Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 1

Today begins the first post in a series of engagements around Nathan R. Kerr's Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission. Nate's book has recently been released simultaneously in the United States through Cascade Books in their Theolopolitical Visions series (Amazon.com link), and in the United Kingdom by SCM Press in the Centre of Theology and Philosophy's Veritas series (Amazon.co.uk link).  (I should add that Cascade Books is still offering a 40% off discount if purchased through their site using the discount code "KERR40", bringing the cost of the book down significantly more.) 

As is common, each post will be accompanied by an image of the book cover.  However, due to the simultaneous printing of this book on two presses, there are two covers of the book, so I will be using them interchangably.  The cover below is from the Cascade Books version, and the next post will be from the SCM Press version (which I actually designed with the photographic vision of Sara Cunningham-Bell, which is why I couldn't resist mentioning this!).

The first post comes from Joshua Davis who is a Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University.  Josh addresses the introductory chapter 1  as well as the conceptual trajectory of the work.  I had the pleasure of meeting both Nate and Josh in Nashville, Tennessee last May while I was in town for a business trip for my (now) former employer, and we couldn't help but talk theology and philosophy the whole time. 

Please feel free to add your own thoughts and comments below, especially if you have already read Christ, History and Apocalyptic, and if you have not done so, it's not too late to catch up.

---

It is an honor to have the opportunity to introduce this public discussion of Nate Kerr's fascinating study, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission.  It is an honor because I anticipate that the publication of this work will mark the emergence of a fresh theological perspective that is as important as it is distinct.  Yet, even this is a relatively minor concern for me because, in the six years I have known him, Nate has become not only an important colleague and interlocutor, but also my friend.  And, as such, I do not know this work as one more book of ideas, but as something of an angel with whom I have seen him wrestle, an encounter in whose wake I know him now to limp. 

I mention this only because it seems to me his work may not be read for the kind of theological reflection it is - that is, per Evagrius' dictum, one that seeks to open out onto that true prayer that is the praise of the Father.   There is a risk, it seems to me, that this work may be interpreted as one more instance of "Barthian" hyperbole and polemic, as repeating an outmoded "modernist" and "punctualist" understanding of the nature/grace relation, as propounding a "Docetic" ecclesial vision, or as a retreat into a fideistic mythological cosmology.  I am not unsympathetic to such concerns; Nate's theological sensibilities are, generally speaking, the precise obverse of my own.  But, such claims, I charge, obscure the real challenge Nate's argument poses.  What can it mean to argue that certain critical and somewhat characteristic moves made by Barth, Hauerwas, as well as the most "community"-oriented aspects of Yoder, repeat a Hegelian gesture, inherited from Troeltsch, that is not only woefully inadequate in its rejection of mission and apocalyptic as essential aspects of the Christian witness, but is, consequently, irreducibly ideological and - what is perhaps worse for the Hauerwasian - Constantianian?   I will leave this question for the readers and respondents to consider as this discussion proceeds.  By raising it, I do not mean to suggest it is the only or even the most important question the book poses, but that it is one that must be put into relief at the beginning of any discussion of the work, if that discussion is not to repeat the very positions it seeks to put in the dock. 

I have elected so far to speak very generally about the force of this work.  Yet I believe it is also important, as a way of introducing this discussion, to underscore the simplicity of its claim.  Nate names it quite clearly in the opening sentence of the introduction.  What he seeks, throughout the book to investigate, is "what mode of thinking about history and the historical character of human action renders the 'truth' of the earliest and most straightforward Christian confession, that of Jesus Christ's 'lordship' - kurios Iesous - for our world today?"  The subject of the book, then, is Jesus' lordship - what it means to affirm it in history, in practice, and, most importantly, in the present.  This is what Nate's language of "singularity" is meant to highlight: the nature, uniqueness, and finality enshrined in the claim "Jesus is Lord." 

