Classical Metaphysics: Some Terminology

I mention classical metaphysics or substance ontology a lot. I suppose it's fair that I define my terms.  Bruce McCormack notes,

1. The order of knowing runs in the opposite direction to the order of being.   This means before we "know" God we are operating with some abstract notion of "being" or "person" and projecting that onto God. As McCormack argues, "The consequence of this methodological decision is that the way taken to the knowledge of God controls and determines the kind of God-concept one is able to generate" (187). This leads to:
2. Metaphysical thinking in "the strictest sense of the term."  We are beginning "from below" and through an inferential process determining what God can be.
3. Which means that we have a fully-formed (or mostly formed) concept of what God is before any consideration of his self-revelation in Christ.  As McCormack notes, "the content of Christology will be made to conform to a prior understanding of God" (188).  Natural theology has now given us a definition of God apart from God's decision to elect, save, create, etc.  There is now a metaphysical "gap" between God in the abstract and the Triune God.  

McCormack, Bruce.  "The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism." Engaging the Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce McCormack, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008.

We see this playing out with great confusion in the Nestorian debate.  John McGuckin writes,

Ousia: Essence, substance, being, genus, or nature.

Physis: Nature, make up of a thing. (In earlier Christian thought the concrete reality or existent.)

Hypostasis: The actual concrete reality of a thing, the underlying essence, (in earlier Christian thought the synonym of physis.)

Prosopon: The observable character, defining properties, manifestation of a reality.

Even at first sight it is clear that the words bear a range of meanings that overlap in some areas so as to be synonymous.  This is particularly so with the terms Physis and Hypostasis which in the fifth century simultaneously bore ancient Christian meanings and more modern applications.. In relation to Physis, Cyril tended to use the antique meaning, Nestorius the modern. In relation to Hypostasis the opposite was the case.”

True, both Cyril and Nestorius used the terms to different ends, but neither challenged the metaphysical grammar--and neither gave a satisfactory solution.

John Anthony McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, SVS, 2004,

Is Knowing a dominating? On God's Essence

Classical theism has said that we can know that God is but not what God is.  We cannot know  God’s essence.  They had a reason for saying this:  in the Hellenistic world (which was never fully rejected in Christendom and received a shot in the arm in Descartes, even until our present day) to know something was to “master” it and bring it under one’s control--it is to subsume all under “The Same” (Smith 31).

Thus, when the Fathers said we cannot know God’s essence (cf. Basil, Letters 231 and 234) they meant we cannot bring it under our grasp, seizing and dominating it.  And this is virtually the position of Christendom, East or West.  Later Western thought nuanced this approach with the valid distinction between apprehending and comprehending.  If the field of debate is Hellenism’s view of knowledge as domination, then I fully agree with the tradition on this point.  

But why should we let idolaters determine how we can talk about God?  I understand the distinction between knowing what/that God is, and I agree with the value it seeks to protect, but with Barth I think it is simply “impracticable” (II.1/187).  Jesus said if we know him, we know the Father.  Presumably we know the person of the Father.  Can we know the person of the Father without knowing what the Father is?  This is where classical metaphysics comes undone.  No one is saying we can “fully exhaust God’s essence.”  But neither do I think Jesus is saying, “You can know the Father but I am holding back on you. You can only have me in reserve.”

We can’t separate person from nature (assuming classical metaphysics for a moment).  If we know Jesus, and if Jesus is homousios with the Father, then does it really make sense to speak of a free-floating, abstract essence behind the two?  If you still maintain that the above classical metaphysics is a coherent model, then the only thing left is the frozen theology of Palamism and Eastern Orthodoxy.  They at least are consistent.  They posit that the persons and the nature is hyperousia, beyond being (Palamas, Triads 2.iii.8; 3.iii.17-20).  Still, I must cut this option off at the pass.  I echo Robert Jenson:  if the Persons are eclipsed by the energies and remain in the realm of hyperousia and “above” the biblical narrative, in such case that we can no longer identity the persons by their hypostatic propria, we can only conclude that Palamism, despite its best intentions, is a more frozen form of modalism than anything Augustine or Aquinas ever dreamed of.

Barth, Karl.  Church Dogmatics.

Palamas, Gregory.  The Triads, ed. John Meyendorff.

Smith, James K. A., jacques derrida: live theory.  

