Evaluating theologians

Ben has opened a poll on the ‘world’s best living theologian’ here. His list of contenders itself will raise plenty of eyebrows (isn’t David Bentley Hart a bit, well, new on the block to be a contender? I’d say the same of Milbank, even, although he has at least written more than one significant book) and generate plenty of comments. Me? I vote for Augustine, on the basis of Lk 20:38…

The interesting question it raised in my mind is how one assesses such a category. What is ‘good’ theology, and what makes a particular theologian ‘the best’? Some answers look attractive, but probably need to be dismissed because they are inoperable as criteria: the ‘best’ theologian is not the ‘most right’, or else who would judge? (At present, I have to assume my own theology is the best on this criterion, because, uniquely I believe, I do not hold to any positions I consider to be wrong…)

Is the best theologian merely the cleverest? Or the one with the deepest knowledge of the tradition? (In that case the winner is almost certainly some French Roman Catholic monk none of us have heard of…) Or the widest knowledge of contemporary thought? (Milbank might well win on that criterion.)

I think a good theologian prays well, first. No theologian who doesn’t has even begun to understand the discipline. And then s/he serves the Church, and his or her particular part of it (down to a local congregation) in humility and faithfulness. Theology belongs to the Church; any theologian divorced from the Church is a bad theologian, however brilliant or knowledgeable. A good theologian has a grasp of gospel values, and would swap everything s/he has written to see one sinner repent, or one broken life healed. A good theologian writes and speaks only to help the Church be more faithful to the gospel, bringing whatever knowledge of the tradition, whatever insight into contemporary modes of thought, and whatever native cleverness s/he may possess, all into service of this one end. A good theologian is marked by humility and cheerfulness, knowing how far short of the mystery of God and God’s works his/her best efforts fall, and knowing that in the good grace of God something of lasting worth may still come from them. A good theologian, finally, does know something, and has some capacity of thought, and so can make a contribution through his/her God-given vocation.

I am not a very good theologian.

Evangelical ecclesiology (2)

Andy and Michael have raised an interesting issue in comments on this post. Andy had claimed that ‘evangelicalism has a weak ecclesiology’; Michael countered with ‘evangelicalism has a low ecclesiology’. I actually disagree with both, as will become clear.

Let me first make a distinction: a ‘low ecclesiology’ might mean a ‘low-church ecclesiology’, i.e., an eccelsiological position that tends to Presbyterian or Congregationalist polity, or it might mean a ‘low evaluation of ecclesiology’, i.e., an ecclesiological position that, whatever its account of ecclesiology, held the matter to be relatively unimportant in the scheme of theology. I take it from his post that Michael meant the latter, but the two must be distinguished: I, and many others, would identify with the ‘high chapel’ tradition which is low in the first sense but emphatically not in the second. (I’ve quoted Smyth elsewhere: ‘Is not the visible church of the New Testament with all the ordinances thereof the chief and principal part of the Gospel?’–is there, anywhere, a higher ecclesiology in the second sense?)

Now, what of the ecclesiology of Evangelicalism? Is it either ‘weak,’ or ‘low’ in the second sense? I contend that there are enough counter-examples to render either conclusion untenable. The Wesley brothers held a high ecclesiology in both senses of the word, as my previous post indicated; Edwards’ ecclesiology was low-church, but strongly held (he lost his ministry because he refused to compromise on questions of church membership and qualifications for communion). Whitefield, in complete contrast, did have a weak or low ecclesiology.

