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Collection Highlights

Aquinas and the Theology of the Body: The Thomistic

Foundations of John Paul II’s Anthropology Thomas Petri

Eternally spiraling into God : knowledge, love, and

ecstasy in the theology of Thomas Gallus Coolman

Jewish Public Theology God and the Global City Abraham

Unger

The Trinitarian christology of St Thomas Aquinas 1st

Edition Legge
The Ethics of St Thomas Aquinas Happiness Natural Law and
the Virtues Leo J Elders

The Grace of Being Fallible in Philosophy, Theology, and

Religion Thomas John Hastings

Calvin and the Resignification of the World Creation

Incarnation and the Problem of Political Theology in the
1559 institutes Michelle Chaplin Sanchez

Finding Favour in the Sight of God A Theology of Wisdom

Literature New Studies in Biblical Theology 46 1st
Edition Richard P. Belcher Jr.

Consilience Truth and the Mind of God Science Philosophy

and Theology in the Search for Ultimate Meaning Richard J.
Di Rocco
 God and Creation in the Theology
of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth

The legacies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth remain influential

for contemporary theologians, who have increasingly put them into
conversation on debated questions over analogy and the knowledge of
God. However, little explicit dialogue has occurred between their theol-
ogies of God. This book offers one of the first extended analyses of this
fundamental issue, asking how each theologian seeks to confess in fact
and in thought God’s qualitative distinctiveness in relation to creation.
Wittman first examines how they understand the correspondence and
distinction between God’s being and external acts within an overarch-
ing concern to avoid idolatry. Second, he analyses the kind of relation
God bears to creation that follows from these respective understand-
ings. Despite many common goals, Aquinas and Barth ultimately dif-
fer on the subject matter of theological reason with consequences for
their ability to uphold God’s distinctiveness consistently. These mutu-
ally informative issues offer some important lessons for contemporary
theology.

Tyler R. Wittman is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology at The

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY (USA). His
research and writing concentrate on issues surrounding the theology
of God’s perfections, the Trinity, and Christology. His articles have
appeared in the International Journal of Systematic Theology, Modern
Theology, and Pro Ecclesia. He is a member of the American Academy
of Religion and the Evangelical Theological Society.
God and Creation in the Theology
of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth

TYLER R. WITTMAN
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108470674
DOI: 10.1017/9781108556927
© Cambridge University Press 2019
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2019
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
A cataloge record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-47067-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
 For Jessie.
God is very good indeed.
 Contents

Acknowledgments page ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Note on Citations and Translations xiii

Introduction

1 Confessing That God Is God: The Relation between Theology

and Economy 3
The Problem of Confessing God as God 4
The Procedure 14

Part I God’s Being and Activity

According to Thomas Aquinas

2 Aquinas on God’s Being and Activity 27

Approaching Divine Actuality: Formal and Material Objects 29
The Ways of God: The Formal Orientation of Theological
Inquiry 32
Simplicity, Perfection, and the Grammar of Divine Naming 48
God Himself: The Material Object of Theology Inquiry 54
Conclusion 71
3 Aquinas on the Creative Act and God’s Relation to Creation 74
Creative Causality and the Question of God’s
Self-Correspondence 75
The Principle of Creation 79
The End of Creation 99

vii
viii Contents

The Relation of Creation 111

Conclusion 125

Part II God’s Being in Act According to Karl Barth

4 Barth on God’s Being in Act 129

The Theological Approach to Divine Actuality 133
Necessity and Decision: The Formal Orientation of
Theological Understanding 135
Loving in Freedom: The Material Object of Theological
Understanding 150
Conclusion: Theology and Economy 170
5 God’s Self-Correspondence and Barth’s Critique of
Nominalism 176
Correspondence as Analogy and Dialectic 178
The Simplicity of God’s Self-Correspondence in Christ 188
6 Barth on the Electing God’s Relation to Creation 199
The Decree’s Necessity and the Question of God’s
Self-Correspondence 202
The Decree’s Form and Content as God’s Internal Activity 206
The Decree’s Form and Content as Christ’s Election 220
Conclusion: God’s Relation to Creation 243

