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The glory of God : the Christological anthropology of Irenaeus of Lyons and Karl Barth

Reeves, Michael

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 THE GLORY OF GOD
The Christological Anthropology of Irenaeus
of Lyons and Karl Barth

Michael Reeves

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF

KING'S COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AND OF THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

2004

1
ceUD
 Abstract

This thesis seeks to examine the manner in which anthropology is informed by

Christology in the thought of Irenaeus of Lyons and Karl Barth. It does so by placing

the two theologians alongside each other and examining each in turn, allowing each to
illuminate the other, so providing an heuristic device to draw out and clarify the issues

they address and their respective approaches and models.

Three questions are put to each in an attempt, not to constrain, but to give full space to

articulate their anthropology: first, `Who is Man? ' (concerning methodology and
looking to obtain a preliminary conclusion); second, `What is Man? ' (analysing the
detail of what human being and becoming can then be said to be); and third `When is

Man? ' (concerning the doctrine of time and man's origin, being and destiny).

In that it takes two subjectsso separatedin time, it should be clear that this examination
is a work of systematic as opposed to historical theology. Historically they are far

apart; systematically they are easily comparable. As such, not only can Irenaeus and
Barth be placed side by side for examination, but they can also be brought easily into

conversation with contemporary anthropological debatesand concerns.

Whilst it does in fact do so, the goal of the thesis is not simply to prove the merits of

Christological anthropology; instead it serves as more of an exploratory demonstration

of the diverse possibilities that are available when it is affirmed that Jesus Christ is the

revelation and reality of the being of man. That is, whilst the anthropologies of
Irenaeus and Barth can, all their separation in time, be shown to bear a remarkable
-for
similarity to each other because informed by Christology, they can also be shown to be

striking in their differences, because informed by different Christologies. Thus, we will

see, Christological anthropology cannot be accepted as an unambiguous category or

single project.

2
 Contents

Abbreviations 4

INTRODUCTION 5

PART I: IRENAEUS 8
1. Who is Man? 9
i. The Gnostic Dissolution of Man 9
ii. The Proper Object of Anthropology 16
iii. Homo Humanus 22

iv. A Revised Methodology 43

2. What is Man? 49
i. Spirit and Man 50

ii. Spirit and Flesh 56

iii. Deification and Hominisation 73

3. When is Man? 81
i. RedeemingTime 82
ii. One Economy of Father, Son and Spirit 92
iii. The Causeof the Incarnation 97

PART!!: BARTH 108

4. Who is Man? 109
i. Pioneering a New Anthropology? 109
ii. Man as the Creature of the Trinity 119
iii. Man as Male and Female 133
5. What is Man? 146
i. Spirit and Man 146
ii. Man as Saul and Body 166
iii. Conclusion 179
6. When is Man? 183
i. Jesus,Lord of Time 184
ii. The Covenant as the Presupposition of Reconciliation 202
iii. Conclusion 217

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 218

i. The Polyvalence of Christological Anthropology 219
ii. The Promise of Christological Anthropology 225
Select Bibliography 232

3
 Abbreviations

AH Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (in the numeration of Massuet)

Dent. Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Frag. Irenaeus, Fragment

I Ap. Justin Martyr, First Apology

II Ap. Justin Martyr, Second Apology

Dial. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho
EH Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History

CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vols 1-4, eds. G. W. Bromiley

and T. F. Torrance; trans. G. W. Bromiley et al. Edinburgh: T.

& T. Clark, 1956-75
KD Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik (Munich: Chr. Kaiser
Verlag, 1932 and Zurich: TVZ 1938-65)

4
The Glory of God Introduction

Introduction

At the 'O L#M6 the navel of the Greek world at its classical height, stood the temple of
,
Apollo at Delphi. On its walls was written the maxim that Socrateswas to take as his

Own: FVO)OLEEauiöv ('Know Thyself'). Thus two things were implied to the Hellenic

mind: that knowledge - and knowledge of man in particular - could be acquired

immanently; and that there was an insuperable distance between Olympus and Athens,

between `the immortals' and mere mortals, between God and man. Neither the pivotal

role of anthropology in theology and philosophy, nor the two fundamental assumptions
have disappeared.

Questions about man certainly have some claim to pre-eminence. Such was the
first question ('Man, where are you? '), and such is the question automatically elicited

God ('Who I? '). 1 Indeed, in many ways it is questions

on the meeting of and man am

and assumptions about the identity of man (or lack of it) that shape society today, from

psychology and medical ethics to the fashion industry and the `self-realisation'

movement. Yet now, as then, it is the introspection of the Delphic maxim that still
dominates methodology in questions about man and his relation to God and the world
.
around him. Feuerbach'sassertion that `knowledge of God is self-knowledge' can only
be supported by the anthropological assumption that `knowledge of man is self-
knowledge'. The result is that, anthropology can look much like a puppy chasing its

tail, for the anthropologist is thus both the subject and the object of his own

investigation. As shown by the Sphinx, man can then be something of an impossible

riddle. It is no wonder that man of the third millennium finds himself so helplessly far
into an identity crisis. In reaction to this, much anthropology has attempted to deal

with humanity in the abstract or as the other (the remote and incomprehensible tribe
that enables human understanding through the negative image of familiar customs).
Such detached study, in treating man as a sample, inevitably tends to dehumanise. Yet,

1 Gen. 3:9; Exod. 3: 11

5
The Glory of God Introduction

G. K. Chesterton stated in his perhaps most masterful work on anthropology `I do

as
believe in being dehumanised in to humanity'. Z The intention of this
not order study

study is the very opposite: by considering man, to be humanised.

The two subjects of this study, Irenaeus of Lyons and Karl Barth, each from

opposite ends of post-apostolic Church history, are radical anthropologists of a very

different school to Delphi. They seek to be theologians first, and to think theologically

and Christianly. John Behr has noted that both were aware of, and successfully

managed to avoid, the temptation `to use a general concept of man to explain who the
is, rather than a concept of man understood in terms of
second person of the Trinity
has in Jesus Christ'. 3 That is the both
what God revealed revolution offer, and the
theological issue at the core of this study: `a concept of man understood in terms of

what God has revealed in Jesus Christ'. What comes of that revolution, however, is by

no means predictable. Two quite distinct, if complementary, accounts can be seen to

rise from what appears at first to be a single source.

In order to appreciate those accounts and so to come to an understanding of

some of the possibilities of what we shall see to be the extremely broad category of
Christological anthropology, it is necessary to analyse in detail their respective

contributions. This is not that we might accept either anthropology wholesale. It is that

only with such thorough appraisals can we hope to avoid the ubiquitous danger of

simply squeezing them into relevance to contemporary questions and debates. If they
do in fact offer truly Christian anthropology, only so can we hope to avoid simply

garnishing non-theological anthropology with Christian flourishes.

We will proceed in two parts, one for each theologian, each part mirroring the

other and consisting of three major sections. That done, we can come to some final

attempt at resolution and conclusion. Even without such final resolution, aided by their

arrangement alongside each other, each should prove as illuminative of the other as of

man. The three main matters dealt with in each will be: the method used and the

general conclusion reached by each (approached through the question `Who is Man? ');
the detailing of what human being (and becoming) can then be said to be (approached

through the question `What is Man? '); and finally, the temporal framework within

which man finds his origin, being and destiny (approached through the question `When
is Man? '). It should become apparent through the course of the thesis that the three

questions do not simply form the three strands of some crude artificial net that fails to

2 Chesterton, G. K., The Everlasting Man (repr. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 23
3 Behr, J., `The Word of God in the Second Century' Pro Ecclesia IX, 1 (2000), 85-107,86

6
The Glory of God Introduction

gather all the relevant information whilst distorting what it does collect; instead, these

are the questions that both theologians effectively instruct the reader to ask.
Two words of explanation before we begin: first, where possible, we have

retained the traditional translation of Irenaeus' homo/ävOpwiioc and Barth's Mensch by

`man', and not substituted it for the gender-neutral term `human being'. Whilst, no

doubt, this will cause some unease to many, this is done in order that we might be more

sensitive to the anthropology (and the understanding of gender) they both actually

present, a fact which, it is hoped, should become increasingly clear. As a provisional

comfort we can note that in neither does this amount to anything like a marginalisation

of femininity; nor is it so simple as to say that, for either theologian, homo/äv@pumocor

Mensch is paradigmatically male.

Second,what may appear to be the extraordinary and unjustifiable straddling of

eighteen centuries by a concentration on subjects from the second and twentieth is, in
fact, the strength of the study. For, whilst needing to take account of their respective

historical situations, this is not an historical survey but a systematic study. The proof

can only lie in the pudding, yet already we might note that the applicability of the same

questions to both itself demonstrates the commensurate nature of Irenaeus' and Barth's

relevant material, showing the validity and value of placing them alongside each other.
Read on their own, each is undeniably enlightening in their proposal for a
Christological anthropology; yet the very differences of context as much as response

enable both to set each other off to even greater effect, each helping to draw attention to
both the strengths and the weaknesses of the other, in so doing revealing how variously

Christology can inform anthropology. It is through two eyes that we will be able to see

more clearly the promise of Christological anthropology.

7
 PART I:

IRENAEUS
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus I Who is Man?

1
is
Who Man? '

The Gnostic Dissolution of Man

The movement in the early post-apostolic Church that most came to embody the ideals

of Delphi Evas Gnosticism. It was the middle of the second century that saw the

proliferation of what are now called Gnostic schemes of cosmology and soteriology,

presenting the Church of the day with the most complex, subtle and serious intellectual
threat to its gospel. The notion that Gnosticism (supposedly the progeny of the

heresiarch of the book of Acts, Simon Magus) was ever an homogenous system was
by their adversaries, and has been thoroughly debunked 2
today. Under
never assumed
the extremely loosely associated leadership of men such as the Ozymandian self-styled
Gnostic Valentinus (Irenaeus' most potent and creative adversary, who, Irenaeus felt,
had recapitulated all heresy as Christ had recapitulated all history 3), Marcion, Basilides,

Saturninus, Carpocrates, Bardesanes, Marcus, Tatian, Cerdo and Cerinthus were such

disparate sects as the Simonians, Ebionites, Nicolaitans, Encratites, Ophites or

Naasenes, Sethians, Cainites and Archontics. `Homogenous' would, in fact, be the last

word to use in description of a compilation of such opiate complexity and obscurity, the
fruit of a (particularly Alexandrian) composting of Oriental and Hellenic philosophies.

However the term is still a useful crudity and so we may present a bowdlerised

synthesis of Gnostic cosmogony somewhat as follows. The prime realm consisted of

the II) pwµa (Fullness), a collection of divine or quasi-divine beings (aiaivror), the root

of which was the HIpoapXrj or BuOOq(Abyss). The other realm was the hylic, with only
indirect connections to the former. This realm was the afterbirth of a celestial
disruption amongst the aicSvtor. That is, one of the atcSvLor (Eoýia) had, for her

hubristic lust to comprehend the Incomprehensible (having been tempted by NoOS),

1The question is inspired by the alternative LXX (A) reading of Psa. 8:4, which has TLS(who?) instead of
ri (what?). We hope to establish that, whether or not it was the question the psalmist was asking, it was
certainly the question of preliminary significance for Irenaeus(and Karl Barth).
2Williams, M. A., Rethinking 'Gnosticism': an argumentfor dismantling dubious
a category (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996)
3 Adversus Haereses (henceforth cited as AH) 4.pref.2. Valentinus was a
particular threat, not only from
the apparent winsomeness of his argument, but due to his position within the Church as a whole, once
having been expected to have become Bishop of Rome (Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 4). Though
he was proud of the title `Gnostic', it should be remembered that the term did not have the connotations
that came to be associatedwith it.

9
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

been expelled from the HXýpwµa (or at least her enthymesis [Achamoth] had been,

whilst E#ia herself had been restored to the HXrjpwµa). Then, much as in the

Babylonian Enuma Elish, the creation itself is formed from the component parts of the

monster, thus rendering it a monstrosity in itself. Her compound being resulted in the

compound being of the world: her passion serving as the ontological basis of all matter,
her longing for truth the basis of soul, and her spiritual nature the basis of the spiritual

nature of the yvwo'rucoi.

The effect was to be thoroughly divisive. For, whilst all good and evil derived

from the one HX,ijp4tcz, this cosmogony reversed the logic of Genesis by making

creation consequent upon fall (not, as is commonly suggested, subsuming the one into
the other). This meant, despite the original emanation of evil from the Mllpwµa, that

the created sphere was wholly incompatible with the divine by its very nature of being

created. Instead of the earth being the Lord's, and everything in it, this cosmogony saw

creation as a mere excrescence, a tragi-comic shadow of the HXi pwµa. Yet the Gnostic

problem was not simply the radical segregation of the divine and created spheres as a

whole, but, by virtue of the division of Sophia/Achamoth, a separation of God and man
between and even within individuals. Redemption on such a model could never even

amount to being individualistic, let alone cosmic, for neither the whole cosmos nor the

whole individual could be redeemed. It could only be the re-separation of the elements

of matter, soul and spirit that had been unnaturally compounded, a redemption that

would require deep introspection and the knowledge to distinguish the deep self from
the psyche. For the Gnostic then, yvCoLS, to a very great extent, was ETriyvcxic (self-
knowledge).

To judge by the mushrooming new literature, the increased use of the terms
`gnosis' and `Gnosticism' in popular publications, and the increased confidence to be
found amongst those who now publicly style themselves `Gnostics', it would seem that
Gnosticism.4 Where earlier crypto-Gnostics
we are today witnessing a renaissanceof
were compelled to camouflage their heretical beliefs or face the fate of the Cathars,

contemporary Gnostics have no longer felt the need for such disguise. Giovanni
Filoramo brings to note that the popular reception of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts

upon their discovery in 1945 was in part because `certain areas of the cultural
panorama showed a disposition, a peculiar sensitivity to the... texts,... which dealt with

° See, for instance, many of the works of authors as diverse as Harold Bloom and Philip Pullman. In
particular, Bloom, H., Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (New
York: Riverhead, 1996).

10
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

a phenomenon that they themselves had in some way helped to keep alive. '5 It would
be naive to imagine that we have a complete reincarnation of Gnosticism rife in society

today. It is certainly a strange strain of Gnosticism that can be Gnostic and (to a large

extent) not know it. Yet it would be equally naive to imagine Gnosticism to be a well-

entombed fad. If Irenaeus was anywhere near the mark in describing Gnostic thought

as the quintessential heresy, it would be unsurprising to find Gnostic influence

throughout Church history. 6 Yet, perhaps with the similarity of the distant god of the

Enlightenment to the ckv ot of Gnosticism, the phenomenon seemed to come alive

.
flourish in the shadows of modernity. 7 The attraction
again and with peculiar strength

of post-modernity in its plurality to the Babel of different sects and beliefs in

Gnosticism is a mere extension of this. Romanticism often bore close similarity to
Gnostic thought, a similarity that was often only thinly veiled for the sake of

conformity. For example, the notion of intrinsically evil matter can be seen behind
William Blake's question in `The Tyger': `What immortal hand or eye, Could frame

thy fearful symmetry? '. Yet even the decidedly unromantic Edward Gibbon could be

appreciative of Gnosticism as he cleared it of the centuries-old defamation of being

referred to as Manichaeanism. In the last century, though, apart from the scholarly

work of Hans Jonas, it is Carl Jung who, through his `depth' (BuOöc) psychology, has

perhaps done more than all in re-appropriating the Gnostic teachings for a

contemporary audience. Richard Smith may be stating the case too strongly when he

argues that `Jung takes the entire dualist myth and locates it within the psyche', yet
Jung's psychology is certainly an interpolation, if not a true appropriation of Gnostic
8
thought. Related to such psychological introspection is the contemporary dominance

of an `ethics of authenticity' dependant upon a Delphic methodology, well expressed

by that far from contemporary `tedious old fool, '. Polonius, as he addressed Laertes:

$ Filoramo, G., A History of Gnosticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. xiv.
6 Cf. Lee, P. J., Against the Protestant Gnostics (Oxford: OUP, 1986)
7 As Karl Barth put it when writing on `Man in the Eighteenth Century': `must we not continue to ask
whether the whole concept of `Enlightenment', the whole picture of the sun piercing the clouds, is
to
enough characterise one aspect of the -
century even on the widest possible interpretation. Could we
not with almost as much justice call it the century of mystery?' Barth, K., Protestant Thought: Frau
Rousseauto Ritschl trans. B. Cozens (London: SCM, 1959), 13
8 Smith, R., `The Modern Relevance of Gnosticism,' in J. M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hanunadi Library,
third edition (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 540-41. Cf. Edinger, E. F., The New God-
Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image (Wilmette,
ILL.: Chiron, 1996).

11
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man. 9

Furthermore, the Gnostic view of evil as inherent within creation is undoubtedly deeply
10 And yet it is the very sane Gnostic
appealing to a terrorised post-holocaust world.
dissolution of man into composite parts that allowed the Nazi recycling of human body

components, and that under-girds the modem `love-hate' crisis in identity as people,
longing to `find themselves', feel themselves to be either alienated from or trapped

inside their own bodies (leaving the ironic condition in which, as with the inspired poet

in Plato's Phaedrus, ecstasy is fulfilment). For, within the Gnostic scheme, the human
dilemma is primarily intra-personal: we are pearls in the mud, in exile from our true

home in the II; pw ta, divine spirits (good) trapped inside hylic bodies (bad) and a
hylic realm (bad). The segregation is by no means solely intra-personal, however: we

would be foolish to imagine that in contemporary society there is no Gnostic distinction

between divine men and women and the herd of mere mortals. There may be no more

Sun-Kings, yet what else is the opera `diva' or the `star'? Spirit, matter and persons
have become so fractured that self-realisation and fulfilment under an `ethics of
authenticity' is the only available soteriology in a covert meta-narrative where
humanism has come to be conterminous with atheism.

It is here that the command and blessing `Honour your father and your mother,
so that you may live long and that it may go well with you' comes to bear on the
Church as a whole. For in the Church father Irenaeus we have an outstanding

theologian who has specifically sought to tackle the Gnostic problem. Only fairly

recently has Irenaeus been freed from the condescension of his descendants in the
Church, who for too long rather credulously accepted as raw fact the bishop's modest

appraisal of himself:

Thou wilt not expect from me, who am resident among the Keltae, and am

accustomedfor the most part to use a barbarousdialect, any display of rhetoric,

9 Shakespeare, Hamlet Act One, Scene iii;

cf. Trilling, L., Sincerity and A« thenticity: The Charles Eliot
Norton Lectures, 1969-1970 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
10Bloom (himself a Jew) writes: `the normative Judaic, Christian and Muslim teachings that God is both
all-powerful and benign... gives one a God who tolerated the Holocaust, and such a God is simply
intolerable, since he must be either crazy or irresponsible if his benign omnipotence was compatible with
the death camps.' Bloom, 23

12
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

which I have never learned, or any excellence of composition, which I have

never practised, or any beauty and persuasiveness of style, to which I make no

11
pretensions.

After the autopsy Friedrich Loofs performed on Irenaeus, having dismissed him as a

confused and unoriginal editor of meagre theological talent or importance, Irenaeus has
been thoroughly resurrected, initially by the works of Montgomery Hitchcock and
Gustaf Wingren in particular. Brunner's peroration on Irenaeus in the middle of his

work on Christology shows how fast the tide began to turn against Loofs and Harnack:

In spite of the fact that in the fornial sense Irenaeus was not a systematic

theologian, yet - like Luther - he was a systematic theologian of the first rank,
indeed, the greatest systematic theologian: to perceive connections between

truths, and to know which belongs to which. No other thinker was able to weld
ideas together which others allowed to slip as he was able to do, not even

Augustine or Athanasius. But he did not take any trouble to articulate into a

theological system the sets of ideas which were connected with their own
12
groups.

Together, Irenaeus' extant works - his 'E1ri&L LS ioü älroorolLKOÜ KfIpüyµatoc

"EXEyxoc ävarpoTT 1ou 13

and, in particular, the KOCL Tres JEUÖÜW1 yvcäOEo may be the

closest thing to a comprehensive system of theology produced by the early post-

apostolic Church. However, pace Hick and many others, Brunner was right to qualify
that Irenaeus was not a systematic theologian `in the formal sense', in the sense of

11AH l. pref.3. Raven recapitulated the assessmentof his age when he described Irenaeus as so `inferior
in intellectual power and speculative ability to the great Gnostics whom he attacked' that `much of his
work is blundering and confused, and much, if judged by later standards, is defective to the point of
heterodoxy' (Raven, C. E., Apollinarianism: An Essay on the Christology of the Early Church
(Cambridge: CUP, 1923), 7).
12 Brunner, E., The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith trans. Wyon,
0. (London: Lutterworth, 1934), 262
13'EiTt&Lr
rc TOOänooro WOÜ Knpüyµaroc will hereafter be referred to as The Demonstration (Derr:. ), the
'EAeyxoc Kai ävarponil Ti' ýEUbwvüµou yvciaEwc (also known as rlpb4 tic aip¬aELS) as Adversus
Haereses (cf. AH 2. pref. 1; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.20,26). Citations are from the Roberts
and Donaldson translation (Ante-Nicene Fathers I (1887; repr. Grand Rapids, Ml.: Eerdmans, 1987))
unless otherwise noted. Having been unable to access Rousseau's critical Sources Cliretiennes edition of
the texts, for the Latin and Greek I have referred to Harvey (Sancti Irenaei Episcopi Lugdu zensis: Libros
Quinque Adversus Haereses (Cantabrigiac: Typis Acadcmicis, 1857)) and Migne (Massuet, E., (ed. ),
Sancti Irenaei Episcopi Lugdunensis et Martyris Detection is et Eversionis Falso Cognominatae
Agnitionis Libri Quinque (Paris: 1710); repr. Patrologia Graeca 7 (Paris: 1857)).

13
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

treatise dogmatic 14 Whilst he most certainly

writing a comprehensive or system.

manages to `weld ideas together', a tight system was at the time dearer to the concerns
15 is
of the Gnostics. It not that he was simply a theologian operating before some

vogue for the neat cataloguing of dogmas. Irenaeus had a more immediate pastoral

goal. The bishop recognised that under his Episcopal care (and that of others) there

was a large group that sought to exempt themselves from his authority and know God
immediately. Whilst he did grudgingly recognise their spiritual purpose, the only

outcome of their seriously corrupted and deviant doctrine would be the division and
damaging of the one Church. It was this that impelled him to write against tiii

iiEUSwvüµou yvcSaEC)S, `lest through my neglect, some should be carried off, even as

by 16 And this
sheep are wolves'. was not only for the benefit of the apostolic Church,
for, whilst he could pour scorn on `these portentous and profound mysteries, which do

not fall within the range of every intellect, because all have not sufficiently purged their
brains', '7 he could also write in order that the array of heretics he faced `may be

converted to the truth and saved. '18 The product is an animated cartoon, giving the

outlines for a Christian Weltanschauung, in which Wingren is surely right in suggesting

that the central problem is `man and the becoming-man, or man and the Incarnation.
This is not the only problem with which he is concerned, but it is his main one. ' 19 This

can surely be the only conclusion about a theologian who can so strongly affirm that
for the sake of man, and not vice-versa. 20 For, whilst he does not
creation exists

attempt to provide a universal field theory of anthropology, it is clear that he considers

this question of human identity to lie at the very heart of the gospel, which is the

project of man. For Irenaeus, the goal of the Edenic project is expressed in his

14Cf. Hick, J., Evil and the God of Love, Revised Edition (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1977), 211;
also Williams, R., The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testamentto St John of
the Cross 2°d ed. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), 24
15 Whilst
seeking to use the Gnostics as an early example of the corruption and secularisation of the
simple message of Jesus, Harnack is surely right in noting that the Gnostics `were the first to transform
Christianity into a system of doctrines (dogmas). ' (Harnack, A., The History of Dognia trans. N.
Buchanan (London: Williams & Norgate, 1897), Vol. 1,228); cf. Gunton, C. E., 'A Rose by any other
Name? From "Christian Doctrine" to "Systematic Theology"', in Intellect and Action: Elucidations on
Christian Theology and the Life of Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), 19-45
'6AH l. pref.2; I Tim 6:20; cf. AH4. pref. I
17AH l. pref.2
18AH 4.41.4; cf. 4.prcf. 1-2
19 Wingren, G., Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (Edinburgh
& London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), ix (italics original).
20AH 5.29.1; cf. Justin Martyr's SecondApology §4.

14
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

deservedly famous because wonderfully balanced maxim: `the glory of God is a living

man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. 721

21Gloria enini Dei vivens homo: vita autem hominis visio Dei. 4.20.7. This is further balanced when he
adds `the glory of man is God, but [His] works [are the glory] of God; and the receptacle of all His
wisdom and power is man' (3.20.2).

15
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

The Proper Object of Anthropology

It seems to be a perennial temptation for man to leap to asking `what? ' of `this

quintessence of dust'. Yet to make the `what? ' the preliminary question in

anthropology is necessarily to assume the Delphic conception of the possibility of an

immanent understanding of man. Against the Gnostic mythologising that championed

this conception, Irenaeus resolutely placed his anthropology within a dynamic narrative

that forces methodological considerations first. That is, before we may ask `what? ', we

are compelled to ask where we might find our answer. Where is the proper object of

anthropology?
The epic presented in Adversus Haereses remains even today an exotic

theological rarity for two interdependent reasons in particular: its refusal to ground

soteriology on factors external to anthropology such as the fall of angels or the inherent

potential of creation; and its teleological narrative. It is this dynamism of Irenaeus'

understanding of the project of man that Wilhelm Bousset so disastrously

misunderstood in asserting that, for Irenaeus, `Redemption is nothing but the

22 Certainly he could write that Christ
reestablishment of the original nature of man.
became incarnate `so that what we had lost in Adam - namely, to be according to the

image and likeness of God - that we might recover in Christ Jesus.i23 Yet to

understand this as meaning that the bishop's soteriology involved a mere restoration to
Eden would be to do great violence to the texts. 24 Perhaps some of the blame for this

should fall upon the inadequacy of recapitulatio as a translation of &Vc in

KE4aXaCWOLS,
that it gives the impression of a purely cyclical dynamic as opposed to the dynamic of

growth and perfecting Irenaeus envisages. Certainly this is the sense in which Paul

used the root in Romans 13: 9 and Ephesians 1: 10.25 Whether or not an intentional

nuance or pun, the &va in ävaicEcalaiWoLS

carries, for Irenaeus, the senseof a virtuous

spiral, involving both repetition and movement upwards (revealing. again his affinity
with the Johanninetradition26).

22 Bousset, WV.,Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to
Irenaeus trans. Steely, J. E. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970), 438
23AH 3.18.1; cf. 5.32.1
24AH 5.33.4; 5.34.2
25Cf. AH 4.6.2 for Justin Martyr's use of the root in his lost work against Marcion.
26Note the
use of i vW0ev in Jn. 3: 3,7,31; 19: 11,23.

16
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

By this arrangement, therefore, and these harmonies, and a sequence of this

nature, man, a created and organized being, is rendered after the image and
likeness of the uncreated God - the Father planning everything well and giving

His commands, the Son carrying these into execution and performing the work

of creating, and the Spirit nourishing and increasing, and man making progress
day by day, and ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the

uncreated One. For the Uncreated is perfect, that is, God.

Nov it was necessarythat man should in the first instancebe created;

and having been created, should receive growth;

and having received growth, should be strengthened;

and having been strengthened,should abound;

and having abounded,should recover [from the diseaseof sin];
and having recovered, should be glorified;
being his Lord. 27
and glorified, should see

That said, Irenaeus is too elegant a theologian to be a proto-Darwinian or proto-

Marxist. He does not envisage the growth or completion of man through the survival
history, God-consciousness 28 Such models again
of the fittest, the dialectic of or

remove soteriology from the anthropological mooring Irenaeus would give it and
harbour it in genetics, economics, the psychological, or anywhere but the project of

man.
Within this project, Adam could never but be one in need of growth. Whilst the
Greeks and Romans imagined Athena or Minerva emerging fully armed and mature

from the brain of her divine father, Irenaeus held Adam not to be a divine emanation or

generation, but a creation, and so by very nature immature. Even before the fall, whilst

he most certainly was counted as innocent, that innocence did not amount to

righteousness or perfection. Instead of nostalgically conceiving Eden as the

Renaissance's lost aetas aurea, Irenaeus presents Adam in Eden as the necessarily
incomplete foundation of a far grander scheme. This he explains in countering the

potential objection that such imperfection is incompatible with the perfection of God:

27AH4.38.3
2BThat being the
case, Irenacus does not foreshadow the grain of Gore's Lux Mundi, in particular the
fifth essay `The Incarnation and Development' in which J. R. Illingworth saw `the law of evolution' as
the proper starting point for an analysis of incarnation. (Gore, C., Lux Mundi (London: John Murray,
1889), 181ff) Nor can John Hick be correct in fitting Schleiermacher's eschatology and nineteenth-
century evolutionary thinking within what he calls the `Irenaean type' of theology. (Evil and the God of
Love, 219f. )

17
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

If, however, any one say, "What then? Could not God have exhibited man as
perfect from beginning? " let him know that, inasmuch as God is indeed always
the same and unbegotten as respects Himself, all things are possible to Him.

But created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very
fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to

have been uncreated. But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very

do they come short of the perfect. 29

reason

Adam's imperfection as man - an imperfection not to be equated with, despite its

susceptibility to, evil is thus rooted in the necessary imperfection of contingent and
-
created being. As such, even before the corruption of man in the fall, Adam could

never be seen as the proper object of anthropology, but only as the child (výriioc) that

Christ would suffer to call to himself 30

as the recipient of salvation.
That Adam fell and that man is fallen only adds to his ineligibility. Whilst it is

good to obey God, and evil not to obey God, Adam chose, in disobedience to God, to

obtain his own, immediate knowledge of good and evil. Irenaeus concludes: `if any

one do shun the knowledge of both these kinds of things, and the twofold perception of
knowledge, he unawares divests himself of the character of a human being. How, then,

shall he be a God, who has not as yet been made a man? '31 Almost as if he were

reversing the process of maturation and bolstering his infantile status, Adam, in his

disobedience, had only further divested himself of the status of manhood.

It is only in that One who came as an infant for Adam's redemption that Adam
could receive growth from his infancy to glorification.

29AH 4.38.1
30AH 3.22.4; 4.38.1; Dem. 12,14,
passim. Whether derived from Irenaeus himself or not, the idea that,
being recently created, Adam and Eve were essentially infantile and immature, had a wider appeal within
the early centuries of the post-apostolic Church. So Clement of Alexandria: `Above all, this ought to be
known, that by nature we are adapted for virtue; not so as to be possessed of it from our birth, but so as
to be adapted for acquiring it. By which consideration is solved the question propounded to us by the
heretics, Whether Adam was created perfect or imperfect? Well, if imperfect, how could the work of a
perfect God - above all, that work being man - be imperfect? And if perfect, how did he transgress the
commandments? For they shall hear from us that he was not perfect in his creation, but adapted to the
reception of virtue. ' (Stromata, 6.11-12) So too Theophilus of Antioch: `The tree of knowledge itself
was good, and its fruit was good. For it was not the tree, as some think, but the disobedience, which had
death in it. For there was nothing else in the fruit than only knowledge; but knowledge is good when one
uses it discreetly. But Adam, being yet an infant in age, was on this account as yet unable to receive
knowledge worthily. For now, also, when a child is born it is not at once able to eat bread, but is
nourished first with milk, and then, with the increment of years, it advances to solid food. ' (Ad
Autolycus, 2.25)
31AH4.39.1-2

18
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus I Who is Man?

it was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but

man could not receive this [perfection], being as yet an infant.... He might

easily have come to us in His immortal glory, but in that case we could never
have endured the greatness of the glory; and therefore it was that He, who was

the perfect bread of the Father, offered Himself to us as milk, [because we

infants. 32
were] as

Irenaeus' contention that Christ's incarnate priestly ministry lasted from the age of

thirty to fifty 33 the length the Levitical be too dismissed

- career of priests - can easily

as sui generis, incidental, or the strained result of stretching every argument and text

over the Procrustean bed of recapitulation. However, apart from the caution we must

exercise in attributing idiosyncrasy to so staunch an advocate of the regula fidel or

is by incidental. 34 It is only the one who, as he

regula veritatis, the claim no means

matured, has brought flesh from infancy to maturity, and so sanctified men of every

age, that can be saviour and truly man. Humanity otherwise was as an unmarried

body head. 35
woman, a without a
True man, though, was not displayed only by the perfecting and maturing of

childish Adam. Such stop-gap salvation would be a far cry from Irenaeus' vision of the

one otKOVOµia OEoi. For not only was Adam the incomplete child, but also, as the
he 36 We might even
protoplastus, already existed as the shadow of the primogenitus.

say that as the shadow, darkness is an inherent part of his constitution. Not that he is in

any sense created evil (for in that case the Son who created would never have taken
flesh upon himself), but that Adam was not true man man is not created Man. It is for
-
this reason more than any other that Irenaeus could never envisage Adam and his race

as the locus of true humanity, the proper object of anthropology. Thus there is a

problem for anthropology far more profound than a more `missing link'.
To use the protoevangelical words that constitute man ('Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness'), Adam was never created the image or likeness of God.

Here Pannenbergis close to the mark in stating that

32AH 4.38.1
33AH 2.22
34Cf. AH 3.2.1f; 3.15.1; 4.35.4; 5.20.2;
passim.
33AH 3.16.6; 3.19.3; 4.32.1; 4.34.4; 5.14.4; 5.20.2; 1 Cor. 11:1-6; Col. 1:18-9
36AH 5.19.1

19
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

materially the interpretation of Irenaeus, and of others who followed him,

expresses the unfinished nature of the image. Renaissance thinkers gave

special emphasis to this point. Thus Pico della Mirandola said that Adam was

being imprecise form (indiscr"etae iniaginis). 37

created as a of opus

However, Irenaeus was no Whig beforetime, dreaming of an immanent human progress

in which Christ was relegated to the role of the kindly colonial catalyst. Such a dream

could not have survived the horrors of the waves of persecution that had (in 177 in

particular) and would hit Lugdunum. Instead, Irenaeus provided a Christologically

determined anthropology that involves no distinction between the imago Dei as the

designation Christi later 38 Adam

original of man, and the imago as a messianic calling.

never was the Image of God and neither can his race be of themselves. But `the image
is image 39 Thus it was only with
of God the Son, according to whose was man made'.
the visible appearance of the true Image in the incarnation that Adam, created to be like
Christ, could be perfected after the Image and Likeness.

For in times long past, it was said that man was created after the image of God,

but it was not [actually] shown; for the Word was as yet invisible, after whose
image man was created, Wherefore also he did easily lose the similitude.

When, however, the Word of God became flesh, He confirmed both these: for

He both showed forth the image truly, since He became Himself what was His

image; and He re-established the similitude after a sure manner, by

invisible Father Word. 4°

assimilating man to the through means of the visible

To seek for man in any other place than the visible Word, as the Gnostics did through
introspection or myth, would be to distort the image of the king into that of a fox. 41 It

would be a recapitulation of Adam's sin in the garden in being an attempt to acquire

knowledge immediately, without the Logos.

37 Pannenberg, WV.,Systematic Theology trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans &
Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark, 1994,1998), Vol. 2,217
38 Moltmann, J., God in Creation: doctrine of creation trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM,
an ecological
1985), 216-228
39Dellt. 22; cf. Dem. 11,55; AH 4.33.4; 5.1; 5.16.1-2. Presumably this builds upon the Pauline doctrine
of Christ as the `image of the invisible God' (2 Cor. 4: 4; Col. 1:15).
40AH 5.16.2; cf. 4.33.4
41AH 1.9.4

20
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

It was, according to Irenaeus, the nature of Gnosticism to separate what should

be united and thus be atomistic, a trap we need be wary of falling into in considering

anthropology. It is therefore the contention of this study that Christological

anthropology is more than simply a part of the trend for the dismantling of boundaries
between academic disciplines. It is not only the case that Christology and anthropology

genuinely relate, particularly in Irenaeus, but that for Irenaeus, anthropology can only
be done in the light of Christology, not introspection. The pivotal question that then

remains is: if the Word reveals man in the incarnation, in what sense did Irenaeus

understand Jesus Christ to be man?

21
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus I Who is Man?

Honio Humanus

One problem Irenaeus faced when composing Adverstrs Haereses was the lack of a

single opposition. If Gnosticism could be described as single, it was only so in the

its heads.42 Yet it was precisely
sense of the Hydra of Lerna, with numerous serpentine
this lack of cohesion amongst the various hypotheses of the numerous Gnostic sects

that provided the argument for the central section of the first book of the work in

enabling him to contrast this with the `unity of the faith of the Church throughout the
3 Against
whole world'. such multifaceted mythology he explains the content of this
faith as a single, integrated project or otKOVOµiaof salvation.

However, the prime target of the Gnostic separating of what should be united

was the person of Jesus Christ. First, since he was working in the material realm,

Gnosticism was always forced to reduce Jesus of Nazareth to the status of a mere

avatar, prophet, or man possessed in some sense by divinity. All his work on earth was

interpreted, by the Valentinian school in particular, as the symbolic acting out of

spiritual realities that had already taken place within the flXrjpwµa. Rather than being

an effective saviour, the Valentinian Jesus thus looked more like Homer's wandering
Odysseus, his fate always being determined by, and hanging in the balance of, the

divine squabbles on Olympus. This was because, secondly, Gnostic Christology could

not conceive of incarnation, which would impossibly compound God and man. The

very closest it might come to a doctrine of incarnation would be the idea that `Christ
through Mary just flows through "4 Christ would remain as
passed as water a tube'

untouched as the spirits of the yvwaiuKoi, `even as gold, when submersed in filth, loses
its beauty. A5 More commonly, if the sect did not consider Jesus
not on that account

and Christ to be different beings in the IIXrjpwµa, the man Jesus would be seen as the
Christ. 46 Speaking of trends broader than, but
mere temporary receptacle of the aiaiv

consonant with, Gnosticism, Grillmeier reminds us that the Greek mind

could certainly think of no greater opposition than that of `Logos' to `sarx, '
especially if the idea of suffering and death was associated with it. For this

42AH 1.30.15
43AH 1.14; 1.10
44AH 1.7.2; 3.11.3; cf. 4.2.4
45AH 1.6.2
46Cf. AH3.16.1; 3.17

22
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

reason, the Christian proclamation saw ever-repeated attempts of a Docetic

kind to deny the reality of Christ's flesh or to loosen the unity of Logos and
47
sari

The most extreme expressionsof this dichotomy describe how, either Christ left Jesus
immediately before the crucifixion, or, with Basilides, that

he did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being

compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by

him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and

error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by,
laughed at them. For since he was an incorporeal power, and the Nous (mind)

of the unborn father, he transfigured himself as he pleased, and thus ascended

to him who had sent him, deriding them, inasmuch as he could not be laid hold

of, and was invisible to al1.48

If, at best, Jesus Christ was depicted as passing through Mary as water through a tube,

at worst the reality of Gnostic Christology was that Christ was made to pass through
Jesus as water through a tube. Thus if other men were divided up by Gnosticism, Jesus

Christ was more so - separated out from men if seen as more angelic or divine than

human; from God as being incompatible with the Hellenic ideal of divinity, and
fragmented within himself.

It was in opposition to all Gnostic variants of a split or awkwardly spliced Jesus

Christ that Irenaeus founded his doctrine of the one economy. For the idea that Christ

was one and Jesus another,. or suggesting that Christ was not truly born in the flesh, he
believed to be homicidal, leaving its adherents `outside of the [Christian] dispensation',

`under the old condemnation', `in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the

Word of God the Father'. 49 For `how can these men really be partakers of salvation, if

He in whom they profess to believe, manifested Himself as a merely imaginary

being? 50 Irenaeus adopted 1 Corinthians 8: 6 as the leitmotiv of his response: `there is

but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is

47 Grilimcier, A., Christ in Christian Tradition, Voll (London: Mowbrays, 1975), 34

48AH 1.24.4;
cf. 1.7.2; 1.30.13; 4.2.4; the Gnostic Acts of John 97-104
49AH 3.17.3; 3.16.8; 3.18.7; 3.19.1; cf. 4.pref. 3
50AH 4.33.5

23
but one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we

live. 51

In studying Irenaeus there is naturally some struggle to hear the authentic voice

of the bishop down through the centuries of secondary literature and debate on the
issues he addressed. Eric Osborn's recent study attempted to summarise his thought in

four concepts: divine Intellect, economy, recapitulation and participation. 52 These may

be correct, but they seem too abstract and static to be genuinely helpful as descriptions

of Irenaeus' thought. Furthermore, they do not seem sufficiently to account for the
importance of the project of man in his thought, with incarnation as the dynamic

fulcrum of this majestic vision. After all, it is with this that he concludes Adversus

Haereses:

For there is the one Son, who accomplished His Father's will; and one human

race also in which the mysteries of God are wrought, "which the angels desire
to look into; " and they are not able to search out the Wisdom of God, by means

of Which His handiwork, confirmed and incorporated with His Son, is brought
to perfection; that His offspring, the First-begotten Word, should descend to

the creature (facturam), that is, to what had been moulded (plasma), and that it

should be contained by Him; and, on the other hand, the creature should

contain the Word, and ascend to Him, passing beyond the angels, and be made
after the image likeness God. 53
and of

Perhaps closer to the pulse of the work is Denis Minns, who, following Paul Beuzart,

takes the first clause of I Corinthians 8: 6 to see `one God' as the dominant theme of the
54 Irenaeus' opposition to `conjuring up a number of gods, and simulating many
work.
Fathers', as he sees happening in the plethora of divine beings in the Gnostic RXr pwµa,
is certainly a dominant and necessary theme to underpin the one economy. 55 Rather

than there being a Trk pwµa aiwviwv, Irenaeus sees the one God as `all thought, all will,

all mind, all light, all eye, all ear, the one entire fountain of all good things. '56
However, whilst the singularity and unity of the economy does indeed flow from there

51See especiallyAH 1.10.1.

$2Osborn, E., Irenaeus Lyons (Cambridge: CUP, 2001)
of
53AH5.36.3
54Minns, D., Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994); Beuzart, P., Essai
stir la Theologie d'Irenr e
(Le Puy: 1908).
55AH3.16.8
56AH 1.12.2

24
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus I Who is Man?

being one God, it is a singularity and unity maintained only by the fact that it is the

same Word that is the agent of the one project of creation and redemption. His
imposing landscape of the cosmic history of creation, through redemption, to final

consummation as one single (though not simple) project depended on one single
(though not simple) Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that Irenaeus is quick to use bold

Christological language reminiscent of the striking Carmen Christi from Philippians

and the exordium of the book of Hebrews. That is, it is the exact same one who both

sustains all things and who provided purification for sins. More than anything else, it is

upon this - one Lord Jesus Christ - that his presentation of the single economy against
the divisiveness his depends. 57 As Harnack put it, it is this that
of protean opponents
`the doctrine Irenaeus'. 58
stands as cardinal of
To speak broadly, it is all too common amongst christologies that have stepped

away from a complete segregation of the vere homo and vere Deus to find a deep

reticence to face up to the Christological paradoxes, preferring instead to ignore or

59 The tendency here is to slip into the sentiment that incarnation is a
avoid them.
`mystery' to be respected only at a distance and not approached (the word `mystery'

being most ironically used here, given that Christ, as the revelation of God that we may

know, is himself To' µuoirjpLov toi AEoi (Col. 2: 2)). However, though this mystery is

holy ground, Irenaeus describes such sentiment as characteristically Gnostic reasoning,

and urges instead that `it is much more suitable that we, directing our inquiries after

this fashion, should exercise ourselves in the investigation of the mystery and

administration of the living God. 960 It. is only speculation about the immanent

relationship between the Father and the Son on which he calls for reserve, seeing
Isaiah's question `Who shall describe His generation? ' as the trump to all conjecture
here. 61

Given, then, his preparedness to exegete one Lord Jesus Christ, how did he

understand this vere Dells to be vere Homo? Kurt Rudolph makes a claim that is

baffling, given Irenaeus' adherence to the Johannine tradition: providing explanation

57See Book III in particular: for example, AH 3.11.1; 3: 16ff, passim.

58Harnack, Vol. 2,276
59 Even
more strongly, William Temple felt that `if any man says that he understands the relation of
Deity to humanity in Christ, he only makes it clear that he does not understand at all what is meant by an
Incarnation' (Temple, W., Christus Veritas (London: Macmillan, 1925), 139). In regard to this, it hardly
needs to be said that the so-called `Johannine thunderbolt' of Matthew 11: 27, that of 6etc EmyLV UKEI.
töv uibv EL µi1 6 mcTrp is a personal, as opposed to a metaphysical, declaration.
60AH 2.28.1; cf. 1.19.2; 1.21.4; 1.25.5; 3.15.2
61In seeking to protect the eternal deity of the Son within a single Godhead, Irenaeus was uncomfortable
with the phrase X yoc npo4opucöc,or with the description of the Son and the Spirit - the `Hands' of the
Father - as npoßolai (AH 2.28.5-6; cf. 2.30.9; 3.18.2; 3.19.2; 4.33.11; Justin, I Ap. 51; Dial. 43,68,76).

25
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

for the Gnostic preference for the Gospel of John, he suggests that in the Johannine

view of Christ,

it is not his earthly appearance which is decisive, but his heavenly and

otherworldly origin which only faith can perceive. That he has come `in the
flesh' means only this, that he has entered into the earthly and human sphere,

just as Gnosis also assumes with regard to the redeemer. But the `fleshly
Christ' is not the true one, it is the non-fleshly, the Christ of glory, the Logos. 62

However, Irenaeus understood the agenda of the fourth gospel to be (va 1TLoT6[o]fTE

ÖTL 'IIIo0Üs EoTLV Ö 6 UL64 \Va

OEo Wý V ExnTE EV TW
xpLQTÖs Tob
,
KaL 11LOTEÜOVTEs
(ý
övöµaTL aütoü (Jn 20: 31); an agenda that, far from showing affinity to the Gnostic

preference for the supernal, foresaw `these blasphemous systems which divide the
Lord, as far as lies in their power, saying that He was formed of two different

substances(oüoial)', 63
For, despite Erasmus' judgment that Irenaeus was a philosopher, he does not

follow what is often perceived to be Justin's generally more positive approach to

human philosophy ('on account of the Logos spei-inatihos implanted in every race of

men'), referring instead to philosophers as `those ignorant God'. 64 Thus

who were of
he freed himself to be more critical of the Platonic antithesis between spirit and matter,

God and man. No longer is the Logos the demiurgic cushion between God and the

world, but the very presence of God in the world. Where the Father is wholly

transcendent - `above all' - the Son `is inherent in the entire creation, since the Word
God 65 So unflinchingly can he expound this that
of governs and arranges all things'.
Osborn observes that it `is astonishing how much of what Irenaeus says about the

creator, who excels nature, has Stoic overtones, despite the fact that the Stoic creator...
is so immanent as to be identical with the world. '66 Certainly it was an Epicurean

doctrine of the distance between God and the world that lay at the heart of what he

sought to oppose in Gnosticism. There is, in fact, a remarkable degree of similarity

62 Rudolph, K., Gnosis: Tue Nature

and History of Gnosticism trans. Wilson, R. M. (San Francisco:
Harper, 1987), 159
63AH 3.16.5
64 II Apology 8 (cf. I Ap. 5,46); AH 2.14.2. Justin, however,
was far from issuing a blanket approval of
all philosophy, which he is happy to equate with demon worship (cf. his entire Discourse to the Greeks
and much of the Hortatory Address to the Greeks), approving Socrates for his very rejection of the poets
such as Homer (ll Ap. 10).
65AH 5.18.2-3
66 Osborn, 35

26
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus I Who is Man?

between the efforts of Epicurus to remove the uncomfortable intrusion of the divine

into the human sphere and Gnostic cosmogony, the practical effect of both being either

dissipation or asceticism. In complete opposition to the Gnostic doctrine that the

primary Ogdoad consists of a right hand and a left hand Tetrad one being light and
-
the other darkness, so confirming the segregation of hylic and animal - Irenaeus

proffered an alternative reading of the `hands' of God that saw the Son and the Spirit as

the ones that kept what was distinct from God (creation) from being opposed to or
distanced from God. 67

With this as his background, he categorically refused to allow a judgment of

Solomon to be executed upon the person of Jesus Christ. Here was no Jacob of divinity
fighting an Esau of humanity within the womb of the one person. Furthermore, this

entailed a refusal to predicate particular actions as being `proper' to either his divinity

or his humanity. In this sense, Irenaeus had condemned Nestorius (for whom such

predication was axiomatic) beforetime, but also showed himself to be opposed to the
traditions of Antioch and the reasoning embodied in Leo's Tome, that the

nativity of the flesh was the manifestation of human nature; the childbearing of

a virgin is the proof of Divine power. The infancy of a babe is shown in the

humbleness of its cradle; the greatness of the Most High is proclaimed by the
68
angels' voices.

Instead, refusing to segregate`the humblenessof the cradle' from the `Divine power',
Irenaeus saw Isaiah's Emmanuel prophecy as

signifying that both the promise made to the fathers had been accomplished,

that the Son of God was born of a virgin, and that He Himself was Christ the
Saviour whom the prophets had foretold; not, as these men assert, that Jesus

was He who was born of Mary, but that Christ was He who descended from

above. Matthew might certainly have said, "Now the birth of Jesus was on this

wise"; but the Holy Ghost, foreseeing the corrupters [of the truth], and

guarding by anticipation against their deceit, says by Matthew, "But the birth

67AH 1.6.1; 1.11.2; 4.20.1,3; 4.pref.4; 5.1.3; 5.5.1; 5.6.1; 5.28.4. Cf. Job 10:8; Psa. 119:73; Ascension
of Isaiah 9.27-42; 11.32-5; 2 Enoch 20ff.
6' Leo the Great, Letter XXVIIL To Flavian Commonly Called "The Tome ", IV in The Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol. Xll. eds. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (repr. Grand Rapids, Ml.:
Eerdmans, 1975). Cf. Harnack, 2,276.

27
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

of Christ was on this wise"; and that He is Emmanuel, lest perchancewe might
consider Him as a mere man: for "not by the will of the flesh nor by the will of
man, but by the will of God was the Word made flesh"; and that we should not
imagine that Jesuswas one, and Christ another, but should know them to be

one and the same.69

The bishop saw that any dismantling of Christ would have immediate and catastrophic

pastoral consequences. In this he held that he was simply working out Johannine logic:
`Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the

he denies Father Son. 70 Of those who were guilty of this (in

antichrist - the and the
this case the Ebionites), he asked `how can they be saved unless it was God who

wrought out their salvation upon earth? Or how shall man pass into God, unless God
has [first] passed into man? '7' For it is within this one Lord Jesus Christ that his entire

schema of salvation is to be construed. Were he carved up, there could be no salvation,

for then it could not be the case that `our Lord Jesus Christ, did, through His

transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is
Himself 02 This was an issue of equal importance to those who had recently come

through the persecution of 177 and were under constant threat of more. Thus in the

middle of an argument for the reality and necessity of the incarnation (3.16.1-3.18.7),
he inserts a section on discipleship and martyrdom: `If, however, He [Christ] was

Himself not to suffer, but should fly away from Jesus, why did He exhort His disciples

to take up the cross and follow Him? '73 Instead, `when He undenvent tyranny, He

prayed His Father that He would forgive those who had crucified Him. For He did
Himself truly bring in salvation: since He is Himself the Word of God, Himself the

Only-begotten of the Father, Christ Jesus our Lord. '74 A mere fleshly receptacle of the

atwv suffering on the cross in abstraction from the eternal Son would be little

encouragement to those going through their own suffering for him.

Irenaeus, then, sees in the gospels no religious Frankenstein's monster, an ill-

assembled patchwork of divinity and humanity. Rather, he is prepared to speak of the

union of the Logos with sarx in bold terms (EVOÜV, A

ouvEVOÜV,Ko v, Evc)oLS). There is

69AH3.16.2; cf. 3.19.1; 3.21.1

701 John 2:22; cf. AH 3.16.5
71AH 4.33.4 cf. 5.1.3
72AH 5.
pref. Verbum Dei,. Jesunt Christum Dominum nostrum, qui propter inunensant sump dilectionenº
factus est quod sumus nos, uti nos perficeret esse quod et ipse.
"AH 3.18.5; cf. 3.12.2; 3.16.6
74AH 3.16.9

28
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

one possible - even if surprising - analogy that may aid us in grappling with his

conception of the relationship between spirit and flesh, and that is how he conceives the

serpent of Eden's relationship to Satan. For the serpent is said to have borne Satan as
he `led man astray through the instrumentality of the serpent, concealing himself as it

were from God. '75 Yet the serpent is also spoken of as the active agent of the fall and

so the proper object of the curse: `the curse in all its fullness fell upon the serpent,
had beguiled them'. 76 Whilst only an imperfect analogy, the Satan-serpent
which

relationship demonstrates his preparedness to speak of the profound and robust unity
that can be effected between spirit and flesh. To return and apply this to Christology,
Wingren is surely right to summarise that

if we were to insist on his providing us with a clear definition of Christ's

divinity as distinct from His humanity, we should be forcing him into the

position of having to set Christ's divinity and humanity over against one

another in order to give a sufficiently clear answer to our question, in so doing

destroying what is central to his theology. 77

Thus the fleshly hand of Jesus is repeatedly presented as the presence of the divine

Hand, the Son. 78 For, in the incarnation, Christ `united man with God and wrought a
79 Here John Behr draws
communion of God and man'. a striking parallel in noting that
`this statement was cited in a slightly different fashion in the Monophysite Seal of

Faith, as "... and wrought one nature of God and man", making the general

theological-anthropological affirmation a Christological assertion. '80 If, despite the

distinct historical circumstances, Irenaeus' language can in many ways pre-empt that of

Monophysitism, it seems quite extraordinary that Loofs could have so misconstrued

Irenaeus as to understand him to be in Christ. 81

speaking of two persons

75AH 5.26.2; Dem. 16; cf. the dubious Frag. 16.

76AH 3.23.3
77Wingren, 100-1. This insight seemsto hold in post-apostolic and apologetic theology more generally.
Thus Justin Martyr can exegete Gen 49: 10, writing: `what is spoken of as "the blood of the grape,"
signifies that He who should appear would have blood, though not of the seed of man, but of the power
of God.... For as man did not make the blood of the vine, but God, so it was hereby intimated that the
blood should not be of human seed,but of divine power' (I Apology, 32). Cf. Harnack, 2,279.
78Cf. AH 4.6.6; 5.15.3
79Dem. 31
80Behr, J. (translation and commentary), Irenaeus of Lyons: On the Apostolic Preaching (Crestwood, N.
Y.: SVS, 1997), 107, n83; cf. Cf. Froidevaux, L. M., "Sur trios passagesde la Demonstration de Saint
Ircnee," Recherchesde ScienceReligieuse, 39 (1951-2), 372-80; also Harnack IV, 174.
81 Loofs, F., Theophilus
von Antiochien Adversus hlarcionem und die anderen theologischen Quellen bei
Irenaeus (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1930)

29
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

That said, there is one famous potential departure from what might later be
interpreted to be a Christology of high Alexandrian temperament. For at the

culmination of an argument for the one divine and human Jesus Christ he writes:

For as He became man in order to undergo temptation, so also was He the

Word that He might be glorified; the Word remaining quiescent, that He might

be capable of being tempted, dishonoured, crucified, and of suffering death, but

the human nature being swallowed up in it (the divine), when it conquered, and

endured [without yielding], and performed acts of kindness, and rose again,
and was received up [into heaven]. 82

Harnack comments,

From these words it is plain that Irenaeus preferred to assume that the divine

and human natures existed side by side, and consequently to split up the perfect

unity, rather than teach an ideal manhood which would be at the same time a
divine manhood. 83

It is interesting to note here the similarity Irenaeus can bear even in this to that

proponent of Cyrillian Christology, Luther.

He was forsaken by God. This does not mean that the deity was separated

from the humanity-for in this person who is Christ, the Son of God and of
Mary, deity and humanity are so united that they can never be separated or
divided-but that the deity withdrew and hid so that it seemed, and anyone

who saw it might say, "This is not God, but a mere man, and a troubled and
desperateman at that." The humanity was left alone, the devil had free access
to Christ, and the deity withdrew its power and let the humanity fight alone.84

This was the same Luther that could sound very much like Irenaeus in claiming

82AH 3.19.3
83Harnack, 2,284
84 Luther, M., Luther's Works, Vol. 12: Selected Psalms I trans.
and ed. J. J. Pelikan (Saint Louis:
Concordia, 1955), Psa. 8:5,126-7

30
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

these two natures are so united that there is only one God and Lord, that Mary

suckles God with her breasts, bathes God, rocks Him, and carries Him;
furthermore, that Pilate and Herod crucified and killed God. The two natures

joined that the true deity humanity 85

are so and are one.

However, we would be unwise here to imagine Irenaeus starting to wax metaphysical

and so import the sort of questions that would later divide Antioch and Alexandria. For

Irenaeus later explains exactly in what sense he understands this `quiescence':

the Lord did perform His command, being made of a woman, by both
destroying our adversary, and perfecting man after the image and likeness of
God. And for this reason He did not draw the means of confounding him from

any other source than from the words of the law. 86

That is, in defeating Satan in the wilderness, it is not that Jesus ever became abstracted

from Christ. Rather, Irenaeus understands the recapitulation of Adam to be fulfilled by

Christ taking the role of feeble Adam to conquer where Adam had failed. The

temptation in the wilderness is the supreme example of Christ having taken the position

of man under the law, using only the law to undo the work of Adam: `[t]he corruption

of man, therefore, which occurred in paradise by both [of our first parents] eating, was
done away with by [the Lord's] want of food in this world. 187

A preliminary question to ask might be whether, if Irenaeus is in many ways the

paterfamilias of the Alexandrian tradition of Christology (µ(a #Mq toü A6you

aEOapKc1Evfl), his Christ's humanity is effectively made to drown in a sea of divinity.

For what Maurice Relton provocatively called the Englishman, `practical above all

things, spurner of day-dreams, doomed by nature to possess an Antiochene mind, ' his
Christology can be a surd. 88 However, despite that, for anyone remotely acquainted

with Irenaeus, this question would not take long to answer. His passionate concern for
the spiritual welfare of his Gnostic opponents certainly seems a far cry from the

85Luther, M., Luther's {Yorks, Vol. 22: Sermons the Gospel St. John, Chapters 1-4 trans.
on of and ed. J.
J. Pelikan (Saint Louis; Concordia, 1957), in. 3:35,492-3
86AH 5.21.2; cf. 5.21.3-4
$7AH 5.21.2. Quae
ergo finit in Paradiso repletio honninis per duplicent gustationem, dissoluta est per
earn, quae finit in hoc mundo, indigentiam. Harvey notes on repletio: `There can be no doubt but that the
translator read &van; Lrpwot for &vatiXrjpwotc, vitiatio. ' Harvey, W. W. (ed. ), Sancti Irenaei: Libros
Quinque Adversus Haereses (Cantabrigiae: Typis Academicis, 1857), Tom. II, 382, n4.
88 Relton, H. M., Church Times, September 30,1921, later
published in The Catholic Conception of the
Incarnation and Other Sermons (London: SPCK, 1928), 19

31
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

intemperate style of Cyril of Alexandria, which Prestige suggests may be the product of

lack lack humanity in his Christ. 89 (Given the

a of pneumatology and a of

corresponding bigotry of Nestorius, the argument could, of course, be turned on its

head to suggest that Nestorius' Christ was in fact equally, if not more, inhuman. )

Whatever we might make of such a pragmatic argument, the thought that the union of

God and man in Christ could mean the overwhelming of man would probably not have

occurred to Irenaeus in any sense other than that of a Gnostic dualism that itself needed
to be overcome. Rather, man is established, sustained, embraced and `contained' in

God in Christ. 90
union with
Yet, no matter to what level we pursue it, such an examination of the

consonancehe assumesbetween divinity and flesh does not seem to do justice to the
profundity with which he understandsJesusChrist to be human. This can be seen in
his exegeses of the Old Testament. Like a good Berean, Irenaeus allows the Old
Testament to be determinative in his argument for its own sake and for the sake of
countering the divisiveness of Gnosticism at this point (which saw the God of the Jews

as an angelic pretender to supreme deity91). Against the Gnostics, Irenaeus saw the Old
Testament as the revelation, not of another being than the Father revealed in Christ

through the Spirit, but the very same God, known by the faithful:

the law never hindered them from believing in the Son of God; nay, but it even
exhorted them so to do, saying that men can be saved in no other way from the

old wound of the serpent than by believing in Him who, in the likeness of

sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of martyrdom, and draws
all things to Himself, and vivifies the 92
dead.

Moreover, this was no opaque revelation of a distant, deceitful, or unknown God. On

the contrary, as just one example, he conceives of Moses as having been explicitly
Jesus.93 The content of the apostolic proclamation in
aware of the passion and name of
Acts was new to Jewish audiences in but one respect: that the same Word that the

patriarchs had known had now come in the flesh. This he saw as equally true for

Jewish proselytes such as the Ethiopian eunuch that Philip encountered in Acts 8. `For

89Prestige, G. L. Fathers and Heretics. The Bampton Lectures, 1940 (London: SPCK, 1940), 171-2
90Cf. AH 3.16.3
91Cf. AH 1.24.1-2; 1.27.3
92AH 4.2.7; cf. 4.2.3
93AH 4.10.1; Dem.. 27

32
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

nothing else [but baptism] was wanting to him who had been already instructed by the

prophets: he was not ignorant of God the Father, nor of the rules as to the [proper]

manner of life, but was merely ignorant of the advent of the Son of God. '94 That the
faithful of the Old Testament could have had such complete knowledge of the apostolic

gospel was possible because of Irenaeus' belief that the one Father always reveals
himself through his one Word: `the Spirit shows forth the Word, and therefore the

prophets announced the Son of God; and the Word utters the Spirit, and therefore is
Himself the announcer of the prophets, and leads and draws man to the Father. '95
Therefore it was this Word, Jesus Christ, that had spoken with Adam in the garden,

with the patriarchs, the prophets, the faithful in exile in Babylon, and even less
Balaam. 96 A common designation of the Word for
salubrious characters such as
Irenaeus is, simply, `the one who spoke with Moses'. 97 In what resembles a primitive

confessional, he writes:

With regard to Christ, the law and the prophets and the evangelists have

proclaimed that He was born of a virgin, that He suffered upon a beam of

wood, and that He appeared from the dead; that He also ascended to the
heavens, and was glorified by the Father, and is the Eternal King; that He is the

perfect Intelligence, the Word of God, who was begotten before the light; that
He Evas the Founder of the universe, along with it (light), and the Maker of

man; that He is All in all: Patriarch among the patriarchs; Law in the laws;
Chief Priest among priests; Ruler among kings; the Prophet among prophets;

the Angel among angels; the Man among men; Son in the Father; God in God;
King to all eternity. For it is He who sailed [in the ark] along with Noah, and

who guided Abraham; who was bound along with Isaac, and Evasa Wanderer

with Jacob; the Shepherd of those who are saved, and the Bridegroom of the
Church; the Chief also of the cherubim, the Prince of the angelic powers; God

of God; Son of the Father; Jesus Christ; King for Amen. 98

ever and ever.

