No Shadow of Turning
Classical Theism and the Openness of God
S. Joel Garver
Lecture I: Open Theism and Its Critique of Classical Theism
Echoing the epistle of St. James, Thomas Chisholm wrote a well-known hymn that begins:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;And here we see a statement of classical Christian doctrine: that God does not change and is faithful to his own self and, precisely as such, remains the unchanging God of all compassion.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.
But here is where one might suppose a difficulty to arise. If God is a God of compassion, then he suffers with his creatures in their pain, for that is the literal meaning of “compassion” in its Latin root: to suffer with (compassio). But if God suffers with his creatures, it might seem that God is “passible,” that is, subject to suffering that comes from outside of his own self. And if God is passible, in the sense of suffering because of his creatures, then it seems that the created world in some way can change the inner life of God. But if God changes, then he is not immutable and is not the unchanging God of all compassion of whom Chisholm’s hymn speaks.
And yet, I think, as people of Christian faith, we sense that God does not remain neutral to and untouched by our sufferings. Moreover, we believe that God’s eternal and unchanging love is the very reason that God cannot remain aloof. Therefore, we joyfully embrace the words of Chisholm’s hymn: “Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not; / As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.”
While a heart full of faith may easily embrace the God of all compassion as also the God who does not change, this God has sometimes proven rather more difficult for the minds of philosophers and theologians as they wrestle with the biblical text. The difficulty can be explained in the following way.
On one hand, Scripture presents God as the “wholly other” Creator, standing in need of nothing, all-sufficient in himself, who knows the end from the beginning, and is entirely consistent and faithful to himself and to his own Word. We speak of God’s creative power in terms of his “omnipotence.” We speak of his independence from anything outside himself in terms of his “aseity” and “impassibility.” We speak of God’s absolute self-sufficiency in terms of “pure actuality,” that God is already as great and complete as he can be. We speak of his knowledge in terms of “omniscience.” And we speak of his self-consistency and faithfulness in terms of “immutability.” This is the God that Christians have always confessed and this is, I believe, the God who has revealed himself in Holy Scripture.
On the other hand, the God we encounter in Scripture is also a God who is responsive to his creatures, who acts in history on their behalf to save and to judge, who answers prayer, who grieves, regrets, remembers, and, as the God of all love and compassion, enters into the suffering of his creatures in the person of Jesus Christ, in order to rescue them and redeem a people for himself. This God is active and living and he is dynamic and passionate. And this too is the God whom Christians confess and who has revealed himself in Scripture.
But how do we hold all of this together?
What I shall call “classical theism” has maintained that God is immutable, impassible, independent of his creation, and so on. This immutability, moreover, is not merely an ethical consistency, as if we could separate God’s ethical character from his essential attributes. Rather, it goes to the very nature of who God is in his own being—an ontological immutability. Often—particularly, I think, within early modern western philosophical conceptions (and by “early modern” I mean from the 16th century onward)—the God of classical theism has come across as an immobile, inert, unmoved, and static deity who remains aloof and detached from his creation and from the joys and pains of his creatures. Insofar as this sort of God is involved with his world, it is as the sovereign and all-powerful will that stands behinds all that occurs, in his sovereignty, infallibly and unchangeably determining whatsoever comes to pass.
There are historical reasons for why the God of classical theism has come to be seen in this way within the context of modern thought, but those reasons lie beyond the scope of what I have to say.1 Moreover, I believe that such a portrayal of classical theism—as we find in much of modern thought—is, in fact, a serious distortion of what classical theism has traditionally held and what the church has believed and taught, based on Scripture. Correcting that distortion will be one part of my task in the following discussion.
In the span of the past two centuries there have been a number of critical responses to these kinds of (mis)understandings of classical theism, often dismissing classical theism as an extra-biblical philosophical intrusion into the idea of God made known in the history of Israel and in Jesus Christ. As such, classical theism is seen as having more to do with the pagan Greeks, such as Aristotle, than with Christian revelation.
The earlier Christian responses against classical theism came in various forms of process theology, from Hegel to Whitehead.2 Other kinds of critical responses, often more sympathetic to classical theism, arose in the theology of neo-orthodox Reformed figures such as Karl Barth and Jürgen Moltmann.3 Finally, in our own day, sharper criticism has arisen from among those who espouse the “openness of God” (or “open theists”) including evangelical theologians such as Clark Pinnock, William Hasker, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, and others.4
While there is some diversity among them, those theologians within this last group—those who maintain the “openness of God”—make a number of characteristic claims:5
[1] that God's love requires his being responsive to his creaturesAll in all, these kinds of claims, with their challenges to and modifications of classical theism, are not coming from some small group of quirky theologians working at the margins of mainstream theology. On the contrary, these claims represent the thought of some of the 20th century’s most important Christian theologians (Barth, Moltmann) and, in the case of the open theists, some of the leading figures in contemporary American evangelicalism.6 We will do well, then, to give their criticisms and claims due attention and careful consideration.
[2] that creatures therefore truly influence God
[3] that human freedom sets a limit on God's sovereignty
[4] that God learns the future at it comes to pass, and
[5] that God is thereby dependent upon the world in various respects.