Additionally, I should note that the most important, indeed the most illuminating and revolutionary, aspect of Nate's development of this theme occurs in his wholesale rejection of Boethius' development of Plato's understanding of time (i.e., history) as "the moving image of eternity."  This is a theme too rich and complex to take up here, and is best left to Nate to develop in his response to others.  I would urge the readers and respondents, though, to pay close attention to this theme, for it is of a piece with his overarching apocalyptic orientation and essential to his rejection of Hegel.  In this theme, we begin to catch a glimpse of the truly original and transformative insight that animates this work.  J. Louis Martyn has developed this theme in detail, though in quite different terms, throughout his body of work.  It is the truth regarding Jesus that Paul insists God "apocalypsed" in him (Gal. 1:15-16), the good news that sent (apostelo) him to the Gentiles: the news that in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, God has triumphed over every power and principality, and sends us now into the world to inhabit history in such a way as to render it transparent to the Kingdom, which is our share in God's life. 

Joshua Davis
Ph.D. Candidate, Theological Studies
Vanderbilt University

Comments

[geoffrey holsclaw]

joshua,

thanks for the provocative introduction setting out the themes of this book. I don't yet have a copy so I need some clarification on one thing.

Is Kerr the one claiming that Barth/Hauerwas are "repeating a Hegelian gesture" (and which gesture at that), or is that your claim?

thanks, that will help me understand the discussions more.

[Thomas Bridges]

Eric,

So who will be the other responders to Nate's book?

[Joshua Davis]

Geoff,

This is, indeed, Nate's position. What he is claiming is that Troeltsch, Barth, Hauerwas, and Yoder all advance, in different ways, a common account of Hegel's "concrete universal."

Barth has a unique place in Nate's account because, while judged guilty, he has shown the way forward in his emphasis on the historical man, Jesus Christ. But where Barth goes wrong (principally in CD IV) is in abstracting from that particularity in a way that universalizes his historicity and compromises his singularity (i.e., his finality, his 'lordship.)

Troeltsch, Hauerwas, and (aspects of) Yoder advance a more pernicious version of this gesture -- one that more fully develops this Hegelian trajectory. They do this in that they repeat Hegel's moment of the cultus, which functions as the historical mediation of the universal in and through the particular. This is the case inasmuch as the Spirit comes to be associated with the "narrative" and practices of the Church as a kind of Sittlichkeit in which an objective spirit is manifested. Nate's objection is that this thoroughly, but unintentionally, immanentizes the Kingdom of God, repeating Troeltch's historicist orientation toward a religious absolute.

Insofar as this gesture is virutally replete in contemporary theology among those claiming to be some kind of "postliberal," this is a serious gauntlet to throw down.

[Lucy]

Nate does not in his book develop an alternate vision of eternity and its relation to time. I wonder if he might point in the direction he would take in doing so? What would an apocalyptic doctrine of God look like?

[geoffrey holsclaw]

Joshua,
thanks for the helpful response, and for virtually guaranteeing that I will pick up this book.

I am very interested in this very problematic of Hegel's Sittlickkeit and its relation (or not) to ecclesial politics.

But my initial concern (at least of your summary, it not Nate's position) is that by faulting Barth/Yoder/Hauerwas with repeating a form of Hegel's "concrete universalism" or "objective spirit" would also entail a corresponding repetition of Hegel's ontology of "self-determining holistic immanence" (to rip William Desmond). But surely this cannot be the case with any of these thinkers.

It seems, as Lucy suggests, that the real concern ought not to be whether an ecclesial politics repeats Hegel's "objective spirit" but how transcendence and time relate in a specifically Christian way (which Hegel loses).

So while I'm very interested in Kerr's concern, I would wonder if the situation was reversed in much contemporary non-postliberal theology which assumes a more process ontology like Hegel's but ends up with nothing like his "objective spirit" (such as Motlmann), but usually ends up underwriting the Sittlichkeit of the capitalist nation-state.

[Tim F.]

Lucy,

It seems to me that Nate cannot develop "an account" of history's relationship to eternity if we mean by that what is normally called "theory." From my reading, Nate wants to highlight God's action/activity in Jesus Christ and this action is irreducibly concrete and unable to be theorized in any sense. For Nate, this does not lead to fideism, at least on his own terms (he and I disagree on this), but simply manifests the human life by which all other human lives participate, via non identical repetition, in God.