94AH 4.23.2
95Dem. 5
96AH 3.6.2; 3.18.1; 4.5ff.; 5.5.2; Frag. 23; Den:. 43ff., passim. In reference to Gen. 3:8, Irenaeus
refers
to Jesusnot just as the Word, but also as the `Voice of God' (AH 5.15.4; 5.16.1; 5.17.1; cf. 4.16.3-4).
97AH 3.15.3; 4.5.2; 4.9.1; 4.10.1; Dent. 40
98Frag. 53; cf. also Frag. 54. These Christophanics were provided out
of God's mercy, for without such
a sight of the object of their faith, Irenacus holds that not only would the faithful themselves fall into
despair, but mankind as a whole would `ceaseto exist' (AH 4.20.7).

33
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

In all this, we should not imagine that `the Man among men', the subject of these
Christophanies, is seen by Irenaeus as non-human. Rather, Christ `spoke in human
99 In this, Irenaeus is consonant with the ongoing theme in Justin
shape to Abraham'.
Martyr's Dialogue tivith Trypho of Christ's appearing as man to the faithful of the Old

Testament, working in particular from such passages as Genesis 32: 24-30, Judges 13,

and Ezekiel 1:

And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of God, and appearing formerly

in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory of fire as at the bush, so also was

manifested at the judgment executed on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully

by what has been said. '°°

There is, however, some confusion at this point, and understandably so, for here

we seem to be presented with humanity, but not as we know it. Our very prefabricated
formulation of man's identity and being prevents Irenaeus' being understood here. Our

definition of man is not necessarily his. This is illustrated by Houssiau's understanding

of such anthropomorphic Christophanies as `mere symbolic representations of the

future reality: the Word remains just as invisible as the Father, since His manifestation

belongs to the New Testament. ' 101 Certainly Irenaeus considered the appearances of

Jesus Christ as man before the incarnation to be in some sense prophetic. Thus, long

before the incarnation, he can understand Jeremiah to be speaking of Christ when he

`He is know him? ' 102 For, despite the appearances of Christ
asks a man, and who shall

as man to the faithful - and even unfaithful - of the Old Testament, it is only through
his visible portrayal in flesh - in particular upon the cross - that either God or man

could be properly known. Thus whilst Moses could speak with Jesus, Irenaeus could

write:

And the Word spake to Moses, appearing before him, "just as any one might

speak to his friend. " But Moses desired to see Him openly who was speaking

99infigura locutus
est huutana ad Abraham, AH 4.7.4.
too Dial. 128; It is interesting to note here the similarity to von Rad's bold
cf. Dial. 56,58,59,61,126.
statement that `Israel conceives even Yahweh himself as having human form. ' (Rad, G. von, Old
Testament Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 1:145).
t°t Houssiau, A., La Christologie de S. Irenee (Louvain: 1955), 127,
cited in Ochagavia, J.. Visibile
Patris Filius: A Study of Ire, taeus' Teaching on Revelation and Tradition (Romae: Pont. Institutum
Orientalium Studiorum, 1964), 85
102Jer. 17:9 (LXX), quoted in AH 3.19.2; 4.33.11

34
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

with him, and was thus addressed: "Stand in the deep place of the rock, and
with My hand I will cover thee. But when My splendour shall pass by, then
thou shalt see My back, but My face thou shalt not see: for no man sees My
face, and shall live. " Two facts are thus signified: that it is impossible for man

to see God; and that, through the wisdom of God, man shall see Him in the last

times, in the depth is, in His 103

of a rock, that coming as a man.

The project of man would entail a gracious revelation of Himself in and to man (which
for Moses was to be at the transfiguration). 104 Yet this in no sense diminishes the

immediate truth of the revelation received by Moses: Moses was one of the faithful that

had personally met with Jesus, the Rock of Israel, and understood that he was the

mediator to the Father on Sinai who - in contrast to the veiling of the law to rebellious

minds - would be revealed through the Spirit. In Himself, the Word is the visible form,
the manifestation and measure of the Father, even antecedent to the incarnation.

To say that the Son incarnate is the necessary mediator of the knowledge of

the Father comes down to favouring the position of the opponents by granting

that there was no knowledge of the Father in the Old Testament. Irenaeus'

endeavour is precisely to show that there is no fundamental difference between

the Old and New Testaments regarding man's knowledge of God: the Father is
known in the Son. '°5
always and through

Also, following Paul's willingness to use the human name `Jesus' when
speaking of the Word as agent of creation in 1 Corinthians 8: 6 (and elsewhere),

Irenaeus sees the human name `Jesus' as most proper to the pre-incarnate Son of God,

`who also, having been anointed with the Holy Spirit, is called Jesus Christ. i106 This

appears to be another instance of following Justin's lead, seeing `Jesus' as the human

name, in particular because of Moses' renaming of his servant Hoshea (Auarl mv

Nauru) as Joshua ('I iaotc). 107

Harnack observes:

103AH 4.20.9;
cf. 4.9.1; 4.20.11; 4.26.1; 5.5.2
104Cf. Deny. 44
io5Ochagavia, 95
106AH 3.12.7; cf. Dem. 43ff.
107Frag. 19; Dial. 90,91,113,116,131

35
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

Irenaeus, as a rule, made Jesus Christ, whom he views as God and man, the

starting point of his speculation. Here he followed the Fourth Gospel and

Ignatius. It is of Jesus that Irenaeus almost always thinks when he speaks of

the Logos or the Son of God; and therefore he does not identify the divine

element in Christ or Christ himself with the world idea or the creating Word or
the Reason of God. That he nevertheless makes Logos (µovoyEVr}S,

"only begotten", "first born") the regular designation of Christ as

TTPWTÖTOKoc,
the pre-existent One can only be explained from the apologetic tradition which
in his time was already recognised as authoritative by Christian scholars, and

moreover appeared justified and required by John 1: 1.108

Certainly it is clear that Irenaeus thinks of the Logos as Jesus, and not an Hellenic

metaphysical principle. However, it seems extraordinary, given the weight of Irenaeus'

invective against those who would divide Jesus Christ, to suggest that he does not

therefore identify him with the Word as agent of creation. As we have seen above,

Jesus as one of the `hands' of the Father is a more pervasive theme than a mere

concession to apologetic tradition could be. Then there is need for great care in

handling Harnack's suggestion that Jesus Christ is the starting point of Irenaeus'
thought. For we should not imagine that in some sense Irenaeus' divine Aoyoc is a

proto-Kantian projection of the incarnate One onto eternity (such as the eternal XoyoS
EvaapKOSthat some commentators, such as Ochagavia, see him championing). 109 Some

of the Gnostics espoused the myth that

the Propator of the whole, Proarche, and Proanennoetos is called Anthropos;

and that this is the great and abstruse mystery, namely, that the Power which is

above all others, and contains all in his embrace, is termed Anthropos; hence
does the Saviour style himself the `Son of man.' 110

Yet it was precisely such Gnostic mythologising of the historical that Irenaeus sought
to contest, believing that in the true man Jesus Christ he has the original and answer to

the mythology of "AvOpWnoq and all its cognates. In contrast to those myths, Irenaeus
does not dream of a self-contained salvation history in eternity, where "AvOpcairoc,as

103Harnack, Vol. 2,262-3; cf. 2,240

109Ochagavia, 56
110AH 1.12.4; cf. 1.30.1-15

36
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

one of the aiuivLoL, is a protagonist, which is then reproduced and so known in time

through the part of "AvOp(,moc being played by the man Jesus. Jesus, the Image and
Word of God, had his actuality with God before his assumption of flesh, by which he

revealed himself most fully. To place the birth of Jesus Christ in eternity, as an eternal

Xöyoc EvaapKo doctrine would require, would be to violate Irenaeus' prohibition on

the the Son. "' Also, though Irenaeus does not

speculation about eternal generation of

mention it, Tertullian devotes his De Cm-ne Christi to overthrowing the doctrine,

attributable to Apelles and the Valentinians in particular, that Christ's flesh was of a
112 It was teaching just such as this that Irenaeus was alluding to in his
celestial nature.

assault on the notion that Christ passed through Mary `as water through a tube', for the

consequences would again be a cleaved Christ and the Gnostic monism-pantheism so

the division Sophia/Achamoth. 113 For this it
reminiscent of ontological of reason,

appears that Irenaeus did accept the pre-incarnate existence of a XoyoS äaapKoc, writing
historical he back into 114
as he would of an oc pKu oLs that never projected eternity.
Instead, the anthropomorphic Christophanies of the Old Testament and the use

of the human name for the pre-incarnate Aoyos should be understood as a denial, not of

a Xoyoc äcapKOS,but of a Xöyoc 06K ävOpwrroc. For Irenaeus then, `man' (verus homo)

is not entirely coterminous with `creature', given that the Son was always before the

Father, not indeed as creature, but as man. 115 The Son as the glory of the Father is

God: the vivens homo. 116 `Thus then the Word of God in all
eternally the glory of
things has the pre-eminence for that He is True Man and Wonderful Counsellor and

uz Cf. Harnack, Vol. 2,262ff

112Tcrtullian, De Carte Christi, 8,15.
113AH 1.7.2; 3.11.3; 3.21.10; 4.33.2. The work ascribed to Athanasius, Against Apollinaris, objected to
this reading of Apollinarius on the basis that an eternal XXyoc EvoapKOcwould either assumeor result in
mere pantheism: Ei SE 6µoo6aioS toü Xöyou il 6p2; Kai ouvcc&oc, EK toütou EpEitE Kai ti& nävta
Ktiaµata auvaibLa tCCiä nävta KtioavtL 6E(ý(ii, 12).
114Cf. Farrow, D., `St. Irenaeus of Lyons: The Church and the World. ' Pro Ecclesia 4.3, Summer 1995,
340-3; also Jenson, R. WV.,Systematic Theology Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 140.
The question of the Xl yoc äoapKOcis one to which we shall return below in chapters 3-4 in particular.
115Ironically for Irenaeus in his opposition to Gnostic perversions, James Dunn recognises this position
within the apostolic and post-apostolic church, believing he can trace it back to Philo's `heavenly man'.
(Dunn, J. D. G., Christology in the Making (London: SCM, 1980), §15 `Pre-existent Man? (113-25). )
Philo's `heavenly man' (Higr. Abr. 220; Leg. All. 1.31) is the Word (Conf. Ling. 41: 62-3,146-7), and
possibly high priest (De San. 188, reading LXX Lev 16: 17 näs äv0pcilrros osK Eatat Ev TTYoK11vT ). This
is particularly interesting in the light of the current revision in Philo studies. So, Margaret Barker writes
`Philo, as I shall show, drew his theology from the most ancient traditions of Israel and not from an
amalgam of hellenized Judaism and contemporary Greek philosophy, as is so often suggested. ' (Barker,
M., The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God (Louisville, KY.: Westminster/John Knox, 1992),
48)
116AH 4.20.7; cf. 3.20.2

37
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

Mighty God calling men anew to fellowship with God. "7 All of which cuts across the

grain of Harnack's contention that for Irenaeus

the perfect manhood of the incarnate Logos was merely an incidental quality
he possessed. In reality the Logos is the perfect man in so far as his
incarnation creates the perfect man and renders him possible, or the Logos

behind Christ the perfect man. 118

always exists

Whilst Adam was a type of the One who would recapitulate his life, he was not simply

a foreshadow, but a copy of the true Image who was already - not just proleptically -

vertrs homo. Here, Minns grasps the literalism of Irenaeus' understanding of Adam as

ThTroSof Christ, even if he fails to understand its proper referent: Adam, he holds, `does

not simply prefigure Christ, but bears in his own body the lineaments of the incarnate
Son of God. i119 Yet Irenaeus never states that it is the lineaments of the incarnate Son

of God that Adam bears. In fact, such a reading all too readily starts to bear a

resemblance to the thought of Gnostic teachers against which Irenaeus sought to

contrast and define the faith. Theodotus, for instance (some of whose writings were

preserved by Clement of Alexandria), taught that the Son was only `drawn in outline in
the beginning'. 120 For Irenaeus, who saw Christ's pre-mundane actuality as intrinsic to

the whole oiKOVOµia, this was unacceptable. Instead, his conception of Adam as TünoS
is one in which Tünoc has the sense of an indentation, made possible by the presence of

the reality: the man of dust reflecting in his being the imprint of the present man of
heaven. Christ

traced His own form on the formation (nl&qux), that that which should be seen
for (as) the image of God was man formed and
should be Godlike (OEOELötjS):

set on the earth. And that he might become living, He breathed on his face the
breath of life; that both according to the breath and according to the formation

be like God. 121

man should

117Dein. 40
118Harnack, 2,284
119Minns, 86
120Cited by Clement of Alexandria in Excerpts, 19
121Dem. 11

38
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

As Ochagavia put it in commenting on AH 5.16.2, `Irenaeus is saying at this point that

man's body was made after the image of the Word, which presupposes that according
to Irenaeus even before the incarnation the Word possessed some sort of human form
' 122 If Adam's imperfection as the imperfection of
or shape. man was necessary

contingent and created being, Irenaeus was looking for an uncreated man (as opposed
to the eternal existence of createdness in a X6yoc EvoapKos): the Image as the truly
human humanity of God. Thus Pannenberg's concern, that if the Image refers to the

Xl yoS äoapKoc, not the incarnate One, then `the Christological statements about Jesus
Christ as the image of the eternal God no longer ha[ve] any relevance to our general

divine likeness', is answered. 123 The Aöyoq äaapKoS is not a Xl yoc 06K ävOpWrroc. The

is rooted in the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, and
otKOVOµiaOEOÜ

not in its pivotal key, the incarnation. Man's archetype is therefore the eternal man

revealed in the incarnation, but not the incarnation per se. It must be noted that this is
not the sort of hubristic anthropocentrism that falls foul of Montaigne's gibe that if
horses had gods, they would look like horses. Irenaeus in no sense imagines divine

humanity to be a heavenly mirror giving the erroneous impression of an

anthropomorphic deity to the simple minded. Instead, here it is Adam that is

Christomorphic. We might, of course, seek to critique Irenaeus from the other side: has

he been drawing Platonic archetypes into his gnosis? The problem is, however strong

the critique might appear today, it probably would not have worried Irenaeus himself,
Plato being widely regarded at the time as having simply plagiarised Moses,

specifically as he sought to model the Law as a whole, and the tabernacle in particular,
hroupaVCWV(Exodus 25: 40; Hebrews 8: 5). 124
Kath TÖVTÜTfoVTCJV
If we follow suit, and plagiarise Cicero, Jesus Christ was then, before the
incarnation, not simply homo f rturus but homo huinanus; the first and true man who

122Ochagavia, 90. Ochagavia reads this as evidence of aX yoc EvaapKoc rather than a Xöyoc äaapKoc that
is not a ,löyoý OLK &vOpwnoc. Nevertheless, his point is still germane.
123Pannenberg,Vol. 2,209
124With the tabernacle/temple in mind, Margaret Barker has suggestedthat, in Old Testament liturgical
terms, all the mysteries of God and his creation, including those concerning man, were held in the Holy
of Holies represented in the Jerusalem temple. Man, like God, could not be understood otherwise.
Occasionally, however, as the high priest annually entered the Jerusalem sanctuary, so especially
favoured individuals were granted an insight into the state behind the true temple veil. `To be granted
this vision was a special privilege; the mysterious Prayer of David gives thanks for such a vision: `You
have caused me to see the vision of the Man on high [or perhaps `the Man of eternity'], the LORD God
[or 0 LORD God]' (1 Chron. 17.17; this is a literal rendering of the Hebrew, with `vision' drawn from
the LXX). ' Jesus is the Man on high, the LORD God. Furthermore, in his work and role as the great
high priest, he opens up the mystery of the Holy of Holies, so revealing in his ascensionthe mystery of
man (Barker, M., The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London & New York:
T. & T. Clark, 2003), 180).

39
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

would come after the second (Adam) and so make visible what he eternally was. Thus
he was the one of whom the Baptist could say öniocO µou EpxETaL&vilp eS EµnpooOb

öri. 125 Rather than

µou yEyovEV, npwtöc 1101)i V. manhood being an incidental quality
he - aeon-like - could render possible, what he was, that he also appeared to be. 126

This logic can be seen in Irenaeus' intriguing exposition of Gen 38: 27-30, in which the

firstborn of the twins in Tamar's womb, marked by scarlet for suffering, is born after

the second. 127 So faith precedes law and the firstborn man Christ precedes the man
Adam, such that as Abraham's faith was real, so too was Christ's true manhood

(though not yet flesh). It was precisely for this reason, argued Irenaeus, that `the Lord

did declare that the first should in truth be last, and the last first. ' 128

It is for this reason above all that he can understand there to be a consonance
between God and man in Christ, for the Christological paradox is not to be located
there, but in the incarnate Christ's being both Man and man, Creator and created. It is

thus that he is able to string together a catena of Old Testament messianic prophecies,

rolling together descriptions of humiliation and exaltation: `He is the holy Lord, the
Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming

on the clouds as the Judge of all men. '129 After the description of Jesus as the Lord of
Israel, Irenaeus turns to the portrayal of the son to be born in Isaiah 9, inserting the

description of Christ as the `most handsome of men' from Psalm 45: 2 and then the

picture of Daniel's Son of Man, coming on the clouds.

Oscar Cullmann's appraisal of Irenaeus' Christology thus seems remarkably

prescient: Irenaeus, he writes,

was the only one of the ecclesiastical writers of the second century to grasp the
depth of Paul's idea about the Son of Man. His entire Christology is

dominated by the contrast between Adam and Christ, and he makes the only

attempt in the whole history of doctrine to build a Christology on the concept

'Man'. 130

12$John 1:30; cf. AH 3.10.2

126Cf AH 2.22.4
127AH 4.25
128AH 3.22.4 (Matt. 19:30; 20: 16)
129AH 3.19.2
130Cullmann, 189

40
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

Cullmann then ends his examination of the concept of `The Son of Man' (a concept to

which we will return) with a, perhaps rather too audacious, hope that

a modern theologian would undertake to build a Christology entirely on the

New Testament idea of the Son of Man. Not only would such a Christology be

entirely oriented to the New Testament and go back to Jesus' self-designation;

it would also have the advantage of putting the logically insoluble problem of

the two natures of Christ on a level where the solution becomes visible: the

pre-existent Son of Man, who is with God already at the very beginning and

exists with him his image, is by his divine Man. 131

as very nature

It may seem extraordinary, then, that Irenaeus could be accused of impugning

the humanity of Christ. And yet it is to Apollinarius, who has classically been
understood to do just this in suggesting that the Logos took the place of the human soul
in the incarnate Jesus Christ, that he has been compared. 132 However, having cleared

him of the charge of proto-Eutychianism, there is a similarity between the two that is

startling only if it is forgotten how Monophysite he can appear. The following

description of Apollinarius' Christology is illuminating in its resemblance to Irenaeus:

According to Apollinaris, the Logos is not only the image of God but the

archetype of manhood. He was eternally predestined to become man, and bore

within Himself, so to speak, the `potency' of Incarnation. In this sense

Apollinaris spoke of Christ's human nature as pre-existent. Christ was the pre-

existent heavenly man, as being destined for the Incarnation. So Apollinaris

understood the expression of S. Jo. iii. 13, The Son of nian which is in heaven,

and the statement of S. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 47), The second man is from heaven.
The Logos, who supplied the place of the human soul in Christ, was in no

sense foreign to the essence of humanity; rather he was `the truth of human

nature' - that without which it could not attain the goal of its development.
Accordingly, from this point of view, human nature (oäpý in the wider sense of

the term, i. e. ävOpwnoc) was in a sense coeternal with the Logos, not something

adventitious, but something `consubstantial and connatural'; man's nature pre-

131Cullmann 192, original italics.

132Osborn, 111; Duncker, L., Des heiligen Irenäus Christologie im Zusanrmenltaiige
mit dessen
theologischer und anthropologischer Grundlehre (Göttingen: 1843), 206.

41
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

existed in God. The human birth of the Son of God was indeed an act of self-
humiliation (KEl oLS), but only in the sense that to be the archetypical man is a

higher state of existence than to be actually man and to pass through the stages

human history. 133

of

Thus, not only is it a misunderstanding to read Apollinarius as imagining that the flesh
of Christ pre-existed (as perhaps Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa understood
him to be teaching 134),but also it would be erroneous to imagine that Apollinarius

conceived of a less than fully human Christ. While the similarity to Irenaeus may
diminish with his understanding of human pre-existence to be a mere `potency' (an

understanding that would appear to stem more from Ottley than Apollinarius),
Apollinarius' incarnate Logos would have been complete man, given that he was

already such in eternity (irpotiräpXEt ö &vApwnoc XpLazöc135). This was not the heresy

with which he was charged. His error had been that he had not closed himself to

Gregory of Nazianzus' soteriological charge: Tb yäp & pöoXrliiiov &OEpänEutov.136

The purpose of incarnation in Irenaeus' vision of the economy will be dealt with

more thoroughly below in the secondand third chapters. For the moment though, it can
be seen that incarnation was exactly that: o&pECwoLS
(correctly translated incarnatio),
becoming the plasma of Adam, and could never simply be expanded to what would, for
137 Because Christ's
Irenaeus, be the more misleading term EvavOpWrn'jots. assumption
of flesh was a real addition to his eternal being, incarnation could never be seen as a

mere theophany or shadow of a hidden spiritual reality. Indeed, it brought `all possible

novelty' in bringing the flesh Adam to its 138 This true man would come as
of tEXoc.

man to bring fallen man to perfection.

133Ottley, R. L., The Doctrine of the Incarnation (London: Methuen, 1896), Vol. II, 56-7
134Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa seem to have
understood Apollinaris this way: `If
anyone assert that His flesh came down from heaven, and is not from hence, nor of us though above us,
let him be anathema.' (Gregory Nazianzen, `To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius' in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2, Vol. 7 ed A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (repr. Peabody, MASS.: 1994),
440). Cf. Prestige, 107-8. However, he quite specifically denied this in condemning `the utter madness
of those who say that the flesh is consubstantial with God' (Frag. 159; cf. Raven, 217).
135Gregory
of Nyssa, Treatise against Apollinaris, 13
136Raven notes that Gregory the Theologian's
clause is `the fundamental argument against Apollinarius'
even though he goes on to note that it 'seems to reflect a mechanical notion of salvation, like Irenaeus'
"He gave His soul for our souls, and His body for our bodies"' (Raven, 258).
137Dent. 31
138AH 4.34.1; cf. 3.22.1; 4.33; 5.1.3

42
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

A Revised Methodology

Before proceeding to ask the `what? ' question of man, it is worth pausing to note how
different a plumbline Irenaeus has provided for pursuing the task of anthropology:

instead of FvOL EEQ,

UT6v, we are commanded Fv@OL XpioTÖv. On this pitch, all

introspective quests for gnosis of man stumble on the norma norinans non normata that

is the eternal man revealed in the incarnation: Jesus who was anointed to be Jesus

Christ.

Did all those who have been mentioned, with whom you have been proved to

coincide in expression, know, or not know, the truth? If they knew it, then the
descent of the Saviour into this world was superfluous. For why [in that case]

did He descend? Was it that He might bring that truth which was [already]

known to the knowledge of those who knew it? 139

Any anthropology that has not started from this point, according to Irenaeus, is ruled

out not just by virtue of the fall, but creation too, since Adam was only ever `after the
image' of the Image (Kar' EtK6va toü EtKcvoc). In fact, given that ä-X OELa,as

Heraclitus observed, is a privative expression, speaking of non-concealment, for Jesus

to be `true' man entails that without the revelation of this man, the nature of humanity
is concealed to man. 140 His anthropology simply expresses his overall theological

methodology: E&v oüöE µ1'1oUVýTE(if you do not believe, neither will

µil 1TLOTEUGIITE
141 In
you understand). no sense could Irenaeus ever conceive of anthropology as
`deficient Christology' and Christology as `realised anthropology'. 142 As Blaise Pascal

was to put it: `Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble

yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends

man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear
God. ' 143 It was in part for this reason that Irenaeus could lump the theologically
impoverished Ebionites in with the plethora of Gnostic sects, for any merely fleshly

139AH 2.14.7; cf. 3.12.6; 4.20

140Cf. Heidegger, M., Being and Time E.T of Sein und Zeit by Stambaugh, J., (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1996), 204
.A. Isa 7:9, LXX, cited in Dem. 3
142Rahner, K., Theological Investigations, Vol. ], (London: Darton, Longman & Todd/New York:
Seabury, 1961), 117
143Pascal, B., The Pensees,translated by J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1961), 434

43
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

Jesus will not be truly man but a truncated or invertedly Docetic Christ, in that he only

appears to be man without being the reality and revelation of Man. Not being saved by
the Image, one of the `hands' of the economy, means they cannot be saved at all.

A word of caution should be soundedhere, however. Irenaeushas not made the

claim that it is possible to read anthropology straight from Christology, imagining that
the two overlap entirely. Instead, rather than simply attaching the name `Jesus Christ'

to an aeon-like universal standard of humanity, he sees Jesus as not simply Man, but a

man. He is a specific particularity defined geographically, temporally, socially,

racially, and of course, sexually. In dealing with this question, Francis Watson asserts

the entirely secondary nature of this particularity:

If in Jesus we learn what it is to be human, then part of what we learn is that to

be human is not in the first instance a matter of gender, race or class. Jesus

was male, a Jew and an artisan, but to describe him as the image of God is to

assert that his humanity transcends his maleness, his Jewishness, and his

artisan-status: `For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same
Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him' (Rom.

10.12). 144

Yet it will become clear below that Irenaeus is unable to dismiss this particularity as
secondary. For him, Jesus Christ is more than ävOpWnoc &XgO11q;he is not just

incidentally, but specifically and most significantly &vrjp &A.

rjOij. It is just this

particularity that will serve as an underlying theme for the following chapters.
However, for the moment, if faith is concerned with finding reality externally to

ourselves, then Irenaeus has presented not some compartmentalised `life of faith', but
human reality - Man - as to be found extra se in Christo. A revolution in identity,
because the most profoundly personal, is necessarily the hardest to stomach. And yet,

to a culture characterised by the acedia of ego-loss and weightlessness, further

exacerbated by the problems of human uniqueness and species differentiation heralded

by genetic modification and the advent of artificial intelligence, this is indispensable:

my identity, reality and hope, are not, contra the self-realisation movement, to be found

within my own fickle self. Rather, vitally for the church of Lugdunum and beyond, he

144Watson, F., Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 286

44
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

called for the priority of reality and potential in Christ as opposed to the present

experience of persecution.
Yet the modem West is in a rather different situation to the church of
Lugdunum. Commenting on Psalm 8 ('What is man that you are mindful of him, the

son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; you
crowned him with glory and honour and put everything under his feet... ') in his great

work on anthropology, Reinhold Niebuhr states:

the vantage point from which man judges his insignificance is a rather

significant vantage point. This fact has not been lost on the moderns, whose

modesty before the cosmic immensity was modified considerably by pride in

their discovery immensity. 145
of this

The irony is, that in reaching out across the cosmos for objective information, man only
found himself to be more of a riddle, the cadaver of his identity only the worse for all

the dissection it had undergone. It is when such pride at man's exaltation, or the

Genesis command to subdue the earth, is not primarily understood Christologically that

the ecological movement steps in to protest at Adam's tyranny. Here Irenaeus presents
Protagoras bound: `... at present we do not see everything subject to him [man]. But we

see Jesus' (Hebrews 2: 8-9).

Developing the Greek concept of an essentially reasonable humanitas, the
Roman stoics, and particularly Cicero, contrasted homo ronranus with homo humanus,

the ideal of the moral and cultured man. This ideal was necessarily governed by a
Delphic methodology, as Cicero reveals in his aphorism homo suns: humani nihfl a inc
146 Yet,
alienuin puto. as uncreated, Irenaeus' homo humanus cannot be seen to be a

simple extrapolation of the best in society. Indeed, by having no other gauge by which
to judge humanity, he is able to conceive Jesus of Nazareth in very different terms to

what expectation might demand: `as the ark [of the covenant] was gilded within and

without with pure gold, so was also the body of Christ pure and resplendent; for it was
by the Word, by the Spirit. ' 147 A possibly
adorned within and shielded without

145Niebuhr, R., The Nature and Destiny of Man Vol. 1. (London: Nisbet, 1941), 3
iahCicero, De Ofcfis 1,30
147Frag. 8; cf. Frag. 48. There is a similarity here to the Christology of the puritan John Owen, who
otherwise held to a very different Christological model. Owen saw that in Christ, `being formed pure
and exact by the Holy Ghost, there was no disposition or tendency in his constitution to the least
deviation from perfect holiness in any kind. ' Indeed, `as to our bodily diseasesand distempers which

45
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

illuminativeparadigm is offered by Irenaeus' dictum `He may most properly be termed

Light, but he is like that light ' 148 He had already

not with which we are acquainted.

showed himself to be quite aware of the Gnostic merging of the concepts of light and

man which, in part, had derived from the ambivalence of the word ýwc (both `light' and
`man'). 149 Adam, in being created Kat' ELKÖVaroü EdKovoc,was created, like the Sun,

to shine forth in the created realm in reflection of the true Light of the world, the imago
Dei. It might be as though he were saying: `He may most properly be termed Man, but
he is not like that man with which we are acquainted. '

However, could all this simply shift the Gnostic Abyss from between God and
man and relocate it between Man and man? This would be a strange reading of

Irenaeus, who saw that whilst Man is to be found extra se, this cannot be interpreted to
be an endorsement of some aloof proclamation of a gospel unearthed to experienced

reality. That is the point of incarnation: this One became as we are so that we might

become as He is.

In contrast, all anthropologies that have sought to ask `what? ' of man first,

before determining where the proper object of anthropological study lies, have

necessarily slid towards qualification-based understandings of man, man being reduced

to subsistence as a mere featherless biped. Even those attempts to break free from the

monster of introspection have all too often foundered on functional descriptions, the

result, for example, of quality comparisons with other animals (such lists of features

that supposedly distinguish man from other animals inevitably undergoing systematic

condemnation from Darwinian evangelists seeking to display such features as common

to other animals). 150 Yet it might be argued that this is precisely the import of Paul's

argument in Romans 1:23. When man ceases to understand himself in reference to the
true imago Dei he is compelled then to understandhimself in reference to the animals.
.
If true, this places such anthropology right within the ambit of perverted worship.

adhere unto us upon the disorder and vice of our constitutions, he was absolutely free from them.'
Owen, J., The Works of John Oiven, Vol. III ed. W. H. Goold (repr. Edinburgh: BOTT, 1991), 167
148Lumen rectissinie dicetur, sed nihil simile ei, quod est secunduni nos limnini. (AH 2.13.4)
149AH 1.8.5
'50 Colin Gunton has demonstrated the way in which this argument for the distinctive ontology of the
human is very near to the traditional form of the doctrine of the imago Dei, in which it is man's finite
reason that distinguishes him from the irrationality of animals and the infinity of God. Here it is the
property of the human mind that provides a criterion of radical discontinuity from the rest of creation. In
sharp contrast to what we shall see below of Irenaeus' theology of animals, this model all too often
reduces animals to mere mechanistic beings, their cries of pain perhaps being no more than the squeaks
of unlubricated machinery. (Gunton, C. E., The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1997), 100-1. )

46
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

Certainly this is how Irenaeus understood the yVÜXatLKOL',

who, with their logical

starting point of the disparity between spirit and flesh, found themselves, by virtue of
their distinct spiritual ontology, to be the elite amongst a divided race of men: `[t]hey

conceive, then, of three kinds of men, spiritual, material, and animal, represented by
Cain, Abel, and Seth. These three natures are no longer found in one person, but
151 So
constitute various kinds [of men]. ' essential was the ontological distinction
between these classes of men, that, as Gustaf Wingren put it, even `God is powerless

before this predestination from below'. 152 Such was the divisiveness of this schema

that it segregated not only men from each other, but component part from component
153 With
part within each man. no Christological ballast to preserve the concept of the

whole man, each person could be further divided, even given his adherence to the

correct doctrine of the day, since the body would, in any case, always be incapable of
in 154 It is no coincidence that the Gnostic scheme, with its inhuman
sharing salvation.
deity, also saw what Foucault could later announce: the effective death of man.

Christian anthropology has not tended to follow Irenaeus.In its detailing of the
attributes of humanity, theology has not on the whole related or grounded its thinking
in the manifestation of the Word as man. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given that this

man is the one despised and rejected of men. Instead, the Hellenic assumption has

remained pervasive, that to be man is to stand in opposition and concealment - as

opposed to relationship and incarnational revelation - of God. A part of this has been
the philosophical tradition of the Academy with its supposition of the priority of the

the `eve become just by doing just 155 The results are
work over person - acts'.
abstractly or introspectively conceived properties that bear little sense of the dynamism
Irenaeus envisaged as the project of man. Such definitions - seen most classically in

Boethius' classification of the person as naturae rationalis individua substantia - are

unavoidably qualitative.
The ethical fallout is catastrophic, for on such a basis life, death, health and
identity are imparted on the basis of qualifications inherent in the individual: has the
inhuman-sounding `embryo' or `foetus' yet qualified for humanity? Are those who

151AH 1.7.5; cf. 1.5.6; 1.6.2

152Wingren, 36
153AH 1.24.1
154AH 1.27.3
155Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
and intro. by D. Ross; revised by J. L. Ackrill and J. O.
Urmson (Oxford & New York: OUP, 1998), 29

47
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 1 Who is Man?

have been born fulfilled in themselves to retain that status? 156 With
enough so
functional and atomistic a concept of identity, it is small wonder that unemployment

evokes such disorientation and fear. As for divisions, the lynchings of the Deep South,
South African apartheid and the holocaust hardly seem a stone's throw away from the

Gnostic elitism based on ontological difference. The striking Memphis sanitation

workers of the spring of 1968 perhaps expressed the problem most poignantly with
their placards reading `I am a man'. The campaign for euthanasia is only the ironic
flipside of this: either I am no longer a man, or it does not matter that I am, for a

`quality of life' is missing.

True, it has not yet been established in what sense we might be human if Jesus

Christ alone is truly Man. We can see a very different approach to the question,
though, as we turn to it now. Yet for the moment we can certainly go so far as to say

that, given the Image's assumption of our flesh, on the basis not of individual

qualification but incarnation, humanity in Christ is simul homo hiunanus et peccator.

156A
potential counter-argument, that the ethical issue at stake is a question of personhood, as opposed to
humanity per se, draws on a theoretical distinction that, of course, was not a clear option on the second
century philosophical menu. It is when the debate moves on to such territory, so well-trodden by
trinitarian and later Christological deliberation, that it rests on far surer ground.

48
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

2
What is Man?

Given Irenaeus' denial of a XöyoSoüK ävOpwlroc,two questions in particular arise: If the

AoyoS alone is vertrs homo, in what sense might we creatures be understood as men
(under which question comes the demand that Irenaeus prove he has not formed an

abyss between AvOpwnog and oäpý)? And, related to that, secondly, if ävOpwnoc is
taken to be an eternal category, in what sense does he understand incarnation? The two

questions we propose to unite as a double-barrelled expression of the one cry of Psalm

8: `What is man that you remember him, and the son of man that you attend to him?
You made him a little lower than the gods, and crown him with glory and honour.'

49

-F ry7
I \
LY_:, I7,
k [. ryas !3°
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Spirit and Man

In both Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2, the question `what is man? ' assumes an immediate

connection between the identity of man and his humiliation and exaltation. For

Irenaeus, that humiliation is first seen or intimated in the original constitution of Adam.
Some superficial similarity can be seen here between Irenaeus and his adversaries in

that neither saw Adam as being imbued with the rrvEܵa OEoü, nor saw that as

CwfS. l Yet this was no theological larceny on Irenaeus'

coterminous with the uvoý

part: whilst the Gnostic agenda arose from the perceived necessity of partitioning spirit

and matter, for Irenaeus this was the result of a conception of an intimacy between
Spirit and man that was entirely antithetical to any such rift. Adam was not vents

homo, but only Kat' ELKÖVaTOOEhKÖvoc,a TünoSof the true Man (to be understood as

an indentation, by the presence of the reality). 2 As such, he was never

made possible
äv8po rroc nvEUµariKÖv but only &vOpwnoS IJuXLKÖV,filled with typical breath in order

that he might fulfil his role as rüiroS of the one filled with the Spirit. 3 Pace Behr, it can
be seen that with this, Irenaeus showed himself to be stepping away from the Platonic

notion of 4ruxrj as the mediate principle of life between #oLS and voüq4 Whilst he can

see iuxrj as the governor and ruler of the body, this is so, not in the sense of an
independent principle of animation, but only in its essential function as passive

recipient of the life conferred by God. s

[T]he soul herself is not life, but partakes in that life bestowed upon her by
God. Wherefore also the prophetic word declares of the first-formed man, "He
became a living soul, " teaching us that by the participation of life the soul

AH 5.12.2; Gen. 2:7. If the shibboleth of Gnosticism was rvcä0L EEautöv,the primary question had to
be 'what is the true self?'. For Valentinus, this was the spirit, not the soul. Cf. Brown, P., The Body and
Society: MMen,Nomen and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988), 109
2 Cf. Philo, On the Creation, 25
3 Cf. AH 1.5ff.; 3.24.1; 5.7.1; 5.12.1-2; Dein. 11,14; 1 Cor. 15:45-7
4 `Irenaeus is not interested so much in the soul itself, as a principle of interiority, as in its animation of
the flesh.' (Behr, J., Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement, Oxford Early Christian
Studies (New York; OUP, 2000), 91). Behr is surely right to note Irenaeus' avoidance of the soul as a
principle of interiority, and yet to describe it as the means of the flesh's animation again seemsto give to
the soul a more active role than Irenaeus allows for it.
5AH 2.33.4

50
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

became alive; so that the soul, and the life which it possesses, must be

being 6
understood as separate existences.

Irenaeus was certainly no Hebraist, as can be seen in a number of peculiar translation

attempts, that appear to be the result of a reliance on some unknown, dubious source.

However, in this he is entirely consonant with the Hebrew concept of Ali (LXX iruxrj),

8
a word with the basic meaning of throat. Through the throat, the breath of life is taken
to the flesh through the blood, meaning that life could be characterisedby breathing,

and the end of life by `breathing one's last'. As such, for Adam to be W (ilruxiý
o1'il T-..

(woa), is for him to be intrinsically passive and needy, in particular for M1'1(TWEܵa).

Thus, Irenaeus feels, `every one will allow that we are a body taken from the earth, and

a soul receiving spirit from God. i1° Whilst the point is to some extent incidental for the

purposes of this paper, it can be seen that much of traditional psychology's depiction of
the soul as an almost entirely separate entity (famously said by Descartes to be coupled

to the body via the pineal gland") is entirely alien to Irenaeus' psychology. Without
doubt he held that the continuity of the resurrection body from present existence was

dependent upon the separability of the soul and its ongoing existence after the

putrefaction or destruction of the flesh. Yet, perhaps because he was freed by his

methodology from the felt need to derive the basis of human distinction from a dual

ontology (which distinction he did not root in the possession of an anima, given the

solidarity of the sixth day, with the creation account's attribution of animae to the
animals), he never conceived a dualistic anthropology in which one, non-material part

6AH 2.34.4; cf. Justin, Dial. 4-6

7 Cf. `Moreover, Jesus, which is a word belonging to the proper tongue of the Hebrews, contains, as the
learned among them declare, two letters and a half, and signifies that Lord who contains heaven and
earth; for Jesus in the ancient Hebrew language means"heaven"' AH 2.24.2 (cf. Harvey's explanation, 1,
335-6, n.4); `the Hebrew word "Satan" signifies an apostate' (AH 5.21.2). Finally, `Eloae and Eloeuth in
the Hebrew language signify "that which contains all... (AH 2.35.3), which passage Frend, somewhat
eccentrically, takes as evidence of Irenaeus' real acquaintance with the language (Frend, W. H. C., The
Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 244).
8 Cf. Prov. 25:5; 27:7; Psa. 107:9; 42: lf; Wolff, H. W., Anthropology
of the Old Testament (London:
SCM, 1974), 10-25
9 Cf. Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11,14; Deu. 12:23; cf. AH 5.3.2
10 Nos
auten: quoniam corpus sumus de terra acceptum, et anima accipiens a Deo spirituni, omnis
quicunque conf tebitur, AH 3.22.1
11In responseto Descartes, Laurence Sterne had Walter Shandy humourously `prove' that the soul does
not reside in the brain's pineal gland. So Tristram Shandy: `If death, said my father, reasoning with
himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; and if it is true that people can walk
about and do their businesswithout brains, then certes the soul does not inhabit there. Q. E. D. ' (Sterne,
L., The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, eds. M. and J. New (Gainesville: University
of Florida Press, 1978), vol. 2, ch. 19).

51
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

is revered as in some sense quasi-divine whilst the other, material part is relegated to

the condition of being a mere container.

In contrast to needy ävOpurnoS 1IUXLKÖV- and, indeed, the self-styled

nvEUpartºcoL- he sees Jesus, anointed with the Spirit, as the true Man, for `where the
Spirit of the Father is, there is Living Man'. 12 The Word as archetype of humanity is

the ävOpcJTToc `the His Wisdom 13 Thus in no

1rwEUµatucöv, receptacle of all and power'.

sense is this true man deficient. It is he, and not (as the peculiar optimism of the
Enlightenment had supposed) fallen man, who is the true homo sapiens, the man filled
and equipped with the Sapienlia of God.

Hence also was Adam himself termed by Paul "the figure of Him that was to

come, " because the Word, the Maker of all things, had formed beforehand for
Himself the future dispensation of the human race, connected with the Son of

God; God having predestined that the first man should be of an animal nature,

he be by One. 14
with this view, that might saved the spiritual

With this, Irenaeus was departing from the traditions of his antagonists and the

apologists alike. Justin, in his exegesis of Luke 1:35, felt as much as many of the
Gnostics that that spirit that descendedon the virgin Mary Evasthe Aoyo;:

It is wrong, therefore, to understand the Spirit and the power of God as

anything else than the Word, who is also the first-born of God, as the foresaid

prophet Moses declared; and it was this which, when it came upon the virgin

and overshadowed her, caused her to conceive, not by intercourse, but by

15
power.

This was the simple extrapolation of the assumption that autonomy is integral to
divinity, for Justin does not conceive of the Son, being God, as being in need of the

Spirit's equipping. Thus, when asked by Trypho why, if Christ be God, he should be in

need of the empowering of the Spirit, Justin replied:

12ubi autent Spiritus Patris, ibi Homo Vivens,AH 5.9.3

13AH 3.20.2
14AH 3.22.3
151 Ap., 33; cf. AH 1.4.5,1.7.2,1.15.3,1.30.14f.

52
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

truly there does seem to be a difficulty; but.... Scripture says that these

enumerated powers of the Spirit have come on Him, not because He stood in

need of them, but because they would rest in Him, i. e., would find their

accomplishment in Him, so that there would be no more prophets in your

nation after the ancient custom. 16

There can be some difficulty in determining Irenaeus' understanding of the relationship

between the Son and the Spirit, as seen in his comments on Lam 4: 20 (nvEܵa
LOU EV TCCLS bla e0Pc tc EV
TiPOQWiiOU LOTÖ KUP QUVE%Lµý0Tl
ýl aÜTWV OÜ ELiiaµEv
ßlµ(JV XP S
OIG66IEea EV ToIS EOVEouV):
TTj OKIU a&TOÜ

being Spirit of God, Christ was to become a suffering man the Scripture

declares; and is, as it were, amazed and astonished at His sufferings, that in

such manner He was to endure sufferings, under whose shadow we said that

we should live. And by shadow he means His body. For just as a shadow is

made by a body, so also Christ's body was made by His Spirit. But, further,

the humiliation and contemptibility of His body he indicates by the shadow.

For, as the shadow of bodies standing upright is upon the ground and is trodden

upon, so also the body of Christ fell upon the ground by His sufferings and was
trodden on indeed. And he named Christ's body a shadow, because the Spirit
it, it it. ' 17
overshadowed as were, with glory and covered

However, whilst referring to Christ as `spirit' here, Irenaeus was quite capable of
distinguishing between the two `hands' of God, Word and Wisdom, the Son as `spirit'

from the Spirit. '8 Furthermore, it is clear that Irenaeus objects to the dividing of Christ

that a descent of `Christ' on `Jesus' would involve, insisting instead that `it was neither
Christ nor the Saviour, but the Holy Spirit, who did descend upon Jesus.' 19

Yet Harnack felt that in dealing with the same questions as Justin (why God

would need anointing by the Spirit), `Irenaeus no doubt felt these difficulties. He

16Dial. 87; cf. Swete, H. B., The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church: A Study of Christian Teaching in the
Age of the Fathers (London: Macmillan, 1912), pp 265-7 for a study in how the relationship between the
Son and the Spirit develops in the later Christological dispute between Antioch and Alexandria.
17Dem. 71; cf. AH4.20.1; 4.pref.4; 5.6.1; 5.28.4
18Cf. AH 3.6.1-2; Frag. 52
19AH 3.17. title; cf. `Christ did not at that time descend upon Jesus, neither was Christ one and Jesus
another: but the Word of God-who is the Saviour of all, and the ruler of heaven and earth, who is Jesus,
as I have already pointed out, who did also take upon Him flesh, and was anointed by the Spirit from the
Father-was made Jesus Christ' (AH 3.9.3).

53
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

avoided them (111.9.3) by referring the bestowal of the Spirit at baptism merely to the

man Jesus, and thus gave his own approval to that separation which appeared to him so

reprehensible in the Gnostics. '20 Undoubtedly Irenaeus sees a vital role for the Spirit in
the generating and equipping of the Son in the incarnation. The incarnate Son was,

after all, 6 Xpior6c, `sown from God by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin
Mary'. 21 Yet even the passage Harnack chooses as his illustration (AH 3.9.3) is far

from clear in making his point. In it, Irenaeus writes: `Christ did not at that time
descend upon Jesus, neither was Christ one and Jesus another: but the Word of God...

was anointed by the Spirit from the Father. ' It was through a misapprehension of the
bishop's concept of `man' that Harnack failed to understand that that anointing by the

Spirit, in contrast to Justin's conception, Irenaeus sees as equally true of the pre-

incarnate ,koyoS äoapKoc. Thus, commenting on Psalm 45: 6f., he sees `the Son, as

being God, receives from the Father, that is, from God, the throne of the everlasting

kingdom, and the oil of anointing above His fellows. The oil of anointing is the Spirit,

wherewith He has been 22 From creation onwards, it could be seen that the
anointed'.
Aoyoq acts in the power of `the Spirit of the Saviour', the Son in `the Spirit of
that Spirit by he 23 Irenaeus did not see
adoption', same whom visited the patriarchs.
Jesus' assumed impersonal flesh being directly animated, as if personally, by the Spirit.

It was the person of the man, equipped as the Word of God, that was anointed. The

alternative would have been what for Irenaeus would be an unacceptable notion, that
the nature the Aoyos took to himself in the incarnation was, by the Spirit, an
aüzoKivg-cov, a self-moving principle. Yet such a6TOKiv1latS would always, for
Irenaeus, be too redolent of departures from the anchor of the otKOVOµiaOEOÜ:
one Lord
Jesus Christ.

Given his conviction that it is the presenceof the Spirit that determineswhether
blood, the vehicle of the soul, is `rational' (AoyLKÖS),
it seems most likely that he

understood the very concept of Man as Aoyoqto involve empowermentby the Spirit.

The flesh, therefore, when destitute of the Spirit of God, is dead, not having

life, and cannot possess the kingdom of God: [it is] irrational blood, like water

poured out upon the ground. And therefore he says, "As is the earthy, such are

20Hamack A., The History of Dogma trans. N. Buchanan (London: Williams & Norgate, 1897), Vol. 11,
285
21Dem. 40; cf. AH 3.12.7
22Den:. 47; cf AH 3.18.3
23AH 2.28.7; 4.1.1;
cf. 1.22.1; 2.28.2; 4.36.8

54
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

they that are earthy. " But where the Spirit of the Father is, there is Living

Man, the rational blood preserved by God for avenging, the flesh possessedby
the Spirit, forgetful indeed of what belongs to it, and adopting the quality of the
Spirit, being made conformable to the Word of God.24

Thus to be ö Aoyoc, it seems, is, per definitionem, to be ö XpLot6S. The Aoyoc is, as it

were, the 4ruxý OEOÜ,

the primal and archetypical recipient of the Spirit. The questions

of how and why this One who is eternally Jesus (human) Christ (anointed) can then
take flesh and be baptised by the hovering creator Spirit will occupy us next, and must

continue to occupy us in the next chapter. For the moment, though, this may seem to -

and indeed does - complicate the question of Irenaeus' similarity to Apollinarius:

would the Aoyoq then need to take a htunan *uXT1to himself upon incarnation? Jesus
being innately Spirit-filled, would the soul that in men receives the Spirit be

superfluous? It is worth noting, however, that even though he sees the Aöyoq as

ävOpWnoc ttvEUµaCLKov,and despite resemblance to Apollinarius in holding that

6
lrpoüTr&PXEL ävOpornoc Xpw tT c, it seems he does not ultimately fall into Apollinarius'

having Aöyoq 25
error of the assume a truncated oäpý. As recipient of the Spirit, he still
had a human 4ruxrj, even if he was not merely IuXucöv: `the Lord thus has redeemed us

through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh'. 26

That he had a human juXij is, in fact, of fundamental significance for the next section's

examination of Irenaeus' soteriology. For, had Jesus' assumed flesh been incapable of

receiving that life-giving Spirit with which he, as the Christ, was eternally anointed,

there would be no resurrection and no hope for Adam's infantile and rebellious race.

24 Igitur
taro sine Spiritu Dei mortua est non habens vitain, regnum Dei possidere non potest: sanguis
irrationalis, velut aqua of rse in terrain. Et propter hoc alt: Qualls terrenus, tales terreni. Ubi aulem
Spiritus Pairis, ibi homo vivens, Banguis ration ails ad ultionein a Deo custodints, taro a Spiritu possessa
oblita quidem sui, qualitatem autetn Spiritus asswnens, conformis facts Verbo Dei. AH 5.9.3; c£ 4.4.3.
25 Contra Osborn, E., Irenaeus
of Lyons (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 111; Duncker, L., Des heiligen
Irenäus Christologie im Zusammenhange mit dessen theologischer und anthropologischer Grundlehre
(Göttingen: 1843), 206.
26 AH 5.1.1; cf. 5.6.1; Clement
of Rome, /" Epistle to the Corinthians, 49; Ignatius, Epistle to the
Philadelphians, 6

55
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Spirit and Flesh

The matter of Irenaeus' likeness to Apollinarius leads us to a similar query, of whether

Irenaeus in fact sailed his Christology too close to the rocks of docetism, failing to skirt

the Gnostic doctrine that `Christ passed through Mary just as water flows through a

tube'. 27 Had he in fact left an Abyss between Man and men? This might indeed have

been the case were it not for the full development of his pneumatology: where the

Gnostics `set the Spirit aside altogether, 29 Irenaeus sought to reverse the Gnostic Babel

with a Pentecost that reunites what was scattered through weakness and sin. In contrast
to the fissiparous Orphic creed of aWµa-aýµa - the body as a tomb29 - he did not see

flesh and spirit as incompatible. Rather, the two were to become one in the incarnation.
Flesh would be redeemed, but only by that Spirit of life with which the archetype of

humanity, the EiKWV TODOEoi, is eternally endowed. 30 Adam would never escape the

`hands' of God that had formed him since, having been established as the Tünroqof the

Son, he would receive life through his Spirit, just as in creation the Father had been

`establishing all things by His Word, and binding them together by His Wisdom'. 31 so

the economy would blossom, faithful to its inception, with the Spirit bringing life and

maturity to what had been established in reference to and by the Word. Where the

Word is the soil and substance, the ünöoraatS of humanity, the Spirit is that water that

brings life to the intrinsically needy and thirsty flesh of a'vOpwrroc1IJUXLKÖV.

And those of them who declare... "I will make a way in the desert, and riven in

a dry land, to give drink to my chosen people, my people whom I have

acquired, that they may show forth my praise, " plainly announced that liberty

which distinguishes the new covenant, and the new wine which is put into new
bottles, the faith which is in Christ, by which He has proclaimed the way of

27AH 1.7.2; 3.11.3; cf. 4.2.4

28AH 2.17.4
29 One characteristic that could be said to unite the disparate Gnostic sects was the wholehearted
enthusiasm with which they adopted, in particular, the vivid Platonic images used to describe the soul's
unnatural union with the body: the soul, for instance, could aptly be described as being trapped in its
body like an oyster in its shell, or tortuously bound to its body just as the Tyrrhenian pirates had bound
their captives to corpses (cf. AH 1.25.4).
30AH 5.2.2; cf. 5.12.1; 5.14.1; Harnack, II, 238
31AH3.24.2; cf. 4.pref.4; cf. 4.20.1; 4.31.2; 5.1.3; 5.5.1; 5.6.1; 5.28.3

56
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

righteousness sprung up in the desert, and the streams of the Holy Spirit in a
dry land, to give water to the elect people of God, whom He has acquired. 32

To take one step back, it is necessary to see what is perhaps an unsurprising

assertion, coming from Irenaeus. That is, ävOpornoq luxLKÖV is not only needy, but
33 The
imperfect without the infusion of this IrvEܵathat anointed the EiK(: )v Toü OEOÜ.

plasma, whilst formed Kaz' EtKÖVa TODEdK6voS,was imbued only with typical breath,

and so lacked that very likeness to God that helps to make up the fundamental

constitution of the plasma. Amongst others, A. A. Hoekema has contested this, arguing
that the Spirit was in fact possessed by Adam in his primitive state; it was due to his
fall, rather than to his role as tünoc, that he was deprived of the Spiritual likeness 34

However, the passage in Adversus Haereses that he turns to as evidence, where Adam

soliloquises over losing `that robe of sanctity which I had from the Spirit', refers not to

any loss of the Spirit or likeness, but refers explicitly to the loss of his `natural
disposition and child-like mind'. 35 It is true that Adam lost his innocence in the fall,

but later restorationist salvation histories should not be retrospectively injected into the
bishop's economy, where Adam remains a type imbued solely with typical breath. The

idea of a special but secondary gift of a `golden bridle' of righteousness given to Adam

over and above his creation to secure him in his integrity may borrow Irenaean
terminology and yet remain one belonging to an entirely different millennium and
devoid of Irenaeus' Christocentric teleology. 36 What, then, of the oft-cited passage

32AH 3.17.2; cf. 3.17.3; 4.14.2; 4.33.14; 4.36.4; 4.39.2; 5.2.3; 5.18.2
33AH 5.6.1
34Hoekema, A. A., Created in God's Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 33ff.
3s AH 3.23.5. That this is the case can be seen in the fact
of the broader second century Church's
agreement with Irenaeus. So, complementary to him, Clement of Alexandria spoke of Adam in his
primitive state as being adapted for the reception of virtue, but not as created possessing it. Whilst
innocent, then, he had no righteousness(a righteousnesscorresponding to the likeness) to lose (Stroniata,
6.11-12). Furthermore, Clement built this conception upon what he confesses to be a borrowed
distinction between man's original constitution `in the image' and his later perfection `according to the
likeness' (Stromara, 2.22).
36The difficulty with interpretation here is that Irenaeus does
not fit neatly into the well worn grooves
defined by the arguments between the Reformers and Roman Catholicism. Rome (or, more specifically,
Roman Catholicism as influenced by Scotism, cf. Cross, R., Duns Scotus (New York and Oxford: OUP,
1999), 96-100; also Aquinas' Surnnia Theologise,prima secunda;, ix., sect. 2, art. 1) taught that Adam
was created perfect even before he was endowed with original righteousness like a robe or ornament.
Thus Adam's original righteousness (iustitia originalis) and state of integrity (status integritatis) were
divine gifts not to be confused with the essential image (imago essentialis). The offence for the
Reformed churches was that, thereby, sin could be described as simply the lack of original righteousness,
and not the loss of the image itself, which is endemic to humanity. They, in contrast, maintained that
original righteousness is an essential part of the human nature, Adam having been created in the
possession of it as the direct manifestation of his life. Thus sin could be seen as more than the loss of
original righteousness, as the corruption of human nature itself. This is a question to which we must
needs return below.

57
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

quoll perdideranuus in Adam, id est, secundum imagine/n et similitudineni esse Dei, hoc
in Christo Jesu reciperemus (AH 3.18.1)? If Irenaeus is not to be found guilty of the

sort of inconsistency Friedrich Loofs charged him with, this seems to refer, not to the
loss of an originally possessed likeness, but to Adam's squandering of his destiny in

disobedience, a destiny that Christ restores to humanity in the incarnation. The

significance of this can be seen in the significance Irenaeus attributed to the concept of
öµoiwoLS, which he interpreted to be the spiritually imparted property of Wisdom that

Adam simply did not have. To be more precise, Irenaeus believed the Spirit to be the

bringer of öµoiWoLS since the Spirit is the öµoiwotS of God: `His [the Father's]

Offspring and His Similitude do minister to Him in every respect; that is, the Son and

the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom. '37 Such is the reality of the distinction that
Irenaeus in fact made between EIKCJVand öµokWnc. Man, as he is created, is the

possessor of neither; nor is it strictly correct even to say that the Son is both the image
and the likeness together; it is most accurate to say that, for Irenaeus, Jesus is the
image, and as the Christ bears the likeness by the Spirit so it is that the Son, as Jesus
-
Christ, can bring to the created type both the image and the likeness that are his destiny.

At this juncture it is necessary to pause for a moment in order to examine Emil

Brunner's seminal critique of this aspect of Irenaeus' anthropology. Given the weight

of the criticism, and the persistency with which similar or derivative arguments can be
found in the secondary literature, it is worth devoting some time to. Brunner's

admiration for Irenaeus has already been noted. In his Man in Revolt he could write
that Irenaeus was `the first great genuine theologian, and possibly the most Scriptural

of all the theologians of the early Church. We might almost call him the
`Fundamentalist' among the early Fathers. ' And yet Brunner immediately felt impelled

to go on to launch the most blistering attack on Irenaeus since that of Friedrich Loofs:

In spite of this, however, even in his thinking the spirit of Greek rationalism

was at work, and precisely in his doctrine of the imago-si, nilitudo.... His

anthropology is Gnosticism purified by Scripture, with a strong element of

Greek 38
general philosophy.

37AH 4.7.4 Progenies Figuratio

- ntinistrat Erbin ei ad oninia sua et sua, id est, filiue et Spiritus sanclus,
verbum et sapientia. Figuratio sua is possibly a translation of n µöpýwoLc or E[Kcw aütoü, where aüroü
may refer to the Son, as Harvey understands it (Harvey, 11,164, n. 8). However, it seems most natural to
read aütoü as referring to the Father, as with sua Progenies.
38 Brunner, E., bean in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. Wyon, O. (London: Lutterworth, 1939),
504. For a brief, but entirely antithetical appraisal, see Farrow, D., Ascension and Ecclesia: On the

58
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

It is certainly the case that the terminology of EiKC'v and öµoic,

OoLcis strewn
throughout Hellenic thought. Usually, EtKCilvwould refer to man's essential rational

principle, öµoC oic being that which could be acquired through the perfection of this

reason. The image is the foundation and the likeness is the goal. The terms were then
imported into Gnosticism where they acquired the flavour of the entire system such that

they could be sharply differentiated in order to divide the Gnostic elite from the rabble

of ontologically pedestrian humanity. That is to say, whilst some men had only the
image, others had what could only be called the fortune (given the impotence of all

beings before the sovereignty of ontology) to enjoy the likeness as well - so higher and

lower men could be distinguished. 39

Brunner maintained that the very Valentinianism that Irenaeus was seeking to
eradicate had actually contaminated his anthropology at this point. Given that Irenaeus

saw God as supreme Reason, Brunner argued that Irenaeus interpreted the imago Dei to
be man's natural endowment of reason. However, scriptural `fundamentalist' that
Irenaeus was, he knew this rationalism to be essentially alien to Christianity, and thus

he attempted (in violation of the meaning of Genesis 1:26) to paste over the difficulty

with a Christian veneer - the similitudo. Brunner seemed to be confused as to whether

this sindlitudo constituted an `original relation to God which may be lost' or `was

rather a promise for the future than a present reality' for man in the primitive state.
Whichever it be, Brunner sees that the case is clear: imago is the essential humanem,

si, nilitudo a donum superadditum. Thus Irenaeus had yielded to the Gnostic

partitioning of man by importing a distinction between a `nature' and a `super-nature'.

The shock-waves down through Church history, he went on, were disastrous, for this

became the basis for the traditional dualism of Christian anthropology, the whole

nature-grace dichotomy, indeed, of Semi-Pelagianism. This was due, in large part, to

Irenaeus' dualism being intensified by medieval Scholasticism through its synthesis

with Aristotelianism into a universal system of nature and super-nature. Thus, on this

basis of a distinction between man's essential humanem as rational imago and the grace

of the similitudo, Roman Catholicism could ascribe to unredeemed man complete

freedom of the will by virtue of his innate rationality, his inalienable huunaiitun. It was

the foothold for natural theology in making reason inviolable as it was equated with the

Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1999), 59
39AH 1.5.5; 5.6.1

59
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

essential image. Not that the Reformers come off much better: their reduction of what
is retained in fallen man to a mere `relic' of the image he sees as simply confused and
40
compromised.
Dare we attempt to pick up and clean so spit-stained a mantle? It seems that we

must, if we are to understand the bishop himself, and not merely lament trends within

medieval Scholasticism. First, in response to the incessantly repeated critique of

Irenaeus' doctrine of the imago-similitudo, that it fails to recognise in the Genesis text

what is normally taken to be a simple instance of Hebrew parallelism, it has to be said

to be a case of collective theological tunnel vision. Irenaeus most frequently refers to

öµoLwßic 4' Wingren suggests that

and
ELKCSv as a hendiadys. commentators have only
leaped to the rare instances of distinction, not because the scholastic tradition built on

Irenaean foundations, but because of the superficial similarity between the two. 2

When he does distinguish them it is, in part at least, to use a weapon of the Philistines

against the hand that made it. Thus, where Gnostics could imagine imago and

siniflttudo signifying body and spirit respectively, Irenaeus could respond that if we let

only the body be saved, then one is left with a naked imago without its necessary and

corresponding similitudo; and on the other hand, if we let only the spirit be saved, then
is left its 43 In
one with a naked shnilitudo without necessary and corresponding imago.

neither case can we be speaking of the whole and complete man. Even when

considered exegetically, to be fair we must note that in the Septuagint, Genesis 5: 3, the

verse usually turned to as evidence of the interchangeability of ELKWVand 6ioiwoLS, in

that it reverses the order of Genesis 1:26, bears no mention of öµoiwoLc, but states
EYEVVTlGEV WOW CIÜTOÜ
Kar& t1JV L T11VELKÖVLY
Ka. KaTCC cdrroü.
Even then, Irenaeus' admirers are usually content to assert that, even if he was

clear of the fault (given that his intent was simply to demonstrate that man as created

was not what he finally would be, but that his destiny was to advance into glorious

maturity and divine fellowship), his distinction between image and likeness was, if

truth be told, the foundation for so many of those ills that Brunner enumerated. Yet

such a concession prescinds the factor that most supremely makes Brunner's charge
invalid, which is the broader context of Irenaeus' anthropology as we have seen it.

