Survey on Faith and Art

My friend and fellow PhD colleague at Princeton Seminary, Katie Douglass, is conducting a survey on the role of faith and art in young adults as part of her dissertation project. She is looking for people between the ages of 18 and 30 to fill it out. You do not need to be either Christian or artistic. The survey consists of four parts divided into sixty questions: Demographic Information, Faith Practices, Art Practices, and Your Opinions on various issues on the arts and religion. It will take approximately 15-20 minutes to fill out.

As a bonus for taking the survey, you will have a chance to win a $100 gift card to Amazon.com.

“Jesus and Faith”: a new article

I have a new article in the latest issue of the Journal of Reformed Theology. The essay is titled, “Jesus and Faith: The Doctrine of Faith in Scripture and the Reformed Confessions.” I begin by looking at the Catholic-Protestant conflict over the nature of faith. I then summarize the New Testament witness to faith, examine whether the Reformed confessions do justice to this witness, and conclude by suggesting some theological possibilities for a contemporary pisteology within the context of a confessional Reformed theology.

There isn’t anything really special about it, but it raises some soteriological—including christological and pisteological—issues that must be addressed in contemporary Reformed theology. Overall, the paper falls in that category of essays that offer a close analysis followed by suggestive reflections. Hopefully, others will find its treatment of this topic helpful and informative.

Here is my concluding paragraph:

To conclude, the Reformed confessions present a doctrine of faith as a divine gift that includes a necessary human response. The doctrine is historically situated in the context of a dispute with Roman Catholicism about the very nature of faith. Against the Catholics, the Reformers emphasize the nature of faith as a heartfelt trust in Christ and the gospel of justification. Their employment of Scripture toward this particular end results in a heavy emphasis upon the Pauline epistles to the neglect of the Synoptics, Hebrews, and James, in addition to other texts. In particular, the confessions fail to provide a satisfactory understanding of the relation between the person of Jesus and the nature of faith; christology and pisteology are not mutually implicated in that while faith is directed to Jesus, Jesus is not similarly “directed” toward faith, so to speak. The problem is represented by the relationship between Son and Spirit, which seems to involve a bifurcation between objective and subjective, past and present. Recent exegetical work, as well as the theological resources of Calvin, Barth, and Agamben, to name just a few, offer fruitful and creative ways of integrating Jesus and faith today.

Paul among the Evangelicals, §5: Conclusion

Finally, where would Paul place himself among the evangelicals? Here I will necessarily be brief. First, the centrality of human faith in Christ is a hotly contested issue in contemporary New Testament studies, and on this point, it seems, Paul does not stand with the evangelicals. While it is not textually self-evident whether Paul leans more toward an objective or subjective genitive in using πίστις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, the Pauline letters seem to indicate that James Dunn is wrong to assert that the parallel between the works of the law and faith in a passage like Gal. 2:16—“pistis as the opposite of erga nomou”—actually favors interpreting faith as “something on the human side of the salvation process.”⁷⁴ As J. Louis Martyn argues, Paul does not set up faith and works of the law as two human possibilities—on the analogy of the Two Ways in the Didache or the two paths of Hercules, for example—but rather faith is only a divine possibility. Faith is part of the new creation (Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17), whereas law—and the human choices that go along with it, e.g., circumcision or uncircumcision, obedience or disobedience—remain part of the old creation. Jesus Christ nullifies the old world of competing human possibilities and establishes the new world in which what is humanly impossible becomes and remains a divine possibility. Evangelicals have yet to grasp this point, and Barth is an interlocutor who could prove helpful in developing a more biblically faithful concept of faith.