In this first lecture, therefore, I will be giving a brief explanation of each of the five central claims make by the open theists and some of the reasoning that lies behind them. If we are going to defend a version of classical theism, as I intend to do, then is it necessary to understand the criticisms of it and the alternative offered to it. Open theists make a number of valid points with regard both to how God is revealed to us in the biblical text, as well as the ways in which the God of classical theism has sometimes been portrayed. Thus we will do well to listen to the proponents of the openness of God carefully and charitably so that we may learn better how to faithfully confess the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Let’s turn to the first claim made by the open theists, that God's love requires his being responsive to his creatures. There are several implicit features of this claim, only some of which will concern us. For instance, open theists often seem to prioritize God’s love among his various attributes in such a way that it overwhelms his other attributes, forcing us to revise our understanding those attributes in light of the overwhelming character of divine love. Richard Rice writes, “Love is the essence of the divine reality, the basic source from which all of God’s attributes arise.”7
Though perhaps supporting their perspective, such an overarching focus on God’s love is not necessary for the claims of open theism. If it is the case that, among various attributes, God is also love, and if we explain love as necessarily involving features such as responsiveness, sensitivity, and vulnerability, then the simple claim that God is love is sufficient in itself possibly to ground some of the claims of the open theists, without having to grant divine love any of kind of absolute centrality, particularly the controversial idea that love is the ontological ground of all of God’s other attributes.8
We will do well, then, to think a bit about God’s love and what it means for God be loving or that, indeed, as 1 John says, “God is love.” Scripture reveals God as a God of love, even defining his lordship and sovereignty in terms of his love.9 Thus, when the Lord God shows himself to Moses, he proclaims himself, “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands…” (Ex 34:6-7). Likewise, Jesus, in whom God most fully reveals himself to us, shows us what the sovereignty of God looks like:
You know that those who are considered rulers among the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mk 10:42-45)As the express image of the Father (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3), we learn from Jesus that God’s sovereignty is not one that lords itself over his creatures, but takes the form of service, even unto the death of cross. Divine lordship is cruciform love.10
What God does in the history of redemption, culminating in the life and actions of Jesus, shows us who God is in himself. Indeed, we have an intimate glimpse into the eternal life of God in Jesus’ prayers in the garden before his crucifixion. He prays there that we might know that God loves us with the very love with which he has eternally loved Jesus as the divine Son of God (Jn 17:22-26), again showing that God is love and that this love defines the relationships among the Persons of the Trinity. Thus, while some of the claims of the open theists regarding the priority of God’s love may go too far, the love of God is certain an important and central biblical theme that must inform our understanding of who God is in himself.
But what is the nature of this love? Is it a feeling? Does it involve a responsiveness, a sensitivity to human affairs? Open theist Clark Pinnock presents a God who is like “a caring parent with qualities of love and responsiveness, generosity and sensitivity, openness and vulnerability.” 11 After all, Scripture speaks of God as compassionate, merciful, tender, taking delight in and pity upon his creatures. Scripture even goes so far as to say that God can “be grieved” by the actions of his creatures (Gen 6:6; Eph 4:30), that he can “regret” having made them, that in the distress of his people God is distressed (Isa 63:9). As the very image of the eternal God, Jesus weeps (Lk 19:41; Jn 11:35), is moved with compassion (Mk 1:31; 6:34), is disturbed in his innermost self, and so on. How can we not allow the tears of Jesus to impinge upon our image of God? Is not the God of the Bible one who is passionate, who is moved, who feels the plight of his creatures?
If we present a theology in which God is incapable of these things in any sense, in which God is inert and dispassionate, unmoved and aloof, then we are not being faithful to the teaching of Scripture. This biblical language of God’s passion and responsiveness cannot be set aside simply as “anthropomorphism” or divine condescension to human limitations in order that we might somehow conceive and relate to a God who, in reality, possesses a character or nature other than what he reveals himself to be. On the contrary, God’s self-revelation in Scripture and, above all, in the Person and work of Jesus Christ, shows us who God truly is in himself. This biblical language of divine compassion, mercy, grief, tenderness, and so on is, in some manner or another, literally true of the God of Holy Scripture.12 On that much, the open theists are correct.
It is a distinct question, however, whether such an embrace of divine responsiveness, sensitivity, and even vulnerability requires a revision of classical theism toward open theism. Answering that question, however, will have to wait for my second talk, though I am convinced that classical theism contains more than adequate resources to take up the challenge of open theism.
Let’s turn then to some further claims of open theism. If it is the case that God’s love is a responsive love, a vulnerable love, then it would seem to follow that, in some manner or another, creatures therefore truly influence God and, moreover, one might argue, as the open theists do, that human freedom sets a limit on God's sovereignty. It is not entirely clear to me just how these conclusions are supposed to follow from the nature of God’s love and responsiveness to creatures, but I shall try to outline what I take the argument to be.
Open theists ground their perspective, it seems, in two main considerations: first, biblical accounts of divine-human interaction as embodying genuine responsiveness and, second, an analysis of the nature of God’s love and grace and its necessary reciprocity if it is to constitute a real relationship between God and his creatures. With regard to the first, it is true that the Scriptures present us with a God who truly and authentically responds to his creatures. As we have already seen God can be delighted by their actions or grieved by their rebellion. Moreover, time and again God takes actions, makes threats, pronounces blessings and curses, and so on as a result of his creatures’ choices, achievements, and failures.
One can think here of God’s interaction with Moses on Mt. Sinai in response to the Israelites’ idolatry in worshipping the golden calf. Yahweh says to Moses,
I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my anger may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you. (Ex 32:9-10)Through Moses’ intercession, however, God does not destroy Israel, rather, Exodus tells us, “Yahweh relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people” (Ex 32:14). The biblical text presents a certain kind of give-and-take between God and Moses, in which human intercession is the occasion for God modifying his initially expressed intention or changing his mind altogether.
We can find many other biblical examples of such genuine divine response to human intercession, repentance, faith, disobedience, and so on: Abraham’s intercession on behalf of Sodom (Gen 18:16-33), God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh when they repented (Jonah 3), God’s relenting in light of the pleading of the prophet Amos (Amos 7:1-6), God’s sorrow before the flood that he had made humanity (Gen 6:5-7), God’s regret that he had made Saul king of Israel (1 Sa 15:11), and so on. We can add to this all the places in Scripture where God is said generally to respond, whether in anger, grief, delight, mercy, and so on. The open theists, therefore, rightly criticize any view of God’s will and divine sovereignty that leaves no room for such authentic response on the part of God or attempts to explain it away without doing justice to God’s own self-revelation in Scripture.