Given this, it is possible to see that, for Irenaeus (if not for the Scholastics), the Spirit is

40 Brunner, 505ff.
41Beuzart, P., Essai sur la Theologie d'Irenee (Le Puy: 1908), 69-73
42 `'Vingren, G., Man A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (Edinburgh
and the Incarnation:
& London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 157
43A115.6.1

60
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

not the supernatural dommi superadditum to the basic htunanum, for Adam was not the
basic humamun. Adam was only ever Kat' EdKÖvaTot EdKÖVOs,
and never the EtK(Sv,or

the possessor of the EtKWV,in himself. He had `not as yet been made a man. '44 Thus

the basic humantun could be as little found in Adam as the öµoiwoLS. This was not to
denigrate Adam; put negatively, it was to deny his independence as the possessor of a

basic hianamun outside of and apart from Jesus Christ; put positively, it was to affirm

his creatureliness, and so enforce his utter dependence, even in his very existence, upon

Jesus Christ, his archetype and goal. Jesus Christ, as himself the EtKWV,and being the

Christ, the bearer of the öµoiWoLS, is the bringer of both to the needy creature. Semi-

Pelagianism must, of necessity, find another mentor.

To return to the main argument; whilst remaining within the one economy, we

must progress from creation to redemption, and so look first at God's coming to man,

and then at man's corresponding coming to God. Whilst having introduced the theme

much earlier in the work, Book Five of Adversus Haereses (the book most concerned

with the role of the Spirit and the eschatological hope of man) opens with the argument
that for the redemption of that needy and immature flesh, the E1KWv took his own

craftsmanship to himself. Through this `union and communion' of the archetype and
his type, the Spirit with which he, the Aoyoc, was endowed, could be shared with the
45 Incarnation, then, could helpfully be understood as EvavBpWn-q'aLq
plasma. -never
(becoming generically man-like), but only as a oäpKWO1S (correctly translated

incarnalio; that is, becoming specifically Adamic, in the flesh) for the sake of the

`blending and communion of God and man... in order that man, having embraced the

Spirit of God, might pass into the glory of the Father. A6 This oäpKWßtc involved not

only the revelation of the EtKW'Vin the true man, but the impartation of the Spirit, the
61oiwoLS of God, to the imperfect plasma of Adam. 47 Thus it brought `all possible,

novelty' in bringing the flesh of Adam to its TEXos by uniting it to the `the ladder of

God' the Spirit. 48 With Irenaeus being to this the

ascent to - so explicit as novelty of
Spirit (a novelty with regard to the flesh as opposed to a chronological novelty that

would disbar the faithful justified of the Old Testament), it seems impossible to concur

with Robert Jenson's analysis of Irenaeus' soteriology as essentially restorationist, as

Wilhelm Bousset had presented it. Jenson explains:

°aAH 4.39.2
45AH5.1.1; cf. 5.6.1; Dem. 41
46AH 4.20.4
47AH 5.16.2; cf. 3.17.3; 5.1.3; 5.36.3; Dem. 97
48AH 4.34.1; 3.24.1; 5.20.2; cf. 3.17.1; 3.20.2; 3.22.1; 4.14.2; 4.20.4; 4.33; 5.1.3.

61
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

When Irenaeus wrote, "Out of the greatness of his love he was made what we

are, that he might bring us to be what he is"... [he] did not distinguish

qualitatively between what believers are becoming in this age and what they

will be in the Eschaton, or indeed between what humanity is created to be and

it be. 49
what will then

Yet Irenaeus paints a markedly different picture: where the createdplasma had been
created unripe and needy, now the Spirit of adoption could produce visible fruit - the
immature flesh 50 Left
rendering of mature. apart, the Spirit indeed is willing, but the
flesh is weak. Infused with the life-giving Spirit, that flesh would shrug off its sloth
for it 51
with the eagerness which was modelled. This is the tEAocof the plasma.

For this reason does the apostle declare, "We speak wisdom among them that

are perfect, " terming those persons "perfect" who have received the Spirit of
God, and who through the Spirit of God do speak in all languages,as he used
Himself also to speak.52

So it can be seen that both the image and the likeness of God were brought to Adam

such that in both creation and redemption, `God shall be glorified in His handiwork,
fitting it so as to be conformable to, and modelled after, His own Son. 53
To the chagrin of those, such as Hamack, whose taste is for a purely ethical

salvation with no ontological payload, he persistently returns to the Eucharist as itself

both effective and illustrative of this, perhaps unnervingly `physical', redemption. He

begins at the Last Supper, where Jesus `administered food to them [the disciples] in a

recumbent posture, indicating that those who were lying in the earth were they to whom
He came to impart life. 354 Hence, as with the posture of the disciples, the Eucharist

serves as proof of the salvation of the flesh. There can be seen the created and,

49 Jenson, R. W., Systematic Theology Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 322-3; cf.
Bousset, \V., Kyrios Christost A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to
Irenaeus trans. Steely, J. E. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970), 438.
50AH 5.12.4
51AH 5.9.2; cf. Matt. 26:41
52AH 5.6.1; cf. I Cor. 2:6
53AH 5.6.1
5; AH 4.22.1. Perhapsit needsto be said that whilst Irenaeus' exegesis(like Patristic exegesis in general)
may appear wholly alien to today's reader, it does not follow that this particular methodology of his
negatesthe conclusions he reaches. It is, after all, his anthropological conclusions and not his exegetical
ability that we are seeking to determine and assesshere.

62
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

importantly, manhandled elements receiving the Word of God for the sake of the flesh

of men. In just the same way, he argues, our flesh received the Word of God in the

incarnation, a reception which is appreciated through the nourishment of the

Eucharist. 55 This rationale is founded upon the Eucharist containing within itself both

fleshly and spiritual realities, the communion of which, for Irenaeus, is the essence of

redemption. At the ETTLKX

loLS, a `fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit' is

effected such that what was `common bread' now consists of two realities, earthly and
heavenly. 56 In just the same way, our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, receive the

Spiritual Word and so can enjoy the hope of resurrection. 57 So the body of Christ is

`re-membered'. The Eucharist holding so fundamental and illuminative a significance

in his understanding of redemption, Irenaeus simply cannot see how Gnostics can take

the material elements with any degree 58

of consistency.
It should by no means be imagined that a complete transformation of substance
is envisaged here, either in EnCK,
lrloLS or redemption. It is not the case that bread is no

longer bread, or flesh no longer flesh, but there exists a `fellowship and union' of two

realities. For this redemption, the AoyoS did not pass through Mary as water through a

tube, but required an umbilical cord of continuity with the race of Adam, his assumed
`righteous flesh' reconciling not a wholly new race of men taken afresh from the dust,

but the very flesh of Adam. 59 For this to be, the `righteousness' (the lack of the taint of

sin in the flesh assumed) was imperative if the substance assumed were not to be sub-
human. For,

according to Irenaeus there is not a single part of humanity lacking in Him. If

there were, it would mean that the sinless One had not wholly entered the

sphere from which sin was to be expelled. Sin is never in itself anything

55AH 5.2.3; cf. 4.18.5

56Cf. Justin, 1 Ap. 66. More can be seenhere on the vexed question of Irenaeus' understanding (and that
of his contemporaries) of the relationship between the Word as spirit and the Spirit with which the Word
is anointed. Thus in AH 5.2.3 Irenaeus can sound much as if he is imagining a Aöyoc EniKXfloLc:'When,
therefore, the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist of
the blood and the body of Christ is made, from which things the substance of our flesh is increased and
supported, how can they affirm that the flesh is incapable of receiving the gift of God, which is life
eternal, which [flesh] is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord, and is a member of Him? '
57 AH 4.18.5, flpoo4 ÖE allt(W Lbla, Eµl1EX C &TrayyWOVTEc [Kai
po iEV tIX KOLVLJVLaV KUI. vow
6µ0X0yoÜVTEc] Kai 7TVE61VaTOc [EyEpoLV]. 'QC y&p änÖ Y i; äptoc npooXa t avöµEVOc Ti V
oapKbc
EKKÄijOLV [SiC. 1. ET1IKX11OLV] tOt eEOb, &ptOý EOtLV, &XX' EÜXapLOTla, EK 66 0 npayµäTmv
OÜKEtt KOLVbc
E1TLyELOU TE Kal th pµ(3V ie Tile EüxapLatiat,
OUVEOTfKE'La, o paVLOU' oitWc Kai oRiµata alaµßävovta
&eapta, Sa tf; &vaoTc aewc EXOVta. Cf. 5.2.3
1111KETL EZVai TT V E%111. Etc, at(3Vac
58AH 4.18.4; cf. 1.28.1
59AH 5.14.2; cf. 3.21.10; 5.12.3.4

63
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

human, but on the contrary is the Devil's destruction of man as God made him.

It is no limitation of Christ's humanity that He has no sin, but on the contrary

His very freedom from sin qualifies Him for achieving the thing which is truly
human. 60

In this, Irenaeus has refused to succumb to the dispensational butchering of the one

OKOVoµia AEOÜ:here there is no abandonment of the project of creation, nor a

redemption ex nihilo, but ex Maria; KaLvös, not v4oS. There, in the taking of plasma to
himself in the incarnation, was the affirmation and E)XapLatia ºcar' E oxi v for the very

flesh, the cosmos, and the man for it formed. 6'

existence of whom was
This being the case, it would seem extraordinary that the processof redemption

might then somehow involve the supplanting of flesh by spirit as opposed to the
infusing of flesh with spirit. Irenaeus is eager to be most explicit on this point. Those

whom the apostle Paul terms of 1WWEUµaTLKOL',

are so called

because they partake of the Spirit, and not because their flesh has been stripped

off and taken away, and because they have become purely spiritual. For if any

one take away the substance of flesh, that is, of the plasma, and understand that

which is purely spiritual, such then would not be a spiritual man but would be
the spirit of a man, or the Spirit of God. But when the spirit here blended with

the soul is united to plasma, the man is rendered spiritual and perfect because

of the outpouring of the Spirit, and this is he who was made in the image and
likeness of God. 62

Any metamorphosis implying a displacement of the created plasma would lie closer to

the Gnostic schema in which the redemption of flesh was impossible, it having to be

removed as that which smothered the true self of the spirit. In defence of this
impossibility, those who followed Valentinus found 1 Cor. 15: 50 in particular to be
`decisive evidence against the Church's claim of bodily resurrection': aäpý Kai aiµa
ßaoLXEiav OEOÜKXflpovoµiaaL oü SüvaraL oüöE ý ýOop& tily &4Oapoiav KXtIpOVO1Et.

`This is [the passage] which is adduced by all the heretics in support of their folly, with

60Wingren, 86-7, cf. 102-3.

61Cf AH 4.18.4
62AH 5.6.1; cf. 5.8.2. Whilst it is
not of immediate concern for our purposes here, in this passageit can
be seen that Irenacus believed in a created spirit as well as the divine Spirit, a spirit that in no sense
diminished the need for the createdplasma to be infused with vivifying Spirit (cf. Behr, 103).

64
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of God is not saved. '63

However, having seen the resurrected Jesus' words of comfort to the disciples, rwEܵa

01)K EXEL KQAd)SEVE AEWpELTEExovtLuke

O&pKCCKai. ÖQTECti 24: 39), Irenaeus retorted

If, however, we must speak strictly, the flesh does not inherit, but is inherited;

as also the Lord declares, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the

earth by inheritance; " as if in the kingdom, the earth, from whence exists the
flesh, is to be by inheritance. 64
substance of our possessed

Contingent being, such as flesh, can neverjustify itself. It is, however, as created, a fit
inheritance for the Son to share with his Bride. The process of being fitted for that
inheritance is termed by Irenaeus`spiritualisation'.
`Spiritualisation', for Irenaeus, does not mean transubstantiation. Flesh is the

very plasma of the project of man, the first aspect of man created and his hope of

resurrection (that is, a fleshly, though perfected, future due to God's faithfulness to his

purposes in creation). However, left to itself it could not achieve the goal for which it

was formed. For this, it must become 1TvEUµatLK6q,

like the EiKWV TOOOEOÜ. Yet, for

is not to be less tangible, but to be free from the corruption,

Irenaeus, to be nvEUµaTLKÖS

mortality, and darkness that affects it. Whereas now we see as through a glass darkly,
the Spirit so affects the flesh as to make it luciform, an öpyavov of light conformable to

the Word God. 65 In fact, for flesh to be 6x is the very antithesis of its
of made iivEUµam
being traduced. Instead, Irenaeus speaks of the augmentation and strengthening of the

flesh that, far from being laid aside as the clothing of youth, is that very thing which is

the object of maturation. To be a spiritual man or a spiritual body is not to be less

human or less bodily, but to be more truly and completely so, for the Spirit comes not,

to rob but to redeem man as he is found in the flesh from all that impoverishes and

undermines his being. Thus, for the present, `eve do now receive a certain portion of

His Spirit, tending towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption, being little by

63 AH 5.9.1;
cf. 5.13.2; Pagels, E. H., The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 85. Peter Brown explains this non-resurrection redemption as follows:
`Christ had breathed on His disciples, as a man breathes on the dying embers of a fire. He had scattered
from their spirits the loose ash of confusion, causing the whole self to glow throughout with a single
radiance. ' (Brown, P., The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 110; cf. Clement, Excerpta ex Theodoto
3.2).
64AH 5.9.4; cf. 5.2.3; Lk. 24:39
65AH 5.9.3; cf. 5.5.1; 5.14.3-4.

65
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

little accustomed to receive and bear God'66 The weakness of flesh is unable

immediately and fully to sustain the weight of the divinity that Adam had desired for

himself. For this reason (and not simply because of sin), flesh and Spirit will struggle

within those who are being spiritualised now until mortality is entirely swallowed up in

immortality. 67 Then he prefers to speak of the resurrection of oc pý (instead of what

became more traditional, to speak of the resurrection of the a6pa), the irvEܵa effecting

this through juxrj. For awµa, as Aldous Huxley punned in so naming the drug the

citizens of the Brave New World could use for out-of-body experiences, is a word open
interpretations 68
to less tangible and more detached than ßäpß.

Having seen the essentially ontological nature of the redemption envisaged by

Irenaeus, it is necessary to insert a brief caveat regarding the criticisms of Friedrich

Loofs and Adolph von Harnack. 69 It need only be brief, given that the ground has
been 70 The question broached is whether
already extensively covered elsewhere.
Irenaeus' model of redemption is not in fact too coldly mechanical, with no space left

between its cogs for the individual and his response; all &vä13aoicat the expense of

KaTäßaoLS,with little conception of the impact of the fall. Indeed, if it is a system that
has barely managed to include sin, does this effectively render the cross and human

repentance redundant? As Eric Mascall put it: `Is it, in short, Lady Day or Good

Friday that is the supreme commemoration of our redemption? '7'

As he argues the case for the prosecution, Harnack is forced to concede a

significant point. Irenaeus is ardent and repetitive in his assertion of the necessity of

faith if any of Adam's race is to be spared from Hell and included in the salvation of

Christ. 72 Harnack is compelled to dismiss these assertions as simple inconsistency. 3

Yet the very dominance of the theme suggests that the weakness lies, not in Irenaeus'

66AH 5.8.1
67AH 5.8.1; cf. 3.17.1-2; 4.37-9; 5.1.2; 5.6-9; Eph. 4:24
68AH 4.13.2; Dem. 42. The etymology of awµa is illustrative of this propensity. Eduard Schweizer notes
that in `Homer, söma, "body, " is primarily a "corpse," that is, something different from the ego of the
speaker, an object that he observes as lying outside himself. ' (Schweizer, R. E., `Body' in The Anchor
Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 768). The modernisation of the article in the Apostles'
creed `the resurrection of the body' to `the resurrection of the dead' only continues the flight from the
fleshly specificity Irenacus posited in his eschatology into a more nebulous, if less offensively tangible,
hope.
69 Loofs, F., Leitfaden zun: Studien der Doginengeschic/ite (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1906); Harnack, Vol.
11,231 ff.
70Cf. Brunner, E., The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith trans. Wyon,
0. (London: Lutterworth, 1934), 249-64; Hart, T. A., `Irenaeus, Recapitulation and Physical
Redemption' in Hart, T. A. and Thimell, D. P. (eds.) Christ in Our Place (Exeter: Paternoster, 1989)
7! Mascall, E. L., Christ, the Christian, and the Church: A Study of the Incarnation and its Consequences
(London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1946), 68
72AH 2.29.1; 2.32.5; 3.6.2; 4.28.2; 5.10.2; 4.2.7; 4.5; Denn.39; passim.
73Harnack, 244,275

66
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

presentation of the model, but in Harnack's reading of it (or, perhaps more likely, his
aversion to the necessity of ontological ballast behind any moral redemption).
Furthermore, his reading is forced to ignore the pneumatology that so shapes this
74 Finally, the
redemptive model. reconciliation that Christ effects between the Creator

and his rebellious creation is entirely dependant on Christ recapitulating the work of
Adam, undoing by his obedienceAdam's disobedience:

in the last times the Lord has restored us into friendship through His
incarnation, having become `the Mediator between God and men', propitiating

indeed for us the Father against whom we had sinned, and cancelling our

disobedience by His own obedience; conferring also upon us the gift of

Maker. 75
communion with, and subjection to, our

Here is a soteriology that can only be understood ontologically (the state of redemption
is characterised as &Oavaoia, &4Oapoia, even cäpµaKov). Yet for that physicality to be

necessarily mechanico-magical is simply a non sequitur. Why else would he have the

pastoral concern to write against heresies?

Thus can be seen the goal of the Man and his image: rather than the Gnostic
partitioning of Spirit, soul and flesh, here is a growing relationship, typically depicted
in that intimacy between the children in Eden, `kissing and embracing each other in

purity. '76 And so the importance of a'vOpwnoc &XqOijSbeing more particularly &vrjp

äXrt6rjý can be seen as Jesus Christ comes to his plasma to become one with it. 77

Through the revelation of Man - the EtKW'v Tots GEOÜ- in the incarnation, a

perichoretic relationship between the creator and his creation was effected. Where it
had been not good for man, the glory of God, to be alone, his bride, the glory of man,

had been immature, unfulfilled, even anhypostatic. Yet now the true Man had been

united to his bride, and the two had become one flesh. In this marriage, vivifying Spirit

had been brought by the Aöyoq through ij,uxrj to be one with flesh. That Spirit had,
- -
in turn, brought a'vOpwnoq 1ruXLK6vto bear the fruit of life. Nov, in the garden of the

74AH 3.17.1-2; 5.1.1; 5.9.2

75AH5.17.1
76Dem. 14 '
77 It is
probably this that stands behind Caecilius' otherwise extraordinary stated slur against the
Christians in Minucius Felix's dialogue Octavian, that 'Some say that they [the Christians] worship the
virilia of their pontiff and priest, and adore the nature, as it were, of their common parent. ' (Minucius
Felix, Octavian, 9).

67
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Church, humanity would no longer be disobedient to the Voice of God in her midst,
longer by breath, but by Spirit Bridegroom. 78
suffused as she was, no the of that

This is the reason for His wishing the temple (i. e., the flesh) to be clean, that

the Spirit of God may take delight therein, as a bridegroom with a bride. As,

therefore, the bride cannot [be said] to wed, but to be wedded, when the
bridegroom comes and takes her, so also the flesh cannot by itself possess the

kingdom of God by inheritance; but it can be taken for an inheritance into the

kingdom of God. 79

At this juncture it is worth pausing to note the vital contrast between Irenaeus

and his opponents on this point. The bishop was offering what he believed to be gospel
in opposition to both Valentinus' vision of a celestial redemption, entailing the

marriage of Sophia and Christ (a myth that also manifests itself as the marriage of
"AvOpcilnoq with the first woman, the Spirit8), and the burgeoning movement of ascetic
denunciation of any sexual intercourse (as seen in Tatian's Encratites81). Gnostic

practice was always prone to lurch between two opposite extremes. On the one hand,
the Gnostic divorce of God from the world had a comforting Epicurean effect.

Liberated from the intrusive presence of deity, life was secured for the sort of pleasure

displayed in the legendary licentiousness of Simon Magus. On the other hand, disdain

for the material had the obvious but opposite effect of producing an asceticism that

would rather turn wine into water, for where the Gnostics may have been of the world,
they had no desire to be in it. Irenaeus, in effect, retorted `a plague o' both your

houses! '. The form of this asceticism was intimately connected with the Gnostic

soteriology which envisaged, not a oupcwma between sexes, but the `healing' of,

otherness. Redemption on this model could be summarised under the general

expression änavbpöoµan: femininity existed as a shadow of the excrescence that was

creation, a sorry state of otherness that could not be celebrated but only healed by the

78AH 5.20.2. Here, Irenaeus drew his identification of the Church with paradise from the Song Songs
of
4: 12 ('You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain').
Jean Delumeau has traced the influence of this identification on the cloister, especially the Cistercian
cloisters. Monasteries required gardens, especially in order to cultivate medicinal plants, and the
preferred form was the square, whose four sides, built around a symbolic central well, represented the
four rivers of paradise. So the cloister garden offered a model of the cosmos and a diagram of the
paradise the monks would attain through their contemplation (Delumeau, J., History of Paradise: The
Gardeft of Eden in Myth and Tradition (New York: Continuum, 1995), 122).
79AH 5.9.4
80AH 1.30.1
81AH 1.28.1

68
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

female becoming male. 82 Jesus' saying in Matthew 22: 30 that in the resurrection they

are like the angels in heaven was taken to mean (as it so often still is) something

stronger than that they neither marry nor are given in marriage. It was not even taken

to be that there will no longer be male or female. It was that there would be no females
in heaven. Thus the Gospel of Thomas concludes:

Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of

life. " Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she

too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who

will make herself male will enter the kingdom of i83

heaven.

Similarly, whilst Basilides could advocate venereal licentiousness as a perversely

enjoyable demonstration of the superiority of the spiritual over the physical, Apelles,
Marcion, Tatian, Saturninus, the Priscillianists and others all condemned the approval

of femininity and physicality that was found in wedlock, and particularly coitus.
Marriage, after all, was the invention of the despicable and jealous creator, who had

and worthlessness precisely in the fact that he was the creator

displayed his inferiority
84 The
of an other, and worse, a hylic realm. various Gnostic Acts, recounting the

endeavours of the apostles, show the twelve making it amongst their chief business to

proclaim a gospel of ascetic continence. This entailed turning people against marriage

and especially the connubial bed, persuading spouses to cease all cohabitation save as
brother and sister, and even separating couples on the wedding night. 85

This was a model that clearly held appeal even well inside the bastions of so-
called orthodoxy. Derrick Sherwin Bailey and Elaine Pagels are amongst those who

have traced the insidious influence of the EyKpätELatradition not only through patristic

theology, but well beyond as it entered and informed the entire Western tradition on
86 Tatian himself,
sexuality. who had once been a student of Justin Martyr, had

extensive influence on the Church, even beyond his native Syria, especially through his

82Cf. Vogt, K., "`Becoming Male". A Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor' in Borresen, K. E., The
Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), pp170-86.
83 The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 114, in J. M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Han,madi Library, third edition
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), p 139, cf. Logion 22.
$a The Testimony
of Truth, 45ff., in The Nag Hanunadi Library, 454-5.
$SBailey, D. S., The Afan-Homan Relation in Christian Thought (London: Longmans, 1959), 37ff:
86 Bailey, The Man-Woman Relation in Christian Thought; Pagels, E., Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
(London: Penguin, 1990). Grace Jantzen, also, has demonstrated the tragic effect of this theology on
twelfth century `affective mysticism' in particular: `for a man to become spiritual he must increasingly
become what he is; but for a woman to become spiritual, she must become what she is not' (Jantzcn, G.
M., Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), 130).

69
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

87 Arthur Vööbus describes how Tatian

widely circulated Diatessaron. redacted his

compilation of Gospel texts to support Encratite beliefs: `Here a gloss, there a little

change in word order, or an addition, sufficed to make it unmistakably plain that the
Gospel of Salvation demands a radical renunciation of the whole human life, and that

the price of eternal life is virginity. '88

Innumerable more insidious examples could be cited (as well as the more
straightforwardly Gnostic cases such as that of Böhme), but perhaps the most forthright

modern example of a theology of redemption that amounts to &uavöpooµan is that of the

mystical Orthodox theologian, Nikolai Berdyaev. In The Destiny of Man he feels able
to be quite explicit that man's sexual duality is an expression of his (the male pronoun
being most emphatic) fallen nature. Basing his anthropology upon the myth of the

androgyne found in Plato's Symposium, Berdyaev sees the original sin as the division

of the whole original (and therefore future) androgynous man into two sexes. As a

sexual and so divided being, man is doomed to disharmony. Sexual intercourse, then,
is not only the source of life, but also death. 89 A remarkably similar non-theological

account might be said to be found in the psychology of Sigmund Freud (whose Oedipal

complex Berdyaev had appropriated to interpret symbolically and mystically). After

all, the theory of the `penis envy' of the female seems to be little more than an

appropriation of the Aristotelian concept of the woman as a mutilated and anatomically

deficient male. 90 Yet it is not only the woman in isolation that is wounded here;

humanity as a whole remains mutilated by bisection. Within the Church, the proof-text

frequently resorted to for this has been Ephesians 4: 13, where Paul states his vision of
the time KaTaVT ýlOCJµ EV OL TT&VTES ELS TV
ý1 EVOTr1Ta Tf1S 7TLOTE(il
S KUL Tcýl E1T6
YSVCJOEW

TOD ULOÜ TOD OEOt, ELS ävöpa ETpOV

TEAELOV, ELS F1. 1 XLKI(XS TOD nXrlp0)'µatoc TOD

XpLaToü. This was taken to mean that becoming avilp TEXELOS

(in a quite specific and,

private sense) was to be the TEXoSfor all. Perversely mimicking Irenaeus' growth

motif, this belief held that sexual difference is an aspect of the infirmity that is part of
our protological origins, a troublesome though temporary feature of humanity that will
87 Petersen, W. L., Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in
Scholarship (Leiden, New York and London: E. J. Brill, 1994). Peterson demonstrates that the
Diatessaron had such an extensive circulation that medieval Icelandic Christians and Chinese
Manicheans alike were known to quote it.
$$ Vööbus, A., Celibacy: A Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church
(Stockholm: Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1951), 17
89Berdyaev, N., The Destiny of Man (London: G. Bles, 1948), ch.3, § 3, `Sex: The Masculine and the
Feminine'.
90 Aristotle,
The Generation of Animals, 11,3,3 ('the female is, as it were, a mutilated male'); Freud, S.,
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Lecture 33; cf. Jewett, P. K., Man as Male and Female: A
Study in Sexual Relationships from a Theological Point of View (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 149ff..

70
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

ultimately be dealt with eschatologically as all infirmity is swallowed up. So, for all his

denunciation of docetic approaches to marriage and intercourse, Clement of

Alexandria: `And is not woman translated into man, when she is become equally

unfeminine, and manly, and perfect? '91 Tertullian could also imagine the abolition of

what he called the `devil's gateway' of feminine otherness to be gospel, just as Christ
the second Adam's celibacy (one wonders what happened to his bride, the Church)

supersedes the first Adam's monogamy: `For you too, (women as you are) have the

self-same angelic nature promised as your reward, the self-same sex as men. '92 Thus
the EyKpäxELatradition could hold the state of Adam before the formation of Eve, or the

supposed virginal condition of the protoplasts, to be the ideal after which to aspire,

even seeing its perfection as entirely derivative of a pre-sexuality or a-sexuality. Here

is the danger in misinterpreting Irenaeus as a restorationist, for Irenaeus saw the
innocence of Eden as a state of immaturity, the growth from which would necessarily

include marriage, the basis of the blessing of increase. 3 Redemption as restoration

instead of maturation is a model that, of necessity, would then look much more like the

Encratite &Travbpooµau.

Here there was no ethic orphaned and alienated from its mother theology. The

concepts `male' and `female' held greater significance than inter-sexual relations and
the nature of resurrection or eschatological existence. `Male'
was reflective of
ideal `Female' derivative imperfection 94 In fact, it
everything - spirit. spoke of - soul.

was not so much that the female was regarded as a derivation of the male but (as in
Aristotelian anthropology) as a deviation. Thus to equate redemption with the
becoming male of the female entailed not a soteriology of marriage, nor even of
divorce, but a soteriology in which all otherness is `healed' (that is, removed). As Kurt

Rudolph put it,

The end of the cosmos does not simply signal the separation of two basically

opposing principles but results in the destruction of one of them.... The

impression is given that the situation at the end of time is not merely a bare

restoration of the primeval condition but that it surpassesit by the constantly

91Slromata, 6.12; cf. 1.3; 2.18; 7.12 passim; Paedogogos 1.6; 2.13; 3.10.
92 De Cultu Feminarunr, 1.2;
cf. Adversus Valentinianos, 32; De dlorzogamia, 5,17.
93AH 3.22.4; Gen. 1:27-8
94Gasparro, G. S., 'Image of God
and Sexual Differentiation in the Tradition of Enkrateia' in Borresen,
pp134-69.

71
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

repeated affirmation of the `destruction', `dissolution' and `tearing-out' of the

`root of darkness'. 95

In absolute contrast, Irenaeus' doctrine of the oLKOVOµia

OE06championed what was
almost certainly the greatest affirmation of `otherness' in the early Church, declaring

creation, femininity, relationship and marriage to be good in their manifestation of

harmonious difference (Isaiah 54: 5). Rather than allowing that our biological existence

as male or female is meaningless, indifferent or misleading, Irenaeus insisted that

man's external and objective form is a part of his created goodness and thus part of the

project of redemption. As the Son's eternal differentiation from the Father is good, so

creation, in its differentiation from God, is good; so too woman, in her created
differentiation from man, is good. Man's external form as male and female thus

proclaims a movement away from what is `not good', which is being alone. Man must
be united with God.
So we have arrived at a position in which we are able to examine the offspring

of this marriage. The question now is whether this mixed union of God and man would

produce gods or men.

95 Rudolph, K., Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism trans. Wilson, R. M. (San Francisco:
Harper, 1987), 202-3

72
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Deification and Hoininisation

Few terms in biblical studies seem to have generated so much heat without

corresponding light as the extraordinary Greek idiom 6 ui6S Tot &vOpSnou (usually

translated `the son of man', but literally `the son of the man'), derived from the Hebrew
Vlx-jý
TTT
(ZZ)» `lZ in the Aramaic of Daniel 7). As Tom Wright's anonymous Oxford

colleague put it: `Son of Man? Son of Man? That way lies madness.'96 Yet Jesus'
preferred term of self-reference in the gospels is also Irenaeus' preferred term of

reference for the incarnate one. Walter Wink notes

The issue of capitalization is relevant. Virtually all English versions of the

Bible read `the Son of man, ' not only omitting the second definite article, but

suggesting by capitalization that `Son' is the more significant noun. If we shift

the capital letter to the last term, as in `son of Man' or `the son of the Man, ' the

emphasis changes. The Gnostics tended towards this sense and pondered who
this Man 97
was, whose son was the world's savior.

Irenaeus was, as we have seen, necessarily bound up with this question in seeking to

provide an alternative to the dichotomous Christology of the Gnostics that envisaged

the son of the Man Urmensch, 98
"AvOpwrroq. Yet rather
as an avatar of the the atlcäv

than allowing any chasm to open within the one Lord Jesus Christ, Irenaeus envisaged

the Man from Ezekiel's throne-chariot himself becoming son of the Man, the EiKwv
GEoübecoming his image 99
Tob Kar' EdKÖVaioü EdKÖVOS
- own and offspring.
It is his understanding and use of this title, ö uiöc Tob &vOpu ou (used

exclusively by Irenaeus as a designation of Jesus as incarnate10°),that clarifies his

soteriology and, in particular, the question of his perceived doctrine of 9EOlrohrtoLS
(an

96Wright, N. T., Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 512
97 Wink, W., The Hunian Being: Jesus and the Enignna of the Son of the Man (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2002), 233; cf. AH 1.12.4
98AH 1.12.4; 1.30.13. Another myth (that of the Ophites and Sethians) held that the son of Anthropos
was yet another aiwv: `laldabaoth, becoming uplifted in spirit, boasted himself over all those things that
were below him, and exclaimed, "I am father, and God, and above me there is no one." But his mother,
hearing him speak thus, cried out against him, "Do not lie, Ialdabaoth: for the father of all, the first
Anthropos, is above thee; and so is Anthropos the son of Anthropos. "' (AH 1.30.6).
99AH3.12.1; 4.31.2; 4.33.2
ioo Cf. AH 3.10.2; 3.16.3,7; 3.17.1; 3.18.3-4; 3.19.1-3; 3.20.2; 3.22.1; 4.34.2; 5.14.1; 5.17.3; 5.22.1-3;
passim.

73
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

idiom Irenaeus never actually uses). Or, to re-phrase, if with the son of the Man we

were to ask "'[w]hat if you were to see the Human Being ascending to where he was

before? " (John 6: 62). What indeed? It is surely not an empty-handed return trip. i101 If

we might answer for Irenaeus, µrt yEVOLro. Instead, `our Lord Jesus Christ did, through
His transcendentlove, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He
is Himself. ' 102
has never been a Christian preserve. Indeed, Wilhelm Bousset sees
OEO1rooloLS
the theme in Adverstrs Haereses as an entirely alien, Hellenic accretion to Irenaeus'
103 In Irenaeus' day, in
gospel. many ways it was OEOnoittoLSor &iioOEcotS that bound

the empire together in the imperial cult. Some, such as Justin Martyr, were happy to
draw a straight comparison between the deification of Caesarand that of Christians:

you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to
heaven from the funeral pyre.... But, as we said above, wicked devils

perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who
have lived near to God in holiness and virtue. 104

However, the problem with such a straight comparison was that the imperial cult had
intentionally collapsed into narcissism. Any simple transposition would mean that, as
G. K. Chesterton shrewdly warned: `That Jones shall worship the "god within him"
turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.' los Such anthropotheism
to
sits closer the Protagoran throne of a Feuerbachor a Marx than to 106
Irenaeus.

101Wink, 249
102AH 5.pref; cf. 3.10.2; 2 Corinthians 8:9
103Bousset, 430ff
104I Ap. 21
105Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908), 76.
Developing the thought of Luther, Ringel elaborateson Chesterton's point somewhat more theologically,
if less succinctly: `The necessity of denying the divinity of humanity follows from the inclination in
human existence (an inclination not unknown to the unbeliever also) to ground and so to caricature
himself. `Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does
not want God to be God.' The possibility of denying the divinity of humanity follows from the humanity
of God as it took place in JesusChrist. To let God be human in JesusChrist, and for this reason not to let
humanity become God: this is the anthropological task' (JUngel, E., Theological EssaysI trans. and ed.,
J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 152, original italics, citing Luther, Disputation Against
Scholastic Theology, LJV31,10)
106Moltmann pertinently describes Feuerbach's rejection of a theistic God as just such a transference
of
power from God to man: `God is man come to himself, and man himself is God. In that case God and
man are no longer separatedand alienated from each other in religious terms, but are one being. This
antitheistic atheism leads unavoidably to anthropotheism, to the divinisation of man.... If for this
atheism `man is finally man's God', this may be morally fine as an ideal in face of a situation where man
is man's wolf. But a century's experience with such anthropotheism has shown that even these human
deities can become man's wolf.... In the enthusiasm of their religious inheritance, the anthropotheists of

74
 The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Yet, on the basis of his Christology, Irenaeus was able to conceive of an

economy that did entail `promotion into God', and yet avoided the narcissism the

Gnostics so effortlessly seemed to stumble into. Given his particular allegiance to John

6 OE6,oyoc, it is unsurprising to see Irenaeus turn here to John 10:33-6 where Jesus cites

Psalm 82: 6-7 (`I said, "You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High. But you will

die like mere men"'). Yet his application of the verses is somewhat different to

Justin's. Justin had looked primarily to the fall, seeing that

the Holy Ghost reproaches men because they were made like God, free from

suffering and death, provided that they kept His commandments, and were
deemed deserving of the name of His sons, and yet they, becoming like Adam

Eve, death for themselves. 107

and work out

Irenaeus, however, had a more teleological vision: Adam, in his original formation, was
let God. 108 Yet, through the proper maturing process of the
not yet even a man, alone

economy that the incarnation of Jesus Christ effected, that weak plasma would become

Dei. 109
capax
At one level, this salvation can simply be seen as the bestowal of a0avaaia, and

freedom from both death 110 This be with the broader

so and sin. would consonant

cultural conception of the essence of being

OEoTroitloLS the bestowal of &Qavaoia. The

Hellenic world could admit the relatively easy &1roOECwaLS

of its heroes because the gods

were little more than those simply characterised as `the immortals', and nothing more

. than that immortality formally distinguished them from men. Yet immediately a

problem is encountered on so monochrome a reading, for Irenaeus will not allow for

there to be any such freedom outside of the life of God. Indeed, `immortality is the

the One'. "1 If is

OEOnohloLS to be to &Oavaaia, such
glory of uncreated simply reduced

would be a curse: to be `like one of us' outside of the divine community, to be god

outside of God. This was precisely Adam's problem, in that he, the one Kar' EtKÖVa

had
Toü EdKÖvoc, lusted to be God himself outside the parameters of the EtKCäv, to be

modern times from Feuerbach to Rilke, from Marx to Bloch, have overlooked the dark side of evil in
man and the problem of suffering in the world. ' (Moltmann, J., The Crucified God (London: SCM,
1974), 251-2).
107Dial. 124
10' Quemadmodum igitur
erit Deus, qui nonduun factus est homo? AH 4.39.2
109AH 3.19.1; 4.38.4; 5.32.1
110Cf. AH 1.10.1; 2.20.3; 3.6.1; 3.18.7; 3.19.1; 3.23.7; 4.38.4; 5.21.3
111AH4.38.3

75
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

mature outside of the One who would bring flesh from infancy to maturity. In

proclaiming their own autonomous deity, Simon Magus, Menander and Epiphanes had
inherited father's hubristic be like Most High. 112
simply their common passion to the
Instead, &Oavaoia is that life of man which is obtained by and consists in

beholding and knowing God. To be immortal is to partake of the divine nature (capere

Dewn). 113 In fact, not only is it the case that `the beholding of God is productive of
immortality, but immortality renders one nigh unto God. '114 This might be said to be
the true Gnosticism as against those who are only `falsely-called Gnostics': ii yvc:ýatS

Oeot, ijric ýv & 9apoia. 115

toü uioü toi
In place of an Hellenic ontology of static substances, Irenaeus envisaged

redemption involving a dynamic of inter-relationships - the plasma constituted in

creation by relation to God being led into `fellowship and unity with God' (for this

reason, `deification' is perhaps to be preferred to the more ontologically questionable

`divinisation'). 116 In particular, `ascension into God' is equivalent to the gift of

adoption in the Son so that those who are saved ascend through the Spirit to the Son,
through the Son to the Father. 17 Thus, `there is none other called God by the
and
Scriptures except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption. '1 8

After all, the Psalmist had equated being `God' or `gods' with being `sons of the Most

High'. Through the incarnation of the Spirit-anointed Man, the plasma of Adam had

been taken into the ELKcv and imbued with the ÖµoLWoLS. Through this divine
fellowship, now enjoying and displaying the image and likeness of God, the plasma of

Adam might approximate to the uncreated One and be said to have started the ascent
into God. This is the goal of man's original creation, created in the image and after the

likeness of God. Nov man can be truly like God, after the model of Jesus Christ.

The difficulty - whether real or only apparent - with many &1To9EWOLS

doctrines,,
is the constant danger of a mysticism or idealism that marginalises or annihilates
humanity. This can be perceived in the Doxastikon at the Praises, to be recited by the

Orthodox at the Feast of the Annunciation:

112Cf. AH 1.23; 2.9.2

113AH 4.20.6-7; 5.32.1
114AH 4.38.3; cf. 4.20.5
115AH 1.11.1; 3.10.3; 4.6.4; 4.35.1; 5.26.2; 4.36.7; cf. 1.21.4; Harnack 2,292,
n3; Clement, Stranata,
4.21.
116AH4.13.1; cf. Justin, I Ap. 10
117AH 3.19.1; 5.36.2; cf. 3.6.1; 3.18.7; 4.33.4
118AH4. prcf. 4; cf. 3.6.1; 3.10.2; 3.19.1; 4.33.4; 4.41.2-3

76
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

Adam of old was deceived:

wanting to be God he failed to be God.

God becomes man,

So He can make Adam god.

If this is only an instance of using potentially misleading terminology (terminology

which Irenaeus is happy to use in speaking of men becoming `God' or `gods'), Gregory

of Nyssa shows the reality of the danger in seeing OEOnoifoLc as the process of
becoming wholly other:

that lowly nature, I say, by virtue of its combination with the infinite and
boundless element of good, remained no longer in its own measures and

properties, but was by the Right Hand of God raised up together with Itself,

and became Lord instead of servant, Christ a King instead of a subject, Highest
instead of Lowly, God instead of man (&vti, &vOpwiou OE6c)»9

Such a soteriology of metamorphosis we should not find surprising in a theologian who

the doctrine 120

ä1Tav5p0oµ0CL. If salvation for him did necessarily entail the
espoused of

stripping away or dissolution of otherness (such as femininity), then man must

necessarily be replaced with God. Yet &iro9EwotS, for Irenaeus, entailed as little an

absurd transmogrification as incarnation had been. His growth motif, and the doctrine
of the one Lord Jesus Christ, forbid the possibility of a salvation that is an ontological

metamorphosis from the water of humanity into the wine of deity. So contrary is his

eschatological objective to any pseudo-spiritual escapism that he is able to refer that

is 12'
exact same augmentation of men that redemption to the entire COSMOS. This is

119Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius 5.3. It is the understandable if, as it

- will turn out, unnecessary
- fear of this view of 6EOiroirloicthat Douglas Farrow voices: `Irenaeus was interpreted as teaching what
quickly became the central motif of eastern theology: "God became man that man might become God."
Behind that dictum which does not properly represent his view of things, stands the opposition between
Creator and creature that he was fighting in the Gnostics - an opposition that can only be resolved by
collapsing the space between the two' (Farrow, D., `St. Irenacus of Lyons: The Church and the World. '
Pro Ecclesia 4.3, Summer 1995,341). It was a similar fear that drove Dietrich Ritschl, who, uneasily
aware of the similarity of much deification theology to the Platonic ideal of the `deification' of the soul
by elevation to the perception of ideas, expressedthe hope that the 'deification concept of the `best part'
of the Greek theological tradition is a doxological and not an ontological concept.' (Ritschl, D., Memory
and Hope: An Inquiry Concerning the Presenceof Christ (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 95; cf. 93)
120Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation Alan, 16f.
of
121Irrationabiles igitur
omin modo, qui non expectant tempus augmenti, AH 4.38.4; aiSet icai ouviotatat
h Ti)c oapth ýpCjv ütröotaatc (augetur et consistit carnis nostra substantia), 5.2.3; Quoniam creatur
on: nis secundumn vole taten: ad incrementtmr erlt, 5.34.2.

77
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

possible because the anointing of Christ with the Spirit is an anointing that effects the
of all creation: `He was named Christ, because through Him the Father
spiritualisation
' 122 Yet, as seen above, this is not a spiritualisation that
anointed and adorned all things.

can be understood as the ushering in of a disembodied beatific vision whilst all

creatureliness is effectively dissolved. Where the corrupted superficial appearance

(oXfµa) of the world will pass away, its substance or essence (ünöoraoLc, da(a) will

is faithful. 123 That `increase'

remain, as God of the flesh by the Spirit will be
appreciated by all creation to such a degree that, as he sees Isaiah prophesying, `the lion

shall feed on straw. And this indicates the large size and rich quality of the fruits. For
if that animal, the lion, feeds upon straw, of what quality must the wheat itself be

food for lions? ' 124

whose straw shall serve as suitable
Yet in what sense could this be termed OEOnoirlaLS?
Irenaeus is emphatic in
making the connection between this augmentation and a TEXEiWOLS
which is, through
the knowledge of good and evil, the ascent from being men to being God or gods.
This, then, is the TO.EiWoLSIrenaeus imagined: Man had become the son of the Man,

made for a little while lower than the gods, not in order to eradicate and replace men
(as Apollinarius might be found guilty of suggesting), but to bring men to the goal for

which they had been formed; to be sons of God in the fellowship of the divine nature,

enjoyed as the image and likeness of God. More than simply being given the hope of a
divine sentence of `not guilty' or a beatific vision, through the maturing work of

redemption, &vOpwuoc 1IJUXLK6v was brought to enjoy the image and likeness of God -
to be loved by the Father through the Son in the eternal fellowship of the Spirit. So

man's creation in the image and after the likeness reaches its objective when man
begins to participate in the being of God, sharing in the Triune life of God. So the

work of God's `hands' would be accomplished in the divine community's expression,

and extension of itself. Concerning this promise of the gospel, Robert Jenson writes:

It is the fact of God's Trinity which requires that his concluding gift to us,
should he make one, must be inclusion in his own life, the gift not of

something other than God but of "all he is. " The triune God does not and
indeed cannot beneficently affect us causally; for him, causal action, with its

intrinsic distancing, would mean exclusion from himself and so cursing rather

122Dem. 53
'23AH 5.36.1, citing I Cor. 7:31; Psa. 102:25-8; Isa. 51:6.
124AH 5.33.4; cf. Isa. 11:7; 5.33.3; Frag. 4.

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

than blessing. The goal of all the biblical God's ways is the glory of God.

Were an otherwise biblical God - contrary of course to possibility - monadic,

his intention of his own glory would be a sort of omnipotent egocentricity, and

the reality of God would be a universal moral disaster. But God's glorification
himself is supreme blessing because the triune God can and does include
of
in that glory. '25
creatures

Irenaeus would heartily concur, adding only to specify that `the glory of God is a living

man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. ' This is what Irenaeus saw as the

fellowship of divine glory with which the son of the Man is crowned in his exaltation:

that "`wheresoever the body is, there shall also the eagles be gathered together, "
given
do in the glory of the Lord, who has both formed us, and prepared us for
we participate
His ' 126
this, that, when we are with Him, we may partake of glory.
That the created partakers of the divine glory could be called `God' or `gods'

implied as much an abrogation of their originally designated humanity as the divinity of

the true man might. 127 Quite the contrary. This is simply the perfection of man's

creation in the image of God so that he might be like God. Just as the coming of God

to men involved no loss of deity, so the corresponding coming of men to God involves

no loss of their humanity. Quite as easily they could be called `sons of God', `tnie

'men'. 128
men', or simply

Man does not give up his existence as man and take upon himself a different

existence, viz. God's existence, while his human part disappears.... When
Irenaeus represents the idea of a `deification' of man, this `deification'
`becoming man'. 129
coincides with man's

For this reason it is unsurprising that Irenaeus does not describe this process with the

potentially confusing word OEOnoirloLS. It is scarcely possible to imagine Irenaeus

conceiving the sort of divine distension that would entail God's acquisition of a myriad

125Jenson,311, italics original

126AH4.14.1, citing Matt. 24:28
127There is another similarity to be found here to Apollinaris, who held that flesh, having been united
with divine Spirit, could properly be called 'God' (Frag. 147, cf. Prestige, G. L. Fathers and Heretics.
The Bampton Lectures, 1940 (London: SPCK, 1940), 108).
'Z$AH 5.36.1. Commenting on this theme in its later historical context, John Meyendorff suggests `Man
is not fully man unless he is in communion with God' (Meyendorff, J., The Byzantine Legacy in the
Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1982), 188).
129`Vingren, 209-10

79
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 2 What is Man?

of other `hands'. Then, when he speaks of men `rising above the angels', he is not

imagining something superhuman, but entirely human, given that Adam, even as an
lord 130 It is
infant, was secretly established as over the angels. wholly proper that man

should, having been for a while under the heavenly host, be crowned above them. Any

that entailed a loss of manhood would be akin to the Gnostic

doctrine of AEOTroirjoLS

escapism that resulted from the lack of Irenaeus' under-girding doctrine of the true

man, the one Lord Jesus Christ. Such were the theologies, far removed from Irenaeus'

thinking, that led to an Encratite aspiration to permanent celibacy: Christ became flesh

that flesh might be removed or become something wholly other and relinquish its

natural state. Instead of flesh being superseded by Spirit, Irenaeus saw that by

assuming the flesh of his creation the Son of God `caused man to cleave to and to
become one with God' such that he might `vin back to God that man which had

departed from God' 131 This was the goal he saw Paul referring to in I Corinthians as,
.
far from condemning marriage, he sought to protect its sanctity: EaovTaL yäp, ý110iv, of

6 WVEVOc
5o Etc o&pI« [AL°N. SE KoXý. EV 132
EQTLV.
t4 KupCc TIVE13
tc

to the plasma of flesh, the head

In the marriage of ävOpwnocnvEUµatLKÖV

remained the head and the body remained the body, only now united in marital
harmony. In other words, for the arch-adversary of the Gnostics, deification is not the

antithesis to, but the reality of, hominisation. God, after all, has not left man dead, but

him to the feast

raised up enjoy marriage - so man still exists, only now as one with
God. For, when Irenaeus writes of Jesus Christ becoming what we are, `that He might
bring us to be even what He is Himself' to what would he be bringing us? Within the

economy that Irenaeus describes, the answer could only be that Jesus Christ had taken

and perfected the plasma of Adam such that Adam, in Christ, might be homo hunzanus.
If to be Man, for Irenaeus, is to be God the Son as he is loved by God the Father in God

the Spirit, then deification is the process of being united to that Man, and so to being
loved by the Father in the eternal fellowship of the Spirit. If incarnation was not

EvavOpWirrjotcfor Christ, it was for Adam. Then that word which constituted the being

of the protoplastus is fulfilled: `Let us make man in our Image. '

130AH 5.36.3; Dent. 11-2,16

131AH 3.18.7; 3.10.2
132`For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." But he who unites himself with the Lord is one
spirit. ' (I Corinthians 6: 16-17).

80
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

3
When is Man?

We have seen already that Irenaeus' philippic against the Gnostics can not helpfully be

categorised as a lexicon of heresies or even an elenctic catalogue of dogmas. In

contrast, in the Adversus Haereses, we are presented with a polemical biography of

man - one who is, essentially, the `time being' - and his relations with the one God.
Thus, something more like a Pilgrim's Progress than a Summa Theologiae was to be

the weapon with which the Gnostic mythology of all-determining, atemporal akWVLOL
would be fought. This being the case, it would be a decidedly unbalanced enterprise

that undertook to analyse Irenaeus' charting of the oiKovoµia ävOpcinou without asking
`whet is man? '.

81
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Redeeming Time

What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him

I know '
who asks, not.

The aporia of time is never discretely examined in the extant literature of the second

century. That is not to say, however, that it did not serve both to inform and reveal the

nature of Gnostic mythology and soteriology, and Irenaeus' dynamic response equally.
Here, as elsewhere, Gnosticism found deep roots in that mature Hellenic thinking

which had found a way to accommodate something of both the Eleatic denial of true

temporality and the observable phenomenon of Heraclitus: Irävta PEEL. In particular,

this entailed a debt to the Aristotelian conception of a dual cosmos in which the

revolving, superluminary spheres of unchanging aether dictated the existence of the

subluminary world. This debt was particularly unsurprising for Valentinus in

Alexandria, where his contemporary Claudius Ptolemaeus was ironing out some of the

observable discrepancies in the Aristotelian system. It should not be thought, as is so

often the case, that the model's geocentrism was the result of an anthropocentrism that
Irenaeus would have shared. Where Irenaeus would undoubtedly have been geocentrist
for just such reasons, the Aristotelian system envisaged an ontological hierarchy; in

rising from the earth above the luminaries, change and corruptibility were replaced with

eternality and divinity until, behind all the heavenly spheres, the sphere of the primtun

mobile, the unmoved mover, was reached. Within that model, the change so apparent
as characteristic of the world was considered to reveal its inherently inferior ontology,

allowing events on earth to recede into the shadows of the primary significance of the,

revolving heavens. The only way for such being to be accommodated would be in

repetition and circularity - an idea often represented by the ourobouros, a snake biting
its own tail - the closest representation mere materiality could make of the absolute

immobility at the hub of all true being. 2 Thus there could be no real protology or

1Augustine, ConfessionsXI. 14.17

2 Plato, Timaeus, 37c-38a. In the ancient Greek Pantheon, Xpövoc, the self-formed rrpcartyovoc of time
who encircled the universe, driving the rotation of the heavens and the eternal passage of time, was
serpentine in form. It was he who, with his mate, the serpentine 'AväyKrl (Inevitability), entwined the
world-egg in their coils and split it apart, forming the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. For the
Ophites or Naasenes in particular, the serpent held a particular significance as being their good genius
(hence their name, derived from the Greek ö4t or Hebrew WM) for serpent). In intriguing harmony with
the Cainites, the Ophite-Naasenes held that the serpent was not the agent provocateur of the fall, but

82
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

eschatology, but instead the revelation of the perfection of that hub in the uniform

revolutions of the stars circling above in the orderly heavens. Where once the cosmic

order expressed in such endless repetition inspired awe, increasingly existence under
the stars came to be seen as the experience of a slavery of endless reincarnations to a
fate sealed in the heavens, as the heavenly bodies or a'pXovtEc- and so, with them, all

existence under their influence - came to be seen as more diabolical than divine. The
heavenly revolutions began to look increasingly less like the beautiful dance of the
like the crushing turns of a millstone. 3 Time could only
carmen universitatis and more
serve as the arena the prison house for such bondage, or be experienced as
- -
degeneration. (It has to be said that in many ways little here is different from the

modem conception of time other than the replacement of the heavenly &pXovtESwith
the revolutions of the hands on a clock. The reign of the clock, or, what Robert Banks
has termed the `tyranny of time', seems to have turned equally sour in having seen the

evolution of a society characterised by a pressurised timelessness in which time

4) Here
remains only a prison or millstone. was a fate worse than that Hobbes was later
to imagine: life would be nasty, poor, solitary, brutish and, not mercifully short, but

repeated. Oscar Cullmann expresses it thus:

Becausein Greek thought time is not conceived as an upward sloping line with
beginning and end, but rather as a circle, the fact that man is bound to time

must here be experiencedas an enslavement,as a curse. Time moves about in

the eternal circular course in which everything keeps recurring. That is why
the philosophical thinking of the Greek world labours with the problem of

(perhaps even the definitive) partaker of the divine nature. Its inherent immortality was expressedby its
holding of its tail in its mouth, consuming and entering into itself, shedding and renewing its skin, and
so, Phoenix-like, rejuvenating.
3 Cf. Dc Santillana
and von Dechend's use of this image, originally from Trimalchio in Petronius
(Satyricon 39), De Santillana, G., and von Dechend, H., Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the
Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission through Myth (Boston: Nonpareil, 1977), 138. J. R.
R. Tolkein is the most eloquent exponent of this anti-sphericism in his relation of the history of Middle-
earth and the history of its spherical rings. Aware that the globe is the spatial complement to
Hellenism's temporal image of circular time, he describes the bending of the world into a ring-like orb as
a curse on man's sin, trapping him, like Adam and Eve, east of paradise: `Men may sail now West, if
they will, as far as they may, and come no nearer to Valinor or the Blessed Realm, but return only into
the east and so back again; for the world is round, and finite, and a circle inescapable - save by death.
Only the 'immortals', the lingering Elves, may still if they will, wearying of the circle of the world, take
ship and find the `straight way', and come to the ancient or True West, and be at peace. ' ('From a letter
by J. R. R. Tolkein to Milton Waldman, 1951' in The Sibxarillion, 2nd edn., ed. Christopher Tolkein
(London: HarperCollins, 1999), xxviii; cf. `Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age', 366)
4 Banks, R. J., The Tyranny of Tinte (Eugene, OR.. Wipf & Stock, 1997)

83
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

time. But that is also why all Greek striving for redemption seeks as its goal to
be freed from this eternal circular course and thus to be freed from time itself. 5

Such a cyclical conception of time has been far from confined to classical
Hellenism. Instead, it can be seenas an ever recurrent mode. Irenaeus' description of
the Marcosian understanding of the relation of eternity to temporality bears an almost
total resemblanceto Hellenistic dualism:

In addition to these things, they declare that the Demiurge, desiring to imitate

the infinitude, and eternity, and immensity, and freedom from all measurement
by time of the Ogdoad above, but, as he was the fruit of defect, being unable to

express its permanence and eternity, had recourse to the expedient of spreading

out its eternity into times, and seasons, and vast numbers of years, imagining,

that by the multitude of such times he might imitate its immensity. They

declare further, that the truth having escaped him, he followed that which was
false, and that, for this reason, when the times are fulfilled, his work shall
6
perish.

Temporality, for Gnosticism, being the corrupt and disposable imitation of eternity, it is

unsurprising to find again evidence of a circular view of time. Thus Simon Magus and
Carpocrates are just two named as notable advocates of the doctrine of the
7
transmigration of souls. Only in such perpetual reiteration could the Gnostic live the
horoscopic life of the zodiac and so attest to celestial reality. A doctrine could not be

found to contrast more starkly with what Irenaeus perceived to be the cosmic goal of

resurrection than that of metempsychosis. One described the final destiny and goal of,

the body; the other spoke of a never ending return and re-imprisonment of the soul.
That being the case, it might be said that the entire shape, not just of the chronology,
but of the soteriology and cosmology of Gnostic thought as a whole was cyclical.

Dietrich Ritschl has suggested that Gnosticism

is to be defined from the standpoint of theology as the concept of a movement

of the saviour, the Logos or the heavenly man from the highest God down into
5 Cullmann, 0., Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History (London:
SCM, 1951), 52
6AH 1.17.2; cf. Tinzaeus37c-38c
7AH 1.23.2-3; 25.4

84
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

the region of human perception and back to its place of origin.... The

movement of the saviour is a circle, the journey of the redeemer from God

down to earth and home to God. B

Ritschl himself feels that Irenaeus, with his description of the descent of the heavenly
his God, fell into that framework. 9 However,
man and return to effectively as we shall

see, this seems to be an inadequate and truncated reading of Irenaeus in that it entirely
fails to take account of his optimistic teleology. Far from being the dupe of his own

antagonists, Irenaeus showed himself to be keenly aware of the influence of Hellenic

cosmology, even seeing how it managed to colonise beyond the borders of receptive
Gnosticism, gaining territory even within the very heartland of orthodoxy. For

instance, Plato's thought in the Timaeus of the heavenly revolutions being an imitation

of eternity was probably not far from Augustine's mind when he spoke of them as the

carmen universitatis. It is hardly surprising, then, when it is to Augustine's adaptation

of Platonic chronology that Robert Jenson points in giving an aetiology of the Western

impasse over time:

what Augustine seems at bottom to have assumed is the Platonic picture of the
turning wheel of time with the geometric still point of eternity at its centre. As

a Christian he could not be content with this picture; he cut the circle and

stretched it out as a line, to model the biblical understanding of reality as

history. But he continued to think of. the point of eternity as equidistant from

all temporal points. Many puzzles within Western discourse about time result
from this oxymoronic root metaphor, of a point perpendicular to a straight line

from it. 10
yet equidistant all points on

Cyclical chronology corresponds to what Ritschl thought he could detect in

Irenaeus, which is Mircea Eliade's `myth of the eternal return' seen in every
11 And indeed, the development
restorationist soteriology. and codification of the

8 Ritschl, D., Memory and Hope: An Inquiry Concerning the Presence of Christ (New York: Macmillan,
1967), 79, italics original.
9 Ritschl, 82
10Jenson, R. W., Systematic Theology Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 32
11 Eliade, M., The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Trask, W. R. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1971). Moltmann picks this up when he asks: `Did Thomas Aquinas mean anything different
when he said: "The end of things corresponds to their beginning: after all, God is the beginning and end
of all things. Therefore the emergence of things from their beginning corresponds to their return to their

85
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

liturgical calendar since seems to have worked most effectively in remoulding the
Church's teleological movement and hope into an enjoyment of `the ever-circling

years' when `comes round the age of gold'. On such a model, eschatological hope

becomes at the very best a simple return to Eden, which hope, as we have already seen,

the bishop of Lyons never shares.

However, that said, it would be too crude to describe Gnosticism as mere

second-hand Hellenism (of whatever sort) for the masses. Whilst without any doubt

there was a great deal of overlap and continuity between the two, that overlap does not

stretch so far that the Gnostic aicSvLoL can be seen simply as reincarnations of
Hellenism's celestial äpxovTES. For instance, it would not have been entirely true to say

that for the Gnostic, history is bunk. 12 Gnostic thought envisaged neither pure

temporality nor pure atemporality but a mythological thinking that straddled and

incorporated both. Thus, whilst the world remains little more than a stage on which

mythical events in the Mllpwµa are acted out, individuals can and do lay claim to be

one of the aiuivloL, or appropriate their work spiritually (by which is meant internally

and unobservably), allowing the claim that for them, the resurrection had already taken

place (2 Tim. 2: 18). Yet still, `Gnostic time is only the consequence and reflection of
the adventures or conflict of transcendent realities, an episodic copy of an atemporal

tragedy, and the Gnostic's effort is to transcend time in order to establish himself. 'i3
Effectively it thus remains for the Gnostic that man in time is very much the passive

object or shadow of any moment of spiritual significance, and far from being the very

locus of such a moment, as in Irenaeus' thought.

Oscar Cullmann notes, `no theologian of antiquity grasped so clearly as did

Irenaeus the radical opposition which emergesbetween Greek and Biblical thinking as
to this point, namely, the question of the conception of time. ' 14 Without doubt, in place

of the Gnostic vision of a supra-temporaldrama, Irenaeusposited a supremely temporal

soteriology. 15 However, Cullmann understands the contrast between Irenaean and

end"? At all events, for Aquinas time has a symmetrical, circular structure.' (Moltmann, J., Science and
Wisdom, trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM, 2003), 99), 35, quoting Summa Theologice, la 90.3). In place
of Aquinas' restorationism (a circularity he seesas deeply insidious elsewhere, such as in the theology of
Bultmann), Moltmann posits creation as an open system. It is by no means necessary, however, that
Irenaeus need have proposed the same alternative beforetime. For the bishop, the project is one of
orchestrated growth.
12AH 1.5.6; cf. the mythopoeism of Ptolemy in particular.
13 Henri-Charles Puech, 'Gnosis and Time' in Man and Time: Papers fron: the Erartos Yearbooks
(Pantheon: New York, 1957), 83
14Cullmann, 57
15In order to understand Harnack's difficulty in accommodating the breadth and ontological reality of
Irenacus' scheme of redemption, it is worth noting the similarity of a gospel of mere ethics to such supra-

86
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Aristotelian cosmology to consist simply of an entirely linear chronology replacing the

16 In fact, he holds that for Irenacus `the line runs on in so straight a
cyclical model.

course that the break which resulted from the fall into sin is not sufficiently taken into

' 17 Thus, is the shape of redemptive history in Irenaeus'

account. so rectilinear

chronology that the scheme ultimately collapses under its own weight. Yet, whilst it

will be necessary to return later to the serious charge that Irenaeus ironed out the Fall

so as not to wrinkle his chronology, for the moment we can note that a number of

factors should warn us against this minimalist reading. Two in particular are worth

mentioning here: first, a purely linear reading of Irenaeus' chronology is liable to

ignore the crucial double theme in the Adversus Haereses - and indeed, the
Demonstration - of maturation and & aKEýaAai)GLS. Where, in such a reading, could

Irenaeus find the `space' for the novum of the incarnation? Also, Irenaeus' ontology

never disappears down into the solipsistic hole that is the constant danger of entirely
linear chronologies, in which the present constitutes the only reality. After all, the

bishop is a far cry from the modern replacement of order and cosmos with a history that

is no more than `one damn thing after another'.