Conclusion

7 Confessing God as God 253

Actuality and Theological Reason 254
Being and Activity 269
Relation and the Confession of God 285

Bibliography 297
Index 313
 Acknowledgments

It is a delight to practice here what the book preaches at length: to

acknowledge God’s bounteous goodness. Whatever one makes of this
study’s claims about God’s goodness, the fact of it at once asserts itself
and outpaces anything we might say about it. I’m painfully aware of this
as I think about the family, friends, and acquaintances without whom this
project would not have been possible.
The book is a slightly revised and expanded version of my doctoral
thesis begun at Aberdeen and completed at St Andrews under the super-
vision of the late John Webster. Because he stewarded his gifts well, John’s
students benefited from his hedgehog-like focus on what really matters,
as well as his humility, patience, humor, and sharp wit. When I ambi-
tioned a more tortured project, John subtly guided me to the more fun-
damental concerns initially invisible to me. And when I would despair of
being able to write on two such formidable figures, John encouraged me
to stay the course and insisted that it (probably) would not be in vain. For
these reasons and many others, I thank God for John. He is sorely missed.
The academic environments at Aberdeen and St Andrews were form-
ative in different ways, and I’m grateful to the faculty who contributed
to my positive experiences. Among the many friends and conversation
partners I had the pleasure of meeting during the course of my research
and writing, I mention only a few: Matt Burdette, Darren Sumner, Adam
Harger, Esau McCaulley, Kai Akagi, Alden McCray, Jared Michelson,
Andrew Torrance, Joey Sherrard, Tim Fox, Steve Duby, and Daniel De
Haan. But the present book would not have been written without the
friendship of Tim Baylor and Jordan Hillebert in particular, as well as
Carsten Card-Hyatt – all of whom were trusted constants in conversation,

ix
x Acknowledgments

and who knew well the value of putting down the books and picking up
the croquet mallets. Special thanks also are due to Marty Westerholm,
who more than once offered a sage word that was worth its weight in
gold. I do not know four men whose theological intuitions I value more
than theirs. Simon Oliver and Fergus Kerr examined the thesis thought-
fully, and in the wake of John’s passing, Kerr and Lewis Ayres kindly
advocated for its publication. Marty offered helpful suggestions on ear-
lier versions of the manuscript, and at a later stage so too did Scott Swain,
Mike Allen, and two anonymous referees. Where I was wise enough to
heed these voices, the book’s limitations were eased in some measure. My
thanks also go to Beatrice Rehl and her team at Cambridge University
Press for taking the book on and patiently shepherding me through the
publishing process for the first time.
For supporting me throughout the writing of this project (and beyond)
with their generous provision, prayers, and love, I am thankful for my
in-laws, John and Lisa McLean, and parents, Calvin and Diane Wittman.
Above all, I am most thankful for my wife Jessie and our three little boys.
Jessie’s bold confidence in the Lord and her adventurous spirit teach me
far more than the books do. And the boys not only prayed the book
into existence but kept their father busy with far more important tasks.
Belonging to these people is the best gift the Lord has given me short of
himself and reason enough to never cease thanking “the lord for his
steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men” (Ps 107:8).
 Abbreviations

General
LCL Loeb Classical Library
rev. Translation revised
trans. My translation
s.c. sed contra
corp. body of article
obj. objection
ad reply to objection
prol. prologue to question
Primary Sources
1 Cor. Super primam Epistolam ad Corinthos lectura
1 Tim. Super primam Epistolam ad Timotheum lectura
CD Church Dogmatics
Col. Super Epistolam ad Colossenes lectura
CTh Compendium theologiae
DA Sententiae libri De anima
DC Super librum De causis expositio
DDN In De divinis nominibus expositio
DP Quaestiones disputatae de potentia
DT De trinitate
DV Quaestiones disputatae de veritate
Eph. Super Epistolam ad Ephesios lectura
Eth. Sententia libri Ethicorum
Gal. Super Epistolam ad Galatas lectura
Heb. Super Epistolam ad Hebraeos lectura
Ioan. Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura

xi
xii List of Abbreviations

KD Die kirchliche Dogmatik

Meta. Sententia libri Metaphysicae
Matt. Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura
Phy. Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum
Psalmo In psalmos Davidis expositio
Quod. Quaestiones quodlibetales
Rom. Super Epistolam ad Romanos lectura
SCG Summa contra Gentiles
Sent. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi
STh Summa theologiae
 Note on Citations and Translations

