Starting Points

Karl Barth

This week in theology we discussed various starting points in our exploration of God. From the reading that we did (Stan Grenz) there were three basic starting points throughout the Christian tradition: 1). faith (e.g., Augustine's "Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand" or Anselm's "Faith seeking understanding"); 2). doubt or the proofs of God's existence (e.g., Aquinas "Five Ways"); and 3). agnosticism (e.g., Ricoeur's "Hermeneutics of Suspicion"). Overall, this explains well how theological/philosophical exploration has been done throughout the Christian tradition. I get this idea of starting points from Karl Barth. The idea is simple: wherever you begin your thinking will significantly influence and shape your theology. 

Musa W. Dube

Now enter African biblical scholar Musa Dube (from Botswana) and her "Talitha Cum" hermeneutic. I recently read a short article by her about African Women's ways of reading the Bible. The framework that she sets up is based on the Markan story found in Mark 5:21-43. There are two females in this story. The first is the bleeding woman, who touches Jesus' cloak and is healed, and the daughter of Jairus, who dies while Jesus is on the way to heal her. When Jesus enters the house, he says to the little girl, "talitha cum" ("Little girl, I say wake up") and she jumps up from her bed and begins to walk around the house. 

Dube argues that this story has captured the imagination of African women theologians. There is hope in this story. Two women who were suffering were healed and raised from the dead. The bleeding woman was cast out of society because of her condition and the little girl had died. It is this Jesus that comes to the women of Africa, a man who brings forth life from death and alienation. And thus, a "Talitha Cum" hermeneutic is a "Hermeneutic of Life."  

In particular, this is a way of approaching the core of the Christian life. These women call us to live into a way of living for life and standing against what Dube calls "all the death-dealing forces and the social injustices that often trivialize the lives of many" (145). This is what she refers to as reading and living into "the resurrection space for life" (145). 

Reading Dube caused me to return to the discussion of starting points. Her call to live into resurrection and life is very compelling. May it be my starting point in all my theological thinking and doing. Thank you Professor Dube for reminding me to feel and do while I think. 

Article: Musa W. Dube, “Talitha Cum Hermeneutics of Liberation: Some African Women’s Ways of Reading the Bible,” in The Bible and The Hermeneutics of Liberation, Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R. Andiñach, eds., Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009: 133-145.

A Pneumatological Soteriology

This past week in class, felt like we talked around some ideas that I have written about elsewhere pertaining to a Pneumatological Soteriology, or how it is that the Spirit participates in how we are redeemed. I want to discuss three key concepts in order to frame how we understand the relationship between Spirit and Word; the Holy Spirit and the Son.

Mural of the trinitarian workings
of the Holy Spirit in the world
by Troy Terpstra

Let’s begin with the second century theologian, Irenaeus. He talks about the Son and the Spirit as the two hands of the Father, working out the love and the will of the Father throughout the world. British theologian, Colin Gunton, picks up on Irenaeus’ language and argues that when we think of God’s redemptive work in the world, we must think in a trinitarian shape. He argues that the Son and the Spirit both have a particular agency in the world, each moving and working in a specific way. As the French charismatic theologian Jean-Jaques Suurmond puts it, The Word and the Spirit … are … the two creative hands of God who “together develop and work out life like a cosmic Bach fugue.”[1]

My point is this, when we think about atonement, redemption, or any other work of God in the world, we must think in terms of the fullness of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. Only in this context can we begin to envision the dynamic nature of the work of God in the world.

         And this brings me to our second key concept, the Holy Spirit is the ‘deposit’ of our inheritance (2 Cor 1:21-22; Eph 1:13-14)—which means that the Holy Spirit is given to us as a guarantee or an assurance of our inclusion and identity as the heirs of God (i.e., we are co-heirs with Christ). But this is not just a promise, this is a continuous and active agency for us on God’s part. In Christ’s farewell speeches in John, he talks about the Spirit as the one who will continue his work and teachings in the world when he is gone. Throughout the writings of Paul, we see the Spirit as the Triune person who inspires, empowers, and moves us to continue the work of Christ in the world. Somehow in this interchange, we are involved not because we just need something to do in the world but because we are the children of God. We do not just become members of the Kingdom of God, we are the rightful heirs with Christ of the riches, responsibilities, and benefits. The Holy Spirit, who is sent to us, is both the guarantee and the deposit of this inheritance, which is a mysterious and wondrous gift.