Peter Forster offers a more refined alternative to Cullmann's reading, in which a

second level of time is superimposed upon the simple linear level. Thus, he says, `we

might describe Irenaeus' understanding of time as comprising two aspects: fallen,

linear time, which is redeemed, and the redeemed time of the incarnate Christ, by

it is being "8 Certainly this evaluation is more sensitive to Irenaeus'

which redeemed.

concern that the oiicovoµia entail an anthropological and cosmic augmentation that is
the product of the incarnation. However, there is need for caution concerning such an

interpretation. Gustaf Wingren notes that recapitulation means

the accomplishment of God's plan of salvation, and this accomplishment is

within history, in a time sequence,and is not an episode at one particular point

temporal redemption (Harnack, A., The History of Dogma trans. N. Buchanan (London: Williams &
Norgate, 1897), cf. esp. Vol. 2, p230ff. ).
16Cullmann, 0., The Christology of the New Testament(London: SCM, 1959), 190. This interpretation
is almost certainly what led Frend to hold the same view (Frond, W. H. C., The Rise of Christianity
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 245).
17Cullmann, 0., Christ
and Time, 57
1$ Forster, P. R., God
and the World in Saint Irenaeus: Theological Perspectives (PhD: Edinburgh,
1985), 140. Douglas Farrow comments on this, that `we are not to think in terms of a Christological
nunc stars as a counterpoint to linear progress, but of a pneumatological intersection of times, where
time itself is understood as a function of personal existence, and personal existence as a function of
communion with God through co-humanity with Christ. ' (Farrow, D., Ascension and Ecclesia: On the
Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1999), 65, n92).

87
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

of time. It is a continuous process in which the otKovoµi.a, dispositio, of God is

by 19
manifested

The notion of a double-decker chronology smacks too much of the very Aristotelian

and Gnostic cosmologies Irenaeus was seeking to eradicate. It is quite possible to

appeal again to Ritschl's assertion that it was precisely here, in his chronology, that
Irenaeus showed most clearly the effects of having imbibed the Gnostic poison. Yet,

precisely in opposition to the Aristotelian twofold system consisting of immutable

heavens and a mutable earth, it was a great part of Irenaeus' genius to do for theology

what Newton was later to do for science in opposition to the Aristotelian scholasticism

of his day: to demonstrate that the cosmos does not consist of two discrete systems but

one creation, a universe. There is no hypertime or metatime - whether that be

Christologically understood or not - to intersect with the time experienced by the fallen
20
creation.
In drawing the perhaps surprising and unlikely comparison between Irenaeus

and Newton at this point, it is worth pausing to resolve a potential misunderstanding.

Max Jammer has traced the influence of pantheistic elements within the cabala on

Newton's concept of absolute space and time, and it is certainly the case that before

such absolutes faced their Götterdämmerung in relativity theory, Euclidean and

Newtonian cosmology attributed to space and time all the hallmarks of classically
divinity. 21 It
conceived should not, of course, be thought that with the demise of those

systems such attributes have also been removed, despite relativity's general acceptance

as a norm even outside the boundaries of the philosophy of science. It was the

supposed indivisibility of Democritus' ätoµoS ('that which cannot be cut'22) that had

given it the quality of eternality, and so of deity, such that its splitting was a true
Götterdämmerung. As soon as the universe is considered to be infinite, it assumes the

19 Wingren, G., Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (Edinburgh
& London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 81
20Cf. Williams, D. C., `The Myth of Passage', in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 48, Issue 15 (Jul. 19,
1951), 457-472. Here Cullmann is closer to the mark when he states that what can be found in Irenaeus
is the same as that found in the New Testament, where `it is not time and eternity that stand opposed, but
limited time and unlimited, endless time. ' (Christ and Tinte, 46). This, of course, necessarily (and, it
would seem,correctly) readsthe phrase tob; at@vasin Heb 1:2 as cognate with icöoµot.
21 Jammer, M., Concepts
of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1969), 95ff. The connection or identification between God and space had
been derived in particular from the use of D1pt? as a divine name in first century Palestinian Judaism (cf.
Jammer, 28ff). Cf. Hawking, S. W., A Brief History of Time: Fron: the Big Bang to Black Holes
(London: Bantam, 1988), 18.
22 Cf. I Cor. 15:52, where Paul speaks of the äropoc as
constitutive of the boundary (or bridgehead)
between this age and the one to come.

88
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

quality of the äzoµoc. And, indeed, the historic connection between such atomic theory

and the infinity of the universe can be seen in such figures as the sixteenth century
disciple of Lucretius, Giordano Bruno, in his dialogue De 1'irfnito univero e niondi.
Yet Democritus' eternal atoms have all too easily been replaced by eternal physical
laws such that, with Spinoza, Stephen Hawking can maintain that such laws are all a

`creative deity' would need.23 The consequent effect was described by Pascal, who,

when faced with such cold divinity in the heavens, could no longer ask `what is man
that you are mindful of him? ', but instead wrote `The eternal silence of these infinite

spaces frightens me. '24 If Schopenhauer was right in calling pantheism merely a polite
form of atheism, the ultimate result is that, with God absent (or absented) from his

space, there was literally left behind save a cosmic agoraphobia, or what
`nothing'
Moltmann describes as horror vacui, the terror of space.25

The question for us now, then, is: would the denial of any dual chronology -
time and hypertime, or fallen time and redeemed time - leave Irenaeus in an equivalent

pantheism, time having assumed all the attributes of absoluteness? Perhaps, as seen

above, Irenaeus' antagonism to the Epicurean tenets of Gnosticism (Epicurus being

perhaps the foremost classical proponent of Democritus' eternal atom theory) should

allay our fears somewhat. Yet Richard Norris and Eric Osborn are amongst those who
have felt that Irenaeus has - wittingly or unwittingly - stumbled into just such a
26 The
cosmology. reason for this lies, to a large extent, in his willingness - and indeed

eagerness - to employ the historic formula shared by the Valentinian Gnostics in which
the God who is the flXi pwpa is described as containing or enclosing (Xwpc.
6v) all things,
being (aX(Lpr by 7 Thus `the entire universe is
whilst contained or enclosed toc) none.

within Him', whilst God simultaneously fills all things, inhering that creation
28 In
completely. an age when the domination of the mechanical clock - the latest
incarnation of chronometry to assume and reinforce the cyclical conception of time
-
has effectively managed to abstract and objectify time, perhaps it is harder to see that

23 Hawking, 12,174; cf. Spinoza, B., Ethics, trans. Elves, R. H. M. (London: George Bell & Sons,
1891), i, appendix.
24Pascal, B., The Pensees,translated by J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1961), 206
25Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 125
26 Norris, R. A., God
and World in Early Christian Theology: A Study in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus,
Tertullian and Origen (New York; Scabury, 1965), 86; Osborn, E., Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge:
CUP, 2001), 35.
27 Dem. 4
28 Cf. AH 1.1.1; 2.1.2; 2.12.7; 2.30.9; 2.35.3; 3.4.2; 5.18.3; Dem. 4;
cf. Schoedel, W. R., `Enclosing, Not
Enclosed: The Early Christian Doctrine of God', in Early Christian Literature and the Classical
Intellectual Tradition: In Honorem Robert Al Grant; eds. Schoedel, W. R., & Wilken, R. L., (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983), 77f.

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

the formula xwpwv Kai. aXwptltoc never implied any pantheistic absoluteness of time. It
is the case, though, that at no point does Irenaeus grant any such independent ontology

to time upon which such an attribute could be built. With so robust a Christology

(within which his pneumatology must also be accounted for), Irenaeus was enabled

successfully to tread the line between a divorce of God from the world and the

pantheism that annihilates all that is other from God (and, according to Schopenhauer,

eventually annihilates God himself). In the place of annihilation or divorce he posited a

Christologically effected marriage of the two: there is both God and contingent, created
being; both that which contains and that which is contained; that which inheres and that

which is inhered.
It appears that we have begun to leave the question of time and trespassupon
the matter of space. Yet is this a real trespass for Irenaeus? Or is it the case that he is

consistent enough to posit a continuum between time and space? We must agree with

ýv Kai axw'p-qtoc) is illuminative

the latter, and so agree that his account of space (X(Opc;

of his account of time. It is because all things are contained by God that Irenaeus can
be so optimistic. Space is the stage for that time in which the drama of redemption can

take place, and, being contained by God, it is a drama that, from beginning to end, takes

place within his sway. For all the progress he posits within his chronology, there is
simply not the space for an open process.
To return to the question of Irenaeus' chronology proper, it appears that in order

to appreciate and correctly apprehend his notion of time, there is a need to be sensitive

to the dangers of the Aristotelianism that ever lurked behind his Gnostic opponents,

whilst at the same time, with Forster, taking account of his concern for an oiKOvoµia

marked by growth. If, with Cullmann, we might be allowed to depict time in spatial

terms, what then appears is a single chronology shaped by &VaKEXXXaiwOLS,

the &va
bearing the sense, not of pure cyclical repetition, but of a virtuous spiral woven
together with the themes of fulfilment and augmentation. From its original designation

as K kO;, time would see creation brought to be MU Xiav. Here was a supremely

positive chronology: in place of seeing xpövoc as a prison or arena of necessary decay,

history simply recording the steady decline from an age of gold to one of silver, then
bronze and finally iron, or Gnosticism's mythology in which time was the very form of

the corruption of an original II; Lrjpwia, Irenaeus saw xpovoS offered as Katp6S - the
for 29
opportunity 1O.rjpGxfLS.

29Cf. AH 1.5.6

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Maturation alone, however, could never constitute the spiral dynamic of time.

It is the dual use of Kaip6s that helps to provide this, for, whilst xpövoc as a whole is

offered as icaLpöc, yet there can be said to be a more specific Kaupöc. This KaLpOq,

which Eve had first refused to wait for in presumptuously seeking &iroOEWotS

independently, Mary is told to wait for Cana. 30 This will be the temporal co-
at

ordinates of God's definitive engagement with humanity. This should not be

understood to constitute a second spiral, a `Christ-time' as against an `Adam-time', for

this is 31 Where Marcion held to an unheralded and
-co' iiXijpc.)µa toü xp6vou.

unexpected incarnation that broke history into quite discrete fragments, Irenaeus saw

prophecy and expectation. Thus, in addition to the actual appearances of the truly

present Son of God to the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, events could be
typological of that then present person's still future work. So, Moses' staff thrown

down and transformed to swallow up the serpents of the Egyptian Magi was a type of

the incarnation and the swallowing of death and sin; 32 Moses' marriage to a Cushite

the the Word to the Church the Gentiles; 33 the law

was prophetic of marriage of of
full Christ's incarnate 34 Gideon's fleece typified the
given was of types of work;

original blessing of the flock of Israel with the dew of the Spirit before the hardening of
Israel and the blessing of the Gentiles; 35the first 'Irtoot leading the people of God into
,
the promised land, was a type of the second 'IqoobS,leading the people into a renewed
36 Yet, as his dual use of Kalpöc shows, Irenaeus saw something stronger
creation.
within the oiKOVOµia: not just prophecy and expectation, but a bias within the very
fabric (if we may use so ontologically loaded a word) of time toward incarnation. It is

to that that we shall now turn.

30AH 3.16.7
31Galatians 4:4
32AH 3.21.8; cf. Exod. 7:8-12; Isa. 25: 8; Hos. 13:14; 1 Cor. 15:54-6
33AH 4.20.12
3" AH4.11.4; 4.14.3
35AH 3.17.3
36Frag. 19

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

One Economy of Father, Son and Spirit

Irenaeus couches that inclination in somewhat different terms, however. First and
foremost for him, Jesus Christ is the &pfj, the ruling Head and Beginning, in his
Law, Church, humanity, 37 Thus he refuses to
relationship to the the and all creation.
divorce Christology from protology and so give ground to any quasi-Marcionism that

might entail the temporal precedence of creation to redemption. To concede that would
be to allow the dissection of the single otKOVOµ4athat is his refutation of false
knowledge. Yet, in respect to all these (Law, Church, humanity and creation), Jesus

Christ is not only also the &pX11,but the determinative one definitively appearing at the
&pxrj 38
end: the at the TEXOS. That Irenaeus does not have solely temporal categories in

mind when referring to the beginning and end is clear when he writes of the incarnation
joining `the end to the beginning, that is, man to God. 39 Even with that added nuance,

still it remains that in trying to grasp his chronology, the primary - and indeed the
to be: 'why Christ the beginning 40
ultimate - question seems should appear at the end?
To answer that question, we need first to understand in what sense Irenaeus

understands Jesus Christ to be the &pxrj.

A good litmus test for any doctrine of creation must be `Is the incarnate Jesus

relevant here?' For the Gnostic, the answer had to be a categorical, and even puzzled,
`No'. For Irenaeus,the answer is a most emphatic `Yes'. Not becausethere is created
being eternally before the Father, a XoyocEvoapKOS;
but becausethere is the Son, whose
very being stretches towards an historical aäpK oLS, a union with the created plasma.
This one - and not the abstract `humanity' of so many individualist predestinarian
soteriologies - is defined as Man, the companion (Tioxitric) of God, the specific object

of God's love. 41 To speak of God and man as abstracted substances or categories

would be to return to Gnostic mythopoeism, which Irenaeus absconds from in favour of

the particularity of humanity and divinity in Christ.

37AH 3.22.3; 4.12.4; cf. Pro. 8:22-3; Isa. 44: 6; 48: 12; Col. 1:18; Rev. 22: 13. It
was with this in mind that
some of the fathers chose to translate ! 1'VM'13, Gen 1:1, with Ev i1 ycq (Theophilus of Antioch, Ad
Autolycus, 11,10; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 6,7; Ambrose, Hexaemeron, 1,4,15; Augustine,
Confessions, 11,8f., 24; cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics 111/1,14).
38AH 3.18.7; 5.
pref.; 5.8.1
}9AH4.20.4
40AH 1.10.3
41Dein. 76; Zech. 13:7

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

It is the personal relationship between this Man and God that constitutes

beginning, not an impersonal (or, to be more accurate, what would later be called
between God and the created substance of flesh. For, given
enhypostatic) relationship
that `the Father bears the creation and His own Word simultaneously', the dynamic of

the relationship between God and his spoken Word, God and his beloved companion,
Man, the Father and the Son, can be seen to be constitutive of that between God and his
42 The these two relationships - and the dependence of the latter
creation. similarity of

upon the former is expressed in Irenaeus' translation of Genesis 1: 1 as `A Son in the

-
beginning God established then heaven and earth', on which Robe comments:

Irenaeus opposes the two crucial moments in the life of the Son: His generation

or appearance before the Father when the world was not yet created, and His

birth in the flesh. He insists on the first one, but always within a cosmogony

context that seems to display its dialectical movement: he was made a

beginning before heaven and earth in order to be the principle of the

43
universe

The Word, then, is never considered by Irenaeus in sefpso, but always with a view to
the economy, his very relationship as Son borne and contained by the Father informing
and supplying the nature of contingent and contained being. It is in this sense that
creation can be considered to be `through' Christ. Robert Jenson, commenting on
John's doctrinal summary of Genesis 1 `In the beginning was the Word', notes

An equivalent "In the beginning was the Son and the Son was with God and
the Son EvasGod" is a true proposition of a developed Christology, but,

42 AH 5.18.2. Wolfhart Pannenberg, whilst using slightly different Christological categories from
Irenaeus, acknowledges a similar dynamic operating: 'In the Son is the origin of all that differs from the
Father.... The existence of Jesus,like that of all creatures,has its basis in God, the Creator of the world.
With his difference and self-distinction from God, however, it is grounded in the self-distinction of the
eternal Son from the Father. Hence the eternal Son is the ontic basis of the human existence of Jesusin
his relation to God as Father. But if from all eternity, and thus also in the creation of the world, the
Father is not without the Son, the eternal Son is not merely the ontic basis of the existence of Jesusin his
self-distinction from the Father as the one God; he is also the basis of the distinction and independent
existence of all creaturcly reality. ' (Pannenberg,WV.,Systematic Theology, trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Grand
Rapids, Ml.: Eerdmans & Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark, 1994,1998), Vol. 2,22-3).
43 Robe, A., Hacia la primera teologia de la procesidn del Verbo (Roma: 1958), 134-5, commenting on
Deny. 43 in Ochagavia, J., Visibile Parris Filius: A Study of Irenaeus' Teaching on Revelation and
Tradition (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1964), 102.

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

significantly, does not appear in Scripture. The reason, it may be suggested, is

it is formalism is 44
that a and materially empty.

Irenaeus would disagree that the proposition is materially empty. `Son' is a most

pertinent title for the Word as principle of creation: `Since then the Word establishes,

that is to say, works bodily, and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order

and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son,

and the Spirit the Wisdom of God. '45 Instead of the BuOöc between God and man, the
&vOpu
oiKOVOµLa iiou acknowledges, not two jealous parties, but one united enterprise of
the Father and the Son. Instead of rooting creation in celestial upheaval and discord,
Irenaeus' intention was to root creation in the eternally constitutive love of God for his

Son Jesus Christ, so affirming it as originally and intrinsically good. Gerhard May

argues that the import of Irenaeus' creatio ex nihilo doctrine was precisely this: to

make clear that there had been no external constraint upon God motivating creation,
46 For creation to be a mere
nor a material cause, nor any moulding of a resistant other.

resolve of God's (perhaps arbitrary) will would not be strong enough a position to take
on the Gnostic menace, nor would it take seriously enough the being of the God who
finds his ünöozaotq in 47
`speaks exactly what He thinks', who EFcozaoic. In contrast to

the vicissitudes of the Gnostic Hxijpcwµa, here was one God who, as Albert Einstein

would later put it, does not play dice. Thus it is as the companion and loved Son of the

the &pxrj over all.

Father that the man Jesus Christ is the 1TpwröroKOS,

With just the same refusal to presage the type of question prompted by more

Antiochene Christologies, `Is redemption the work of the human or divine nature?', so
Irenaeus rejected any such awkward dichotomy between Christ's being and his work

anywhere within the otKOVOµia.Thus could he envisage salvation, not as a last-ditch

dens ex machina for creation, but as an aspect of the very same oiKOVOµia. As the
Church is watered by the four streamsof the gospels, so Eden's four rivers flowed out

" Jenson, R. W., Systematic Theology Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 78, n. 28
45Dein. 5. Behr remarks that the Armenian translated `works bodily' could `suggest either "works for
the body," "does the work of the body," or "works with the body" (as Weber), or alternatively "gives
body," "corporealizes"' (Behr, J. (trans. and commentary), Irenaeus of Lyons: On the Apostolic
Preaching (Crestwood, N. Y.: SVS, 1997), 103, n. 20). Smith adds that 'Son' carries the sense of an
expression of the Father on the plane of contact with created things in Athenagoras (Suppl. 10) and
Tatian (Or. Ad Graecos 5) that is similar to the concept of the 16yo4 npo46puKOs(Smith, J. P., St.
Irenaeus: Proof of the Apostolic Preaching (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952), 140).
46 May, G., Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine
of 'Creation out of Nothing' in Early Christian Thought,
trans. Worrall, A. S. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), 164ff.
47AH 2.28.5

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

to the ends of the earth (Eden, rather than Delphi, being for Irenaeus the true navel of
be inherently 48 Creation
the earth), such that the cosmos could be seen to cruciform.
itself was the beginning of ztXtjpWQLS.Where the nature of creation is salvific in its

expulsion of darkness and ordering of chaos, the nature of salvation is creative in its

bringing into being new life through the very same Word: `God the Father was rich in

mercy: He sent forth His creative (TEXvirllc) Word.... And His light appeared and

dispelled the darkness. '49 Creation was never the secular foundation upon which
divergent soteriological projects could be built or imagined. Because of the centripetal

work of the Word inherent in all creation `even dumb animals tremble and yield at the
invocation of His name', whilst Gentiles could follow the Word of God sine
instructione literaruin since `by means of the creation itself, the Word reveals God the
Creator'. 50

By this understanding of the overflowing nature of the Son's generation by the

Father, the creation as a whole can be seen, not only as anthropologically directed, but

also as anthropologically moored. There could not be a sharper contrast between this

vision and the Gnostic vision of the anthropological project as a mere by-product of

celestial conflict, which has been so determinative throughout much of the Church's
history. When Milton wrote `Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit', he was making

epic a dominant tradition ennobled by luminaries from Origen to Anselm as he ascribed

it to the demonic pique of the exiled hordes of Pandaemonium. 51 Irenaeus, however,

went back even beyond the fall of man in his grounding of the obKOVOµiaävOpc'nou to
`anthropic being dependent Man 52
see a true principle': creation's existence entirely on
Peter Brown notes that, whether through this or the elaborate cosmogony of the

Gnostics, such an anthropological grounding for cosmology was necessary, since

48Dem. 34; AH 3.11.8

49Dem. 37; cf. AH 5.15.2
51)
AH 2.6.2; 4.24.2; 4.6.6
51Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, E. T. of Cur Deus Hoino by E. W. Fairweather, in
A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselin to Ockham. Library of Christian Classics X (London: SCM, 1956),
chaps. 16-8
52 AH 5.29.1;
cf. 4.5.1; Justin Martyr's Second Apology §4. Theologians cannot expect the natural
sciences to provide the kind of nuance they themselves proffer here, and yet the usual formulation of the
anthropic principle as expressed by John Wheeler is surely still a most welcome discovery: `It is not only
that man is adapted to the universe, the universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or
another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or
another? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the centralp of the anthropic
principle. According to this principle, a life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and
design of the world. ' (Burrow, J. D., and Tipler, F. J., The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford:
OUP, 1986), viii)

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Second-century thinkers invariably regarded the human person as a microcosm

of the universe. Only a doctrine that explained the salvation of the human soul
in terms of the origin and purpose of the created world of which it was a part
53
would satisfy them.

Before proceeding, again it is worth while being clear that, if Irenaeus did see Köopoc as

this
µaKpävOp(x)noc, would not have been in a pantheistic sense, equating Jesus Christ

with that µaKpävOpWnoc. Instead, the relationship is one of marriage between two

beings, that which contains and that which is contained.

53 Brown, P., The Body

and Society: Afen, Nornen and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 106

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

The Cause of the Incarnation

Continuing our examination of the inclination in Irenaeus' chronology towards

incarnation - or, to use the bishop's own words, why the Beginning should come at the

end - we arrive at the notorious question: Utrum Christus venisset, si Adam non

peccasset? Chided as the sort of barren conjecture that could only flow from the pen of

a Doctor Subtilis, all too often the question has been forcibly confined by historical and
theological commentators to the most musty corners of scholastic fantasy. And,

indeed, it is true that Irenaeus neither directly asks nor answers what was to become

such a favourite chestnut (significantly, neither does he ever even pose the Cur Deus
homo question directly). Instead he seems to put an end to any such speculation in

stating that `if the flesh did not need to be saved, the word of God would by no means
have been made flesh. '54 But, despite the speculative air in the phraseology of the

question, it need not engage solely with the abstractions of an ordo decretoruin Dei, but

can deal with matters as profound as the very purpose and unity of the otKOVOµia. In

particular, it focuses the question of whether the incarnation was intrinsic to that

venture or the response to some factor external to God's eternal being, such as sin. To

what extent is the disposition towards incarnation original and essential? Is incarnation

essentially revelatory or providential? Furthermore, it is by no means clear that

Irenaeus did seek to close down such avenues of investigation. Not only would such a

conclusion have a traduced understanding of Irenaeus' vision of what it might mean to

`be saved', but also the above citation seems to be a potentially misleading translation

of Si enim non haberet taro salvari, nequaquam Verbtau Dei taro factum esset, a

similar sentiment to which is expressed two chapters earlier in the argument:

For what was His object in healing portions of the flesh, and restoring them to
their original condition (pristinsan characterem), if those parts which had been
healed by Him were not in a position to obtain salvation?... Or how can they

maintain that the flesh is incapable of receiving the life which flows from Him,
it
when received healing from Him? 55

54AH 5.14.1
55AH 5.12.6; cf. 5.13.4

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

In fact, the scales seem to tip decidedly in the opposite direction, in favour of a positive

answer to the question, when he writes of `the fullness of time, at which the Son of God

had to become the Son of Man. '56 Should we dare commit the historiographical sin of
labelling Irenaeus a Scotist before time?

On this, perhaps superficial level (and, importantly, not with regard to what for

Scotus was the related issue of the do zum superaddituin of the iustitia originalis), it

seems we should certainly run close to doing so. The context within which the entire

relationship between God and humanity is set is one of freedom. In contrast to the

ontological determinism of the Gnostics, Irenaeus sets out the centrality of freedom to

the identity of man such that God, in his love, can woo humanity into relationship with
himself.Only in such a context of freedom could genuine communion with and trust in

God be possible for man. 57 It would be easy then to say that Adam, in his childlike

immaturity, fell easily, succumbing to Satan's offer of a yvwaiS that had never been his

to give. Certainly is 58
there some truth to this. However, on its own this view would be

savagely procrustean in failing to set the fall into the broader context of the 0tK0V%1(0C

as a whole: the fall is seen by Irenaeus as more than mere childish error even felix
-
59 It be imagined, have that thus Irenaeus is proto-
culpa. must not as we stated above,
Danvinian in the sense that he collapses fall into creation, so naturalising sin and death,

nor that he is giving a hostage to Hegel or Teilhard de Chardin's model of Christus

Evolutor. 60 That would be to confuse an equation of creation and fall with a necessary

linking of the two under the one same project (as well as constituting a failure to

56AH3.16.7
57A114.37-9
58AH 3.23.5; 4.pre.4; 5.16.2; cf. 4.9.2; 5.2.3; 5.5f.
59 The hazardous apophthegm is derived from the liturgical formula of the (possibly fourth century)
Praeconiunt, better known as the Exultet (the word with which it opens), in the Roman Missal's Easter
Even Vigil, sung in the rite of blessing the paschal candle:
O certe necessariu,n Adae peccatun:
quod Christe morte deletum est!
Ofelix culpa, quae talent ac tantum
meruit habere Redemptorem.
Arthur Lovejoy has catalogued the history of the liturgy, citing the most explicit exponents of the
doctrine it espouses, including Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great (for Aquinas'
view, cf. S. T/:. 111.1.3ad 3 in fin. ), John Wycliffe, John Donne, John Milton, Francis de Sales and Du
Bartas, not to mention the popular forms such as hymns in which it was proposed. For instance, the
fourteenth- or fifteenth-century English carol 'Adam Lay Ybounden':
Ne had the apple taken been, Blessed be the time
The apple taken been, That apple taken was.
Ne had never our lady Therefore we moun singen
A-been heavenequeen. Deo gracias!
(Lovejoy, A. 0., `Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall' in Essays in the History of Ideas (New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1960), 277-95)
60Cf. Moltmann, J., The Way of Jesus Christ trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1990), 292-302

98
The Glory of God.. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

perceive that the oixovoµia is not operating from within what we now call creation's
`natural laws', but in and through the freedom of the Holy Spirit). Quite emphatically,

sin is an alien, parasitic intrusion into the good creation, and it is Satan alone who is the
fall. 6' Yet it is to a great extent the very strength of this
agent provocateur of the
position that repeatedly forces him back to the question of why the creation was

originally only good, and not perfect.62 His answer flows largely from his

understanding of Pauline theology as expressedin the apostle's letter to the Romans;

Erst, that µatalÖtrrrL 1 KTLOLS ünETäyrl, of EKOÜOa ä,1,lä && Ü1i0TLY
Tý TÖV avTa,

UTTLSL h EXEUOEPWOýlýQETaL &TTÖ Tf1S SOuAEIaS

O'TL Ka. UUTrl KTLOLc Tr1ýS ýe0p-aý ELS Tý1V

EXEUOEpLaV T1ic ö6ý1jc T6V TEKVWV Toü OEOÜ (Romans 8: 20-1); then, that OUVEKAELOEV 6

OEÖc TOtis TTUVTac ELS & ELOELaV, 'LVa TOUq ITUVTaS EXEýßq (Romans 11: 32). 63 So he can

state that

it was necessary, at first, that nature should be exhibited; then, after that, that

what was mortal should be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and

the corruptible by incorruptibility, and that man should be made after the image
and likeness of God, having received the knowledge of good and evil.

Earlier, in Book 3, Irenaeus has made clear in what sense this is the case, that God

allowed the apparent victory of Satan in the fall in full knowledge of the fact that that
victory was only pyrrhic, allowing and preparing the way for the true and final victory
of the Word. Becauseof that primal tragedy, the shadows of the good creation would
ultimately be expelled in the cross. God appointed this whole plan, including the
swallowing of man by `the author of transgression,' just as he appointed (TrpooEtaýEV,
Jon. 2: 1, LXX) the fish for Jonah:

Long-suffering therefore was God, when man became a defaulter, as

foreseeing that victory which should be granted to him through the Word....

For as He appointed Jonah to be swallowed by the fish (cetus), not that he

should be swallowed up and perish altogether, but that, having been cast out

again, he might be the more subject to God, and might glorify Him the more

61Cf. AH3.23.1-3; Den:. 16

62AH 3.20.1-2; 4.37-9
63AH 5.32.1; 1.10.3
64AH 4.38.4

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The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

who had conferred upon him such an unhoped-for deliverance... so also, from

the beginning, did God appoint man to be swallowed up by the fish, who was

the author of transgression, not that he should perish altogether when so

engulfed; but, arranging and preparing the plan of salvation, which was
by the Word. bs
accomplished

Death, therefore, is never viewed by Irenaeus as a final and absolute evil. God having

`appointed', `arranged' and `prepared' the plan of salvation whereby Christ the man

alone would ascend back up the garden mount to take from the tree of life, it seems he

is quite unable to imagine Adam not taking from the other tree and being inflicted with

death, for he could not envisage such a thing as immortality outside Christ. Yet there is

also a more positive side to that curse. The death that was inflicted on Adam in view of
his sin was ultimately a merciful punishment, a painful therapy in two senses in

particular.
First, death would prescribe a boundary to sin and an end to the evil that now
inhered the flesh of Adam. It is man, and not his sin, that God seeks to make immortal.

By this means man, freed through resurrection, might begin to live to God in grateful
66 This be beginning `lifting
and willing communion. would the of the up' of man, to

use the Johannine language that was so much Irenaeus' native tongue. Panayiotis

Nellas, commenting on this theme in patristic thinking more generally, explains that

under this model, `by death is put to death not man but the corruption which clothes
him. Death destroys the prison of life-in-corruption, and man, by abandoning to

corruption what he received from it, is liberated through death. '67 Furthermore, death

`becomes the means by which the human body penetrates into the interior of the earth,

reaching the inmost parts of creation' such that the very creation, groaning under the
tyranny of death and sin, will be resurrected as the earth, which holds the bodies of
is 68 The to the dust from he came is
men, resurrected. promise of man's return whence
hope for that very dust: a promise of the destruction of its weakness in death and

cosmic resurrection. Through man, the creation is subjected to frustration in hope. It is

"AH 3.20.1; cf. Isa. 27: 1; Behr, J., Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement, Oxford Early
Christian Studies (New York: OUP, 2000), 48, n. 49.
66AH 3.23.1,6; 3.26.6;
cf. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycus, 2.26; Gregory of Nyssa, Oration 45,8;
Commentary on the Song of Songs, 12; Methodius of Olympus, On the Resurrection of the Dead 1.38-
41; Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 2.
67 Nellas, P., Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives
on the Nature of the Human Person trans. by
Russell, N. (Crestwood, New York: SVS, 1997), 64
68Nellas, 65; cf. AH 3.23.6; Rom 8: 19-23

100
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

for this reason that Irenaeus is quick to point out that not only was Jesus Christ united

to all the creation he eternally contains in his assumption of flesh, but further united to
it in his death: `the wood has been joined on to the iron, and has thus cleansed His land

because the Word, having been firmly united to flesh, and in its mechanism fixed with

pins, has reclaimed the savage earth. '69

Second, death itself functions 70 Under its tuition, man learns
as a 1rai& ywyös.

that life is not inherent to his being as it is to God's; and so he grows in yvc3onS.
Having received the knowledge of good and evil, now he may choose more wisely and

appreciate both the evil from which he is spared and the good for which he is kept.

Knowing experientially for himself what is good and what is evil, man can live in

genuine gratitude, praising God with all sincerity, loving much because he has been

forgiven much (Luke 7: 42-7). 71

What, then, does Irenaeus make of evil? Given that in many ways the

Gnosticism that he sought to oppose was simply a theodicy (meaning that its revival

today is hardly surprising), in that it attempted to explain the existence of evil without
implicating the supreme God, could it be said that Irenaeus was doing little more than

seeking to provide a non-dualist alternative, especially motivated by the situation in

Lugdunum? If so, Irenaeus was decidedly successful in distinguishing his alternative,

for in place of the Gnostic story of creation as a tragedy, Irenaeus saw a comedy. Yet

still, what does Irenaeus make of evil?

On the one hand, Wingren shrewdly notes a tendency in Irenaean studies

to regard the opposition to God as afiction, as though the whole thing were a
theatrical performance: the play must, of course, be put on, but in actual fact
is
nothing changed, and the real condition of the universe is the same before

the beginning of the performance as it is at the end. Such an interpretation of

Irenaeuswould mean also that man transcendstime.72

We might add that such a reading would also ignore the essential themes of maturation

and augmentation. Rather, it is through death that comes resurrection.

69AH4.34.4
70 Cf. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad A« tolycus, 2.26; Methodius of Olympus, On the Resurrection of the
Dead 1.38-41; Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 2; Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetica! Oration, 8; Commentary
on the Song of Sangs, 12
71AH 3.20.2
72 Wingren, 42

101
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

On the other hand, there is the problem of the supreme antinomy of the felix

culpa. Given the number of moral and metaphysical pitfalls that surround the

suggestion that we might rejoice, rather than lament the fall, it is unsurprising that the
language of mystery and a history of non-commitment clusters here. 73 The desire to

justify the goal of the economy all too easily justifies evil itself as an integral cog to the

that (Rom. 6: 1-2). 74 Yet Irenaeus is

machine, allowing sin so grace may abound

unequivocal in his description of sin (with death) as, for all its real evil, the conditio

sine qua non of improvement. That being the case, the bishop finds himself press-

ganged time and again into the service of those who would downgrade either the fall

itself, the culpability of man in his sin, or the punishment of God. For instance, Jean

Delumeau, concluding his magisterial study of the history of paradise, turns briefly to

Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeuswho, he feels,

do not see the beginning of human history as marked by the anger of a God

who punishes.... But science and the only Christian theology that is acceptable

today agree with Theophilus and Irenaeus in not assigning an excessive guilt to

the stammering human race that first came on the scene.

73 Marguerite Shuster is a most recent case in point (Shuster, M., The Fall and Silt: What We Have
Become as Sinners (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004)). Unsurprisingly, it is often left
to fictional characters, safe in their non-existence, to espousethe paradox. So Milton, who confesseshis
Paradise Lost to be a theodicy, seeking `to justify the ways of God to men' (Bk. I, I. 26), has his Adam,
on hearing from the Archangel Michael of the redemption that must follow his fall, reply:
`0 Goodnessinfinite, Goodnessimmense,
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good - more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned,or rejoice
Much more that much more good thereof shall spring -
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God - and over wrath grace shall abound.' (Bk. 12,1.469-78)
Still though, Adam remains `full of doubt' as to the appropriate response, even if Milton's readers are
left with none. We turn again to J. R. R. Tolkein who, as a Roman Catholic, was unabashed in his
orthodox presentment of an other-worldly equivalent. When the Lucifer-figure of Melkor begins to
know and act outside of the stipulated musical theme of the divine 1l6vatar, llüvatar responds that `no
theme may be played that kath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite.
For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful,
which he himself bath not imagined.' (Tolkein, 6)
74 A
classic formulation of the objection to such synthesising of evil can be seen in Dostoyevsky's Ivan
Karamazov: `Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men
happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to
death only one tiny creature... and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be
the architect on those conditions? ' (Dostoyevsky, F., The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, C. (New
York: Modern Library, 1950), 291) cf. Shuster, M., The Fall and Sin: What We Have Become as Sinners
(Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004), 90ff. ). Stendhal's `protest atheism' is the
conclusion: `The only excuse for God is that he does not exist'.

102
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Thus, Delumeau feels, Irenaeus helps us to be rid of what he calls the `repulsive image
God'. 75
of a vengeful
Yet, however thin the ice may have worn under his feet (the doctrine is

notoriously precarious), Irenaeus never himself slipped into synthesising evil. As he

wrote in Lugdunum in the wake of the persecutions of 177 (for the brutality of which it

is worth consulting Eusebius76), he could not so detach himself from the reality of

suffering as to blithely imagine the fallen creation to be Leibniz's or Rousseau's `best

of all possible worlds'. Not yet. The pain that allows growth and appreciation is real

and tragic pain. Evil is truly evil, and not covertly good. The very real pain of the

experience of man's growth is in no way meant to be diminished by the ultimate

optimism of the vision, but functions to heighten the final appreciation of the goal, just

as the experience of good is heightened and defined by the knowledge of its

just be hungry to food. 77 In

corresponding evil, and as one must appreciate effect,
Irenaeus saw that granting Luther's point that even the Devil himself is God's Devil is

the only option left available by God's being xWpwv Kai axWpr toc, the only option to

avoid the metaphysical dualism of Gnosticism. That God contains all things does not

those things in than to deny their 78 Yet in the

relativise any other sense absoluteness.

end God does contain all things, and so, without in any way toying with what is

contained, what is meant there for evil, God can mean for good (Gen. 50: 20).

75 Delumeau, J., History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition (New York:
Continuum, 1995), 233. Delumeau is a particularly outspoken example. However, what, perhaps, is
now the classic example of such use of Irenacus is John Hick's much critiqued `Irenaean type of
theodicy' (cf. Evil and the God of Love, 2nd edn., (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977); for such
critiques, see Farrow, 74ff.; Surin, K., Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986), 15ff.; Russell, J. B., Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1981), 82, n. 10). Hick espousesa felLv culpa model which envisages evil and pain as the necessary
instruments of what he seesto be the overall purpose of the world, which is the processof `soul-making'.
This phrase he lifts from a letter of John Keats in which the poet says `The common cognomen of this
world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears" from which we are to be redeemedby a
certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven. What a little circumscribed straightened
notion! Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making...... Do you not see how necessarya
World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and to make it a Soul?' (The Letters of John
Keats, cd. M. B. Forman (London: OUP, 1952), 334-5, cited in Hick, 250, n. 1). For all his covert
dependenceon Schleiermacher rather than Irenaeus, it has to be said that Hick had got closer to the heart
of Ircnaeus than has Delumeau.
76Ecclesiastical History 5.1
" AH 4.37.7 (citing Jer. 2: 19); 4.39.1
79 Pannenberg elaborates on this
spatial dynamic and, combining it with something very much like
Irenaeus' conception of the inherent imperfection of what is (newly) created, gives what sounds like an
authentically Irenaean aetiology of evil: `Like pain and suffering, evil is possible becauseof the finitude
of existence, and especially of living creatures that seek to maintain themselves autonomously and thus
incline to aim at a radical independence.' (Pannenberg, 172)

103
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

It seems, then, that Irenaeus would have given a heartfelt Yes to the question
,
Utruni Christus verrisset, si Adam non peccasset? He could never have allowed
incarnation to be relegated to the status of mere consequence of the fall. That would be

to concede the very irXijpwµa iou xpovou to a Gnostic doctrine of creation and to

assume a goal for creation other than the Spiritual Sons who require death to allow for
the change of resurrection from being 4uxucöc to becoming nvEUµcTLKÖc.
Moreover, if there is any truth in Rahner's somewhat exaggerated claim that

among theologians since Augustine (contrary to the tradition preceding him) it

has been more or less agreed that each of the divine persons (if it were freely

willed by God) could become man and that the incarnation of the second

person in particular throws no light on the special character of this person

within the divine nature79

then that is most certainly an agreementthat runs contrary to the position, if not any
tradition, of Irenaeus. His understanding of Jesus Christ as, eternally, the Homo
humanus that is the EiKWV ioü OEot runs entirely contrary to such an agreement. As

such, incarnation simply could not be viewed as an episodic anomaly to be inserted at

any point within the Divine being. As Irenaeus himself put it: `in every respect, too, He
is Man... and thus (ergo) He took up man into Himself, the invisible becoming visible,

the incomprehensible being made comprehensible'. 80

With this, we begin to be given an answer to the question of how this novelty of
incarnation could be a true expressionof the Son's eternal being. Flesh, far from being
the veil to hide all spiritual and divine reality, is the very stage of revelation. `Revealed
in flesh the Godheadsee.' We need to be quite clear on this point, for Irenaeusis being
highly specific: the medium of the revelation of God's Word is visible form.81
However, that form is not general. Even John Behr fails to recognise the necessary

specificity of the form of revelation: quite correctly, he writes of that which is visible

about the Father, `the Son, in whose human nature, rather than behind it, we can seethe
invisible Father.'82 Yet he errs when he proceeds to suggestthat the `revelation of the

79 Rahner, K., `Remarks

on the Dogmatic Treatise "De Trinitate"', in Theological Investigations IV
(London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 80
soAH 3.16.6; cf. 3.20.2
81AH 2.34.1
82Behr, J., `The Word
of God in the Second Century' Pro Ecclesia IX, 1 (2000), 96; cf. AH 4.6.6-7; Heb.
11:27; Matt. 11:27; John 1:18; Col. 1:15-17; 1 Tim. 2:5.

104
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

Word is an embodiment of the Word'. 83 This is simply to confuse oäpKCaoLSwith

ou)patonoirlotc, a vital distinction Irenaeus never confounds. Revelation - becoming

visible and comprehensible to those who live on earth - is not coterminous with

appearance. As we have seen above in chapter one, the Word had already appeared
bodily to men and women of faith and unbelief throughout the ages before the

incarnation (though, even there, Irenaeus never allows that any special (;wµaroiroirlats

ever took place). Yet such appearances are not equated with incarnation as moments of
definitive revelation. 84 For the revelation of the Word of God to creation, the substance

of creation had to be assumed. Only then could reality be summarised in the `concise
(X. flesh. 85
word' yov ouvtEgL%IEVov)of that
That said, there needs to be a more essential reason why flesh should be quite so

apposite a medium for that revelation. Something of this can be seen in the

intentionally chiastic dynamic of Irenaeus' thought, a dynamic which can be seen in his

comparison of the Word's ordering of the cosmos and crucifixion:

And since He is the Word of God Almighty, who invisibly pervades the whole

creation, and encompasses its length and breadth and height and depth - for by
the Word of God the whole universe is ordered and disposed - so too was the
Son of God crucified in these, inscribed crosswise upon it all; for it is right that

He being made visible, should set upon all things visible the sharing of His

cross, that He might show His operation on visible things through a visible
form. For He it is who illuminates the height, that is the heavens; and

encompasses the deep which is beneath the earth; and stretches and spreads out
the length from east to west; and steers across the breadth of north and south;

summoning all that are scattered in every quarter to the knowledge of the
Father. 86

Here is his understanding of some of what it might mean for God not to deny himself (2

Tim. 2: 13): just as the fourfold nature of the gospel witness is an inevitable and
ontological necessity, so too is the incarnation, crucifixion and glorification of the
Word that allows for the salvation of the gentiles and the entire cosmos that the Word

$' Behr, 105

$; Cf. AH4.26.1; Jer. 17:9, LXX
85Dem. 87;
cf. AH 4.33.4; Isa. 10: 23; Rom. 9: 28
86Den:. 34

105
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

87 Thus, it is
orders. more than simply appropriate that the one who is eternally Jesus
(human) Christ (anointed) should take flesh and be baptised by the hovering creator

Spirit. It does not amount to the unnatural breaking and entering of a divine being from

one of the eternal, superluminary spheres into the temporal arena of the subluminary (a

paradoxical action that would fit better within Newton's space as a container model88).
Nor should this be understood to be a cheap recasting of Gnostic mythology, for the

crucial difference remains that it is the one Lord Jesus Christ that is both the Word

sustaining all things and the one crucified amongst those things. Incarnation, whilst
involving a genuine addition to his being, is not seen by Irenaeus as something entirely

alien to the Son, but precisely an expression of his eternal being. As the &pxrj, he is the
&pXq of his own flesh, and then of all contingent reality.

Under this chronology, Irenaeus shows that the `two hands' of God that mediate

creation are not, in themselves, sufficient to mediate that other found in creation in the
sense that Irenaeus would understand that mediation. The Spirit-anointed Word must

take to himself, be by, that creation in the union of incarnation. 89 Only

and sustained
then, when God contains man the microcosm, can God fully begin to be xwpc:°v Kai
iprltoc in 90
ax - all all.
Taking up the language of necessity found in the New Testament (Jesus, for
example, needing to become `lower than angels' in order to be `crowned with glory and
honour' and being loved by the Father because he lays down his life to take it up

again91), he is able to find the root of this necessity in the very nature of God. As he

couches it, as the fashioning of man is the work of God, and `inasmuch as He had a

pre-existence as a saving Being, it was necessary that what might be saved should also
be called into existence, in order that the Being who saves should not exist in vain. '92

Repeatedly he seeks to reinforce the fact that this vision of necessity in no way implies

a weakness or fault within God - who, throughout the second century, is almost

unquestioningly accepted and presented without qualification as oü5E TrpooöEÖJEVÖc

zLvoq - in the way that creation emanated necessarily from a fault within the HX pwµa.
`For not alone antecedently to Adam, but also before all creation, the Word glorified

87AH 3.11.8-9
$$Cf. Torrance, T. F., Space, Time
and Incarnation: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 37ff.
89AH 3.16.3
90AH 5.18.3; 5.36.3
91Heb. 2:9; in. 10:17
92AH 3.22.3; cf. 5.15.2

106
The Glory of God. Part One: Irenaeus 3 When is Man?

His Father, remaining in Him; and EvasHimself glorified by the Father. '93 Rather, it is

the ecstatic nature of love that makes the 1T) pwoL4 of Man, accomplished in the
incarnation, so necessary.

What we have seen, then, is that whilst Irenaeus deems it of capital importance
to see a distinction between the Xoyoc äaapKocand the AöyoS EvoapKoc,he cannot
accept that there be any radical disjuncture between the two. Robert Jenson, whilst
then proceeding in a direction alien to that of Irenaeus, is here quite right in stating that
`[w]hat in eternity precedes the Son's birth to Mary is not an unincarnate state of the
Son, but a pattern of movement within the event of the Incarnation, the movement to
Incarnation, as itself a pattern of God's triune life. '94 By very nature the Al yoq äaapKoc
is `Pleasedas Man with man to dwell, Jesusour Emmanuel'. The fulfilment of that
is
pleasure zö nXi pwµa tob xpövou,the &pXrj
at the TEXoc.
In his chronology, then, Irenaeus provided something considerably more

substantial than mere retort. Where the Gnostics were driven by their dualism into the

sort of subjectivism that later manifested itself in theological cosmologies as the

distentio animi that fails to give any serious weight to cosmology, Irenaeus saw that

time, as the form of the oiKOVOµia OEOÜ,is by its very nature Christologically
determined and shaped.95 The first event of all is the eternal loving of the Son by the

Father in the Spirit, by which the Son has his being and by which God becomes

creative. So the matrix of creation is established. Yet he does not abandon his creation

at this point, as the Gnostics would plead, for the very purpose of heaven and earth is ib

TrXýpwpa -cob xpövou, when God and the creation could be united to exist in that
harmony which is the characteristic of the love of the Father for the Son. Time in

creation, then, is the locus required by childish humanity to grow as a dependent other.
To paraphrase the apostle Paul, time, for Irenaeus, is a im b ywyös to lead man, little by

little, to that glorious maturity.

93AH 4.14.1; cf. 4.13.4

9; Jenson,Systematic Theology Vol. 1,141
9' Cf. Ricocur, P., Time and Narrative, trans. Blarney, K., & Pellauer, D., (Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1988), Vol. 3, pl2f.

107
PART II:

BARTH

108
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

4
Who is Man?

Pioneering a New Anthropology?

Other than perhaps the appeal of somehow `book-ending' the Church's thought on the

question of theological anthropology with sturdy theologians from the second and
twentieth centuries, it may appear to be an unwarranted leap of quantum proportions to

shift the focus of study from the second century apologetics of Irenaeus to the twentieth

century dogmatics of Karl Barth. Quite apart from skipping over eighteen centuries,

Basle is not the most obvious first port of call after Lyon. The whole bias of Barth's

thought is often taken to weigh against his producing anything other than an essentially

negative anthropology, a thoroughly defaced imago Dei, revealing an interpretation of

`the glory of God' very different from Irenaeus' `living man'. Certainly this line of
interpretation, judging Barth's later work in terms of his earlier dialectical theology

and, classically, his debate with Brunner, continues today, despite a growing body of
literature that declaims to the contrary. ' Ironically, it is Emil Brunner who stands at the

head of this body, having described Barth's part-volume dedicated to anthropology

(111/2) as `the culmination so far of the whole powerful work.... It is of all Barth's
2 Even
works his most human'. so, Basle seems to remain a far cry from Lyon. Barth
himself felt that, at the time of writing, his anthropology necessarily stood on its own in

that he believed it to employ an entirely novel methodology. As he wrote in the preface

to that part-volume:

' For examples of the former, see Niebuhr, R., Essays in Applied Christianity, cd. Robertson, D. B.,
(New York: Meridian, 1959); Willis, R. E., The Ethics of Karl Barth (Leiden: Brill, 1971); Lovin, R.,
Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner and Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1984). For examples of the latter, see Hunsinger, G., Karl Barth and Radical Politics
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963); McLean, S., Humanity in the Thought of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1981); Price, D. J., Karl Barth's Anthropology in Light of Modert Thought (Grand Rapids,
MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002).
2 Brunner, E., `The New Barth: Observations
on Karl Barth's Doctrine of Man', trans. Campbell, J. C., in
Scottish Journal of Theology 4/2 (1951), 123, quoting Prenter, 135. The constraints of the thesis have
meant that it has been necessary to focus attention on CD 111/2, which constitutes the core of Barth's
examination of anthropology, and to refer to relevant passages from elsewhere in the Barth corpus in
relation to that. Further study of Barth's thinking on humanity would benefit from closer analysis of his
doctrine of reconciliation and, in particular, his ethical thinking, in that it displays his appreciation of
human action (cf., for example, his Ethics, ed. D. Braun; trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1981); CD chapters VIII (11/2) and XII (111/4); The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV/4,
Lecture Fragments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981); also Webster, J. B., Barth's Ethics of
Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Barth's Moral Theology: Hcuuan
Action in Barth's Thought (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1998)).

109
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

The reader will soon realise that at this point the exposition deviates even more

widely from dogmatic tradition than in the doctrine of predestination in 11.2.

None of the older or more recent fathers known to me was ready to take the

way to a theological knowledge of man which I regard as the only possible

In this book, then, few be found to their works. 3
one.... references will

Whether he would have been heartened to know it or not, our study up to this

point would seem to show that this could be, tragically, throwing a father such as

Irenaeus out with the bathwater. For there is in reality a good deal of overlap between

the anthropologies of Barth and Irenaeus,particularly at the point of method. In much

the same way as Irenaeus had opposed the Delphic methodology of Gnostic
anthropology, as he approachesthe question of man Barth seeksto be consistent with
his overall dogmatic scheme, `christologically determined as a whole and in all its
4 Thus `[w]ho and
parts'. what man is, is no less specifically and emphatically declared
by the Word of God than who and what God is. '5 Per definitionein, Christological
thinking serves as the foundation for all other theological thinking, including

theological anthropology, and cannot simply be built in at a later stage of construction.

To start with any other decision, even if we were to imagine we could find it in

scripture, would be unacceptable,since scripture gives just the one foundation of Jesus
Christ. The doctrine of man, then, like the larger doctrine of creation, is not

prolegomenal or pre-theological, but resides within the domain of dogmatics. If, then,
theological anthropology is to have an a priori - as in fact all anthropologies do have -

ostensibly it is to be the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As Barth sees the doctrine

of creation as a whole as the first article of faith, so too he sees anthropology, being a

subset of the doctrine of creation, as also to be a matter to be understood by faith. The

question of who and what man is cannot, on such a presupposition, be answered by

reflection on the observable phenomena of what we feel to be `human'. To assume that

it can is to make the fundamental mistake of Adam, equating himself with God and so

assuming that he might regard himself as the presupposition of his own being. Human

nature as such does not possess the capacity in itself for becoming the human nature of

3 Barth, K., Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, part 2: The Doctrine of Creation eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F.
Torrance, trans. H. Knight et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), ix (hereafter CD 111/2).Cf.
Berkouwer, G. C., Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 90, n. 50.
° CD 1/2,123
5 CD 111/2,13;cf. 1/1,242

110
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Jesus Christ, which is the place of divine revelation, and so, from the sanctifying and so

separating virgin birth on, Jesus Christ is then to be the QKäv& Xov to all speculative or
6
scientific anthropologies.
At the outset, Barth seeks to make it clear that, cloaked in his sin, man is in

reality homo absconditus, hidden man. Consequently, man cannot be both his own
7
teacher and student. How, Barth asks,

can we possibly reach a doctrine of man in the sense of a doctrine of his

creaturely essence, of his human nature as such? For what we recognise to be

human nature is nothing other than the disgrace which covers his nature, his

inhumanity, perversion and corruption. 8

Despite being the object of divine grace in creation, sin causes man to be worse than a

cracked mirror to himself. It places an immovable ceiling on the efforts of man to

understand his true being. As the homo in se incin-vatus, man is unable to see himself.
The very grace that man receives is not natural, but a gift. All introspective or Socratic

quests for the being of this man thus necessarily deal not with his reality, but merely
9 This is
with appearance and phenomena (at best). not to deny the importance of such

phenomena or the sciences that observe them, for such observation may provide useful
information for man. It is to deny that they provide real information about the true
being of man as such. It is to recognise phenomena as only that and so to set a

boundary around the proper role of science. So far he can agree with Kant: such

determination 10 After all, on

phenomena cannot amount to a of the real nature of man.
the basis of such self-assessment, how can man divine the difference between what is

average among men and what is normative for man? Later Barth proceeds to

demonstrate systematically that this is indeed the case with the four major

anthropological approaches of the modem period: those of naturalism, idealism,

existentialism and even theism. (This, of course, he does with characteristically wry
humour, lamenting, for example, the failure of the apologists of naturalism in their

6 CD 1/2,188
7 CD 111/2,22
8 CD 111/2,27
9 CD 111/2,24-5;cf. CD 1/1,36.
10It does not seem entirely inappropriate to apply retrospectively the language of Thomas Kuhn here, for
Barth was insisting that science, relying as it does upon perspectival judgements, must yield to
theological interrogation. To resort to introspection, then, in an attempt to discern man's real being, is
simply to operate within the wrong paradigm. To reach his goal, the scientist must undergo a paradigm
shift that involves the displacement of introspection with the new paradigm of revelation.
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

attempt to define the characteristics that make man unique to mention that man is
the being to laugh ') He does feel that
apparently only accustomed and smoke!

naturalist anthropologies inevitably end up pointing beyond themselves, since in the

very act of self-assessment man reveals himself to be capable of degrees of self-

transcendence. However, they cannot be pointing clearly as helpful signs in
themselves. These attempts to define man immanently may describe real aspects of

man, but such descriptions as they produce will be only that. They cannot be

descriptions of anything more than dimensions of man. They cannot be descriptions of

man as such. We do not and can not know man as the man of the kingdom of glory, as
he was created in his original state, for we only see ourselves as fallen men.
Furthermore, as with Irenaeus, he does not see a prelapsarian Adam as an adequate

object of study beyond the barrier of sin since neither do we have a direct vision of
him, nor do we see in him the being of man fulfilling its original determination. 12 And,

as for Irenaeus, 1 Cor 15:45 testifies that Adam is not, like Christ, the nvEܵa
( onoLoüv, but only a uxrly (cioav through the nvEܵa (Qottotoüv of God. The true

meaning of that original creation of man can only be thus understood through his

recreation. The breath of the Creator and so the true being of man is only fully
- -
manifest in the powerful resurrection of Jesus from the dead by the same divine breath.
It is through that resurrection that humanity itself is justified, not just in the sense of
being declared righteous, but in the sense too of being affirmed. In the end, all

anthropological speculation runs up against a final but invisible barrier that forces it to

wander aimlessly in the darkness of ignorance, for so profound is the effect of sin upon

man's knowledge of himself that the very fact of sin is itself concealed from man's

sight, being revealed only in the divine accusation levelled against him in the Word of
God. 13

CD 111/2,§44.2 `Phenomenaof the Human', cf. 83. Barth's demonstration is simply the application, at
this point, of his overall approach to the question of the doctrine of creation as a whole. Entering a
sphere of study in which he felt less confident, his defence at having taken so unabashedly unscientific
an exposition took the form of a growing belief that 'there can be no scientific problems, objections or
aids in relation to what Holy Scripture and the Christian Church understand by the divine work of
creation.' (CD 111/1,ix).
12 CD I/I, 47; 111/2,28; cf. Barth, K., Christ
and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, trans., T. A.
Smail (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 75.
13 CD 111/2,30. Or,
as he was later to put it in Volume IV: `Only when we know Jesus Christ do we
really know that man is the man of sin, and what sin is, and what it means for man' (CD IV/l, 389).
Wollhart Pannenberg objects that `in this approach the Christian assertion of human sinfulness depends
for its validity on the decision of faith' such that those who refuse to believe in Christ are ultimately
spared the realisation and the reality of the confrontation with the distortion of their human being and
destiny (Pannenberg, W., Anthropology in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985),
92). Yet whilst Barth will promulgate the ontic, as well as the noetic, derivation of humanity from
Christ, Pannenberg has conflated the two. It is not that the Christian assertion of human sinfulness itself

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Yet what is impossible with men is possible with God. And it is here that he

must take the most decisive leave from Kant. For that quandary cannot be bridged by

the categorical imperative or any form of universal or abstract truth, but only by the

personal and particular Word of God. If `by the Word of God we are denied any

capacity of our own to recognise our human nature as such, it is the same Word of God

which enables us to know it, in a free demonstration of the free grace of God apart from

' 14 Alienated in his sin, man is in the far country. Then,

and against our own capacity.
into the darkness of man's ignorance God shines the light of his revelation, a light that

comes to us as an incomparable Novum. It is in this revelation we see that man is

separated from God but should not be. Here at least he can find agreement with

Schleiermacher, that it is by itself is for it is. 15 In all this,

grace that sin shown up what
Barth holds that he is simply being consistent to the tenets of the Reformed tradition

which itself finds yet deeper roots in historical theology. This is the only legitimate
fulfilment of the programme: Credo ut intelligam. 16 Where he differs from that

tradition is in the thoroughgoing nature of his consistency to that programme and his

refusal to be distracted into abstract speculation. Thus he feels able to be appreciatively

critical of the famous opening paragraphs of Calvin's Institutes, in particular Calvin's

assertion that without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self:

Calvin's exposition is not intrinsically cogent and satisfying because he does

not tell us on what grounds all this is affirmed. Who is the man of whom it

may be said that his humanity is explicable only in God, and whose existence

can be explained only as a subsisting in God? And on the other hand, who is
the God the knowledge of whom is so unconditionally necessary for the
knowledge of man? We cannot accept the theses of Calvin unless we

transplant them from the empty and rather speculative sphere in which they

stand in his thinking, and root them once more in the firm ground of the
knowledge of Jesus Christ in which they really grew even in Calvin. But they
in themselves therefore to be '?
are correct and are accepted.

depends for its validity on the decision of faith. Barth is arguing that it is the realisation of human
sinfulness that dependson the decision of faith.
14CD Il1/2,40
15CD 111/2,35ff.
16CD 1/2,44
17CD 111/2,73

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

It has to be said that for all his refusal to read even the name `Jesus Christ' as the name

of a general abstraction or principle, Barth is not as consistent in practice as he seeks to

be in theory. `Jesus Christ' does at times become a dependent factor, being the source

of anthropological knowledge
because of certain external qualifications, even
18 However, this is
resembling a general abstraction. not yet the place for such a

critique.
This then brings us to the heart of the matter: instead of attempting to establish
in general what it is to be human and then to go on to interpret the humanity of Christ

in particular, Barth sees the man Jesus as the revealing Word of God about and to man,

the source of man's knowledge of the nature of man. The exclusive nature of this claim
he does not see as a deficiency of theological anthropology. Instead, it is in the very

nature of human being to live in encounter, and here in Jesus Christ is the ultimate

encounter, a facing up to the very reality of our own being. Perhaps this is the point at

which briefly to note the paradox inherent in Barth's own encounter with the culture of
his day. It has to be said that in many ways it was his very (apparent) remoteness from

praxis that provided his counterbalance for an otherwise hijacked German culture (in,
for example, the `confessing' resistance to Hitler's attempt to appropriate German
Christianity). By providing his times with an encounter, as opposed to a mirror, the

theologically explicit nature of Barth's thought was able to make him one of the most

pertinent and seriously received theologians of his day.

This is not to say that the man Jesussimply mirrors human nature as we know
it, allowing us in a rather facile manner merely to deduce anthropology from
Christology. `For although He becomeswhat we are, He does not do what we do, and

so He is not what we are.' 19 The man JesusChrist is, after all, Emmanuel, God with us
(and this is meant in terms of distinction, in some contrast to Irenaeus' doctrine of
änoOEcoLS). More specifically, and here coming into complete agreement with
Irenaeus, in the man Jesushuman nature exists in such a relationship with God as never
has existed or will exist between God and another. This mystery is great: `[t]hat Jesus
is utterly unlike us as God and utterly like us as man is the twofold fact which

constitutes the whole secret of His person. 20 Yet there is another mystery that
separatesout Jesusfrom other men: the mystery of our sin. These two mysteries are a
part of the fact that, in contrast to what we see in humanity as a whole, in him man is

1$Cf. CD 111/2,132
19CD 111/2,48;cf. CD 1/2,15 1ff.
20CD 111/2,53;cf. 71

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

revealed as the covenant-partner of God in his original and uncorrupted form. This

difference between the man Jesus and other men is not then, finally, an insuperable

dissimilarity but a revelation of real man. Jesus Christ is the only real man for God.

Not that other men do not exist, but that they do not accomplish what it means to be a

man. We are not man because of sin. That is, we are not, like Jesus, in perfect

relationship with God. It is as we study his reality that we see the shadow of our own
incomplete or lost reality. 2' Still, for all that, the man Jesus is not a being to which

humanity is alien. If we were to conclude that from his distinctness or prototypicality,

we have to conclude either that he was the only human being, or that he was not in fact

really human being but a different being altogether.

Something more profound than the Heisenberg principle - that the observer is
always a part of the field being observed and that the objective world thus already
includes the subject - is at work. Yet in some sense we do seem to be operating in

Heisenberg's universe here, for we `cannot really look at Jesus without - in a certain

sense through Him - seeing ourselves also. '22 The difference is that here it is not just a

question of epistemology. Having walked through the looking-glass into the strange

new world within the bible, Barth believed that he had found there to be no man prior
to Christ. There simply was no pre-defined human nature for the Son of God to

assume, but instead he defined human nature in his very assumption of it. Thus Jesus
Christ is not the more proper object of anthropological investigation. As the real man it
is he, and not Adam, that is the one who brings reality to men. Man's essential and

original nature is only typified, but not actually found, in Adam in such a way as that it
down to us by heredity. 23 Jesus Christ is not some lately provided
might come way of
dears ex machina for an already existing humanity. He alone is primarily and properly

man as God's relation to sinful man is primarily and properly His relation to this man
in Him Him. 24 The
alone, and a relation to the rest of mankind only and through

speaking of the Word not only serves a noetic function in revealing the being of the

creature, but has an ontological function in that it also establishes the very being of the

creature. There in the man Jesus is God's grace constituting man's being such that we
have our human nature as such wholly from Jesus. This ontological factor must of

21Godsey, J. D. (ed.), Karl Barth's Table Talk. Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers,No. 10
(London & Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963), 15
22CD 111/2,48
23 Christ
and Adam, 39-40
24 CD III/2,43

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

necessity under-gird the noetic, or else real man will never be reached, but only mere
phenomena and epiphenomena.