My question for Nate could be asked this way: how is the past mediated, made present, or whatever he prefers to call it. Of course, this has theological implications for events like the eucharist and baptism but also for more "mundane" things like recipes and relationships (ie forgiveness, memory, learning, etc.).

Blessings,

Tim

[Nate Kerr]

Thank you, Josh for this helpful (and indeed provocative!) introduction to the discussion. And thank you Geoff, Lucy, and Tim for beginning to carry the conversation forward. As I am scheduled to post a response to the conversation as a whole after all of the contributors have posted, I will wait to see what themes emerge as regards to what I need to articulate more in-depth there. Also, as some of the questions that have been raised will probably be addressed further in the discussion of particular chapters, in some cases I will only begin to offer an outline in anticipation of further clarification down the line. But my desire is to be a part of this conversation as it unfolds and so will do my best to address questions as I can in the comments as they arise.

That being said, I'd like briefly to address Lucy's question as regards an alternative vision of eternity and its relation to time. The rudiments of this alternative vision of time's relationship to eternity are present in the logics of "singularity" and "excess" that emerge from my trinitarian recounting of the apocalyptic historicity of Jesus in ch. 5 of the book. For me these twin logics name for us the way in which in Christ's history is gifted to us as our mode of participation in God's eternal life, which now occurs paradoxically as the ever-new, non-identical repetition of the singularly temporal, contingent reality of Jesus of Nazareth's life as God. So my way of beginning to answer your question, in other words, is to say that in doing so we must be careful hold togeter and to affirm what are for me two fundamental axioms. First, the singular human being Jesus Christ is not only himself constitutive for us of time's relationship to eternity, but that relationship is an operation internal to his historicity. The second is that our affirmation of God's eternity coincides with our accordance of a certain kind of "finality" to an event that is singular and contingent, and that occurs, repeats, and is particated in (via the power of the Spirit) only by way of a certain definite temporal locality. Any transgression of either of these two axioms is bound to lead back into an inescapably idealist account of time's relation to eternity. On the other hand, I am suggesting something rather more like a christologically realist account of that relation.

I'll stop there for now, if that's okay. I've said a lot that no doubt needs working out and unpacking. But I should at least note that the spectres looming largely in all of this are those of Kierkegaard and Donald MacKinnon. For me, the decisive categories for rethinking the the relation of time to eternity that occurs in the person of Jesus are the Kierkegaardian categories of "the Moment" and "repetition" and "contemporaneity," as re-worked through MacKinnon's peculiar brand of theological realism. In fact, I am in the process of re-reading all of this stuff in Kierkegaard and MacKinnon for a forthcoming essay on the relation of time and eternity in conversation with Robert Jenson's work (so clarification on this question is coming in the form of something other than blog comments!).

I will leave off this comment by affirming Geoff's remarks about transcendence and time (though I formulate it as a matter of transcendence and contingency in ch. 5). Though I did not put it this way in the book, it could be said that my espousal of apocalyptic is meant to affirm a certain kind of pure transcendence, which is the affirmation of God's life as transcendent act without reserve -- the unbounded freedom of love. This is a decisively a-telelogical account of transcendence and time. If I think Barth and Hauerwas and Yoder at points short-circuit transcendence as such, it is because of the way in which they reinscribe the teleological gesture with regards to the eschaton (which I diagnose as the core of the Troeltschian problematic).

I have much more to say in clarification and in reply other questions I haven't even gotten to yet. But I will pause here for response. Please tell me what is helpful or not and I will do my best to state differently and to clarify or elaborate. Thank you for your critical engagement. I am already learning much from this conversation.

