Calvin, zombies, and the false faith of the reprobate

This week I read Edward Feser’s wonderful book Philosophy of Mind. One section in particular brought to mind an interesting connection.

In the middle of a dense discussion of Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and property dualism, Feser adverts to a common trope: namely, the difference between a conscious human person and a zombie duplicate. While criticizing Chalmers, Feser deploys the zombie example to show that Chalmers cannot account for a conscious human being’s knowledge of qualia as reliable knowledge if his theory would imply also, and necessarily, that a zombie would falsely but sincerely suppose it had qualia. If the latter were true, in other words, then why should anyone believe that her qualia are real and not the figment of her imagination? On what grounds would you or I suppose we are not zombies? For, epistemically speaking, we are in an identical position as a zombie that believes itself to be the conscious subject of genuine experiences. Even if it is just the case that I am a non-zombie with qualia and the zombie is a zombie without qualia, I have no good reason to believe I am any different; and the zombie may equally well believe its condition not to be what it in fact is.

A complex matter, to be sure. What it brought to mind is this.

In the third book of the Institutes, Calvin takes up, among other things, faith and election. After a brief introductory treatment, chapter 2 addresses the matter in detail. In section 11, Calvin faces head-on the obvious question: Aren’t there people who sincerely believe that they believe in Christ? I.e., believe they have saving faith in Christ? But who, according to Calvin, lack saving faith? I.e., are not among the elect? What of them? Not least given Calvin’s understanding of divine sovereignty?

Calvin bites the bullet, as only he can. Let’s just say it’s not the most satisfying part of the Institutes. And given the intended pastoral aspects of the doctrines of election, sola fide, assurance, and the perseverance of the saints, Calvin’s answer is doubly unsatisfying. In a word, it’s the original zombie problem, at least for Christian theology. Here’s how it unfolds:

The elect (non-zombie) “knows” he is saved, whereas the reprobate (zombie) believes (falsely) that he is saved. But precisely because there are reprobate (zombies) intermixed with the elect (non-zombies), the elect have no certain grounds for supposing themselves not to be reprobate (zombies)—for it has already been established that the reprobate (zombies)’ belief that they possess saving grace is utterly sincere; and, moreover, that God himself is the agent and source of their having this belief. Why, then, should anyone in the church, in the full knowledge of this spiritual and epistemic situation, suppose himself truly saved, because elect, rather than falsely confident (even “certain”) of a status lacking all independent verification?

That, it seems to me, no Calvinist, including Calvin, has ever resolved satisfactorily. At least not in this non-Calvinist’s eyes.

In any case, here are the two passages in full. I’ve not indented the quotations, given their length; I’ve placed in bold the crucial sentences; and I’ve broken up a few of Calvin’s ultra-long paragraphs. The first passage comes from pages 111-114 in Feser; the second comes from sections 11, 12, and 19 in chapter 2 of book 3 of the Institutes.

Feser on the zombie problem

The whole point of property dualism is to insist that there are non-physical qualia; if the theory also entails that we can never know that there are such qualia, then how (and why) are we even considering it? How can dualists themselves so much as formulate their hypothesis? Chalmers attempts to deal with this problem by suggesting that the assumption that there must be a causal connection between the knower and what is known, though appropriate where knowledge of physical objects is concerned, is inappropriate for knowledge of qualia. The existence of a causal chain implies the possibility of error, since . . . it seems to entail a gap between the experience of the thing known and the thing itself, a gap between appearance and reality: it is at least possible that the normal causal chain connecting us to the thing experienced has been disrupted, so that the experience is misleading (as in hallucination or deception by a Cartesian evil spirit). But knowledge of qualia, Chalmers says, is absolutely certain. Here there is no gap between appearance and reality, because the appearance—the way things seem, which is constituted by qualia themselves—is the reality. Knowledge of qualia must therefore somehow be direct and unmediated by causal chains between them and our beliefs about them. The fact that they can have no causal influence on our beliefs thus does not, after all, entail that we can’t think or talk about them.

But an objection to this is that it seems question-begging, since whether our knowledge of qualia really is certain is part of what is at issue in Dennett’s argument. Moreover, Chalmers’ claim that there is no gap between appearance and reality where knowledge of qualia is concerned seems problematic, given the assumption he shares with other property dualists that propositional attitudes can, unlike qualia, be reduced to physical processes in the brain. For while there is a sense of “appearance” and “seeming” which involves the having of qualia (a sense we can call the “qualitative” sense), there is also a sense of these words (call it the “cognitive” sense) which does not, but instead involves only the having of certain beliefs: one might say, for example, that at first it seemed or appeared to him that Chalmers’ arguments were sound, but on further reflection he concluded that they were not. Here there need be no qualia present, but only a mistake in judgment or the having of a false belief. But the having of beliefs and the making of judgments are, by Chalmers’ own lights, identical with being in certain brain states, so that there is a sense in which even a zombie has beliefs (including false beliefs) and makes judgments (including mistakes in judgment). But in that case, it could “seem” or “appear” even to a zombie that it had qualia, even though by definition it does not. So there can be a gap between appearance and reality even where qualia are concerned. Dennett’s challenge remains: how can property dualists so much as think about the qualia they say exist? How can they know that they aren’t zombies?