In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul tells us that the Spirit reveals to us the deep mysteries of God. British theologian, Tom Smail, concludes from the 1 Cor 2:11 passage that the Spirit is identified as God. Only God can know God, and only God can reveal God to us. Smail argues that:

What the Spirit does is not a human work, or the work of some spiritual energy that is immanent to our humanity or to the created order, but a work of God.[2]

I think it is important to note here that Smail is working for a charismatic renewal of the Spirit in the life of the Church and wants to move toward a theology that holds a high place for the personalizing of the Spirit. The first thing that he does is set apart the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is not an anonymous spiritual force or energy in the world. The Spirit is God at work in the world, not simply the collective energy of humanity or the created order. God is not present in an ambiguous manner, God is present for us through the particular agency of the Spirit. Moreover, the Spirit brings us Christ and we are brought into full relationship with the Triune God through the Spirit. The Spirit is a builder of relationships. Here Smail continues:

If it is through the Spirit that we come to believe the gospel and to appropriate corporately and personally all that the Father has done for us through the Son, none of this is a possibility for or an achievement of our own inherent spirituality; rather, it is a gracious work of God within us.[3]

Thus, the Spirit works to help us know and understand what the Father has done for us through the Son. We could even say that the Spirit makes efficacious the work of God within the created order. The Spirit is working in the world and says “Yes” on our behalf by not only bringing the good gifts of God to us but by providing and creating a space in which we can respond positively to the “Yes” of God. The Spirit then empowers us to use these gifts in the world. This is our spirituality as Christians, and as Smail points out, this is the gracious work of God within us.

This idea of using the gifts of God in the created order brings us to our third concept. American theologian, Kathryn Tanner, in her book, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, sets up a theological system of non-competitive relationship between God and the created order. She does this primarily through the concept of “gift,” which is based on a relational theology of perichoresis; that is, how trinitarian persons are involved in an eternal, mutual, and reciprocal gifting of particularity and personhood toward one another. Thus, trinitarian personhood (distinction and unity) is mediated between the persons, for the sake of the each other. Hence, when she discusses the relationship between humanity and God she talks in terms of our incorporation or participation in the workings of God ad extra, in the Triune God’s redemptive and economic involvement in the created order. This participation is through our life “In Christ.” Tanner writes:

My theological anthropology appears, indeed, to be a task- or vocation-oriented one. The Son is sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit to bring us into the gift-giving relations enjoyed among members of the Trinity; living our lives in Christ according to the mode of the Son, should involve, then, our own service to that mission, spreading the gifts of the Father that are ours in Christ, empowered by the Son’s own Spirit.[4]

But this gifting is not because God needs us or requires something of us:

God does not so much want something of us as want to be with us … God gives simply so that there might be a non-divine reflection of what God is … God does not so much require something of us as want to give something to us. Our lives are for nothing in the sense that we are here simply to be the recipients of God’s good gifts.[5]

She then turns this around and talks about our union or incorporation in Christ, and in that life we are gifted an “extrospective shape” to our lives--we move outward toward and on behalf of others.[6] Thus a two-way motion is set up in our life: we are gifted Christ through the Spirit and we are formed into the likeness of Christ through our actions in day to day life. In this, we become gift to the world[7] and in the process participate in God’s gifting of Christ, through the Spirit, to the entire world. According to Tanner:

We are to be for one another as God the Father is for us through Christ in the power of the Spirit.[8]

Thus, we are continuously gift in whatever community in which we find ourselves.

She furthers this concept of gift giving by saying that God’s gifting is not dependent upon a ‘return’ investment or gift from us:

One cannot pay God back for what God has given because God already has all that one might want to give back. The triune God already has, and in greater abundance, with a fullness unimaginable, all that we would like to present in exchange.[9]

Plus, all that we have has been gifted to us by God, we are totally dependent. As she argues, “we can only give back gifts received.”[10] In this way, she can say that our good works are for ourselves, for our own formation, and for the world: “Our good works … are not owed to God but they are to the world.”[11] Thus, our good works are part of our creatureliness within this life, so that we might be made like Christ. If we really live into this call and beingness, then mutual fulfillment will result. Even though sin gets in the way, we still, bit by bit live into this participation in God’s ongoing redemption in the world, continuous empowered by the Spirit. Participation and gift are interlinked in Tanner’s model of divine and human relations, especially in the fact that God utilizes and gifts to us our unique being. We must be ourselves, not someone else, to live into God’s vocation for each of this.

A human community conforming to this idea would be a community of mutual fulfillment in which each effort to perfect oneself enriches others’ efforts at self-perfection. One perfects oneself by making one’s own the efforts of others to perfect themselves, their efforts too being furthered in the same way by one’s own.[12]

Of course this is an ideal vision of community living, but the concept comes out of our being perfected through our participation in God’s redemptive work in the world. Thus, we participate in the redemption of our fellow humans as we are incorporated into Christ through the Spirit. This is a very holistic redemptive gesture.

Thus, the Spirit moves us into relationship with God—and even secures that relationship for us—and moves us into relationship with other people and all of creation. If the work of the Spirit is about the building of relationships and of connection with others, then we could also say with British theologian, Colin Gunton, that there are two main characteristics of “a theology of the spirit in general.”[13] The first “is to do with the crossing of boundaries, with opening out of people and things to one another.”[14] The second, and this is the paradoxical turn, is that the Spirit both “maintains” and “strengthens particularity.”[15] Gunton contends that the Holy Spirit is “not a spirit of…assimilation…but of relation in otherness, relation which does not subvert but establishes the other in its true reality.”[16] Within his theology of the Spirit, Gunton asserts that the Spirit is the mediator of relations: who simultaneously unifies and particularizes. The Spirit moves persons toward one another, opening us to relationship, without the threat of relational assimilation. He contends that Christian spirituality should be about a kind of freedom that is mediated by relationship with God and one another and that our spirituality and our relationships should never be defined by uniformity or homogeneity. In other words, our relationships should be mutually beneficial to all involved. Our models of being toward one another should hold the wonderful distinctions of each person.