[Dave Belcher]

Geoff, as I understood Josh's comments about those figures repeating the Hegelian gesture of objective spirit in the moment of the cultus (or, of an immanentizing of the Kingdom of God), not only is such a move simply incoherent, it would in fact be a specifically non-Christian way to relate eternity and time; and Nate's logics of singularity and excess (or, to use Kerr-ese, the "apocalypticization of history" in the singular historicity of Jesus by the power of the "more" that is the Spirit) are attempting to do precisely what you want...that is, a construal of "how transcendence [or eternity] and time relate in a specifically Christian way."

In other words, this is not a move simply contra Hegel, I don't think...it is a move for the singular historicity of Jesus Christ as the only way against the teleo-eschatological immanentization of the Kingdom of God (which is another way of saying, against all forms of controlling history to work it out to a specific outcome by a series of well-managed developments..."ideology"). What Nate is attempting to do is to think outside of an Idealist framework, and that an "apocalyptic" mode of thinking (but only as a mode of practice, of doxology) is incompatible with such. Peace.

dave belcher

[geoff holsclaw]

Nate and Dave,

Thanks for the clarification. they were very helpful. The book is on order, so I'll probably need to wait and read it before my next question becomes clear. but here it is...it seems that we are a contrasting telo-eschatological track and an apocalyptic track for understanding God's Kingdom and the historicity of Jesus Christ. is that right?

If it is I bet there is significant philosophical/theology freight being moved on those tracks (which would probably be difficult to explore in detail here), coupled with various claims to being (or not-being).

Anyway, last year at the "Saint Paul's Journey to Philosophy" Paul Griffiths gave a paper exploring Paul's "messianic quietism" which does not seek to control history but stands in apocalyptic realism before the world. But he does this with a robust (Catholic) ontology/metaphysics of creation and teleology.

so are we pitting ontology and apocalyps, or is there continuity?

[Lucy]

Nate, thank you for your response. Let me see if I understand you correctly. By "pure transcendence" you mean that God is related to time / history NOT as a goal is related to the process by which that goal is reached. This is the historisist / immanentist mistake. History unfolds toward the Kingdom of God / God himself. Rather God enjoys a life of singular excess that cannot be approached from history, that cannot be ARRIVED at, but experienced only as an irruption INTO history, only as a GIFT--hence, your emphasis on doxology. The singularity is Jesus and the excess is the Spirit. Jesus inagurates the Kingdom of God not by arriving at a goal through a historical process, but by so identifying himself with excess of the coming Kingdom (which is not the telos of history but its interruption) that he is, paradoxically, its coming. God, then, relates to history by non-identically repeating this irruptive moment that irrupts first (and so determinatively) in Jesus. God's eternity, then, is not an eternalized history, but the ever-new irruptive event of God's freedom and love. Is this right?

Now, you mention Jenson. It seems that you would have some critiques to level against Jenson because Jenson identifies the Spirit as the GOAL of God's own life, and so the goal of history. God's eternity, for Jenson, is God's own history in which the history of the world is located. It seems that Jenson's ontology doesn't allow for an apocalyptic rendering of history or of God's own life. God can't INTERRUPT history, because history is a single narrative created by the "poles" of God's life, which are Father, Son, and Spirit, which are, respectively, Past, Present, and Future.

[Joshua Davis]

I should have been clearer that I believe the book is illuminated when read with eye toward the relationship of time and eternity as a theme, and that this is especially borne out in the disucssion of Jesus' historicity.

Regarding matters of ontology, Nate does not address them directly in the text. In fact, this is an ongoing discussion he and I have, so this does not mean they are unimportant. However, in my assessment, there is a very important sense in which such questions genuinely occlude the kind of singularity Nate is insistent must be ascribed to Jesus, precisely as the incarnation of God in time and matter and their redeemer, if we are to faithfully profess him as Lord.

That said, the theme of time and eternity provides glimpses.

[Stephen Rose]

When will someone concede that the earliest confession is NOT that Jesus is Lord but the Markan statement of Jesus that the realm of God is at hand, that we should repent and be glad? Creedal messianism is an overlay which distorts the meaning of this earliest confession, perpetuating the very religion which Jesus came to destroy.

