DOGMATICS AS AN ACT OF FAITH

3. DOGMATICS AS AN ACT OF FAITH

Dogmatics is a part of the work of human knowledge. But this part of the work of human knowledge stands under a particularly decisive condition. Like all work of human knowledge, it naturally demands the intellectual faculties of attentiveness and concentration, of understanding and appraisal. Like all serious work of human knowledge, it demands the best will to utilise these faculties and ultimately the giving of the whole man to this utilisation. Over and above this, however, it demands Christian faith, which does not simply come of itself even with the deepest and purest surrender to this task. Dogmatics is a function of the Christian Church. The Church tests itself by essaying it. To the Church is given the promise of the criterion of Christian faith, namely, the revelation of God. The Church can pursue dogmatics. Even in the Church dogmatics need not be the work of a special dogmatic science. But there is no possibility of dogmatics at all outside the Church. To be in the Church, however, is to be called with others by Jesus Christ. To act in the Church is to act in obedience to this call. This obedience to the call of Christ is faith. In faith the judgment of God is acknowledged and His grace extolled. In faith self-examination is necessary in view of responsibility before God. Faith grasps the promise that we shall be led into all truth (Jn. 16:13). Faith knows God. Faith is the determination of human action by the being of the Church and therefore by Jesus Christ, by the gracious address of God to man. In faith, and only in faith, human action is related to the being of the Church, to the action of God in revelation and reconciliation. Hence dogmatics is quite impossible except as an act of faith, in the determination of human action by listening to Jesus Christ and as obedience to Him. Without faith it would be irrelevant and meaningless. Even in the case of the most exact technical imitation of what the Church does, or the most sincere intention of doing what the Church does, it would be idle speculation without any content of knowledge.

H. Scholz (Z.d.Z., 1931, p. 34) poses the question, expressly in relation to dogmatics: “Can we or can we not construct a form of Christianity, and do so in such a way that it is worth our while to contemplate this form and immerse ourselves in it, unless for better or for worse we ourselves actually believe in this Christianity?” His own answer, which fortunately is only indirect, is to the effect “that we may confidently evolve from Platonism or Aristotelianism, from Leibniz or Kant, a picture which ought to impress any who are susceptible to such spiritual pictures, and in such a way that for better or for worse we are neither Platonists nor Aristotelians, neither Leibnizians nor Kantians, but what it is our destiny to be.” Our comment is that, so long as we understand by Christianity the creaturely and cultural reality of a view of life and the world alongside Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc., and so long as we understand by a form or picture of Christianity the representation of it in its creatureliness according to the laws of the knowledge of such a reality, then the construction of an impressive form of Christianity without believing in it for better or for worse, is certainly an attractive and rewarding possibility. But there can be no question of this in dogmatics. In dogmatics Christianity means the proper content of talk about God ventured in the fear of God. Form means the statements in which we formulate our provisional answers in investigation of this content. The problem of impressiveness for the spiritually susceptible is bluntly replaced by that of responsibility to God. The third point reminds us that in dogmatics there can be no construction outside the real encounter between God and man, which is faith. Nor can the real content, i.e., Jesus Christ, be simply equated with creaturely reality. For He is revelation, divine-human reality. If there is such a reality, and if there is knowledge of it, as the Church and dogmatics presuppose, then this knowledge can only be that of faith, and we have good reason to ask if faith is really faith unless it is for better or for worse. Omnis recta cognitio Dei ab obedientia nascitur* (Calvin, Instit., I, 6, 2). Plato’s claim to make us Platonists might be transformed without loss into an impressive exposition of Platonism. Christ’s claim to obedience is identical with the being of the Church and cannot therefore be evaded by any dogmatics which is not prepared to forswear itself and become a mere survey of human thought. Dogmatics does not presuppose that it is our destiny to believe as Christians, but rather that our destiny not to do so is not final, and therefore that we shall not be disobedient to the heavenly voice (Ac. 26:19),

Faith, however, is not a determination of human action which man can give to it at will or maintain at will once it is received. On the contrary, it is the gracious address of God to man, the free personal presence of Jesus Christ in his activity. Hence, if we say that dogmatics presupposes faith, or the determination of human action by hearing and as obedience to the being of the Church, we say that at every step and with every statement it presupposes the free grace of God which may at any time be given or refused as the object and meaning of this human action. It always rests with God and not with us whether our hearing is real hearing and our obedience real obedience, whether our dogmatics is blessed and sanctified as knowledge of the true content of Christian utterance or whether it is idle speculation.