With regard to the second consideration I mentioned above—the nature of God’s love for and grace towards his creatures as involving actual reciprocity—open theists often argue in the following way:
God, in grace, grants humans significant freedom to cooperate with or work against God’s will for their lives, and he enters in dynamic, give-and-take relationships with us. The Christian life involves a genuine interaction between God and human beings. We respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses…and on it goes. God takes risks in his give-and-take relationship, yet he is endlessly resourceful and competent in working towards his ultimate goals…God does not control everything that happens. Rather, he is open to input from his creatures. In loving dialogue, God invites us to participate with him to bring the future into being.13This is merely a summary statement from a preface to a longer book, but here we do see the general shape of the open theists’ argument. If God enters into a genuinely responsive and loving relationship with his creatures, then it is thought to necessarily entail that God, in some important sense, “takes risks” so that he is not in control of everything that happens. Otherwise, it is implied, input from creatures is not authentic or real. These points appear to follow from general, somewhat philosophical reflections regarding the nature of love, relationship, responsiveness, reciprocity, and so on.14
Even granting that God is a God who loves, who truly responds to his creatures, and so on, it is a further distinct question whether or not this kind of divine responsiveness entails that God is subject to change or is mutable. And it is yet another question whether God’s response to his creatures entails that the freedom of creatures somehow limits his sovereignty. After all, might not God, in his loving and self-sacrificial sovereignty, always already have included his response to his creatures in his plan to create and redeem them? Would such a response be any less authentic or any less loving? And why should we see human freedom and divine sovereignty in a manner that pits them against one another, so that, for either to be genuine, it must somehow limit the other? It is neither clear nor beyond challenge that these questions should be answered along the lines of open theism.
But open theists do not stop there. They argue further that, if the free choices of creatures do limit God’s sovereignty, then these choices also limit God’s knowledge so that God only learns the future at it comes to pass, insofar as it is affected by the free choices of his creature. Moreover, this picture would seem to entail divine passibility in the sense that God is dependent upon the world in various respects so that he is affected by the world in such a way that the effect upon God finds part of its ultimate origin in the world itself, independent of God’s own will or foreknowledge.
The argument for all of these conclusions, however, is far from obvious.15 And as they proceed they become more and more troubling from the standpoint of classical theism as that emerges from divine self-revelation in Holy Scripture. The God of Scripture is the God who responds, but he is also the God who proclaims, “I, Yahweh, do not change” (Mal 3:6), of whom it is said, “God is not a human that he should lie, nor a son of Adam that he should change his mind” (Num 23:19; cf.1 Sa 15:29). The God of Scripture is the God who has created free creatures and genuinely interacts with them, but he is also the God who declares, “You are my witnesses…that I am God. Yes, from ancient days I am he. No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?” (Isa 43:12-13). He is the God of whom the Psalmist says, “The plans of Yahweh stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations” (Ps 33:11).
If we are faithful to God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures, we cannot interpret one set of texts at the expense of the other. Rather, we must find a way to hold the entire biblical witness together with integrity. This task may not be easy or simple, because it is God of whom we speak and God’s ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts. Nevertheless, it is my contention that with the resources of classical theism we can, in fact, bring together the entirety of the biblical witness without having to compromise any portion of it. This does not mean, however, that nothing is to be learned or gained from this brief survey of open theism.
To the extent that certain kinds of modernist theologies have presented the God whom the open theists critique (including strands of my own Calvinistic tradition), their critique is warranted and such modernist theologies have not always been as faithful to the Scriptural data regarding God as one would wish.16 Moreover, to the degree that many open theists point to the person of Jesus Christ as the place where God is definitively and fully revealed, I concur. At this point in particular, their emphasis is a helpful corrective to some theologies that take "the one God" as a starting point for theology with little or no attention to the doctrine of the Trinity or the Incarnation.17
While I very much appreciate the concerns of the open theists, I want to maintain: [1] they have mischaracterized the bulk of "classical theism," when properly understood in its historical and philosophical context; and [2] classical theism, understood correctly, contains resources that quite adequately account for the valid concerns of open theism, especially when expounded with a greater emphasis on the distinctively Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In terms of the perceived tensions in the biblical picture of God as I sketched that above, I want to say that the tension is only apparent and that one way of biblically describing God does not need to be qualified at the expense of the another, whether on the side of classical or open theism. Rather, we must say that God is compassionate because he is all-sufficient. God is responsive because he is immutable. God can be said to suffer because he is pure act.
I realize that these affirmations sound paradoxical and perhaps even contradictory. Nonetheless, it is precisely such an understanding of God—the Triune God of Scripture revealed in Jesus Christ—that will be the topic of my second lecture.
Lecture II: Classical Theism and Its Response to Open Theism
In my first lecture I spent much of my time attempting to listen to the concerns of the open theists, particularly insofar as Scripture bears witness to the legitimacy of their concerns. The God of Holy Scripture who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ is a God who responds, a God who acts in history on behalf of his people, full of compassion and abounding in love. But Scripture also bears witness to a God who is the sovereign Creator of all things, who stands in absolute distinction from every creature who, even in his weakness, is stronger than human beings (1 Co 1:25). It is with God as the transcendent Creator, then, that I wish to begin now.
The Scriptures, of course, are not written in the language and thought-forms of philosophy and are not designed primarily to answer philosophical questions. Nevertheless, we as Christians must draw out the implications and assumptions of Scripture in order to think about and address even those areas of which the Scriptures do not directly speak. After all, how we answer philosophical questions about the being of God will have profound implications for who we believe God is and who we are in relation to him.