[Nate Kerr]

Lucy:

Thank you for restating my position as you have. I think you are tracing out the fundamental trajectory of my thinking very well and very helpfully. The only thing I would want to clarify at this point regards your previous question as to an apocalyptic doctrine of being. What I would want to say is that God "is" the event of that act of love that occurs from the Father, through the Son (Jesus Christ), in the Spirit (historicity). So I would want to be careful not to say that God acts interruptively, as if God were involved in an arbitrary, willy-nilly movement of withdrawal from and intrusion into the world. Rather, God just is this free outgoing. As creatures, this outgoing is for us (for several reasons and on several levels) an irruption of our being and history, but even here this is the irruption of grace is not punctiliar but is the ongoing constitutive of our being and its conversion into our doxological participation in God -- eternal life; deification.

Also, I think you are right about Jenson. I have been questioned about the relation of my position to Jenson's elsewhere, and I had the following to say. I really appreciate Jenson's critique of eternity as a kind of timeless past. I am also very appreciative of the way in which Jenson seeks to root his understanding of the time-eternity relation in terms of the election of the incarnate Son in vol. 1 of his Systematic Theology (and so appreciate his critique of traditional understandings of the Son's "pre-existence"). I would have questions for Jenson at two points: (1) Is it sufficient simply to reverse the question of time's relation to eternity from one of our relation to a recollected timeless past to the anticipation of a "timeful" future? (though I like the way his focus upon the future still maintains the notion of transformation); and (2) Is it still yet too idealist (in the technical sense) to think of eternity merely as a "bracketing" of past and future? There is the concern for me that eternity function as a kind of "summing up" (a kind of conceptual Gestalt) for Jenson in a way that actually ends in an evasion of the concrete and contingent in spite of its apparent accounting for the "fullness" of temporality. As for me, I think of eternity as something like the boundless, infinite repetition of God's outgoing love for the other. Time then is what we might think of as that "space" which we are given, or better, in which we are elected, for our own participation in the repetition of that love as the other of God (i.e., for our own participation in eternity).

I hope that helps. Please let me know what needs clarification and I'll do what I can. I am grateful for the engagement. And now I'm off to teach class...

[james]

Hey Stephen Rose, St. Paul didn't get the memo I guess.

[Nate Kerr]

Correction: the first paragraph of my most recent post is referring to Lucy's question as regards an apocalyptic doctrine of God. Clearly, I had Geoff's question regarding being on my mind.

[Tim F.]

Hi, Nate,

Thanks for the clear and concise summary of your understanding of eternity. I have one question of clarification:

When you say that eternity is something "like the boundless, infinite repetition of God's outgoing love for the other" who is this other? Is it the otherness in God himself as Triune or creation and history?

Thanks in advance,

Tim

[Nate Kerr]

Tim:

The short answer is that this other is the creature. But saying just that is insufficient. This other is the one that is called into existence as the Father goes out in love, through the Son, in the Spirit. That other's existence is the existence of that one who is elected for praise of the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit -- that is, that one who is created for participation in God's own life as other, for the loving praise of God as that other whose love has called her into being as other. This is another way of making the point (though I would want to make it differently than McCormack with regards to Barth) that election is constitutive of God's eternal being-in-act. And also of thinking election as that point at which God's being and act, as also the doctrines of creation and redemption, are genuinely and appropriately thought together. (This question about the relation of being to act as one of the relation of creation to grace is a question that is currently being worked out by Josh Davis in his dissertation.)

Two things here:

1.) This other is not simply the "cosmos" as such, a general reality, "the world." This otherness is an operation of the trinitarian logics of singuarlity and excess.

2.) I don't consider there to be "otherness" within Godself as triune in se, and that is mainly because I don't know what it would mean to think of God as other to Godself. I am not a "communal" trinitarian, in that sense. The triunity of God indeed entails that there is genuine difference in God, but not otherness as such.

[geoff holsclaw]

amen to not having otherness in Godself! seriously, let that Hegelian theme be banished.

[Tim F.]

Thanks, Nate.