Chalmers’ view seems to be that this sort of objection can be avoided by arguing that it is just in the very nature of having an experience that one is justified in believing one has it, that there is a conceptual connection between having it and knowing one is having it. The evidence for my belief that I’m having the experience and the experience itself are the same thing; so I don’t infer the existence of the experience from the evidence, but just know directly from the mere having of the evidence. But this seems merely to push the problem back a stage, for now the question is how one can know one really has that evidence—the experience—in the first place, given that an experienceless zombie would also believe that it has it (and, if it’s read Chalmers, that there is a conceptual connection between having it and being justified in believing it does). Chalmers’ claim seems to amount to the conditional: if you have qualia, then you can know you have them. But that raises the question of how one can know the antecedent of this conditional, i.e. of how one can know one does in fact have qualia. Chalmers’ reply is “Because it seems to me that I do, and its seeming that way is all the justification I need.” But a zombie would believe the same thing! “But I have evidence the zombie doesn’t have my experience!” Chalmers would retort. Yet the zombie believes that too, because it also seems to it (in the cognitive sense) that it has such evidence. Any response Chalmers could give to such questions would seem to invite further questions about whether he really has the evidence he thinks he does. His only possible reply can be to say that he has it because he seems to have it, but if he says that he seems to in the cognitive sense of “seems,” then he’s saying something even a zombie would believe, while if he says, even to himself, that he seems to in the qualitative sense of “seems,” then he’s begging the question, for whether he has the qualia that this sense of “seems” presupposes is precisely what’s at issue. Chalmers’ reply to the sort of criticism raised by Dennett thus seems to fail.

Property dualism would thus appear to lead to absurdity as long as it concedes to materialism the reducibility of the propositional attitudes. If it instead takes the attitudes to be, like qualia, irreducible to physical states of the brain, this absurdity can be avoided: for in that case, your beliefs and judgments are as non-physical as your qualia are, and there is thus no barrier (at least of the usual mental-to-physical epiphenomenalist sort) to your qualia being the causes of your beliefs about them. But should it take this route, there seems much less motivation for adopting property dualism rather than full-blown Cartesian substance dualism: it was precisely the concession of the materiality of propositional attitudes that seemed to allow the property dualist to make headway on the interaction problem, an advantage that is lost if that concession is revoked; and while taking at least beliefs, desires, and the like to be purely material undermines the plausibility of the existence of a distinct non-physical mental substance, such plausibility would seem to be restored if all mental properties, beliefs and desires, as much as qualia, are non-physical. Moreover, property dualism raises a puzzle of its own, namely that of explaining exactly how non-physical properties could inhere in a physical substance.

Property dualism, then, is arguably not a genuine advance over substance dualism . . . .

Calvin on reprobate “faith”

11. I am aware it seems unaccountable to some how faith is attributed to the reprobate, seeing that it is declared by Paul to be one of the fruits of election; and yet the difficulty is easily solved: for though none are enlightened into faith, and truly feel the efficacy of the Gospel, with the exception of those who are fore-ordained to salvation, yet experience shows that the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them. Hence it is not strange, that by the Apostle a taste of heavenly gifts, and by Christ himself a temporary faith, is ascribed to them. Not that they truly perceive the power of spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but the Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them without excuse, instills into their minds such a sense of his goodness as can be felt without the Spirit of adoption. Should it be objected, that believers have no stronger testimony to assure them of their adoption, I answer, that though there is a great resemblance and affinity between the elect of God and those who are impressed for a time with a fading faith, yet the elect alone have that full assurance which is extolled by Paul, and by which they are enabled to cry, Abba, Father.

Therefore, as God regenerates the elect only for ever by incorruptible seed, as the seed of life once sown in their hearts never perishes, so he effectually seals in them the grace of his adoption, that it may be sure and steadfast. But in this there is nothing to prevent an inferior operation of the Spirit from taking its course in the reprobate. Meanwhile, believers are taught to examine themselves carefully and humbly, lest carnal security creep in and take the place of assurance of faith. We may add, that the reprobate never have any other than a confused sense of grace, laying hold of the shadow rather than the substance, because the Spirit properly seals the forgiveness of sins in the elect only, applying it by special faith to their use. Still it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and without due discernment; not that they are partakers of the same faith or regeneration with the children of God; but because, under a covering of hypocrisy, they seem to have a principle of faith in common with them. Nor do I even deny that God illumines their minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never attain to the full result or to fruition. When he shows himself propitious to them, it is not as if he had truly rescued them from death, and taken them under his protection. He only gives them a manifestation of his present mercy. In the elect alone he implants the living root of faith, so that they persevere even to the end. Thus we dispose of the objection, that if God truly displays his grace, it must endure for ever. There is nothing inconsistent in this with the fact of his enlightening some with a present sense of grace, which afterwards proves evanescent.

