Daily Archives: January 30, 2008

Jesus as God’s Self-Interpretation

Posted by on January 30, 2008 7 comments

One of the central theses of Eberhard Jüngel’s book God’s Being is in Becoming is that the doctrine of the Trinity is our interpretation of God’s own self-interpretation.  For Jüngel, God’s revelation perfectly corresponds to Godself.  The triune God is the one who corresponds to himself.  His being is his act, and the revelation of the Trinity in Christ and the Spirit constitutes God’s self-interpretation.  The economic Trinity is God interpreting himself before us, it is God’s act of saying who and what God is within the realm of created being.

It seems to me that Jüngel’s construal of the Trinity as God’s self-interpretation might offer a helpful way to mediate the various debates surrounding the relationship between the man Jesus and the eternal trinitarian Son.  If Jüngel is correct that the economic Trinity is God’s self-interpretation, could we not argue that Jesus is the self-interpretation of the eternal trinitarian Son?  Thus, it isn’t strictly accurate to speak of the Logosas having an incarnate and an unincarnate state in a static sense.  Rather, the man Jesus himself is the eternal self-interpretation of the Son.  From all eternity the Son of the Father interprets himself as Jesus of Nazareth.  And because God’s act of self-interpretation is identical with God himself, the Son’s self-interpretation of himself as Jesus means that Jesus simply is the eternal trinitarian Son without remainder. 

And thus, as Jüngel says, God’s self-interpretation, the event of decision to be the God that he is identical with the eternal being of God.  God is the event of his own decision and that decision is “not to be understood only as a decision for God, but also . . . as a decision for humanity” (p. 81).  This “decision for humanity” which is eternally included in the event of the triune God is precisely the decision we see actualized in the man Jesus.  A proper understanding of the second person of the Trinity requires us to begin and end on this point.  If we grant that the actualistic ontology of Jüngel (and Barth, and perhaps Aquinas as well) is the most appropriate theological construal of being, then we are forced to conclude that the man Jesus is the eternal self-interpretation of the trinitarian Son.  Everything that we behold in Jesus belongs to the eternal identity of the triune God.  The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is the Nazarene.

Identity Politics Exposed

Posted by on January 30, 2008 Comments Off
“For each identification (the creation or cobbling together of identity) creates a figure that provides a material for its investment by the market. There is nothing more captive, so far as commercial investment is concerned, nothing more amenable to the invention of new figures of monetary homogeneity, than a community and its territory or territories. The semblance of non-equivalence is required so that equivalence itself can constitute a process. What inexhaustible potential for mercantile investments is this upsurge — taking the form of communities demanding recognition and so-called cultural singularities — of women, homosexuals, the disabled, Arabs! And these infinite combinations of predictive traits, what a godsend! Black homosexuals, disabled Serbs, Catholic pedophiles, moderate Muslims, married priests, ecologist yuppies, the submissive unemployed, prematurely aged youth! Each time, a social image authorizes new products, specialized magazines, improved shopping malls, “free” radio stations, targeted advertising networks, and finally, heady “public debates” at peak viewing times. Deluze put it perfectly: capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization. Capital demands a permanent creation of subjective and territorial identities in order for its principle of movement to homogenize its space of action; identities, moreover, that demand anything but the right to be exposed in the same way as others to the uniform prerogatives of the market.”

– Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003), 10-11.

H/T: Christian Amondson

The Risks of Theology

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“The first risk theology runs is not the risk of being judged wrong; it is the risk of being judged meaningless.  There will always be those who reject the though of the involvement of the Absolute in the sufferings of Jesus, and will deny the truth of Christianity accordingly.  But when positivism rejects theological propositions (along with ‘metaphysical’ doctrines) as candidates for inclusion in the class of propositions that may be true or false and so bear a meaning, then meaningfulness becomes the predominant question.  With a speech that is ‘folly’ rationality seems to collapse, and the best thing to do is laugh at it, since it does not deserve the honor of a refutation.  With a speech that is ‘scandal’ the faith and hope of Israel seem to be denied, and the only thing is to excommunicate those who have made it.  . . .  Christian theology will claim that its third language criticizes both the Greek logos and the Jewish logos (if one may speak of such a thing), but the price paid for its critical distance is extraordinarily high.  Theology thinks that it alone knows what the most important words really mean: God, mankind, world, salvation, etc. etc.  But it will have to persuade us that the language it deploys is intelligible, not senseless; that it is capable of giving men and women access to a community of reasonableness, not simply following the irrational free play of emotions.”