Thus, while the Bible does not often use the well-defined language and systematic methods of philosophy to speak of God, nonetheless, as God reveals himself in Scripture through his actions and in the experience of his people, his divine nature and relation to the world is made known. Even though, from the standpoint of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, we can recognize that the Old Testament’s witness to God is partial and incomplete, it is nevertheless from within the context of Yahweh’s prior revelation to Israel that God fully revealed himself in Christ. Thus, that revelation to Israel is where we will begin.
First, from the standpoint of Israel’s own experience, we must begin with God’s calling of Israel and establishing his covenant with them. Israel knew that Yahweh himself had initiated and renewed his covenant with them: the call of Abraham, the exodus, the exile and return, and so on. It was out of Yahweh’s own choice, loving initiative, and faithful promises that he established Israel as his own people, and not because of anything they had done (Ex 19:5; Dt 7:8-11; 9:4-6; 10:14-15; etc.). Thus Israel came to know Yahweh as a God who in his sovereignty initiated, created, promised, acted, and saved in accordance with his covenant.
From within this framework of the covenant, Israel also came to understand more about their God: [1] that Yahweh was not just one god among many, but the only God who had created all things, and [2] that Yahweh was a personal deity who acted in love and faithfulness towards his creation.18 In more philosophical terminology, Israel came to understand both [1] that their God was the transcendent creator who was, thereby, absolutely different from all created things, who alone could create and initiate a relationship with his creation, and [2] that their God was the immanent covenant God who was, thereby, intimately involved with his creation and present to it, particularly his covenant people. Moreover, Israel seemed to understand that God is able immanently to act within his creation precisely because he is transcendent over it.
I don’t wish to belabor this point, but this absolute distinction (and relation) between Creator and creature is central all that I have to say and, therefore, needs further exposition. Thomas Weinandy provides such an exposition in his discussion of the Old Testament revelation of God as Savior, Creator, and All Holy.19
As Savior, Yahweh reveals himself as “the living God who acts in time and history,” who, unlike the idols of the pagans, surpasses all other human or natural powers and all cosmic forces, so that “no historical situation is outside Yahweh’s providential care nor immune from his saving action” (cf. Isa 44:9-20; Jer 10:3-5).20 As such, Yahweh stands uniquely in absolute distinction from all world-bound powers. And so Hosea testifies, “I have been Yahweh your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior” (13:4; cf. Ex 15:11). It was Israel’s experience of God as this kind of Savior that all the more made known to them the prior truth that God is also the Creator, for it as the Creator of all things that God is able to save.
As Creator, then, Yahweh reveals himself as the one “who is distinct from all that he creates, and so can neither be depicted in any fashion nor numbered as one of the things created.”21 This is seen in the way Genesis depicts God as calling all things into existence by his mere Word, so that the biblical notion of creation is absolute—all of creation is radically contingent upon God’s creative power and nothing within the creation is divine. Thus, while creation reveals and discloses God to us, any similarity between God and the world is situated within an even more radical otherness (see Isa 40:18).22 The complete dependence of the world upon God, however, not only establishes a distinction between God and the world, it also means that God “remains most intimate with his creation…lovingly present to what he has made” (see, e.g., Ps 139).23 This awe-inspiring and paradoxical relation of transcendence and immanence is summed up, above all, in the Scriptural notion of God’s holiness.
As the All Holy One, Yahweh reveals himself in all of his intimate otherness, characterized by a majestic and powerful perfection and goodness that distinguishes God as beyond and above all created things, who remains entirely and wholly himself: “I am Yahweh; there is none besides me.” Yet, it is out of this holy goodness that God created in the first place, that he is angered and grieved by human sin, and that he seeks to protect, save, and perfect his people. Thus, when God appears to Israel in the “splendor of his holiness,” he is terrifying to approach (Ex 19:3-20; Num 20:1-13; 1 Sa 6:19-21), but it is this very splendor that protects Israel and is the effective sign of God’s close presence among them (Ex 40:34-35; 2 Sam 6:7-11; 1 Ki 8:10-53). As the All Holy, even though Yahweh is utterly unapproachable in terms of the creature’s own initiative, Yahweh is also the God who remains always immediately at hand as he chooses to graciously dwell in the midst of his people.
This complex biblical interplay of transcendence and immanence is at the heart of God’s revelation of himself. It is not as if some aspects of God are transcendent, while others are immanent. Rather, as we have seen, it is the one and same God who, in his whole being, is both transcendent and immanent in relation to his creation and, moreover, that these are mutually defining concepts. Therefore, it is only as the God of Scripture who is utterly and transcendently distinct from all created things that this same God is also intimately and immanently present to his creation, the God who is closer to us than we are to ourselves, as Augustine said.24
This crucial truth should warn us against any attempt to divide God’s attributes up into opposed categories: on one hand, into those attributes that appear to make God distant and remote and, on the other hand, into those attributes that seem to make God responsive and involved. Open theism, it seems to me, arguably falls into this very mistake of pitting transcendence and immanence against one another. Rather, the biblical picture would lead us to expect that God’s intimate involvement with his creation will have to be conceived as a unique mode of involvement that also expresses divine transcendence. Likewise, God’s categorical difference from his creation will have to be conceived as a mode of difference that also entails divine immanence. We will return to this point shortly.
Thus far I have primarily focused upon the biblical revelation of God as we find that in the Old Testament faith of Israel. The fullness of God’s self-disclosure, however, has come to us in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ, God himself come to us in human flesh (Heb 1:1-3). Moreover, in Christ we know God to be a Trinity of divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons, yet one God. Neither the Incarnation nor the Trinity run counter to what we have already heard, but rather deepen and strengthen our understanding of God as transcendent and immanent.