12. Although faith is a knowledge of the divine favor towards us, and a full persuasion of its truth, it is not strange that the sense of the divine love, which though akin to faith differs much from it, vanishes in those who are temporarily impressed. The will of God is, I confess, immutable, and his truth is always consistent with itself; but I deny that the reprobate ever advance so far as to penetrate to that secret revelation which Scripture reserves for the elect only. I therefore deny that they either understand his will considered as immutable, or steadily embrace his truth, inasmuch as they rest satisfied with an evanescent impression; just as a tree not planted deep enough may take root, but will in process of time wither away, though it may for several years not only put forth leaves and flowers, but produce fruit. In short, as by the revolt of the first man, the image of God could be effaced from his mind and soul, so there is nothing strange in His shedding some rays of grace on the reprobate, and afterwards allowing these to be extinguished. There is nothing to prevent His giving some a slight knowledge of his Gospel, and imbuing others thoroughly. Meanwhile, we must remember that however feeble and slender the faith of the elect may be, yet as the Spirit of God is to them a sure earnest and seal of their adoption, the impression once engraven can never be effaced from their hearts, whereas the light which glimmers in the reprobate is afterwards quenched.

Nor can it be said that the Spirit therefore deceives, because he does not quicken the seed which lies in their hearts so as to make it ever remain incorruptible as in the elect. I go farther: seeing it is evident, from the doctrine of Scripture and from daily experience, that the reprobate are occasionally impressed with a sense of divine grace, some desire of mutual love must necessarily be excited in their hearts. Thus for a time a pious affection prevailed in Saul, disposing him to love God. Knowing that he was treated with paternal kindness, he was in some degree attracted by it. But as the reprobate have no rooted conviction of the paternal love of God, so they do not in return yield the love of sons, but are led by a kind of mercenary affection. The Spirit of love was given to Christ alone, for the express purpose of conferring this Spirit upon his members; and there can be no doubt that the following words of Paul apply to the elect only: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5); namely, the love which begets that confidence in prayer to which I have above adverted.

On the other hand, we see that God is mysteriously offended with his children, though he ceases not to love them. He certainly hates them not, but he alarms them with a sense of his anger, that he may humble the pride of the flesh, arouse them from lethargy, and urge them to repentance. Hence they, at the same instant, feel that he is angry with them or their sins, and also propitious to their persons. It is not from fictitious dread that they deprecate his anger, and yet they retake themselves to him with tranquil confidence. It hence appears that the faith of some, though not true faith, is not mere pretense. They are borne along by some sudden impulse of zeal, and erroneously impose upon themselves, sloth undoubtedly preventing them from examining their hearts with due care. Such probably was the case of those whom John describes as believing on Christ; but of whom he says, “Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 2:24, 25). Were it not true that many fall away from the common faith (I call it common, because there is a great resemblance between temporary and living, ever-during faith), Christ would not have said to his disciples, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31, 32). He is addressing those who had embraced his doctrine, and urging them to progress in the faith, lest by their sluggishness they extinguish the light which they have received. Accordingly, Paul claims faith as the peculiar privilege of the elect, intimating that many, from not being properly rooted, fall away (Tit. 1:1). In the same way, in Matthew, our Savior says, “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up” (Mt. 16:13). Some who are not ashamed to insult God and man are more grossly false. Against this class of men, who profane the faith by impious and lying pretense, James inveighs (James 2:14). Nor would Paul require the faith of believers to be unfeigned (1 Tim. 1:5), were there not many who presumptuously arrogate to themselves what they have not, deceiving others, and sometimes even themselves, with empty show. Hence he compares a good conscience to the ark in which faith is preserved, because many, by falling away, have in regard to it made shipwreck. . . .

19. The whole, then, comes to this: As soon as the minutest particle of faith is instilled into our minds, we begin to behold the face of God placid, serene, and propitious; far off, indeed, but still so distinctly as to assure us that there is no delusion in it. In proportion to the progress we afterwards make (and the progress ought to be uninterrupted), we obtain a nearer and surer view, the very continuance making it more familiar to us. Thus we see that a mind illumined with the knowledge of God is at first involved in much ignorance,—ignorance, however, which is gradually removed. Still this partial ignorance or obscure discernment does not prevent that clear knowledge of the divine favor which holds the first and principal part in faith. For as one shut up in a prison, where from a narrow opening he receives the rays of the sun indirectly and in a manner divided, though deprived of a full view of the sun, has no doubt of the source from which the light comes, and is benefited by it; so believers, while bound with the fetters of an earthly body, though surrounded on all sides with much obscurity, are so far illumined by any slender light which beams upon them and displays the divine mercy as to feel secure.

Sin, preaching, and the therapeutic gospel

Regular readers will have noticed a regular theme, or convergence of themes, on the blog over the last few years. In a phrase, the theme is the question of how to be and to do church in a therapeutic age. This question includes a range of issues: evangelism, liturgy, sacraments, preaching, class, education, literacy, exegesis, culture, technology, disenchantment, secularism, functional atheism, and more.

Three constant conversation partners are Richard Beck, Alan Jacobs, and Jake Meador (the persons and the blogs!). A fourth is my friend Myles Werntz, whom I’ve known for more than a decade, whom I’ve had as a fellow Abilenian for more than five years, and whom I’ve had as a colleague at ACU for almost three years. His Substack is called “Christian Ethics in the Wild.” You should subscribe!