–Jean-Yves Lacoste, “More Haste, Less Speed in Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9:3 (2007): 271-272.

The Psalms as Inter-Trinitarian Dialogue

Posted by on January 30, 2008 9 comments

A while back I posted a Christological Theology of the Psalms.  At the end of that post I suggest that the Psalms can be read fruitfully as a an inter-trinitarian dialogue, that is as a conversation between the Son and the Father in the Spirit.  This has a prima facie plausibility to me in light of the simple fact that the Psalms, more than any other book of the Old Testament are found on the lips of Jesus throughout the Gospels.  Jesus finds in the Psalms his own prayers and speaks them as his own prayers to the Father.

If it is indeed the case that the Psalms can legitimately and fruitfully be read in this figural way, I wonder what we might glean from them in terms of trinitarian doctrine.  In other words, if the Psalms are a discourse, a conversation between the Son and Father in their common Spirit, how might these Scriptures reshape and nurture our affirmations about the being of the triune God?  I have two thoughts about where such reflections might lead us.

First, if the discourse between the Psalmist and Yahweh in the Psalms is reflective of the eternal conversation of Jesus and the Father, we are forced to think of the divine life in an intensely personal and dynamic manner.  The pleas throughout the Psalms for divine help, even a prayer as radical as “take not your Holy Spirit from me!” (Ps. 51:5), if read trinitarianly propels us to think about the divine life of communion between the Father and Son, not a static given, but a dynamic being given.  The Son does not posses the Father but stands ever in need of the Father.  The Father likewise stands in need of the Son, without whom he will be without praise, love, and adoration.  Without the living Son, there is none to behold the Father’s radiance or declare his reality to the world (cf. Ps. 30:9).  We could say, on the basis of the Psalmic discourse that the Son is the visibility of the Father, without whom the Father cannot be himself.  One of the fascinating (and perhaps ontologically radical) implications of the Psalms for trinitarian doctrine is that essential neediness is not foreign to the life of the Trinity.  The sort of vulnerability, instability, and dependence that we experience as creatures is not a reality that is foreign to the life of God.  Rather, in God the reality of ontological neediness is embraced in an overabundant life of gift.  In the Trinity, being is not a given, but a dynamic being given which can only be received through the embrace, rather than the eschewal of need and dependence.

Second, if the Pslams reflect the eternal trinitiarian conversation, they testify to the irreducible historicality of God’s way of being God.  The eternal trinitarian conversation includes the history of Israel, the church, and the world.  God’s eternal discourse between the Son and the Father in the Spirit includes, grounds, and sustains the world of chance and change.  Indeed, on the basis of the Psalms we can say that God’s way of being God is identical with his being God for us.  The immanent, eternal discourse between the Son and the Father includes, embraces, and upholds creaturely reality.  God’s immanent life is found, not above, but profoundly within history, or rather history itself is found within the triune discourse.  The self-abnegating hesed of Yahweh, and the kenosis of Jesus are the elocutions of the triune discourse through which creation finds its being as an inflection, a rhythm, a non-necessary participant within the eternal conversation that is the triune God. 

There is certainly much more that could and must be said about a Christological and trinitarian reading of the Psalms.  What other vistas and horizons of discovery might there be for theological interpretation if we approach the Psalms as inter-Trinitarian discourse?  If people have thoughts, I want to continue such a conversation.  Who knows, such a conversation might even catch and experience a few of the inflections within the historical and eternal triune discourse!

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