Gunton uses the term ‘haecceitas’ (from Duns Scotus) to clarify the agency of the Holy Spirit. Haecceitas refers to the ‘thisness’ of an individual person or thing. Gunton claims that something is real—what it is and not another thing—by virtue of the way it is held in being not only by God but also by other things in the particular configurations in space and time in which its being is constituted: that is to say, in its createdness…in its haecceitas.[17]

We, as persons, are rendered real and particular through our relations with the persons and things around us: we are ‘held in being’ through otherness-in-relation.[18] So we could also say that to be Spirit people, we are held by God and one another, and this holding actually maintains and establishes our personhood. This paradox of connection without assimilation is our being perfected through the Spirit. Here Gunton talks about this perfecting work of the Spirit within the created order:

One of the ways—perhaps the way—that the Spirit…perfects the creation may be seen in the constitution of particularity. We are accustomed…to speak of the Spirit as the unifier…. But trinitarian love has as much to do with respecting and constituting otherness as with unifying.[19]

Gunton, influenced by St. Basil, emphasizes that the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit is to actively work for redemption through the perfecting of the creation, “and we can interpret this as meaning to bring to completion that for which each person and thing is created.”[20] Hence, we see here that Gunton is asserting that the perfecting work of the Spirit is a redemptive work: to make the created order more itself through relationship with God:

the distinctive work of the Spirit is eschatological. One way of expanding such an insight theologically would be to say that the Spirit’s peculiar office is to realize the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation with God the Father.[21]

We are discussing, then, a soteriological function, for it is the Spirit who perfects our particularity, which has been redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, we can say that our perfection, the particularizing activity of the Spirit, is the process of bringing us, and the created order, into right relation with God: to make us what and who we were meant to be.[22] As Gunton says in another place:

Where the Spirit is, there do the creatures become that which God creates them to be. [23]

And of course this echoes Paul’s words regarding the Spirit:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor 3:17)

Thus, we can conclude, that a “saving relation” to the Father and the Son through the Spirit is one that brings freedom.
 
To sum up the argument of this short lecture/essay, a Pneumatological Soteriology needs to be trinitarian in shape and movement. We are given the Spirit as a guarantee and a deposit of our identity as the children of God who are co-heirs of the Kingdom with Christ. In this process we are empowered and gifted by the Spirit to continue the work and the teachings of Jesus for the sake of moving into our identity as heirs--adopted siblings of Jesus. Because of our identity, we are gifted and thus become gift to the world. All along, the Spirit moves us in a extrospective (outward) shape while simultaneously gifting us freedom to be ourselves in the world. Life in the Triune life of God is not a competitive or a binding life of constrictive worship. Instead it is an invitation to play and become who it is we were created to be, but always with the relational context of community and the wonder and fecundity of the whole created order. The Spirit moves us to be in redemptive relation to the world and to the Triune God who is a perichoretic unity of persons-in-relation. As Tanner puts it, “God gives simply so that there might be a non-divine reflection of what God is.” It is strange and wonderful to think that we gain personal freedom by reflecting the glory of God in the world. This is the essence of how the Spirit creates a redemption movement in our lives.

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[1] Jean-Jaques Suurmond, Word and Spirit at Play.
[2] Smail, “The Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity,” in The Giving Gift, 150.
[3] Smail, “The Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity,” 150.
[4] Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, 68.
[5] Ibid., 68-9.
[6] Ibid., 72.
[7] Ibid., 85.
[8] Ibid., 79.
[9] Ibid., 84-5.
[10] Ibid., 85.
[11] Ibid., 89.
[12] Ibid., 94.
[13] Gunton, OTM, 181.
[14] Ibid., 182.
[15] Ibid., 182.
[16] Ibid., 182.
[17] Ibid., 200-1, my emphasis.
[18] Particulars are inherently hypostatic in that they are “rendered such by the patterns of relations that constitute them what they distinctively are: with God in the first instance and with other temporally and spatially related particulars in the second.” (Ibid., 203.)
[19] Gunton, OTM, 205-6.
[20] Ibid., 189. This suggestion is made “on the basis of Basil’s teaching that the Spirit is the one who perfects the creation.” (Ibid., 190: Basil, On the Holy Spirit, XV, 36 & 38.) “[W]hen Basil of Caesarea described the Holy Spirit as the perfecting cause of the creation, he enabled us to say that it is the work of God the Spirit to enable the created order to be truly itself.” (Idem, TC, 10.)
[21] Gunton, OTM, 189.
[22] “The creation has a purpose: the world is made to achieve perfection through time and to return completed to its creator.” (Ibid., 120.)
[23] Gunton, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, 81.