I will simply assume here the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as that has been discerned from Holy Scripture by the church and subsequently defined in the early Councils: that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three co-equal Persons who are each exhaustively God so that they exist as one-in-being.25 Moreover, each of these three Persons is who he is only in relation to the other Persons, so that the existence of each both defines and is defined by the other Persons.26 The relationships among these divine Persons are traditionally referred to as “processions” and that is language I will be using. This way of thinking about the Trinity can be seen from the simple terms “Father” and “Son” by which God names the first two Persons. No person is a father unless he has a child and no child is a son unless he has a father. The concepts of “father” and “son” are mutually defining and constitutive of one another. God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the particular shape that revelation takes, shows us that each of the divine Persons subsists only in relation to the Others.
Thus, the Father is Father only in relation to the Son and to the Spirit so that he is constituted as “Father” in the single eternal event or act of begetting the Son and breathing out the Spirit, an eternal event of divine self-giving love, so that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in and through the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Father lovingly gives himself over so exhaustively and without remainder in this act that this act defines the Father as Father and constitutes the Son and the Spirit as divine Persons as much as the Father.
Similarly, the Son is Son only in relation to the Father and to the Spirit so that he is constituted as “Son” in the single eternal event or act of being begotten by the Father and sending out the Spirit, an eternal event of divine self-giving love, so that the Son eternally gives to the Father in and through the Spirit by whom he was begotten. Like the giving of the Father, the self-giving return of the begotten Son to the Father in the Spirit defines the Son as Son and constitutes the Father and the Spirit as divine Persons as much as the Son.
Finally, the Spirit is Spirit only in relation to the Father and to the Son so that he is constituted as “Spirit” in the single eternal event or act of being breathed out in love by the Father as the one in whom the Son is begotten and being the one in whom, proceeding from the Son, the Son completely gives himself back to the Father. Like the giving of the Father and the Son, the self-giving procession of the Spirit from the Father in the Son and from the Son returning to the Father defines the Spirit as Spirit and constitutes the Father and Son as divine Persons as much as the Spirit.
The Persons of the Trinity, then, are to be understood as relational events or acts of loving gift who are nothing more and nothing less than these eternally active relationships. As such, for instance, the Father cannot become any more the Father by doing anything further than he already eternally does in begetting the Son and breathing out the Spirit. And the same holds true for the other divine Persons, who are each already eternally who they are in their fully actualized self-giving relations of love. Thus, the personhood of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is exhaustively constituted by their respective relational acts.
The Old Testament revelation of God’s transcendent otherness, as distinct from every created thing, is therefore explained and fulfilled by the revelation of God as Trinity since it is as Trinity that God is exalted above every created form of existence and remains definitively unlike any created thing. Indeed, it is precisely the absolute difference, “otherness,” and distance between the Persons of the Trinity that grounds the possibility of God freely choosing to create a world that exists as something truly distinct from and other than himself.
But the revelation of God’s immanent loving presence is also explained and fulfilled by the revelation of God as Trinity since it is as Trinity that God is shown to be defined by the loving gift of self, one to another as the one God. Indeed, it is precisely the absolute identity of each of the Persons as God—while remaining in all their infinite distinction as Persons—that grounds the possibility of God’s intimate closeness to a creation that exists as something completely other than himself.
It is also in light of this revelation of God as Trinity that we must understand the claims of classical theism, particularly that God is both “being itself” (ipsum esse) and “pure act” (actus purus), concepts that are closely interrelated.27 The affirmation that God is “being itself” (where “being” is not just a noun, but a verb referring the eternal event of existing) is a way of speaking of who God is distinct from all created things. It is not, after all, the essence of any created thing to be or to exist, since its existence is a gift received, wholly dependent upon the power of God to create. God might have made all different things from those he has actually created or, indeed, he might have made nothing at all. But what actually exist are those potentially existing things that God has chosen to actualize, those things that might or might not have existed, yet God has chosen to bring into existence.
God, on the other hand, is a completely different sort of being and not just another thing alongside created things. For God, existing is of his essence, since his existing is not dependent upon anything outside of himself and thus he is self-existent. It is not the case that God might or might not have existed, but rather it is the case that God is the sort of being who necessarily exists. “Being itself” or the event of existing just is the nature of God. In God there is no unrealized potential, no possibility that God might become more God than he already is, because God is eternally fully actualized. As “being itself” God also just is “pure act.”
This philosophical description of the nature of God on the part of classical theism is consonant with, follows from, and finds fulfillment in the account of God as Trinity that we have already discussed. The Christian notion of God as “being itself” and “pure act” has a distinctively Trinitarian content and explanation, since the actualization of who God is takes the form of the eternal relations between the Persons of the Trinity, each of whom is fully who he is in the event or act of relating to the other divine Persons. And as I suggested earlier, this Trinitarian understanding is necessary for God to be the God of Scripture who remains both transcendent and immanent in relation to his creation.
This discussion of the revelation of God in Scripture, culminating in the revelation of God as Trinity, and its connection with the claims of classical theism, now enables us to address the important questions raised by the proponents of open theism.
Let us recall the biblical descriptions of God as a God who is compassionate, merciful, tender, takes delight in and pity upon his creatures, is moved by their sin and plight, responds to their prayers, and even surrenders himself for their salvation in the vulnerability of the cross. As we have seen in the first lecture, it will not do simply dismiss such language as anthropomorphic language, for Scripture is revealing something that is true about God, particularly as he reveals himself fully in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the Scriptures reveal God as the one who is transcendent, to whom no comparison is possible, whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways, and who is, in relation to his creation, the “wholly other.” It is this God who was incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, not only as a revelation of God’s immanence and involvement in human affairs, but also his absolute otherness since, in the paradox of biblical revelation, only such a transcendent God could truly become a human being and dwell among us.