Second, Paul has a much more complex view of the relation between reconciliation, justification, and salvation than most Christians (evangelicals included) seem to articulate. In Rom. 5 alone, the verb δικαιόω is used twice (vv. 1, 9), both times in the aorist passive with reference to faith and the blood of Christ. The verb σῴζω is used twice (vv. 9, 10), both times in the future passive, the first time in distinction from δικαιόω and the second time in distinction from the verb καταλλάσσω. This latter word is used in Romans only Rom. 5:10 (occurring twice, both in the aorist tense), and it is used elsewhere in the New Testament only four other times: once in 1 Cor. 7, and the other three times in 2 Cor. 5:18-20. In other words, it is a Pauline word which is directly related (apart from 1 Cor. 7) to the event of reconciliation accomplished in Jesus Christ. These three words are often conflated in discussions of salvation. Bell, for his part, argues that justification refers to a reality in the life of the believer, so the future tense usage in Rom. 5:19 must be a logical rather than real future.⁷⁵ But the situation is more complex than this. More work still needs to be done on this topic. A textual study examining the relation between past, present, and future in Paul’s narrative of reconciliation is one that needs to be carried out.

Finally, even if Barth’s early work is too indebted to a time-eternity dialectic which renders any realized eschatology quite problematic, it is nevertheless true that Paul himself thinks, in a sense, dialectically. His numerous antinomies—faith/law, Spirit/flesh, Christ/Adam—are at the heart of his letters. And yet, also like Barth, Paul does not leave these hanging as static contrasts. Paul definitely affirms the arrival of a new world order in the Christ-event, and this new world is not merely a potential reality but an actual one. Something has indeed changed—even for all. In his own way, the Barth of Romans II recognizes this. The dialectic of time and eternity, like Paul’s own dialectics, are only for a time; they, too, will pass away (cf. 1 Cor. 13:12). With that, I close with a comment by Barth on Rom. 8:33-39, of which I think even Paul himself would approve:

Monstrous to us are even those final inevitable contrasts—knowing and not knowing; death and life; divine and human nature; past, present, and future on the one hand, futurum aeternum on the other; here what can be observed, there what is invisible; relativity and absoluteness; earth and heaven¬—to us they are endless finiteness, endless concretion, endless createdness—but in God, as negations which have been negated, as positions which have been dissolved, they are at peace, reconciled, redeemed, and resolved; in Him they are one. For the love of God in Christ Jesus is the oneness of the love of God towards men and the love of men towards God.⁷⁶

To see the outline of the series, click here.
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74. J. D. G. Dunn, “Once More, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ,” in Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, 270.

75. Bell, “Rom 5.18-19 and Universal Salvation,” 424.

76. Barth, Romans, 329.

Paul among the Evangelicals, §4: Barth on Rom. 5 (4.2)

4.2. Barth’s Partial Affirmation of the Evangelical Position

Barth is certainly critical of some of the underlying assumptions of evangelicals in the debate over universalism, but he is not only critical. He affirms both sides in the debate in at least the following way: in stressing that there is no distinction between individuals before God, Barth does not denigrate the significance of believing in Christ. He recognizes that there is indeed a difference for those who live in faith. Such people, according to Barth, are able to say Yes to their negation. They are those “who hope for, but who do not possess, redemption,” who even “dare to know what God knows.”⁶⁰ Such people have a radically different perspective:

[W]e believers see the invisible. We see the righteousness of God in His wrath, the risen Christ in the crucified One, life in death, the ‘Yes’ in the ‘No’. We are able to behold at the barrier the place of exit, and in the judgement the Coming Day of Salvation. … The obstacle to our life becomes a stepping-stone to the victory of life. Demolition becomes edification. … We affirm the negation which says that we are creatures, and we see clearly.⁶¹

The metaphor of sight is an important one, since throughout his commentary, Barth speaks of the dialectic between time and eternity in terms of visible and invisible. Whereas human belief is visible and historical, “faith and its power is invisible and non-historical.”⁶² Religion is “a visible and concrete historical fact”; the new world in Christ is “non-concrete, unobservable, and non-historical.”⁶³ For Barth to assert that believers are indeed able to “see clearly,” even to “see the invisible,” is a remarkable affirmation of God’s gift of grace and human reception of this gift.⁶⁴


To see the outline of the series, click here.
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60. Romans, 155.

61. Ibid., 156.

62. Ibid., 152.

63. Ibid., 183, 181.

64. Cf. ibid., 178-79: “He is the God who gives the gift of grace. . . . This gift men are able to receive; and through it they verily reign in life.”