John Webster on a Pneumatology of Scripture

Webster On Scripture

Here is a short summary of John Webster’s chapter, “Revelation, Sanctification and Inspiration,” from his book Holy Scripture. In this chapter, Webster identifies a key problem with how Scripture has been handled and understood within recent history (say the past 200 years or so). He believes that the idea of what Scripture is has been isolated from the Doctrine of God—i.e., God as triune. In consequence, Scripture has been subjected to unnecessary qualifications to prove that it is indeed a text given to the church by God. The central issue, as he states it, is how to prove or even talk about how a human document can contain divine wisdom and divine self-disclosure with surety and integrity. What is at stake is how we live with Scripture as a trustworthy and authoritative text within the community of God.
The solution to this problem, according to Webster, is to locate our thinking about Scripture within a dynamic trinitarian doctrine of God. He does this through the interrelating of three concepts: revelation, sanctification and inspiration. The most important of all of these concepts, if there is to be a kind of prioritizing, is ‘revelation’. Sanctification, however, takes a very close 2nd because it is through the agency of the Holy Spirit that God has consistently communicated (revealed) himself to humanity.[1] This self-communication (and self-presence) of God includes the writing, the preservation and the interpretation of the words of Scripture within the community of God. Thus, what is most important for Webster to set out in his doctrine of Scripture is not the veracity or the reliability of the words themselves (such as the concept of ‘inerrancy’) but, instead, the very presence of God with us. As he puts it,

Holy Scripture is dogmatically explicated in terms of its role in God’s self-communication, that is, the acts of Father, Son and Spirit which establish and maintain that saving fellowship with humankind in which God makes himself known to us and by us. The ‘sanctification’ of Scripture (its ‘holiness’) and its ‘inspiration’ (its proceeding from God) and aspects of the process whereby God employs creaturely reality in his service, for the attestation of his saving self-revelation… What Scripture is as sanctified and inspired is a function of divine revelatory activity, and divine revelatory activity is God’s triune being in its external orientation, its gracious and self-bestowing turn to the creation. (8-9)

In essence, his claim is that scripture is telling the story of God’s presence within the created order, and this story is shaped through the trinitarian activity of God in and for the world.

Revelation

Webster’s central concept for scripture is ‘revelation’.

1) “the self-presentation of the triune God” 

2) “the free work of sovereign mercy” 

3) the establishment and perfecting of “saving fellowship with himself” (cf. 13-17)

First, revelation is the self-presentation of the triune God. This means that the content of the revelation is nothing less that God himself. Furthermore, God is the agent of revelation, which is what is meant by God’s ‘self-presentation.’ [2] Thus, Webster asserts that revelation is the real presence of God, freely given to us.

Second, revelation is the free work of sovereign mercy. This concept of freedom is a little more difficult to grasp. Webster talks of the spiritual presence of God, which is answerable only to itself because it has its own integrity and reality. This means that we must take revelation on its own terms, even as the mysterious presence of God. Hence, God is not contained within the pages or the words of Scripture, even though God is present and indeed revealed in the reading of those words.[3] So, God is free in relation to revelation because God is not limited by the boundaries set by scripture.

Third, revelation is the establishing and the perfecting of God’s saving fellowship. Last week we talked about the ‘koinonia’ of the Holy Spirit, well this is what we are talking about here. Revelation is intended to bring us into fellowship with God through the mediation or work of the Spirit. The text of revelation is not intended to bring us information about God so that by some special knowledge we can be saved. The intent is relationship through God’s presence, which brings about reconciliation and salvation. We are enabled through revelation to be in full fellowship with God.[4] Webster argues that the ‘end’ of revelation is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. (15-16)

Sanctification

Next, let’s look at Webster’s understanding of the ‘sanctification’ of the text. His concept of sanctification addresses the problem of how we comprehend the relationship between divine agency and creaturely processes. I believe that a more robust Pneumatology of scripture can solve the problem of this dualistic approach to the text. Webster argues that sanctification gives us the ability to assert that God can and does ‘make holy’ creaturely realities and processes, which helps us resist “the drift into dualism.” (26) Webster is deeply concerned with protecting a true and viable creaturely reality that is not subsumed or assimilated into God while simultaneous not dismissing certain passages as simply anthropological or creaturely. As he puts it,

Sanctification is the act of God the Holy Spirit in hallowing creaturely processes, employing them in the service of the taking form of revelation within the history of salvation. (17-18)

In this way, God honors the created order, and creaturely things and processes are imbued with the capacity to take a role in the self-presentation of God to the created order.[5]
One key problem that Webster identifies is the inheritance within Western culture of a strong dualism between the natural and the supernatural; transcendence and immanence; divine and human. This dualism sets up a strong competitive relationship between these concepts, meaning that they cannot really be held in tension. Instead, one or the other has to dominate over the other category.[6] He does not think that this competition between the divine and the creaturely in the text is necessary and Webster is deeply concerned with protecting a true and viable creaturely reality that is not subsumed or assimilated into God: 

the rule is: sanctification establishes and does not abolish creatureliness. (30)[7] 

Thus, it is the sanctification of and by the Spirit that is the means of preserving God’s self-presentation in the text while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of creaturely processes. This text has been sanctified, not only as a text but as the articulation of “the Spirit’s activity in the life of the people of God.” (29) So we see that this is his way of articulating God’s work and active presence within space and time. Along the way, creaturely reality is established, not abolished, by God’s presence.