His latest issue is on holiness, prompted by a conversation with an undergraduate student. The student earnestly asked him the following: Why doesn’t anyone—at church or university—ever talk about sin? Neither the student nor Myles is sin-obsessed. They just find themselves wondering about the fact that, and why, sin-talk is in retreat.

They’re right to do so. Sin is a byword these days. There are many reasons why. Much has to do with generational baggage. Boomers, Gen X, and even some older Millennials do not want to reproduce what they understand themselves to have received: namely, an imbalanced spiritual formation, whereby believers of every age, but especially youth, are perpetually held out over the flames of hell, rotting and smoldering in the stench of their sin, unless and until God snatches them back—in the nick of time—upon their confession of faith and/or baptism. Such ministers and older believers do not want, in other words, young people to feel themselves to be sinners, tip to toe and all the way through. Instead, they want them to feel themselves beloved by God. For they are. They are God’s creatures, made in his image, for whom Christ died.

But there’s the catch. Why would Christ die for creatures about whom all we can say is, they are beloved of God, and not also, they have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory? The more sin drops out of the grammar of Christian life, the more the cross of Jesus becomes unintelligible. So much so that children and teenagers can’t articulate, even in basic terms, why Jesus came to earth, died, and rose again.

There is much to say about this phenomenon. As ever, the church’s leaders are fighting the last generation’s war. The result is extreme over-correction and, however unintended, the mirror-image mis-formation of the young. Instead of believing they’re worth nothing, being filthy sinners whom God can’t stand the sight of, they now believe they’re worth everything, and therefore utterly worthy—sin being a word they’d barely recognize, much less use to describe themselves. Moreover, this is where therapy enters in. Self-image and self-esteem and mental health having taken over load-bearing duty in Christian grammar, replacing concepts like sin and righteousness, holiness and justification, atonement and deliverance, the Christian life comes to be understood as the achievement of a certain well-adjusted standing in the world. The aim is to find emotional, physical, financial, relational, vocational, and spiritual balance. The aim, in a word, is health. And it is utterly this-worldly.

Note, in addition, the burden this places on the believer. When sin-talk is operative, it does a great deal of work in making sense of one’s unhappiness, one’s sense of there being something wrong, not just with the world but with oneself. Whereas when the message is simultaneously that (a) God affirms me just as I am, so that (b) I don’t need God to move me from where I am to where I’m not, then (c) the upshot is a sort of therapeutic Pelagianism. Or, as Christian Smith has popularized the term, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). God is there to observe and to affirm, but neither to judge nor to save. And this is a burden, rather than a relief, because all of a sudden I seem to, need to, matter a lot. Yet one look in the mirror shows me that I don’t matter at all. I’m a blip on the radar of cosmic time. I’m nothing. So I keep upping the ante of just how much God loves and values me, even though I and everyone else I know sense that something is amiss. But saying “something is amiss” sure smells like shame, guilt, and sin … so I turn back to the latest self-help Instagram influencer to help me see just how worthy and valued I am.

In sum, a therapeutic gospel that has excised sin from the Christian social imaginary not only reduces God to a bit of inert furniture in a lifelong counseling session. It’s also bad for mental health. This shouldn’t surprise us. If original sin is true—if you and I and every human being on earth is conceived and born in bondage to Sin, Death, and the Devil, so that we cannot help but sin in all we say, do, and think and thus desperately need deliverance from this congenital moral and spiritual slavery—then pretending as if it were not true could never be conducive to a life well lived. The concept of mental health, as with any form of health, presupposes the concept of truth and therefore of a truthful, as opposed to false, understanding of ourselves and our condition. Sin is part of this condition. We cannot understand ourselves without it. Cutting it out, we lose the ability not just to understand ourselves, but to help or be helped, in any way, by anyone. Denial of sin is, in this way, a form of willful self-deception. And self-deception is the first thing we need to be freed from if we would pursue either mental or spiritual health, much less both.

If, then, preaching is the first (though not the only) place where the grammar of Christian life and faith is fashioned and forged for ordinary believers, then how should the foregoing inform preaching today? Put differently, how should preachers go about preaching the good news of Christ instead of a therapeutic gospel? What are a few simple marks of faithful proclamation in this area?

I can think of four, plus an extra for good measure.

First, preach God. This is a no-brainer, but then, you’d be surprised. As I’ve written elsewhere, God should be the subject of every sermon, and ideally the grammatical subject of most of any sermon’s sentences. God is the object and aim, the audience and end of every sermon. A sermon is not advice about life. It is not commentary on current events. It is the announcement of what God has done in Jesus Christ for his beloved bride, the church, and in and through her, for the world. The rule for every sermon is simple: God, God, and more God. The living God, the triune God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No one should ever walk away from a sermon wondering where God was, or supposing that the onus lies on me rather than God.

Second, preach salvation. Likewise, this one surely seems a strange suggestion. I might as well recommend using words when preaching. But the therapeutic temptation is strong; MTD has no soteriology, because it lacks both a savior and a condition to be saved from. So the god proclaimed ends up being an inert deity, a lifeless idol, a bystander who at most serves as cheerleader from the sidelines. He’s not in the game, though. He doesn’t act in your life or mine. He isn’t up to anything in the world. He certainly hasn’t already done the marvelous work of redemption. But this is a flat denial of the gospel. Preaching ought therefore to be about salvation from beginning to end. Both the act and the effect of salvation. God, the saving God, the delivering God, the rescuing God: He has done it! It is finished! You are saved! You, right there, in the pews, worried about debt and anxious about your kids, you have been saved by God, are saved, even now. Rejoice!