It is in this light that we have to ponder what was once much discussed as the demand for regeneration or conversion in the theologian and what is today being debated afresh as the prerequisite of what is called existentiality in theological thinking. Urgent warnings that theologising is powerless unless there is a relationship between the theme and the theologian in which the true and total man is claimed may be found already in Anselm, who tells us that the credere underlying intelligere cannot be merely a credere id but must be a credere in id, quod credi debet (Monol., 76–78). Rectitudo fidei et intellectus necessarily involves a rectitudo volendi (De concordia, qu. III, 2 and 6). Non solum ad intelligendum altiora prohibetur mens ascendere sine fide et mandatorum Dei obedientia, sed etiam. aliquando, datus intellectus subtrahitur … neglecta bona conscientia (Ep. de incarn., 1). Non est … securus transitus a scientia ad sapientiam; oportet ergo medium ponere, scilicet sanctitatem (Bonaventura, In Hex., XIX, 3). Against certain supposed “mystical” theologians, whose actual experience was the very opposite of all theologia negativa, and who knew nothing of the Christian’s love for death and hell, the younger Luther wrote the words: Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando (Op. in Psalm. W.A., 5, p. 163, l, 28). “Doctors of arts, medicine, law and philosophy, can be made by the pope, the emperor, and the universities; but be quite sure that no one can make a doctor of Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost from heaven, as Christ says in John 6: ‘They must all be taught of God himself.’ Now the Holy Ghost does not ask after red or brown robes, or what is showy, nor whether a man is young or old, lay or clerical, monastic or secular, virgin or married. Indeed, He once spake by an ass against the prophet that rode on it. Would God we were worthy that such doctors be given us.…” (Luther, An d. chr. Adel deutch. Nation v. d. chr. Standes Besserung, 1520, W.A., 6, p. 460, l. 28), Even Melanchthon (e.g., Apol. Conf. Aug., De justif., 9 and 37, C.R., 27, 430 and 434) was ready to insist that true knowledge of salvation is not gained by empty speculations, but only in agone conscientiae et in acie*. The theological significance of all this is brought out in the age of orthodoxy by the fact that theologia concretive considerata*, i. e., as event rather than concept, is described as habitus θεόσδοτος per verbum a Spiritu sancto homini collatus* (J. Gerhard, Loci theol., 1610, Prooem., 31). It can be said: Post lapsum non nascuntur theologi, sed fiunt scil. a Deo docti per verbum scriptum* (Quenstedt, Theol. did. pol., 1685, l, cap. 1, sect. 2, qu. 2, ekth. 2). Thus true theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God. That there is at this point an acute danger of anthropologising theological knowledge is shown by the rather equivocal assertion of Anselm that if we compare the proclamation and hearing of the Word of God with sowing (agricultura), then the semen*, i.e., the Word of God, is immo non verbum sed sensus qui percipitur per verbum* (de Concordia, qu. III, 6). For here there is at least the threat of the unfortunate transition from a divine determining to a human determination, if not expressly to a human achievement, as was the opinion of Bonaventura, who understood and could describe that sanctitas* as a vita timorata, inpolluta, religiosa, aedificatoria* (In Hex., XIX, 20 f.). If we follow up this line, then the sensus*, the human determination, the experience and attitude of the knowing subject are made the criterion of theological knowledge. It was obviously in an attempt to avoid this danger that the middle and later orthodoxy (e.g. Quenstedt, op. cit., ekth. 5; Hollaz, Ex. theol. acroam., 1707, Prol. 1, 18–21; Buddeus, Instit. theol. dogm., 1724, l, 1, 49) made a distinction between objective theological habitus* on the one side and faith or the regeneration of the theologian on the other: Constat, habitum Theologiae reapse separare posse a fide salvifica* (Heidan, Corp. Theol. christ., 1686, L, 1, p. 3). It hardly need be said that this is not in keeping with the thought of Luther. It carries with it the far worse implication that faith, regeneration and conversion are now to be regarded quite definitely as a human experience and attitude. How little certainty there was in the whole matter is shown by the fact that it was thought necessary to hedge around with every conceivable reservation and restriction the possibility of an unconverted theologian living only by the habitus*, i.e., of a theologia irregenitorum*, which had to be admitted on the basis of the distinction. We need not be surprised that Pietism abandoned the distinction and demanded of the student of theology at least a serious striving for personal conversion (A. H. Francke, Method. stud. theol., 1723, cap. 2). But the very fact that it can speak only of striving is an indication how self-evident has become the idea that faith is to be decisively regarded as a determination of human reality. So far as concerns this subjective presupposition, Rationalism (e.g., G. J. Planck, Einl. i. d. theol. Wissenschs., 1794, Vol. I, p. 62 f.) was not prepared to insist on the need for Christian religiosity, but only for religiosity in general. But this did not help the