All citations from the STh1 include only part number, question, article,
and location where applicable (Ia.1.1.ad1 = STh Prima pars, question
one, article one, reply one). Similarly, DP 1.2.s.c. = De potentia ques-
tion one, article two, sed contra. Citations from commentaries and
expositions that are numbered include chapter, lecture, and number
(Super Romanos chapter 1, lecture 7, number 123 = Rom. 1.7.123). I
tend to quote existing translations of texts with minor, unannounced
revisions throughout, occasionally providing my own. For the STh I
have used chiefly the translation of the English Dominican Province.
The Latin text used comes from the Blackfriars edition for the STh
and from the editions listed in the bibliography for all other works.
For all texts that do not exist in published form, I have provided my
own translations.
All citations from the CD2 include only volume number and page,
separated by a colon (e.g., II/1:3 = Church Dogmatics, vol. II/1, page 3).
Where appropriate, especially when the standard translation has been
revised (=rev.) or replaced (=trans.), or emphases restored from the origi-
nal German, the original pagination will appear after the pagination from
the English translation (e.g., II/1:51/54 = Church Dogmatics II/1:51;

1
 Excerpts from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the
English Dominican Province, © 1948 by Benzinger Bros., New York, NY, are used with
the permission of the publisher, Christian Classics™, an imprint of Ave Maria Press®,
Inc., Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.
2
 Excerpts from © Karl Barth, 1956-75, Church Dogmatics, T&T Clark, an imprint of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. are used with permission.

xiii
xiv Note on Citations and Translations

Kirchliche Dogmatik II/1:54). To improve readability, in the main body

of the text I have either provided translations to Barth’s Latin and Greek
or used the translations in the Study Edition of the CD.
In certain other German sources that exist in translation, I have pro-
vided my own translation only where the German original is listed before
the English translation.
INTRODUCTION
 1

Confessing That God Is God

The Relation between Theology and Economy

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2010 adaptation of Charles Portis’s novel True
Grit, the young protagonist, Mattie Ross, attempts to persuade an auc-
tioneer, Colonel Stonehill, to buy back some ponies traded to her late,
murdered father. Stonehill is not as accommodating as one might expect,
so Ross goes on the offensive. Not only will he buy back the ponies but
he will also fork over reparations for her father’s saddle horse that was
stolen while under his protection. Again, Stonehill refuses to see what her
loss has to do with him. When she tries to appeal to his sense of justice
by comparing him to a robbed bank that tells its depositors they are out
of luck, the auctioneer quips without missing a beat, “I do not entertain
hypotheticals. The world as it is is vexing enough!” As we know, Ross
eventually gets the best of the old colonel. Indeed, she already has him
against the ropes because Stonehill has simply begged the question: What
do we mean when we talk about the world as it is? What things are,
and how they are, is always at least set against the background of what
they are not. The opening scene implies this much with its quotation of
Scripture: “The wicked flee when no one pursues” (Prov 28:1). The many
injustices Ross encounters, like a thief’s rationality and the limitations
of the shadowy characters she marshals to her cause, are set in relief
against the background of the justice she seeks and eventually finds.
Something similar confronts theologians when they attempt to answer
God’s act of self-­naming before Moses and so to confess that “God is
God” (cf. Ex 3.14). The Nicene Creed emphasizes this identity of God
with God not only in its repetition of “one” – “one God, the Father . . .
and one Lord, Jesus Christ” – but also in the language of the Son being