Event, Identity, and the End of Classical Metaphysics

If we posit a God beyond the God revealed, then we are left with the worst form of nominalism (I know, I just said the n-word) and skepticism.  This is one of the reasons I reject Palamism.  There is no such thing as a God-in-itself.  Ousias do not have interiorieties.

McCormack writes,

“For Barth, the triunity of God consists in the fact that God is one Subject in three modes of being. One Subject! To say then that ‘Jesus Christ is the electing God’ is to say, ‘God determined to be God in a second mode of being.’ It lies close to hand to recognize that it is precisely the primal decision of God in election which constitutes the event in which God differentiates himself into three modes of being. Election thus has a certain logical priority even over the triunity of God. [Quoting Eberhard Jüngel:] ‘Jesus Christ is the electing God. In that here one of the three modes of being is determined to be the God who elects, we have to understand God’s primal decision as an event in the being of God which differentiates the modes of God’s being.’ So the event in which God constitutes himself as triune is identical with the event in which he chooses to be God for the human race. Thus the ‘gap’ between ‘the eternal Son’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ is overcome, the distinction between them eliminated…. There is no ‘eternal Son’ if by that is meant a mode of being in God which is not identical with Jesus Christ” (pp. 218-19).

As Ben Meyers summarizes,

The event in which God chooses to be “God for us” is identical with the event in which God “gives himself his own being.” And this event of election is not located in any timeless eternity. God’s eternal decision coincides with the temporal event in which this decision reaches its goal. This coincidence – this event of utter singularity – is God’s being. Time, then, “is not alien to the innermost being of God” (p. 222). The time of Jesus Christ is the time of God’s decision – it is the primal time, the time of God’s eternal movement into history. There is no still-more-primal divine being which lurks behind this movement into history; God’s being is this movement, this effectual decision.

Bruce McCormack suggests that the best model for understanding Karl Barth’s theology is Realdialektik–God is indirectly identical with the medium of his self-revelation.  It is dialectical in the sense that it posits both a veiling and unveiling of God. God is unveiled in Jesus’s flesh, but since it is in Jesus’s flesh, God is in a sense veiled (McCormack 145).   This is another way of using Luther’s Deus absconditus.  Interestingly, this dialectic solves the postmodern problem of “Presence-Absence.”

What is Classical Metaphysics?

Barth’s project is in many ways an attempt to overcome the limitations of classical metaphysics.  Among other things, classical metaphysics (and it doesn’t matter whether you have in mind Eastern and Western models) saw the essence of God as an abstract something behind all of God’s acts and relations (140).  This view is particularly susceptible to Heidegger’s critique of “Being.”  It is also susceptible, particularly in its Cappadocian form, to Tillich’s critique:

The Cappadocian “Solution” and Further Problem

According to the Cappadocians, the Father is both the ground of divinity and a particular hypostasis of that divinity.  Taken together, we can now speak of a quaternity.  Secondly, the distinctions between the relations are empty of content.  What do the words “unbegotten,” “begotten,” and “proceeding” mean when any analogy between the divine essence and created reality is ruled illegitimate, as the Cappadocians insist (Tillich 77-78)?  The Augustinian-Thomist tradition at least tried to move this forward, even if its solution was equally unsatisfactory.

Further, with regard to the Person of Christ, essentialism connotes an abstracted human nature which is acted upon (McCormack 206).  Further, in essentialist forms of metaphysics the idea of a person is that which is complete in itself apart from its actions and relations (211).  A wedge is now driven between essence and existence.  Christologically, this means that nothing which happens in and through the human nature affects the person of the union, for the PErson is already complete anterior to these actions and relations.

Election and the Trinity

Barth navigates beyond this impasse with his now famous actualism.  Rather than first positing a Trinity and then positing a decision to elect, which necessarily creates a metaphysical “gap” in the Trinity, Barth posits Jesus of Nazareth not only as the object of election (which is common to every dogmatics scheme), but also the subject of election.  How can this be?  How can someone be both the elector and the elected?

For Barth the Trinity is One Subject in Three Simultaneous Modes of being (218).  To say that Jesus Christ is the electing God is to say that God determined to be God in a second (not being used in a temporal sense) mode of being…this lies close to the decision that [Election] constitutes an event in which God differentiates himself into three modes of being (218).  Election is the event which differentiates God’s modes of being…So the event in which God is triune is identical with the event in which He chooses to be God for the human race” (ibid.)

Participation, not Theosis

Barth’s actualist ontology allows him to affirm the juridicalism within the Scriptures (which is markedly absent from many Eastern treatises) and the language of participating in the divine but without recourse to the theosis views so dependent on classical metaphysics.