I'll chew on that for a while, though I am sure you know my first reactions are skeptical, because I worry that eternity becomes dependent on time if its (even intra-trinitarian eternal) constitution includes a created other. Here, I simply cannot follow McCormack (and disagree more).

Just to be clear, I didn't want to affirm there is "otherness" in God but I do want to say there is difference, something like what Balthasar says. Difference without otherness is a difficult, if perhaps necessary, claim.

Peace,

Tim

[Lucy]

Nate, for me, what needs clarification in your understanding of eternity is the concept of "repetition." As I understand you, what is repeated is the singular history of Jesus as it is determined by the excessive presence of the Spirit. Through the Spirit, Jesus comes to us in our many contingent locations and makes them sites of the excessive work of the Spirit, which results in missional doxology.

Though what do you mean by "non-identical repetition?" I think you mean that the presence of Jesus throughout history will always be different depending on what contingent factors need to be opened to the excess of the Spirit. But what, if anything, is consistent through these repetitions that make then in fact REPETITIONS?

Maybe another way to ask my question is this: In your thinking is there any room for the Reformed emphasis on the perfect, complete work of Christ? Did Jesus in his historicity COMPLETE anything, or did he simply inaugurate openness to the Spirit, who is yet to bring the Kingdom? Perhaps you think this is a false dichotomy, but it would be helpful to know why.

[Nate Kerr]

Lucy:

These are excellent questions, and precisely the questions that need to be asked, it seems to me, in working out the time-eternity relation that is the historicity of Jesus, according to the terms I am suggesting. Because your particular question about repetition addresses the development of that latent time-eternity relationship that I am currently seeking to work out more explicitly, and because that is most likely an element of what I will try to work out more fully as the discussion unfolds and in my own contribution at the end of the discussion, I trust that you will forgive me if I come at your questions from somewhat of an angle (if not obliquely) in this comment. What I'll do here is briefly posit a few points that when taken together and filled in might give us something of what a more sustained response would look like. (And insofar as the idea of "repetition" is not a concept that I deploy as such in the book, I'll try to articulate what that concept is doing in terms of what I do say in the book -- hence the angularity.)

1.) As to the question of the "completeness" of Jesus Christ's historicity. It is axiomatic for me that something like this idea is necessary to the idea of non-identical repetition. Though I'd prefer not to use the term completness and to speak rather of the "finality" of Jesus Christ's historicity as the crucified and resurrected one. What is "finished" (finis) here is, as I say, the perfect agape that is humanity's union (without confusion, without transmutation, etc., per Chalcedon) with God as other. And yet insofar as what humanity is united to here is God's outgoing love for the other, Jesus' work is "final" as to be repeated. This repetition is our participation in God's eternal life, and it happens only as participation in what is "finished" in Christ (which is a perfectum, in the sense of something accomplished). Only as "finished" does repetition take on its full-force. And only the idea of repetition can really affirm what is "finished" here as a genuine finality. Otherwise we lapse back into an understanding of history between Resurrection and Parousia as the teleological "working out" of what Christ did "back there."

2.) It is on the basis of this finality that Jesus Christ himself is the "more" to history. This is at the heart of what I mean when I borrow Certeau's phrase to say, "Jesus is the Other." It is also why I insist upon the Second Coming in its own singualar distinctiveness as a determinative event. What the Spirit delivers us to in the ongoing contingencies of history is the their transformation as their participation in the one "finished" historicity of Jesus. What the Spirit is about then is not so much the "translatability" of a figura (Christ) into the contingent diversity of history (the way R. Williams in his Hegelianism puts it), but rather that transformation of the contingent diversity of history into union with (or participation in) the concreteness of Christ's lived historicity. This is why I say that Christ's history is not a "universal history" but a catholic historicity.

3.) Another way of saying this is to say that the logics of singularity and excess are internal to the apocalyptic historicity of Jesus. To say this, and to say that the "truth" of history is rendered according to this singular historicity, is to say that this truth is rendered insofar as the contingencies of history are not related to Christ's historicity "externally" as if to any given particular historicity as such, no matter which, but as "internal" to it, as involved in a mystery that encompasses them.