3
4 Introduction

the “only-begotten.”1 Part of what we learn from the fourth-­century

debates over this confession is that what it means to say “God is God”
is always set against the background recognition of what God is not: a
creature, a thing alongside other things, an exemplification of something
more generic, made up of parts, and so forth – all of which is embraced in
traditional teaching about God’s simplicity. If this is so, then it seems that
the distinction between Creator and creature is in some significant sense
dependent on the very relationship it clarifies. It appears, in other words,
that entertaining any thought about God above or possibly without the
relationship of Creator to creature is impossible. “God with us” is vexing
enough! However, to the extent that Christians wish to deny that God
is reducible to this relationship, which is what divine simplicity would
appear to demand, then an immediate problem arises: How do we think
of God as God consistently in such a way that upholds the Creator/crea-
ture distinction? What are the consequences for theological thought and
speech of Christian teaching that God is simple and therefore irreduci-
ble? What, in short, does it mean to say that God is God? How does one
uphold such a thought while nevertheless doing justice to the fact that all
knowledge and speech about God is only had in relationship to God as
Creator and Redeemer? This book aims to better understand these ques-
tions and their answers, but first something more should be said about
the shape of the underlying problem.

The Problem of Confessing God as God

We can begin to appreciate the broader contours of this problem by
reflecting on some of its exegetical and metaphysical dimensions.
Theology’s perennial concerns typically involve metaphysical questions,
but only because they are first and foremost matters of biblical exegesis.
This is no less true for the question at hand. One representative example
of why this is so comes from the apostle Paul’s first chapter of his epistle
to the Romans, where he addresses the knowledge of God and its cor-
ruption by idolatry. The overarching context for this discussion is how
God’s wrath has been “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth”
(Rom 1:18). These persons know something about God in the creation
because “God has shown it to them” (Rom 1:19–20). Unfortunately, their

1
 Donald Wood, “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” International Journal of Systematic
Theology 14.4 (2012): 384–5.
 Confessing That God Is God 5

response to this knowledge is inexcusable because they suppress what

they know in unrighteousness, which we discover soon enough stems
from idolatry: “For although they knew God they did not glorify him as
God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and
their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became
fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resem-
bling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (Rom 1:21–23). Paul’s
series of contrasts here are significant: true glory exchanged for mere
images, the immortal God exchanged for mere mortal things, and the
luminosity of a mind that sees all in the light shed upon them by their
Creator exchanged for the darkness of a mind of that sees things only in
its own light. As the argument progresses, these exchanges have increas-
ingly dire moral consequences, and the root of it all is a transgression of
the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no
other gods before me” (Ex 20:2; Deut 5:6).
The problem Paul identifies is that knowing God is insufficient apart
from the moral element of that knowledge eliciting glorification and grat-
itude to God “as” God (Θεὸν ὡς Θεὸν).2 What is meant by this easily
overlooked qualifier is worked out negatively in the verses that follow as
people turn to “the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25). Stated
positively, however, to glorify God as God is to know and practice the
“truth about God” (Rom 1:25), to “see fit to acknowledge God” (Rom
1:28). Both of these phrases amplify what it means to glorify God as
God, which we might summarize as the confession that God is what and
who God is, whereas everything else is not. First, there is an element of
acknowledging the truth about God and what it is that God has revealed
in creation: God’s divinity (Rom 1:20). What this includes exactly we
are not told, but the progression of the passage suggests that it means
at least a basis for the recognition of an immortality, eternality, glory,
and righteousness that are not ours. God’s divine nature is something
firmly objective, that to which both knowledge and worship of God must