In the nineteenth century, many of the more radical Evangelicals had strongly-held, if low-church, ecclesiologies. Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby are obvious examples; Thomas Chalmers split the Kirk over questions of ecclesiology in 1843, which is hardly the action of someone careless of ecclesiological questions! Across the Atlantic, the anti-missions movement points to an astonishingly strong Baptist ecclesiology. I also think Spurgeon held to a strong ecclesiology, but recognise that this is more contentious…

In the twentieth century, Lloyd-Jones’ somewhat ill-tempered and unclear strictures in 1966 at least implied that he felt that ecclesiological questions were important; the Restorationist strand of the (British) charismatic movement was strongly committed to its distinctive ecclesiological positions. Today, look at something like 9Marks: there is an intense focus on certain ecclesiological positions, including accounts of the proper offices of the church and qualifications for ministry, as essential to the gospel. It happens that I disagree with at least some of the positions they urge on both points; their ecclesiology cannot be dismissed as ‘low’ or ‘weak’, however.

Of course, Whitefield too has his heirs, particularly in Britain amongst Anglican Evangelicals, but not exclusively. In the wider Evangelical world, The London Missionary Society forbade its missionaries from teaching on ecclesiological matters; the origins of the Salvationist repudiation of sacraments lies in a desire on Booth’s part to focus on gospel, rather than structures; and so on.

So, I do not think that ‘Evangelicalism’ has either a weak or a low ecclesiology; I would be prepared to accept that Anglican Evangelicals, after the Tracts for the Times, have found it impossible to hold to a strong ecclesiology, and that others have sometimes followed the same course; but there is no uniformity visible in the history that I know (mainly, British, I own). Evangelicalism as a whole has no distinctive or common ecclesiology (just as ‘Arminianism’ as a whole has no ecclesiology).

‘Unreal city’

This blog went live on the 16th of December, receiving four views, according to the WordPress stats counter. Today, that counter topped 5000. I imagine long-term theobloggers like Andy, Jason and particularly Ben will regard that as pretty paltry, and I am sure that WordPress set it up to maximise the numbers (their business depends on encouraging their bloggers, after all), but it seems a big enough number to make the blog feel worthwhile.

Thanks to all who have stopped by or blogged about this blog, and particularly to all who have engaged in debate. Although (looking at the stats) if you were one or more of the 97 visits on Christmas day, you probably should have had something better to do…

(Incidentally, if anyone is wondering, all the ‘admin’ posts have titles taken, like the blog title, from Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’, and hopefully not totally unrelated to the topic of the post. For this one, the choice was between ‘unreal city’, ‘I had not thought death had undone so many’ and ‘hypocrite lecteurs’…)

Evangelical ecclesiology

Andy has asked in a comment on the previous post about a lack of ecclesiology in Evangelical theology. This bears some reflection. Historically, one of the decisive early decisions that made Evangelicalism a distinctive movement was a refusal to let ecclesiological differences divide it. For some (Whitefield, e.g.), this meant ecclesiology was totally unimportant; for others it remained really very important, but they would work across the boundaries nevertheless (John Wesley agonised over whether he could ordain preachers for the American mission, despite not being in episcopal orders; he eventually decided to take this step, horrifying his brother Charles–who left some manuscript verses about the decision, including the lines: ‘The pious Mantle o’er his Dotage spread, / With silent tears his shameful Fall deplore, / And let him sink, forgot, among the dead / And mention his unhappy name no more’–fairly vitriolic things to say about your own brother!)
This has been a continual tension in British Evangelicalism: when Bible Society was founded, it nearly fell apart because some Baptists wanted to insist that baptizo be translated ‘immerse’ in all its publications. Around the same time, the rise of the Brethren movement linked Scriptural faith to particular ecclesiological stances, notably separation. More recently, the debate between Lloyd-Jones and Stott over whether Evangelicals should come out of the historical denominations still reverberates. (Although the folk-memories often enough bear little resemblance to what actually went on in October 1966, judging by the historical reports that are available.)

The decision to put ecclesiological matters to one side in order to concentrate on shared missional commitments has, regularly, drifted into a suggestion that ecclesiological matters are not important (see my essay in the Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology for some instances); but it need not. Evangelicalism is not, however, a denomination, marked by a shared ecclesiological position. I suspect that most developed Baptist ecclesiologies are, as it happens, Evangelical, and a few years back Tim Bradshaw could develop a specifically Evangelical Anglican ecclesiology in The Olive Branch, but in both cases the denomimnational qualifiers are rather decisive.