Third, preach (about) sin. To be saved, as we’ve already seen, entails something to be saved from. Preaching that fails to mention sin thereby fails to proclaim the gospel of salvation and, ultimately, fails to proclaim the God of the gospel. Sin—though not only sin—is what we are saved from. Not his sin or her sin, but yours and mine. I am a sinner. Like David, I was a sinner from my mother’s womb. I was born into quicksand, and the harder I struggle the deeper I sink. God alone can help me. No one else. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is the promeity of proclamation. It is pro me only so long as I’m personally in the condition that needs resolving, and no one but God can do the resolving. I need to know it, to feel it in my bones. Not to see myself as a disgusting wretch whom God can’t bear to look at. God loves me. I’m the prodigal. But like the prodigal, I’m a thousand miles away, lying in the mud, eating pig slop. Sin has reduced me to porcine living. I yearn for the Father’s house. The Father yearns for me to be in his house. But I need to be lifted up, to be rinsed and washed and cleaned of the sin that clings so closely. I need to be freed of these chains, chains that I all too often prefer to freedom. God is ready to liberate. He is the great emancipator. He is standing at the door, even now, knocking. But if preaching never shows me my bondage, how can I ever ask God to unshackle me, much less accept his offer to do so? Preaching, rightly understood, is nothing other than the weekly heralding of this very offer: the offer of freedom to sinners.

Fourth, preach heaven. It is in vogue these days to avoid talk of heaven. Again, I’ve written about this elsewhere, but the reasons have to do with class, education, and baggage. The baggage is an upbringing that made the gospel exclusively about the next life, with nothing to say about this one. One’s postmortem destination exhausted the church’s message. As for education, it concerns an influential turn in evangelical scholarship the last two generations, represented symbolically by N. T. Wright. This turn uses the already/not-yet eschatology of the New Testament, wedded to a certain understanding of the new creation, to subvert colloquial talk of “this world/earth” and “the next world/heaven.” Instead of this schema, because heaven is breaking into earth, because God is going to renew all creation rather than burn the earth to ashes, it follows that we should care about this world and not only the next. Practically, this means focusing on social issues like poverty and homelessness as well as matters of culture, like the arts, film, TV, and so on. On the ground, the effect can be a kind of embarrassment about old-school evangelism. After all, isn’t that passé? Haven’t we learned that the gospel isn’t about leaving this world for the next, abandoning earth for heaven?

Well, no, we haven’t. For ordinary believers, “heaven” may be mixed up with imperfect eschatology—they may imagine it as disembodied and distant rather than redeemed and resurrected, God dwelling with us forever in the new heavens and new earth—but what it mainly signifies is the next life, beyond death, with God, minus sin, death, suffering, and evil. And that is as right as right gets. There’s nothing to correct there. Further, ordinary believers are right in their instinct that if this is what “heaven” means, then heaven is a big deal, even the main thing. Eternal life with God, beyond this vale of tears, is what the gospel brings to us. It is the good news. Yes, we have a share of it in this life: a glimpse, a foretaste. But it’s nothing in comparison to the real article. This is why the Christian life is defined by hope. Yet if the church does not give her members anything to hope for, truly to spend a lifetime yearning for with a deep hungry ache, then she has failed in her task. Preaching, accordingly, should proclaim this hope: with gladness and without apology. Just as preaching should form listeners over time to understand themselves as sinners saved by almighty God, it should also form them to understand themselves as pilgrims journeying from earth to heaven, from the city of man to the city of God, from this life of injustice, idolatry, sin, suffering, illness, and death, to eternal life free of every such enemy, all of which God himself has put away and destroyed, forever. Such is hope worth living for. Such is hope worth dying for.

Finally, preach (about) Satan. One test for preaching that seeks to avoid reducing the gospel to therapy is whether it mentions the Devil, demons, and evil spiritual forces. Show me a church that talks about Satan, and I’ll wager it also talks about sin, salvation, heaven, and God. Show me a church that never talks about Satan, and I’ll wager that next Sunday’s sermon won’t mention sin or heaven. Such a church is on its way to disenchantment, secularism, a therapeutic gospel, and functional atheism. The point isn’t that talk of devils is spooky, though it is. It’s that talk of devils presupposes and projects a universe with stakes. I didn’t mention hell above, but the popular imagination pairs heaven with hell. If there’s a good destination, then there’s also a bad one. Matthew 25 suggests as much. And if there’s good at work in the world—his name is God—but also Sin to be rescued from, then there must be some kind of agency that does Sin’s bidding—his name is Satan. Heaven and hell, God and Satan, angels and demons: this is the language of spiritual warfare, of cosmic stakes that hold all our lives in the balance. For ordinary believers, this cashes out in how they understand their daily lives. Are they living in enemy territory? Are they constantly under assault by the Enemy? You don’t have to be charismatic to think or talk like this. But preaching makes evident whether this is the right way to experience the world.