2
 Acts of glorification and gratitude regularly suggest some reference to God’s saving
benefits (Rom 4:20; 15:6; 1 Cor 6:20; Ps 24:7–10; 29:1). Something different is in mind
here, however, because Paul talks about the ungodly and unrighteous, the referent being
to those outside the covenant but who nevertheless have received a general knowledge
of God and are therefore “without excuse” (Rom 1:20). Whatever glorification or
thanksgiving is in view is that which is owed by rational creatures as such, and so his
comments extend minimally to the Gentiles.
6 Introduction

conform.3 Second, the glorification of God as God requires that one “see
fit to acknowledge God” (Rom 1:28).4 Acknowledgment here involves
having and holding to a true knowledge of God’s Godness, retaining it
against any and all impulses to replace it or to lay it aside.5 And to see
such acknowledgment as fitting or worthy (ἐδοκίμασαν) of God involves
not only an approval but implicitly one based upon an act of distin-
guishing. This is what Paul has in mind later in the same epistle: those
in the Church who serve one another in such a way that promotes peace
and humility will be “approved (δόκιμος) by men” (Rom 14:18). That is
to say, edifying service to Christ distinguishes those whom the church
approves from those whom it does not. In this vein, it is “worthwhile” to
retain the true knowledge of God because God alone is God and nothing
else is: the distinction underwrites the approval. However, distinguishing
between the creature and the Creator must find approbation or else it
is morally blameworthy. If the distinction stands alone, it has not been
acknowledged. To know the truth about God and then to distinguish
this truth, to approve it as worthwhile, and so acknowledge it just is to
confess God “as God.” What this suggests is that knowing and confessing
that God is God requires more than a mere neutral act of intellection but
is rather involved with the moral stance of the theologian. How does this
figure into the problem at hand?
Paul insists on the fact that suppressing the truth about God as God in
unrighteousness is the quintessential act of idolatry, which he also main-
tains is a revelation of God’s wrath. Thus, to the extent that the truth
about God is “given up” or “exchanged” for a lie (Rom 1:23, 25, 26), God
in turn “gives up” the unrighteous to the debasement of their intellects
and desires (Rom 1:24, 26, 28). Though they may profess to be wise, they
are in reality “fools” – every bit as blind, deaf, senseless, and immobile
as the objects of their devotion (Rom 1:22; Ps 115:3–8). Having failed
to retain the truth about God – that is, having failed to discern between
creature and Creator – they consequently fail to discern between right

3
 Johann Albrecht Bengel, Gnomon of the New Testament, ed. M. Ernest Bengel and J. C.
F. Steudel, trans. James Bryce, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1860), 20 (on Rom 1:21).
4
 Woodenly, “to deem it worthy to hold God in knowledge” (ἐδοκίμασαν τὸν θεὸν ἔχειν ἐν
ἐπιγνώσει).
5
 One commentator observes that “to glorify God” in Rom 1:21 involves both “die
kognitive Anerkennung des Gottsein Gottes” and “die Huldigung Gottes” and discerns
how both aspects appear negatively and positively throughout what Paul says in
1:21–28. Andrie du Toit, “Die kirche als doxologische Gemeinschaft im Römerbrief,”
in Focusing on Paul: Persuasion and Theological Design in Romans and Galatians, ed.
Cilliers Breytenbach and David S. du Toit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 298.
 Confessing That God Is God 7

and wrong. They refuse to approve God, and so they instead “approve”
what refuses God: envy, murder, strive, deceit, maliciousness, and so
much more (Rom 1:29–31). “Though they know God’s decree that those
who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve
those who practice them” (Rom 1:32). This vindicates Tertullian when
he argues that “all sins are found in idolatry and idolatry in all sins.”6
The question about how we distinguish between God and creation is
therefore an inherently moral question with social and political conse-
quences. Karl Barth makes the observation, still timely, that where “the
qualitative distinction between men and the final Omega is overlooked
or misunderstood, that fetishism is bound to appear” in which God is
exchanged for the creature, and especially the rational creature’s “half-­
spiritual, half-­material creations, exhibitions, and representations of His
creative ability – Family, Nation, State, Church, Fatherland.”7 Minimally
we can see that failure to confess God as God involves a hostile, intem-
perate, and indulgent way of life, which suggests on the contrary that
the way of life supporting this confession will be intrinsically ascetical in
some respects. If confession (ὁμολογία) requires acts of prayer, penitence,
and praise (Rom 15:9; Jas 5:16), then theology will be “fundamentally
purgative of idolatry” in all its forms.8 A full exploration of these forms
and the ascetical acts that resist them is a worthwhile undertaking, but
our aim is somewhat more circumspect. Rather what this brief glance at
Romans 1 suggests for what follows is that in looking for a satisfactory
account of what it means to confess God “as God,” we will have to look
at what it means to resist what Augustine calls a “flesh-­bound habit of
thought.”9 That is, we will need to explore what it means to temper the
mind’s movements and ambitions such that its perception of the truth