Barth is historically-oriented, not metaphysically.  The divine does not metaphysically indwell the human so as to heal the potential loss of being.  Rather, the exaltation occurs in the history of Jesus Christ.  “The link which joins the human and divine is not an abstract concept of being, but history” (230).

For Barth, God’s ontology is the act of determining to enter human history (238).  God’s essence and human essence can be placed in motion–they can be actualized in history.

Exaltation, not indwelling

The terms describing Jesus’s history are agreement, service, obedience–they speak of the man Jesus standing before God, not being indwelt.

Reworking the Categories

If Barth’s criticisms of classical ontology hold, then a humble reworking of some categories is in order.  Instead of hypostasis, Barth uses the term “identification.”  The identification in question is an act of love.  Jesus is God, but God as self-differentiation.

This may seem obscure, but it bears great promise.  Both East and West have struggled with defining “person.”  A good Eastern theologian will not even define it, since, as John Behr notes, you cannot give a common definition to something which is by definition not-common.  Eastern Orthodox like to say how “personal” their theology is, yet ask them to define “person.”   The West actually does define it, but the problems aren’t entirely gone.  If person = relation, then how come the relations between the persons are not themselves persons, and ad infinitum all the way back to Gnosticism?  Given these huge problems, we should not so quickly dismiss Barth’s proposal. 

A Classical Christian Beginning List

These are books that I have read and have found helpful (or not helpful).  There are other fine works that I have not yet read that should be good.  Anything by Thomas Oden and Christopher Hall should be read if it is already not on this list.  

Why should we pursue a Classical Christian Conversation?

In short, for all of the problems and inadequacies in the Fathers, the fact remains that if you want to learn early liturgics and the Trinity, you have to sit at their feet.  Further, whatever galling problems we may see in the Fathers, the same symptom is in us:  are we self-critical?  Can we stand outside our own understanding of the world?  It’s not so easy, isn’t it?  Reading the Fathers allows us to stand outside our own position and ask, “Why would someone believe this so firmly?”

Ancient Christian Commentary Series.  There are some limitations to this series (inevitable arbitrariness in selection; insane prices--though I understand why), but it succeeds in what it sets out to do:  it gives you substantial commentary on the Scriptures and it offers superior translations than the common Schaff volumes.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures.  Not all of these will be equally persuasive, but it is a nice summary of Ante-Nicene and Nicene thought.  The lectures on antichrist and the end times are really fun.  Yarnold has released a new edition of Cyril and though incomplete, it should provide a welcome introduction and better translation than what is found in the Schaff series.

Hall, Christopher.  Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers.  There are two others in this series (Worship and Theology) that are probably excellent, but I haven’t read them.  Also see the lectionary cycle put out under Hall’s aegis.  

Oden, Thomas.  After Modernity...What? A mid-point update of Oden’s pilgrimage out of liberalism and into a patristic theology.  

Webber, Robert.  Who Gets to Narrate the World?  This was really good.  Imagine a short and up-to-date statement of City of God.  He even points out the dangers of Wahabbist Islam, though he doesn’t point to the American financial backers.

Read, but Beware

The following works are thoughtful and suggestive, but deeply problematic in many important areas.  Pastors should be familiar with them since many parishioners, especially history majors on a college campus, will be reading and asking questions.

Webber, Robert.  Ancient-Future Faith.  Much of it is good and a breath of fresh air compared to the 40 Days of Sexual Silliness too often found in the Evangelical world.  Unfortunately, while Webber is rightly critical of modernity, postmodernity seems to get a free pass.  Further, he is appreciative of Rome in ways that he does not realize Rome’s claim to totality.  

--------------.  Ancient-Future Worship.   This is actually outstanding.   Worship is the public re-enactment of God’s narrative.  Brilliant. Unfortunately, he allows for some silliness at the end.

-------------.  Ancient-Future Time.  I didn’t care for it, but that’s not the problem.  Anyone who wants to say we are under a certain “calendar” based on seasons needs to own up to Paul’s warning that we are no longer under the Stoichea.  

----------.  Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail.  Larger arguments of what is permitted in the worship service aside, this book is both interesting and incomplete.  He does rightly capture why Evangelicals are wanting more than “3 songs and a lecture,” and even probes that we need to give good outlets for this, but this book was written before the ECUSA declared open war on God, his people, and his word.