Consequently, when Scripture speaks of God in all of these ways—of God’s compassion, grief, love, suffering, and so on—it speaks of these as the compassion, grief, love, and suffering of the God who transcends creation and remains wholly other than it. Indeed, the passion and seeming excessiveness of the biblical language about God points to a God who, in all these ways, lies beyond merely human and anthropomorphic categories, who is loving and passionate and responsive in a way that no created being could be. This is not to say that Scriptural language concerning God is not literally true, for indeed it is. But, as Weinandy notes, this “is a literalness that must be interpreted from within the complete otherness of God.”28
Let’s push these points further. Scriptural revelation and classical theism both maintain, side by side with this language of passion and love and response, that God is nevertheless immutable and impassible, beyond all change in himself or limitation by his creation. In light of what we have seen, however, it is clear that this immutability and impassibility cannot be understood in terms of God being inert, aloof, or static. Rather, God is immutable and impassible for quite the opposite reason.
As a God who is pure act, realized in the relations of self-giving love among the Persons of the Trinity, the God of Scripture is already as living, dynamic, relational, loving, passionate, and responsive as he could possibly be. No change in God or in his creation in relation to him could make God any more active than he already is since he already contains within himself the full actualization of every divine possibility and every relation and response to his creatures. It is in this light that we must understand my earlier claims that God is compassionate because he is all-sufficient, responsive because he is immutable, and even can be said to suffer because he is pure act. These claims can be made precisely because God’s Trinitarian nature as absolute being and pure actuality eternally contains every possibility for compassion and response to his creation and, indeed, the very possibility of creation. Further explanation, however, is necessary.
Turning to the act of creation itself, we must insist that God’s act of creation as such is analogically contained in the processions within the Trinity, particularly within the eternal begetting of the Son in the Spirit. I say that this is true “analogically” for several important reasons. If we were to say that the act of creation is contained univocally in the processions within the Trinity, then we would be saying that the eternal begetting of the Son in the Spirit simply entails or is even identical with the creation of the universe. But the creation of the world is a free act of God creating something in addition to and distinct from himself. On the other hand, if we were to say that the act of creation is contained equivocally in the processions within the Trinity, then we would be saying that the eternal begetting of the Son in the Spirit bears no necessary relation to God’s creation of the world or that the act of creation tells us nothing of the true nature of God in himself.
The notion of an analogical relation, however, is that of a true similarity, but not an identity. Particularly it is a similarity, with regard to the relation between God and world, which is contained within an even greater and absolute difference.29 Thus, Thomas Aquinas writes:
The divine Persons, according the nature of their procession, have a causality respecting the nature of things…Hence God the Father made the creature through his Word, which is his Son; and through his Love, which is the Holy Spirit. And so the processions of the Persons are the type of the production of creatures…30And so, the possibility of God’s relation to the created world is already pre-contained within the eternal life of the Trinity. Moreover, God’s knowledge of his creation is contained in the eternal begetting of the Son as the Word of the Father. Aquinas writes:
“Word” implies relation to creatures. For God, by knowing himself, knows every creature…Since, by one act, God understands himself and all things, his one and only Word expresses not only the Father, but all creation.31Likewise, this knowledge is one borne in love since God’s love for his creatures is already contained in the eternal procession of the Spirit as the Spirit of love between the Father and Son. Again, Aquinas writes:
The Father loves not only the Son, but also himself and us, by the Holy Spirit…It is evident that relation to the creature is implied both in the Word [that is, the Son] and in the proceeding Love [that is, the Holy Spirit]…inasmuch as the divine truth and goodness are a principle of understanding and loving all creatures.32Aquinas adds,
When we say that in [God] there is a procession of Love, we show that God produced creatures, not because he needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of his own goodness.33Therefore, for the classical theism of Aquinas, God’s relation to, knowledge of, and love for his creation are already analogically provided for within the life of the Trinity so that God’s nature as Trinity is a necessary precondition for the possibility of creation at all.
This kind of analogical approach, rooted in the biblical revelation of God as a transcendent Trinity of Persons, provides us with the resources necessary for going further and to speak now of divine pathos, compassion, and even suffering as that is present within an unchanging and impassible God. In whatever manner we conceive these divine realities, it is clear from our discussion thus far that it will not involve God’s subjection to a cause that is external to his own being so that he suffers as one who is acted upon by an outside force. Rather, it is in the freedom of the Trinity as an interrelation of self-giving love that we will contemplate the passion of God. Divine pathos, then, will have the form of a fully active love that excludes any kind of deficiency or passivity, for even the responsiveness and vulnerability of God is one that expresses the power and fullness of God as pure actuality.
The compassion of God, of course, is most gloriously revealed in the cross of Christ, where God the Son suffers in human flesh in order that we who suffer might be redeemed. But even here, with regard to the incarnate Son in his humanity, we cannot speak of a pure passivity. Jesus says of the sufferings of the cross, “I give my life and I will take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I give it of myself” (John 10:18). Or as Augustine says regarding the Incarnate Word, “with him, weakness is willed on the basis of power.”34 And as we heard in the first lecture, it is in the service of the cross that the sovereign power of God comes to fullest expression.
This paradox of Jesus Christ’s fully active and willed passion and suffering most radically and mysteriously reveals God to us. With regard to this revelation of God in the suffering of Christ, however, two claims must be made and two errors avoided.
The first claim is that the sufferings of Jesus are the sufferings of God the Son and thereby not confined to his human nature while his divine nature remains dispassionately aloof. While there is no confusion between Christ’s divine and human natures, there also is no division since there remains a single divine subject of those natures in the Person of the eternal Son. It is the Person of Christ who undergoes the cross and not merely a “nature” and, since that Person is God the Son, the cross reveals him to us. Thus St. Paul tells us, it is “because [Christ] was in his very nature God that he did consider equality with God something to be seized, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant…and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). The sufferings of Jesus on the cross on our behalf are expressive of the very nature of who Jesus Christ is as God the Son.
The second claim is that the eternally begotten Son of God, incarnate in human flesh, is the perfect expression and image of the Father. “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus states (John 14:9) and we cannot exclude this revelation of the Father from the sufferings of the cross, as if the Father were only revealed in Jesus’ words and miracles. On the contrary, the cross itself above all tells us something of the eternal nature of God as he exists in himself as the God of all compassion.