The ontological determination of humanity is grounded in the fact that one man
among all others is the man Jesus. So long as we select any other starting point
for our study, we shall reach only the phenomena of the human.... In this case

we miss the one Archimedean point given us beyond humanity, and therefore
the one possibility of discovering the ontological determination of man.
Theological anthropology has no choice in this matter. It is not yet or no
longer theological anthropology if it tries to pose and answer the question of

the true being of man from any other angle. We remember who and what the

man Jesus is. As we have seen, He is the one creaturely being in whose

existence we have to do immediately directly the being God 25

and with of also.

Anthropology concerns the question of man's being, an ontological determination and

relationship to the being of God. It is on precisely this basis that he criticises Brunner
for seeing the Word of God as only the noetic, and not primarily the ontic, basis of the

being of man. 26 Indeed this is an offence to the proud being of man, as Eberhard Ringel

has pointed out, for, refusing our sole ontological constitution as hearers of the Word,
`ontically we wish to ground ourselves in ourselves. We are ruled by the will to self. '27
Elizabeth Frykberg summarises excellently in what sense it is that Barth can

come to the understanding of Jesus Christ as man in this primary and proper,
ontologically constitutive sense.

Barth first systematically developed his analogical teaching concerning human

creation in the image of God in the midst of exegeting Genesis 1:26-7. In that

exegesis,he translatesthe first part of verse 26 from Hebrew into German with
the words, "Lasset uns Menschen machen in unserem Urbild nach unserem
Vorbild! "28 Urbild means "original image" (or "prototype"), whereas Vorbild
has the sense of "pattern". In choosing these words over "Abbild" (reflection)

and "Nachbild" (copy) for the original Hebrew substantives zelem and demut,

25CD 111/2,132;cf. 58,150,244-5

26CD 111/2,132
27 Jüngcl, E., Theological Essays I. trans.,
and cd., J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 133
28 Die kirchliche Dogmatik, III: Die Lehre
von der Schöpfung, 1 (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1948),
222 (hereafter KD 111/1).

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Barth declares directly and by inference that the Imago Dei refers primarily to

God and only secondarily to the human being. 29

To speak in terms of Paul's Adam-Christ parallelism, it is Christ then who is really the
first and prototypical real man, the Urbild and Vorbild, the imago Dei. Adam, the one

who is really second and typical, the Abbild and Nachbild, became first, whilst the one
is 30 Far from being
who really first has become second. a pioneer, so far it looks as
though Barth is swimming in distinctly Irenaean waters. Neither Adam nor his race can
be the proper object of theological anthropology, whilst the imago Dei refers primarily

to God, all because it is Jesus Christ that is the substance and revelation of the real
being of man. He can even, like Irenaeus, write of the pre-existence of the man Jesus

Christ in the Old Testament, his real presence with Israel and the faith of the fathers in

him. Thus, just as Irenaeus had done, he could rail against any classic Gnostic-style

separation of the eternal Son, the Word or Christ from Jesus, even under and within the
Old Testament.

The ascertaining of the first fact, that the Son of God is this man, that the
Christ is Jesus,is not to be conceived of as though those who thus thought or

spoke had first a definite conception of God or of a Son or Word of God, of a

Christ, and then found this conception confirmed and fulfilled in Jesus. That

would be an arbitrary Christology, docetic in its 31

estimate and conclusions.

So tangible does he understandthis pre-existenceof the man Jesusto have been that he
is at no point liable to the kind of misunderstandings that Irenaeus' fine distinctions
between irvEܵa,4uxrj, oc pý, and uWis continually produce.

So, in view of the terrible encounter of God and man in the Old Testament, we

shall have to say that here, too, we already have the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting. To expect

Christ in this full and complete way, as was the case here, means to have Christ

29 Frykberg, E., Karl Barth's Theological Anthropology: An Analogical Critique Regarding Gender
Relations. Studies in Reformed Theology and History (Princeton Theological Seminary, 1993), 31
30CD 111/2,46,205
31CD 1/2,16

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

and to have Him fully. The fathers had Christ, the complete Christ. Here, too,
idea Christ, but the incarnate Word, the Christ history. 32
naturally, not an of of

It is at this point, though, that despite the assertions of commentators such as Robert

Jenson, we begin to see a radical divergence of opinion between Barth and Irenaeus 33

32CD 1/2,93; cf. 73ff; 1I/2,354ff.

31 In addressing the question of pre-existence Jenson describes Irenacus and Barth almost
perfectly
mirroring one another in their presentations of the issue. `Irenaeus of Lyons will here only be
mentioned,' he states wisely (any further analysis of the bishop's theology necessarily revealing the
disparity between the two), 'although discussion of his remarkable Trinitarian metaphysics could in fact
substitute for the following discussion of the other, Karl Barth. ' Jenson, R. W., Systematic Theology
Vol. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 139-140.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Man as the Creature of the Trinity

The point at which Barth begins to deviate from Irenaeus and so genuinely to start

pioneering a new anthropology is over the question of the sense in which we might say
Jesus Christ is man. For Irenaeus, as seen above, `man' could not simply be subsumed

under the larger category `creature'. Creaturely men - and Adam in particular - he saw

as types of the divine Man who then himself became a creature in the incarnation. Yet,

while never explicitly rejecting this precise position, Barth felt that such Christology
(ironically for Irenaeus) would itself fall into the trap of dividing the Christ that no man

should put asunder. From Basle, to have a Christ above and behind Jesus of Nazareth
looked too much like abstraction and speculation. Whilst both theologians are in

agreement that Jesus Christ is the reality and revelation of the true being of man, it is in
fact little more than a superficial agreement, given their differing understandings of the

significance of `Jesus Christ'.

G. C. Berkouwer reveals some of the difficulties in coming to terms with this
anthropology, given its sheer originality, in his assessment of it:

The undeniable value of many of Barth's anthropological views regarding the

Biblical picture of man does give rise to some question regarding the
Christological basis of this anthropology. We can put the matter thus: on the

one hand, Barth builds his anthropology on Jesus as archetype, Urbild, and on
God's grace which preserves man's `essence'; on the other hand, the argument

often stresses rather the creaturely dependence of the whole man on God, his
Creator. 34

The novelty of Barth's conception seemed to shield Berkouwer from the realisation that

here is no either-or situation, no inconsistency in the new dogmatics. Even as the

Urbild, the real and primary man, this man can only be spoken of as created `flesh', as

`the creature'. Indeed, this, rather than `man', is Barth's choice as title for Chapter X,

which constitutes his part-volume on anthropology. Man is only ever the creature.

This does not mean that Barth harbours a crypto-Lutheran Christology in which there is

a mutually affecting perichoretic relationship between the Word and his flesh (a

34Berkouwer, 94-5

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

that makes the Word as dependant on the flesh as the flesh is upon the
relationship
Word). This would be to misunderstand both the novelty of the position and the

seriousness with which he conceives man as creature. Nor does it mean that this

position should be confused with an abstract Jesus-worship, worshipping the human

nature alone, such as in the Protestant pietism of Zinzendorf and the Catholic cult of the

sacred Heart of Jesus. This he expressly repudiates on the grounds that the human

Logos is has or prior to its

nature of the anhypostatic and so no existence outside of

the Logos. 35 Thus, the gospels do record Jesus' being hungry,

union with whilst
thirsty, tired, sad, angry and so on, this `private life of Jesus' never amounts to an

theme in the New Testament. 36 What it does mean is that every question
autonomous

concerning man which is directed away from Jesus of Nazareth, the human being of
from being 37 It is
Christ, is necessarily and wholly directed away the real of man.

simply the incarnate Word alone, the Xöyoc EvaapKOS,

that is God's revelation, the

unveiling of the being of both God and man. When Paul or John in his prologue speak

of Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the one through whom and for whom all things were

made, they wish to speak only of the eternal divine Son or Logos in his unity with the

human being Jesus: `That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which

we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,

of the Word of life' (1 John 1: 1).

The point in time at which this conception began to crystallise in Barth's mind

is unclear. What is clear is that in his first effort at dogmatics in the early years in

Göttingen in 1924-5, whilst he did hold that the eternal Son could only be known in and

through the incarnation, the eternal Son could be spoken of as a being apart from,
because prior to, Jesus Christ.

The incarnation of the Son, then, is not an eternal relation like that of the Son

to the Father, although it is enclosed by the wisdom of God from all eternity. It
is something new, an action like creation. Certainly we know the Son only

through the Incarnate, in Jesus Christ, whom the fathers saw in hope. But he is

also the Logos of God beyond his union with humanity, just as the Trinity is

35 CD 1/2,136-8; Barth, K., The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed.
H. Reiffen; trans., G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI.: Ecrdmans, 1991), 157
36CD 111/2,209
37Cf. CD 1/2,166

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

more than the incarnation. As the Father is not just the Creator, so the Logos is

he is from Jesus Christ. 38

what even apart

By the time he came to write the Church Dogmatics his Christology - and his
understanding of the connection between the Logos and the humanity he assumed in

particular - does appear to have changedsomewhat. Some statementsin volume I (the

second part-volume in particular) seem quite emphatic: `[i]t is oütoS, this man, who in
the beginning was with God, as we read in Jn. 12. Who is this man? The Logos who
became flesh'. 39 Yet there is too much in volume I that militates against so

monochrome a reading. Specifically, Barth has not yet delineated the nature of

`becoming'. The result is that certain affirmations are not only ambiguous, but
potentially misleading, especially for the unwary. For example:

He is the incarnate Word, i. e., the Word not without the flesh, but the Word in

the flesh and through the flesh - but nevertheless the Word and not the flesh.
The Word is what he is even before and apart from His being flesh. Even as
incarnate He derives His being to all eternity from the Father and from

Himself, and not from the flesh. 40

Without a clear doctrine of time yet in place, in what sense can the `becoming' of this

passage be understood? Eternally? Timelessly? In terms of common, `linear',

chronology? In what sense can there be any `before and apart from'? The difficulty in

grappling with Barth at this point is heightened by yet more clear statements that there

was indeed a definite `becoming' -a change from one mode of being to another. Thus,
he writes, the Word `became Jesus. In so doing He did not cease to be what He was

before, but He became what He was not before, a man, this man. Al What grounds

Barth's thought here (unsurprisingly! ) is his conception of revelation. That is, what

God is in his being towards us as the incarnate Word, he is eternally and antecedently
in his own being as God. Worryingly for what purports to be so christocentric a
doctrine of revelation, the precise Christological details may not have been worked out,

and yet the inclination of Barth's thought can be clearly seen. The maturity of that

38 The Göttingen Dogmatics, 155-6

39 CD I/2,18
40CD 1/2,136
41CD 1/2,149

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

thought can be seen nearly twenty years later, when, in answer to the question `Does

the incarnation make a change in the Trinity? ' Barth replied:

No, the incarnation makes no change in the Trinity. In the eternal decree of

God, Christ is God and man. Do not ever think of the second Person of the

Trinity as only Logos. That is the mistake of Emil Brunner. There is no Logos

asarkos, but only ensarkos. Brunner thinks of a Logos asarkos, and I think this
is the reason for his natural theology. The Logos becomes an abstract

principle. Since there is only and always a Logos ensarkos, there is no change
in the Trinity, as if a fourth member comes in after the incarnation. 42

Not only do we see now for the first time a hypostatisation of the assumed flesh (with

which, it has to be said, Barth thankfully fails to be consistent), such that any

`becoming' can be imagined to amount to the inclusion of a fully hypostatic fourth

member in the Godhead, we also see a pioneering Christology.

In this definition of his mature Christology, as we have seen Jenson do, Barth

did turn to Irenaeus as his very first pillar of support in the church. 43 Yet instead of

picking up the tradition of Irenaeus, it would be more accurate to say that Barth has

effectively inverted Irenaeus' view that to place the birth of, and assumption of flesh

by, Jesus Christ in eternity would be to make a speculative judgment about the eternal

generation of the Son. For Barth, the real speculation is that of any other generation
than the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem! A confusion that we must be careful to avoid (as

in dealing with Irenaeus' doctrine of the eternal man) is between Barth's doctrine of the

A6yos EvaapKoc and the ancient tradition of the caeleste corpus found first in Apelles

and the Valentinians, then seen in the Paulicians, Hilary of Poitiers, dissidents of the
Radical Reformation such as Melchior Hoffman, Menno Simons, Caspar Schwenkfeld,

Sebastian Franck, Valentin Weigel and Deitrich Philips, as well as individual

representatives from both evangelical (Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge) and esoteric
(Emanuel Swedenborg) camps. `n To take Isaac Watts as perhaps the most able and

42Table Talk, 49
43CD I11/1,55, citing AH 5.18.3 (`For the Creator of the world is truly the Word of God: and this is our
Lord, who in the last times was made man, existing in this world, and who in an invisible manner
contains all things created, and is inherent in the entire creation, since the Word of God governs and
arrangesall things; and therefore He came to His own'); cf. CD 111/2,155.
44 Cf. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity x. 18ff. Also Williams, G. H. & Mergal, A. M., Spiritual and
Anabaptist Writers. Library of Christian Classics: Ichthus Edition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957),
162,238.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

orthodox exponent of the caeleste corpus tradition: Watts held that Christ's `person as
God-man existed before the foundation of the world', by which he meant that the Son's

human nature `was formed the first of creatures before the foundation of the world'.

Watts was trying, in `The Arian invited to the Orthodox Faith', to lead those persuaded

by the post-Reformation revival of Arianism to belief in the full deity of Christ by `soft
45 The problem with `steps', of course, is that they lead both ways at
and easy steps'.

once, and thus J. A. Donner declared `From this view to Arianism was but a short
46 In
step'. contrast, despite his (unintended) inversion of much of Irenaeus' anti-
Valentinian logic, Barth, like Irenaeus, wholly resisted the temptation to reduce the

divine status of the Son of God. Neither was the ac pý of the ,löyoS celestial; nor did it,

for all its eternal nature, in any way imply the less than fully divine nature of the Xoyoc.

In fact, the very opposite: for Barth, God is God precisely in the flesh. That is his

doctrine of revelation: God is in Jesus.

Whilst this might raise theological problems about the eternal relationship
between the Creator and his creation, it has to be said that Barth's Xöyog EvuapKoclooks

nothing like the formless Urmensch of Gnosticism. Rather, the rejection of the `second

person' of the Trinity per se, the X6yoc äaapKoc, is a protest against all formless
`Christ-principles', and a replacement of them with Jesus Christ the Mediator, One who
in the eternal sight of God has already taken upon himself our human nature. 47 Any

protest that this is, in effect, the construction of an eternal incarnation (and so its own

effective etherification) is missing the point. There may be no change in the Trinity in

that no new member is admitted. Yet there is still a very real `becoming' in the choice

and so being of Jesus Christ the God-man. As Barth himself responded: `eve have no
to into 48 Eberhard Ringel explains the sense in which
need project anything eternity'.
this is the case:

This pre-existent being of the man Jesus should not be interpreted as a

`gnoseological' or `ideal' being. And this being `does not belong only

45 Watts, I., `The Arian invited to the Orthodox Faith' in The Works of the Rev. Isaac Matts, D. D.
(Leeds: 1813), Vol. VI, 210ff. Philip Doddridge is sometimes bracketed with Watts in discussions of
eighteenth century English Arianism: `there is reason to believe that Christ had before his incarnation a
created or derived nature... though we are far from saying he had no other nature' (Doddridge, P., A
Course of Lectures on the Principle Subjects in Pnemnatology, Ethics and Divinity, 4`h ed. (London:
1799), Vol. II, 154).
46Dorner, J. A., History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1872), Vol. II, 331
47CDI11/1,54
48CD 11/2,98

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

passively to the aeterna Del praedestinatio [eternal divine predestination]' (CD

11/2,107) as Aquinas taught (5Th III. 24. lf. ). The being of the man Jesus in the

beginning with God consists rather in the spoken character of the eternal Xoyoý:

Jesus. And here also it is true that `he spoke, and it came to be' (Ps. 33.9). In

that the electing God has spoken his electing Yes to this man, this man is this
Yes. He is this not (sic) Yes for himself. For himself he is nothing at all. But

he is this Yes with God. 49

We might say that in the man Jesus Christ we are presented with the very antithesis of

the supratemporal myth of the Gnostic aeon, whose eternal being was then shadowed or

acted out on the stage of history. For in him we do not see the mere sign of some other

reality but the reality himself - the sigmuni and the res in the one person. The human
flesh assumed by the Mediator of the covenant is the only temple in which God may be

known or glorified or loved or worshipped. 50

Again, we need to be careful not to mishear Barth on this point. For there is an

assertion with which he did not wish to be confused, one that he held up against the so-

called Extra Calvinistictmi of Reformed theology. That is the Lutheran idea of a

perichoresis between the Word of God and the human being of Christ, a perichoresis
that, he felt, reversed the enhypostasis of Christ's human nature such that, in the same

way that the humanity only has reality through the Word, so the Word only has reality
through the humanity. 51 To this, Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries responded with an assertion, not against the totus totes intra carneni but

against the munquant et nuspiam extra carnem.

They did not want the reality of the Xöyoc äaapKOcabolished or suppressed in

the reality of the XoyoS EvoapKoc. On the contrary, they wished the ,löyoc
äßapKoc to be regarded equally seriously as the terminus a quo, as the Xoyoc

EvaapKOSwas regarded as the terminus ad quem of the incarnation. And so

49Jüngel, E., God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth.
A Paraphrase, 2"d English ed., trans., Webster, J. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 96
50Cf. CD I1/1,58; 11/2,58; IV/2,101. This is important to bear in mind when Barth writes in what could
otherwise potentially be construed as mythopoeic language. For instance, in the second part of his
section `The Royal Man' (CD IV/2, §64.3), he describesthe royal man as being created `after God' (Kath
9E v) (166) such that the Son of Man copies, represents and reflects the humiliation of the Son of God
(167-71,179ff.; cf. 11/2,413f.). It is not that the Son of Man is the temporal shadow of some other being,
namely the eternal Son of God, but that the royal man Jesus is God's faithful and true Eii«Sv,revealing
the divine Yes spoken to man and the creation as a whole.
51CD 1/2,166-71

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

they wanted to reject that reversal of the enhypostasis, by which, it seemed to

divinity the humanity imperilled. SZ
them, the
either or as such was

Not that Barth could entirely agree with them. The Reformed response, he believed,

failed to demonstrate that it had not posited a twofold Christ, a? 6yoS EvaapKOS

alongside a Xoyoc äoapKoc: `In short it cannot be denied that the Reformed totes intra et

extra offers at least as many difficulties as the Lutheran tours intra. '53 His conclusion

was that there may in the end be no nice equilibrium between the two, but that the

existence of two evangelical theologies in one evangelical Church may reflect the great
6 Al EYEVETO.54 This halting of his between two opinions seems
mystery that yoS oäpý
to serve as an early indicator of his overall approach to Christology: that is, he

consistently refused to be tied to one idiom, a refusal that enabled him to make,

alternately, strongly Alexandrian and strongly Antiochene Christological statements,

whilst avoiding an ultimate collapse into Nestorianism or Eutychianism.
The real furnace in which this was forged was the doctrine of God, and, more

specifically, the question of election. For Barth, God does not exist behind his

revelation of himself, but in it, in his being towards us. What is that being? God's
freedom is such that he decides what he will be and so is the one authentic `I'. Human

decisions in their creaturely and sinful weakness have not only the potential but the bias

toward remaining ineffectual.

In contrast, God's decision is the most historical,
So in fact, that God is his decision. 55
effectual, and real of occurrences. much so, own
His decision, his covenant decree, is the choosing of Jesus Christ. It is in that act of

choosing that Jesus Christ exists. Then, if Jesus Christ the electing God was also to be
the elected man, if it is this person, God united with man in one person, who is as such

the eternal basis of the whole divine election, then in the eternal decree of God, the Son

of God had to be determined as the Son of Man, to be the pre-existing God-man Jesus
Christ. 56 The eternal purpose of God is the reality of the divine-human person of Jesus

Christ before the existence of all other reality. Jesus Christ, the divine-human person,

therefore eternally is.

In his examination of the doctrine of creation Barth elaborates on this, for that

covenant decision is the internal basis of creation. That is, in the very same freedom

52CD 1/2,169-70
53CD 1/2,170
54CD 1/2,171
55CD II/1,265-72
56CD 11/2,101ff.; cf. 172; IV/1,66.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

and love with which God eternally begets the Son, he also turns outward as creator to
love in freedom - to pronounce his divine `Yes' on that which lies outside his own

being and eternity. In the man Jesus, God turns - not because of external compulsion,

but out of the inner necessity of his eternal love - ad extra such that his relationship

with what is other than him might correspond to his own inner, eternal relationship.
This actualisation of God's grace in creation is the answer to the supreme problem for

theology, which is not the existence of God but the independent existence of creaturely

reality. Creation is God's temporal externalisation of that which he eternally is in

himself. 57 The speaking and hearing of the Word from all eternity thus forms the

internal basis of the existence of creation, which is itself the hearer of the Word and one

that responds in praise. It is wholly consonant with his nature that God, the eternal

speaker of the Word, should be creator. Thus framed, a Christian doctrine of creation

effectively escapes the horns of necessity and arbitrariness as the eternal love of the
Father for the Son is expressed in the love of God for what is outside his inner being.

God's acts ad extra are not strange to his being. To be God for us is not therefore

something alien to the being of God. It is grounded in his very being. The God who is
the metaphysical Supreme Being, a God alone without man (such as Martin Buber's
`wholly other' God), as opposed to being eternally for man, is a proud being, unable to

stoop in humility down to his creature, a God in marked contrast to the God revealed in

Jesus Christ. Such a God is the devil. It is the perversity of sin that man wishes to be

precisely this absolute, solitary, and proud being (self-sufficient, self-serving, self-

centred) and not like the humble God.58

To put it simply: the love of the Father for the Son, or of God for his Word, is
the eternal basis of the creaturely being found primarily in the incarnation and

secondarily in creation itself. Incarnation, then, is the embodiment, the external form

of the inner reality of the eternal love that is between the Father and the Son. The
Trinity is the ontic root of the incarnation as the Word is the &pXrj of creation. The

fellowship between Father and Son thus finds a correspondence in the fellowship

between God and his creature. Far from the man Jesus being a copy in the creaturely

57 `Creation is the temporal analogue, taking place outside God, of that event in God Himself by which
God is the Father of the Son. The world is not God's Son, is not "begotten" of God; but it is created.
But what God does as the Creator can in the Christian sense only be seen and understood as a reflection,
as a shadowing forth of this inner divine relationship between God the Father and the Son. ' ('God the
Creator' in Dogmatics in Outline, trans. G. T. Thomson (London: SCM, 1949), 52) Cf. Colwell, J. E.,
Actuality and Provisionality: Eternity and Election in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh:
Rutherford, 1989), 224-6. Why creation can be seen by Barth to be the specifically temporal analogue
and not also the spatial analogue is a question to which we will turn in chapter six.
58CD IV/1,159,422

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The Glory of God. Part Twvo:Barth 4 Who is Man?

world of the eternal Son, his existence is a reflection of the Father and the Son together.
It is this

relationship in the inner divine being which is repeated and reflected in God's

eternal covenant with man as revealed and operative in time in the humanity of
Jesus.... The humanity of Jesus is not merely the repetition and reflection of

His divinity,or of God's controlling will; it is the repetition and reflection of

God Himself, no more and no less. It is the image of God, the irnago Dei. 59

The imago Dei is not a state, but the image of a relationship. It is the primary instance

of the analogia relation is, in which the union of the Father and the Son is seen in the
temporal reality of the God-man JesusChrist. It is dynamic divine love imaged (and,
we might say, echoed) forth in the created sphere.
It is the positing of the Word of God as very God and - becauseof the Father's
love for the Son - very man from all eternity and before creation in the counsel of God

that is what finally makes creation not only appropriate but necessary. It is this in

contrast to any suggestion that God somehow stands in need of some partner other than
Jesus Christ. 60 The state of creatureliness flows out of the relationship between the

Father and the Son (of which the Spirit is the bond, meaning we must not understand

the covenant as binitarian and so failing to be the work of the whole being of God).
This state stands eternally before God and loved by him in the Son. That God has

regard to the Word made flesh is the ratification of the covenant that is then the true
basis 61
and genuine of creation.

If the eternal Logos is the Word in which God speaks with Himself, thinks
Himself and is conscious of Himself, then in its identity with the man Jesusit
is the Word in which God thinks the cosmos, speaks with the cosmos and
imparts to the cosmos the consciousnessof its God.62

59CD 111/2,219. It is this crucial point that is so determinative for his doctrine of reconciliation, for it is
this that Barth means when he statesthat the `royal man of the New Testament tradition is created "after
God" (Ka-r&OEÖV).This means that as a man He exists analogously to the mode of existence of God.'
(CD IV/2,166, referring to Eph 4: 24).
60Barth, K., The Humanity of God trans., J. N Thomas & T. Wieser (London & Glasgow: Collins, 1960),
50
61CD 111/1,51f.;cf. 28f., 49f.; 111/2,18,137.
62CD 111/2,147

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Thus Jesus Christ, the Word precisely in his flesh, is the mediator from all eternity, the

meaning and motive of all creation. As Jesus Christ is God for God in the divine

relationship ad intra, so he is God for man in the repetition of that relationship ad

extra. The man Jesus is to the created world what the Son of God as the eternal Logos
is within the triune being of God, for he is human exactly as he actualises himself as the

Word of God. Thus the becoming flesh of the Word cannot be conceived as anomalous

to his being. 63 The decree of grace that prompts the creative will of God
eternal

presupposes that the unity and love between the Father and the Son will not be
unsettled or disturbed in some sense, but transcendently glorified by the becoming flesh

of the Word and his taking to himself of man's misery. His becoming is his being, and

so his becoming like us is not a becoming unlike himself. Whilst being other than
himself in his going into the far country as the Son of Man, the Son of God remains

utterly himself. For there is within the divine life of God himself a pries and a

posterius, such that the humiliation of the Son is not the slighting but the very

affirmation of his divine being and the divine life itself. `Christ is man, not in contrast

to the fact that elsewhere He is termed the Son of God, but because He is the Son of
God, and expresses and demonstrates Himself as such in the fact that He is man. ' 64 He

cannot be the Word of God, communicating God ad extra to creation, and therefore be
for God, or even be at all, without being for men. 65

If this has profound implications for the doctrine of creation as a whole, it has
yet more for anthropology proper, which is our immediate concern. For the Word of
God is concerned with God and man, not with heaven and earth themselves. Therefore,

a theological doctrine of creation moves ineluctably towards anthropology, to man in

the cosmos, given that the goal and centre of the cosmos is the human reality within
66 Barth is
it. asserting that there is no human nature prior to the Son's assumption of it,
for he took creatureliness to himself even (so to speak) before it was. Jesus Christ

alone is really and originally man - even creaturely man, flesh. As such he, as

prototype, both determines and is human nature in a way that no man can avoid. He is

not only the root and basis of the covenant of grace planned for man. He is also the

root and basis of human nature as such. Other men only share derivatively and

63 So Hans Frei: `That God related himself to

us means that it was possible, that he must be himself
eternally in a way that is congruent with his relating himself to us contingently. ' (Frei, H., `Karl Barth:
Theologian' in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, eds. G. Hunsinger and W. C. Placher (New
York/Oxford: OUP, 1993), 171)
64CD 111/2,46;cf. 1/2,165; IV/1,200f.
65CD 111/2,217
66CD 111/2,6ff.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

in fleshly is his. 67 He is the original,

secondarily a nature that properly and primarily

we are the copy. The possibility of a natural anthropology has thus been pre-empted in
being denied from all eternity in the very being which is the decision of God. 68

However, despite the undoubted strength of such an uncompromisingly Jesus-

focused anthropology that refuses to tolerate abstraction when
- an anthropology
speaking of `the human nature' -a number of problems have become clear. There is of

course the inevitable danger of sneering at the theological sight of the giant upon whose

shoulders we are standing, yet Douglas Farrow's comment on Barth's ascension

theology might just as well be applied here: `[i]n his loyalty to the Man of Nazareth he

struck a great blow at the head of the "giant gnostic snake" coiled at the roots of docetic
theology, even if in doing so he bruised his own theological heel. 269

The first problem is illuminated as the distinction between Barth and Irenaeus,
both proponents of Jesus Christ as the original and eternal man, has opened up to shed

light on the matter. Barth has integrated the traditionally distinct, if inter-related,

aspects of Christology, the being and the activity of Jesus Christ. His work does not

stand over and above his person, for he is the reconciliation of God that he performs.
Robert Jenson sets out the issue: speaking of Christ as being within himself both the

subject and object of the work of God, Jenson sees here the key to Barth's holding
together of the identity of the eternal Son with Jesus of Nazareth (importantly, with
terms such as `fellowship').

In classical Christology God works in and through the human nature of Christ

as through His own nature. Here God works on the human nature of Christ....
For classical Christology the history of salvation, the history of Christ and His

people, is the history between God-in-Christ and mankind. For Barth's

Christology it is the history between God and man as these are present in the

67CD 111/2,50;cf. 1/2,44; 111/1,380.

68 Eberhard Jüngel comments, 'Barth's teaching
concerning the being of the man Jesus in the beginning
with God is, indeed, the christological counterpart to the theologia naturalis [natural theology] which he
radically rejected. Whereas Barth always denied the priority of God's being in the beginning with
humanity in creation over revelation (which is only to be understood christologically), he now teaches,
on the basis of the priority of revelation (of covenant) which he always maintained, the being of a man in
the beginning with God, which precedes creation: that is, the being of the elect man Jesus. In this, Barth
has in some measure christologically surpassed the conception of all natural theology. One can hardly
any longer make the charge that Barth's rejection of any natural theology withheld from humanity the
theological significance which is its due. ' (Jüngel, E., God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian
Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, 2nd English ed., trans., Webster, J.
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 97, n. 91)
69 Farrow, D., Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for
Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), 254

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

two natures of Christ. One almost wants to say without qualification: It is the
history between the two natures of Christ. The classical Christology was
concerned with the history made by the one person of the God-man, with the
deeds worked by God-in-Christ. Barth's Christology is concerned with the

history worked by God on Jesus, "in" Christ. 70

Yet this deviation from what Jenson calls `classical Christology' is precisely the

problem, and, given the centrality of the dual concept of anhypostasis-enhypostasis to

the inner logic of the whole scheme of God's grace operating in the giving of Jesus
Christ for us, a problem that must infect Barth's entire doctrine of reconciliation. 7'

Where for Irenaeus it is the personal relationship between the man Jesus Christ and

God the Father that is the ontic basis for creation, for Barth it is, in the end, the

anhypostatic flesh of the Word as the repetition of that relationship ad extra. There can
be no I-Thou interpersonal relationship here. Any relationship must be replaced with

what must be called an enhypostatic connection. It is understandable then that he

should want to hypostatise the flesh of the Word, as seen above and in his use of terms

such as `fellowship'. Yet if it is the anhypostatic flesh itself that, by being loved by the

Father before creation, even in the Son, is the internal basis of creation, any

`relationship' with it necessitates a fall into Nestorian Christology of the worst sort.
What sort of `relationship' can God really have with created being on this model? It is

imperative to note that this is not a critique of the classical doctrine of the Evurröoratoq

as Leontius of Byzantium had couched it.. For Leontius and John of Damascus, what

was enhypostatic was not humanity or human nature in general, but a potential human
individual as yet undeveloped into an hypostasis. 2 Barth's innovation is to have made

70Jenson, R. W., Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Thomas Nelson,
1963), 130. `The actuality of the incarnate Son of God, the union of the two natures in Him, is the direct
confrontation of the totality of the divine with the human in the one JesusChrist. ' (CD IV/2,86; cf. CD
111/2,69ff.)
71Barth referred to the formula as a description of 'the sum and root of the grace addressedto Him', that
is, the human nature of Jesus Christ (CD IV/2,91). Bruce McCormack has argued convincingly that
Barth's appropriation of the anhypostasis-enhypostasis formula in 1924 `provided the material
conditions neededto set free the elaboration of the analogia fidei', supplanting the time-eternity dialectic
`as the central parable for expressing the Realdialektik of God's veiling and unveiling' (McCormack, B.
L., Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909-36
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 19,367).
72Cf. Relton, H. M., A Study In Christology (London: SPCK, 1917), chs. 8-9. Building on the challenge
laid down to the traditional reading of Leontius by Aloys Grillmeier and Brian Daley, F. LeRon Shults
has argued that Barth's appropriation of the anhypostasis-enhypostasis formula was the result of his
readings in Protestant Scholastic, and not patristic, theology. Despite the terminology, Barth's use of the
formula cannot, then, be said truly to reflect Leontius' thought. (Schults, F. LeRon, Reforming

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

the humanity of Jesus Christ the ontological foundation (even, at times it seems, the

totality) of the being 73 It is when this is put together with the traditional and
of man.

orthodox doctrine of the EvunöatatoS that Leontius' thought is distorted, with

consequences never on the map of the late classical Christological debates. The charge
that Barth aimed at any (such as Irenaeus) who would divide Christ by postulating a
Son prior to Jesus of Nazareth seems to have exploded in his face: either he could do

the same himself or admit the lack of any relationship (as opposed to mere connection)
between God and his creation.

Furthermore, it does seem in practice that in Jesus' being as the man for other

men, his humanity is made dependent on ours. Why else would the Son assume that
flesh affected by our sin? 74 The alternative, that, metaphysically, sin is something that

should be removed and dealt with in the creaturely realm, simply smacks of conjecture.
At times Barth feels able - despite his great fear of speculation - to suggest that some

other economy might, in fact, have obtained: `[i]n delivering and fulfilling this first and

eternal Word in spite of human sin, as He would in fact have delivered and fulfilled it

quite apart from human sin, sin is also met, refuted and removed in time. '75 Jenson

pleads an otherwise plausible defence, that the Son's triumph over sin is not the

abstract plan of a God who likes to overcome difficulties, but the expression of the

absolute primacy of the Crucified and Risen. '76 Yet this does seem to beg the question,

or at least open another one about the chicken and the egg.
Finally, there is the problem of the eternal standing of created being before,

with, and even within God. Barth does on occasion show an awareness of how close to
the edge of pantheism he is treading. Of the Word made flesh he writes: `[i]n His

divinity He is from and to God. In His humanity He is from and to the cosmos. And

God is not the cosmos, nor the cosmos God. But His humanity is in the closest

correspondence with His divinity. It mirrors and reflects it. '77 This is perhaps why, at

a time when quantum theory was tying time and space together tighter than ever, Barth

Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans,
2003), ch. 7 `Anthropology and Christology: The Anhypostasis-EnhypostasisFormula')
73 Thus the history of Jesus Christ, as we shall see in chapter 6, is
our history, the history of the
reconciliation of the world with God (CD IV/l, 158; 547f.; 630f.; 643f.; IV/2,270).
74CD 1/2,151ff.
75CD IV/1,48
76Alpha
and Omega, 104
77 CD 111/2,216

131
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

only felt able to elucidate a Christologically informed doctrine of time. 78 Certainly it is

his account of time that serves as the black box into which so many potential
difficulties are crammed. Perhaps, then, all we can say for the moment before we

proceed to examine his doctrine of time is that since to his doctrine of time much has
been given, much will be required.

78This is a criticism
regarding Barth's anthropology only- in CD 11/1,the question of space is dealt with
in so far as it concerns the doctrine of God (§31.1). Significantly, as we shall see, Barth denies there that
God's omnipresenceand eternity, for all their relationship, can be considered as parallels (cf. 464ff. ).

132
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Man as Male and Female

We must not get ahead of ourselves, for we have not yet acquired a complete account

of Barth's understanding of who man, the imago Dei, is. If we were to break off our
investigation at this point we would be left with an abstract, timeless conception of

humanity that would bear little resemblance to the concrete specificity of the humanity

we encounter in ourselves each day. Furthermore, such an account of human nature

would hardly have the necessary ballast to withstand the onslaught of attacks that the

concept of the person in particular is currently undergoing.

We have seen that man, as Barth understands him through his exegesis of
Genesis 1 especially, is not created to be the image of God himself, but is created to be
in correspondence with the image of God. That is, man is to be the copy and imitation

of the original imago Dei, a being in correspondence with the very being of God
himself. Therein there is great similarity to Irenaeus, who also saw Adam as only Kar'

EtKÖVa T06 E.K6voS. However, here again Barth begins - unconsciously, we must

assume - to distance himself from the bishop, for he builds into (or sees in) the very

nature of the image something that Irenaeus did not. That is, man's correspondence

with the image of God is to be found in the plurality - the `us' and `our' - of Genesis
1:26. As God lives in togetherness within himself, so he lives in togetherness with man

such that men might live in togetherness with one another.

For Barth, a lonely Adam was declared `not good' precisely because in his

solitariness he could not properly correspond to the being of God. As such he could not
be the partner of God in the history of creation which follows. Thus if created man

were solitary, creation itself would then lack its internal basis in the covenant, which is
that partnership of correspondence.

Humanity, the characteristic and essential mode of man's being, is in its root
fellow-humanity. Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity. For
it cannot reflect but only contradict the determination of man to be God's

covenant-partner,nor can the God who is no Deus solitarius but Deus triunes,
God in relationship, be mirrored in a homo solitarius. 79

79CD 111/4,117. In practical support of Barth's theory, Paul Jewett writes of how noteworthy it is `that
prisoners look on solitary confinement as the worst form of punishment. Vietnam War prisoners viewed
it as the "ultimate ordeal." "The isolation and monotony of the prison," they said, "surpasses in

133
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Man is analogous to God in the fact that he has his counterpart in his fellow man, the

relationship within Godself being repeated in the relationship man has with his fellow.
Humanity is thus essentially shared (Mitmenschlichkeit). Just as the man Jesus, the

imago Dei, was man for other men, so too to be in the image of God, man must be
homo relationis, not homo solitarius. This, in contrast to (at least Barth's conception

of) the Thomist analogia entis, is the analogia relationis, which analogy sits so closely
to the twin terms employed earlier in the Dogmatics: the analogia fidel and the

analogia gratiae. To be God's partner in this covenant, man himself needed a partner.

Without his partner, man would not only be without glory himself, he simply would not
be the glory of God. Clearly here is a different interpretation of the `the glory of God':

not simply a negative alternative to the vivens homo, but the actual incorporation of (as
opposed to mere association with) fellowship. Barth hastens to add that one may not

go on to imply the apotheosis of the I-Thou relationship as Schleiermacher had done in

raising the dialectic of human gender to a metaphysical absolute (describing the

embrace of lovers as no longer a creaturely embrace but the mystical embrace of God
himself). Man remains the creature and servant of God, but is so as his faithful

covenant partner. That is, in that his being is a being in this encounter, man finds the

closest correspondence and partnership with God. 80

At one level, in the line of Ebner, Buber and Brunner, Barth is preparedto leave
his understanding of humanity as fellow-humanity at that. Here, in every responsible I-
Thou relationship, is where Brunner left his interpretation of the innago only a few
.
years earlier, despite seeing that human sexuality, unlike other distinctions, `goes down
to the very roots of existence, and penetrates into the deepest
our personal
"metaphysical" 81 After
grounds of our personality'. all, the differentiation and

relationship between the I and the Thou in the Q'i1ýK (Elohim, that plural being of

Genesis 1 that can act in the singular), is not at first sight more obviously specific. The

concrete form of differentiation to be found in God's covenant-partner (that is, the

relationship between male and female) need not be anything more than an aspect of

psychological horror and human degradation all the beatings and rats and diarrhoea and morning
emptyings of the honeybucket. `If you think only in terms of physical torture, you miss the subtlety of
what we mean by inhumane treatment"' (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5,1970, pt. I, p. 10, in Jewett, P. K.,
Man as Male and Female: A Study in Sexual Relationships front a Theological Point of View (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 20, n. 26)
8° CD 111/4,120ff.
$1Brunner, E., Alan in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans., 0. Wyon (London; Lutterworth, 1939),
345

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

man's creatureliness. Certainly the original and concrete form of differentiation and

relationship found in the creature is only that, and need not be seen as the only form of
differentiation to correspond with the being of God. 82 On this model, sexual duality is

a penultimate matter - merely a specific form of the ultimate matter which is the

responsible relationship between an `I' and a `Thou'. God might have found some

other means than sexual duality as the specific form of the `I-Thou' encounter.
In response we might say that if in fact Barth can leave differentiation at just
that, his anthropology does have profound consequences for sexual ethics. He

condemns homosexuality, citing Paul's reference to it in Romans 1, as a `physical,

psychological and social sickness, the phenomenon of perversion, decadence and

decay'. Yet it is hard to see on what basis he might be able to launch a consistent

critique of any segregation of the genders or homosexuality. Why might a loving

relationship between two persons of the same sex not equally correspond to the divine

fellowship on this model? Essentially, his argument is reduced to the assertion that
homosexual relations are not real relations, but the manifestations of an engorged

solipsism:

The real perversion takes place, the original decadence and disintegration
begins, where man will not seehis partner of the opposite sex and therefore the

primal form of fellow-man, refusing to hear his question and to make a

responsible answer, but trying to be human in himself as sovereign man or
woman, rejoicing in himself in self-satisfaction and self-sufficiency. The

command of God is opposedto the wonderful esoteric of this beata 83

solitudo.

Yet is the homosexual lifestyle necessarily or really so solitary and self-sufficient? It

seems hard to accuse it of replacing relations of alterity with those of ipseity when it is

simple encounter and not gender that is, at bottom, definitive. On Barth's model, could

not man see his partner in some other form of fellow-man and so live in interdependent
fellowship, encountering true alterity? 84 Having, even for a moment, untied the

82CD 111/1,196
83CD 111/4,166
$' Barth's non-limitation of relational specificity was taken to precisely this conclusion, to espousenon-
abusive homosexual relations, in what has been one of the most influential works for theological gender
studies in recent decades,Derrick Sherwin Bailey's Homosexuality and the ]NesternChristian Tradition
(New York & London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1955). Ironically, the existence of this loophole in
Barth's ethical thought may serve, by its very nature as a loophole, as a timely proof that anthropologies

135
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

theological anchor mooring human gender in its actuality, Barth is immediately set

adrift on the high seas of sexual ethics in need of some other mooring (a mooring

which, it has to be said, he never did find or even seek).

However, in the end he does in fact want to speak of man in the concrete

specificity of relationship in which he is actually found. The account of the creation of

man as male and female in Genesis 2: 18-25 is the climax of the whole history of
`Old Testament Magna Carta humanity'. 85 Thus he is deeply
creation and so the of

reticent about speaking of man without in the same breath saying male or female and

also male and female. This is not to imply that there can be no relationships between

male and male or female and female. It is that all such other relationships are

derivative of that primary and essential relationship between man and woman. 86 Whilst

there are many other differences than that of male and female in man, this difference

permeates and determines all other differences. So, the apostle Paul could choose to be

single as opposed to married, but he could not choose to be a man instead of a woman
(and, we might ask, has the advancement of surgical and hormone-replacement
technology really changed anything at a fundamental level here?). Adam needed Eve

since this fellowship is the `root of all other fellowship, without which he would not be
"good" as a creature, and without which his creation as man would thus be
incomplete. ' 87 For Barth, that fellowship between Adam and Eve is the primary sign of

humanity's ontological existence as creatures destined for covenant. To be God's

partner in the covenant, man himself needed a partner, yet not just any other. Animals

were deemed unfit partners because of their essential dissimilarity to Adam. Only the

woman was found suitable in her `similarity in difference', the only created being who
be `I' `Thou' to man. 88 Another Adam would be like Adam, yet would
could an and a
fail to be his `Thou' or a proper `I', in that he would not be different to Adam. In

contrast to so much traditional anthropology, Barth has at the least attempted to take the
femininity of woman - what distinguishes woman from the masculinity of man -

seriously. This is the only alternative to an abstract I-Thou anthropology such as

of male-female complementary are not necessarily, as is so often suggested, simply rear-guard actions
against homosexuality, arbitrarily privileging sexual difference over other forms of human alterity.
$SCD 111/2,291ff.
86In that this binary relationship underpins all others, excluding the possibility of what Eugene Rogers
calls an `egoism ä deiir' (Rogers, E. F. Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune
God (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 273), it might be said to be more fully Trinitarian, more inclusive of the
Spirit, than it at first appears,as it informs and is celebrated by relationships external to the primary I and
Thou.
87CD 111/1,324
88CD 111/1,290

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Martin Buber's, an anthropology that, for all its worth, is not sufficiently anchored in
the actual and particular to avoid its floating off into disconnected mysticism.
Barth puts the rhetorical question to his critics: could anything be more obvious

than to understand the image and likeness of God as described in Genesis 1:27 and
Genesis 5: 1-2 as signifying the conjunction of male and female? 89 Many since have

been disposed to answer, `Yes'. If Irenaeus was accused of failing to identify a case of

Hebrew parallelism in the use of ELKw) and öµoicoaic (generally identified as a

hendiadys), Barth has been accused of seeing a parallelism where there was none
(between `in the image of God he created him' and `male and female he created them').

Wolfhart Pannenberg is one who feels that it is not possible to accept Barth's

interpretation within Genesis itself. Yet, however those texts might be understood,

Pannenberg's point seems to hold, that within the broader context of the salvation-

historical realisation of the human image of God in Jesus Christ, the interpretation is

justified in a deeper sense. In the New Testament, Christ is the image of God, not in

solitary isolation, but as Christ, the head of his body, the Church (2 Cor. 4: 4; Col. 1: 15,
18).90 Yet even a critic such as Colin Gunton, who saw Barth's interpretation of the

imago Dei as a forced novelty alien to the thought of Genesis, valued the strength of so

concrete an understanding of humanity. His

rather strained use of the male-female relationship at the heart of his

conception of human nature appearsto have called attention away from the fact
that his position is as radically destructive as any empiricist, existentialist, or
neoclassical attack on conceptions of the person as a timeless substance
problematically linked to a changing body.91

The value of this for a culture that lightly throws aside this specificity as secondary is
incomparable. Not only is the man who is an island Descartes' isolated cogito ruled
- -
out from creation itself, but this particular differentiation is integral to our

correspondence with God and so the very existence of creation. To neutralise the sexes
is to dehumanise man. Man cannot then try to deny or exist beyond his sexual
determination as mere man by imagining that an overcoming of sexual differences

89CD 111/1,195
90Pannenberg,531
91 Gunton, C. E., Becoming The Doctrine
and Being: of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth
(Oxford: OUP, 1978), 188

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

would attain some higher unity for mankind. To imagine that would be to imagine that

man knows better than his creator.

In the work of God - which is what the human is - there is nothing offensive

and therefore no pudendinn.... And the awful genius of sin is nowhere more

plainly revealed than in the fact that it shames man at this centre of his
humanity, so that he is necessarily ashamed of his humanity, his masculinity

femininity. 92
and

One additional and immense advantage of Barth's explanation of man's being in the

innago Dei is that it gives no space whatsoever to the Gnostic doctrine of änavöpöoµai.
Gregory of Nyssa, as part of what has come to be called the `garments of skin'

hypothesis (the suggestion that Genesis 3: 21 refers not to clothes but to the post-

lapsarian origins of the human body), had divided Genesis 1:27 in a way completely

alien to Barth (and, it has to be said, in a way alien to the text itself to a degree that
Barth's own interpretation cannot be accused of), seeing the declaration `male and
female he created them' as a statement subsequent to creation proper such that
involve to the the 93 Embodiment,
redemption could a return sexlessness of original.

and thus sexuality, were departures from truly human ontology, occluding man's

essential androgynous hwnanum. For all the allegations against Barth of eisegesis and

misogyny, it has to be said that his conclusion at this point has managed to avoid the
doctrine most conducive to male chauvinism. Here is an anthropology that recognises

that it is not good for the man to be alone. Theology after Barth necessarily finds it

much harder than it had been to remove the question of human sexuality to a footnote.
In all this, we need to be scrupulous in avoiding the confusion that the male-
,
female relationship seen first in Adam and Eve is itself the imago Dei. They are the
Abbild (reflection) and Nachbild (copy), not the Urbild (prototype) and Vorbild

92CD 111/2,292;cf. 111/4,118,159f.

93 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man, 16f.. In his examination of the eschatological nature of the
male-female relationship, Barth does also directly address the question of the Encratite doctrine of
salvation as &navhpöopm. `Is A. Oepke right (TWBzNT, 1,785)', he asks, `when he says that by
proposing for man in the perfected lordship of God a sexless being similar to that of the angels Jesus lifts
from woman particularly the curse of her sex and sets her at the side of man as no less justifiably the
child of God?... But there is no reference here, and there cannot be, to an abolition of the sexes or a
cessation of the being of man as male and female. ' (CD 111/2,295-6). This is the obvious and logical
conclusion once the imago Dei has been tied to sexual duality, for if man is to retain his being in the
image, further, to be fully renewed in it, then he cannot lose his being as male and female. If he did so,
he would either no longer be in the image, or we would need to conclude that sexual duality was never
essential to being in the divine image.

138
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

(pattern). 94 Thus all that happens to Adam and Eve is a type and reflection of the

reality found in Jesus Christ the bridegroom and his relationship to his bride, the
Church. To see, then, that it is not good for man to be alone, that he needed a

helpmeet, indeed that his emergence as man could only be completed with the creation

of woman, is to see the most profound statement about the nature of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God and Son of Man. It is to see that he, Jesus Christ, was never meant to be

alone, but to have his counterpart in the Church which believes in him. This was why
Adam had to fall into that death-like sleep in which the woman had her origin, for the
Church of Jesus Christ was to have its origin in the very real death of her bridegroom

and then to stand complete before him in his resurrection. This is the reason why a

man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, so that they become

one flesh, for the man Jesus would leave the glory of his Father for the sake of his
Church and become one flesh with her in his incarnation. 95

To seethis is to seethat even JesusChrist in the flesh is too limited, too abstract
a definition of man. Building on the Old Testament background to the understanding

of Jesus as the Christ (that is, not an isolated figure, but the Head of his community), he

refuses to speak of any other Jesus than the Christ, not only in his flesh, but with his
body. Using Paul's thought in 1 Corinthians 11:7, he sees man as the EiKWV Kai bösa

only in conjunction with his wife.

OEOÜ This, Barth argues, is the true appropriation of

Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 2, for there we do not find in man an isolated male, but man

and his wife. To speak then of Jesus Christ as real man, the image of God, we

necessarily speak of him with his body, his bride, the Church. The man together with
the woman is the man who is the reality and not merely the indication or reflection of

the image God. 96 She is, after all, his glory, a part or member of his own body,
of
indeed his body itself, and therefore cannot be severed from him. The X6yoc EvoapKOc

cannot be without a body. His enfleshment is thus only completed in his embodiment;
his incarnation only fulfilled in the gathering in of the Church. Any other disembodied

94CD 111/1,197
95 CD III/1,32If. In an otherwise comprehensive exposition, it is unclear as to whether Barth here is
deliberately refusing to draw a connection between `and his mother' and the feminine fill, though the
omission is striking. It may be a case of avoiding the father-mother-child analogue opposed by
Augustine (De Trinitate, XII, 5-6), and yet it may serve as evidence of a weak pneumatology. One of the
critiques levelled at Barth's equation of man's being in the image with Genesis' `male and female he
created them' has been its tendency to be binitarian. So, in the relationship between man and woman we
see reflected the duality of the Father and the Son, but not fully trinitarian communion (cf. Gunton, C. E.,
The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 112). We will proceed to
examine the question of Barth's pneumatology in its reference to his anthropology in the next chapter, so
this is a matter that we might properly defer until then.
96CD III/I, 203

139
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Jesus is a docetic spectre, and not the totes Christus. This is the full (detractors might

say overstuffed) meaning of `Jesus Christ'. In his creation as male and female, and

therefore in the image and likeness of God, man is shown that even in the face of his
being in sin, he has reason to look for the man who will be real man for him, male and

female, namely Jesus Christ and his Church.

It is worth, briefly, returning here to an issue raised in the first chapter. Francis
Watson has asked a question highly pertinent to any anthropology that seeks to be in

any sense derivative of Christology: it is, he says `in Jesus, the image of God, that God
tells us who we are. But Jesus was a man, not a woman. Can he really embody the
image of God in its wholeness? Can a woman learn from Jesus what it is to be a

woman? '97 Watson answers his own question by asserting that the humanity of Jesus

of Nazareth transcends his maleness. Yet to dismiss this particularity as secondary and
incidental runs both a methodological risk and the risk of being left with a highly

abstract humanity. Irenaeus posited Jesus Christ as not just ävOpcrnrosä?.riOrjc, but more

specifically ävr p &XriOrjc,the husband who would be united with his bride in becoming

one flesh with his people. Yet it is Barth who has dealt with Watson's concern most

comprehensively. For he did not hold the same presupposition as Watson that it is

Jesus alone who is the image of God, so telling us who we are. In Barth's thinking it is

Jesus Christ, the head of his body, and that only with his body, who is the image of

God. The man Jesus of Nazareth does not reveal the totality of what it means to be

human in himself, else we would be left with a Jesus abstracted from his people.

Anthropology is never to be derived, in whatever sense, from Jesuology, but from

.
Christology. 98 Christological anthropology, then, is not intended to hold up Jesus of

Nazareth as an individual model for other individuals. What it does show is man's

need of a fellow (primarily Jesus Christ and his Church).

This is not to say that the Church is a part of his divinity, though it does mean

that she becomes an accessory part of divinity in God's choosing his Son as saviour for
her. 99 It has to be said that at this point Barth does run dangerously close to, if not into,

Balthasar has `ecclesiological 10° For, he

what von called an pan-Christism'. writes:

97Watson, F., Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 285
98 The significance of this can be seen inversely in Eugene Rogers' failure to appreciate Barth's
messianic understanding of JesusChrist: `If Christ is the complete image, then the image need not be a
dyad.' (Rogers, 225)
99Cf. Table Talk, 65; CD 111/1,296ff., 321; IV/1,43f.; IV/2,300.
100Balthasar, H. U.
von, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 107

140
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

The foundation of the Church is also its law and its limit. We might say that it

correspondsto the anhypostasisof Christ's human nature. By its inmost nature

the Church is forbidden to want independenceof JesusChrist, or sovereignty in
thought and action. 101

Certainly this takes into account the relation of the Church to Christ as a body to its

head. Yet is there really room here for the Church to be the bride, a relational `other'?

Only, we might answer, if the correspondence to the anhypostatic nature of Christ's

humanity breaks down. Yet whilst the bride is brought to share in all the status of the

bridegroom, the woman is not the man. When viewing the analogy between Christ and

the Church and man and woman, though, Barth developed into consistency. That is,

man and woman, as he is happily prepared to say even into the highly charged

atmosphere of gender studies, are not absolutely equal and interchangeable. Man is the
head, woman the body. This order of succession he does not examine in the Göttingen

Dogmatics, whilst he considers it to be an aspect of fallenness in Volume I/2 of the

Church Dogmatics. 102 Yet it is clearly seen as an aspect of being created in the image

of God in Volumes 111/2and 111/4,increasingly firmly grounded in the Trinitarian being

of God. Thus there can be a preceding and a following, a super- and sub-ordination.
Man is the source; woman does not choose and create, she is chosen and created. So

the Church did not first recognise Jesus, but was recognised and formed by him. In the
fullest sense, this is why it is the man, and not the woman, who exclaims in Genesis

2: 23 `This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'. We hear no response from

the woman in Genesis. It is only in the Old Testament's `second Magna Carta' of
humanity, the king's song of all songs in which we hear the answering voice of the
103 Man is the lord his 104 So, even in
woman. of the woman and the woman elect.
.
bestowing his righteousness and rank on the Church, Christ remains her lord and head.

Yet succession should in no sense be mistaken for value. First, man and woman are not

hierarchically related at the level of their being. Precedence and subsequence should

101CD 1/2,216
102CD 1/2,194
103CD II1/1,303,313,321; 111/2,293ff.; 111/4,216f. In this 'second Magna Carta' the Church is depicted
as a bride in real relationship, responding to the groom. However, one has to wonder whether this
responsedid in practice operate as a `second Magna Carta' in Barth's thought; in contrast to the gallons
of ink spilled on Genesis 2 throughout CD 111,less than five spread out pages are devoted to the Song.
Thus, whilst Barth in no sense denies the Church's existence as a being in relationship, his system has
the effect of covertly occluding the fact, his Christology steamrollering his understanding and use of the
woman's reply to man.
104CD 111/1,297,306; 111/2,312;111/4,169.

141
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

not be mistaken for superiority and inferiority. Second, without the subsequence of the

woman man could not be man. As Paul Jewett accurately, if mockingly, put it:
`although the woman is the glory of the man who is the glory of God, her glory is the

greater because the man could not be the glory of God without her who is his glory.
The woman's subordination, then, becomes not humiliation but exaltation! " 05 To treat

the woman as inferior is the very opposite of Adam's valuing of Eve in his jubilant

exclamation, and the very opposite of Christ's incorporation of the Church. The

ordering of man and woman imperils neither, but is the framework for their self-
fulfilment under God, for by it they both attest to the covenant that is the basis for their

being. So it can be seen that any humiliation of the woman was not the result of her

subordination, but sin's perversion and disruption of the created sexual harmony,
through which man's superordination was perverted into a blind domination, and the
into jealous desire for 106
woman's subordination perverted a emancipation.
Despite his caution here, his detailed treatment of the theme of a super- and sub-

ordination of man and woman is one of the more controversial sections in the Church
Dogmatics (111/4,116-240) and the theme of sexual differentiation
in general has
brought the accusation of patriarchy against Barth. ' 07 Wolf Krötke
understandably

pleads that the stratification of gender that entails precedence and subsequence is a

puzzling but merely peripheral and expendable concrete mode of the basic form of
humanity which is man in communication and encounter with his fellow, whether that

be male or female. The only place, he feels, for such a definite ordering, is in that of

the soul and body of the individual human person. 108 Such a plea could have held its

ground within the context of Volume I, and even to some extent in the context of the

ordering of sexual differentiation as just the concrete form of man's differentiation and
being as being in encounter. However, that specifically ordered relationship came to be

105Jewett, 73. Elsewhere, he adds, 'The authority to which the woman bows in her subordination to the
man is not that of the man as such, but the rä Lc(order) under which they both are placed. This order at
the human level is only a token of the obedience that the church owes to Christ. Hence it is a mode of
subordination that is sui generis; it is free, honourable, and meaningful, taking nothing from the woman
and giving nothing to the man. (Jewett, P. K. with Shuster, M., Who WeAre: Our Dignity as Human. A
Neo-Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1996), 147)
106CD 111/2,287;111/1,310
107Janowski, C., `Zur paradigmatischen Bedeutung der Geschlechterdifferenz in K. Barth's Kirchlicher
Dogniatik' in Kuhlmann, H., (ed.) Und drinnen waltet die züchtige Hausfrau. Zur Ethik der
Geschlechterdifferenz (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1995), 140ff. Eugene Rogers gleefully notes the opprobrium
that this specific working out of co-humanity in terms of precedenceand subsequenceinstantly attracted:
`According to oral legends circulating at Yale, Barth admirer Richard Niebuhr threw the volume across a
room in frustration. ' (heard from Hans Frei, Rogers, 141)
108Krötke, W., `The humanity
of the human person in Karl Barth's anthropology' (trans., P. G. Ziegler)
in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. J. Webster (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 169

142
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

seen by Barth as analogous to the relationship between Christ and the Church, even

rooted in the divine being of Trinitarian fellowship, at which point it necessarily began
to entail precedence and subsequence. 109 As soon as the superordinate-subordinate

order was seen as comparable to both divine-human covenantal relations and

perichoretic relations with Godself, that ordering could no longer be inconsequential, to

be jettisoned upon its clash with cultural mores. To wish that such ranking be limited

to its containment within the human individual is to miss its ultimate significance in

Barth's thinking. To actually remove such ranking would either destroy the analogia

relationis or serve as an attempt to bridge the infinite qualitative distinction between

God and creaturely being. A large part of the reason why Barth feels that he simply

cannot be harmonised with those who seek to deny the super- and sub-ordination of

man and woman is their different understanding of how essential sexual duality is. At

very much the same time as Barth was occupied with his doctrine of creation, Simone
de Beauvoir asserted, in her classic appeal for the abolition of what she called the myth

of the `eternal feminine', her celebrated remark: `On ne nait pas femme, on le devient'
('One is not born, but becomes a woman'). ' 0 Barth felt that a salutary and noteworthy

(though `very pagan') attack on androcentricity had fallen into an effective denial of the

real being of the woman, gender being reduced to an extrinsic condition, improper to
the human being 11 He, on the other hand, felt compelled to affirm sexual
as such.

precedence and subsequence because of his refusal to downgrade sexuality in this way.

109Paul Jewett fails to appreciate this, even though he has correctly located the basis for Barth's
understanding of gender stratification: `As we see it, the fundamental difficulty with Barth's argument
for female subordination is just this: the theology of humankind as male and female that he himself has
espousedis inimical to a doctrine of sexual hierarchy. In such a theology, the man and the woman are
partners in life, so related to each other as to be a fellowship like God is in himself, the very image of
him who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The plain implication of such a theology is
obviously the equality of the man and woman under God. Yet having gained this important insight,
Barth nonethelessdraws back from following its implications to the conclusion to which it leads. (Who
We Are, 148) On the contrary, it seems that Barth has been entirely consistent, seeing the precedence
and subsequence of man and woman respectively as analogous of two stratified relationships, that
between the Father and the Son, and that between Christ and his Church.
110Beauvoir, S. dc, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1953), 273. The
`eternal feminine' means that woman is being understood sub specie aeternitatis, as the empirical bearer
of the feminine principle of subsequence. As such, woman symbolises the relationship of the creation to
its Creator. In Roman Catholic thought, the principle of the Eternal Feminine has been used as an
explanation of the dynamics of the Fall. So, woman was tempted precisely becauseshe was the one to
whom belonged the ascendancy in creation (just as the ascendancy would belong to her in redemption
through her `seed' (Gen. 3: 15). This area commanded some special interest for Barth because of
Charlotte von Kirschbaum's discussion of the matter in her Die wirkliche Frau (Zurich: Evangelischer
Verlag, 1949; trans.: The Question of Woman, trans., Shepherd, J., ed. Jackson, E. (Grand Rapids, MI.:
Eerdmans, 1996)).
111CD 111/4,16If.. It might be noted that de Beauvoir is probably making a more limited point than
Barth imagines: not that she is imagining sexuality to be an accident, but that modem woman in
particular has been compressed into her stereotypical role by an androcentric culture (cf. Bailey, 28).
However, even if he has erected a straw woman, the essenceof his argument still holds.

143
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 4 Who is Man?

Sexual duality is rooted not only in creation and the nature of man, but in the very

being of God.