Inspiration

Once we get to Webster’s concept of ‘inspiration’ our categories really should be shifted from the text as a means of knowledge to God’s agency as the Holy Spirit in the world. Inspiration is not about an outside, external or distant voice talking to an alien or unprepared person or people. Instead, the Holy Spirit is present and active. And it is within this context that we should understand Webster’s statement that inspiration is a “specific work of the Spirit of Christ with respect to the text.” (31) The text “proceeds from God.” (32 & 33)
He sets out four requirements for his understanding of ‘inspiration’ based on 2 Peter 1:21: ‘Those moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God’: 

1) First, inspiration of the text is ‘from God’. He argues that inspiration is “a divine movement and therefore a divine moving.” (36)  

2) Second, inspiration is not a spontaneous creaturely activity. This means that the text does not originate with human creativity or agency. The authors of the text were ‘moved’ by God to produce the text.  

3) Third, inspiration is the specific agency of the Holy Spirit. I love how he talks about this. The Holy Spirit moves God’s activity into the realm of creatureliness. (37) The Holy Spirit is active and present in “human communicative acts.” (37) The central argument is that the Spirit is active and present in how we communicate. God makes himself known within the confines and limits of human language and creativity. Webster is trying to maintain that creaturely reality is established by the Spirit, not abolished by it. Life and breath is found in this presence and I find hope in this.  

4) Finally, “The Spirit generates language.” (37) This addresses the problem of how we are able to find the words to talk about God. Webster asserts (and I agree) that the Holy Spirit is actively working within human language to generate appropriate concepts and language in and through the text of scripture. 

Overall, I would assert along with Webster that an appropriate doctrine of inspiration would never separate the activity of God from the text itself. The Bible is God’s self-presentation to humanity.
In the end, Webster wants a more robust pneumatology of Scripture: “It’s the Spirit, stupid!” But this is always found within a trinitarian framework of God's activity and self-presence in the text and in the world.

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[1] Cf. Barth: Father as the Revealed; the Son as the Revealer; and the Spirit as the Revealing person.
[2] “To speak of ‘revelation’ is to say that God is one whose being is directed towards his creatures, and the goal of whose free self-movement is his presence with us.” (14); “Revelation…is identical with God’s triune being in its active self-presence.” (14)
[3] “Revelation is God’s presence; but because it is God’s presence, it is not direct and unambiguous openness such that henceforth God is plain.” (15)
[4] “ ‘Revelation’ denotes the communicative, fellowship-establishing trajectory of the acts of God in the election, creation, providential ordering, reconciliation, judgement and glorification of God’s creatures.” (17)
[5] “[T]he biblical texts are creaturely realities set apart by the triune God to serve his self-presence.” (21)
[6] Webster names five different ways that the Protestant tradition has dealt (thought through) this dualist problem:
1) Accommodation: This means that God adopts or accommodates for his own purposes a human text. The consequence of this is a separation of form (creaturely reality) and content (God’s reality). The result is that the text itself remains external and separate from the content of Scripture.
2) Hypostatic Union (dual natures, fully human and fully divine in one text—this is Frances Young’s position): Webster finds this problematic because he does not believe that the Word and the word are equivalent realities. In general he does not agree with ‘incarnational’ concepts used for specific ministry styles. There was one incarnation and Jesus’ particular life and ministry should stand on its own as a theological category. He also is concerned that this position may divinize Scripture and lessen the fact that the Bible is a creaturely reality.
3) Prophetic and Apostolic Testimony (witness): This is the first of the categories that Webster finds helpful because it gives a way of articulating that scripture can both be itself and reveal the self-presence of God in the text. He argues “testimony is not about itself but is a reference beyond itself.” (23) However, testimony can appear to be arbitrary or accidental if not construed properly.
4) A ‘means of grace’: Webster also likes this category because it does not require the text to be divine in any way. This approach, like testimony, points beyond itself to the reality of God. He believes that scripture as a means of grace works only if it is partnered with a strong Christological and Pneumatological lens. It has to be fundamentally soteriological.
5) The ‘servant form’ of scripture: Webster also likes this category because it articulates that scripture is “the fitting creaturely servant of the divine act.” (25)
[7] “Ingredient within the idea of sanctification is thus an understanding of God which is neither deist nor dualist. As the Holy Spirit’s work, sanctification is a process in which, in the limitless freedom of God [NB: which simply means that God is not bound by the text itself nor by the limits of creaturely time and space], the creaturely element is give its own genuine reality as it is commanded and molded to enter into the divine service… As sanctified creature, the text is not a quasi-divine artifact: sanctification is not transubstantiation. Nor is it an exclusively natural product arbitrarily commandeered by a supernatural agent [adoptionism]. Sanctification is the Spirit’s act of ordering creaturely history and being to the end of acting as ancilla Domine [servant of the Lord]… It is as—not despite—the creaturely realities that they are that they serve God… The biblical text is Scripture; its being is defined, not simply by its membership of the class of texts, but by the fact that it is this text—sanctified, that is Spirit-generated and preserved—in this field of action—the communicative economy of God’s merciful friendship with his lost creatures.” (27-29)