Here’s the fundamental question: Is following Christ like living in wartime or in peacetime? The flavor of a sermon tells you all you need to know. And if, as I began this post, therapeutic preaching finally serves to reassure disenchanted professionals in the upper-middle-class that God affirms them as they are—that a well-adjusted life is attainable, though ennui on the path is to be expected—then we have our answer: there are no demons; there is no war on; we are living in peacetime.

Such a message may be the best possible way to lull believers to sleep. Not literal sleep (a TED Talk can be entertaining), but spiritual sleep. Jesus commands us to be alert, to be watchful, to stay awake as we eagerly await his coming. The command, in short, presumes a wartime mentality. Peacetime is thus a myth, a lie from the Enemy. Each of us forgets this at our own peril, but preachers most of all.

How the Eucharist effects salvation

Since [the Eucharist] is the sacrament of the Lord’s passion, it contains in itself the Christ who suffered. Thus whatever is an effect of our Lord’s passion is an effect of this sacrament. For this sacrament is nothing other than the application of our Lord’s passion to us. . . . Hence it is clear that the destruction of death, which Christ accomplished by his death, and the restoration of life, which he effected by his resurrection, are effects of this sacrament.

—St. Thomas Aquinas, In Ioannem 6:56, para. 963 (cited in Eugene Rogers Jr., Blood Theology [Cambridge UP, 2021], 192–93)

An atonement typology

This post grew out of a brief handout I drew up quickly for a class I was teaching on the atonement, which I then shared on Twitter. I thought I would expand it here with some initial definition and reflections.

Let me note two things at the outset. First, I took initial inspiration from Ben Myers' lovely patristic-flavored post on atonement theories from a few years back. Second, it seems to me that atonement is a particularly resonant English word that is very nearly interchangeable with salvation. To ask what atonement consists in, it seems to me, is to ask how Jesus saves. Or at least so I have assumed in what follows. Third, atonement is not one of my pet doctrines; I haven't read widely and deeply in it the way some of my friends and colleagues have. I'm sure that, somewhere below, I have left something out or inexpertly explained this or that theory. Pardons in advance.

Without further ado, my sixfold (really, 6 x 5) typology of the atonement.

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I. Royal Conquest

1. Ransom

Through the death of Jesus, the Messiah, God "ransoms" or buys back his elect people from their slavery to sin and death; this is the new and final Exodus, in which the Lord once and for all delivers his people from the Pharaoh-like Satan.

2. Christus victor

Jesus submits to death, the wages of sinful humanity, and in doing so puts death to death and triumphs over it in his resurrection from the dead, now eternally free from death in the life of God, never to die again.

3. Harrowing of hell

Jesus the King descends to the realm of the dead and claims what is his own: all the saints of old, awaiting the proclamation of good news to those who died in hope of his coming. The gates of hell tremble at the sound of his feet, and crack open as he takes his own with him into everlasting life: he, the Living One, in whose hands are now the keys to Death and Hades (Rev 1:18).

4. Exaltation

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead: and not only risen, but raised to glory eternal, the glory he had with the Father before the ages. Only now, it is in and as the human nature he assumed in Mary's womb that he is raised, glorified, ascended, enthroned at the right hand of the Father in the power of the Spirit, whence he rules and judges the affairs of earth until he returns again.

5. Citizenship

Having inaugurated his reign over creation, Christ extends the gift of heavenly citizenship to all who accept his rule. To live subject to the wise, just, and merciful kingship of Christ in between his two advents means to anticipate, even now, the glories of the kingdom of heaven that will be made manifest at his appearing, though they remain hidden as the church sojourns in the world.

II. Holy Justice

1. Suffering

This one little word, "suffered," serves in the New Testament as a euphemism or précis for the whole work of Christ. Why is that? "Christ also suffered for sins once for all" (1 Pet 3:18); "Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood" (Heb 13:12): we could multiply examples. There is a mystery here. First, Jesus shares in the human condition, under the weight of sin, evil, and death. His solidarity is complete. "For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted" (Heb 2:18). Moreover, his suffering is salvific: the victim bleeds, the substitute is scourged, the one pronounced guilty is mocked and spat upon. We see, we feel, we intuit the depths of the mystery here—even if we cannot finds words adequate to it—that the eternal and impassible One has willed to undergo this passion simply because "he loved me" (Gal 2:20). It was necessary that the Lord's servant suffer rejection at the hands of both those under and those outside the Law: this very thing happened in our midst, for us and for our salvation.

2. Sacrifice

God is holy, and wills that his people be holy likewise. In old Israel, God graciously provided for the people to be cleansed of their sins through the shedding of blood, that is, through ritual sacrifices that sanctified them, in love, so that they might worship the Lord in his presence with a pure body and a clean conscience. Jesus Christ is the final sacrifice, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, that to which all prior sacrifices pointed and in which they participated (and, mutatis mutandis, so ever since, whether in praise, in illness, in martyrdom, or in the Eucharist). Jesus, the spotless victim, without blemish, offered himself upon the cross, a perfect and pleasing sacrifice to the God of Israel, thus cleansing, purifying, and sanctifying his beloved people, and effecting, once and for all, the forgiveness of sins.