Again, this is not to say that if Christ comes to his Church, if God comes to

man, he does so out of obligation or as the result of some external compulsion to be

gracious to man. However, Barth is prepared to use alarming language to show God's
being in becoming. God is not a static monad. Nor then indeed can there be in the Son

an innermost detachment in which he is a private individual. His very relationship with

the Father is not a private affair reserved for his own enjoyment, but, as proclaimed in
John 17, a relationship he has for others as a public person. He is the man for the

woman, the man for other men, and does not exist stoically or mystically apart from
them. 112 As the woman was taken from the man, so the two must come together again
in one flesh. In this sense it can be said that man is the weaker half in his dependence

on woman for the fulfilment of his relationship to her and so his own very being. In the
humiliation and exaltation of Jesus Christ for the creature, the being of God radiates

and triumphs and so is glorified. Thus the being of God is more glorious than if he had
kept his glory to himself. This

is obviously the inner presupposition of the divine decree of grace and of the

divine creative will founded upon it. In some sense it is a matter of the self-

justification of God without which He could not have

and self-sanctification
loved the creature nor willed or actualised its existence. 113

Not only is the body meant for the Lord, but also the Lord for the body (1 Corinthians

6: 13). Woman is the glory of man because her creation is the very culmination and

completion of the humanity of his own creation. As such, whilst anthropology is not to
be a covert form of cosmology (the cosmos, for Barth, not being µaKpävOprnoc), the

story of creation can be compressed into the story of the emergence of woman such that

she participates in the completion of creation as a whole. Together Jesus Christ and his
Church constitute the internal basis of creation. 114

Given this inclusive, as opposed to privately exclusive, sense in which Barth

conceives the divine likeness of man found in the one man Jesus, those who have faith
in him are brought to participate in the image of God (here he refers to such passages as

112CD 111/2,209ff.
1" CDI11/1,59
114CD 111/1,302f.,322; 111/2,187

144
2 Cor. 3: 18; Rom. 8: 29; Col. 1: 15,24; 3: 10). 115 Moreover, given that Jesus cannot be

Christ and exist exclusively for himself, being the imago Del solitarily, there is no

sinful man who is not affected and determined by him.

115CD 111/1,204;IV/2,281

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

5
What is Man?

Spirit and Man

It is ironic that whilst relationship and personal encounter have been integral to Barth's

definition of man, one of the concerns with his anthropology that so far has largely only

bubbled under the surface has been the question of the reality of such relationship(s).

In many ways, this is just another way of inquiring as to the bearing his pneumatology

has on his anthropology. Or, to put it negatively, has Barth's generally anhypostatic

conception of man, coupled with his equation of man's being in the image of God with
Genesis' `male and female he created them', effectively stripped his anthropology of
basis? '
any pneumatic
We might begin answering with Barth's affirmation that if God is to be true and

not a liar (in other words, if the Spirit's role ad extra in and to man is to be grounded in
the eternal being of God), then the Spirit's work in creation, and on man in particular,

must have its counterpart in a prior work on the Son in the Trinity. Specifically, that

prior work is the work of complete approval of God's opus intermrm ad extra - his
decision to love the humanity whom he would create by uniting himself with man in

the Son. It should not be imagined that the Spirit is thereby relegated to the merely
honorary role of rubber stamp in the heavenly court. Given that the Spirit is the Spirit

of the Father and the Son, the meeting place and bond of union between the two, the

whole reality of the gospel - the entire order of the relation between God the Creator

and his creatures - exists and pre-exists in him. In the Spirit the will of the Father and
the obedience of the Son meet as the decree which is the intra-divine beginning of all

things. Therefore, it is in God the Holy Spirit that the creature as such pre-exists and

therefore has its being: `it is by the communication and impartation of that in which
God exists as God that it comes about that man can exist as man. '2 As the Spirit

perpetually secures God's free relationship to himself, so the Spirit secures in history
the relationship between God and man, acting out in history an eternal, intra-divine

1 In understanding this point it is worth remembering one of the critiques levelled at Barth's equation of
man's being in the image of God with Genesis' `male and female he created them': its tendency to be
binitarian. So, in the relationship between man and woman we see reflected the duality of the Father and
the Son, but not fully trinitarian communion.
2CDII1/1,57

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

role. As the Spirit is the one that enables the Son to be the object of the divine love ad
intra, so the Spirit is the one that enables man to be the object of the divine love ad

extra. We might say that if the incarnate Word of God as the object of the eternal
divine decree of grace is the ground of creation and of the creature, the Spirit is their

necessary condition. The fellowship of the Father and the Son that constitutes the intra-
divine foundation of creation is secured by the Spirit. Thus the Spirit is the intra-divine

guarantee - the divine conditio sine qua non - of the creation and preservation of the

creature.
The Spirit, then, is the life-principle of man. In fact, before being so specific,
we must remember that man is only one creature - however central - in the creation as

a whole, and shares his dependency on the Spirit with the entire creation. Indeed, it is a

pneumatically based equality that man has with other parts of creation (and especially
the animated parts of creation - the beasts and the host of heaven - which, Barth points

out, are also said to be dependent on the Spirit, according to Psalm 33: 6), for it is when
the Spirit is removed that animated beings cease to be animate and are threatened with
dissolution until the reappearance in recreative power of the same Spirit (Psalm 104:29-

30). The Spirit is the principle of life - of creation and renewal applicable to the
-
entire cosmos. One might even ask, given that animals (described as `living souls' in
the first creation account) are dependent upon the Spirit, on what basis it might be said

that they do not have just such a relationship as man does with God? Barth points out

that the only distinguishing feature of man here is the fact, according to the second

creation narrative, that God turned to man in the most direct and personal way to
breathe the breath of life into man's nostrils. 3 Thus, while it is Christians as members

of the body of Christ that are the ones `filled with the Spirit', that same dependence on
the Spirit for life is a more general anthropological reality. Regardless of his faith, that

a man lives is directly equated with the fact that he breathes - he is the recipient of the
Spirit of life. His breath is an answer to the life-giving breathing of the Creator.

Having that divinely provided breath means that man may live, God being there for

him. To die is to give up the Spirit (Acts 5: 5,10; 12:23). If a man ceases to breathe

and thus have Spirit, then he will cease to exist as the soul of his body. The union of

soul and body, effected by the Spirit, will dissolve the Spirit departs. 4
as
Man, then, has Spirit in so far as he breathes what God has breathed into him.
To say man has Spirit is to say that man is by and from God in an ever new act of

3 CD I11/1,236; cf. 111/2,395f.

4 CD 111/2,366;cf. Wolff, H. W., Anthropology
of the Old Testament(London: SCM, 1974), 10-25

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

grace. Man therefore has Spirit, and yet it is critical in Barth's thinking that we should

not go on to say that man is Spirit. Barth is categorical in his rejection of

anthropological trichotomism (the view of man as a being consisting of three inherent

parts: body, soul and spirit), not so much because he sees that it has effectively given

man two souls (though he does), but because of his view of Spirit. At death, the Spirit
is `given back' like something borrowed (Luke 23: 46), whilst awakening from the dead
involves the Spirit's return to a man (Luke 8: 55). Thus, Barth concludes, the Spirit,

`coming and going, lives His own life over against the man. '5 Spirit, then, is not the

property of man, but the principle of God's movement towards him. The Spirit is God
in his creative movement towards man such that when God breathes out his Spirit on

man, man breathes the breath of life and becomes a living being. To suggest that Spirit

might be an innate part of man's being at some level would involve at least an indirect

identification of man with God, transferring to man the divine prerogatives of grace and
life, for Spirit is what God is and does for man, man himself being receptive soul (of

his body). 6

Here he finds what sets his theology and anthropology apart from Liberal or

Neo-Protestant, Existential and Roman Catholic theologies and anthropologies in that

they adopt some mediating principle between God's self-revelation and man's response
in faith other than the Spirit of God. The doctrine of divine immanence exemplified in

theologies such as those of Schleiermacher, Troeltsch and Herrmann (even to some

extent, he argues, Augustine) envisaged an almost unbroken continuity between the

divine Spirit and the human spirit (or, the Spirit and the `individual's immediate putting

forth of religion'), allowing for a naturalisation of the gospel and its compounding with
humanistic philosophy, sociology and psychology. Barth had reacted to an expression

of this in Erich Przywara's defence of the analogia entis with the publication of a
lecture on the Holy Spirit in 1929 (The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life). There he

argued that there is no created medium between God and man, a notion that had seeped
into Roman Catholic as well as Protestant thinking. Instead the Holy Spirit is one who,

without ceasing in any sense to be God, makes immanent the transcendent God, in the

process making real that relation of the creature to himself by which the creature has
life. 7

5 CD 111/2,365
6CDII1/2,354
7 Barth, K., The Holy Spirit
and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics, trans. Hoyle, R. B.
(Louisville, KY.: Westminster/John Knox, 1993)

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

That said, his pneurnatology had developed in the intervening decade or so

between that lecture and the writing of Chapter X of the Dogmatics. The doctrine of

the eternal X yoc EvaapKOcthat had been formed in the composition of Volume II

enabled Barth to rephrasethe issue:

the question whether Spirit is God or creature cannot be answered because it is

falsely put. Spirit in His being ab extra is neither a divine nor a created

something, but an action and attitude of the Creator in relation to His creation.
We cannot say that Spirit is, but that He takes place as the divine basis of this

relation and fellowship. Spirit is precisely the essence of God's operation in

relation to His creature. Spirit is thus the powerful and exclusive meeting
initiated between Creator and creature. 8

Even given his caution, that he is speaking only of the Spirit `in his being ab extra', this
is a quite remarkable formulation. Not that the Spirit has now acquired any of the

continuity with the human spirit so vilified in his 1929 polemic, but that now the very

being of the Spirit can be said to be necessarily and essentially related to the creature.

The Spirit is, after all, the eternal vincultun between the Father and, not a Xoyos
äaapKoc, the second person of the Trinity per se, but the divine-human person of Jesus

Christ his Son. The Spirit is therefore both the attitude of the Creator to his creature

and the responseof the creature to the Creator.

So monergistic a pneumatology is guaranteed to attract hostility, as indeed it
has. Philip Rosato argues that Barth has effectively stolen from the poor and given to

the rich by having deprived man of any inherent subjectivity or spirituality for the sake
9
of guaranteeing the Spirit's supremacy. Intrinsically man is reduced to an empty and
impotent vessel without any extrinsic meaning other than that given to him in the

Spirit's gracious approach. Or, as George Hendry has put it:

If there is no relation between the Creator and the creation subsisting all the
time, but only the relation establishedby the act of grace, it becomes difficult
to maintain the existence of the creation as a reality over against God. In his

8CD111/2,356
9 Rosato, P. J., Tue Spirit as Lord: The Pneutnatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981),
142; cf. Come, A., An Introduction to Barth's "Dogmatics "for Preachers (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1963), 152

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

treatment of the doctrine of creation, Barth resolves the Berkeleian doubt as to

the existence of the world by merging it in its salvation: esseest salvari. The
has become totalitarianism. 10
sovereignty of grace

There seems to be some confusion here. Hendry has rightly noted that there is no

natural substructure here to man or creation as a whole onto which God can later add a

spiritual superstructure. The very substructure of creation is spiritual - that is,

established by the act of grace. However, that dynamic Barth does envisage as

subsisting all the time in the very being of the Spirit as the Father loves Jesus Christ,
the eternal A6yoc EvoapKOS. There are indeed problems in the `relationship' between

the Creator and his creature on this model. It might even be said that they effectively

amount to a form of totalitarianism - yet not in the sense suggested by Hendry. Any

totalitarianism or dispossession of man is not the result of divine monergism but the
lack of real relationship between the Lord and his elect. Has the Spirit really secured

any relationship other than that between God and his Word?
Barth certainly feels so. As early as the Göttingen Dogmatics he had repeated

the psalmist's question `What is Man? ', commenting "`that thou art mindful of him" is
interests " Far from the Christological
what us about man'. exposition of man he would
later give, his concern then was more simply the Deus dixit. Even in this more abstract

form, though, he reveals an understanding of man reflective of the psalmist's, whose

question about man is logically constructed upon the presupposition that God is

mindful of him: `what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care
for him? '.

A relationship between God and man lies at the very heart of Barth's
anthropology, as the very essence of man's being. God's freely given relationship to

man is what defines man, and no other factor, no assortment of innate faculties, can be

said to be either constitutive or definitive of man. It should be noted well that sin is
included at the top of this list of non-determinative factors. Not that sin is merely a

spectral semi-reality, but that it is merely parasitic upon God's good creation. In fact, it
has the status of `impossible possibility'. 12 To decide for sin is to make a decision

against one's very being as man. As for the actual state of godlessness itself, it is not

even a possibility impossibly. In Immanuel, God has united himself with man, and so

10Hendry, G. S., The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology (London: SCM, 1965), 109
" Barth, K., The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, ed. H. Reiffen;
trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1991), 72
12CD 111/2,146

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

man cannot escape God. God is absolutely, and not merely relatively, with us. Man's

godlessness can thus only be relative (or, perhaps better, merely illusory), for it cannot
13 Man is
make God a "manless" God. with God, and it is a straight ontological
impossibility for man to be without God, whatever decision against reality he might

choose. God is with us. This is what it means to be rational and logical man: not to be

a Boethian individual, but a dynamic, relational agent, a being in encounter with God.
From the very outset man must be understood as a being in some kind of relationship to

God, and thus one simply cannot attempt to go behind the divine-human relationship to

find some property of man more essential. This would entail that there is some being

of man prior to his relationship to God, something Barth categorically denies. Man's

very being is provided in God's approach to him, just as the point of contact between
God is by God himself in the act of revelation. 14 He therefore
man and provided
criticises the anthropology of traditional Christian dogmatics for having proceeded
directly to the question of the form of man's being without having shown him
being in God in fellow 15 Surely
essentially as a covenant with and encounter with men.
a large part of the reason for this divergence from tradition has to be the difference
between his methodology and that of the dogmatics he objects to. As Robert Jenson

puts it:

The creature's destiny to live in loving fellowship with God is not discoverable
by any amount of examination, empirical or philosophical. Let an omniscient

psychoanalyst, an eschatological physicist, and Heidegger himself combine

their efforts. They may discover my Oedipus complex, the complete

mechanism of my life and my capacity for self-transcendence. But in the

infinitely
long final report of their investigations this one proposition will not

This being is be loved by God. 16

occur: created to

One particular way in which Barth speaks of man as a being in covenant and

encounter with God is through the specific technical layer of meaning he gives to the
term `history' (Geschichte). For Barth, history is not a description of the existence of a

13CD 111/2,136;IV/1,480; cf. 11/2,317

14CD 111/2,72
15CD 111/2,325
16Jenson, R. WV.,Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Thomas Nelson,
1963), 23

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

creature, even wehenit makes changes, as long as those changes are intrinsic as opposed
to relational. History is encounter.

The history of a being begins, continues and is completed when something

other than itself and transcending its own nature encounters it, approaches it

and determines its being in the nature proper to it, so that it is compelled and
to transcend itself in in to this factor. '?
enabled response and relation new

To clarify: inanimate beings such as plants, he holds, have no `history' as such because

their existence involves no encounter (a safe proposition, we might allow, unless, of

course, as Daniel Price suggests, we hold to an extreme form 18). Their

of pantheism!

existence is simply typified by set characteristics of their own predetermined and innate
biological nature and rhythm. There is no real `happening' at a deep level of their
being to amount to change or encounter. To have history is necessarily to have an

anima. For this reason naturalism must necessarily be rejected in that it can offer no

more to creaturely being, including man, than self-contained existence. There is no

room in materialist dogma such as Darwinism for real encounter and so for such

history. Yet Barth feels he must go further. Where the existential philosophy of a

Buber might accord to normal human interaction the status of such history, Barth does

not. Authentic history of this sort is found only in the man Jesus. There we see the

primary encounter of God's approach to man and man's response to God. Apart from
that primal history (Urgeschichte) seen in. the man Jesus, humanity would be lacking
history, even lacking being. Without Christ, man, if somehow he could exist at all,

would be reduced to the inanimate status of the vegetable, merely acting out the

properties intrinsic to his own self-contained being. In him humanity has encounter

with God and relation to him, for each person is implicated in the primal history of this

man. In him man has history. Christ animates humanity by bringing fellowship with

God.

As we have seen, man's being as the covenant-partnerof God entails that man

unavoidably lives in encounter with his fellow man. This is not to say that such
encounter constitutes history as such, for that is the domain of God, the creator of all
history (Heilsgeschichte). Yet God's approach to man is necessarily reflected in the

1' CD 111/2,158
18Price, D. J., Karl Barth's Anthropology in Light
of Modern Thought (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge:
Ecrdmans, 2002), 97, citing CD 111/2,121.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

approach of man to man, which approach can be said to amount to history in a

derivative sense (kleine Geschichte) rather than history per se. Man's being as a being-
in-encounter cannot be as a being directed heavenwards only. To be the covenant

partner of the God who is not Deus solitarius but Deus trituurs, man must live in

earthly encounter too, for that is the inviolable correspondence to his determination as a
being with God. To illustrate the contrast between this and the `modem man', Daniel

Price astutely juxtaposes Barth's

new anathema Si quis dixerit hominem esse
-
solitariunt, anathema sit (if anyone will have said that man is solitary, let him be

anathema) - with Carl Jung's statement, `The man whom we can with justice call
"modem" is solitary'. 19 It is not, though, as if Jung was a solitary voice; his assessment
is just one of a culture in the West that dreams Nietzschean dreams of azure loneliness:

Sartre `hell is 20
witness notoriously opining other people'.
The primary earthly encounter between an I and a Thou for the real man is the

meeting of a man and a woman in marriage. It is in this encounter that humanity is in

the likeness of the being of its Creator and reflective of the marriage of God and man in

and through Jesus Christ. And, as it is the Spirit that enables harmony between God

and man, so it is the same Spirit that enables actual marital harmony and unity between

a man and a woman. Marital love, as the husband and wife testify to the possibility of

unity won for men in Christ, is a sign of the efficacy of the Spirit's outpouring at
Pentecost. Through this the meaning of manhood and womanhood, which otherwise

would necessarily be misconstrued, is revealed as analogous to the intra-divine

fellowship of God echoed in the love of Christ for his Church 21

.
That relationship between a man and a woman is, even if definitive, only the

primary relationship between a human I and Thou. To examine the reality of other

human relationships Barth develops and modifies Martin Buber's term `encounter'

(which is broad enough to stretch beyond the `personal' so as, for example, to include

encounter with a tree) so that there are quite specific standards by which an encounter

might be validated as such. Thus, it is hoped, no mere connection, acquaintance, or

objectification of man by his fellow might be passed off as a true encounter. Referring
to Matthew 6: 22f., Barth suggests that being in encounter consists first in the fact that

one man physically looks the other in the eye (as we shall see, it is significant that this
is a physical encounter of external forms). Such beholding is, of course, analogous to

19Price, 97
20Such is the conclusion of Sartre's play No Exit.
21CD 111/2,203

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

and derivative of the primary encounter between God and man, an encounter which is,

ultimately, `face to face'. To look one's fellow man in the eye is not only to be the

subject of the looking, but to allow oneself, reciprocally, to be the object of looking

also. Within a bureau (perhaps the illustration could be updated to include the internet

and e-mail), for instance, men have the ability to be effectively invisible to each other,

for they fail to do precisely this. Merely looking at another man does not entail

according him human status - we may see an It as opposed to a Thou. Such looking is

Ernst Jünger to he `act 22 In

what was referring when called seeing an of aggression.

contrast, looking the other in the eye involves a two-sided humility and openness.
Through looking one's fellow in the eye, allowing the windows of the soul to meet, as
it were, a true encounter is achieved as each accords to the other real humanity.

Secondly, being in genuine encounter involves mutual speech and hearing. As God

does not merely speak, but also hears his Word, so man must also live in the same

reciprocity. Yet mere speaking and answering cannot be said to constitute the

mutuality required of a true encounter: `Two monologues do not constitute a

dialogue. ' 23 The words used in private conversations, lectures, pulpits, and written

media are all too often barbaric and empty, revealing the emptiness of the wordsmiths
themselves. Instead of stringing together arbitrary symbols or sounds, the real speech

that evidences encounter is the disclosure of an I to a Thou and vice versa. It is

mutuality that constitutes the encounter and thus the very humanity of the participants
themselves. Thirdly, being in genuine encounter consists in the climax of action as we

render mutual assistance in the act of being. This should not be confused with an

unhealthy altruism in which one acts as if he has no need of the other despite the

other's present need of him. Mutual assistance entails that each needs the other, and is
therefore the climax and goal of reciprocal sight and speech and hearing. Yet fourthly,

all this occurrence must be done on both sides with gladness. This is the final step of
humanity, ensuring that man's mutualityis not an inhuman and merely external

dynamic, but the product of his inner being and so reflective of his inner being. 24 Our

concern is with a more fundamental problem concerning relationship in Barth's

theology, and yet we need to note that Barth's qualifications do appear to be

unfounded, even if laudable. On what basis might these qualifications be deemed

preferable or more accurate than any others?

22Der misterbliche Geist in der Natur (1938), 63, cited in Pieper, J., Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans.
Dru, A. (New York & Scarborough, Ontario: Mentor, 1952), 25
23CD 111/2,259
24CD 111/2,250ff.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

Without necessarily indulging in critique, there is a limit to this earthly

encounter. There is the God-man relationship and the man-man relationship for Barth,
but, as Andrew Linzey has demonstrated, there is very little (if any) by way of any

between 25 As have seen,

relationship man and other, non-human creaturely reality. we

the inanimate creation in Barth's thought is simply incapable of history - it cannot exist

as a Thou to any I, whether divine, human or non-human. Yet this Barth sees as
equally true of the non-human animate creation. Whilst the non-human creation as a
whole does exist as an external other to both man and God in co-existence, it cannot
in true 26 There is a worry that this might in fact turn
exist confrontation or reciprocity.
out to manifest a failure to give creation its proper place in redemption. Yet our

question is whether man himself can exist in true partnership with God, or whether, to
use Andrew Linzey's phrase, man himself is not in fact the neglected creature.
In order to answer that question, it is necessary first to posit another question:

how is it that the creature can be? Barth gives what he feels is a necessarily indirect

answer:

For them [the writers of the New Testament as much as the writers of the Old

Testament] there is no (wi and therefore no (wonofrloLS of the creature apart

from that already initiated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to be expected

from Him. And it is in this (WolrOLEivthat they see the work of the Spirit. In

this indirect way, by expecting life - life in the new aeon which is true life for

them - from the work of the Spirit, and from Him alone, they also bear witness

that there could be no creature, nor any creation, if God were not also the Holy
Spirit and active as such, just as He is also the Father and Son and active as
27
such.

As Adam was imbued with typical breath, so Christ with filled without limit with the

nvEܵa AEoi, and so became the irvEܵa (gonoLoüv. Only there, in the filling of Jesus
Christ with the Spiritus Redemptor, is God's creative movement towards man fulfilled.

The creative work of the Spirit merely demonstrated the potentiality of man's
creatureliness. Yet that potentiality is only ever realised in the redemptive outpouring

25 Linzey, A., The Neglected Creature: The Doctrine

of the Non-human Creation and its Relation with
the Human in the Thought of Karl Barth (PhD: University of London, 1986)
26CD 111/1,184
27CDI11/1,58

155
-- "..... j ... v--. .-... v. -. u1 -1 VY 119.1. la ivlall:

of the Spirit (as opposed to man's own effort). After all, the soul of man is not the

Spirit of God, and whilst the Spirit may be called the Spirit of man, he remains the

Spirit of God and never becomes the innate property of man. He is the quickening
breath of God by which man becomes a living soul. Thus it is that the principle of

renewal is considered as actually logically prior to, and so determinative of, the

principle of creaturely reality. The Spiritus Redemptor illumines the Spiritus Creator.

It can only be seen, for instance, that `the Spirit gives life' in the broad anthropological

sense of the breath of God enabling men to breathe and live, through passages such as
John 6: 63 and 2 Corinthians 3: 6, which are of primarily soteriological significance.
The life-imparting turning of God to man in Eden could not be detected from nature

alone. It is revealed in the reconstitution of the Church of God as he turns to man in the

same life-imparting manner at Pentecost. This is the reason behind Jesus' quite
deliberate emulation of Genesis 2: 7 in his breathing on his disciples with the words:

`Receive the Holy Spirit' (John 20: 22). This is also very much to the point in the
Pauline association of creation with the resurrection of the dead in Romans 4: 17, the act
28 There, in the fulfilment
of creation being called a KaAEiv t& µ'I övta 60'vta. of the
divine breathing at Pentecost, it is elucidated what it was that created man was destined

to be. In the very same way as the appreciation of grace necessarily precedes that of

sin, so it is only in fulfilment that his becomes 29 We

man's original potential apparent.
might add that this paradox is not simply noetic. The Spirit is not just known as, but

actually is primarily the Spirit of the New Covenant in that the Spirit is the Spirit of
Jesus Christ.

On this relation between reconciliation and creation, von Balthasar writes

because the Son himself becomes man in the midst of his creatures, creation

already has an essential connection to him, just as he has to creation. No

longer does Barth have to manoeuvre around extra-Calvinist doctrine to prove

that the Redeemer is also Lord over this (questionable, contradictory) creation.
The perspective has been turned inside out: because Christ the Redeemer

became man in time, creation in its entirety is something good from the outset.

It is already justified.And, from the very onset of God's decision to create, it

is appropriate for God to choose man for his partner. 30

2 CD 111/1,244ff., Rosato, 98
cf.
29CDI11/1,57
30Balthasar, H. U.
von, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 114

156
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

Reconciliation is the internal ground, and creation the external ground of human nature.

Nature does not therefore stand in opposition to grace. It is actually founded upon it
(already removing the conception of sin as a power so transformative that it has

rendered man an entirely different being to what he was created to be31). Thus the

Word of God does not come to man as an afterthought. Man is summoned to be God's

covenant-partner in his very existence. To be addressed by God is to be summoned

into being. There is no human being prior to the call of God in his Word, and therefore

the being of man consists in being with Jesus, in the hearing of the Word of God. The
being of man is a being in gratitude. 32

If, then, we are to come to any conclusions about the relationship (or lack

thereof) between the Spirit and man, we are required to seek them within the defining

relationship of the Spirit to Jesus Christ. Here we may begin with the

acknowledgement that Jesus had an utterly unique relationship to the Spirit. Whilst

possession of the Spirit is not a general human state, the Spirit being imparted only `by

measure' (John 3: 34) and not in fullness or permanency, the anointed Son has the Spirit
lastingly and totally.

He is the man to whom the creative movement of God has come primarily,

originally and therefore definitively, who derives in His existence as soul and
body from this movement, and for whom to be the `living soul' of an earthly

body and earthly body of a `living soul' is not a mere possibility but a most

proper reality. He breathes lastingly and totally in the air of the `life-giving

Spirit. 33

The relationship of this man to the Holy Spirit is so close and special that it can be said
that, without being fathered by the Spirit, the man Jesus owed his very existence as
such to the presenceand power of the Spirit. Thus can the Son be without beginning of
days or end of life (Hebrews 7:3), having life in himself (John 5:26). Philip Rosato
builds on this aspect of Barth's thinking what can only be described as a distinctly

31 'We do not associate ourselves, therefore, with the common theological practice of depreciating the
human nature as much as possible in order to oppose to it the more effectively what may be said of man
by divine grace. Orientation by the picture of the man Jesusshows us a very different way' (CD 111/2,
274).
32CD 111/2,142ff.
33CD 111/2,334

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

overblown argument for a Pneuma, as opposed to a Logos, Christology in Barth

(indeed a Pneumatocentrism as opposed to a Christocentrism). What is the case,

though, is that at the core of Barth's anthropology stands the Spirit-filled Jesus. It is
because of Jesus that anthropology cannot be severed from soteriology and

pneumatology. Jesus Christ reveals life in the Spirit because he alone possesses it in its
fullness. 34

The relationship of the Spirit to Christ Barth begins to expound in Volume 1/2,

where he moves from speaking of the Spirit as such to speaking of the Spirit in

relationship to the Word. Thus in Chapter II, Part III, `The Outpouring of the Holy

Spirit', in many ways mirrors Part II, `The Incarnation of the Word': as Jesus Christ is

the objective reality and possibility of revelation, so the Spirit is the subjective reality

and possibility of revelation. It is this that guides Barth's understanding of the Spirit's

activity for man: as the Spirit is the power of God, enabling the Word to become flesh,

so the Spirit is the power of God uniting man with God. This is no mere imagined

analogy, for this work of the Spirit in man is simply the actualisation in him of what is

already a reality in Jesus Christ. As God is free for and pronounces his `Yes' to man in
Jesus Christ, so man is freed for and pronounces his `Yes' to God in the Holy Spirit.

Thus there is no deification of man, if by that is meant man's transformation into

another holy spirit. This is why Paul twice makes the equation iw üia is KüpLoc(2 Cor.
3: 17-8). Even if there is some totalitarianism, it has to be said that Barth is seeking in

this for the presence of the Spirit not to be destructive of man, but one that establishes
his being as a being in genuine encounter. with God. The Spirit is God's own divine

presence in man, enabling man to say `Yes' to God's `Yes' over all creation spoken in
Jesus Christ. God speaks to man through his Word and is heard by him through his

Spirit. Thus human freedom finds its root and existence in the divine freedom: as God
is free in the Spirit to reflect himself in man, so man is freed, in the same Spirit, to be in

the likeness of God. As the divine power for the coexistence of God and man, the Holy
Spirit brings God's freedom and man's to genuine encounter. The Spirit is the

principle of encounter. This is the true work of the divine breath breathed out at

Pentecost but typified in Eden: bringing man to the life which is communion with God.

Man's freedom for God is wholly the work of the divine breath upon him, and not the
innate ability of the created dust as such. This is the import of his affirmation of the
Spiritual conception of Jesus, establishing the Spirit's divine primacy in the uniting of

34Cf. CD IV/2,323 ff.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

man to the Word of God because of the Spirit's prior role in uniting the human nature

of Jesus to the Word. This work of the Spirit in the birth of Christ, uniting man with

God in the Word is what makes it possible that flesh - man - might exist for God.

The work of the Spirit on Jesus Christ does not end with the conception,
however. It is by the Spirit that the incarnate Word in Jesus of Nazareth is enabled to
be obedient to God for man. By the Spirit, and in analogy to the obedience of Jesus

Christ, the man in Christ is enabled to be obedient to his identity as one elected in Jesus

Christ. As such, the Spirit is the power for all the obedience of man. Thus the Spirit is

the one who acts not only on man, but also in man, working the obedience of faith

which is man's answering `Yes' to his election by God. As man lives by his constant
breathing in of the life-giving Spirit, so he only exists in obedience to God by ongoing

dependence on the Spirit. Whatever else we might say, it does seem unfair to

caricature Barth's man as a merely passive receptacle of the active Spirit of God.
Man in Christ discovers that he is real man in that the Spirit of the one really
real man, Jesus Christ, is at work in him, enabling him to be a man for God. In the
Spirit he is not only objectively (ontologically), but also subjectively (noetically) free

for God as God is free for him. Christian existence is therefore essentially messianic,

for it is with the Spirit of the anointed one that the believer is given his freedom for

God. The work of the Spirit on the anointed one is the objective reality of the divine

election, subjectively appreciated by the same movement of the Spirit in the becoming

of the children of God. By the Spirit, Jesus is the Christ, the head with his communal
body, the Lotus Christus. Thus the Spirit repeats his eternal function within the Trinity

of assuring the divine community as he assures the unity of its creaturely counterpart,
the Lotus Christus. 35 Here - and only here - the Holy Spirit achieves the unity between

the creature and God.

Barth seeks to make it quite clear that there is a real relationship between man
and God through the Spirit in the divine-human person of Jesus Christ when he affirms
that Jesus' uniqueness is to be found in his special relationship to the Spirit, and not in

any innate superhuman ability to be found within his flesh. Nor, to refute the charge of
Eutychianism, was the man Jesus able simply to appropriate the divine powers of the
Word at will, overcoming his native limitations and so, in effect, disappearing into the

Word. The Word, instead, truly became flesh. This `flesh' can simply be used as a

neutral term for man's created mode of being as an animal form of existence.

35CD II/1,670; IV/3,760

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

However, oäpý does also bear more sinister connotations, denoting the very fabric of

man's being as a being affected by the fall, under the judgment and verdict of God.

It indicates the condition of man in contradiction, in disorder and in consequent

sickness, man after Adam's fall, the man who lives a fleeting life in the

neighbourhood of death and corruption. Flesh is man, or soul and body,

Logos. 36
without the

What then of the Logos becoming flesh? If this is to happen truly and not

merely as a phantasm, the Logos has to put himself on the side of his own adversary.
Thus, Barth (through the influence of H. R. Mackintosh) traces the argument of the
Scottish theologian and pastor, Edward Irving (1792-1834) to assert that the Logos was

incarnated, not in a sinless, prelapsarian form, but in the likeness (Ev öµoLc i tL) of

sinful flesh (oapKÖSäµaptiaS). Jesus is found in the familiar being of man as a being

affected by sickness, death and corruption (a nature not to be confused with an actual

culpable sinfulness and concupiscence). 37

There is a significant difference that must be noted between the logic of Irving's

thought and that of Barth (especially in his mature thought), even if the end result is

much the same. That is, Irving did not believe in Jesus Christ as the ontologically

primary man (even if he did see his humanity as determinative). For Irving, before the
incarnation of the Son there existed a concrete form of human nature: that of fallen

flesh. Therefore it was only this that the Word could assume. Or, as Irving himself put

it, `there was no other in existence to take'. 38 For Barth, conversely, the Son does not

assume a humanity already determined by another. Human, fleshly nature is primarily

and properly his. It is us, and not him, that are born into a humanity that has already
been pre-determined. Thus it was not, for Barth, that there was no other flesh than

sinful flesh for the Word to assume. Instead, Jesus Christ revealed in himself God's

eternal elective decree as God's covenant partner by defeating sin in the flesh. In Jesus
Christ, before Adam's existence, sin in man has been dealt with. That this is a drastic

reorientation and relocation of the traditional doctrine of the fall is not our concern here

36CD 111/2,335
'7 CD 1/2,151
38 Irving, E., The Collected Writings
ofEdtivard Irving Vol. 5, ed. G. Carlyle (London: A. Strahan, 1864),
115

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

(though it is one to which we shall return in the next chapter). Our concern is with the

Christology that is determining man's existence.

To return to that, it can be seen that in this whole-hearted acceptance of the

Word's assumption of sinful flesh, the Docetic and Manichean argument (that, since

our flesh is sinful, Christ adopted a spectral likeness of our human nature, but not the

actual substance) is effectively turned on its head. In consequence the incarnation can

be set in contrast with the avatars of Isis, Osiris, Buddha and Zoroaster. God's

becoming flesh is not merely the Word's becoming a hero or even a man, as with the

religions. It is the assumption of the adversarial state of man in order to reconcile it: TO'

änpöoXrlnrov 39
&OEpä1TEUrov.
y&p
On this basis, Barth felt able to scorn what is effectively Irenaeus' account of
Jesus' incarnate being when he writes of

Luther's refusal to realise the application of the words of Is. 5214 and 532 to the

personal form of Christ: quia full integer, sanissimi colporis, 111udissinlae

carnis, siele peccato conceptus (Enarr. 53 cap. Iesaiae 1544 E. A. ex. op. lat.
23,457). So too, on the basis of passages like Ps. 453 and Col. 118,Lutheran

dogmaticians thought to ascribe specifically to Christ's human nature a

singularis animae et corporis excellentia ac Eýoxrj qua reliquos holnines

superavit, supreme health (sum nam bonaln et aequabilem corporis temperienl

seu habitudinem), immortality, and suininain formae elegentianl ac venustatenl

(Quenstedt, Theol. did pol. 1685 III 3c. I I, thes. 14
in. sect. 16).40 and

Such a Christ, Barth maintains, untainted by the fall, would not be a brother in our
human condition. He would be less than fully human, left hanging between heaven and

earth unable to sympathise with us or even to redeem us. An unfallen flesh would
instead serve as a cordon sanitaire between the saviour and ourselves, meaning that our

`old self or `sinful body' did not die. 41 Indeed, as Thomas Weinandy argues in his

development of Barth's thesis, throwing the theological grenade first aimed at Luther's

39 Gregory Nazianzen, To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius (Ep. Cl)

40 CD 1/2,153; cf. Irenacus, Frag. 8 ('as the
ark [of the covenant] was gilded within and without with
pure gold, so was also the body of Christ pure and resplendent; for it was adorned within by the Word,
and shielded without by the Spirit') and Frag. 48.
41 Cf. Gunton, C. E., Theology through the Theologians (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), 159

161
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

if Jesus is not like us in his fallenness, then his `identity with

doctrine of justification,
little legal fiction'. 42
us becomes more than a
So something akin to the patristic doctrine of a `physical' redemption is drawn

up. In the constitution of the human person of Jesus the Logos assumes the chaos of
flesh. Yet, this flesh is the flesh of the one who breathes the air of the life-giving Spirit.

Thus in the very act of the assumption of flesh, something happens for and in the flesh

of which otherwise and in itself it is incapable:

The flesh, which in itself is disobedient, becomes obedient. The flesh, which

in itself profits nothing, becomes a purposeful instrument. The flesh, which in

itself is lost, attains a determination and a hope. The flesh, which in itself is

illogical and irrational, becomes logical and rational.... This is the triumph of

the meaning of the human Jesus.43

existence of

The issue of key importance here, though, is not the associate soteriology, but

the model it gives of God's relationship to man through the Spirit. Following the lead

set in the Christology of the Puritan theologian John Owen, that the Word never acted
directly on his own human nature but only through the Spirit, Irving could thus depict

Jesus as truly, normatively, and prototypically human. The reason Christ was able to

resist temptation was not because he was divine, but because of the Holy Spirit's help.
`Christ's soul was so held in possession by the Holy Ghost', he said, `that it never

assented unto an evil suggestion, and never originated an evil suggestion. '44 Members

of Irving's congregation were thus shown that they could resist sin just as Jesus did for,

on earth, he was exactly as they were. `Christ's life from his baptism to his agony is our

42Weinandy, T., In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 45. Through these
comments by Colin Gunton and Thomas Weinandy, as well as in the works of C. E. B. Cranfield, T. F.
and J. B. Torrance and others (see especially McFarlane, G. W. P., Edward Irving, Christology and the
Spirit (PhD: University of London, 1990), it can be seen that Barth effectively managed to foster a
significant resurgence of interest in Irving's Christology. In the scramble for orthodoxy patristic
theology is all too often this battle's epicentre. Irenacus is one key witness, and understandably so, given
his famed aphorism ('the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love,
become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself. ' [AH 5.pref]; cf. Weinandy,
26-8). Yet, as we have seen, it has to be said that to conclude that Irenaeus - who would most
emphatically speak of Christ's `righteous flesh' (AH 5.14.2; cf. 3.21.10; 5.12.3-4) - thought that
incarnation entailed the assumption of sinful flesh is to stretch his theology out of all shape and
recognition. To give another instance, in the foreword to Weinandy's In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh,
Colin Gunton asks what, as a Roman Catholic, Weinandy can do with the official doctrine of the
immaculate conception, which (however erroneous) stands as testimony to the traditional nature of the
view of Christ's unfallen flesh (Weinandy, x).
43CD 111/2,336;cf. 1/2,40
44 Irving, Collected Writings, 137

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

the liberty the Holy Ghost'. 45 Correspondingly, Barth's Jesus of

model of and power of
Nazareth could be said to be in relationship to the Word of God only through the Spirit,

as his body the Church is. The flesh of the Word is, in fact, autokinetic by the Spirit.

There are a number of questions we might put to this Christology, quite apart

from whether it can legitimately be said that the `likeness' of sinful flesh in fact means

the actuality of sinful flesh. For, if we are to admit the equation, then we have, with the
46 The first is:
utmost significance, made our doctor himself a patient. what is the

necessary point of contact between God and humanity that makes reconciliation and

mediation possible? Is it fallen human nature? Or is such argument simply a repetition

of the old error of the Quest for the historical (human) Jesus: determining the nature of
his being by projecting our own nature onto him? It has to be said that this use of

Nazianzen's maxim - zö y&p & rpöoArIntov &OEpänEUTOV is at least confusing.

-
Gregory was responding to Apollinarianism. The burden of proof then falls on those

who would extend his logic to the necessity of assuming specifically fallen nature. In
other words, as Apollinarius was condemned for denying Christ's fleshly mind, is it

right to be condemned for denying Christ's sinful flesh? Certainly such `logical

extension' of Nazianzen's argument is a slippery slope. Christina Baxter, for example,

asks in Atonement Today, `is it the case that as Jesus has not assumed female humanity,
therefore female humanity is not redeemed? '47 Following Irving's `logical extension'

of Nazianzen's axiom, the question has become valid.

A more immediately pertinent question arises in the necessary proviso of Irving

(and so Barth) that the person of Christ remained holy. Christ's nature is thus so

independent of the person that the person is not implicated. Irving insists: `whenever I

attribute sinful properties and dispositions and inclinations to our Lord's human nature,
I am speaking of it considered as apart from Him, in itself. '48 Bishop Kallistos of

Diocletia notes that here Irving is developing a distinction made by Nestorius between

the levels of nature and person. 49 To this we might ask: can a person's ontology be so

45Irving, Collected Writings, 237

46 James Torrance seems prepared to admit even more than this equation, by simply transferring Jesus
out of the surgery and in to the sick ward: `Christ does not heal by standing over against us, diagnosing
our sickness... as a doctor might. No, He becomes the patient! ' (Torrance, J.B., `The Vicarious
Humanity of Christ' in The Incarnation ed. T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1981), 141) It is,
perhaps, ironic that Jesus in all three synoptics specifically choosesto refer to himself as a doctor (Matt.
9: 12, Mk. 2: 17, Lk. 5:3 1).
47 Baxter, C., `Jesusthe Man and Women's Salvation' in Atonement Today ed. J. Goldingay (London:
SPCK, 1995), 138
48 Irving, Collected JVritings, 565
49 Bishop Kallistos
of Diocletia, The Humanity of Christ. The Fourth Constantinople Lecture (Anglican
and Eastern Churches Association, 1985)

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

split from his actions? No doubt every sinner would wish it were true of him. Yet is it

really possible to have such a divorce? In fact, is this Nestorian distinction not simply
the open door to a Nestorian Christology? If Barth defines flesh as man without the

Logos, this Christology seems to steal its own supposed reconciliatory effects by the
back door, for man - even in Christ - remains divorced from the Logos.

In defence of Barth's Christology, George Hunsinger observes that Barth quite

deliberately alternates back and forth between an Alexandrian idiom (that which, when

unbalanced, is always in danger of veering into docetism) and an Antiochene idiom

(that which, when unbalanced, is always in danger of veering into Nestorianism). 5°

And Barth himself is clear that this is the only way in which to be properly
Chalcedonian in Christology, following the New Testament's own diversity of idioms.

For there we `are dealing with testimonies to one reality, which, though contrary to one

another, do not dispute or negate each other.... Rather do they mutually supplement

and explain each other and to that extent remain on peaceful terms. '51 Hunsinger is

correct to rescue Barth from Charles Waldrop's forced option between Alexandria and
Antioch. 52 The existence of Chalcedonian Christology prevents any such stark

alternative, and Barth is highly aware of that. However, that said, for all Hunsinger's
loyalty, Barth's explicit avowals of Chalcedon do not necessarily amount to a truly

Chalcedonian Christology. Even if Chalcedon does allow room for significant

variation of idiom, it is still possible to lurch between those elements of Alexandrian

and Antiochene thought that are declared anathema by the council. The question is,

whether Barth is guilty of such and so of endangering man's relationship to God.

On the one hand, his adoption of Irving's Christology is in great danger of no

longer having the Spirit as the mediator between God and man, but as the actual, much

despised, cordon sanitaire. The person's sharp distinction (even alienation) from his

own nature - the Word's distinction from his own flesh - may have created room for
`relationship', but at what expense for the unity of the person of Christ? Irenaeus

would most certainly have seen this as too high a price to pay. If there is to be one
Lord Jesus Christ, then such relationship cannot exist.

On the other hand, such distinction also goes against the grain of his ongoing

philippic (in the doctrine of the eternal Xöyoc EvaapKoc)

against the naked second

so Hunsinger, G., `Karl Barth's Christology: Its Basic Chalcedonian Character' in Disruptive Grace:
Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000), 131-147
51CD 1/2,24
52 Cf. Waldrop, C. T., Karl Barth's ChristologY: Its Basic Alexandrian Character (Berlin: Mouton,
1984)

164
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

person of the Trinity. When speaking in this, much more Alexandrian, idiom, Barth

even seems to recognise how perilously close he is to a Eutychian form of Christology.

He thus denies that Godhead has taken the place of manhood in the person of Jesus

Christ, or that manhood is, as it were, swallowed up or extinguished by Godhead, and

yet he feels that in the Fourth Gospel Jesus `seems to melt into the divine Subject and

therefore to disappear as a human Subject. )53 It is no wonder that he was required so

repeatedly to seize opportunities to reject docetism itself and the charge of docetism in

his Christology. By Chapter XVI especially, the humanity of Jesus really does look

overwhelmed and engulfed by the more abstract concept of what he called `the

humanity of God' in God's turning to man. T. F. Torrance (who has followed the

broad outlines of the more Antiochene elements in Barth's Christology) was concerned

by this, and raised the matter with Barth himself shortly before his death. He

concludes: the "`suspicion of docetism" in what Barth had written about the ascended
humanity of Jesus inevitably raised questions in some quarters about how he really
! 954
regarded the humanity of the pre-resurrection je SUS
Hunsinger's appraisal of Barth's Christology as `basically Chalcedonian in

character' may, then, have been too optimistic, unless the word `basic' is used in a
different sense. In practice he manages simultaneously to drive a wedge between the

Word and his assumed flesh, and to subsume man into God in the person of Jesus

Christ. The result is highly ironic for Barth: far from having rescued Jesus Christ from

the speculators, he has to all intents and purposes etherealised humanity. As to whether

man can, in the end, be said to have a relationship with God in all this, the answer has

to be negative. Man is either isolated from God or annihilated by his presence.

53CD 111/2,65;cf. 207; IV/4,163

5' Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth: Biblical Theologian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990),
and Evangelical
134

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

Man as Soul and Body

Having (necessarily) first looked at man in his being ad extra, we can now proceed to
look at man, so to speak, in himself, as he is found in the creaturely form of soul and
body. Barth is ardent in his insistence that soul is the life of man arousedby the Spirit,

and is not to be confused with some kind of prolongation or continuation of that divine
in God in Spirit. 55 Yet, as seen first in the
action which creatively approachesman the
Word's becoming flesh, Spirit is the principle of man's being as embodied soul and

besouled body. An exposition of Barth's understanding of and distinction between

body and soul, therefore, can only be made in the light of the Spirit, and so within the

context of intersubjectivity. Spirit is the context and basis for man as the soul of his
body.
Barth provides a summary of his thought on man's being as soul and body that

can serve as a helpful introduction:

Man is (1) creaturely life - life which by the will and act of the living God is

awakened,created and called into temporal existence as the individual life of a

body. He is living being. And he is (2) creaturely being - being which by the

will and act of the sameGod has a certain spatial form or besouled body. He is
living being. To put it in another way, he is (1) there, and has existence, and in
this respect is soul; and he is (2) there in a certain manner and has a nature, and
in this respect is body. 56

It is not that the soul is to be equatedwith the I, and the body left to be the mere vehicle
.
in which this I can encounter a Thou. It is that soul is the temporal dynamic, and body

the spatial dynamic, in which the I can live as a being in encounter. Man has a

creaturely life and a creaturely being. The former refers to the soul and the latter to the
body. Creaturely life involves living and so represents and is man's temporal

existence. His bodily being representsand is the spatial form of that temporal living.
We can immediately seethe robustnessof his doctrine of the body in the way in
which Barth portrays the body as the inalienable spatial complement of the soul. Soul
as movement in time would simply be a nonsensical concept without a place in which

ssCD 111/2,372
56CD 111/2,367,original italics

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

that movement might occur. Life itself cannot be mere internal, abstract or independent
being. There must be something living. Soul therefore presupposes a body whose soul
it is (which material matter then becomes organic). A soul without a body would be in

bondage in the sense that it would have no being in space. Such life would, in effect,

be lifeless. To be bodiless, then, is to be life-negating. 57 Furthermore, to be bodiless is

to be life-negating to more than just the `I', for the body is the person as he is available

not just to himself, but also to others. Man has awareness of others as he has body, for
body is his openness and availability to others; it is the person as object. 58 Using G. W.

F. Hegel's famous section on domination and slavery in his Phenomenology of Spirit,

Robert Jenson expands on this theme of the body as object and availability, coupling it
with Barth's avowal of the need for mutuality in relations, to conclude that to be

bodiless is not only to be life-negating, but to be enslaving to the potential Thou of the

I.

If in our mutual relation, I am a subject of which you are an object, but

withhold myself from being reciprocally an object for you, you are in so far

enslaved to me. Only if you are able to intend and deal with me as I do with

you, can we both be free. Thus a disembodied personal presence cannot bless
but only curse other persons. 59

All of which is embedded in Christ's embodiment, without which we would be left

with a bodiless God who would not be God for us or God with us, but only God against

us.
Yet it is not an isolated doctrine of the body that Barth set himself to chart. In

and for itself, but also against both traditional anthropological dualism and modem

anthropological reductionism, whether of a materialist or spiritual kind, he seeks to

uphold the psychosomatic unity of the whole man, the soul of his body. The psychical

and physical cannot then be severed, such that if a man's somatic organs fail to
function properly he may continue to live an unaffected life in the `upper storey' of his

soul, or such that if a man's soul were to be removed or annihilated, he may continue to
live an unaffected life in the `lower storey' of his body. The question of man's healing,

then, needs to be phrased as follows: `Wilt thou be made whole? ' (John 5: 6), and must

57CD 111/2,352f.,373
58CD 111/2,401
59 Jenson, R. WV., 'The Church
and the Sacraments' in Gunton, C. E., The Cambridge Companion to
Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 211

167
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

be `Wilt thou have healthy limbs be free '. 60 To

not taken to mean or of their sickness?

present man as such a whole being Barth is forced to reject the view summarily called
Greek (but actually also a traditionally Christian view) of soul and body as two

qualitatively different parts of man, the soul being spiritual, non-spatial, indissoluble,

immortal, and the body being material, spatial, dissoluble and mortal. This traditional

view is such that both parts can be severed from each other upon death, waiting for
their reunion in the resurrection (the so-called `intermediate state'). Instead, as soul of
his body, man `is neither in a foreign land, nor in a prison, nor even in a vessel, but

wholly in his own house and wholly himself. '61 The concept of the whole man also

requires him to reject not only what he perceives as this dualism, but also monism,

whether it be monistic materialism (in which the one substance of man is his

corporeality) or monistic spiritualism, which takes the opposite view, that Spirit is the

only true substance of human reality. Materialism, with its denial of the soul, can only

render man subjectless - he can no longer be an I. Spiritualism, with its denial of the
body, can only render man objectless - he can no longer be a Thou. Furthermore, the

folly of these positions can be seen in their effective impersonation of death with its

removal of the very Spirit that gives life to man as soul of his body. With no such
Spirit, the soul and body divorce. 62 One example is
uniting of a man must war and
instructive: the monism of Mary Baker Eddy's self-styled `Christian Science'. This

entire schema is built upon a quite peculiar doctrine of the imago Dei, that, since man is
the image of a perfect God, so too man himself must be a perfect being. Sickness,

therefore, can be but an illusion, an altered mental state of the eternal mind of man.
Even death is simply a mere disappearance from our level of consciousness.
Effectively the body of such an eternal man is then an illusion. Barth concludes:
`[w]hether Christian Science is really "science" need not occupy us here. But there can

be no doubt that it is not `Christian' science. '63

Yet again, Barth does not wish to deduce all this from scientific or cultural

studies. His exposition of the `whole man' is worked out from and set upon his

60CD 111/4,359
61CD 111/2,426. We shall see in the next chapter that, having established Jesus Lord
as of time, Barth
has so re-oriented his eschatology as effectively to circumvent the traditional question of the
`intermediate state'. Thus he can maintain consistency with his doctrine of the whole man, for otherwise
within the parameters of the traditional model, soul and body being so necessarily and inseparably
connected, there could be no continuity between the 'now' of the present age, and the `not yet' of the
resurrection. Instead of simply replacing the traditional soul/body parallelism with another, that between
the two ages, he has proposed Jesus,the mediator between time and eternity, as our future and hope.
62CD 111/2,380ff.
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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

Christology. Jesus Christ (that is, the Lotus Christus, with his body and in the flesh) is
in that he is 64 To understand the whole man, he must be seen in
real man whole man.
the light of the real man, the relationship between God and man, and the relationship
between man and man, seen and found in Jesus Christ. Though clearly the soul is not

the creator of the body, the constitution of Jesus Christ's being as man is a `repetition,
imitation and correlation' of the `relationship' between the Word of God and his
65 Whilst he
creaturely constitution. seems uncomfortable with describing the soul as
`tabernacling' in the body, Barth's language concerning the ordering of soul and body

does, unsurprisingly then, seem to have something of a Chalcedonian feel to it.

According to the Leitsatz to §46, man is the soul of his body - `wholly and

simultaneously both, in ineffaceable difference, inseparable unity, and indestructible

' 66 That there
order. should ever be any friction or distance between the body and the

soul in which either is opposed to, triumphs over, or resists the other, is due entirely to
the being of humanity in its rebellion against and so alienation from the Spirit and the
Logos. It is the nature of fallen flesh, and not the nature of God's good creation, that

prevents man being whole. Yet in Jesus is found one whole cosmic man, embodied

soul and besouled body, a formed and ordered totality, not a chaotic composite being

existing as the union of two parts. This he sees being illustrated linguistically from the
New Testament witness to Christ: where Gal. 1:4; 2: 20; Eph. 5: 2,25 can speak of Jesus

Christ giving himself (Eautöv) for our sins, in Matt. 20: 28; Jn. 10: 11,15; 15: 13; 1 Jn.

3: 16 it is his soul (iuxrj) that he gives as a ransom for the Church. Then again, in Lk.

22: 19; Rom. 7:4; Col. 1:22; Heb. 10: 10; 1 Pet. 2: 24 it is his body (aciva) which is given
67 Clearly there is no conflict within him, but a unity. What is more, at
as the sacrifice.

no point does the New Testament contain any hint of a liberation of Jesus as object (in
his body) from Jesus as subject (in his soul). Nor can Jesus the accused glutton and

drunkard be shown to be an ascetic at war with his own body. As the one filled without
limit with the Spirit that is the bond of union between the two levels of man's being,

such possibilities are precluded. He is the integrated subject of his own object and

object of his own subject. He wills and fulfils himself so that a humanity divided by
the flesh might be united in him.

64Cf. CD 111/2,340f.
65CD 111/2,341
66CD 111/2,325
67CD 111/2,328

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

His whole being consists in the event in which soul and body come into

formation and order, in which chaos is left behind and cosmos is realised, and
in which the flesh is slain in its old form and is quickened and comes alive in

its new - and all this by and from out of itself. 68

The relationship between soul and body in Jesus is in fact so broadly

determinative that Barth feels that with our knowledge of Jesus Christ as the whole

man we find ourselves at the centre of all Christian knowledge, not simply the
knowledge of man. For that relationship - Jesus in his simultaneous objectivity and

subjectivity - is both comparable to and illuminative of a number of other relationships

core to theology. It has already been seen that for man to be a logical cosmos there
must be an ordering between the two moments of soul and body corresponding to the
Word's rule of his creaturely nature (heaven's rule of earth). Only then, in that

reception of the Word and Spirit that transforms the divisive flesh to make the whole
man can man be logical. What has not yet been seen is that, as the preceding soul of a

succeeding body, man can be seen only to be fulfilled as a duality, just as man is only
fulfilled with the being of woman. The body is the subordinate logic of the soul, the

soul's other, the signum of man's res, corresponding to the creation and the female.
The first and most certain and clear relationship analogous to the relationship between

soul and body in Jesus, then, is the relationship between Christ the head and his body,
the Church. Yet Jesus as soul and body also seems, he feels, to be illustrative (and

determinative? ) of the relationship between heaven and earth (even though it may not

necessarily be further supposed that man as soul of his body is the microcosm),
justification and sanctification, law and gospel, faith and works, preaching and

sacrament, confessional formula and corresponding attitude and action, Church and
69
state.
Evidently these are not issues of merely nugatory significance in Barth's

thinking. It is of utmost importance in that case, having established the manner in

which he relates the inner ordering of man to other relationships, to determine to what

extent Barth has managed to construct a sufficient model of the whole man and his

psychosomatic makeup.
The question and consequences of the lack of any serious doctrine of space in
his anthropology is one that has already been raised (and one that can receive further

68CD 111/2,337
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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

and fuller attention in the next chapter). We must turn to it again here, though, to ask:
if the soul is man's creaturely life of temporal existence, and the body his spatial form

of that temporal living, why does Barth feel he can devote so much space in Chapter X
to a doctrine of time without giving any such time to an equally weighted doctrine of

space? With the doctrines of time and space being considered so independent that one

can be addressed without the other, a schism does seem to be secreted within the whole
between his temporal living form. 0 Daniel Price seems, indirectly, to
man, and spatial

recognise this in his judgment that, in the end, Barth's pneumatology does not seem

robust enough to hold together the whole man. When Barth proposes that the Spirit of
God is the basis of the unity of the body and soul, he says, `it sounds nearly as if he is

"God 0 1 That may be.

calling on a of the gaps" to solve the mind-body problem.
However, the problem is yet more serious. If Barth is right in thinking that every

trivialisation of the body is in point of fact a trivialisation of the soul, then his

marginalisation of any doctrine of space can only, in the end, constitute a

marginalisation of man himself as the soul of his body. This is not to say that Barth has
failed to construct a substantial doctrine of the body - far from it, as we have seen.

Rather it is that the numerous tangible benefits his doctrine of the body incorporates are

in constant danger of leaking out, there being no auxiliary doctrine of space muscular

enough to retain them.

Jürgen Moltmann has another equally serious charge to put to Barth on this

point. That is, Barth's view of the subjugation of the body to the soul (as the flesh of

the man Jesus is subjugated to the Word, as earth is to heaven, as woman is to man) is

simply one form of the whole of Western anthropological theory, a theory that moves
inevitably towards inter-personal, societal domination. Barth calls the ordering of soul

and body `indestructible' in part because of its analogous relationship to God's

relationship of dominion (which Moltmann reads as `domination') towards the world.

This analogy Moltmann dismisses as a fabrication, setting out instead what he feels to

be the actual and historical impetus behind Barth's model. In the Platonism that so

pervaded patristic anthropology, whilst primacy was given to the soul, the body was the

prison of that soul and so to be escaped. In a less extreme way, Philo of Alexandria

70 This
separation is almost certainly rooted in Barth's earlier refusal to see God's omnipresence and
eternity as parallels, a refusal that John Colwell has argued relies on an arbitrary distinction between the
two that effectively abstracts eternity from the incarnation by seeing God's eternity, and not his
omnipresence, as "an attribute of God's freedom as such" (CD 11/1,465) (Colwell, J. E., Actuality and
Provisionality: Eternity and Election in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: Rutherford, 1989), 33).
71Price, 257

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

saw the imago Dei as a referent to the mind (God being the mind of the universe).
Thus the human mind is related to the body in a way analogous to the divine mind's

Barth 72 Could Barth in

relation to the universe, which analogy also sees and upholds.

effect be downgrading the body as an integral part of man's being in the imago Dei? If
Moltmann is right in his case, it would appear so. But to move on through his historical

argument: in mediaeval anthropology the Aristotelian view that the body is formed by
the soul was determinative. Is Barth's rendition of the human being as `soul of his

body' just a simple appropriation of the Aristotelian-Thomist definition anima forma

corporis? In modem European anthropology it is the expositions of Descartes and

Lamettrie, giving the conscious mind power and ownership over the instrument of the

body. 73 To view Barth's anthropology as an extension or product of such cultural

forces is, of course, an implicit critique of Barth's claim to have founded his exposition

of the human constitution Christologically. As such, Moltmann holds that to see and

describe the person of Jesus as the definitive soul ruling its own body is merely
imposition. 74
eisegetical

But is this `inner sovereignty' and self-control really the outstanding

characteristic of the human being Jesus? Can the struggle in Gethsemane be

interpreted in those terms? One has the impression that in this passage Barth is

adopting Schleiermacher's Christology, with its thesis about Jesus' `always

dominant consciousness of God'. 75

The result, for Moltmann, can only be one in which the reasonable soul dominates the
body and feelings, giving no right to resistance or to a say in the decision making of the

person. Harmony between the body and its dominating soul is not even something to
be desired, for the ordering between the two is not only indestructible but gracious.

The soul not only does, but must dominate the body. In place of so disturbingly
dictatorial an anthropology, Moltmann posits perichoretic mutual affection instead of

subjugation by the one of the other. And since the relationship between the soul and

72Philo, De opificio mundi, 69. It is worth

noting Margaret Barker's remarkable caution here, however:
Thilo, as I shall show, drew his theology from the most ancient traditions of Israel and not from an
amalgam of hellenized Judaism and contemporary Greek philosophy, as is so often suggested.' (Barker,
M., The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God (Louisville, KY.: \Vestminster/John Knox, 1992),
48).
73 Moltmann, J., God in Creation: doctrine
an ecological of creation trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM,
1985), 247ff.
" Cf. CD 111/2,332
75Moltmann, 352-3, n.30

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

body is analogous to the relationship between male and female, even God and his

creation, Moltmann must implicitly be advocating such perichoretic mutuality between

the sexesand between the Creator and his creation. As the soul is affected by the body
and vice versa, so God is affected by his creation.
Many of Moltmann's questions seem valid, and much of what he says is true.
Yet is this critique fair for Barth himself? The fact is, Barth does hold to the soul

feeling and thinking by use of the body, as can be seen in his analysis of what,

biblically, the `heart' is. So, he says, `it must not be forgotten that to the body

(according to Ps. 2215,394; Prov. 1430) there belongs also the heart, and therefore the

human personality. Man does not possess but is that which he is fashioned out of the

earth. '76 The `heart' is what it is anatomically. Yet, having seen the command to

circumcise the heart and the demand for purity of heart, he can also see that the `heart'

represents or is more than just a somatic organ. This body part is very much at the

heart of man's living being. Thus, he can conclude,

the heart is not merely a but the reality of man, both wholly of soul and wholly
of body. Who would want to say from his heart that it is the one more or less
than the other or without the other? Of this term which in the first instance is
wholly physical, but is then given in the Bible a content which is wholly of
soul, we are forced to say that it speakswith particular plainness of the order in
is body, being.77
which man soul and or man as a rational

There is an indestructible ordering within man. Yet to see Barth's exposition as just

another domination by dualism is to miss the genuine complexity he builds in as

reflective of the real complexity of the being of man made known in Jesus Christ. If,
Barth has in the end marginalised the body, it is not because of his doctrine of the

coordination of the body and soul.

A contrast that is illuminative of Barth's contribution to the subject of the whole

man is that with Augustinian anthropology, in which the likeness to the triune God can
be found within each individual. If one is determined to find it, there is something that

might vaguely resemble Augustine's type of `trinity' in Barth's whole man: by the

Spirit, man in his being as subject and man in his being as object are held together in

76CD 111/1,245
77CD 111/2,436

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

78 However, anthropology can be

unity. some most vital differences to Augustine's

seen, reflective of Barth's insistence on man's finding his very being in encounter. Not

only does the Spirit in Barth's thinking remain the Spirit of God even as the spirit of

man, but also - and most significantly in great improvement on Augustine's

-
containment of that likeness to the mind or soul, Barth takes the body into man's being
in the likeness of God. Man, when real in the fmago Dei, is the soul of his body.