Kenosis and the Christian Life (Sarah Coakley): Part III

Sarah Coakley’s Contemplative Solution

British theologian, Sarah Coakley, gives a feminist critique of how Kenosis has been translated and applied to the Christian life. For her, Kenosis is about ‘power-in-vulnerability’. [1] In her analysis she simultaneously critiques and corrects, taking the tradition very seriously. Coakley gives us a good view of how constructive theology is done well. In her chapter, “Kenosis and Subversion,” (from her book Powers and Submissions) she explores 6 primary ways in which Kenosis has been understood throughout the tradition.  

1)  Cosmic Redeemer: Jesus temporarily relinquishes his divine powers which are Christ’s by right 

2)  Gnostic Redeemer: Jesus pretends to relinquish divine powers whilst actually retaining them (Cyril of Alexandria) 

3)  Jesus chooses never to have certain (false and worldly) forms of power—forms sometimes wrongly construed as ‘divine’ 

4)  Jesus reveals ‘divine power’ to be intrinsically ‘humble’ rather than ‘grasping’ 

5)  Divine Logos: The divine Logos’s taking on of human flesh in the incarnation, but without loss, impairment, or restriction of divine powers (14) 

6)  Retracting: Jesus’ life is a temporary retracting (or withdrawing into ‘potency’) of certain characteristics of divinity during the incarnate life. (19)

Coakley’s Definition
Coakley argues that in order to understand Kenosis, we must begin with the narrative of Jesus Christ, with a narrative commitment. In looking at the story of Jesus Christ, Coakley contends that Kenosis is about the humanity of Jesus not about the emptying out of pre-existent ‘divine stuff’. In other words, it is about how he lived not what he gave up to become human. This combines this presupposition with the third definition, that Jesus chose never to have or grasp at certain forms of power, and so we have Coakley coming to a similar definition of Kenosis as Fee.
Primary here is the holding together of the vulnerability of human life with the power of divinity, and this is the point for Coakley, that in Christ we have a category in which to talk about the shape of the relationship between humanity and divinity. Thus, Jesus reveals a God of vulnerability and risk who establishes and maintains power through vulnerability. When I say that God is vulnerable I mean that God, in the very act of creation, does not impose a coercive and absolute power over the creation. Instead there is space for the created order to rebel against and reject God. God is not some monolithic tyrant who demands our love and loyalty but a God who draws near and provides what is necessary for relationship and reconciliation.
Hence, the kenotic movement of Jesus reveals something of who God is for us. For this reason, Coakley asserts that Kenosis is not just “a philosophical embarrassment to explain away” (25) instead it is inherent in the narrative of Jesus. In this way, she argues that Jesus redefines ‘vulnerability’. It is not a feminine weakness but a human strength (25) and she holds (along with Radford Ruether) that Jesus’ way of vulnerability also empties ‘patriarchal’ power (25). Thus, this is why Coakley defines Kenosis as ‘power-in-vulnerability’. And here is the key point: in the life of Jesus a ‘space’ is created in which “non-coercive divine power manifests itself.” (5) Jesus’ life showed that there was space for God to be God and humanity to be humanity—this is the manifestation of reconciliation.

Our Response
Coakley turns to contemplative prayer in order to nuance her understanding of Kenosis, because it is through contemplative prayer that we practice making space for God to be God. Her assertion is that Jesus, in the incarnation, made space for humanity to be itself through his reconciling and redemptive work for the whole of the created order while simultaneously making space for God to be God in his life. It was this practice of ‘making space’ that enabled reconciliation to happen through a vulnerable life; which included death and resurrection. And it is through this vulnerability that Jesus is Lord (“divine power ‘made perfect through weakness’”)—not because he seized power but because he created space for life to happen in the midst of death.
Coakley argues that Jesus shows us a different way of living with power. The problem that she points out is that we all have power on some level and we all have the potential to abuse the power given to us. If this is true, then we have to find ways and practices that shape in us Jesus’ way of vulnerability in power.[2] Coakley believes that if we allow God to be God in our lives, then we will be empowered to live into the way of Jesus. We will give up abusive and coercive power and make space for others to be healed and reconciled.[3]
By choosing to ‘make space’ in this way, one ‘practices’ the ‘presence of God’—the subtle but enabling presence of a God who neither shouts nor forces, let alone ‘obliterates’. (35)
Further on she stresses that this way of making space for God and practicing self-emptying “is not a negation of the self, but the place of the self’s transformation and expansion into God.” (36) Coakley pairs this with the necessity of self-disclosure in our lives, that in this process of contemplative prayer we are actually known in a deep way (double knowledge). Thus, contemplative prayer holds in tension our vulnerability with personal empowerment. We lose our lives in order to find ourselves before God and others.[4]
Ultimately, Coakley calls us to live into the narrative gap and live in expectant waiting. New life and healing takes time and struggle to be brought forth. And this wait and struggle is the shape of the Christian life.

