, nature and attributes should all be logically posterior to the decree of election.39

The unique view of the Logos in eternity in conjunction with election and its implications for the

life of the Trinity is what really stirs the pot in modern Barth scholarship. Despite the innovations

made by the Swiss theologian, his desire was to remain Chalcedonian. However, if Barth

followed the suggestions made by McCormack in the Trinity, then the Swiss would become anti-

nicene. Homousios would be desperately lost because the essence of Christ is different from the

Father. The divine procession/generation would be contingent upon a decision of the Father to

save humans. In this understanding of the Trinity, Jesus is not consubstantial with the Father,

because the Father is not contingent upon election and the Son is.40

The debate can be reduced to a few propositions, according do van Driel,

1. Jesus Christ is the subject of election, and

2. Election is the logically first act of the divine will,41

3. God elects to be Jesus

McCormack would be happy until now because there is a sense in which the entity God without

any immanent identity is pre-conceived. However, if one is consistent in the application of the

propositions, then a fourth one is needed connecting (1) and (3):

38van Driel, “Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ,” 51. van Driel adds a caveat to be fair to McCormack: All this talk about precedence and existence is not a time-relation issue, but McCormack presents it in an ontological or even logical relation. Much like the idea of supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism are not time-related issues, but logical relations between the decrees of God.

39Ibid., 52.

40See Swain, The God of the Gospel, 219.

41All of this is that if one assumes McCormack's proposal be correct.

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4. Jesus Christ elects Jesus Christ.42

However, this electing cannot be self-constituent of the divine essence (contra-McCormack),

because if Jesus already exists, he cannot determine to be Jesus himself. He already is who he is

in his immanent relations. Therefore, van Driel suggests that what Barth did when he formulated

his doctrine of election should not retrocede to Trinity, because it would be logically inconsistent.

Proposition (4) should be talked more in terms of self-affirmation and not of self-determination.

In other words, David Gibson also argues that even though one can see that there is a

sense in which Jesus is subject and object of election, to say that this move constitutes the divine

Trinity is going too far. When God, who is eternal, turns to humanity in time, this turning is

identified with the person of the Son. However, the turning itself does not constitute the divine

Trinity, but is “a determination of how the divine being is going to be ad extra, towards

creation.”43 In a sense, this idea does not imply that there is not an elector God ad intra but the

ad extra does not constitute the ad intra. In other words, the Trinity is in essence the Trinity and

this essence is the basis of how election occurs. Election, therefore, is contingent upon the

essence of the triune God.

Much of the confusion has to do with Barth's unique view of election. Since he does

not believe in an absolute decree, much can be tied to God himself, who determines to be

“something for somebody.” However, McCormack's position seems to go too far when he sees

this “something for somebody” to be determinative of the essence of God. Hunsinger is correct

in his first thesis: Barth never said that election should determine Trinity. However, even though

Barth departed from the classical Reformed view of election with “great anxiety,”44, McCormack

is not correct to say that he did not “fully realize the profound implications of his doctrine of

42Ibid., 55.

43Gibson, Reading the Decree, 54.

44CD II/2, x.

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election for the doctrine of the Trinity.”45 If there is a Logos ensarkos only, then how can the

Trinity be not contingent upon humanity? Jesus would be ultimately contingent upon the

existence of humanity and His relationship with them. However, if the language of Logos

ensarkos is used in the primary sense of ad extra, then Barth is not so much inconsistent after all.

Barth reaffirms his view that Trinity precedes election in the year of his death, 1968,

(much after 1932, the year that McCormack said he changed his view).

Election means election to justification, to sanctification, to mission. All the particular things which I then try to develop in the doctrine of reconciliation are explications of the doctrine of election.... And behind the doctrine of election stands the doctrine of the Trinity. That is the order [Reihenfolge]. The doctrine of the Trinity, election, and then sanctification, and so forth."46

Solution

It is time to take stock here. Barth has a view of election that is much at odds with

classical Reformed thought. In this view, the Logos ensarkos incorporates the Logos asarkos by

function of Jesus anticipation in eternity to be man. However, this view does not mean that the

Trinity is determined by election for Barth. The Swiss can hold to the idea of a Logos ensarkos

from eternity,47 but that does not mean that the essence of Christ in the immanent Trinity

changed, because as said by van Driel, this way of speaking can be merely self-affirmative,

instead of determinative. The fact that one says Jesus chooses Jesus does not imply a

fundamental change in the being of Christ but it is merely a self-affirmation in which Jesus'

identity is confirmed ad extra by his work of choosing to be human.48

45G&B, 102.