Augustine's model had not only made the soul so overweight that the body would

perish of theological malnutrition, but it had also effectively reduced the Trinity to a

mathematical nicety. When the mark of the Trinity is only stamped on the inner being

of the person, the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit cannot be reflected in

anything other than internal self-relatedness. The person all too quickly becomes

impersonal, an individual with little `history' outside of his own constant

introspection. 79 It is the way in which Barth successfully managed to break free of

such internality to see man as a being in encounter that is worth elaborating on now.
This difference to Augustine has to be listed as one of the great benefits Karl
Barth has brought to subsequentanthropology. That is, he sought to incorporate what
theological anthropology has all too often balked at, namely the external nature, the

physicality, of the inner being of man. This is the indispensable correlative of man's
being as a being in encounter. It has to be said that - perhaps particularly in the
Reformed tradition - physicality has all too often been undervalued in being regarded

as `merely external', externality being equated not with relationality but peripherality.
Yet if our external form is not the form of our very being, then (as in Irving) our
behaviour cannot be anything more than incidentally related to us. Act and being must
then be divorced.
In reaction to this, Barth turned to the kind of thinking embodied in F. C.
Oetinger's aphorism `corporeality is the end of all the ways of God'. 80 From his

earlier, complete acceptance of the words, he came to a more nuanced judgment,

rejecting it as dogma per se, but feeling that Oetinger had managed to express a very

necessary opposition to the flight of the Enlightenment spirit from nature. From the

constitution of Adam by the LORD God in the second creation account, the body is
.

78 Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, XI

79Cf. Gunton, C. E., The Promise
of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 102-3
8° CD I/1,134; cf. 11/1,268. `Those
responsible for the Gesamtausgabe make it clear that the sentence
should actually say: "Corporeality is the end of the Work of God [... ], " which Barth apparently was not
aware of. He quoted from memory. ' (Jehle, F., Ever Against the Stream: The Politics of Karl Barth,
1906-1968 (Grand Rapids, Mi. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), 35, n. 32)

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

shown to be no prison or peripheral organ, but the very nature of man. It is worth

quoting Barth at some length here as he expounds the relevant section of that narrative.

The creation of man described in Genesis differs from the Enuma Elish, the
Orphic myth of Dionysus and the Titans, and other similar cosmogoniesin its

strong emphasis on creatureliness. In each of the alternatives, man is formed

from the blood of the slaughtered (usually evil) deity or deities. Thus man is

the composition of already evil matter and divinity. Yet man is Q`iK, taken
TT

and formed solely from the MIN. T T-:

This homo is not a celestial, but a

terrestrial being, from the humus through and through. Yet not only is his
divinity excluded in his formation. His configuration by the fingers of God

excludes the possibility that this being should be a holy and spiritual being
trapped behind profane and material walls. By the hand and breath of God

man is a whole being, body and soul. His body cannot be a disgrace or prison
or threat to the soul, for he is divinely willed and crafted in his totality. The

only sense in which he can be a being both humiliated and exalted is in the

sense that he is an object of both divine judgment divine 81

and mercy.

Man's inner essence is found in his external form, and his status is determined not by

the matter with which he is made but by his relation to God. This is another aspect of
Barth's thinking that Eberhard Ringel has sought to elucidate (and elaborate). Ringel

notes Hegel's appreciation of the essential nature of externality:

That which Something is, it is wholly in its externality; its externality is its

totality - it is equally its introreflected unity. Its Appearance is not only

Reflection into other, but into self, and consequently its externality is the

manifestation of that it is in itself. 82

which

Much of the fear in Christian dogmatics of bringing the body into man's being
in the imago Dei has been the understandable fear of anthropomorphism. If man in his
bodily form images God, then what of God? And yet it is a fear that has inevitably

81CD I11/1,243-4; cf. Rad, G.

von, Genesis: A Commentary trans. Marks, J. H. (London: SCM, 1961),
75
82Hegel, G. W. F., Science Logic (trans. London, 1929),
of vol. II, 159, cited in Ringel, E., Theological
EssaysI trans. and ed., J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 137

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

fuelled the downgrading of the body and the dividing of man such that the image and

likeness of God can be found in the human mind without its attendant body. 83 In

response, Barth's account of the nature of body does seem to make such objections

seem a little naive and artless. For Barth, body is the person as he is available to others
(and himself). So, for God to be gracious to man, God too is embodied in his approach

to man (and, to avoid inconsistency, in his approach to himself, especially in the

ascension). The imago Dei, then, can only be found in bodily form in Jesus Christ and
his body.

It is interesting to see, then, the development in the thinking of Old Testament

scholarship in this area immediately after Barth had written the first two part-volumes

on creation. Since then there has been some considerable work done to recover the

native Hebrew conception of deity and therefore imago Dei as witnessed in the Old

Testament. For example, Gerhard von Rad is remarkably similar to Irenaeus and the

patristic exegetical tradition of anthropomorphic Christophany in speaking of the form

of God as he appears through the Old Testament:

Actually, Israel conceived even Jahweh himself as having human form. But

the way of putting it which we use runs in precisely the wrong direction

according to Old Testament ideas, for, according to the ideas of Jahwism, it

cannot be said that Israel regarded God anthropomorphically, but the reverse,

that she considered man as theomorphic. 84

The result is that von Rad refuses to exempt man's bodily appearancefrom God's
image in order to limit it to man's spiritual nature, dignity, personality or ability for

83Cf. Watson, F., Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 291
84The question of divine corporeality is one that will exercise us in the next chapter. For the moment,
though, we may note the work of a number of biblical theologians on this topic, including Gerhard von
Rad, Walter Eichrodt, Terence Fretheim, Stephen D. Moore and Francis Watson. Terence Fretheim, for
instance, has picked up this tradition, most notably in The Suffering of God, to assert that `it can be said
unequivocally that the human form is not somehow foreign to God's Godness.' In order to substantiate
this, he goes on to ask: 'Is the human form one which God assumesonly for the sake of the appearance;
or is there an essential continuity between the form and God as God is or both? It would be a mistake to
move to a consideration of God as spirit in this connection. It is remarkable how seldom the OT and
even the NT, uses such language to speak of God. Isa. 31:3 is sometimes cited in this connection: `The
Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. ' Yet, as Eichrodt indicates,
this passagedoes not serve to set spirit over against matter, but the "inexhaustible power of the divine
life" over against "the essentially transitory". The spiritual and the physical/material are not mutually
exclusive categories. To speak of God as spirit does not necessarily entail formlessness.' (Fretheim, T.
E., The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 102, citing
Eichrodt, W., Theology of the Old Testament,Vol. 1 (London: SCM, 1961), 215. Cf. Rad, G. von, Old
Testament Theology, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962), 145; Watson, 289; Moore, S. D., God's
Gym: Divine Afale Bodies of the Bible (Routledge: New York and London, 1996))

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

moral decision, etc. Such limitation he finds not only one-sided but strange to the Old

Testament and the Hebraic mind before its inundation with Hellenic influence.

Outside the realm of Old Testament studies, there are two theologians in

particular who have sought to expand on Barth's doctrine of the body. The first is

Derrick Sherwin Bailey, a fervent advocate of Barth's interpretation of the imago Dei

as involving the relationship between man and woman. Bailey finds the ontological

relation subsisting between man and woman demonstrated in the physical form of both,

as reflected in the language of the creation account of Genesis 1. So, 1DT and 7nN

appear to be derived from roots denoting respectively `the sharp one' (that is, the one
`the (that is, the one with the vagina). 85 Thus the
with the penis) and perforated one'
inner being of man is rescued from abstraction as man's being as a being in encounter

is manifested in his fleshly appearance.

The second theologian is Eberhard Ringel. Seeing himself standing in an older

tradition, in continuity with a strain of patristic thinking, Ringel finds a decisive aspect

of the understanding of humanity as the image of God in Köhler's interpretation of the

image as consisting in the fact of man's upright and erect form. 86 As with Bailey, in

taking the bodily form of man seriously, Ringel has sought to understand man's bodily
form precisely. `This only have I found', wrote Qoheleth, `God made man upright'

(Ecc 7: 29). This Ringel reads quite literally as a conclusion drawn from Genesis 1:26

that the erect form of the body is the external form of the dominion given to man. So

man can bow from his naturally erect posture and so emulate the humiliation of the one

who is called lord in his humiliation. Thus we can find our being in correspondence to

the divine condescension in Jesus Christ. Ringel is quite serious in his specificity, as

can lie seen in the distance to which he feels this line of thinking can be taken:

It is not a matter of chance that we feel that those of our fellows who are

prevented from walking or holding themselves upright are especially

unfortunate and pitiable. They lack freedom for the future. In antiquity they
were particularly ridiculed, evidently becausetheir existence was a disturbing
85Bailey, D. S., The Man-Wontan Relation in Christian Thought (London: Longmans, 1959), 273
86Ringel, 136ff. Cf. Köhler, L., Theologie des Alte,: Testaments(Tübingen: 1966); Augustine, De Gen.
ad litt. 6.12; Lactantius, A Treatise on the Anger of God, VII. We might add to this tradition John
Milton, as he describesAdam and Eve for the first time:
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
God-like erect, with native honour clad
In naked majesty, seemedlords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone, (Paradise Lost, Bk IV, 11.287-91)

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

marginal comment on human lordship, with the result that since they seemed

externally to lack the function of lordship, they were thought to be particularly

domineering. The fact that today such ridicule of those prevented from
walking upright is no longer a matter of course as it was in antiquity, has

something to do with the fact that Jesus Christ, whom faith calls `Lord', was
the crucified. 87

Whatever we might make of the details of these arguments, one thing is very

clear. With his refusal to disembody the real man at any stage, Barth has made it

incomparably more difficult for subsequentanthropology to sideline the body. Real

man is a whole man. As the creature called into being by the love of God ad extra,
man is an essentially external, bodily being.

87Jüngel, 139, original italics

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Conclusion

For Barth then, what is man? As the recipient of the Spirit of Christ, he reveals in his

external form what he is essentially, namely a being in encounter. He is not an island

but a Thou and an I, defined primarily by the divine I and secondarily by the human

Thou of his fellow. Thus we see the tragedy of man's being the homo incurrvatus in se.

Yet Barth finds that this being of man ad extra is not unconnected to his being ad intra,

if we can refer to it in this way, for his body is not the physical öpyavov at the disposal

but the form the 88 Bodily

of the essential soul, external and essential of self. encounters

are I-Thou encounters. When man, then, is the homo incurvatus in se, he can be seen

physically as such, averting, like Peter, his eyes from his fellow man (Luke 22: 61-2).
In contrast to what might be said of his treatment of the concept in volume I/1 with

regard to his doctrine of God, in his anthropology Barth has thus given a wonderfully

rich exposition of the concept of Trpdo(. )nov and its implications for man, an exposition
that deserves to be highly influential. 89

The concern raised in this chapter has been that for Barth to articulate this
conception of man as a whole being in encounter, he must necessarily detach it from

the core of his overall argument, as witnessed in the case of the apöownov. To start

88Given that Barth's doctrine of the whole man is intended to be derived from his doctrine of the real
man, JesusChrist, a difference in Christology can be noted here from that of Athanasius, who famously
described the human nature of Christ as the Word's 6pyavov (De incarnatione, 8,9,22,41,42-5).
89 CD I/1, §9;
cf. Torrance, A. J., Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and
Human Participation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), ch. 4. Daniel Price is one who has recently
attempted to make Barth's work in this area more widely appreciated, even outside the realm of
theological study, by showing it to be analogous to the object relations psychology of W. Ronald D.
Fairbairn (Price, D. J., Karl Barth's Anthropology in Light of Modere: Thought (Grand Rapids, MI. &
Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002)). At much the same time as Barth, Fairbairn (1889-1964) was resisting.
Freud's reductionism in his argument that the human psyche struggles not so much for libidinal pleasure
as for object relations. Price seeks to illuminate the insistence of both Barth and Fairbairn that the
human being is constituted, at a fundamental level, by relationships. It is necessary to insert a caveat
here, for there is, surely, a world of difference between the psychologically formative experiences of an
infant and the ontologically constitutive love of God whereby man has his being. In object relations
theory the object is primarily the mother, and the relationship is merely psychologically affecting. In
Barth's theological anthropology God is the subject and man the object whose very existence derives
from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Then, the primary human relationship for Barth is that between
man and woman, whereas for this branch of modern psychology at least the primary relationship is
chronological - it is that between parent and infant. To flag up these differences (some of which Price is
aware of) is not to deny Price's achievement. What it does do is to illustrate the fact that he does in the
end let his optimism for the cause of dialogue colour his readings. Whether or not Barth offered, in his
anthropology, the possibility of some rapprochement between theological and 'non-theological'
anthropologies (and here we must note that, whilst he was undoubtedly moving, by the time he discussed
the ethics of human sexuality and marriage (CD 111/4), into more serious engagement with psychology,
he did ultimately fail (or refuse) to draw out the implications of his Christology for the physical
sciences), what Price has drawn out is the vast practical relevance of Barth's relational anthropology in
place of the static substantival categories of so much classic theological anthropology.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

with his doctrine of God: there we see, with its threefold repetition of the divine I, a
doctrine oriented at the deepest level toward the revelation of God. Alan Torrance has

shown extensively that this problematic status that relationship has in Barth's thinking

stems from a lack of real relationship between the three `modes' of God's being in his

doctrine of God.

If the metaphor of repetition is to be used to establish the singularity of the

divine identity in the threeness, this requires to be qualified by a much more

profound doctrine of perichoresis than Barth seems willing to offer in this

context....Barth's concept of the trinitarian Seinsweiseit obscures the concept

in God. 90
of communion

With that being the case, when we come to anthropology we might ask: what room has

Barth then allowed for encounter and communion as the likeness of humanity to the
being of its Creator?
The critique is commonly carried over into assessments of his pneumatology,

for there is now a general consensus to be found in the secondary and tertiary literature

on Barth that the trait Torrance and others have identified in his doctrine of God is

by the overall weakness of his 91 In place of Irenaeus'

perpetuated pneumatology.

model of God's dealings with his creation being through both his `hands', Barth
presents a decidedly single-handed alternative. The effect on his anthropology we need

only rehearse briefly here. Knowing Barth's general reticence about the Spirit, his

understanding that man's twofold existence as male and female is intended to be the
image of God's threefold existence as Father, Son and Spirit seems to be an open door

to criticism. 92 Is the binary I-Thou dynamic insufficiently relational, then? Eugene

90 Torrance, A. J., Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human

Participation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), 115. Thus Torrance offers a critique that fairer than that
offered by Jürgen Moltmann, whom he cites: `to understand God's threefold nature as eternal repetition
or as holy tautology does not yet mean thinking in trinitarian terms. The doctrine of the Trinity cannot
be a matter of establishing the same thing three times. To view the three Persons merely as a triple
repetition of one and the same God would be somewhat empty and futile. ' (Moltmann, J., The Trinity
and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God, trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1981), 141-2)
91 This broad agreement has been illustrated by Robert Jenson in particular: `Karl Barth is the initiator
and the model... of this century's renewal of Trinitarian theology.... The near-unanimity is therefore
remarkable, with which a recent meeting of the Karl Barth Society of North America agreed that long
stretches of Barth's thinking seem rather binitarian than Trinitarian. ' (Jenson, R. W., `You Wonder
Where the Spirit Went', in Pro Ecclesia, 2 (1993), 296-304) Cf. Colwell, J. E., Actuality and
Provisionality: Eternity and Election in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: Rutherford, 1989),
303 ff.
92We have also seen, however, that the case is not as simple as it first appears. For all his reticence
concerning the father-mother-child analogue denied by Augustine (CD 111/1,32If.; De Trinitate, XII, 5-

ISO
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

Rogers suggests so, and argues that the phenomenology fails to allow for corporate or

ecclesial relationships, reducing co-humanity to co-individuality.

Despite the suggestive bridal imagery, which serves another purpose, God's

relationship to Israel and the Church resists reduction to I-Thou (in the
singular) but may resemble I-Ye (in the plural). Otherwise the God-given and
Spirit-consummated particularity of the biblical and post-biblical saints gets
93
washed out.

What has worried Robert Jenson and others more, though, is the effect this has on

human reality itself. Humanity, especially as the creature of the Trinity, is for Irenaeus

confined neither to the abstract universal or ideal, nor to the entirely particular, but can
be found in a particular (Jesus Christ) who shares his humanity with universal

significance. For Barth, on the other hand, the focal specifying of the hunianuni by a

single story and the want of the Spirit of life-giving multiplicity work against all his

endeavours to leave time for the redeeming of the many.

That said, whatever might be alleged about the overall weakness of his

pneumatology, we have not found it to be so problematic with regard to its role in

securing man's being as a being in encounter. It is that the relationship Barth gives to
man in the left hand of his pneumatology he is in danger of taking away in the right
hand of his Christology.
But further, it is not just that thereby man's existence as a relational being is
under threat; it is man's whole being that is put in peril. The whole man, it must be

remembered, can be understood only in the light of the real man, Jesus Christ. Thus the

ordering of man's soul and body can be seen as analogous to Jesus Christ's being as
God and man. Yet if this be the case, given Barth's Christology, is anything like a

Chalcedonian ordering of soul and body finally possible in man, the two existing `in

ineffaceable difference, inseparable unity, and indestructible order'? 94 It would seem

more logical for the body to exist in constant danger, if not the reality, of being

6), the primary I-Thou binary relationship informs and is celebrated by relationships external to it, thus
imaging more effectively than an isolated dyad the God who, as Eugene Rogers himself (who is highly
critical of Barth at just this point) put it, `is like a wedding feast, the love of two celebrated by a third'
(Rogers, E. F. Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God (Oxford: Blackwell,
1999), 195).
93Rogers, 184. To be fair, we must note that 'encounter' for Barth includes `where one is with many, or
many with one, or many with many' (CD 111/2,244). Yet, again, it seems quite easy to see such
affirmations as unnatural attachmentsto the main bulk of his anthropology.
9' CD I11/2,325

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 5 What is Man?

consumed by its own soul, a logic that is only advanced with the lack of any detailed
doctrine of space (any where to encounter).

The fact that man remains, for Barth, a genuinely whole being in encounter is a
testimony to him and his theological instinct. It is not that his anthropology at this

point has ceased to be truly Christological. It is that, to the benefit of man as the soul

of a body in encounter, he has ceased to be driven by the more Alexandrian strains that
inhere his conception of the real man.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

6
When is Man?

In this last chapter on Barth we turn again to the question of time and its relation to

man. It is not as if the passing of time from the second to the twentieth century had

solved any of its own riddle. In any case, time (which, we will see, Barth saw as a co-

creation) is the form of the external basis of the covenant, and so intrinsically worth

studying. As such, man's existence in time is simply another aspect, in fact an exact

parallel to, and the presupposition of, the other anthropological fact that man is as he

has spirit, i. e., as he is established, constituted and maintained by God as the soul of his

body. As man is the soul of his body, so he exists in his time. '

1CD I11/2,521ff.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

Jesus, Lord of Time

Back in the early days of dialectical theology, in the 1922 edition of Der Römerbrief,

Barth had famously stated `if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what

Kierkegaard called the "infinite distinction" between time and eternity'. 2

qualitative
Time and eternity, each being the negation of the other, Barth saw as the mode of

existence of man and God respectively. This dialectic of time and eternity, denying the

possibility of any union of the two, provided the fuel that would fire Barth's critique of
human religion since it rendered unattainable the goal of that enterprise. A decade on,

whilst acknowledging the antiseptic significance such a timeless revelation had for its
time, Barth himself put a warning over his old dialectic, that it had failed to do justice

to the Word's becoming (and flesh. 3 The first time-eternity model had to be
remaining)

modified once Christology was taken into account and Jesus Christ proclaimed as the

one concrete mediator between time and eternity. For all the appearance of radical

change from dialectic to analogy, however, there were elements of continuity, even

elements that never seemed to change, leaving Barth's later chronology with many of
the problems that afflicted the original. 4

In volume I of the Church Dogmatics Barth appeared in some ways to have

almost entirely reversed the order he had first proposed. Rather than God being
timeless and man being timeful, in the Church Dogmatics we seeit is man in his fallen
lack of encounter that always veers towards timelessness and non-historical, static

existence. Man has been given time by God such that he might use it as the meansby
which he too, like God, could have his own history. Yet it is an inheritance man has

2 Barth, K., The Epistle to the Romans, 6`hed., trans. Hoskyns, E. C. (London: Oxford, 1933), 10
3 CD 1/2,50. It is hard to
resist citing Robert Jenson on that old dialectic: `An "advanced" conception of
God is very likely to be one of "pure substance, " visually pictured as an infinitely extended pudding (to
steal someone's devastating remark). If we also believe in the Christian message about God's entry into
history, we are almost certain to regard this entry as His emergence into a foreign and slightly distasteful
realm and to regard His doing anything as an act of condescension. ' (Jenson, R. W., Alpha and Omega:
A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1963), 74)
°A detailed history of this development can be found in Roberts, R. H., Eternity and Time in the
Theology of Karl Barth: An Essay in Dogmatic and Philosophical Theology (PhD: Edinburgh, 1975).
For a more general treatment (and re-appraisal) of the overall movement in Barth's thought from
dialectic to analogy, see also Bruce McCormack's definitive work Karl Barth's Critically Realistic
Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909-36 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Robert Jenson put it that `If one went through the Commentary on Romans and replaced the tangential
intersection of time and eternity with the story narrated by the second article of the Apostles' Creed, he
would obtain the theology of the Church Dogmatics. ' (Jenson, R. WW.,God after God: The God of the
Future and the God of the Past seen in the Theology of Karl Barth (Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1969), 71).

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

squandered by his avaricious use of it. So, for fallen, sinful man in himself the past is
the when we leave and have no longer. The future is the when we do not yet have. As
for our present, it is much like the flight of Bede's sparrow through the great hall, from

darkness to darkness. Our time is condemned to disintegration and, at last, extinction,

precisely because of our attempts to horde the present, so alienating the past and the
future.

As for God, Barth can still say `Time can have nothing to do with God. '5 Yet

the `time' that can have nothing to do with God is now simply this fallen, disjointed
time. Eternity is no longer a simple Augustinian negation of all temporality. George
Hunsinger puts it superbly:

"God is light, " Irenaeus once remarked, "and yet God is unlike any light that
we know" (Adversus haereses 2.13.4). Barth knew this dictum and cited it
(11/1, p. 190). It offers a possible paradigm for his use of the word "time. " It is

as though he were saying: "God is temporal, and yet God's temporality is

unlike any time that we know. " The time peculiar to God is at once the

presupposition of creaturely time, and yet so utterly different as to be

ineffable. 6

Being the living God, God does not transcend or flee from time. He is the true

possessor of it. As such, eternity cannot simply be known as the negative image of

time, but must be freed from the Church's long Babylonian captivity of this abstract
7 Introducing the divine
opposition. perfection of eternity (with its twin, glory), Barth
set out his understanding of God's eternity in well-known words:

The being is eternal in whose duration beginning, succession and end are not

three but one, not separateas a first, a second and a third occasion, but one
simultaneous occasion as beginning, middle and end. Eternity is the

simultaneity of beginning, middle and end, and to that extent it is pure duration
(reine Dauer). Eternity is God in the sense in which in Himself and in all

5 CD 11/1,608
6 Hunsinger, G., 'Alysterium Trinitatis: Karl Barth's Conception
of Eternity' in Disruptive Grace:
Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000), 189
7CDII/1,611

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

things God is simultaneous, i. e., beginning, and middle as well as end, without
distance 8
separation, or contradiction.

Where the creature's time is characterised by the fact that in it past, present and future

are severed and put in opposition to each other, the `purity' of God's duration is

characterised by wholeness and integration: in eternity, beginning, succession and end

neither fall apart nor into conflict with each other. Past, present and future exist in
immediate unity. Man's time is contrastingly disjunctive and needs to be healed of its

succession and division by being brought into the time of the triune life of durational

simultaneity. This is neither timelessness nor sempiternity, but the duration of the

simultaneity of past, present and future in contrast to their division within our time.
Approvingly, he cites Boethius' definition of eternity (insofar as it defines God's

eternity specifically, and not merely eternity in abstraction): Aeternitas est

9
interminabilis vitae Iota simul et perfecta possessio. In eternity, the past is not lost,
and the future holds no threat of extinction, but the three (past, present, future) are
harmoniously one just as Father, Son and Spirit are one. Yet God's time is not
destabilised but established by its unity in trinity. The proper perichoresis of past,

present and future involves a before and an after just as there is an order and succession

within God. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds from both.

This does not mean that we can imagine that the three modes of time correspond to the

three modes of God's being respectively. That would imply the very disjunction that

God's being is free of. The Father, as origin and begetter, is not only beginning but

also succession and end; the Son, as the begotten, is not only succession but also
beginning and end, being of the same substance as the Father; the Spirit, as the one who

from both, is but beginning 10

proceeds not only end also and succession.
Given that history for Barth is a matter of encounter, the triune God who is

communion therefore is history, supreme and absolute time. He is a God who

becomes. His being is event, the event of the relationship between the Father, the Son

and the Spirit. It would only then be possible to talk of a purely timeless divine eternity
if God were not the God of encounter that he is. To speak thus is necessarily to remove

the gospel by denying the triune being of God as revealed in the moment of revealing

a CD II/1,608
9 De consol. Phil. V, 6, cited in CD 11/1,610
10CD 11/1,615

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

in Jesus Christ. " Once this has been acknowledged, Barth

and reconciling encounter
feels that all abstract definitions of eternity can be jettisoned.

In the last resort when we think of eternity we do not have to think in terms of

either the point or the line, the surface or space. We have simply to think of
God Himself, recognising and adoring and loving the Father, the Son and the

Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that we know eternity. For eternity is His
12
essence.

The triune God is eternity, the font of all time. 13 This, in chronological terms, is what

must be meant by God's being for his creation. Here Barth ventures into something of

a temporal equivalent to the Irenaean doctrine of God's being as xwpwv Kai axaiprlroc,

ascribing to God pre-temporality, supra-temporality and post-temporality, in that he

beginning its duration its 4

precedes the of time, accompanies and exists after end., The
God who has and is real time thus encloses all time within himself, and can take time

for and give time to the creature as he has history, or encounter and communion, with

uCDII/1,618
12CD II/1,639
13CD 11/1,611. Margaret Barker believes that a very similar conception of eternity can be found within
the liturgical symbolism of Old Testament Israel's worship: `It can be shown, for example, that the
temple concept of time was neither linear nor cyclic, but based upon the concept of a hidden eternity in
the midst of time as we perceive it. This hidden centre was also the unity from which all creation came
forth. ' (Barker, M., The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London & New
York: T. & T. Clark, 2003), 146)
14Cf. Jenson, R. W., Systematic Theology Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 221. In
a
fascinating historical excursus, Barth draws out some of the implications of the perichoretic nature of
God's pre-temporality, supra-temporality and post-temporality. If each is co-dependent, it is impossible
to stress one above the others, just as it is entirely inappropriate to posit the three persons of the trinity as
rivals (who are the basis of the three forms of temporality), without serious theological consequences.
Yet this is precisely what has happened to unbalance theology, as he seeks to demonstrate in a summary
historical theology of time from Reformational through to twentieth century theology. The Reformers,
he suggests, weighted God's pre-temporality too heavily in their emphasis upon God's election in
particular. Human life and God's presence in time was therefore consigned to an appendix, whilst God's
post-temporality and therefore eschatology became `the appendix of an appendix'. Under such theology,
eschatology became just the accomplishment of the important matter, which is God's predetermination
of it before time. This may account for many of the pastoral problems of assurance that the puritans
were later forced to deal with. Then, and more dangerously, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw
the evolution of a new form of one-sidedness, giving preference to God's supra-temporality and so man
in his time (an imbalance most starkly represented by Feuerbach). By the beginning of the twentieth
century (a date perhaps marked by the publication of Johannes Weiss' Die Predigt vat Jesu vom Reiche
Gottes) the scene had again shifted to become an over-emphasis upon God's post-temporality and
eschatology. (CD 11/1,631-8). One is given to wonder, if this is the case, whether Barth does in fact see
a closer correlation than he is prepared to admit between beginning, succession and end on the one hand,
and Father, Son and Spirit on the other. Might not this historical theology just as aptly describe the
Reformational and post-Reformational concern for the Father's election, moving on to the original quest
for the historical Jesus and culminating in the twentieth century's special interest in pneumatology?

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

him in Jesus Christ. Eberhard Ringel notes this as an aspect of God's election of
himself, whereby God's being correspondsto itself as Father, Son and Spirit:

in the history which is constituted through this correspondence God makes

space within himself for time. This making-space-for-time within God is a

continuing event. The space of time conceived as a continuing event we call

eternity. "God has time because and as He has eternity. " (CD II/1,611)15

Chronos, the great aLWvand God of time, is dethroned and laid subject before the feet,

not of his son Zeus, but of the Son of God, JesusChrist. 16

It is to Jesus Christ as the Lord of time that Barth turns in his next protracted

examination of the question of time. In the opening pages of his part-volume on the
doctrine of election (CD I1/2), Barth had referred to the life of Christ as Urgeschichte,

the primary history of the covenant relationship between God and man, which serves as

the basis history between God 17 In The Epistle to the Romans, he

of all other and man.
had spoken of seeing `the light of the LOGOSof all history and of all life; and this is the

Primal History, history. ' 18 After some

non-historical, or rather the which conditions all
deliberation over the issue in volume 1/2, he returned in CD II/2 to the notion of `primal

history', specifying it now as that history which exists between God and the man Jesus

Nazareth. 19 It is this term that

of serves as a vital conceptual anchor within his
examination of time as an aspect of the doctrine of creation.
In CD 111/2Barth begins to propound his own doctrine of &VaKEýaXaiwOLS.
Here we see that Barth does not imagine God's precession, accompanying and

successionof creaturely time abstractly but concretely in JesusChrist. The history of

15Jüngel, E., God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being

of God in the Theology of Karl Barth.
A Paraphrase, 2nd English ed., trans. Webster, J. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001), 111. Similarly,
Robert Jenson elaborates on this theme of time as a divine distentio in his Systematic Theology to
provide what could appear to be something approximating a temporal complement to Jürgen Moltmann's
use of the Lurian doctrine of Tsiuitsum: `for God to create is for him to make accommodation in his
triune life for other persons and things than the three whose mutual life he is. In himself, he opens road,
and that act is the event of creation. We call this accommodation in the triune life "time. " (Jenson, R.
WV.,Systematic Theology Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 25, italics original, cf. ch.
17; Moltmann, J., God in Creation: an ecological doctrine of creation trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM,
1985), ch. 4, § 3; Scholem, G. G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1974), 244-
286). However, Barth's position should not in any way be read as a panentheism dressed up in temporal
garb. His conception of Jesus as Lord of time is utterly inimical to the sort of divine dependence and
limitation associated with panentheistic models, which he deplored as worse than undiluted
pantheism. (CD 11/1,312,562).
16Cf. CD 111/2,456
17CD 11/2,8f.
18The Epistle to the Romans, 140
19CD 1/2,57f.; 11/2,8; cf. Jüngel, 90, n. 57

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

Jesus is the event of the Word of God in atonement and revelation, the coming of God

to man and man to God, and as such it underlies and precedes all other reality as the
Word of God which brings all other reality (that is, creaturely reality) into being.

God's primal decision for Jesus is the primal relationship between God and his creature

whereby he is with and for his creature specifically, and his whole creation more
generally, even before it is. This prevenient positive relation of himself to what is

created is `primal history' and is found in his decision to be for the man Jesus. Just as
the speaking of the Word has an ontological function in establishing the being of the

creature, so too it has a further ontological function in establishing the being of the co-

creation, time. Just as there is no man, so there is no time preceding Jesus Christ.

When Barth turns in a subsection entitled `Beginning Time' to the problem of our

origin, it is this that is his answer. There, Barth does not consider debates over the

mechanics of human origins, such as that between creationism and traducianism, worth

entering into, given that they fail to deal with the problem of beginning from non-
being, a problem that must be dealt with if we are to avoid a pantheistic emanationist

account of creation. Instead, his goal is to seek to affirm that we do not come from the

abyss, but from `the being, speaking and acting of the eternal God who has preceded

us. '20
Jesusof Nazareth, the incarnate Word of God, lived a time of his own from his
birth to his death. Yet, in contrast to us, he did not live the life of the homo incurvatus

in se, but a life lived for others. In his obedience, the Son neither made the idolatrous

attempt to control time that so characterises the life of sinful humanity, nor an attempt
to escape it, but instead trusted the covenant God by living within the temporal form of
his creation. Here, if anywhere, is the place to find genuine history, even Urgeschichte,

for here God comes to man and man comes to God. The Creator became a creature

who then lived for God and so for all men. As the Christ, the one who lives for his

people, his history was never exclusively private, but inclusive and public. Just as he

shared his humanity with us, establishing our human being, so he shared his time with

us, establishing our temporal form. So he shared his time, becoming the contemporary
his time his 21 In Jesus, then, the light of God's time
of all men, and was never alone.
shines into the darkness of man's fallen time. It is one point of light within that
darkness, but a point whose light permeates the entire shadow. T. S. Eliot is unmatched
in his expression of much the same thought when he wrote `The Rock':

20CD 111/2,577
21CD 111/2,439-40;cf. 1/2,51 ff.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

Then came at a predetermined moment,

a moment in time and of time,

A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting, bisecting the world of time,
a moment in time, but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment:
for without the meaning there is no time,

in time gave the meaning. 22

and that moment

Christ became one with, and so the head of, his creation, recapitulating all things in
himself (Ephesians 1: 10), meaning that the KULpOL(the `sub-times', as it were) are not

annulled but fulfilled. His time is the `acceptableyear of the Lord', the great Sabbath,
the fulfilled time of God's covenant. Barth understandably pressgangs Galatians 4: 4
(O'TE SE ijXOEV EýaurEOTELXEV Ö OE&
TO' nXTIpW}. ta TOO XPOVOU, TO'V ULO'V allTOÜ, YEVÖ11EVOV

EK yuvaLKÖS,yEVÖµEVOV
ültö vöµov) into his service to explain that the mission of the

Son does not so much come at as bring with it the fullness of time (an interpretation

that, Barth is first be 23 The Son

concedes, not what the verse at sight seems to saying).

entered the temporality that all humanity experiences, bringing with him the fulfilled
time that is before and after all other time, making xpovoc as such. All time exists
because of and for this time.

As a part of the overflowing grace of God, this selfless time of Jesusburst the
bounds of finitude appointed for the human race as Jesus was raised to a further history,

that of the forty days between his his 24 In this second time
resurrection and ascension.
the preceding time of the man Jesus is revealed and the apostles (and, through them, the
Church) understand Jesus to be who he is. For in this Easter time Jesus, whilst

remaining vere homo, was manifested to the apostles in the mode of God, where before
his deity had been veiled. 25 Thus the Church could come to understand that his time is

not only the time of a man, but the time of God. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and
to day, and for ever, for whilst all other men have a beginning, a limited duration, and
Jesus before he is, be. 26 He is the Lord
an end, was was, still and still will of time. His

22Eliot, T. S., `The Rock', in T. S. Eliot: SelectedPoems (London: Faber & Faber, 1954), 119
23CD I1I/2,459ff.
24CD 111/2,440-1
2$CD 111/2,448f.
26CD 111/2,463-4

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

yesterday is also today, meaning that the New Testament community can rightly

understand Jesus to be really if transcendentally present. Barth understands the

appearance of the exalted Jesus to Saul (the apostle `born out of due time' according to
1 Corinthians 15: 8) on the road to Damascus as an example of this: whilst taking place

after the ascension, the appearance belongs properly to the forty days between the
27
resurrection and the ascension.
At last in the New Testament Jesus can be identified with the God of Israel,
who is the first and the last, as he announces himself at the end of the apocalypse to be

io''3,6
äXý IX tcaý tow ttpcZzoS '6o
Kai 'EoXazoS,rý apX'n Kai TO' t XoS (Revelation

22: 13).28 As the beginning and the end, he has a being in time, embracing and

enclosing within himself past, present and future. Yet, Barth goes on, the implicit Eyw

EiµL prescinds the notion of any simple succession of past, present and future. It means
the simultaneity of all three in him. 29 It is because he is this Lord of time, the first and

the last, that Barth feels he can understand Jesus to be the contemporary of the

patriarchs (in such a way that Luther could be affirmed in his description of Adam as a
Christian), the one who in the Old Testament already called himself the one who is and

be. 30
who will
In his mercy, God has revealed himself to man. To say this is to say that God
has time for us; eternity becoming time, we might say, such that time might become
31 This he did for
eternity. man in his fallen time through Jesus Christ as the fulfilment

of his covenant. The time of Jesus Christ is the time of the fulfilment of the covenant,
the fullness of time. As such, all time is his time. Even the time of the creation was

thus the time of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Logos. Eternity, on this model, is no longer

the pre-defined, mythological or abstract notion of religious Christianity. The old

dialectic of time and eternity is no longer required or valid, for the life of Jesus Christ

not only reaches into eternity, it is both eternity and the overlap of time and eternity.
Jesus Christ is the revelation and reality of God's eternal essence. He, and not the

sinful man who derives his existence from him, is the Lord of time.

27CD 111/2,470-1
28Barth would not wish it to be imagined that, becauseJesusChrist is the &pXtj
of creation, the creation
did not have a historical entry into reality. This vital theological reality he deemed some of the fathers
(Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycus, 11,10; Clement of Alexandria, Strontata, 6,7; Ambrose,
Heraenmero,:,1,4,15; Augustine, Confessions, 11,8f., 24) to have obscured when they chose to translate
h'11]R`13, Gen 1:1, with Ev A6yy (CD I11/1,14).
29CD 111/2,476
30In a subsection on the Old Testament as revelation of JesusChrist, it is to Irenaeusthat Barth first turns
as one of the chief proponents of the theme (CD 1/2,72ff. ).
31CD 1/2,45; 11/1,616; 111/2,512-9

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

This is a very different rebuke to that articulated by dialectical theology, yet

rebuke it still is. Where in the West time has been absolutised by Newton and

substantiated by the clock, it has unavoidably been forged into a property and
commodity for man, to be arranged and ordered for his convenience. Man has become
the God-like lord of time himself. One might say for an age even less certain than
Barth's that time, and in particular the extendedpresent, is increasingly being hollowed

out into a solipsistic, ambient music filled, bolt-hole from the crush of a culture short
on the product. Yet it was something remarkably similar to this that was in his
theological sights when he proposedJesusinsteadof us as Lord of time:

Everything dependson whether time has a different centre from the constantly
disappearing and never coming "now" of the pagan concept of time. But time

really has this centre, and being related to eternity in this centre, it is
by 32
accompaniedand surroundedand secured eternity.

It is, perhaps, too much of a cliche to say that one's doctrine of God will
determine one's doctrine of time. Yet a conscious derivation of the one from the other
cannot be said to be so routine (and the extent to which that further shapes and informs
the experience of life has to be less 33 The case is
an even well trodden thought path).

only magnified when it comes to the relationship between Christology and theories of
time. The one necessarily informs the other: for example, a Nestorian Christology is by
its very nature commensurate with a dialectical relationship between time and eternity,

whilst at the other extreme a monophysite Christology must tend towards a theology of

sempiternity. However, theories of time, even theological theories of time, can hardly

be said to be littered with Christological references. Oscar Cullmann is (ironically,

given Barth's opposition to his chronology) a notable exception, feeling that time was
the last space within Barth's thought to be illumined by Christology.

When I here demonstratethat his conception of time, in which I seethe last but

quite momentous remnant of the influence of philosophy upon his exposition

of the Bible, is incompatible with that of Primitive Christianity, I believe that

" CD 11/1,629
33 Thus Robert Jenson commends Augustine for his logic, if critiquing the final product because of the
materials used: `Augustine rightly drew his interpretation of time from his doctrine of God. Unhappily,
his recurrent conceptual Unitarianism manifests itself with special force just here: God is understood as
sheer simultaneous Presence. ' (Jenson, Systenzatic Theology Vol. 2,29)

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

thereby I am carrying out his Christocentric program on the field of New

Testament exposition and by means of exegetical methods. 34

Barth felt he could respond to the criticism in kind. Cullmann's linear time model, he

suggested, was just such a reprehensible philosophical construct, in that it merely

inserted Christ into an already existing time-construct, rather than allowing Jesus Christ

rWV aiwvwv (1 Tim. 1: 17) in his time to determine the

as the revelation of the ßaGLAEÜS
Christian doctrine of time. 35 Furthermore, because of its existence before creation,

Barth suspected that Cullmann's linear time savoured too much of autonomous divinity

for comfort. 36 In contrast, Barth believed that he had successfully purged the doctrine

of time from abstractions whereby time is not understood as God's (co-)creation. The

concept of time in the Church Dogm at1cs, however, is in practice far more polluted
than he was prepared to admit: the Platonic and Augustinian bones still clearly show

through an account that Richard Roberts has shown to be deeply idealist in the flesh.
Leaving the impact of the Hegelian concept of synthesis on the system for the moment,

it can be seen that the result is a swing too far from Chronos: in the process of being de-

divinised, time seems effectively to have been hypostatised (despite his claim that `time

is not a something, a creature with other creatures, but a form of all the reality distinct

from Godi37), assuming the category of substantial creation.

Yet, with the completion of part-volume 111/2 of the Church Dogmatics, the

very opposite problem to the usual methodological one seems to obtain: the person of
Christ so dominates as to obscure all other reality. From the very earliest days, Barth
had never been tempted by more Aristotelian conceptions of time as a metric of
external movement. Yet neither did the Augustinian alternative of time as an internal

experience come to collapse in his thinking into pure subjectivism, nor become just

another form for the mind's organisation of sense-data. Instead of a distentio aiiimi he

effectively posited something of a distentio Christi. God's time is when the Father

relates to the Son through the Spirit, a time that the Son shares with all that are his.
Jesus Christ being the Lord of time, his story is the meta-narrative into which all the

sub-plots of human interaction fit. All other events are the acting out of the meeting of

34 Cullmann,0., Christ and Tinte: The Primitive Christian Conception of Tinte and History (London:
SCM, 1951), 13
35CD 111/2,443
36Karl Barth's Table Talk, ed. Godsey, J. D., Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers,No. 10
(London & Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963), 55
37CD 111/2,438

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

God and man, eternity and time, that occurred in the event of the incarnation. For

Barth, the unio hypostatica constitutes the primal synthesis, first of all for divinity and
humanity, and consequently for eternity and time. Time, then, if we might speak this

has if 38 The
way, something akin to, not actually, an enhypostatic relation to eternity.

novel question for such a novel chronology is whether all other history, having been so

relegated, is not made superfluous. Whilst commenting on the epistemology of time,

he reveals that this might in fact be the case: `eve do not know, ' he writes, `what time

for for the the 39 Yet is this merely a

means animals or plants, or rest of universe.

matter of epistemology? Could it not equally be said that the figure of Jesus in time

appears so disproportionately brobdingnagian that all other temporality becomes at best

vestigial? It is not so much that we cannot know what time means for animals and

plants. It is simply that there is none to speak of.

Thus it is that the antitheses within Barth's Christology, where Antioch and
Alexandria remain at loggerheads, are carried into his chronology. Colin Gunton

approaches this inner contradiction through Barth's concept of `durational

simultaneity', asking `what, conceivably, is simultaneity that is pure duration?

Duration and simultaneity appear to be (at least) contraries. If a contradiction is being

generated, the most likely explanation is that Barth is halting between two opinions. '40
These two opinions we have suggested are, at root, Christological. So, on the one
hand, the Word's distinction from his own flesh has effected a synthetic dualism of

time and eternity. Richard Roberts notes precisely this in Barth's chronology:

Barth's equivocation regarding `time' (that underlies the systematic and

pervasive ambiguity of this concept in the Church Dogmatics) relies upon a

conceptual distinction, the separation of a `simultaneous' from a `successive'

time order in a contrast of `duration' and `division'. Is such a distinction not in

fact a mere conceptual sleight of hand, in which two logically interdependent

38 On the
pre-existent being of the man Jesus as the temporal object of God's eternal election, Ringel
writes: `If I have understood correctly this decisive locus of Barth's doctrine of election, then the being
of the man Jesus with God is to be understood in the sense of the doctrine of the enhypostasis and
anhypostasis of the human nature of Jesus Christ. Barth himself does not explicitly employ this doctrine
in connection with the doctrine of election. But if the being of the man Jesus in the beginning with God
is not to be understood in the sense of a projection of a temporal existence into eternity, then we must
speak of this temporal existence of Jesus in the sense of the anhypostasis. Jesus' existence would not be
what it is if it were not already in the `eternal decision of God by which time is founded and governed'
(CD 11/2,99). But it is precisely in the eternal decision of God in the sense of the en/iypostasis that this
existence really is temporal existence. ' (Jüngel, 96)
39CD 111/2,521
40 Gunton, C. E., Becoming
and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Bartb
(Oxford: OUP, 1978), 179-80

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

aspects of the idea of time, as used by Barth, are distinguished and

hypostatized into deceptively distinct 41
subsequently categories of reality?

Yet again, the very antithesis within his Christology can also be discerned. In another

essay, Roberts voices his concern that there is here an acute danger of a temporal
docetism parallel to a docetic view of Christ's humanity as conceived in Chalcedonian

Chri stology. 42 The reality of the incarnation, lies, he suggests, within its own temporal

envelope, detached from all other `extra-theological' time or humanity. This is

something Barth explicitly disavows, and, especially given his wariness, perhaps it

would be more accurate to say that it is not that time here is presented as a merely
illusory phenomenon, but that it is swallowed up in eternity. 43 Just as Jesus melts into

God, disappearing as a human, so time is sensibly swallowed up in eternity. 44 This is

the chronological impact of the Eutychian aspects of his doctrines of the ;ý yoq
EvoapKO;and the humanity of God. In his `redemption' of time, it is not that God has

taken time for man, but taken time from man by taking time to himself in such a sense
that it is swallowed up and drowned in his eternity.
Having said that, the tensions within Barth's Christology should alert us to the
danger of seeing this problem as universally operative within the Barth corpus. For

Barth refused to allow what he saw as titanism to operate within Christian redemption.

There is to be no OconoirIats of the being of humanity (which he understood as the sort

of transmogrification soteriology referred to in the second chapter). That this is the

case is not always immediately obvious. After all, God's election of grace, the sum and

essence of the gospel, is properly treated as a part of the doctrine of God, since
`originally God's election of man is a predestination not merely of man but of
Himself' 45 Man's salvation is his being taken into the self-determination of God to be
Father, Son and Spirit. So, in election, man is caught up into the event of God's being.
`Salvation, ' he can write, `fulfilment, perfect being means - and this is what created
being does not have in itself - being which has a part in the being of God, from which

and to which it is... '. Yet, Barth immediately goes on to add, `... not a divinised being
but a being which is hidden in God, and in that sense (distinct from God and secondary)

41 Roberts, R. H., 'Karl Barth's Doctrine of Time: Its Nature and Implications' in A Theology on its
Way? Essayson Karl Bart/: (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), 47-8
42'The Ideal and the Real in the Theology of Karl Barth' in Roberts, 76
43CD 111/2,463
4; CD 111/2,65;cf. 207; IV/4,163
45CD 11/2,3

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

6
eternal being. This was no mere caveat. semblances of OEoTroirtaLghe
All

God's being God, God's being 47

energetically opposed as antithetical to and gracious.
The divinisation of nature was, he felt, just one aspect of the sickness unto death that
infected nineteenth and early twentieth century theology and culture. It Evas a

Feuerbachian confusion of God with nature or reason, rooted in that `invention of

Antichrist', the analogia entis. 48 Witness the fervour with which he pursues the

traditional Reformed critique of the Lutheran teaching about the participation of the
human nature of Christ in the omnipresence of the Logos (a new face to which critique

he has provided with his doctrine of the X6yoc EvoapKOS):

when it speaks of a divinisation of human essence in Jesus Christ, and when

this divinisation of the flesh of Jesus Christ is understood as the supreme and
final and proper meaning and purpose of the incarnation - even to the point of

worshipping it -a highly equivocal situation is created.

Worse, such a conception proffers a deduction that `can compromise at a single stroke

less than the whole of christology'. 49 How so? Because, he argues, the
nothing
humanity of Jesus Christ is the humanity of all men, and thus it leads to a `high-

pitched' anthropology in which humanity as a whole is either already deified, or at least

on the verge of deification. Thus it was natural, he suggests, that the flower of Idealism

should have grown in Lutheran soil, with its own `high-pitched' anthropology. He can

even suggest that Feuerbach was justified in appealing to Luther for his theory of the

identity of divine and human essence.

If the supreme achievement of Christology, its final word, is the apotheosised

flesh of Jesus Christ, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, deserving of

our worship, is it not merely a hard shell which conceals the sweet kernel of

46CD IV/l, S. `The taking up of humanity into the event of the knowledge of God is grounded in the
taking up of humanity into the event of the being of God. That sounds strange, and in no way does Barth
think of it in the senseof a OeottoAare [deification] of the being of humanity. The taking up of humanity
into the event of God's being is, rather, humanity's salvation. ' (Ringel, 75)
47 With
regard to a locus classicus for deification soteriologies, Peter's statement that yv oOe Oe ac
KOLvWvoi ýüOEWý äno4uy6vtcc ttlc Ev rw Köaluu ill EmOuµia 48opdc (2 Peter 1:4), he comments that
Peter was simply speaking of `the practical fellowship of Christians with God and on this basis the
conformity of their acts with the divine nature. ' (The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV14, Lecture
Fragments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 28)
48CD I/1, xiii
49CD IV/2,81

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

the divinity of humanity as a whole and as such, a shell which we can

discard and throw away once it has performed this service?50
confidently

All annihilation of our humanity - even by elevation into or fusion with deity - Barth

has studiously sought to oppose. We might allow that he would have the same zeal in

his chronology, a zeal that might even drive him to hypostatise and substantiate time.

This, as well as the more extreme Alexandrian tendencies at work in his Christology,

must be taken into account if we are rightly to esteem the chronology his Christology

shaped.
It is here that we must go on to point for one last time to Barth's lack of

prolonged consideration of space in CD III/2 alongside his consideration of time. It

would seem (worryingly for his doctrine of the Xl yoc EvoapKoc) that this is simply what

operating within the parameters of the field of space and time as left by Kant, who
described time as the formal a priori condition of all appearances or universal

looks like. 51 If so, it

categories, may well be that, for Barth, the doctrine of time

actually serves double duty, covering the ground for both itself and a doctrine of space
(ironically, given that at the same time Einstein was rendering such Kantian

categorisation obsolete). This would explain his writing of `understanding time in all
its three forms as the time created by God, as the divinely given space for human
life. 'S2 Eberhard Ringel elaborates, suggesting that Barth's chronology does in fact

give room for a real topology:

In that God makes space for time in his eternal history, one could also speak of

God's corporeality. It would consist in the fact that God has space in his

being. Even this, of course, is meaningful only as a statement of revelation.

And so Barth talks immediately in concrete, christological terms, with

reference to John 1.1, of the Logos as a `stop-gap' for Jesus. Thus from

eternity God's being has space for human history. In making space within
himself for time, he also makes a place for us alongside himself. Talk of God's

corporeality in this sense becomes eschatologically relevant in so far as Barth

understands the eschatological being of humanity as "a being which is hidden

in God" without its difference from the eternal being of God being thereby

50CD IV/2,81
51Cf. The Critique of Pure Reason, cd. Politis, V., (London: Everyman, 1934), Transcendental Aesthetic
52CD 111/2,554

197
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

abolished (cf. CD IV/1, p. 8). One could define matters thus: God's

corporeality is the eternal space of time which makes space for participation in
God's being, a space of time for which God himself makes room in himself (cf.

John 14.2). God's corporeality would thus be the end of all the ways of God,

but God's corporeality as the space of the spiritual body (o@µa nvEUµaCLKOV)

full life love. 53

promised to us, of and

For all the brilliance of the suggestion, has the problem really been dealt with, though?

Can this `space' for time within God occupy any other dimension than that of time
itself? If not, then the problematic effect is ultimately that there then is no space either

within or beyond time, no world without end. His anthropology had already come

dangerously close to effectively subsuming creation, seeing non-human reality, heaven

and earth, as unimportant in themselves. Hope, then, for Barth, would necessarily be
devoid beyond 54
death.
reduced to pure personal existence of any new world
In fairness to Barth, though, despite his omission in CD 111/2,it is possible to

ascertain something of his conception of space through his doctrine of God, and in
§31 the the divine freedom. 55 It is in that volume that,
particular on perfections of
having examined God's omnipresence, Barth ventures to write explicitly of space

alongside time:

Within the sphere of this creation there is, then, no time which is not enclosed
by the eternity of this Word, no space which does not have its origin in its
omnipresence and which is not for this reason conditioned by it. There is, in
fact, no possibility of escaping or avoiding this Word. 56

Space, like time, then, is not independent of God and absolute in itself. Just as there is

no time separable from him, so there is no space, no `where' outside of God. Time and

space pre-exist together in God in his eternity and omnipresence respectively. Both are

shared with the creature in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God's faithful covenant-

53Jüngel, 113, n. 148

54Cf. Moltmann, J., Theology of Hope: On the Ground
and Implications of a Christian Eschatology,
trans. Leitch, J W. (London: SCM, 1967), 45ff. Elsewhere Moltmann warns, `The modern reduction of
the expectation of salvation to the religious and moral personality is a deadly declaration of doom for the
rest of the world. The patristic church's doctrine of physical redemption was more comprehensive in its
cosmic dimensions.' (Moltmann, J., The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. M. Kohl
(London: SCM, 1996), 92)
55 See
above, p. 169, n. 70
56 CD 11/2,95

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

partner: he stands behind us at the beginning of all things. He is Lord: he sits exalted

far above us. He is the suffering servant: he has come down to us, but then descended

unsurpassedly far below us into judgment. He is our hope and forerunner: he is before

us. Behind us, before us, above us and below us, he encompasses all space as God's

primal Tö1roq,the criterion of place. If time, then, is God's gift to man that he might
have history, the time when he may be found, space, we might infer, is God's gift to

man as where he may be found. Would that Barth had articulated such in his

anthropology and so fortified his exposition of the whole man.

To finish this section, there is one appropriate and very obvious casualty:

eschatology. Colin Gunton has observed that at much the same time as eschatology

was being heralded as Christianity's death-warrant (in that Jesus was being understood

to be a mistaken prophet of a coming eschaton), Barth had the genius to champion it as

life 57 Certainly he
a warrant. was a bold champion: `If Christianity be not altogether
thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains no relationship whatever with Christ. '58 Yet
for all that, many have seen in Der Römerbrief more Kantian dualism than distinctively

Christian eschatology, whatever that might look like. There we see, not a teleology and

movement towards a real end, a salvation `nearer now than when we first believed'
(Romans 13: 11), but an existential crisis for man as he exists at the brink of God's

`vertical' `horizontal' 59 In volume II of the

eternity, a as opposed to a eschatology.
Church Dogmatics Barth confessed his exegesis of Romans had been mistaken, and we

have seen something of the new eschatology in volume 111.60A timeless eschatology

has been superseded by a realised eschatology of revelation. That is, instead of the

pure creaturely speculation of a sempiternal existence for man (an infinitely elongated
time simply being the idealisation of creaturely existence), time is fulfilled in Jesus
Christ. In our corrupted nature we have a being which is one long loss of time. For,

that to be extended would be the very opposite of healing; it would be the prolongation

of man's temporal sentence and curse. Thus Jesus Christ came to reconcile all people
in himself. In doing so God's covenant was fulfilled and so the end came in him. In

57Gunton, C. E., "`Until He Comes": Towards an Eschatology Church Membership' in Called to One
of
Hope: Perspectives on Life to Come, ed. J. E. Colwell (Carlisle: Paternoster,2000), 252-266
S$The Epistle to the Romans, 314
59 Something
very close to Barth's eternal eschatology in Romans was also being propagated by Paul
Althaus at the same time, who wrote of his `axiological eschatology': 'We arrive at the completion not
by traversing the longitudinal lines of history to their end, but by erecting everywhere in history the
perpendiculars. That is to say, just as every time is equally close to the primordial state and the Fall, so
too is every time equally immediate to the completion. In this sense every time is the last time. ' (Die
Letzten Dinge. Entwurf einer christlichen Eschatologie, (Gütersloh: 1922), 84, in Moltmann, J., Science
and Wisdom, trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM, 2003), 99)
60CD 11/1,635

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

his death, the time of fallen man is concluded, and in his resurrection dawns God's time

as the time of reconciled man. So it can be seen that, not only has Jesus Christ taken

our past, not only is he our contemporary, he is our future. He is not only the &pxTl, but

also the XoS.

rE, In him we have our true being in time and a hope that is not abstractly
temporal, but personal.

What sort of a future would that be, which could be our future instead of Him

or alongside of Him? Our sole future is that He will come, just as our sole

present is that He has come. By virtue of His kingly office, as that become

visible in His resurrection, the Church is in the position of having no other

future than that which it acknowledges in the prayer: Amen; come, Lord Jesus!

By virtue of His kingly office it has this future. Venturus est therefore means:

Christ is our hope, and - Christ is our hope. l

This being the case, the resurrection ushered in the last day in such a way that the

believer in Jesus can live a life hidden in God: `Nothing which will be has not already

taken place on Easter Day'. 62 The time of Jesus Christ overarches and accompanies

ours such that recollection of that time must also be expectation of it. Whilst for us the

resurrection and the parousia are two separate events, for him they are one single event,
the parousia being when the arch of his time over ours will be completed and our

allotted time will be at an end. The only new thing the parousia could bring is the

unveiling of Christ's present lordship over-what is already a new creation in him. Then

it will be announced xpovoq o* tt Eorat. (Revelation 10: 6), and the disintegrated time
that is the fallout of our own greed and alienation will be judged and swallowed up in
God's congruous triune time as he presents us with our future in Jesus Christ. The

resurrection is the anticipation, the parousia the fulfilment of the same event of the
`ending time'. 63
eschaton,
Wolfhart Pannenberg,Jürgen Moltmann and Robert Jenson have all discerned
that the cumulative effect is just the samereduction and disarmament of eschatology as

61 Credo: A Presentation
of the Chief Problems of Dogmatics with Reference to the Apostles' Creed,
trans. James Strathearn McNab (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936), 120 (italics and bold original); cf.
CD 1/1,464
62CD 111/2,489
63It should be noted that, in his exposition of the doctrine of reconciliation, Barth elaborated this point
by describing the resurrection, the real presenceof JesusChrist with us by the Spirit, and his final return
as three forms of the one event, which is his parousia. This he argued by referring to the original
meaning of irapouoia, which is `effective presence', and its association with the word Emý&VELa (CD
IV/3,292).

200
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

be descried in 64 Again,
could Barth's early work. maybe there is a closer correlation in
his system between God's post-temporality and the Spirit than he has been prepared to

acknowledge, the weakness of his pneumatology simply playing out in the temporal
field. So Robert Jenson:

In general, Barth's discussions of the Spirit are not so convincing as his

discussions of the Father and the Son. It is hard to see what is said that has not

been said before. In contrast to Barth's usual fullness and determination to be

understood at all costs, we find here brief concatenations of hints and dicta.
One is even tempted to think that the incompletion of the Church Dogmatics,

with the eschatology and doctrine of the Spirit missing, is not merely a matter
65
of chronology.

Yet it is the more specifically Christological problems we have been noting: here we
might add that if there is really no future `alongside' Jesus Christ, then is there room for
the Bride, the Church, there? Barth answers that the possibility for the existence of the

community of Christ is created by the resurrection. That is, Jesus Christ lives, and he
lives as the one who has come and the one who is still to come. The space for man's

existence, when he can come to a knowledge of what has happened for him in Jesus
Christ, is found there, in the interval between the first and final parousia. 66 It does not

appear to be a convincing affirmation of the real existence of man, the Church, and his
time, however. For the two events are explicitly said to be one for Jesus Christ.
Instead of being liberated for existence in that interval, his Bride seems to be crushed
for lack of space.

64 Pannenberg, W., Metaphysics

and the Idea of God, trans. Clayton, P., (Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark,
1990); Systematic Theology trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Grand Rapids, MI.; Eerdmans & Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1998), Vol. 3; Moltmann, J., The Spirit of Life, trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM, 1992); Jenson,
God After God; Systematic Theology Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Whether or not
they themselves are any more successful in maintaining the right relation of time and eternity, past,
present and future is another matter, and one that cannot concern us here.
65 Jenson, God After God, 173f. The
criticism may not hold with regard to Barth's doctrine of the
knowledge of God, but it does seem to when pointing to the specifically eschatological function of the
Spirit (cf. Gunton, Becoming and Being, ch. VII, § v).
66CD IV/1,333

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

The Covenant as the Presupposition of Reconciliation

Having briefly considered the eschatological fallout of this chronology, we are

naturally led on to the more immediately pertinent question of the story of man, and his
identity in relation to creation and redemption. If we might employ the musical

metaphor Barth himself turns to here, there is a true harmony (involving both

agreement and difference) between this chronology and the `perfection of an imperfect

creation' motif in Irenaeus' thought.

For it should not be supposed that his weakened eschatology necessarily
implied a lack of hope or optimism. On the contrary, whilst it may take a different
form to the eighteenth century (and particularly Leibnizian) optimism he amusingly

appraises at the end of CD III/1, von Balthasar is just one among many commentators
to note that, as he puts it, Barth's schema `veritably thrums with a hymnic certainty of
67 It is
eventual victory'. not that Barth was sublimely detached from the gloomy

realities of post-war Europe as he wrote volume III in a way that he had not been in
1918. It is that even in 1918 he had been thinking theologically, and his theology now

gave him the light of hope even (or perhaps especially) in the darkness of his social and

political landscape: `[i]t is easy to be afraid anywhere in the world today. The whole of

the Western world, the whole of Europe is afraid, afraid of the East. But we must not
be afraid.... Everything is in the hands of God.'68
This optimism is woven into the very fabric of the creation, seen in the first

creation account's indication of a twofold aspect of creaturely existence, that there is

both light and shadow, day and night, land and water, a positive and a negative. 69 And,

significantly, there it can be seen that, in contrast to our gloomy phraseology and

chronology where night follows day and where time is measured in units both starting

and ending in darkness, with light as a mere episode, first there is evening and then
there is morning. As God spoke light into the primal darkness, so day follows night.

Light following darkness is the foundation of biblical chronology. This optimism,

confident in the triumph of the Creator and Redeemer's gracious Yes, even has an

explicitly anthropological dimension, reminiscent of Irenaeus' description of Jesus as

the bringer of the divine likeness to the imperfect and immature race of Adam:

67Balthasar, von, H. U., The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Drury, J. (New York: Anchor, 1972), 354
68 Barth, K., Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, ed. Smith, R. G. (London: SCM, 1954), 99
69 Cf. CD 11I/1, §42.3

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

The image of God, and therefore the divine likeness of man, is revealed in

God's dealings with Israel and therefore in the history of Israel. But it is

revealed only as the hope which accompanies and supports all the events of
this history, as the goal towards which it moves in all its multiplicity, so that it

can never take a concrete form as an object of imitation by man. "I shall be

satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness" - this is the thought and language
in Old Testament (Ps. 17 1s)70
of the righteous man the

So potent does he find this theme of triumph that, in consideration of it, he bursts into
lyrical metaphorsof euphonics, which lead him ineluctably to Mozart.