On this basis, I suspect that there isn’t such a thing as ‘evangelical ecclesiology’, but this does not necessarily mean that many or most Evangelicals are not ecclesiologically interested or concerned.

Evangelicalism divided?

I have seen/heard several comments in the last few weeks about the divided state of contemporary British Evangelicalism. Rob Warner’s book, Reinventing English Evangelicalism, has attracted a fair amount of attention, not least because of his central role in some of the debates he reflects on in the book. Andy Goodliff has begun a review here, and Jim Gordon has posted two parts of his own review here and here. Both focus in part on Warner’s account of the growing divisions in English Evangelicalism through the 1980s to the present. In addition, this month’s Christianity magazine has a feature article by Andy Peck (an excerpt can be read here) entitled ‘Evangelicals United?’ which is in many ways a re-presentation and popularisation of Pete Ward’s ‘tribes of evangelicalism’ thesis.

All these accounts start with David Bebbington’s ‘Quadrilateral,’ from his classic book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. David had argued that, historically, if we were to look for the uniting features of those people and groupings that were regarded as ‘Evangelical’, four broad themes would emerge: biblicism; christocentrism; crucicentrism; and activism. Reading the reviews of Warner’s book (my copy is on order…) and Peck’s article, both then recall a time in the 1950s or 1960s when Evangelicalism did appear united to the authors, and chart how Evangelical growth in numbers, influence, and confidence since then has led to fracture and disunity.

Andy says this in his summary of the book:

Warner’s thesis ’seeks to build upon Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain‘, but identifies a rather more dynamic model of ‘twin and rival axes within pan-evangelicalism that energise the dynamic of evangelical rivalries, experiments and evolution’ (20). There are two things happening, firstly there are the group of active-orientated entrepreneurs, who make up the conversionist-activist axis – those who are engaged in Spring Harvest, March for Jesus, Alpha, and what was in the 1980s and 90s a growing worship industry. Secondly, there are the more theologically-orientated group, who make up the biblicist-crucicentric axis – those who are concerned with doctrine and often the formulating and guarding the doctrinal core of evangelical convictions’ (20). The book is thus divided into two parts, exploring historically and theologically these two axes.

[Where does the third quotation start, Andy? I expect better from my former students!]

Jim states that ‘The last 20 years have seen a process of increasing polarisation, as Evangelicalism has gone through a period of reinvention, redefinition and realignment.’ and explores the same basic theme that Andy picked up on:

The historic movement of pan-Evangelicalism, has in the past been held together despite many internal tensions, by agreed principles generously interpreted …. What Warner argues is that in late 20th century English Evangelicalism, these four essentials in the Evangelical bar code have through a process of bifurcation split the Evangelical movement into two axes. The first is the crucicentric biblicist axis which is essentially Reformed, doctrinally defensive, leans heavily towards fundamentalism and is increasingly separatist. The other is the conversionist activist axis, which is entrepreneurial in style, pragmatic in approach and mainly driven by and ecclesial pragmatism baptised in the Spirit, but less doctrinally precise. Both are increasingly discredited.

I ought to declare an interest here: I presently chair what used to be the Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth amongst Evangelicals (ACUTE), although the first decision under my chairing was to re-name it (to an even longer mouthful!). But my concern with this picture is not because I have anything invested in pretending that the Evangelical movement is more united than it is (if anything, unless there is more than Andy and Jim are saying, I think Warner misses the truly toxic potential divisions which may yet happen, and which, if they do, will get entangled with the politics of ethnicity). Rather, it is because I am interested in Evangelical history.