Paul among the Evangelicals, §4: Barth on Rom. 5 (4.1.1)

4.1.1. The faithfulness of God

Barth shifts the center of gravity in justification from individual, subjective faith to the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. This is a shift from a direct vision or apprehension of revelation to an indirect vision: “in Jesus revelation is a paradox, however objective and universal it may be.”[39] Regardless of its universal dimension, revelation (as reconciliation) is always a dialectical event that occurs in the “critical ‘Moment’”[40]; it never becomes a “thing” that one may possess (“I have the promise of salvation”) or a predicate that can be attached to a name (“John is justified”), without involving its dialectical opposite. Barth shifts faith from a direct relation to God to an indirect relation, from a direct and unqualified notion of salvation to an indirect and paradoxical salvation. He is motivated in this by the concern of undermining any grounds for spiritual pride. That we are “saved” is a notion that opens the door to religious self-justification; it becomes the basis for the most insidious form of sin: the sin of believing one to be in the right with God while others are in the wrong. Barth does not deny that reconciliation has occurred in Jesus Christ; he merely argues that this “is not, and never will be, a self-evident truth . . . because it is a matter neither of historical nor of psychological experience, and because it is neither a cosmic happening within the natural order, nor even the most supreme event of our imaginings.”[41]

The effect of Barth’s radical move is that evangelicals are wrong insofar as they insist on turning faith into a subjective reality, something that humans do in order to procure divine justification. Barth argues that this is simply a pious form of self-justification. Faith is indeed “the radically new disposition” of the human person “naked before God,” but Barth is keen to add: “Faith is the faithfulness of God.”[42] Consequently, “faith is not a foundation upon which men can emplace themselves”; it is not a solid basis upon which humans can move beyond the crisis of their condemnation and into the safety of religion.[43] By defining faith as a divine reality, Barth has denied faith as a possibility latent within humanity as such. Faith is, instead, “the absolute Miracle,” because “it is defined by God” alone.[44] On this point, as a Reformed theologian, Barth stands resolutely against certain strands of contemporary evangelicalism which share more with Schleiermacher in terms of the efficacy and centrality of human faith in Christ.

For the outline of the complete series, click here.
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39. Barth, Romans, 97-98.
40. Ibid., 165.
41. Ibid., 98.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 110.
44. Ibid., 145.

Paul among the Evangelicals, §4: Barth on Rom. 5 (4.1.1)

4.1.1. The faithfulness of God

Barth shifts the center of gravity in justification from individual, subjective faith to the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. This is a shift from a direct vision or apprehension of revelation to an indirect vision: “in Jesus revelation is a paradox, however objective and universal it may be.”[39] Regardless of its universal dimension, revelation (as reconciliation) is always a dialectical event that occurs in the “critical ‘Moment’”[40]; it never becomes a “thing” that one may possess (“I have the promise of salvation”) or a predicate that can be attached to a name (“John is justified”), without involving its dialectical opposite. Barth shifts faith from a direct relation to God to an indirect relation, from a direct and unqualified notion of salvation to an indirect and paradoxical salvation. He is motivated in this by the concern of undermining any grounds for spiritual pride. That we are “saved” is a notion that opens the door to religious self-justification; it becomes the basis for the most insidious form of sin: the sin of believing one to be in the right with God while others are in the wrong. Barth does not deny that reconciliation has occurred in Jesus Christ; he merely argues that this “is not, and never will be, a self-evident truth . . . because it is a matter neither of historical nor of psychological experience, and because it is neither a cosmic happening within the natural order, nor even the most supreme event of our imaginings.”[41]

The effect of Barth’s radical move is that evangelicals are wrong insofar as they insist on turning faith into a subjective reality, something that humans do in order to procure divine justification. Barth argues that this is simply a pious form of self-justification. Faith is indeed “the radically new disposition” of the human person “naked before God,” but Barth is keen to add: “Faith is the faithfulness of God.”[42] Consequently, “faith is not a foundation upon which men can emplace themselves”; it is not a solid basis upon which humans can move beyond the crisis of their condemnation and into the safety of religion.[43] By defining faith as a divine reality, Barth has denied faith as a possibility latent within humanity as such. Faith is, instead, “the absolute Miracle,” because “it is defined by God” alone.[44] On this point, as a Reformed theologian, Barth stands resolutely against certain strands of contemporary evangelicalism which share more with Schleiermacher in terms of the efficacy and centrality of human faith in Christ.