6
 Tertullian, De idololatria: Critical Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. and trans.
J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. van Winden (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 1.5.
7
 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edn., trans. Edwyn C. Hoskins (London:
Oxford University Press, 1933), 50.
8
 Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity” (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20.
9
 Augustine, De Trinitate [DT], trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2010),
8.2. For Augustine, the problem was as much epistemological as moral: “So then it is
difficult to contemplate and have full knowledge of God’s substance, which without
any change in itself makes things that change, and without any passage of time in itself
creates things that exist in time. That is why it is necessary for our minds to be purified
before that inexpressible reality can be inexpressibly seen by them; and in order to make
us fit and capable of grasping it, we are led along more endurable routes, nurtured on
faith as long as we have not yet been endowed with that necessary purification” (DT
1.3).
8 Introduction

does not compromise that truth. Intellectual temperance belongs to this

question in both classical and modern forms: Augustine argued the prob-
lem was that things “cannot be expressed as they are thought and cannot
be thought as they are,”10 and for the German Idealist tradition following
Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Jacobi, the problem was that the mind’s
conditioned and finite concepts compromise apprehension of the infinite
and unconditioned in the very act of thinking.11 The task of rendering
the distinction between Creator and creature is thus bound up intimately
with the habits and movements of thought one employs to render it.
Thus far we have suggested that the problem underneath the question
of how we confess God as God is bound up with an apostolic concern to
avoid idolatry and carries implications for the moral-­intellectual habits
and stances of the theologian. We may now grasp some of the meta-
physical aspects of this problem by reflecting on the underpinnings of
a realist commitment in Christian theology, that is, theology concerned
with what is really the case. As a science, theology attempts not only
to give a coherent account of reality but also to set forth rationally
how its various statements correspond to extralinguistic affairs.12 What
is real does, to this extent, exercise a critical function on the nature of
theology’s systematic claims. In the face of competing visions of real-
ity, however, Christian theology ventures distinctive claims based upon
its equally distinctive articles of faith. Doubtless, some of these articles
render Christian claims more distinctive than others: belief in creation is
at least formally held in common with Judaism and Islam, but belief in
Jesus Christ’s full deity, or the reconciling and re-­creative efficacy of his
Cross and Resurrection, leave no room for such formal similarities. So
regardless of its formal proximity or distance to other forms of belief,
Christian confession depends on the deliverances of divine teaching that
shape its understanding of reality, and this understanding is in important
ways distinctive. Indeed, part of Christian theology’s claim about what
is real is that the church exists in the sphere of divine teaching. This con-
tributes to the reasons for Christian theology’s realist concern with what
is, even if it does not exhaust them. For to say that theology depends on
the deliverances of divine teaching just is to invoke the axiomatic belief
in the reality of God’s presence and activity, a necessary condition of
Christian confession. “I am with you always,” Jesus promises his disciples
10
 Augustine, DT 5.4.
11
 Frederick Beiser, Hegel (London: Routledge, 2005), 163.
12
 A. N. Williams, The Architecture of Theology: Structure, System, and Ratio (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
 Confessing That God Is God 9