46Eberhard Busch, ed., Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe. Abteilung IV: Gesprache / Gesprache 1964-1968 (Zürich: Tvz - Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1997), 293. in Hunsinger, “Election and the Trinity,” 182.

47It seems to me that this idea of Logos ensarkos only in the theology of Barth is probably an attempt to make sense of the knowledge of God. There may be a sense in which Barth, if consistent, would affirm the Logos apart from ensarkos, because there is a Trinity before election.

48Therefore, what Barth should have corrected was his view of the Logos ensarkos only. There is always a Logos asarkos. Negating that would probably give some space for McCormack's thesis.

16

That said, the unique solution of this paper is to propose a soft version of actualism

instead of a hard version of it. Bruce McCormack's work is what can be identified with a hard

actualism. In this version of actualism, the acts of the being of God determine who this being is.

The eternal decision to elect Christ as man (subject of election) and to be in the covenant of

grace, determine who God is in the ad intra relationship. Therefore, the nature of God is

contingent upon his act. In this understanding, some of the essential attributes of God are

accidental properties. In Augustine's formulation, a contingent accidental property is “that

inheres in a subject and that can be lost by a change of that reality to which it pertains, or

something that inheres in a subject and that, though not lost is capable of increase or decrease.”49

However, it must be denied that God has such accidents if one wants to follow the historical

council's affirmations about God. On the other side, it can be said that in some sense, God is

contingent in his relationships with human beings (in the ad extra).This contingency, however, is

to be identified not with the essence of God per se but with the turning of the subject in the

pactum salutis.

McCormack's harder actualism becomes fairly impossible to make sense once one

starts discussing God's freedom in his being. For the Princetonian: (1) God is free from from any

kind of constraints. Nothing outside of himself can make him do something; (2) however, God is

not free to determine what he is (in his nature), or even who he is (since his processions are

consequences of the eternal covenant of grace/election). God is, therefore, contingent upon his

decision to be “for us.”50 As a consequence, the only alternative for God to be free outside of his

decision to be “for us” would be not being God at all. It would be completely insane to propose

God's non-existence. If God is free from constraints, but not free to determine what He will be,

then if humans did not exist, not only a triune God would not exist, God in any shape or form

49Roland Teske, To Know God and the Soul: Essays on the Thought of St. Augustine, First Edition edition (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 99–100.

50McCormack, “Let’s Speak Plainly,” 61.

17

would be impossible.

The solution appears to be to place contingency in the ad extra. That kind of

contingency is what will be called a softer version of actualism. In this version, the acts of God

about himself are not determinatives, but self-affirmatives in relation to whoever or whatever is

outside of him.51 Since eternity is beyond comprehension of the human mind, one cannot take a

hard view of actualism, because in its presupposition, it takes history and time as it is known and

force them into timeless relations. Contingency in God cannot be connected to his nature, or

even to the intra-trinitarian relations, because He is the source of everything. To make Trinity

contingent upon election is to place nature after act. If one does that, then it becomes difficult to

understand sources of beings and subsequent acts. Scott Swain brilliantly said,

Many of the properties that constitute someone's personal identity are necessarily true of that person. Some properties 'are true of person x in order for him or her to be x.' Furthermore, not every property that is contingently true of that person is constitutive of his or her personal identity (e.g., waking up at 7:17 Monday morning). For this reason, it is legitimate to distinguish those properties by which we may 'identify' a person from those which constitute a person's 'identity.'52

Another example would be to say that x gets married to y. When x marries, he chooses to be in a

covenantal relationship that is part of his identity but can never be said to be determinative of

who he is. Swain called this covenantal identity. In this covenantal identity, “being married” is a

property that belongs to x's personal identity. However, this identity is invariably constituted in

relation to another person.53 X could loose y and still be x, because his essence is not determined

by y. Applying this to God, because he is free, He could loose the covenantal relationship (even

51 Edwin Chr. Van Driel says, “To analyse this issue, let us think a bit about the use of the proposition: ‘subject x chooses to be y’. We can use such a proposition in two ways. We can use it to express the thought that subject x’s being y is dependent on subject x’s choosing to be y. In that case we can say that subject x constitutes its being y. This, however, makes sense only if subject x logically and ontologically precedes the choice, and subject x’s being y logically and ontologically follows the choice. We can also use this proposition to express the thought that subject x self-affirms its being y. In that case subject x’s being y does not have to be logically or ontologically secondary to subject’s x choice. However, subject x’s being y is also not established by a choice to be y.” See van Driel, “Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ,” 55.

52Swain, The God of the Gospel, 148.

53Ibid., 149.