For the outline of the complete series, click here.
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39. Barth, Romans, 97-98.
40. Ibid., 165.
41. Ibid., 98.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 110.
44. Ibid., 145.

Against “having faith”

Faith is nothing. Really, it is. In fact, one way to ensure missing the gospel is to think faith is something. But it’s not. It’s really nothing at all. Faith is a negative concept that opens up space to speak about something else. It has what John Webster calls a ‘rhetoric of indication’, one which is ‘self-effacing’. In other words, faith couldn’t care less about itself. Faith wants you to stop thinking about it, too, because in thinking about it, you are thinking about how you have (or don’t have) it. And so, you’re really just thinking about yourself. ...

Trouble is, we ever so subtly undermine the logic of faith when we too glibly exhort a person to ‘have faith’. It’s not so much that these exhortations must run counter to faith’s rhetoric of indication as it is our own recalcitrant tendency to smuggle in works. We relapse, again and again – and if you’ve been around addiction, you know relapse seldom happens once – into creative, but vain attempts to justify ourselves. We pay lip service to grace and then call people to drum up faith, to work with all their might to squeeze out enough of it to make their lives worth saving. We convert faith, in other words, into a work.

—Matt Jenson, “Faith is Nothing” (H/T Chris)

Paul among the Evangelicals, §4: Barth on Rom. 5 (4.1)

4.1. Barth’s Rejection of the Evangelical Arguments

Barth’s basic critical stance toward evangelicals on both sides of the universalism question is to deny that everyone is saved (contra universalists) by denying that anyone is actually and directly “saved” (contra non-universalists). The primary distinction between Barth contemporary evangelicals is rooted in the fact that evangelicals view faith, justification, and salvation as anthropological realities—i.e., they exist primarily in the subjective dimension of existence. Faith is “your” faith; salvation is “your” salvation. Evangelical universalists and non-universalists alike read Rom. 5 in light of what they find to be a consistent emphasis elsewhere in Paul that justification depends upon the believer’s faith in Christ. The difference is that the universalists see a both-and where the non-universalists see an either-or. In other words, whereas non-universalists argue that salvation is by faith or all will be saved, evangelical universalists argue that salvation is by faith and all will be saved (at some point in the unknown future). Barth, on the other hand, argues that (1) salvation is by the faithfulness of God (rather than individual, anthropological faith) and (2) all are saved because none are “saved.”

For the outline of the complete series, click here.

Schmemann: faith is an exodus from the ego

Faith is always and above all a meeting with the Other, conversion to the Other, the reception of him as “the way, the truth and the life,” love for him and the desire for total unity with him, such that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). And because faith is always directed to the Other, it is man’s exodus from the limits of his “I,” a radical change of his interrelations above all within himself. ... Faith, to the degree that it is indeed faith, cannot but be an inner struggle: “I believe; help my unbelief ...” (Mk 9:24).

—Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 144.

Paul among the Evangelicals, §3: The Argument (3.2.1)

3.2.1. Does Paul Really Mean “All”?

Commenting on the parallel structure of Rom. 5:18-19, Talbott writes what serves as a unifying theme among proponents of universalism in Paul:

The whole point of such a parallel structure, so typical of Paul, is to identify a single group of individuals and to make two parallel statements about that single group of individuals, and the effect is therefore to eliminate any possibility of ambiguity. The very ones who came under condemnation, as a result of the first Adam’s act of disobedience, will eventually be brought to justification and life, as a result of the second Adam’s act of obedience.[17]

The heart of the universalist case rests in the parallel between the protasis and apodosis in each of the two verses. There have been a number of various strategies used to attack this admittedly plain reading of the text. I will summarize the strongest counter-arguments, while providing the responses by defenders of universalism.