The account of increasing division Warner and Peck give is true, but only in the way that political statistics are always true: it is easy to demonstrate decline or increase by carefully choosing the starting point. Evangelicalism in the 1950s in Britain was united and uniform, surprisingly so: the old ‘liberal’ and ‘centrist’ wings of the movement, significant before the Second World War, had declined, and a moderate conservatism held sway. My reading of British Evangelical history, however, is that the 1950s represent an astonishing moment of uniformity, unparalleled in history before or since, rather than a norm against which other things may be measured.

Evangelicalism has always been a pluriform movement; in some ways, its chief genius since the 1730s has been its ability to hold together people across lines that divide the wider church, in the name of a focus on certain essentials and a commitment to action. In 1750, some of the Evangelicals astonishingly refuse to be divided on Calvinist-Arminian lines; in 1800 the great pan-Evangelical campaigns all begin in a public house, the London Tavern, because they are bringing together ministers who are prohibited by their denominations from entering one-another’s churches, or even houses; in 1846, the Evangelical Alliance is consciously and determinedly internationalist in scope and focus; and so on.

Through the twentieth century, the wider church became better at not being divided, and so this feature of Evangelicalism becomes less obvious–but, actually, it is still true in important ways: all the ecumenical groups I have been involved in, local or national, multi-lateral or bilateral, have been unable to celebrate the Eucharist together; Evangelicals do it routinely (and the fact that we do it demonstrates that this is not because we don’t care about the Eucharist!). Jim’s line about ‘agreed principles, generously interpreted’ is a very good one; both parts capture something of the central genius of the British Evangelical movement.

I think, pending a close reading of his book, that Warner is simply wrong to suggest the present pluriformity of English Evangelicalism is anything remarkable; rather, the uniformity of a half-century ago was remarkable, in historical terms. However, the thesis is not just about uniformity, but about unity. This post is long enough already, though–that can wait a day or two.

Prawn sandwiches and preaching

Roy Keane, one of the greatest footballers (’soccer players’ if you must) of his generation, current manager of Sunderland, and former captain of Manchester United, may not be everybody’s idea of a model for church members. Foul-mouthed, angry, and sometimes violent, his unquestionable talent and passion was too often eclipsed by all-too-public rants at almost anybody. He belittled his team-mates, the fans, his national team, and most of his managers (although never, at least publicly, Sir Alex Ferguson). But I’ve preached in several dozen churches over the past few years, and not met one that would not benefit immensely from listening to Keane’s views on prawn sandwiches. And I can tell you that, as an Arsenal fan from childhood, it costs me something to say that!

It was in 2000. United were playing Dynamo Kiev in a big European game. They were 1-0 up, and the atmosphere in the stadium was dead-not unusually, in Keane’s view. He announced ‘At the end of the day they need to get behind the team. Away from home our fans are fantastic, I’d call them the hardcore fans. But at home they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, and they don’t realise what’s going on out on the pitch.’ (quoted from The Guardian, 24/8/06).

A week tomorrow, I will preach again in St Salvator’s, the University Chapel here in St Andrews. The pulpit there, removed from the town church, claims to be the one from which John Knox delivered his Reformation sermon; it maintains aspects of the traditional pulpit furniture of Scotland: an hourglass, turned as the preacher began, with the instruction that he should not stop before the sands ran out; and a lock on the outside, so that the congregation may confine the preacher to the pulpit until he has adequately preached the Word.

This was a land where people were more eager to hear the Word of God than their ministers were to declare it. No longer, except in odd places (I pay public tribute to the congregation of St Andrews Baptist Church, who do still value the preaching of the Word). My suspicion is that, almost regardless of the gifts or efforts of their ministers, the people heard better preaching as a result. As a preacher, you know when people care about the Word–you can feel it as you stand up to preach. And where the people are excited, eager, expecting to hear from God through the Word, you preach better. And where they have been praying for you through the week, taking their part in the corporate ministry of the Word, there is a chance of a miracle.

And where they are more interested in the prawn sandwiches, or the after-church coffee, they will get the preaching they deserve.