situation. And when Schleiermacher as a theologian was prepared to speak, “out of the irresistible inner necessity of his nature” (Reden ü. d. Rel., 1799, p. 5), only of that which was “the innermost impulse of his being” (loc. cit.), thus expounding “his own view as an object for the rest” (op. cit., p. 182), he had obviously lost altogether any sense of what Anselm, Luther and Melanchthon were after with their demand for sensus* and experientia* as the presupposition of true theology. “It may be presupposed that no one becomes a theologian, or makes the science of the Christian religion his calling, without having an inner relation to religion or Christianity, just as no one will pursue any branch of science without a love for its theme”—such is their concern as translated into the language of 19th-century Liberalism (H. Mulert, Evangelische Kirchen und theologische Fakultäten, 1930, p. 16 f.). The anthropologising of theology was complete. And it is a serious question whether the same is not to be said of the existential element which is demanded today from theological thinking and utterance under the influence of Kierkegaard, but supremely if sometimes unconsciously in continuation of the Pietist tradition. It is perhaps laughable though highly suspicious that in line with the contemporary vogue even G. Wobbermin has set out to reinterpret his theology, which is in no sense either interested in Kierkegaard or orientated to him, as a theology of existential religious psychology (Wort Gottes und evangelischer Glaube, 1931, p. 14 f.). If this existential element is sought in the fact that the statements of theology must be accounts of the human situation of the theologian as radically revealed in faith; if it is demanded that its utterances must be “the cry of a man who like Christophorus breaks under the far too heavy burden of what must now in any circumstances take place in modern Germany”; if, e.g., the proposition that we are all sinners is not to be a mere phrase, but “I am to speak it for concrete reasons, being brought by a definite occasion to an awareness that this hopeless failure of mine springs from a self-centredness … which I share with all my fellows” (K. Heim, Glaube und Denken, 1931, p. 409), then these are psychologisms and legalisms under the yoke of which we do not have to bend and should not do so. The time has come to go back with a new understanding to the pre-Pietist doctrine of the theological habitus* in virtue of which the theologian is what he is by the grace of God quite irrespective of his greater or lesser likeness to Christophorus, and without any need for existential outcry, etc. A reaction in this sense, a new relating of Christophorus to Christ, has indeed appeared already. We have been told afresh that “theological statements are possible only on the basis of the presence of the Gospel, the message and proclamation.” A proposition with theological intention is one which is true “quite apart from the existential position of the speaker, receiving its meaning for the hearers only on the basis of this independence” (K. F. Schumann, Der Gottesgedanke und der Zerfall der Moderne, 1929, p. 348 f.). Or again with a sharp polemical application: “The ἀκοὴ πίστεως* is not to be understood as the existential decision of faith in apprehension of the promise” (H. M. Müller, Glaube und Erfahrung bei Luther, 1929, p. 90). “Where the existential element is in any way made the theme of theology, service is offered to the humanum*.… There is only one alternative: Either we understand our own existence as being in faith, or we await God’s contingent visitation in the real end of this existence” (op. cit., p. 187). This reaction is timely and useful. Yet the original demand of Anselm, Luther and Melanchthon, in which the older and newer doctrine of the theologia regenitorum*, of existential theology, has its particula veri*, must not be lost to view. Even if only from the standpoint of the end, or from without, God’s contingent visitation does affect the existence of man, and therefore the gift of its promise by faith is a divine determination and claiming of the concrete being of man, of myself. Without this, theology would become the irrelevant wisdom of spectators outside the Church. There would be knowledge only in the dependent form of an imitative formal participation in the knowledge of the Church and faith. If the latter were to fail, then, as Anselm rightly stated, such a theology would lose its power of knowledge. But theology neither does nor can at any time find human safeguards against the danger of becoming the irrelevant wisdom of spectators outside the Church, and therefore a-theology. Faith, regeneration, conversion, existential thinking on the basis of a preceding existential encounter, are no doubt indispensable prerequisites of dogmatic work, yet not to the extent that they imply an experience and attitude, a desire and activity, a knowledge and achievement of the theologian, so that his theology is a personal cry, an account of his biographical situation, but to the extent that they imply the grace of divine predestination, the free gift of the Word and Holy Spirit, the act of calling the Church, which must always come upon the theologian from the acting God in order that he may really be what he does and what his name suggests.