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[1] Sarah Coakley, “Kenosis and Subversion,” in Powers and Submissions, Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. See the bottom of 31 for her summary and cursory analysis of these categories of Kenosis.
[2] “If ‘abusive’ human power is thus always potentially within our grasp, how can we best approach the healing resources of a non-abusive divine power? How can we hope to invite and channel it, if not by a patient opening of the self to its transformation?” (34)
[3] “What I have elsewhere called the ‘paradox of power and vulnerability’ is I believe uniquely focused in this act of silent waiting on the divine in prayer. This is because we can only be properly ‘empowered’ here if we cease to set the agenda, if we ‘make space’ for God to be God.” (34)
[4] “what Christ on this view instantiates is the very ‘mind’ that we ourselves enact, or enter into, in prayer: the unique intersection of vulnerable, ‘non-grasping’ humanity and authentic divine power, itself ‘made perfect in weakness’.” (38)

Kenosis and the Christian Life (Gordon Fee): Part II

Gordon Fee: Translating the Term 'Kenosis'

Biblical theologian, Gordon Fee, can help us establish a different understanding of Kenosis.[1] In his commentary on Philippians, Fee points out that the phrases ‘did not consider equality with God something to be grasped’ and ‘made himself nothing’ function together in the poetic form of the hymn. These two ideas play off each other, saying something similar.

Unfortunately, this pairing of phrases has often been translated or understood to mean that Jesus gave up or emptied out his divinity or something vital to his being. As if Jesus, in the incarnation, was like a bag that could only carry so much stuff and had to be emptied out in order to enable the incarnation. All the God-stuff had to be taken out of the bag.[2] Fee argues that the first phrase ‘did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,’ points to the reality of Jesus, that he truly was God. This identity as God was not something that he desired; it was always his from eternity.[3] He also notes that some commentators translate ‘to grasp’ [harpagmos] in a manner more unto being. That being God, Jesus did not grasp or seize, because that is not the way God is. Power, leadership, kingship is about service not about the grasping of power.[4] Fee seems to agree with this idea that the life of Christ reveals what God-likeness is. “Rather, his ‘equality with God’ found its truest expression when ‘he emptied himself’.”[5

Fee asserts that the primary theological mistake in this passage has hinged on the assumption that if Jesus emptied himself [ekenosen] he emptied himself of something, rather than it being a statement of identity. This person, Jesus Christ, did not grasp at equality with God (he was God) and the one who didn’t grasp poured himself out by taking the form of a slave.[6] “God is not an acquisitive being, grasping and seizing, but self-giving for the sake of other.”[7] Thus this passage is talking more about the nature of who Jesus is rather than what was given up.[8]

Fee’s argument reminds me of the concept of perichoresis, as a gifting and giving of being from the Father, Son and the Spirit. This self-giving is the way of God. Thus, Christ’s self-giving and emptying in a continuous way of being. This is not given up in the incarnation—this can be seen in how he relates to the Father and the Spirit throughout his ministry. Jesus is given from the Father the renewed gift of the Holy Spirit at his baptism. This is the inauguration of his ministry. It is interested that in the synoptic Gospels, immediately after his baptism Jesus is lead by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by Satan. It is here that he truly does not grasp after power and authority. He takes no privileges—because the rule of the world was his by right—and remains a servant. And, as the Christ hymns proclaims, it is in this way of not grasping and of pouring himself out as a servant for the sake of others that Jesus is exalted as Lord.

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[1] Gordon Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, 191-214, esp. 210-214.
[2] Though this is not really Kathryn Tanner’s articulation, I got this idea from her. Check out her discussion of the Chalcedonian definition in Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity.
[3] Fee, 208.
[4] Cf. Fee, 206 for the discussion of harpagmos, which seems even more difficult to translate than kenosis.
[5] Fee, 208.
[6] Fee, 210.
[7] Fee, 211.
[8] Here is how Fee sums up his argument: “In Christ Jesus God has thus shown his true nature; this is what it means for Christ to be ‘equal with God’—to pour himself out for the sake of others and to do so by taking the role of a slave. Hereby he not only reveals the character of God, but from the perspective of the present context also reveals what it means for us to be created in God’s image, to bear his likeness and have his ‘mindset.’ It means taking the role of the slave for the sake of others…” (Fee, 214.)