Bodies and the Body

Yesterday we managed to divert both Cyril O’Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology at Notre Dame, and Matthew Levering of Ave Maria University to St Andrews to give us papers. In the morning Prof O’Regan explored von Balthasar’s apocalyptic trinitarianism, which helped me to understand why Halden has thought McCormack’s ideas echo Balthasar. In the afternoon, Dr Levering gave us a paper soon to be published in Pro Ecclesia on the theological interpretation of Scripture, a topic we talk a lot about in St Andrews.

Levering explored proposals from O’Collins and from the Princeton Scripture Project before giving us his own account of what theological interpretation ought to look like. It was good stuff. One point got me thinking, however. He suggested that theological interpretation should be ‘embodied’, which he glossed by saying that the lives of the Saints (and, perhaps, saints) should be read as privileged interpretations of Scripture.

I don’t disagree with the point (I’ve explored something similar in passing in chapter 2 of my Listening to the Past, indeed), but when elevated to the status of a normative principle for hermeneutics, it made me pause. My instinctive, Baptist/Congregationalist, reaction was to resist locating the normative performance of Scripture in individual lives, and instead to locate it in the lives of Christian communities. ‘Is not the visible church of the New Testament with all the ordinances thereof the chief and principal part of the Gospel?’ asked John Smyth as the Baptists began. I actually believe that the answer is yes.

On Christian ‘belief’

Various folks commented in response to the two posts I managed to put up during Christmas travels, suggesting that a properly Christian account of ‘belief’ implied rather more than I had implied or allowed for. I am aware of this, of course, but probably should have been clearer that I was. The best analysis (as almost always…) comes from the scholastics: ‘belief’ is to be divided into three parts: notitia (‘knowledge’); assensus (‘agreement’); and fiducia (‘commitment’ or ‘trust’). To ‘believe’ in the gospel is, simultaneously, to know the claims of the gospel, to agree that they are true, and to stake one’s life upon them.

My problem is that I don’t think that anyone asking the question ‘Do you believe in God?’ in modern Britain has any of that analysis even subconsciously in mind. They are asking for an affirmation or denial of the factual veracity of a hazily-formed and unanalyzed proposition–in scholastic terms, assensus without notitia or fiducia. And I think that, in sheerly missional terms, this is a problem for us. Take a look at this, rather heart-warming, press comment; the writer records an entirely positive (for her…) experience of church-attendance, and even implies a certain wistfulness that she feels excluded from more active and regular involvement in her local Christian community, on the basis that she ‘doesn’t believe in God’.

This is not uncommon, in my experience. (I acknowledge that it may be rather peculiarly British, or even English: unlike the French in particular, our atheism was always tinged with regret, as Mathew Arnold discovered looking at Dover Beach.) If we could get away from the ill-formed and unhelpful ‘Do you believe in God?’ question, people like Vikki Woods might be given the chance to discover in Christian community what Christian ‘belief’ really means.

Bruce McCormack’s TFT Lectures (5): Evaluation

How to evaluate McCormack’s novel account of kenosis? I want to make two comments. The first is that I think it is at least potentially defensible when judged according to the canons of classical (Reformed) orthodoxy. I do not think there is any major doctrinal decision that it offends against, although on one point I was left with the feeling that more work was needed to establish the defence. The second comment is that I was not convinced by Bruce’s account of the pressure towards a revision of doctrine in this area. Very simply, I think his account of kenosis can be held, but it need not be: it remains open, in my view, to hold to the classical formulations of Christology without the need to revise them, and, personally, this would be my preferred position.

This all needs much elaboration. Let me first address my assertion of the orthodoxy of Bruce’s proposal. It seems to me that the most obvious criticisms, and certainly the ones Bruce indicated had been most prevalent, concern the doctrine of the Trinity. However, it seems to me that with a clear-headed grasp of the contours of Trinitarian dogma we can see how Bruce’s proposals are, not just orthodox within those contours, but significantly more so than many other recent accounts of Trinitarian doctrine.