1756-1791! This was the time when God was under attack for the Lisbon

earthquake, and theologians and other well-meaning folk were hard put to it to
defend Him. In face of the problem of theodicy, Mozart had the peace of God

which far transcends all the critical or speculative reason that praises and

reproves. This problem lay far behind him. Why then concern himself with it?
He had heard, and causes those who have ears to hear, even to-day, what we

shall not see until the end of time - the whole context of providence. As
though in the light of this end, he heard the harmony of creation to which the

shadow also belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not
defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy

and infinite melancholy is not ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway.

Thus the cheerfulness in this harmony is not without its limits. But the light

shines all the more brightly because it breaks forth from the shadow. The

sweetness is also bitter and cannot therefore cloy. Life does not fear death but
knows it well. Et lux perpetua tercet (sic! ) eis - even the dead of Lisbon.

Mozart saw this light no more than we do, but he heard the whole world of

by this light. 7'

creation enveloped

70CD III/1,200
71 CD 111/3,298. This question of the ordering of light and darkness is one that seems almost
synonymous, in Barth's own thinking, to the music of Mozart (cf. Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to
Ritschl trans. B. Cozens (London: SCM, 1959), 12). Thus he could speak very similarly (and
illuminatively) in addressing the Music Hall in Basel: `The Mozartean "center" is not like that of the
great theologian Schleiermacher- a matter of balance, neutrality, and, finally, indifference. What occurs
in Mozart is rather a glorious upsetting of the balance, a turning in which the light rises and the shadows
fall, though without disappearing, in which joy overtakes sorrow without extinguishing it, in which the

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

At no point will Barth allow that this is just a new sentimentalised apologetic theodicy,
for he is not attempting to harmonise faith in God's goodness with the discordant notes

of a fallen world. It is not that Mozart was simply composing his own bitter-sweet

symphonies - he was voicing creation's praise, noting down melodically the ordering

of God's Yes and No that exists as a fundamental character of the external basis of the

covenant.
When it comes to man, then, we are compelled to ask why he is found in the

state in which he is (that is, fallen). `God created man to lift him in His own Son into

fellowship with Himself. '72 So did Adam fall, or was he pushed? Uh-um Christus

verrisset, si Adan: non peccasset? John Hick is one who cautiously suspects that Barth

effectively did make das Nichtige logically necessary for his scheme of creation and

redemption.The culpa of Adam Evasfelix, for it took place so as `to make possible the
73 Certainly Barth does at times come close to stating
supreme good of redemption'.

outright the inevitability of sin in creation, as when he writes that `the creation of man
is understood and portrayed in the light of his later fall and its consequences. There is

already in his origin the possibility of death later actualised in connexion with his
disobedience against God. 174 Creation exists because of and for the Yes of the Creator

and Redeemer. Yet, for that Yes to be precise and meaningful, it can only be spoken

with a corresponding and opposing No, which is spoken for the sake of the Yes, as its
75 Barth
necessary boundary. can even go so (worryingly) far as to implicate God as the

agent provocateur of all evil: `God wills evil only because He wills not to keep to
Himself the light of His glory but to let it shine outside Himself. '76

Yea rings louder than the ever-present Nay. Note the reversal of the great dark and small light episodes
in Mozart's life! At the conclusion of The Afagic Flute we hear, "The rays of the sun drive out the
night. " The play can and must go on, or begin all over again. At some level, high or low, it is a contest
to be won; actually it is already won. ' ('Mozart's Freedom', in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, trans. C. K.
Pott (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1986), 55) Hans Frei has remarked on the effect this `optimism'
had on Barth's handling of tragedy (a concept that clearly haunts his Basel address, cf. `Mozart's
Freedom', 47): `Unlike Kierkegaard, Barth as a Christian man and as a pastor was no ironist because, as
he liked to say, God's "no" to men was enfolded in his "yes" to them. And the one form of imagination
of which he really had little sympathy was the tragic - so closely linked to the sense of irony.
"Titanism" he used to call it depreciatingly and wince whenever he saw it raising its classical or
romanticized head'. (Frei, H., `Karl Barth: Theologian' in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays
(New York/Oxford: OUP, 1993), 175)
72CD 111/1,376
73 Hick, J., Evil
and the God of Love, 2nd edn., (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), 139
" CD 111/1,244
75CD 111/1,383f.
76CD 11/2,170

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

However, here we must tread carefully, for Barth explicitly expressed his
dislike of the association of the words felix and culpa, censuring Schleiermacher for

just this, that he had made sin so necessary. 77 So must we all, he believed, if we are to

hold that the divine No is in earnest; and das Nichtige, as revealed in its conflict with

Jesus Christ, is that to which God gives `an absolute and uncompromising No'. 78 To

say that one cannot make an omelette (however cosmic) without breaking eggs would,
for Barth, have smacked more of National Socialism than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To explain: das Nichtige is not nothing, in that it actually does not exist. It is precisely

God has to be, but form 79

what not willed rejected and negated as a valid of existence.
It is a real enemy with whom no compromise is possible, a factor antithetical and

God. 80 It is misleading, then, without some copious qualification, to talk

abhorrent to

of a causalitas niali in Deo. If we are to give an aetiology of das Nichtige, then we

must see it, not as the opus Dei propriian, but as the opus Dei alienum which is the

side-effect of the former, proper work. Thus it can have no substantial existence in the

sense that creatures have a substantial existence, but `exists' meontically by virtue of its

own negation (hence his reluctance to consider demonology, prolonged contemplation

of which would simply serve to legitimate Satan). Akin to Augustine's privatio boni,

das Nichtige is the existing un-being, creation's antithesis, the definitive surd, the
81 It is inappropriate, then, to speak of
unmögliche Möglichkeit (impossible possibility).

an actual divine predestination to sin, just as it is inappropriate to attempt the theodical

task of describing, containing or excusing what is intrinsically chaotic, absurd and
irrational, namely sin. 82 Grace is not dependent upon sin, and neither is sin justified by

being necessary for grace. Sin achieves nothing. The relationship between the two (sin

7' Schleiermacher was decidedly unguarded in his frank affirmation of God as `the Author of sin', adding
only the qualification: `As in our self-consciousnesssin and grace are opposedto each other, God cannot
be thought of as the Author of sin in the same senseas that in which He is the Author of redemption. But
as we never have a consciousnessof grace without a consciousnessof sin, we must also asset that the
existence of sin alongside of grace is ordained for us of God.' (Schleiermacher, F., The Christian Faith,
ed. H. R. Mackintosh & J. S. Stewart (repr. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), §§79-80, pp. 325ff. )
78CD IV/1,69; 111/3,292,310
79 Barth here is drawing on a long
philosophical tradition rooted in the Platonic distinction used to refute
Parmenidean monism (Sophist) between non-being in the absolute sense of sheer non-existence (o6K '6v),
and in the relative sense of the not yet realised potentiality to be some specific thing (i bv). It is the
latter, meontic category that has commonly been regarded as the origin of evil. Jenson's aphorism, 'The
last word about evil is also the first', that is, that it will have no being, fails to appreciate the distinction.
(Jenson, Alpha and Omega, 102) God's work of redemption, we might say, is a transference of what is
lih öv into the category of 'being' O)K '6v.
80CD 111/3,301f.
81CD 111/2,146;111/3,178,300ff., 318,351
82CD IV/1,409f.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

is 83 It is just that that

and grace) one of genuine conflict. conflict between them is

willed by God. It is of the essence of grace to overcome sin.

Yet if it is the covenant, and not das Nichtige, that is the presupposition of

reconciliation and redemption (cf. §57.2 `The Covenant as the Presupposition of

Reconciliation'), then we seem to have a clear answer to the question utrum Christus

verrisset, si Adam non peccasset? This might seem further supported by the twofold

and contradictory nature of the creation, manifested in the first creation account's
distinction between light and shadow, day and night, land and water, which reveals a

twofold determination: an exaltation of the creature, and a wretchedness of the creature

the need and peril that his exaltation presupposes. The existence of the creation is
-
thus shown to be one almost in free-fall into the abyss of nothingness, and entirely

threatened by it. The creation has a subsistence, but one that is not its own. It is a
dependent creation. 84 It has this nature such that it might be the realm of the reception

of grace, being affirmed and justified by God.

Thus far it can sound as if Barth is singing from an Irenaean hymn-sheet
describing the imperfect state of the creation existing such that it might be perfected in

Jesus Christ. The problem he saw with such a chronologically linear view is that it can

all too easily collapse into (or of necessity be) too cosy a synthesis of good and evil.
Admittedly, he can at times resonate with this to a certain extent himself, speaking of

indispensability 85 Yet to label Barth so quickly as a Scotist in

syntheses and the of sin.
this sense, however, would be to rush in without sufficient acknowledgement of his

near paranoia concerning speculation. When once asked about the necessity of the
incarnation and whether it might have been different, he replied

I have tried to find the necessity of the incarnation out of the fact of the
incarnation.... What I seek to avoid is a concept of necessity grounded

elsewhere than in the reality of the incarnation. I also refuse to speak of

possibility in the abstract. We can talk about possibility only from the

reality.... There is no system of truth in which God is a prisoner. 86

83CD 111/3,333f.;cf. 11/2,170f.; III/1,263f.

84CD II1/1,376
85CD IV/1,373ff.
86Karl Barth's Table Talk, 65-6. `The reason why God created the world and set up in it the office of
reconciliation is because He was able, willing and ready to be one with the creature in JesusChrist and
because He did in fact do this. ' (11/1,515; cf. CD 1112,122;111/2,143; IV/1,36: IV/2,41. It is on this
basis that Barth can assert more boldly than Ircnaeus the freedom of God in creation (CD I11/1,13f.,
44f. ). To Barth's contention, Hans Frei added: `Not only the possibility and the actuality, but also the

206
The Glory of God. Part Twvo:Barth 6 When is Man?

His language is that of epistemology, and yet is necessarily informed by his

chronology, and it is that that has effected his revolution in teleology. The

transformation his chronology brought about was to remove the temporal (though not
logical) ordering of stages. Creation remains on the brink of existence, upheld only by

grace. Its imperfection is allowable not, as in the linear chronologies, because it will be

overcome, but because it has already been overcome in Jesus Christ - not `all's well
that ends well', but all's well because of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to

presuppose the covenant before all else. Barth explains:

The atonement in Jesus Christ takes place as a wrestling with and an

overcoming of human sin. But at the same time and primarily it is the great act

of God's faithfulness to Himself and therefore to us - His faithfulness in the

execution of the plan and purpose which He had from the very first as the
Creator of all things and the Lord of all events, and which He wills to

accomplish in all circumstances.... As very God and very man He is the

concrete reality and actuality of the divine command and the divine promise,
the content of the will of God which exists prior to its fulfilment, the basis of

the whole project and actualisation of creation and the whole process of divine

providence from which all created being and becoming derives. Certainly the

sin of man contradicts this first and eternal Word of God. But in the first and

eternal Word of God the sin of man is already met, refuted and removed from

all eternity. And in delivering and fulfilling this first and eternal Word in spite

of human sin, as He would in fact have delivered and fulfilled it quite apart
from human sin, sin is also met, refuted and removed in time. 87

The event of the cross is not a mere moment of pathos. In Jesus Christ we do not have

a subsequent decision, but the primary will of God. The covenant is God's original

need for incarnate reconciliation is simply to be affirmed as a reflexive consideration of the fact that it
was actually so. For what do we really know of that need apart from or logically prior to that fact? Look
at that huge mass or (to vary the figure) that cumbersome heavy artillery of theological reflection about
"man" and "human existence", so characteristic of modern theology since 1700! What does it all amount
to? And who is listening? Do we ever really know, no matter what anthropological model we employ,
no matter to what sources of individual or cultural sensibility we appeal - do we ever really know or
apprehend ourselves, our neighbours, or the process of history to be in real need of salvation? Isn't the
natural evidence just as much in the opposite direction, except to the extent that we have already
prejudiced it by a specific scheme for the analysis of what being human is like, or by appeal to a specific
experience and sensibility on which we generalize recklessly and childishly? ' (Frei, 171)
87CD IV/1,47-8

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

purpose in creation, and the reason for reconciliation. As we have seen, God's acts ad

extra are not strange to his being but are the temporal externalisation of that which he

eternally is in himself. As triune, God is a being-for-creation. That being the case, sin

can only be a transient middle act, or even an interim, in the drama.

It was on this basis that, in his consideration of the Infralapsarian-
Supralapsarian controversy within the orthodox Reformed theology of the seventeenth

century (a discussion that, even apart from the genius of his own contribution, must still

stand as one of the finest introductions to the debate), he affirm

could
Supralapsarianism 88
as closer to the mark whilst going on to offer a third way.
Supralapsarianism's all-consuming concern for the glory of God was always in danger

of relativising evil and giving him the appearance of a demon, not loving man, but only

using him as a means to his own ends, only preoccupied with himself in his own private

glory-seeking. Furthermore, in it a general principle (in particular, the Aristotelian

principle that `the first intended is the last executed') had taken priority over the

particular person and work of Jesus Christ, who was consigned to a secondary role as
divine 89 `Latet perictdum in generalibus' (danger lurks in
mere executor of the will.
90 Yet if Jesus Christ takes the
generalities). place of the historic decrettau absolurtum,

and if he, in our time and history, is postulated as the fulfilment of the covenant instead

of the two groups, the damned and the saved, then Barth's reconceived (or drastically
91 That is, God's
corrected) Supralapsarianism can be seen. will is neither the existence

of the two groups, reflecting his mercy and his wrath; nor sin, the fall and evil; it is

elected man in concreto. Further, it is his will that elected man should reject what God

rejects, so revealing, corroborating and proclaiming the Yes of God in his creaturely No
to what is repudiated. In order that he might truly stand in covenant with God, he must

say Yes with him and therefore also say No with him. Yet for this to happen, and man
to be an effective and faithful witness to the divine glory, man had to be confronted

with what God had rejected and uttered his No to. Knowing, however, man's

incapacity to do this on his own, God willed to become this man and in him to secure

creation from all that threatens it. Instead of willing evil and the fall, God chose Jesus
Christ, a sinful man who did not sin. In time, a history would corroborate God's divine

No and Yes in a triumph over death, in a death and resurrection. And in all this, the

chosen man is no puppet for God's glory and triumph, but God himself.

88CD 11/2,127-145
89This
can be seen most clearly in William Perkins' A Golden Chain of 1591.
90 CD 11/2,48
91CD IU2,75

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

The twofold determination of creation is not the necessary consequenceof

being a creature in the manner in which Irenaeus saw imperfection as an inherent

attribute of createdness. It is so as the external basis of the covenant revealed in the

humiliation and exaltation of Jesus Christ. This is affirmed in God's having taken it to
himself in Jesus Christ, reconciling its inner antithesis in himself. 92 In order to save

confusion at this point it is important to note Barth's anxiousness to distinguish

between das Nichtige, that which is essentially (if we may use such a word here)

inimical to God and his creation, and creation's own Schattenseite, which is the

necessary antithesis and contrast within that creation which is as a whole proclaimed to
be `very good'. That being said, he does hold the relationship between light and

darkness in the first creation account to be (at least) a true and strict analogy to the

relationship between the eternal Yes and No spoken by God in his election and
it is is 93 Yet
rejection, and thus practically often unclear as to which Barth referring to.
to confuse the two would be to justify the former, giving it a place within the good

creation and so giving it a foothold by which it might establish its malevolent power
94 Rather in the
over us. same way as we are sinful flesh because of Jesus Christ, who
defeated sin in the flesh, so the shadow side of creation mirrors, in creation, the victory

which is the basis of the creature's existence, depicting that which has already been

overcome by God in Jesus Christ before any other creature was and could be placed
it. 95 Das Nichtige, by its
under very nature, is a thing of yesterday, existing eternally in
the past, having been conquered. Having been defeated in God's eternal electing Yes

to Jesus Christ, das Nichtige has been shut out and removed for ever as a reality. We

are left merely with its threatening after-image or shadow, and so left dependent on
God. 96

Far from the abstract plan of a holy self-seeking God who must use man for his
,
own ends without really loving him, Barth has presented a brilliantly and robustly
Christocentric drama of man that must thrill the reader with hope. Barth's chronology

has so entirely re-shaped the landscape of traditional debate in this area as to render

many of the questions within it misplaced. The existence of sin and evil is no longer

treated as something separable from or prior to the existence of Jesus Christ, for the

relentless consistency of Barth's christocentrism has entailed that the possibility and

92CD 111/3,296
93CD I11/1,123-4
94CD 111/3,350
95CD 11/2,165f.; 111/1,133-5,381; IV/1,360f.
96CD 111/3,360-8

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

necessity of the incarnation can be found only on the actuality of the occurrence of the
incarnation. Jesus Christ is the non-negotiable one, sin being ousted from its primal

role into provisionality. As Hans Frei put it, for Barth,

not only the situation of sinning, but the doctrine of creation and of a
primordial relationship of the creature to God are reflexive considerations of
the fact that God Evasin Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The former
is for him the that fact, the latter its figure. 97
situation anti-type of relation

Through his assertion of the primacy and supremacy of Jesus Christ, he has managed to

turn the entire tradition of theodicy on its head. Thus he has circumvented the usual

accusation of the pretensions of theodicy (acknowledging that the only covenant that

exists is the broken and restored covenant) and, by asserting God's justification of
creation in the very act of creation, pre-empted theodicy's demand for God's
justification of the world he has created. Man exists as the creature whose rejection
God has already taken upon himself, and whose election stands behind him. In

summary we might see what Barth found in the institution of the Sabbath in Genesis
2: 1-3 on the first day of man's existence: the `first thing in the time of man is that he
belongs to His Creator; just as the last thing in the time of the Creator is that He

belongs to His creature. '98

For all that, his doctrine of time is left to bear the weight of a number of hefty
problems. Not that we should imagine that we have smelt blood too quickly, for Barth
has inevitably opened himself up to critique in offering what is perhaps the most
thorough Christian ponerogony to date. Milton displayed the difficulty for any

theologian seeking to grapple with any form of primal chaos when he wrote the now
famous lines about God using `His dark materials to create', specifically, `eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature'. 99 It is not just for Barth that evil `is' only in an

extremely problematic manner. Yet one can be given to wonder whether, ultimately,

Barth has succeeded in offering a real alternative to dualism in his refusal to afford to

evil any substance. Has creation's dual orientation in fact reflected a dual reality? For,

97Frei, 174
98This being the case, Barth reasoned that the
early Christians were not innovating when they adopted
the first day of the week as their holiday (1 Cor. 16:2; Act. 20:7), the Kuptaici] r[14pa (Rev. 1:10), but
applying the chronology of Genesis as they had come to understand it, revealed through the resurrection
on that day. (CD 111/2,458)
99Paradise Lost, Bk. II, II. 916,894-5

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

in the same way that we have seen something of a chicken and egg situation with

regard to Christ's humanity and ours, there can appear to be, in Barth's thinking,

another eternally existent reality beside God, that of evil, determining God's Yes and
No. Can God reject that which simply is not? If God has before him a choice of

realities - even potential realities then it seems as though the language of non-being
-
has been reified to actually become `thing' just '°°
some more than meontic non-being.
Clearly, in his choice of the term das Nichtige, Barth has sought to pre-empt such

criticism or conclusions. And yet we might then ask if the choice of good (God's Yes)

necessarily brings a correlate evil into existence (of any sort), implying again the co-
dependence of good and evil.

Barth's simple defence is that he is playing no language game, and thus we need

not imagine Yes and No having the sort of parity and interdependence that they might
in linguistics. God's No is not the equal or partner to his Yes, but the boundary of it.

Thus he paints a very different picture from Gnostic dualism: the evil side-effect is not

creation, but precisely das Nichtige.

What is more concerning is that the eternal divine No revealed in Jesus Christ

eclipses and engulfs the temporal fall of man as Christ overshadows and absorbs Adam.

The effect could be that which first worried Heinrich Vogel, Eduard Buess, Hans Urs

von Balthasar, Gerrit Berkouwer and Gustaf Wingren, among others. That is, is what
Berkouwer called `the triumph of grace' in Barth's presentation a resolution in God's

eternal will prior to creation, so that, as it were, the triumphant clockwork is already

wound tight in eternity, with nothing left to do in creation than work itself out
irresistibly? 101 What is resolved in God's eternal will only needs to be `fulfilled', that

is, acted out on the stage of time. 102 Here is a world where Mozart, a Freemason, could

encounter the antithesis within creation with joy and even a good conscience. If this be

the case, is the triumph not a mock-fight, evil tidily wrapped up or synthesised in the

system, so taking on the appearance of something innocuous, even tolerable,

comfortable and salutary? For all its menace, is such a description of evil,

philosophically satisfying though it be may be, too abstracted from the actual
103 If the system effectively collapses in on itself, for when evil
experience of evil? so,
is comfortably quarantined or its nature diluted or sweetened, the motivation and need

iooCf. Hick, 135ff.

101Berkouwer, G. C., The Triumph
of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Boer, H. R., (London:
Paternoster, 1956)
102CD IV/2,314
103Cf. Horne, B. L., Imagining Evil (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1996), 43

211
The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

to remove it is also diluted. As John Hick puts it, then we might replace the traditional
felix culpa with a far more questionable praise song for the felix Nihil. 104

That he could be understood in this way clearly distressed Barth, as he showed

in the vehemence of his response to Berkouwer:

And is it really the case that the sting of evil is withdrawn when, starting with

God and Jesus Christ, we define it as that which is opposed to the will of God,

so that it is not merely later but from the very outset negated, rejected and

excluded by this will, its nature being thus understood as perversion, its

greatness as that of mischief, its power as that of impotence? Is there any

sharper discrimination of evil or warning against it, any stronger recognition of

its sinister character, than that which is pronounced with this definition in

accordance with the condemnation obviously passed on it in God's own

attitude towards it in the existence of Jesus the Victor? 105

Read in isolation, such words are persuasive, and certainly go so far as to prove that he

had no intent to nullify evil and its power. And yet, whilst on the one hand he can

speak of God's No as the No to which there is no secret approval of a hidden Yes or

original or ultimate agreement, God's No does define God's Yes, and so the nature of
the cosmos as such. Using Irenaean language of God's hands, though changing the

referent from the Son and the Spirit to God's opus proprium and his opus alienum, he
sees das Nichtige finding its basis in God as the Almighty Lord.

He is Lord both on the right hand and on the left. It is only on this basis that

das Nichtige "is, " but on this basis it really "is. " As God is Lord on the left

hand as well, He is the basis and Lord of das Nichtige too. Consequently it is

not adventitious. It is not a second God, nor self-created. 106

Barth must deny the deity of das Nichtige if he is to affirm God as the Lord. And yet, it
is not just that God's right hand knows what his left hand is doing; it is that his right

104Hick, 139
105CD IV/3,177. It is not as if Barth was left wholly opposed in this matter. He is not without his
advocates even today (cf. McDowell, J. C., `Much Ado about Nothing: Karl Barth's Being Unable to Do
Nothing about Nothingness' in hztenrationa! Joanna! of Systematic Theology 4.3 (2002), 319-335).
106CD 111/3,351[KD 111/3,405]

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

hand is portrayed as so strong that his left is disproportionately weak, achieving -

literally - nothing.

There is a specific example that serves to demonstrate the practical weight of

the complaint levelled against Barth on this issue: his handling of the end of man's

allotted time, death. It is tempting to allow that his overall chronology may avoid
implication here, for in his handling of death Barth did not so much seem to follow the

logic of his Christological method as baptise Schleiermacher's view into his own
Christological scheme. (That said, his overall chronology can be said to bear similarity
to Schleiermacher's nunc aeternum as the substitute for any telic progression or
107Also, Barth is
movement. explicit in his intent to derive the reality of human finitude
from the death of Christ, the one who is before us in all things. ) Schleiermacher had

parted company with Protestant orthodoxy's contention that death, in both its physical

and spiritual aspects, is the punishment for the original sin. Given the whole bearing of
his thought, it is unsurprising that Schleiermacher replaced talk of death itself with

reflection on the impression that death makes on the consciousness of self and God.
Quite logically within this framework, Schleiermacher saw death not as an evil per se,
but simply as the natural temporal end and limit for the finite existence of a creature.

Thus Christ need not have been immortal, despite his being sinless. It is a

consciousness of God disturbed by sin that fears death. Thus it is the fear of death that
is the real problem for man: `it is not by death, but, as Scripture says, by the fear of

death, that we are subject to bondage. i1°8 On the cross, Christ died both the natural

death, and the accursed death of the sinner. In fact, the pedigree of the position can be

traced further back to Pelagius' disciple, Celestius, who taught Adam's natural
further, to Plato. 109 In Platonic thought, death set free, for gnosis
mortality, and even

could only be attained by the soul which had been released from its body. Thus, as,
Eberhard Ringel puts it: "`[m]emento mori" means "gnothi sauton [sic]".... This is

why swans sing before they die - "more loudly and more sweetly" - not because of

sadness, but for joy, because they will die to Apollo, the their lord. " 10
god of song,
Instead of Jesus' cry of dereliction, Socrates greeted death with a swan-song. At his
death, Socrates offered a rooster to Asclepius, the god of healing, in thanks for the fact

107`In the midst of finitude to be one with the Infinite

and in every moment to be eternal is the
immortality of religion. ' (Schleiermacher, F. D. E., On Religion: Speechesto its Cultured Despisers,
trans. Oman, J. (New York & London: Harper & Row, 1958), 101)
108Schleiermacher, §75,316, referring to Hebrews 2: 15.
109Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Doctrines, 5th
ed. (London; A&C Black, 1977), 358-61
110Jüngel, E., Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Nicol, I. & U. (Philadelphia; Westminster,
1974), 46,51, citing Plato's Phaedo.

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

that he was being healed of life and liberated for the realm of ideas. He then received
the deadly poison as a health-giving medicine.
A more dissimilar view to the general patristic notion of death"" can scarcely
be imagined than Platonic thanatology, and yet it was something like this that Barth

adopted. That is, the time that has been given to man is allotted in a way that is

appropriate to man in his difference from God. That is not to his disadvantage, but the

very means of his affirmation as the creature. Otherwise, man might be tempted to

believe that, in his temporal infinitude, he himself is God. Death removes everything

from us in order that we might be left only with God and so come to trust him alone. 112

Our mortality, therefore, is only a problem if we seek to be God and therefore

113 `Could there be, ' he
eternal. asks, `any better picture of life in hell than enduring life
in enduring time? " 14 Again, one is tempted to answer with a simple Yes if no further

specification is made. His defence is that with infinite time man would infinitely

multiply his guilt. Thus God, in his mercy, brings a salvation that is not a liberation

from finitude, but a glorification of it. Furthermore, given the Eý' änaý of that

redemption, we have to be finite and mortal to enjoy it, and for it to take effect for
115 The threatening
us. cliffs of death in this way become graciously provided

protective walls for man. Time, after all, is (co-)created, and God the Creator is for,

and not against, man. Somewhat confusingly, given the appropriateness of temporal
finitude for man as the creature, all this can be true because death as it encounters us is

merely the sign of God's judgment on us. Death is not an inherent part of human

nature as God created it. It is an evil that entered the world through sin (Rom 5: 12,14,
17; 6: 23; 1 Cor 15:22). However, here we must look more carefully at what we mean

by death. Adam, for instance, did not die and return to the dust on the very day of his

sin. This was because there are two different deaths or forms of death - what Barth,

calls `actual death' and `death in itself'. When speaking of God's judgment itself

('actual death'), Jesus Christ is the only man ever to have stood under it and borne it

111Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition: A History

of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. I, The Emergence
of tue Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago & London: UCP, 1971), 153. The resemblance to
Irenaeus' view of death as an evil contained by God for the further containment of sin and for growth in
yvc3oLGis somewhat different, and certainly intriguing. Both theologians have refused to accord death
any final or absolute status, but instead sought to show it as a power under divine authority and so
operating, ultimately, for the divine glory.
112CD 111/2,593ff.
113That said, it is not always made clear that the desire for immortality is
sinful. He can speak, for
instance, of life in itself by its very nature hungering for more life, terrified by every limitation (CD 111/2,
587).
114CD 111/2,562
115CD 111/2,631

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

directly. Because he has stood under it, all that is left is the sign of that judgment the
-
frontier of finite existence that is the `death in itself' that we experience. ' 16 We are

liberated for natural, curse-less dying, in which, as finite beings, in the same way as we

step at our beginning from non-existence into existence, so we step at our end from

existence into non-existence. But if dying remains, what does redemption mean? It is

that, this being the case, we can know that it is not just death, but the judging yet

gracious God, the Lord of death, who awaits us, and that it is he who is to be feared, not
death itself. Death is merely an aspect of das Nichtige, deriving its being from the

negation of God's will. Just, then as there is no god called Chronos, so too we might

paraphrase Barth to add that neither is there any god called Thanatos. It stands as the

necessary border to the blessing of God's Yes. `The reason why His curse falls so hard

upon us is that it is surrounded by the rainbow of His covenant. It is the dark side of
the blessing with which He has blessed us and wills to bless us. Those whom He loves
He chastens. ' 117

There are a number of other problems with this revision. First, in terms of

methodology, is the derivation of human finitude from Christology successful? Not

only does it implicitly speculate that Jesus might have ended his life in some other way
than having to stand under death itself, but is it not reading anthropology off directly
from Christology, a method he forbids? On this basis, might it not be possible, on the

basis of the resurrection, to argue for an unlimited life for man? To effect such a

revision of traditional doctrine, he understandably feels much exegesis is needed. It is

in his presentation of death as an aspect of creation's negativity that we see some of the

more strained exegesis of volume III.

When, for example, Deut. 3019 says: "I have set before you life and death,
blessing and cursing, " it is clear beyond all doubt that there are certain

connexions between blessing and life, cursing and death. But this is no proof
that death is intrinsically
a curse, nor life a blessing. Death is intrinsically the
limit human life. ' 18
end and of

Deuteronomy may not have provided the definitive proof of the intrinsic connection
between cursing and death, yet it surely tips the balance in its favour, and cannot be so

116CD If 1/2,605
117CD 111/2,609
"s CD 111/2,588

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

lightly brushed aside. Yet Barth goes on in Deuteronomy to read Deut. 34: 7, `his eye

was not dim, nor his natural force abated', to mean that, through the death of Moses,
God showed the boundary of death to be wholly natural. Yet Moses' death is said

explicitly to be a punishment for his disobedience in striking the spiritual rock (Num.
20: 12). In a similar vein, but even more extraordinary, is his treatment of Enoch's

translation or metathesis: `As the New Testament explains, Enoch did not "see death. "
He stepped over that boundary almost, as it were, unawares. " 19 Elijah's being taken up
is dealt with similarly. The real difficulty is that no substantial reason is given in these

instances for reading the relevant texts in a way so contrary to what at first (and

second) sight they appear to be saying.

Then, we might suggest that finitude does not necessarily mean mortality.
What, Jürgen Moltmann asks, of angels or stones?120 Furthermore, is this separation of

the two, `actual death' and `death in itself', itself a death, the final separation of soul

and body into psychic and physical consequences? And, does it in fact allow for any
future hope in the face of Barth's sharp opposition to any continuation of this life?

Gerrit Berkouwer put it that here there `is not a separate belief in eternal life next to

belief in God. ' 121 The consequences are not merely eschatological but immediate, for

the `cost of this psychologising of the traditional view of natural evil, and especially
death, was the loss of the sense that our relation to God is a life-and-death matter. The

relation came to be focused on the moral life. '122

Finally, is Barth's repudiation of continuity anything different from the Sadducee
doctrine that Jesus opposed (Matt 22: 23; Mk 12: 18; Lk 20: 27; Act 23: 8)? If the pun

might be excused, it seems that Barth does run the grave risk of being the wrong person
to take the sting out of death, which does not, in the end, seem to be the fear of death,
but the cause behind that: sin (1 Cor 15: 55). If a theology is to be constructed that,

equally acknowledges the real good of creation and the real evil of the fall, that takes

seriously the reality of God's election and rejection, it must proclaim death to be

wholly and consistently God's absolute No, with no hidden concord or secret Yes
implied. It is only in the Resurrection that man can enjoy God's Yes.

119CD 111/2,635
120Moltmann, J., History
and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology, trans. Bowden, J.
(London: SCM, 1991), 139
121Berkouwer, 165, n. 81
122 Pannenberg, W., Systematic Theology trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans &
Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark, 1994,1998), Vol. 2,268

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The Glory of God. Part Two: Barth 6 When is Man?

Conclusion

To the question `when is man? ' Barth has given an unnervingly abrupt and radical

answer: Jesus Christ. Time and eternity, past and future, even the Adam-Christ parallel

along with shadow and light, are all found and reconciled in him as the Word and Head

of creation. The end product, we have seen, is a creation teetering on the brink, not

only of das Nichtige, but of chronic problems. It may be that Barth has finally

managed to give some critical counter-weight to temporal being (manifested in his

aversion to deification), and yet there remains a worrying Eutychian element at work
that threatens to ingest any `when' that there might be for any man. Chronos ate all his

children, but now, in Barth's thought, lives in the ever-present danger of being

revenged in kind by Jesus Christ. Barth's language of our participation in Christ's

history does, at times, appear all too artificially (almost, we might say, redemptively)

attached to the core of his thought, even serving as a smokescreen for the fact that our
history is just Christ's history. The body is swallowed up in the head -a bizarre new

form of the homo incurvatirs in se! Given that it is sinful, finite flesh that Barth was

concerned with, it seems only logical that it is not only temporal being that is in danger

of being overwhelmed, but the nature of sin and so death itself.

It would seementirely wrong, however, to end an appraisal on so critical a note.
Here is a chronology that simply cannot be appendixed or treated as a philosophical

excursus to the main dogmatic argument, and for that it must be given due praise.
Barth has replaced what we might call a carpe diem chronology, beset as it is with the

very essence of man's greed, and leading, as it does, to the collapse of Krjpuyµa into

[Moc. Instead, better than merely translating that into a religious carpe Christinn
.
alternative, he details a chronology that can be joyfully proclaimed: Jesus Christ, the
Lord of time, has seized man. If we believe in God's revelation through his Word, then

Barth's call for a Christologically informed, and indeed a Christocentric chronology, is

one that we must take up, only with caution as to which Christological programme it is
that we follow.

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 The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

Concluding Reflections

After six chapters of seeing two complementary Christological anthropologies, it is

time to attempt some final resolution. It almost seems impertinent to sit as a self-

appointed judge over two such maestros of theological anthropology, or to use their

already meticulous accounts as a launch-pad in any sense. The ever-present danger of

trying to go beyond them is that one simply falls, again, behind them. Barth's own

assessment of Hegel we might justly apply to Barth himself, or, indeed, Irenaeus:

Only someone who does not understand Hegel's philosophy can miss its

peculiar greatness. Again and again we find we must think three times before
contradicting it, because we might find that everything we are tempted to say
in contradiction of it has already been said within it, and provided with the best

possible answer.... Could Hegel's picture, once it had really existed, be

forgotten again? '

And yet, neither provides us with Holy Writ, as has already been made clear. True

gratitude for their contributions to anthropology must then involve both learning and
developing.

There is certainly much to be grateful for. For a culture that is increasingly fed
by a diet of re-warmed Gnosticism, both theologians offer robust alternatives to the
sort
of desiccated, nutrient-free anthropologies produced by Socratic or Gnostic
methodology. Following Pope's Delphic advice, `Know then thyself, presume not God

to scan, The proper study of mankind is man', we can only conclude with Pope that

man is the `jest and riddle of the world. '2 Following the counsel of Irenaeus and Barth,
that E&v µil nwßtEÜßrlrEoüöE p ouvIIrE, man's true being can be known, not just as his
own being in a Feuerbachian loud voice, but as a genuine revelation of his origin,

existence and destiny that cannot be reduced, even though it is applied, to horizontal or
socio-historical analyses. 3

Protestant Thought: Front Rousseauto Ritschl trans. B. Cozens (London: SCM, 1959), 280,291
2 Pope, A., `An Essay
on Man, ' in L. Untermeycr (ed.), A Treasury of Great Poems (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1955), 532
3 Isa. 7:9, LXX, cited in Dem. 3

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The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

The Polyvalence of Christological Anthropology

Yet this has not simply been an attempt to prove the merits of Christological

anthropology so much as a demonstration of the possibilities that are available when it

is affirmed that Jesus Christ is the revelation and reality of the being of man. What we

have seen is that `Christological anthropology' is no single (or simple) project. Part of

the difficulty in dealing with Gnosticism was the `wolf in sheep's clothing' manner in

which it utilised Christian vocabulary to articulate a gospel contrary to that of the

Church. Christian orthodoxy was forced to draw its boundaries by definition of its
language. So it is here. `Christological anthropology' cannot be accepted as an

unambiguous category. For what is meant by `Jesus Christ'? The man of Nazareth?
The Logos who assumed flesh? The Messiah as Head of and so with the Body of his

Church? Even the concept of the `eternal man', which one might suppose is relatively

self-explanatory, is handled in strikingly different ways in Lyons and Basel, showing it,
too, to be multivalent, and allowing, as we have seen, alternative definitions of
humanity as conspicuous for their dissimilarity as for their likeness.

Both Irenaeus and Barth affirm Jesus Christ as the eternal, primal man, the

archetype of our own human being. Yet from that we cannot assume, as Robert Jenson,
Douglas Farrow and others seem to, that they thereby intend the same thing. 4 Where

Irenaeus argues that the archetypical man can be found in the Xoyoc äoapºcoc(who was

definitively revealed in his incarnation), Barth, in his war on speculation, contends that

that man can only be seen in the X yoS EvaapKoc. The importance of that fundamental
distinction can be seen in the radically different anthropological products each model
has generated. The implicit assumption, so normally held, that Christology, if it does

so at all, should direct anthropology in anything like a predictable way, can be shown
by example to be untenable. 5 A brief review of the overall difference in character

between the two models should make this clear.

The disparity is to some extent rooted in what it is they are each, essentially,

opposing, as much as in what it is they are each then proposing. As witnessed by the

sheer quantity of its sects, Irenaeus faced what was in essence a cult of fissiparousness
that thus, by that very nature, had no place for relationship. The hylic was seen as so

' See above, pp. 37,118.

5 We have cited Eugene Rogers and Francis Watson in particular as exemplars of this (see above, 140),
p.
and will return to Eugene Rogers below for a further appraisal.

219
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

intrinsically abhorrent to the pneumatic that there simply was no room for a

reconciliation, in any real sense of the word, to happen. `Jesus' or `Christ' or whatever

ambassador or actor stood in his place could only be the saviour in the sense of being
the donor of some epistemic package external to himself, the use of which would allow
his followers to overcome the spiritual powers that barred their way as they sought to

ascend to God. Rowan Williams, in his insightful comparison of the narratives related
by the Gnostics and Irenaeus, called it a `reduction of salvation to spiritual

technology'. 6

It has been suggested, by those uncomfortable with the `physical' nature of

Irenaeus' model of redemption, that the bishop failed ever truly to escape that

reduction, simply replacing it with a mechanico-magical physical alternative that was

just as devoid of relationship as its Gnostic alternative. 7 Yet we have seen how

blinkered and atomistic a reading of Irenaeus that is, and one that can only remain

indifferent as long as it fails to perceive what a healthy alternative Irenaeus' onto-

relations are to the contractualism that James Torrance has shown to be so pervasive in

the Western ordo salutis. The oLKOVOµiaBEOÜowes its existence to the eternally

constitutive love of the Father for his Son Jesus Christ, by which the Son has his being

and by which, in the eternal fellowship of the Spirit, God becomes creative. Man, at
the centre of that creation, lives as the glory of God - an expression of the divine

community - in order that he might `behold God' by participating in the Triune life of
God, in the Imago and according to the Similitudo. Creation, for Irenaeus, is not only

established by relationship, it is sustained and redeemed relationally, and its objective

is to be united to exist in that harmony which is the characteristic of the love of the

Father for the Son. FVCOLS,for Irenaeus, is not some tract of information or technique

(which can only be called tcfs ji¬Ubwvüµou yvWOEWc);the Son is the true yvwoLS of the

Father. 8 Salvation, then - becoming man and becoming God - is reconciliation, an

ontological salvation because of being the supremely relational salvation. The entire

creation project is, for Irenaeus, a relational one, in which the Triune creator, his

creation and men and women all grow into harmonious relatedness with each other.
Karl Barth, who was so instrumental in re-introducing and modelling the
doctrine of the Trinity and its significance to Western theology, and whose

6 Williams, R., The Wound

of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of
the Cross 2nd cd. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), 26
Cairns, D., The Irrzage of God in Man (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 104
8 Dent. 7

220
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

anthropology was expressly analogous to that great truth of God, should, one would
think, be similar in that overall relational tone. Yet, for all its similarity to Gnostic

methodology, the analogia entis, at least as Barth sought to oppose it, was not the
Gnosticism of the second century. Barth's concern, as the very ordering of his Church

Dogmatics displays, was not an account of the oh ovo tta OEoüas such, but something

more explicitly and predominantly epistemological. In his doctrine of man the same

holds true: Jesus Christ is the revelation of man's real being; he is real man, and as such

the revelation of the whole man, God's covenant-partner in his time. Our concern has
been that the relational is in danger of being marginalised instead of being upheld by

the revelational (not that we should even for a moment imagine that Barth had slipped
back into old Gnostic ways of perceiving yv(atc; that would be to misunderstand his

christocentrism entirely). More particularly, we have suggested that there are elements

within his Christology (leanings, as it were, towards both extreme Antiochianism and
Alexandrianism) that have the cumulative effect of jeopardising man's relational being.

Yet surely, none of such criticism of Barth can be heard without a deep senseof
irony, or at least puzzlement. Irenaeus' metaphor of the `hands' of God explicitly
directs the being of God externally, to the economy, rather than to internal relationship.

In creation, Irenaeus did not see the imago Dei as the inherently relational concept that

Barth did. And what of redemption? Again, there is much to be found in common

between Irenaeus' `physical redemption' and Barth's integration of Christ's being and

act as mediator. Thus it is not, in the end, strictly accurate to refer to the schemes of

Irenaeus and Barth as merely relational and revelational respectively. Barth managed

to incorporate relationship where Irenaeus had not, precluding the possibility of one
individual constituting the imago Dei in isolated splendour. It was he, and not

Irenaeus, who managed to exposit so laudably and so holistically the concept of

nrpöownov, and so define man as a whole being in encounter.

There is one noteworthy difference between the models of JesusChrist as real
man offered by Irenaeus and Barth, and it is one that forces us to a dilemma. That is,

when man has been rescued from his arrogant obsession with his own present, what has
he been rescued for? Or, if we may put it this way, in which direction does reality (and,

in particular, human reality) point? To the beginning, or to the end? Before answering,

we must first acknowledge that both Irenaeus and Barth have sought to present Jesus
Christ as the Alpha and Omega, and thus found a third way instead of taking sides in

the mythological Greek war between Chronos and his eternal father, Uranus. Jesus

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The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

Christ is not like Jove, who, to be established comfortably as the supreme God (to be
jovial) had to be rid of his father, Time. With Jesus Christ as the Beginning and End,

man's being and history can be seen to be contained, neither coming from some alien

source, nor with the open possibility of evolution into a higher state of being. There in

Jesus Christ man finds a significance that he could never have on some abstract clock
in which he occupies only the proverbial final two minutes of the earth's total `day'.

Furthermore, with Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the evil that man faces,

participates in and endures can also be said to be contained, having no independent

origin or future.
That said, there can be seen to be a marked difference between Irenaeus' and

Barth's estimations of the temporal alignment of reality. For Barth, there is an

effective orientation in all his thought to the past, and, for man, God's elective choice

of Jesus Christ. It has been suggested that this is due in large part to his failure to give

any actively significant role to the being of God in the third mode, despite his avowal

of the non-identity of Father, Son and Spirit with temporal distinction.

Without the Father there would be no Son or Spirit - but it is not said that

without the Spirit the Father and the Son would not occur. In every nuance of
his formulations, Barth displays the doctrine that the Father is `the fount of the

Trinity. ' But that the Trinity also has a goal in the Spirit remains a mere

occasional assertion. This gathering to the past, to the Beginning in which all
has already been decided, pervades all Barth's thinking. 9

Whilst, then, past, present and future are formally held to exist in a proper perichoresis,
the three modes of God's being and so the three modes of time are in practice distinctly
biased towards the first mode.

9 Jenson, R. W., God

after God: The God of the Future and the God of the Past seen in the Theology of
Karl Barth (Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), 173; cf. Gunton, C. E., Becoming and
Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford: OUP, 1978), 165,185;
Moltmann, J., Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans.
Leitch, J W. (London: SCM, 1967), 37ff.; Colwell, J. E., Actuality and Provisionality: Eternity and
Election in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: Rutherford, 1989), 78 and `The Contemporaneity of
the Divine Decision: Reflections on Barth's Denial of "Universalism"' in Universalism and the Doctrine
of Hell, ed. N. M. de S. Cameron (Carlisle: Paternoster & Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker, 1992).

222
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

He is the beginning without which there is no middle and no end, the middle

which can be only on the basis of the beginning and without which there is no
is based wholly and utterly on the beginning. 10
end, and the end which

It is, if anything, the other way round for Irenaeus,whose thought was pervaded
by a gathering of all things to the future, to the End. What was, as created, imperfect in

the beginning was meant to grow into perfection. Resolution, for Irenaeus, lay in the

end, not in the beginning. `Shadows', then, work in the opposite direction. Where for

Barth victory over evil is something in the past recollected by the following shadows it

still throws onto the present (creation's Schattenseite), for Irenaeus, following the use

of UKL in Col. 2: 17; Heb. 8: 5,10: 1, the shadows are preceding, thrown onto us from

the end. Where for Barth evil is a deviation from the Beginning which is God's

election, for Irenaeus, evil is a deviation from the End, which is gathered perfection.
The same dynamic holds true for man's being. Adam was the shadow of the one who

would only be revealed in the flesh at the end. Where for Barth the creature's being in

the imago Dei is an essentially protological matter, for Irenaeus it is only at the end that

the creature, with his bodily particularity, will be found to be perfected in the imago

and after the similitudo.

In this, two more different chronologies could scarcely be imagined, though

both were, to an extent, tackling alternative myths of progression, from those of

Gnosticism to those of modernity and late-modernity. " Both were rescuing man for a

truly temporal existence, yet one spoke of a cosmic Bildungsroman (story of formative

education); the other of God's covenant and its fulfilment. One saw history and time

flowing towards the incarnation; the other saw them flowing, as it were, from the
incarnation. Which would give man more real time and space in which to exist as a

10CD I/1,364
11Whilst it is Hegel and Darwin who are best known for their contributions to this area, it is Kant who
articulated the most quintessentially modern myth of the fall as a growth from ignorance to knowledge.
For him, human beings in their primitive state were novitiate animals, obeying the `voice of God' which
was their instincts. Yet when man took from the tree, he began to exercise real choice and gain
knowledge, the adverse consequencesof which would only serve to add further to that epistemic gain.
Man's departure from paradise was, by their conflict with their own animality, the transition from that
sub-human state to one of reasonable humanity. It was nothing less than progress towards perfection.
Thus the course of human affairs is not a decline from good to evil, but a development from the worse to
the better. The light of the Enlightenment lay always ahead, encouraging us not to foster the kind of
nostalgia for the primitive state encouragedby the previous generation's stories such as Robinson Crusoe
and reports of visitors to the South Sea Islands, their inhabitants apparently innocent in their nakedness,
but to move on to perfection. (Kant, I., Conjectural Beginning of Human History, in On History, ed.
Beck, L. \V.; E. T. Fachelheim, E. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 53-68) The similarity to the
thought of the Cainites on the one hand, and Philip Pullman on the other, is striking.

223
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

being in encounter is a question that must be answered Christologically. For such

different perceptions of the temporal aspect of human being were both, we have
seen,
fundamentally determined there, in Christology.

224
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

The Promise of Christological Anthropology

So much for the differences between them and the breadth of Christological

anthropology. What of their correspondence? Their very comparability, despite all

historical odds, reveals the truly Christological nature of their methodologies. The

disparity between them is simply an aspect of a greater harmony which the structure

and argument has already noted. That harmony even encompasses such apparently

jarring themes as their approaches to deification, for ultimately both stand opposed to

the divinisation and transmogrification of human being.

Yet perhaps the greatest instance of their confluence is also the most surprising.

Christological anthropology as a discipline (and indeed Karl Barth's theology on the

whole) is all too commonly dismissed for its supposedabstraction and inability to deal
with the physical and relational specificity of the humanity in
we encounter ourselves
each day. In practice Irenaeus and Barth prove otherwise. With their different, though

equally uncompromising Christological methodologies, both Irenaeus and Karl Barth

sought to provide anthropologies that were grounded in actuality as opposed to

speculation or eternal principles hostile to the particular. What both found was that the

gospel of Jesus Christ reveals man as a being constituted by and destined for

relationship. This means man in the form in which he is actually found, that is, as the

recipient of the life of the Spirit in his fleshly body, as male and female. For Irenaeus,
this involved the application of the Son's eternal differentiation from the Father and his

real appearance in the flesh to affirm the goodness of that differentiation that allows

relationship, and its particularity. For Barth it involved an equally Christological

affirmation, that the revelation of the real man as the head of his body and as the soul of
his body is the revelation of man as a whole being defined by genuine encounter.

These two rare vindications of relationship and particularity for man have one,

double-barrelled result. Essentially, this is an affirmation that man is as he is found as

the creature created and redeemed in the image and likeness of God. Man is created

particularly so, and (despite their differences over the doctrine of AEOnoirloLSor
&1roe& oLS) his redemption is not a flight from that, but the realisation of it. The first

aspect of this is an emphasis on man's externality. Creation and redemption in Christ

are things of the bodily, historical world. To be, or to be in the imago of the creator

Deus, then, man is bodily. He is bodily resurrected as such because the whole man, as

225
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

Barth would put it, is called to realise the likeness of God. As Irenaeus and Barth see
it, an anthropology that takes creation and redemption seriously must take man in his

bodily form seriously. The tragedy is that, historically, so few anthropologies have.
Apart from a handful of outstanding exceptions, the centuries after Irenaeus are

testimony to the marginalisation of his thought, especially at the hands of Origenist

theology. John Behr argues that the poor state of the now depleted Irenaean corpus is
itself suggestive of this, his work having been used more by later heresiologists than as

inspiration for the orthodox. 12 We will go on to suggest that surprisingly little of

an

substance has changed post-Barth.

The second aspect, that appreciation of man's general embodiment does not

necessarily include, is man's particular embodiment as male and female. The human

external form thus literally embodies man's üiröataots as a being to be found in

EKata«iS. Neither Irenaeus nor Barth allow that man's being as sexually dyadic can be

trivialised as an inconsequential fact simply explained by the creaturely need for

procreation. Human sexuality is a theological fact first, before being a biological one.

This flows more obviously from Barth's doctrine of co-humanity which, in ceding to

woman (for all her derivation) a constitutive role in the basic structure of human being,
is the death-knell for Aristotelian-type anthropologies of woman as deficient man. Yet
the theme is just as present throughout Irenaeus' description of the otKOVOµia:humanity

exists as man and woman in order that they might grow together, reflecting in their

creaturely harmony the union that the Triune creator knows and seeks to effect with his

creation. Neither in his origin, nor being, nor destiny is man ever reducible to an

abstract neutered humanum. As actual enfleshed bodily beings, we exist as man or

12 Behr, J., Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New
York: OUP, 2000), 218). Florovsky cites the Egyptian Audians as examples of heterodox retention of
the primitive theology of Irenaeus: one of the elders found guilty of having strayed into heresy was one
Abbot Sarapion, to whom it was explained that `the image and likeness of God was taken by all the
leaders of the churches not according to the base sound of the letters, but spiritually'. In bewilderment,
Serapion is said to have `burst into a flood of bitter tears and continual sobs, and cast himself down on
the ground and exclaimed with strong groanings: "Alas! wretched man that I am! they have taken away
my God from me, and I have now none to lay hold of; and whom to worship and address I know not. "'
(John Cassian, Conferences, 10.3; cf. Florovsky, G., 'The Anthropomorphites in the Egyptian Desert', in
Aspects of Church History (Belmont, MASS.: Nordland, 1976), 89-96). It is worth also noting
Tertullian's famously controversial words: `How could He who is empty have made things which are
solid, and He who is void have made things which are full, and He who is incorporeal have made things
which have body For although a thing may sometimes be made different from him by whom it is made,
yet nothing can be made by that which is a void and empty thing. Is that Word of God, then, a void and
empty thing, which is called the Son, who Himself is designated God? "The Word was with God, and
the Word was God. " It is written, "Thou shalt not take God's name in vain. " This for certain is He "who,
being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. " In what form of God? Of course
he means in some form, not in none. For who will deny that God is a body, although "God is a Spirit"?
For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. ' (Adv. Praxeas, 7)

226
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

woman and as man and woman. In our bodily particularity we can be seen to be beings
in encounter, analogous to the God who is Father, Son and Spirit in encounter. As

Eugene Rogers puts it, commenting on Barth's deduction that `[b]ecause the election of

God is real, there is such a thing as love and marriage':

Married lives and the wedding that mark them sacramentalize the saying of

Barth's, that creation is the external ground of the covenant, the covenant the
internal ground of creation. Married lives and the weddings that mark them
insist that that thesis applies even, and especially, to human bodies. Bodies are

the external ground for the desiring love of God, and the desiring love of God
is the internal ground for human bodies. 13

This conclusion that Irenaeus and Barth reach is as original as their

Christological method. Almost all of those sects that we now lump together under the
title of Gnosticism were systems of salvation from the particular, from the bodily, and
from all forms of fleshly difference. Rowan Williams astutely observes that this is the

reason why

the gnostic `gospels', of which a considerable quantity has survived, are

records of words, not acts, located either at some unspecified point in Jesus'

ministry or (very commonly) during the forty days following the

Resurrection. 14

The import of that conclusion can be seen through a demonstration of what together

they can offer to the debate that must constitute the epicentre of contention for

anthropology today.
To take man's particular embodiment as sexual as our example, whilst the
influence of Aristotelianism in particular ensured a centuries-long tension with the
fruits of biblical scholarship in the field of theological anthropology, it would be

13 Rogers, E. F. Jr., Sexuality Way into the Triune God (Oxford:

and the Christian Body: Their
Blackwell, 1999), 270; cf. CD 1I1/1,318
14 Williams, 25. Williams proposes that the practical application of Irenacus' affirmation of the
particular is `to draw attention to the experiencesof limitation, contingency, temptation and internal and
external conflict as fundamental to the mature life of faith and growth towards God.' (Williams, 32)
Given the context of persecution and suffering in which Irenaeus was writing, this is surely a wise
observation. However, our suggestion (which Williams never disputes) is that Irenaeushas secured more
profoundly basic territory in anthropology, namely man's very being, which is not only valuable in itself,
but also can serve as a spearheadfor engagementwith systemscontrary to the gospel he received.

227
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

extraordinary to suggest that we remain in the same place today. Thomas Laqueur has

demonstrated what a change in western sexuality was brought about by the

Enlightenment above all. The empirical evidence of sexually differentiated human

bodies overthrew the classic philosophical denial of their essentiality to suggest fixed

and stable foundations for universally applicable gender roles (which situation came
increasingly under attack as a vehicle for male domination, but which Simone de

Beauvoir critiqued most extensively in her denial of the secondary nature of

femininity). Moving on from Enlightenment empiricism, late- or post-modern gender

theories have sought to go beyond what are increasingly being described as the

artificial strictures of sexual dimorphism in ways de Beauvoir did not imagine. 15

Extraordinary as it may be, and for all that it has moved on, today's situation can
finally be seen to bear remarkable similarity to the situation faced by Irenaeus, in that it

involves a repristination of the ancient denial of human bodily particularity. To

illustrate this, we will take two examples: Luce Irigaray and Eugene Rogers.

When Luce Irigaray alleges that sexual difference does not exist, she means
something utterly different to Simone de Beauvoir. Irigaray feels that women have

been traditionally associated with whatever is derivative, with matter and nature, and
thus have failed to be accorded true subjectivity. Men are the self-conscious subjects,

women the objective `other'. As seen in the language of Western culture at least, only

one form of subjectivity exists, and it is male. True sexual difference (which would in
itself offer the possibility of salvation and cosmic transfiguration) would require that
the I-Thou dynamic be replaced with an I-I alternative in which there is more than one
'6 Yet Irigaray's to being in
subject position. suggestion runs entirely contrary man's
the imago Dei according to Barth, and Irenaeus' affirmation of creaturely
differentiation. If we are to take man's particular embodiment seriously, as both,

theologians suggest, then we cannot allow `sexual difference' to be so reinterpreted. If

anthropology is to be done theologically, even Christologically, such that man and

woman image forth in their respective being God and what is other than him, then
Irigaray can be seen to have proposed nothing more than a metaphysical dualism which

is not only unacceptable, but incapable of providing a framework for true sexual

harmony.

15 Laqueur, T. W., Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA. and
London: Harvard University Press, 1990)
16 Cf.
esp. Irigaray, L., This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985); also Irigaray, L., An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993)

228
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

Our second example of a contemporary assault on human bodily particularity is

that articulated by Eugene Rogers in Sexuality and the Christian Body. We have

already seen Rogers' failure to understand Barth's messianic understanding of Jesus

Christ: `If Christ is the complete image, then the image need not be a dyad. ' 17 With

that in mind, he feels able to argue for more fluid definitions of marriage, gender and
being in God's image. Thus, developing some of Bernard of Clairvaux's imagery and

the idea of a sexual chain of being (from God the Father, to the Son, to the Church and

man, to the woman), a man may have `male' and `female' roles, being part of Christ's
bride, but also, for instance, being a husband and father himself.

Religious discourse works in a much fuller and subtler fashion than by

supposing that one has to instantiate physically what one honours or even
represents figurally.... So, too, gay and lesbian Christians need have no

quarrel with the special aptness of the Genesis account of male and female and
their procreation as normative for the species, as long as not everyone has to
instantiate it to be in God's image. 18

Yet, if Irenaeus and Barth are even close to the mark, then such fluidity negates
whatever one does actually instantiate physically. It assumes that there can be a
disparity between a person's internal and external being, so taking anthropology

straight back to a version of the o@µa-aiµa creed in which the only difference is that
the cell has already been escaped before death's final liberation.

Irigaray and Rogers are evidence of a decidedly ambivalent attitude towards

difference and the body in a contemporary culture that is thus unsurprisingly awash
with such problems as bulimia and anorexia. Irigaray, arguably the major post-modem

philosopher of sexual difference, pleads for a differentiation of double subjectivity,

which, quite apart from the metaphysical problems involved, sounds far more like a

contradiction in terms than a linguistic alternative. As for Rogers, the denial of the

supposition `that one has to instantiate physically what one honours or even represents
figurally' sits most awkwardly alongside his application of Barth's dictum, that

creation is the external ground of the covenant, the covenant the internal ground of

creation, to bodies and gender.

17Rogers, 225
18Rogers, 243

229
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

Into this situation Irenaeus and Barth, in their different ways, speak a gospel to

man as a whole being. He may (indeed he must) live and love as the bodily

particularity that he is. Femininity and the body are neither hidden away behind a veil

of embarrassment (as they must be to any Aristotelian or Gnostic), nor transcended, but

embraced for what they are, as part of a broader understanding of God's own being and
his relationship with humanity and creation. `He who loves his wife loves himself. For

no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the

church, because we are members of his body. ' (Ephesians 5: 28-30)

As God has made his loving approach to man bodily, so he has inscribed that on

our bodies, such that man's corresponding love for his creator and his neighbour is an

embodied love, a relationship of the flesh. Having been created thus in the imago Dei,

our bodies are in actual fact, whatever attempts we might make, finally inalienable.
Eugene Rogers suggests EpwSas one example of this:

The bodies of the desired do not leave even the most devoted misanthrope

alone. Rather, inscribed in him or her, inescapably, is the claim of the

neighbor, even if wounds and cries may have ceased to move compassion.
Eros is both inscribed in the image and the last stand of God in human beings,

that they might never entirely escape the image of God in their neighbors,
however much their powerlessness and vulnerability before that image may

distort them into anger, adultery and murder. 19

Does this mean that Nygren's famous distinction between äyänrI and EpwS has to be

the deeply ingrained denigration the body? 20 Can

seen as overwrought result of a of we
`a desire 21 Not too
speak of the gospel as story of carnal and erotic encounter'?
blithely, it has to be said, given the association of Epc S in Hellenic thought with

mystical, anthropocentric attempts at self transcendence. That said, duly cautioned,

there may still be some merit in Gregory of Nyssa's description of it as the flowering of

19 Rogers, 227. Gerard Loughlin suggests that this can be shown to be so historically, since
`paradoxically, even as Christians put aside their sexual wants in pursuit of spiritual gratification, their
bodies remained as the measure and, later, the figure of their mystical devotion. The ascetics of the
fourth and fifth centuries who went into the desert to find their God, also found the deep sexuality of
their bodies, that could always return to ground their spiritual ascents.' (Loughlin, G., Alien Sex: The
Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 9)
20 Nygren, A., Agape
and Eros, trans. P. S. Watson (London: SPCK, 1953); cf. Watson, F., Agape, Eros,
Gender: Towards a Pauline Sexual Ethic (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 208,259. For a recent critique of
Nygren's distinction, approached somewhat differently, see Jenson, R. W., On Thinking the Human:
Resolutions of D cult Notions (Grand Rapids, MI. & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), 76-7.
21 Loughlin, 12

230
The Glory of God Concluding Reflections

&yärrrl, exhibited in the relationship between Christ and his beloved Church. 22 As long

as we maintain an Augustinian realism about sin, we can safely maintain that

relationships of the flesh are the very stuff of man's eucharistic existence. Only in such

particular relationships, when they make time and space for each other as God has done
for them, do human beings in God's image really display his likeness.

However, the greatest contribution that Irenaeus and Barth offer to

anthropology is their most basic one, and it is with that that we must draw to a close.
Perhaps it is fitting, if surprising, that we should turn to it, as we finish, through the

words of Ludwig Feuerbach. His apotheosising of the I-Thou dialectic and the usual,

crude interpretation of his aphorism der Mensch ist, was er ißt make him a soft target
for Christian anti-materialism. 23 Yet his understanding of man as a being to be found

only in community, and his (albeit monistic) sensuousness that refuses to idealise man,
together bear an intriguing echo of the anthropology we have tried to show as being in

the world, but not of it. And, as Alexander Schmemann has suggested, there is a yet

more fundamental, if unintended, truth underlying Feuerbach's dictum: from the

instruction to eat that immediately follows the command to propagate and have
dominion (Gen. 1:28-30), we humans can be seen, as Irenaeus saw Adam, to be hungry
24 We find
creatures. our fulfilment and our true being in feeding upon Christ, the true

man.

22 Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily 13, trans. C. McCambley (Brookline, MA.: Hellenic
College Press, 1987), 234
23 Feuerbach, L., The Essence
of Christianity, trans. George Eliot, intro. Karl Barth (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1957); cf. Barth's comments in the introduction, xiii-xiv.
24Schmemann,A., For the Life the World (New York: SVS, 1997), 11ff.
of

231
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