Kenosis and the Christian Life: Part I

There is an old Christmas hymn that I love:

Lord, you were rich beyond all splendor,Yet, for love’s sake, became so poor; Leaving your throne in glad surrender,Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor: Lord, you were rich beyond all splendor,Yet, for love’s sake, became so poor.[1]

This hymn captures the heart of kenotic Christology, that Jesus became human and set aside the power and privilege of divinity. Within the Christian tradition, this concept is understood in different ways, and however we think about Kenosis is often how we think about the shape of the Christian life.


Kenosis is one of those theological words that come from the Bible, but then does a lot of work outside of that context. It is very similar to the concept of the imago Dei because it occurs rarely in scripture yet has a very broad and varied theological history. Kenosis, throughout the centuries, has captured the imagination of many theologians and pastors.

The word, Kenosis, comes from the Christ hymn in the second chapter of Philippians. Kenosis comes from verse 7: “but made himself nothing.” It can also be translated as “he emptied himself.” The King James translates it as “made himself of no reputation.” Kenosis, in this passage, talks about Jesus' move from divinity to humanity. Jesus becomes one of us, to the point of death on the cross. It is the wonder of this mystery that has lead to the development of a theology of Kenosis. Moreover, it is also about what it means to be humanity in the light of the God who became human.

Thus, how we understand Kenosis shapes our theology of discipleship—the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of being the people of God. Often the language used around Kenosis is joined with Christ’s command to pick up your cross and follow him. Narrative theologian, Michael Gorman, refers to this as the ‘cruciform’ life: our lives should have a cruciform shape.[2] In other words, to be true Christ followers, we must sacrifice ourselves. In this context, Kenosis is often translated ‘to empty out’. Thus, Christ empties himself out for us, and, as Paul says at the beginning of the Christ hymn, we must be of the same mind as Christ. In this way, we too must empty out ourselves or make ourselves nothing or of no reputation. We must die on our own cross.

But there has been some critique in the last 20 years with regard to the translation of Phil 2:7. Feminists, in particular, have wondered if a discipleship model based upon the sacrifice or the death of the self can ever be a positive model for women or marginalized peoples. Some feminist theologians (e.g., Radford Ruether, Bondi, and Coakley) point out that this understanding of Kenosis can perpetuate cycles of abuse and violence in the name of Christ. Those who are powerless are told that they must give up what little power that they have in order to follow in the way of Jesus. As Robert Bondi articulates this problem:

The difficulty comes at the point where we are tempted to think that real Christian love is of such a self-sacrificial nature that Christians ought not to have a self at all. Instead they must give themselves away extravagantly for the ones they love, pouring themselves out like water into sand for the sake of those they love and serve. This does not work.[3]

We might say that this pattern of discipleship as self-abnegation can be thought to be a path to salvation. But feminist point out that this model for discipleship actually reinforces negative patterns of living for some people and as Bondi so boldly puts it, “This does not work.” In the fall we talked about different models of sin that focus on pride, with a solution found in humility. To apply this to a model of atonement we can say that if sin is pride, then we must live into a place of humility in order to be saved. But if, for some people, sin is defined more as negation or the disappearance of the self (what some feminists talk about as ‘sloth’), then a discipleship model of humility would actually reinforce one’s sin, resulting in self-destruction.[4]


Hence, a discipleship model that focuses solely on the necessity of the death of the self will result in the harmful patterns for certain people. If you come from a place of power, perhaps discipleship models that are solely shaped by concepts of cruciformity and the death of the self can be empowering. However, discipleship models should be empowering for all people, in one way or another, because it is about how we are as the people of God in the world. If you do not come from a place of power then this kind of model could actually burn you out or even tear you down to the point of self-destruction or self-annihilation. As Roberta Bondi argues, “there cannot be love of others, much less love of God, where there is no self to do the loving.” [5]

The core of this kind of sin is really the underdevelopment of the self. And, if a self is required for the Christian life then in order to die to the self or to empty yourself out you must first have a self to give. I would also argue that no matter your definition of Kenosis, the self always remains intact. You must be you in order to be a disciple of Christ. Self-negation or self-dissolution is not the model that is consistent with scripture. If we really are to put on the mind of Jesus Christ, then we need to know something of the God who comes to us in the incarnation.


(Part II: Gordon Fee’s definition of Kenosis; Part III: Sarah Coakley’s contemplative solution.)

[1] Tune: French Traditional; Words: F. Houghton (1894-1972).

[2] See Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross; idem, Inhabiting the Cruciform God.

[3] Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love, 76.

[4] “The temptations of woman as woman are not the same as the temptations of man as man, and the specifically feminine forms of sin – ‘feminine’ not because they are confined to women or because women are incapable of sinning in other ways but because they are outgrowths of the basic feminine character structure – have a quality which can never be encompassed by such terms as “pride” and “will-to-power”. They are better suggested by such items as triviality, distractability, and diffuseness; lack of an organizing center or focus; dependence on others for one’s own self-definition… – in short, underdevelopment or negation of the self…[T]he specifically feminine dilemma is, in fact, precisely the opposite of the masculine” (Saiving Goldstein, ‘The Human Situation’, p#?).

[5] Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love, 77.