The essential patristic claim about the Trinity is that all properties are held in common, save only the personal properties of begetting, being-begotten, and proceeding. If we read McCormack’s account of kenosis as an account of what it is to be begotten, i.e., as the personal property of the Son, then it meets this canon with ease. Dorner’s great criticism, which destroyed nineteenth-century kenoticism, insisted that either the Son gives up divine properties and so ceases to be divine, or we are forced to confess a kenotic Father alongside a kenotic Son, but if kenosis is a—the—personal property of the Son, then neither claim obtains. Self-emptying is the personal mode of the Son’s divine omnipotence, and so on. There are some details down the road that need dealing with, but it seems to me that the basic position is securely orthodox, certainly much more so than all of the recent theology that, misled by the word ‘Person’, insists on finding three instances of many or most divine properties (will; operation; knowledge; …) within the Godhead.

What about the criticism that McCormack makes trinity dependent on election, or somesuch phrase? I confess to finding it a difficult criticism to parse theologically. God’s act is unitary, and identical with His being; if what God is is trinity, and what God does is election, then it is necessary to assert a fairly strict identity between trinity and election. Bruce does this convincingly, as far as I can see. (Personally, I would want to work harder at the ‘what God does is election’ premise—I am more and more convinced that Barth is at least unhelpful on this point, although one of my doctoral students has just convinced me that probably he doesn’t fall into any of the traps he opens up himself.) Only if we assume that God’s act is somehow an accidental accretion to His being can any form of this criticism stand—but that would be to depart completely, albeit fashionably, from the traditional Christian doctrine of God.

If there is a criticism which is in danger of sticking, I think it is to do with creation. We often, and misleadingly, tell our undergraduates that the distinction between the begetting of the Son and creatio ex nihilo is that one is a necessary act and the other a free act. If that were at all an adequate account of the situation, then Bruce’s proposal would have serious problems. However, as I pointed out in the previous post, the affirmation that God’s being is His act is basic to all classical theology, and so such shorthand accounts are deeply misleading. Hence we find throughout the tradition attempts to specify in a more sophisticated way the underlying distinction.

The most popular form of such attempts in a Reformed tradition is to press at distinctions between different sorts of necessity, as Barth himself does. In conversation with Bruce, I became convinced that he could offer an adequate defence along these lines that was no more problematic than many others; I did not think that defence was yet in place in the lectures as delivered, though.

Thus I believe that McCormack’s account of kenosis is, or at least could easily be rendered, orthodox. Is it, however, compelling? Alongside the constructive work in these lectures was a line of critique of classical Christology which established the need for the fresh construction. Simply and bluntly, I found this critique unconvincing. It was, in essence, Herrmann’s critique of metaphysics: the problem with Christology prior to Schleiermacher was its investment in certain metaphysical commitments that were alien to the gospel. This led to irreconcilable tensions, in patristic Christology, which only Cyril’s (supposed) Origenism allowed him to escape, and throughout the tradition into the nineteenth century, with the incompatibility of the anhypostasia and dithelitism coming to the fore. It is these metaphysical commitments, giving rise to the tensions they do, that drive the need for a revisionist Christology.

I have indicated in the course of my comments that I found both the specific accounts of difficulties unconvincing, for different reasons. More basically, I find Herrmann’s overall assessment unconvincing. Bruce devoted a significant amount of time—ten minutes, perhaps—in his third lecture to arguing that Barth’s use of metaphysical or idealistic language was merely ad hoc and demonstrated no commitment to the underlying systems. I am prepared to be convinced of this, or at least of a slightly more nuanced account of the same point; but I am sure that the same could be equally well argued of the Cappadocians, Augustine, John Damascene, Anselm, St Thomas, the Palamite, Luther, Calvin, Quenstedt, Turretin, Suarez, and the rest. (On reflection, I’d give some ground on Nyssan, Anselm, Gregory Palamas, and Suarez if really forced!) I do not find irreconcilable tensions in classical Christology, nor to I find disastrous commitments to alien metaphysical schemes. I think that that debate was fought and won contra Eunomius in the fourth century, and I don’t see any evidence that the lesson was ever forgotten for long, or by the great figures in the tradition. So I don’t feel the pressure that is driving Bruce.