3. Justification

God is righteous and just, the only good and wise Judge. Human righteousness consists in obedience to his commands, which is to live in accordance with the divine will. Humans, though, individually and collectively, are law-breakers, transgressors, guilty before the court of divine justice. We deserve condemnation, and indeed, guilty of sin and subject to death, we stand condemned, dead in our trespasses. But God in his mercy justifies the ungodly, offering pardon in the name of Christ to all who cast themselves in faith on him, the Crucified. He, the righteous one, stands in the dock, and our sentence becomes his—do not Pilate and the people sentence Jesus to a death reserved for the guilty?—while his status—do not Pilate and the Centurion recognize Jesus's just innocence?—becomes ours. Barabbas figures the believer who, through no merit of his own, is released, while Jesus does not resist taking his place. In short, the triune God delivers the final verdict, and though we have broken God's law, we are absolved, pardoned, pronounced innocent for the sake of Christ. Now therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).

4. Substitution

Jesus Christ, the one true and fully human man, takes our place. He lives and dies for us, on our behalf, for our sake. He is utterly and without reservation pro nobis, and he stands in our stead, so that we might stand in his. What was due us, comes to him; what is due him, comes to us. What is ours becomes his, and what is his becomes ours. All that he does, he does with us in mind, for our benefit. Whatever justice demands, he, the God-man, both exacts and accepts it. In him, we see our fate overturned, not by a miscarriage of justice, but by the mercy of the Just One offering himself in our place.

5. Satisfaction

What does humanity owe God our creator? Everything, as it turns out. It is a debt we owe simply in virtue of being the creatures we are, made from nothing and sustained in existence for no good reason other than the divine good pleasure. But we do not give God what is his due. We do not render obedience. We do not love him with our whole hearts; we do not love our neighbor as ourselves (as he commands). We do not live in constant, grateful dependence upon him. If we are to be restored to fellowship with the God who alone is just, good, and right, how are we to rectify the relationship we have broken (from our side)? Not by our own efforts, themselves already corrupt and corrupting. Only the offering of a fully human life perfect from start to finish could be thus acceptable. Thus does Jesus, the God-man, offer his own life to make satisfaction for all humanity, to "pay the debt we could not pay." By his death, he gives infinitely beyond what we ever could, and in rising from the dead and pouring out his Spirit, he gives with abandon what he does not need and what was always already his by nature, not only making restitution but gratuitously sharing gifts both beyond nature and beyond measure.

III. Israel's Fulfillment

1. Abraham's seed

The promise of the Lord to Abraham was that his seed would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and that in his seed all the nations would be blessed (Gen 12:1-3; 22:17). Thus the New Testament begins by telling us that Jesus is the son of Abraham (Matt 1:1), and Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians that the seed (singular, not plural) of which the Lord spoke was Christ himself (3:16)—through him the nations have come to the Lord for blessing, by the selfsame faith with which Abraham believed the Lord's promise (Rom 4:23-25).

2. Torah's telos

The Law of Moses was a gracious provision for God's people Israel, to set them apart from the nations, to sanctify them as his treasured possession, to render them fit to be his servant, the light to the nations. It was, in this sense, a means to an end. And as Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, "Christ is the end of the law" (10:4), which is to say, the telos of the Torah is the Messiah. Moses had a target, an aim, a goal, and it is fulfilled in the man Jesus of Nazareth. Both the work he accomplishes—sanctifying Israel, effecting forgiveness of sins, bringing near the reign of God—and the perfect obedience he offers—obedience to the Torah's literal commands but also to its heart, which is the revealed heart of the Lord God—bring to glorious fulfillment the purpose and meaning of Moses's Law: the law of love, the law of Christ.

3. Shekinah embodied

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us—but the Lord's presence in, with, among, and to Israel is not a novelty. Israel's scriptures are nothing but one long story of the Lord's passionate will to be present to and for his people: wrestling with Jacob, the fire by night and cloud by day, the tabernacle, the ark, the temple. The God of Israel is an indwelling God, a particular God (not deity in general) of a particular land and people (Abraham's children) who can be found, in Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod's memorable phrase, at One Temple Avenue, Jerusalem. But these are the foretaste and promise, not the reality or fulfillment. That came in the person of Mary's son, who took on flesh in her womb and was born and lived a man, that is, a fully human life lived by YHWH. He, Yeshua bar-Yehosef, is the Shekinah enfleshed, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily amidst his people. And so he will dwell, forever, when heaven comes to earth on the last day.

4. Priesthood

The work of the priest is to stand between God and the people, mediating in both directions: representing God to the people, and representing the people to God. In love, the Lord established the priesthood in Israel through Aaron's line and the tribe of Levi. The principal work of the priest was to offer sacrifices before the Lord. Jesus was not a Levite, but he was a priest (according to the book of Hebrews) in the order of Melchizedek. Not only a priest, he is "a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God" (2:17), who offered once and for all his own life as a sacrifice for all the people—a perfect offering, because he, a priest without sin, offered not for himself but for others what they, not he, needed. And so this eternal priest makes offering in the heavenly sanctuary not made with human hands, Jesus the mediator between God and man, interceding for us before God the Father, an advocate and aid to all who seek the help of heaven.