But there are also two errors that we must avoid in making these sorts of claims. The first error would be to identify the sufferings of Christ according to the flesh with the experience of Christ in his divinity, treating the two as univocal. The communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum) between Christ in his humanity and in his divinity is not an identity that collapses Christ’s humanity into his divinity.35 If this were the case, then the sufferings of the cross would impinge upon the transcendence of God, making the cross somehow a necessary moment in God’s actualization of himself or suggesting that God himself stood in need of redemption.36
The second error would be to deny any kind of correspondence between the sufferings of Christ in his humanity and the experience of Christ in his divinity, treating the two as entirely equivocal. This would be to separate and divide Christ’s humanity and divinity and obscure that humanity as the fullness of God’s own definitive self-disclosure.37 If this were the case, then the sufferings of the cross would remain wholly external to the life of God, making it difficult to understand why it was necessary that God should become incarnate to suffer in human flesh for the redemption of humanity or why he was truly moved to do so by his divine compassion.
The way forward, again, is analogical. God remains the wholly other, transcendent over his creation and radically distinct from any created thing. Nevertheless, if the events of Good Friday are to reveal God to us through some likeness to his eternal being, they must then have an analogical foundation in the eternal nature of God himself as Trinity. The surrender of Christ upon the cross by which he took upon himself the fullness of human suffering points back to that eternal self-surrender among the Persons of the Trinity by which God is eternally who he is in himself.
This mutual and reciprocal self-giving within the Trinity establishes the absolute difference among the divine Persons (all the while remaining identically one God), each Person being constituted in his own distinct identity in relation to the Others through the gift of self. Furthermore, this Trinitarian differentiation among the Persons is, as noted earlier, the necessary precondition for the possibility of God creating a world that is truly different from himself. But the creation of a world that is distinct from God also is the possibility for sin.
Our existence and identity as beings distinct from God is one that is premised upon receiving everything that we have and are as a gift from God, a gift that should call forth reciprocity in us in the form of trust and obedience. Sin rejects the gift by refusing reciprocity and, as such, transforms difference and distinction into separation, so that our experience of God becomes one of god-forsakenness as we refuse the self-giving love of God as our Creator.
Yet, it is the infinite distinction among the divine Persons, while yet remaining one God, that grounds the very possibility for the dereliction of sin within the created world. And, insofar as God knows and loves his creation in the Son and through the Spirit, the Trinity must have always already foreseen and made provision for the eventuality of sin. When Jesus cries out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he does so as man, but not merely as man. This is also analogically the cry of God the Son in his difference from the Father, even as he is eternally one in being with the Father, forever remaining in his self-giving love through the Holy Spirit. The Son’s cry, therefore, embraces the god-forsakenness of sin and invests the cross with the infinite value of divine love for the redemption of the world.
Accordingly, the possibility of the cross must also have its ultimate analogical foundation within the eternal Trinitarian processions—the Son, eternally begotten in the Spirit, offers himself back to the Father, eternally committing that Spirit into his Father’s hands, dying to himself; the Father eternally accepts the Son’s self-offering, embracing it in that same Spirit with whom he eternally fills the Son and in whom the Father sends and gives up the Son himself in his begetting. This Trinitarian movement of love—simultaneously a giving up of self and the fullness of life—is the eternal foundation of the Father’s love for the world by which he sends his only Son who offers himself up for sin (John 3:16). In the words of Jean-Pierre Batut, “What in God’s own life is a death to self, which is one with the super-abundance of life, becomes a passage through death to Resurrection when God enters into contact with the sinful reality of earthly existence.”38
Even if we cannot strictly speaking say that God, in his own being “suffers,” there yet remains an eternal analogue to suffering in which the redemption of the cross is already provided for and included in the eternal offering, self-surrender and—may we even say—sacrifice among the divine Persons within the Trinity. This is what Hans Urs von Balthasar terms the “supra-suffering” of the impassible God.39
The Trinitarian God of Scripture, therefore, is also the God of classical theism who, as being itself and pure act, remains immutably and impassibly transcendent over creation as Trinity. It is precisely in the plentitude of the intra-Trinitarian relations that God already is passionate, loving, and responsive to his creation, even, in some sense, taking up the suffering of his creatures for their redemption. This divine weakness and vulnerability is, paradoxically, the fullness of the saving power of God, that dynamic and over-abundant love that lies beyond passibility and, indeed, beyond any shadow of turning.
Notes
1. For part of the story of how this kind of perception of classical theism developed, one might consult the following historical studies on the emergence of the modern out of the shifts within late medieval theology, with some of its theological implications: Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, trans. by Michael B. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); John Montag, “Revelation: The False Legacy of Suarez” in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. by John Milbank, et al. (London: Routledge,1999); and Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1994,); Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
2. See, for instance, G.F.W. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979). One might also consult the writings of Charles Hartshorne, particularly, Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Hamden: Archon Books, 1964).
3. See here, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, especially I/2 and II/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957) and Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (London: SCM, 1974) and The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (London: SCM, 1981). See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).
4. See, among various publications, Clark Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, et al, The Openness of God (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994); William Hasker, “The Openness of God” in Christian Scholar’s Review 28:1 (Fall 1998): 111-139; Greg Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), John Sanders, The God Who Risks (Downers Grove: IVP, 1998).
5. This list is based on a similar one given by John Frame in his No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001) 22. Frame’s list serves as an outline for his book-length response. The list I give here is not intended in quite so programmatic a way.
6. Note that the publishers of works by open theists including some of the most prominent evangelical publishing houses: Baker Books, Eerdmans, and especially, InterVarsity Press. The last of these is particularly important given its place and influence among college and university students.
7. Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in The Openness of God (Downers Grove, IVP: 1994) 21. The claim that the divine essence is supremely characterized by love is not, however, a claim unique to open theists. A number of classical theists have made similar claims, rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity as an exchange of love (see, e.g., Maximus the Confessor, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and more recently, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christos Yannaras, and others). Nonetheless, given the doctrine of divine simplicity, many of these classically theist theologians would also add that love’s priority lies in the fact that all of God’s attributes and nature can be understood under the concept of love and, perhaps, love has an epistemic priority in coming to understand who God is. They would not claim, however, that love has any kind of absolute ontological priority.
8. We can recognize, of course, that love is of the essence of God as a Trinity of Persons in a way that other attributes are not, given that they arise only in relation to the creature. For instance, divine wrath is not of the essence of who God is in himself in the way that love is; rather, it represents a particular relation to the creature who, in rebellion rejects divine love and the manner in which God’s unchanging love must necessarily respond to a spurning of that love.
9. Some of the following is intended as a gentle response to John Frame’s tendency to emphasize divine lordship in such a way that, it seems to me, the character of that lordship as loving service is sometimes eclipsed.
10. See my essay on this theme in the second Gospel, “Mark’s Jesus and Our Suffering,” available online at <http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/markjesus.html>. Also note St. Paul’s emphasis in Philippians 2 that it is specifically because Jesus was in his very nature God that he took the form of a servant unto death. We will pick up this theme again in the second lecture.
11. Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God (Downers Grove, IVP: 1994) 103.
12. This “literalness” may, of course, be embedded within a larger analogical understanding of language about God, which recognizes that such terminology is both literally descriptive of what God is positively like and negatively cognizant that God is even more unlike any created thing. There is always an analogical interplay between cataphatic and apophatic theology in our speech concerning God. More on this, however, in the second lecture.
13. “Preface” to The Openness of God (Downers Grove, IVP: 1994), 7.
14. Even philosophically, such considerations are open to challenge. One might think, for instance, of the phenomenology of staged drama. Though the entire production is scripted and directed by others, when well-rehearsed, accomplished, and sensitive actors fully take on their characters’ roles, their performances are simultaneously constrained by the formal features of the drama and most free and responsive, both with regard to the actors’ art and their reciprocal interactions. For an extended meditation upon drama as a theological paradigm, consult Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Drama (San Francisco: Ignatius Press).
15. For extensive discussion of these and various passages, consult the various traditionalist responses to the challenge of open them, for example: John Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001); Bruce Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000); Douglas Wilson, ed., Bound Only Once: The Openness of God as a Failure of Imagination, Nerve, and Reason (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001).
16. In particular, one can think here of the development of the place of election within the Reformed tradition. The earliest Reformed Confessions and theologies, along with their Lutheran counterparts, typically placed election under the topics of Christology and soteriology. Later, election was placed instead under theology proper as part of the doctrine of God, thereby, in effect, tending to bypass the revelation of election in Christ and positing a God who is identified in terms of an inscrutable will beyond and above the God revealed in Christ. While the teaching of something like the Westminster Confession of Faith on election is perfectly biblical, orthodox, and Reformed in its content, we might raise questions about its priority and presentation.
17. While “the one God” takes precedence in many manual of theology, including St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, I would argue that Aquinas himself unfolds his doctrine of the one God, divine simplicity, and so on, in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity and eventually Christology, so that it becomes clear that such considerations had implicitly informed his discussion from the start. Nevertheless, in the later middle ages, as overall theological ontology shifted under the influence of scotism and nominalism, the topic of “the one God” evolved into something rather different, even among thomistic theologians such as Saurez. By the time early modern theologies were emerging, the theology of the one God emerged as something almost purely philosophical, prior to and unconstrained by faith and theology. See note 1, above for further resources on this topic.
18. The biblical witness to God’s transcendence and immanence can also be described doctrinally as Israel’s confession of [1] creational monotheism and [2] God’s election of his covenant people. See here, e.g., N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 244-279.
19. Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).
20. Weinandy, 45.
21. Weinandy, 47.
22. This is the “maior dissimilitudo” of the Fourth Lateran Council. See note 12, below.
23. Weinandy, 47.
24. See Confessions, 3.6.11.
25. For an introduction to orthodox Trinitarian doctrine, see Augustine’s De Trinitate and T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996). For some contemporary reflection - provacative even if problematic - see, Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Volume I: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
26. On God as essentially relational, see John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985) and Weinandy, The Father's Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995).
27. On the notion of God as an “event,” which I am explicating here in terms of “pure act,” see Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell 2002).
28. Weinandy, 59.
29. This analogical approach was famously formulated by the Fourth Lateran Council: “inter creatorem et creaturem non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda” (however great a likeness can be noted between the Creator and the creature, there remains a greater unlikeness to be noted between them). For a helpful exposition of this approach to the doctrine of analogy, see David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
30. Summa Theologiae (ST) I, 45, 6.
31. ST I, 34, 3
32. ST I, 37, 2, ad 3
33. ST I, 32, 1, ad 3
34. Commentary on Psalm 55:6 (PL 41, 415)
35. Indeed, this would be the error of monophysitism.
36. Hegel seems to suggest just such a view of the incarnation and cross.
37. Indeed, this would be the error of Nestorianism.
38. From “Does the Father Suffer?” in Communio: International Catholic Review, 30:3 (Fall 2003): 403. Batut’s comments are a reflection upon the profound theological insights of Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly as they are expressed in his Theo-Drama, particularly Volume V (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998). Further reflections upon von Balthasar are contained in the same issue of Communio in which Batut’s essay appeared. See especially, Antoine Birot, “The Divine Drama, From the Father's Perspective: How the Father Lives Love in the Trinity” and Jan-Heiner Tück, “The Utmost: On the Possibilities and Limits of a Trinitarian Theology of the Cross.”
39. See his Theo-Drama, Volume 5.