Let me end, though, where I began. Bruce’s Christological proposal is, in my estimation, more weighty and serious than almost anything else I have come across in recent English-language theology. In its striving for conceptual clarity and logical coherence, and its attention to the proper claims of the tradition, it demands and deserves—and repays—serious consideration. When I next teach on modern Christology, Jenson and McCormack will have a session to themselves, as representing magnificent reconceptualisations of either side of the Reformed-Lutheran divide. If I happen to agree with neither of them, that does not dent my enormous respect for both.

Bruce McCormack’s TFT Lectures (4)

A note on the nature of these posts: I am not typing up notes of the lectures (I tend to take none, other than a few scribbled phrases intended to aid in the formulation of a question or comment at the end of the presentation). Instead, I am working from my memory of them, and my reflections following them. My intention has not been to give an exhaustive account of the arguments deployed, so much as to make clear what I took to be the main thread of argument running through the presentations, and my evaluation of it. In turning to Bruce’s final lecture, I am going to depart completely from the structure of the lecture as it was given, which was split into three (unequal) sections: reflections on the proper exegesis of Phil. 2:5-11; an outline of the constructive proposal towards which the lecture series had been building; and a series of responses to criticisms that had been made earlier.

On reflection, particularly following some helpful comments from George Hunsinger and Paul Molnar, I suspect that I erred in the previous post in moving too rapidly from lecture 3 to lecture 4; that is, in ascribing certain theses to McCormack’s interpretation of Barth rather than to the constructive material, intended as an advance on Barth. In particular, the notion that kenosis (as opposed to obedience, say) is simply what it is to be the second person of the Trinity, is something that I think is Bruce’s own, not something he found in Barth.
What, then, is Bruce’s proposal? Let me approach it like this: it is a standard thesis of classical theology that God’s being is His act; further, God’s act is single, and simple. This is, of course, already a problem, at least if one wants to continue to maintain that God’s existence is independent of the created order: St Thomas devotes considerable ingenuity to explaining how God’s act of creation can happen without any change in God (1a q.45 arts 2 &3). When Barth brings the doctrine of election into the doctrine of God (it is treated in the second part-volume of vol. II, not the first of vol. III), and links election closely to incarnation, the problem becomes acute. However, the gains of Barth’s novel doctrine of election are sufficiently obvious that almost every serious (Protestant) theological proposal of the second half of the twentieth century chose to face the problems, rather than lose the gains.

In general, and in one way or another, the problems were eliminated in the later twentieth century by the simple expedient of losing the axiom of impassibility, properly understood: if God’s life is allowed to be dependent on creation, there is no problem. The single greatest merit of Bruce’s proposal, it seems to me, is that he is not prepared to play this game. Instead, he develops a novel account of kenosis.

Barth learnt from Harrmann that generic metaphysical accounts of deity should not be accepted. This allowed him to conceive of an account of Trinity that reflected the gospel story: a prior and a posterior, a sender and a sent, a commanding and an obedience—and of course a unity of the Spirit holding the two ‘poles’ together. Bruce’s proposal is at heart as simple as a radicalisation of this one point: kenosis, self-surrender, is simply and precisely what it is to be the Son. ‘Kenosis’ here implies incarnation, so incarnation, or a directedness toward incarnation, is precisely what it is to be the Son. God’s life as Father, Son and Spirit is directed towards the gospel history. The Son gives up no part of His deity in obedience, incarnation, kenosis, death, because these things are simply what it is to be the second Person of the Trinity. Further, what it is to be the third Person of the Trinity is to eternally hold together the sending and commanding Father and the sent and obedient Son in the unity of the Godhead. In a paragraph, this is what I take Bruce to be arguing.