Why I Am A Universalist, § 3: The Doctrine of God, Part 2: Deus pro nobis

I realize this is a long post, but Karl Barth says almost everything that needs to be said in this one lengthy passage. I urge people to take the time to read this carefully.

[From Church Dogmatics IV.1 (Doctrine of Reconciliation), pp. 212-14.]

God reveals and increases His own glory in the world by this event [of reconciliation], by hastening to the help of the world as its loyal Creator, by taking up its cause. In doing what He does for His own sake, He does it, in fact, propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem [for us humans and for our salvation]. For Himself He did not need that He and His glory should be revealed and confessed in the world and by us. He might have been content with His own knowledge of Himself, just as He might have been content earlier with His being as God in glory, not needing the being of the creature and its co-existence with Him, not being under any necessity to be its Creator. But the world had radical need of His work as Creator, to which it owes no less than its very being. And, again, it has radical need that He should take up its cause in the work of atonement. Not by divine creation, but by the sin of man, it is the world which is thrown back on the faithfulness of God, a world which is lost apart from the fact that He Himself hastens to its help and takes up its cause. It has perverted the being which He lent it. It has fallen, i.e., it is rushing headlong into nothingness, into eternal death. Of itself it is not capable of any counter-movement to arrest this fall. In itself it has no power, no effective will, no sufficient basis, for any such counter-movement. On the contrary, of its own will and ability it makes only such movements as serve to repeat the origin of its fall, which is sin, and to accelerate its headlong course to the abyss.

But God reveals and increases His own glory in the world in the incarnation of His Son by taking to Himself the radical neediness of the world, i.e., by undertaking to do Himself what the world cannot do, arresting and reversing its course to the abyss. He owes this neither to the world nor to Himself. Not to the world, because the sin of man as the origin of its fatal movement to eternal death is directed against Himself, is always presented and characterised as enmity against Himself. Not to the world because the world has no claim that He should exercise in its favour the omnipotence of His free love, and in the perfect form of Himself accepting unity and solidarity with sinful man. And not to Himself, because nothing would be lacking in His inward being as God in glory, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as the One who loves in freedom, if He did not show Himself to the world, if He allowed it to complete its course to nothingness: just as nothing would be lacking to His glory if He had refrained from giving it being when He created it out of nothingness.

That He does, in fact, will to reconcile it with Himself, and to save it, and therefore to magnify His glory in it and to it, is from every standpoint the sovereign will of His mercy. We cannot deduce it or count on it from any side. We cannot establish in principle from any side that it must be so, that God had to link the revelation and increase of His glory with the maintaining and carrying through to victory of our cause, that He had to cause it to take place as an event in which salvation is given to us. How can it be necessary in principle that He should take to Himself—and conjoin and unite with what He does to His own glory—the cause which we had so hopelessly lost, turning it in His own person to good, to the best of all? If we can speak of a necessity of any kind here, it can only be the necessity of the decision which God did in fact make and execute, the necessity of the fact that the being of God, the omnipotence of His free love, has this concrete determination and is effective and revealed in this determination and no other, that God wills to magnify and does in fact magnify His own glory in this way and not in any other, and therefore to the inclusion of the redemption and salvation of the world. This fact we have to recognise to be divinely necessary because it derives from and is posited by God. This fact we have to perceive and reverence and receive and glorify as the mystery of the atonement, the incarnation of the eternal Word. And we have to do it with a thankfulness which cannot be limited by any supposed necessity of this free gift.

Cur Deus homo? Because the salvation of the world and of men, we ourselves and our salvation, are in fact included in the self-purposiveness of this divine action. Because the great and self-sufficient God wills to be also the Saviour of the world. Because what He does for Himself takes place with the intention and is complete in the fact that in its purpose and result we will not perish but have everlasting life. This, then, is why the Lord became a servant. This is why concretely the Son of God rendered that obedience, the obedience of self-humiliation. This is why in free compliance with the freely disposing will of the Father He entered on the strange way into the far country and followed it to the bitter end.

Here, then, we have our general answer to the question confronting us. We cannot deduce it from any principle, from any idea of God or of man and the world. We can read it only from the fact in which the omnipotent mercy of God is exercised and effective and revealed, in which His own glory and our salvation meet, in which that which God does for Himself is also done for us. Our answer can only be a repetition of the answer which God Himself has given in this fact, in which He Himself has pronounced concerning the end and scope and meaning of His activity. Deus pro nobis is something which He did not have to be or become, but which, according to this fact, He was and is and will be—the God who acts as our God, who did not regard it as too mean a thing, but gave Himself fully and seriously to self-determination as the God of the needy and rebellious people of Israel, to be born a son of this people, to let its wickedness fall on Him, to be rejected by it, but in its place and for the forgiveness of its sins to let Himself be put to death by the Gentiles—and by virtue of the decisive co-operation of the Gentiles in His rejection and humiliation to let Himself be put to death in their place, too, and for the forgiveness of their sins. The end and scope and meaning of this downward way, the reconciliation of the world with Himself, is God Himself as the God of this mean and wicked people for the men of this people, and at the end of its history God Himself in the midst of this people and all peoples for the men of this people and all peoples, God in this direct relationship to men and man, God the one man for many. In all that follows we can only hear and intelligently repeat the answer which God Himself has already given to our question.

What must we learn from Barth based on this passage? The following are six major points:

1. Divine freedom must be preserved. Humanity is lost in the abyss, but God freely and graciously enters the abyss in order to arrest our fall and give us new being that may live in obedience to God. God is the ‘one who loves in freedom,’ who has the fullness of glory regardless of whether humankind is brought back into relation with its Creator. God is thus ‘more than necessary,’ to borrow a phrase from Eberhard Jüngel.

2. God is sovereign and self-determining. Humankind cannot say what God must do, but if God has done something, then we are free to speak of that act as necessary. God self-determines who God is and what God will do; humanity is simply at the mercy of God.

3. God’s economic self-determination is revelation. We thus have no right to speak about what God will do in eternity apart from what God has already determined, accomplished, and revealed in the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus Christ.

4. God accomplishes what the world cannot accomplish. God’s grace is sovereign and effective. God does what humankind wishes it could for itself through its good works and good intentions, but the incarnation of Jesus Christ proclaims that God alone is capable of rescuing us from our otherwise eternal estrangement from God. Not only is God capable of this sovereign grace, but God has accomplished this in Jesus Christ on our behalf, pro nobis.

5. All creation is included in the divine self-determination of the incarnation. What God does for Godself involves and includes all of humanity and the entire cosmos. We do not make this the case; it is already the case because of Jesus Christ.

6. God is not some distant God who is abstractly ‘over us’ or ‘above us,’ but rather God is always and eternally ‘among us,’ ‘with us,’ and most importantly, ‘for us.’

A few statements by Barth need to be highlighted:

Cur Deus homo? Because the salvation of the world and of men, we ourselves and our salvation, are in fact included in the self-purposiveness of this divine action. Because the great and self-sufficient God wills to be also the Saviour of the world. Because what He does for Himself takes place with the intention and is complete in the fact that in its purpose and result we will not perish but have everlasting life.

Deus pro nobis is something which He did not have to be or become, but which, according to this fact, He was and is and will be . . . God Himself as the God of this mean and wicked people for the men of this people, and at the end of its history God Himself in the midst of this people and all peoples for the men of this people and all peoples, God in this direct relationship to men and man, God the one man for many.