Naturally, the Church can and should undertake and execute its own self-examination of itself with the human application of human means. But whether in so doing it acts as the Church and therefore knows God in faith; whether the result of its action is true and important criticism and correction and not a worse perversion of Christian utterance, does not depend upon itself. Clearly, the presence of any distinctive and decisive determination of dogmatics, the decision as to what is or is not true in dogmatics, is always a matter of the divine election of grace. In this respect the fear of the Lord must always be the beginning of wisdom. This is the often discovered difficulty of all theology, especially dogmatic theology.

Cognovi, explicationem dogmatum Ecclesiae propter multas causas opus esse difficillimum et quamquam necessarium est, tamen plenum esse ingentium periculorum* (Melanchthon, Loci communes, 1559, C.R., 21, 602). It was more than a monkish trick of style when Anselm referred to the imbecillitas scientiae meae* (Cur Deus homo?, I, 25) and Bonaventura to the pauper portiuncula scientiolae nostrae* (Breviloq., Prooem.), and when on the first page of his Sentences Peter Lombard compared his achievement to the widow’s mite or the two pence which the Good Samaritan gave to the inn-keeper with the promise to pay him more when he returned. The story is also told of Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa theologica obviously remained a torso, that when asked to write more he replied: “Reginald, I cannot, for all that I have written is like chaff to me. I hope that God will soon put an end to my life and thinking” (M. Grabmann, Das Seelenleben des hl. Thomas v. Aq., 1924, p. 51). As against this, the other story that when he was engaged in the christological part of the work Christ appeared to him with the words: Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma*! seems to be less in accord with the facts! Thomas himself was rightly prepared to leave it to eschatology to invest the doctor ecclesiae* with a halo (S. theol., III, qu. 96, art. 6).

Dogmatics must always be undertaken as an act of penitence and obedience. But this is possible only as it trusts in the uncontrollable presence of its ontic and noetic basis, in the revelation of God promised to the Church, and in the power of faith apprehending the promise. This is no less true in the case of the teacher than the scholar, of the author of dogmatic works than the reader. The act of faith, which means, however, its basis in the divine predestination, the free act of God on man and his work, is always the condition by which dogmatic work is made possible but by which it is also called in question with final seriousness.

Paul Althaus finds the problem of theology as a science in the conflict between critical attitude and Church connexion, which are both necessary to the theologian but which seem to be irreconcilably opposed (Grundriss der Dogmatik, 1929, § 1). There is a lack of true and final seriousness in this problem. As Althaus himself shows, it can be solved on both sides in a comparatively easy and amicable way. The older theologians rightly found the difficulty of theology, and sought to overcome it, on a different level: Non ego te duco, sed ille, de quo loquimur, sine quo nihil possumus, nos ducit, ubicumque viam veritatis teneamus* (Anselm, Cur Deus homo?, II, 9). In Theologia … datur subiectum plane divinum, quod est … omni re prius, ut nullam principiati rationem habere possit, unde … fit, ut duas hasce rationes simul contineat, sitque subjectum, de quo agit Theologia et simul etiam ejus principium* (F. Turrettini, Inst. Theol. el., I, 1679, L, 1, qu. 5, 9). Ille enim solus idoneus est de se testis, qui quod sibi gratum est, docere nos possit et cui nihil gratum esse potest, nisi a se profectum et naturae suae conveniens. Quod quale sit nemo novit nisi ipse. At id quomodo nobis innotescat, nisi nobis ab ipso patefiat el reveletur?* (Heidanus, Corp. Theol. chr., 1686, L, 1, p. 7). Quemadmodum in spiritualibus nemo mortalium sibi ipse auidquam absque gratiae viribus aut dare aut tribuere, ita multo minus ea largire potest, quae adtheologiae habitum requiruntur* (Buddeus, Instit. Th. dogm., 1724, I, 1, 51). In his work Die Entstehung der chr. Theologie und des kirchl. Dogmas, 1927, p. 54 f., 87 f., A. v. Harnack explains in relation to both past and present that there are and always have been two kinds of theology. The first is a charismatic theology from within. In this, speaking from the standpoint of a believer, the theologian is convinced of its truth by its inner power of persuasion, and is never without an awareness “that he can speak as a theologian only with the assistance of the Spirit of God, and that his work is thus charismatically determined.” Paul is the founder of this kind of theology, but it can never become either ecclesiastical or scientific. It shapes confession and preaching, but not fellowship. The second is a theology from without. It “places the relevant religion in the circle of other objects of knowledge, and describes its reality and truth accordingly to generally valid historical, psychological and theoretical principles of knowledge.” Its fathers are the 2nd-century apologists, and it alone creates fellowship and can be ecclesiastical and scientific. “We may bewail this, since the inadequacy of such a theology is manifest; but no one can alter the fact, and he who tries to do so destroys and confuses theology. His proper task is to preach.” It is only fitting that this final declaration of one whom I also honour as a teacher should be allowed to speak for itself without either commentary or criticism.