3.2.1.1. First, one of the stronger counter-arguments is that Paul means by the term “all” the fact that condemnation and justification apply to both Jews and Gentiles without distinction. The strength of this argument rests in the fact that it does not force a change in the referent between the first “all” and the second “all.” Each time Paul uses “all” or “many” (at least in Rom. 5), he simply means to say that Jews and Gentiles (i.e., all kinds of people) are both included, though of course the emphasis is slightly different. Thus, Paul means to emphasize in the protasis that Jews are just as much under condemnation as Gentiles, whereas in the apodosis he means to emphasize that Gentiles are just as much justified as Jews. According to MacDonald, “this claim has considerable plausibility,” in light of the context of Paul’s argument thus far.[18] In his arguments against universalism in Romans, I. Howard Marshall, a defender of the Arminian position, writes:

The one/many contrast is used of both Adam and Christ to show that both affect the whole human race and not just the Jews. So Paul’s aim is not necessarily to assert that all will be saved but that the work of Christ is for all, and that he alone is the Saviour in virtue of the one saving event of his death.[19]

The point in this argument is that Paul does not mean to say that every individual will be saved, but that the extent of salvation is as wide as the extent of condemnation. Jews and Gentiles are equal in both sin and salvation; neither has an advantage over the other, so there is no cause for boasting. As Paul himself states: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:22b-23).

Clearly, no defender of universalism in Romans 5 will deny this argument. A “multiracial universalism” of this sort is certainly a necessary implication of Paul’s overall argument in Romans; it is about the least one could say on the basis of these verses. The question, then, is whether such an interpretation is sufficient. At this point, MacDonald raises the simple objection that Paul’s use of πᾶς does not preclude the inclusion of every individual Jew and Gentile. He bases his argument on Rom. 3:9b-12, where Paul—arguing for a universal unrighteousness among Jews and Gentiles both—declares on the basis of Eccl. 7:20 that “there is no one righteous, not even one.”[20] MacDonald thus reverses the flow of Paul’s logic: the primary notion in Paul is not that both Jews and Gentiles are equal in relation to sin and salvation, though we cannot speak on an individual level; rather, it is that each individual is equal in relation to sin and salvation, which then implies an equality among Jews and Gentiles.[21] At the very least, it is obvious that Paul does not intend his argument to leave open the possibility that some individuals may actually fall outside the scope of Adam’s condemnation. If we thus grant that “all” in the protasis means “all who have sinned,” then we still have grounds for a universalist interpretation. Richard Bell notes that unlike in Rom. 11:32, the context in Rom. 5 is not concerned with the question of two groups (Jews and Gentiles) but with two realities (condemnation and justification) and two representatives (Adam and Christ).[22]

3.2.1.2. A second major counter-argument interprets the “all” as “all in Adam” and “all in Christ,” and thus the word “all” must be conditioned by what it means to be “in Adam” or “in Christ.” The assumed implication of this argument is that while all humanity is “in Adam,” only believers are “in Christ.” There are various strategies for arguing this point, though it is worth noting that all of them require looking at some text other than vv. 18-19. (1) The initial basis for interpreting “all” as “all in Christ” is found not in Romans but in 1 Cor. 15:22, where Paul makes a similar parallel: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” The counter-argument of the non-universalists thus reads 1 Cor. 15:22 back into Rom. 5:18-19. The validity of this reading has been cogently rejected by MacDonald by demonstrating that “in Christ” adverbially modifies “will be made alive” rather than modifying the “all.”[23] Christ is the means by which “all” are made alive; he does not limit who will be made alive but how.