4.) This is why it is important to affirm that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. So what I want to say (and I think we find something like this in Ephesians, which I reference in passing in the last chapter of my book), is that this singular historicity of Jesus, his ministry of self-giving love for the other as other, as man to God and so as man to man, is not a mere instance of the repetition of God's love from all eternity, but is its very substance (and this might be an apocalyptically historicist way of thinking the homoousion).

5.) To answer as straightforwardly as I can the question of what is "consistent" in repetition. I would answer that it is the union in love of humanity as other with God as other that is perfected in Jesus Christ's historicity, which is to say that it is is our participation in God's outgoing love for the other by which we are, in Christ, united in love for the human other as other. What is repeated is the "catholicity" of Christ's historicity, which Paul articulates as the "fullness of Christ," and of which eucharistic table fellowship is the sign and sacrament.

I apologize for the length of this comment. And I am not satisfied with how I have articulated this stuff. Perhaps I can blame it on it being a Friday afternoon! But seriously, thanks for your questions; I am really learning much from you in your posing of them and in having to think through how I might respond to them. Incidentally, if you'd be interested in dialoguing in more depth on what I say here, feel free to email me: [email protected].

[Willy]

Hi, Nate said "I don't consider there to be "otherness" within Godself as triune in se, and that is mainly because I don't know what it would mean to think of God as other to Godself. I am not a "communal" trinitarian, in that sense. The triunity of God indeed entails that there is genuine difference in God, but not otherness as such." Which Geoff affirmed: "amen to not having otherness in Godself! seriously, let that Hegelian theme be banished."

Would you say more? would not 'perichoresis' entail both difference & 'otherness in Godself'? ...and a kind of 'communal trinitarianism'. Though forms of Hegelianism might be banished, how is it that the theme itself is to be so dismissed? Nate, you object to "otherness as such" but not "genuine difference in God": you must have special meanings for these terms--otherness & difference--which as far as I can see need not be canonical.

Thank you for your further comments.

[Dave Belcher]

Willy, I'd like to throw in a couple of things (though Nate can still certainly speak for himself)...

I am not certain that this is necessarily the place to get into trinitarian distinctions (yet), although I do think that such distinctions do bear on this discussion. Two things: Aquinas says that though the three persons (or relations) are "really distinct" [distinctio in rei] from one another, nevertheless the three persons are not really distinct from the one essence, or substance of the triune God (see ST 1.29.4 -- he's lifting from Augustine, by the way). I think this is a helpful way of responding to your question. The persons, or "relations of origin" are really distinct from one another -- there is "genuine difference" [subsisting] in the inner-life of the triune Godhead; however, they are not "other" to one another -- they are not such that they are divided, since the Godhead is indivisible, and since such a formulation would make three gods. So, to say that there is difference but not otherness in Godself is, in my mind, simply a way of saying that God is three in one, or one in three. In addition (this would be my "second thing"), perichoresis (or circumincessio) is really a word that indicates the mutual indwelling of self-distinction...it is certainly not meant to indicate "otherness." Even the "difference" it highlights is meant to be cast in a "mutually interpenetrating" light, such that -- as in Nazianzus's famous saying: when we look to the three we are immediately carried away to the one and from the one to the three...though he was not necessarily describing "perichoresis" in this passage (or, another way of saying this is that perichoresis "need not be canonical," and indeed its usage was certainly not as universal as some have made it out to be).

But, really while the trinitarian distinctions may be a helpful way of framing this, I am pretty sure that what Nate has in mind is a particular mode of responding to the Idealist and Romantic modes of thought of which someone like Barth was an inheritor -- and the author of the above post has some really helpful things to say about this as well (but, alas, here I am out of my area!).

Peace,

dave b

[I Need Money Desperately]

I am in the process of re-reading all of this stuff in Kierkegaard and MacKinnon for a forthcoming essay on the relation of time and eternity in conversation with Robert Jenson's work (so clarification on this question is coming in the form of something other than blog comments!).