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though He will not) built with humanity and still be God. Therefore, this relationship is

asymmetrical.54

All that said, it is probably best to leave this discussion of hard vs. soft actualism to

Barthian studies because even the softer version of actualism, exposed here, is based on the

fundamental premise that Christ is mainly the subject of election. Even though this idea can be

argued to have some validity, it tends to annul the absolute decree of God.55

Finally, Hunsinger and Molnar may be wrong in trying to defend Barth by saying he

did believe in a Logos asarkos because it is clear that the Swiss' view of election would not

allow. Barth himself said,

Do not ever think of the second person of the Trinity as only Logos. That is the mistake of Emil Brunner. There is no Logos asarkos, but only ensarkos [enfleshed]. Brunner thinks of a Logos asarkos, and I think this is the reason for his natural theology. The Logos becomes an abstract principle. Since there is only and always a Logos ensarkos, there is no change in the Trinity, as if a fourth member comes in after incarnation.56

Hunsinger and Molnar are wrong when they said that Barth believed in a Logos asarkos. Logos

asarkos would make the God of Barth ultimately hidden. However, the two professors are

correct in saying that Trinity is antecedent to election (contra-McCormack). Or even that election

is a reflection work of who God is in his trinitarian relations. It seems that Barth's denial of a

Logos asarkos does not have to do so much with the essence of God , but more as it relates to

Jesus' self understanding, in the immanent Trinity, that to be man is to be known by creation.

However, as far as trinitarian essence goes, there is a Son independent from creation.

54Ibid., 152. Or to remember what Hunsinger said, “There is a contingency on the Logos. However, that contingency is to be identified only with the Logos ensarkos, never with the Logos asarkos. The Logos ensarkos reflect the act of the covenant of grace, but the Logos asarkos is God in being and essence from eternity, who is contingent upon nothing”

55Some of the post-reformed theologians, like Turretin were reticent to talk about Christ as the subject of election. For him this kind of idea tended to bring to much confusion regarding the foreordination of God. Oliver Crisp argued that the main point of controversy was exactly because the Salmurians and Amrninanians used the idea of Christ's work as basis for election and incorporated those ideas into the decrees of God. Turretin thought that this take on God's decrees caused a fundamental contingency in his being, because his decrees would flow out of a determination from sinful human being. In this analysis, the contingent is not even on the relationship or on the covenantal identity, but on the eternal decrees of God himself. Turretin thought that this idea was inconceivable.

56Karl Barth, Karl Barth’s Table Talk, ed. John D. Godsey (Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011), 49.

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Believing only in a Logos ensarkos (McCormack) and at the same time saying that

Trinity is antecedent to election (Hunsinger and Molnar) is not self-contradictory, because if one

has a softer actualistic view of the entailment of Barth's theology, then that means that election

means self-affirmation of the ad extra character of God in his trinitarian life. As said before, self-

affirmation is not wrong, because the essence of the being is already existent and the election to

have some other form is a mere turning of the subject. As Gibson said, the turning itself does not

constitutes the divine Trinity, but is “a determination of how the divine being is going to be ad

extra, towards creation.”57

Conclusion

G&B is an attempt from Bruce McCormack to historicize the a-temporal relations of

God. The covenant of grace in which God decides to be God for us is what gives reason for His

being to exist as Trinity. According to Swain, two desiderata are driving McCormack here. One

is epistemological, by which man cannot know God except by his self-determination to be man

in history. The second is ontological in nature “and concerns the quest to define the being of God

exclusively in terms of that which makes possible the history of Jesus the God-man.”58

Therefore, history, both in epistemology and in ontology, swept the floor of man and Trinity. The

key to the entire debate appears to be that McCormack talks about ad intra relationships in the

Trinity and Molnar and Hunsiger are talking about ad extra. Little is known about the Trinity ad

intra, therefore in the end of the day, McCormack seems to engage in speculation.

What is known about God ad intra, however, is that God is Father, Son and Holy

Spirit before anything else. Michael Reeves59 sees that any notion of a God who is creator (or

57Gibson, Reading the Decree, 54.

58Swain, The God of the Gospel, 214.

59Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, 8.6.2012 edition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 23–5.

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elector) before He is Father, does not generate love. A God whose identity is first in the act of

electing, creating, or ruling is dependent upon other creatures or creations. Before anything else,

God is Father to the Son in love. Because if He is Father to the Son his relationship is not

contingent upon outside sources.

Even though Molnar and Hunsinger may be mistaken in their interpretation of the

Logos in Barth, it seems that it is better to side with them in their approach to history and the

freedom of God. If God is defined by the covenant of grace, then he is no longer God in

simplicity but a God with parts. The ad intra relationships are always the ground for the ad

extra. Therefore, the entailment of McCormack's proposal for Barth's Trinity is wrong because

threatens God in his freedom, immutability, and aseity.

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