(2) A second strategy argues that justification and righteousness in Romans is dependent upon faith in Christ, and thus we must read Rom. 5:12-21 in light of, say, Rom. 4:13-25. This argument is perhaps the most popular, and its persuasiveness rests in its canonical approach and in the use of Rom. 5:17. If the universalist argument is dependent upon vv. 18-19, then the non-universalist argument depends on v. 17, where Paul speaks of “those who receive (λαμβάνοντες) the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness.” Douglas Moo in his commentary on Romans then writes:

But in the apodosis (“how much more . . .”) “the many” must be qualified by Paul’s insistence in v. 17 that only those who “receive” the gift benefit from Christ’s act. Here it refers to “a great number” of people (but not all of them) or to “all who respond to the gift of grace.”[24]

In a forum discussion on inclusivism, Scott Hafemann follows Moo by adding:

Romans 5:17 reminds us—lest we have forgotten Romans 1-4!—that righteousness and life are for those who respond to God’s grace in Christ and that they are only for those who respond. When we ask who belongs to, or is “in,” Adam and Christ respectively, Paul makes his answer clear: Every person, without exception, is “in Adam” (cf. vv. 12d-14); but only those who “receive” the gift (v. 17; those who “believe,” according to Rom. 1:16-5:11) are “in Christ.”[25]

And of course this argument is not original to contemporary American evangelicals, but has its basis in the Reformers themselves, as the Calvin quote above demonstrates. Luther also spoke of the “free gift” as “that which Christ pours out from His Father upon those who believe in Him.”[26]

Proponents of universalism generally respond in two ways. The first is a grammatical point and simply notes that the participle λαμβάνοντες[27] is being used in the passive sense of “receive” rather than the active sense of “take.”[28] According to John Murray, the “word ‘receiving’ . . . does not refer to our believing acceptance of the free gift but to our being made the recipients” of this gift.[29] A non-universalist might respond that one only receives the gift on the basis of some prior act of faith, while a universalist might respond that we need to read v. 17 in light of vv. 18-19 and not the other way around, so that the “all” is not qualified by “those who receive” but rather “those who receive” is qualified by the “all.” The second possible response by universalists is concurrence with non-universalists that only those who have faith in Christ receive justification. Talbott and MacDonald are in agreement on this point: “Paul taught that justification and life come only to believers and . . . that not all are believers. . . . Paul needs only to believe that one day all will believe,” for which MacDonald goes on to argue.[30] This argument demonstrates the close affinity between universalist and non-universalist evangelicals: both believe that salvation is only by faith—i.e., salvation is primarily an anthropological reality. The central difference is whether faith is limited between cradle and grave, or whether there is an ongoing eternal possibility for faith. The acceptance of the latter leads MacDonald to accept hell, but on a provisional basis, not unlike a version of purgatory. Talbott, for his part, reads 1 Cor. 15:23-24a as support for a three-stage progression in salvation history: (a) Christ is raised as the first fruits, (b) followed by those “who belong to Christ,” and finally (c) at “the end” Christ will raise the rest of humanity, who by then will have become believers.[31] Regardless of the merit of these proposals, all sides agree that salvation is by faith alone—by individual, human faith alone, that is.

To see the outline of the series with links to the other posts, click here.

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17. Thomas Talbott, “Christ Victorious,” in Parry and Partridge, 19. It should be noted that not all agree with Talbott (or MacDonald) that justification and life is a future reality (“…will eventually be brought to justification and life…”), in the sense that for those who do not acknowledge a belief in Christ in this life still have a future ahead of them in which God’s salvation will at some point reach them as well. Richard Bell, for example, thinks that justification is a present-only reality, and so the future tense can only be a logical and not a real future (424). I will return to this argument later.

18. MacDonald, 81.

19. I. Howard Marshall, “Does the New Testament Teach Universal Salvation?” in John Colwell, ed., Called to One Hope: Perspectives on the Life to Come (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 20.

20. MacDonald, 81.

21. Ibid., 81-82.

22. Richard Bell, “Rom 5.18-19 and Universal Salvation,” New Testament Studies 48 (2002): 427.

23. MacDonald, 86.

24. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 336.

25. Scott Hafemann, “Forum Discussion on Inclusivism,” in Paul R. House and Gregory A. Thornbury, Who Will Be Saved? Defending the Biblical Understanding of God, Salvation, and Evangelism (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000), 155.

26. Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, trans. William Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 174; commentary on Rom. 5:17.