Humanly speaking, there is no way to overcome this fundamental difficulty which afflicts theology alone among the sciences, and dogmatics alone within theology. There is no feasible way of creating this specifically decisive condition of dogmatics. We may summon up good intentions, but even the best of intentions are of no avail at this point. Nor can we evoke of ourselves the Christian faith which decisively constitutes the theological habitus*. The popular suspicion of theology, and especially of dogmatics, is only too well founded. There always seems to be an element of presumption in it, and all the exertions seem to lead to such meagre results. We always seem to be handling an intractable object with inadequate means. And this appearance is too solidly grounded in the nature of the study itself to be permanently overcome by a mere change of methods.

The mystery of the ubi et quando visum est Deo* (Conf. Aug., Art. 5; cf. for an understanding of this statement the passages adduced by Hans Engelland, Melanchthon, 1931, p. 568 f.) has accompanied not only Christian talk about God in general, but dogmatics in particular, through all the stages of its history. Nor can it be any different in the future.

We maintain that humanly speaking there is nothing to alleviate the difficulty. We simply confess the mystery which underlies it, and we merely repeat the statement that dogmatics is possible only as an act of faith, when we point to prayer as the attitude without which there can be no dogmatic work.

Hoc intelligere quis hominum dabit homini? quis angelus angelo? quis angelus homini? A te petatur, in te quaeratur, ad te pulsetur: sic accipietur, sic invenietur, sic aperietur* (Augustine, Conf., XIII, 38, 53). Non solum admonendi sunt studiosi venerabilium Litterarum, ut in scripturis sanctis genera locutionem sciant … verum etiam, quod est praecipium et maxime necessarium, orent ut intelligant. In eis quippe Litteris, quarum studiosi sunt, legunt quoniam Dominus dat sapientiam et a facie ejus scientia et intellectus a quo et ipsum studium, si pietate praeditum est, acceperunt* (De doct. chr., III, 37). We are already reminded of Anselm’s Proslogion, 1—a passage to which we shall return in § 6, 4. Thomas Aquinas set the following prayer at the head of his Summa theologica: Concede mihi quaeso, misericors Deus, quae tibi sunt placita ardenter concupiscere, prudenter investigare, veraciter agnoscere et perfecte implere ad laudem nominis tui*. Relevant, too, is the intention of A. H. Francke in his treatment De oratione in a whole section of his directions for the study of theology. Nor is it to be regarded as baroque adornment that Hollaz transforms his treatment of each specific Locus* into a Suspirium*, his talk about God becoming quite expressly address to God.

Prayer can be the recognition that we accomplish nothing by our intentions, even though they be intentions to pray. Prayer can be the expression of our human willing of the will of God. Prayer can signify that for good or evil man justifies God and not himself. Prayer can be the human answer to the divine hearing already granted, the epitome of the true faith which we cannot assume of ourselves. We do not speak of true prayer if we say “must” instead of “can.” According to Rom. 8:26f the way from “can” to “must” is wrapped in the mystery at the gates of which we here stand. With this reference we do not give anyone a means by which he can count on succeeding in his work. It must be said, however, that it is hard to see how else there can be successes in this work but on the basis of divine correspondence to this human attitude: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”



Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, vol. 1 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 17–25.