and by extension the church built on their foundation (Matt 28:20; Eph
2:20). And since “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), God remains active always and
everywhere; love is actual or else it is not love.13 Paul can thus write to
the church at Rome with confidence: “neither death nor life, nor angels
nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to sepa-
rate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39).
Furthermore, since theology takes it that God is the founding reality of
all other realities, then it inevitably seeks to relate what is actual to what
is most actual (actualissimus), and thus to the reality of God in its midst
but not merely in its midst. Love “is from God,” but “God is love” (1
Jn 4:7–8); God loves us in Christ “before the foundation of the world”
(Eph 1:4), and Christ is both “before all things” (Col 1:17) and “above
all” (Jn 3:31). Metaphysical concerns are thereby intrinsic to theology in
the sense that it attempts to understand things in light of their principles
(principia). As a science that seeks to “reduce” or trace things to their first
principle and final end in accordance with divine instruction, theology’s
concern with the actual terminates in its concern to see all things in rela-
tion to God in some respect.
This state of affairs characterizes theology in two ways that will prove
important for our inquiry, and which also drive us deeper into the prob-
lem Paul diagnoses in Romans 1. First, theology’s dependency on the
articles of faith means that it is responsive to God’s gracious initiative
in revealing himself through his covenant with Israel, and the gifts of
himself in the missions of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Theology is thus
marked by its religious responsibility to God as an act of worshipful
gratitude, as we have already seen. Given divine teaching, what follows
for theology is not further divinely inspired teaching but rather hear-
ing, receptivity, and confession of that which has been given “once for
all” (Jude 3). The mode of this confession is further shaped by the fact
that it responds to the presence and activity of God. This inseparability
of divine presence and teaching is part of the reason why the Christian
church celebrates Christ’s giving of his body and blood together with a
conviction of Christ’s presence in her midst, however this is understood.
Second, theology’s responsiveness to the generosity of God’s teaching
assumes something of a “speculative” character. There is an obvious sense
in which theology should not be “speculative,” where this is understood

 Ingolf U. Daferth, Becoming Present: An Inquiry into the Christian Sense of the
13

Presence of God (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 140.

10 Introduction

pejoratively to consist in unchecked curiosity: theology seeks only to

know its subject matter with an intimacy proper to its givenness and thus
without departing from theology’s essential dependence on the Giver.14
When properly tempered, theology receives its goods from God’s hands
and does not seek prideful mastery over what is real, nor does it seek to
find something more fundamental than what it is given. A negative exam-
ple along these lines might be the search for determinate “possibilities”
in the divine mind from which the actual world arose. If reflection on
what is possible is known only in light of what is actual, then the latter
retains its material priority.15 Theology therefore seeks to perceive truth
by seeing into the actual insofar as it is given to see, and in this sense it is
speculative as rational analysis of a matter to the extent that it is given for
such analysis (ratio ratiocinata). But to what extent does God give him-
self to be known? Here God’s actuality exercises some sway over what
a theological culture will consider impoverished and excessive forms of
speculative reason. Where the deposit of Christian teaching is assumed
to be exhausted in reflection on the benefits of Christ and the history
of God’s works, or where the inhibition on theological inquiry posed
by divine incomprehensibility precipitates a despair of the question of
God in himself, then speculation will be considered vainly curious where
it ventures statements encroaching on noumenal matters. The assump-
tion here is that what is really real is fundamentally or exclusively phe-
nomenal or historical, which might minimally be another way of saying
that well-­ordered theological reason will be absorbed with God’s effects.
Alternatively, some denial of divine incomprehensibility might consider

14
 See here Paul J. Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 50–74.
15
 On the connection between actualism and the grammar of creation as gift, see John
Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation
of the People (Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2013), 108–12. For a cogent philosophical
defense of actualism over possibilism that nevertheless allows for discussion of “nonac-
tual possible worlds . . . logically constructed out of the furniture of the actual world,”
see Robert Merrihew Adams, “Theories of Actuality,” in The Possible and the Actual:
Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Michael J. Loux (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1997), 190–209 (203). The ontological priority of actuality in theol-
ogy has been challenged most notably on eschatological grounds by Eberhard Jüngel,
“The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification,”
in Theological Essays, trans. J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 95–123.
Ingolf U. Dalferth echoes Jüngel to an extent in “Possibile absolutum: The Theological
Discovery of the Ontological Priority of the Possible,” in Rethinking the Medieval
Legacy for Contemporary Theology, ed. Anselm K. Min (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2014), 91–129. However, neither author seems invested in the kind
of possibilism presented here.
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