27. Cf. Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 155-56: “The λαμβάνοντες are undoubtedly believers. . . . [But] it is doubtful whether one should (with Bultmann) understand the participle in terms of a decision and choice and see in Christ the possibility opened thereto (Jüngel is right). For Paul the reign of Christ replaces that of Adam. The ontological structure of his anthropology remains determined by lordship as in the old aeon. Analogy can arise between Adam and Christ only because both establish dominion over existence and the world.”

28. MacDonald, 80-81; Talbot, “Reply to my Critics,” in Parry and Partridge, 252-53; Bell, 429. See also M. Eugene Boring, “The Language of Universal Salvation in Paul,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986), 287.

29. John Murray, Epistle of Paul to the Romans, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 198. Also qtd. in Talbott, “Reply to my Critics,” in Parry and Partridge, 253. It is interesting to note also that, in commenting on v. 17, Moo translates (paraphrases?) the contested phrase: “all who respond to the gift of grace.” The word “respond” is a more active verb than “receive.” Hafemann, for his part, equates “receive” with “believe,” also a more active verb. Each author minimizes the force of Rom. 5:17-19 by introducing concepts either foreign to the text (“respond”) or found elsewhere in Romans (“believe”). A more persuasive response by a non-universalist would be to note that the verb “receive” is itself not an entirely passive verb but requires the action of openness to the Other, to what is outside oneself (extra se). This, of course, still does not rule out the universalist scope of the passage, since it is conceivable that all will receive the gift of grace. Even though Paul does emphasize the importance of faith elsewhere, it is not present in Rom. 5:12-21. Does Paul intend the reader to fill in the gaps? Or does Paul intend a distinction between faith as an anthropological reality (by faith) and faith as a christological reality?

30. MacDonald, 80.

31. Ibid., 85-86.

Digital Karl Barth Library

Gradually over the past year, Alexander Street Press has been publishing the complete works of Karl Barth in German in their online Digital Karl Barth Library. Recently they put up the entire text of Die kirchliche Dogmatik, and eventually the English translation will be available (possibly later this fall). In honor of this important event in Barth studies, here is one of my favorite quotes from Barth’s Church Dogmatics on the topic of faith.

Glauben heißt: Folgen, seinem Gegenstand folgen. Glauben heißt: einen schon abgesteckten, schon gebahnten Weg gehen. Der Glaube realisiert nichts Neues, er erfindet nichts, er findet nur eben, was für den glaubenden wie für den nichtglaubenden Menschen schon ist. Er ist nur des Menschen tätige Erschließung dafür, nur seine tätige Entgegennahme, nur seine tätige Anteilnahme daran. Sie macht den Christen aus. Es ist also umgekehrt der Christ, der, indem er glaubt, dem Gegenstand seines Glaubens gerade alles zu verdanken hat: das ganz Unermeßliche, daß er im Verhältnis zu jenem Gegenstand nicht nur da sein, sondern bei seinem Sein tätig dabei sein darf. Das ist sein großer, sein gar nicht hoch genug einzuschätzender Vorsprung vor Anderen: daß dieser Gegenstand nicht nur für ihn da ist, sondern daß er seinerseits für diesen Gegenstand sein darf. Es bleibt nicht bei dessen Beziehung zu ihm. Er selbst tritt seinerseits in eine Beziehung zu ihm. Das unterscheidet den Christen vom Nichtchristen. Der Gegenstand, der als solcher einem Kreis zu vergleichen ist, der alle Menschen und einen Jeden von ihnen umgibt, hat sich um den Christen damit, daß er glaubt, geschlossen, während er beim Nichtchristen eben an der Stelle, wo auch er glauben dürfte, aber noch nicht oder nicht mehr glaubt, noch offen ist. Er hat die Beziehung zu dem, was doch in Beziehung zu ihm ist, nicht aufgenommen. Das ist sein Abnormales. Wogegen Glaube die Normalisierung des Verhältnisses zwischen dem Menschen und diesem Gegenstand ist: der Akt, in welchem der Mensch das tut, was dieser Gegenstand fordert, was ihm diesem Gegenstand gegenüber zukommt: der Vollzug der Entsprechung zu dem, was dieser Gegenstand an sich für jeden Menschen ist und bedeutet.

—Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik IV,1 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1980), 829.