5. Ingrafting

The seed of Abraham is the chosen people of God, and as Paul writes, the root of the tree of Israel is irreducibly and immutably Jewish (Rom 11:16-18). But the miraculous and unexpected work of the Messiah is so to accomplish salvation "apart from law"—"although the law and the prophets bear witness to it" (3:21)—that it applies not only to Jews, branches of Israel's tree by nature, but also to gentiles, a wild olive shoot ("contrary to nature" [11:24]). So that, through baptism and faith in the Messiah, both the natural and the wild branches belong to one and the same tree, the latter grafted in through the gracious hands of the Lord, who is God not only of the Jews but also of the gentiles (3:29).

IV. Natural Restoration

1. Knowledge

Humanity was created to know God, and in disobeying the command of God by seeking after forbidden knowledge, humanity fell away from the knowledge of God. Through Christ, however, the knowledge of God is restored, both in his own person, as a fully human being, and in those united to him by faith through baptism. As Colossians 3:9-10 states, believers have put off the old, fallen nature and been clothed in the new, regenerate nature—redeemed and remade in Christ—"which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." Moreover, Christ came teaching, and in the Spirit and through Scripture, he remains our teacher, drawing us into true and saving knowledge of the Father.

2. Image

Humanity was and is created in the image of God, but through the Fall that image is tarnished, damaged, neither whole nor expressive, as it ought to be, of who human beings are and what they were made to be within the wider created order. Christ, though, as God from God and Light from Light, is neither made nor "in" the image of God: he is the image itself, from everlasting to everlasting. And so, in becoming human, he restores the imago Dei in human nature; all those in him share in that restored image, which will be theirs in full upon his return in glory—at which point they will finally take up their calling as image-bearing creatures among and for the sake of all other creatures.

3. Second Adam

Adam, the first man, fell; and in him all humanity fell, too. That is to say, all human beings share in the condition of our first parents: we are all "in Adam." But Jesus Christ is the new man, the Second Adam, and to be "in" Christ is to be incorporated into the life and body of this sinless one triumphant over death. Our sin died with him on the cross, and in his resurrection, he lives to God the super-abundant life of the Spirit, whom, in pouring him out on the church, he makes available to all those who draw near to him in faith. And in the End, when God is all in all, this Adam will not, can never fall; and the same is true of those he brings with him.

4. Healing

Fallenness means sickness, sickness of the soul and of the body. Christ is our healer, the great physician. He came healing, and those who asked him to be made whole had their petitions granted: "If you will... I will" (Mark 1:40-41). He also sent his disciples out with the same charge, and they healed in his name both before and after his crucifixion and resurrection. Never has a generation passed since then when some number of those who have asked him or his servants for healing have not borne witness to the Lord's healing in their mortal bodies. But no healing lasts in this life; the final healing will come with his second coming, when no disease or sickness will outlast his cleansing presence.

5. Life-giver

To be a creature is to be given existence, and to be created human is to be given the unsurpassably beautiful gift of life: the breath of life in our lungs, breathed in us by God himself (Gen 2:7). Death is the final enemy to be defeated (1 Cor 15:26), and as the wages of sin, death is bound up with opposition to God's good will for living creatures. By contrast, Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6); indeed, he is "the resurrection and the life" (11:25). He comes to bring us death-bound creatures life abundant (10:10), and from his heart rivers of life spring forth to nourish us (7:38). Even now, through his Spirit, we have a taste of "the eternal life which was with the Father" (1 John 1:2), the fullness of which will arrive at his appearing.

V. Perfected Relationship

1. Slavery

The Lord Jesus is the great deliverer, liberating his people from the chains of slavery: first from Egypt and the power of Pharaoh, finally from sin, death, and the power of Satan. Thus he assumed our nature that "through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Heb 2:14-15). But as both Exodus and Romans testify, those once enslaved are not set free "for" anything at all; they are set free to be servants and worshipers of God. There is, in this sense, a transfer of masters, not a denial of life under lordship: though, in this case, a transfer not in degree but in kind—from the cruelty of unjust fellow creatures to the blessing of the only just and sovereign Master. And so, in this sense, what Jesus accomplishes in his life, death, and resurrection is the liberation of all peoples from servitude and subjection to any and all worldly masters, making us instead "slaves of righteousness" (Rom 6:8), that is to say, "slaves of Christ" (1 Cor 7:22).

2. Friendship

Having said that, we turn to 1 John: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love" (4:18). Indeed, as Jesus says in his final words to the disciples in the Gospel of John, "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You are my friends if you do what I command you" (15:15, 14). Thus, although it is proper to say that we are slaves of Christ, at least here below, this claim is subordinate and secondary to the theologically primary claim, that in the incarnation God befriends us, elevating us to friendship with himself. The work of Christ, simply put, is to make us his friends. And so he has, because his word and his life are true and efficacious. Nothing is so beautiful to imagine as beatitude experienced as everlasting friendship with the Holy Trinity.

3. Covenant Membership

There is no relationship with the God of Israel outside of covenant; YHWH is the God of covenant. Covenant is the gracious means by which the Lord establishes relations—saving, loving, lasting—with human women and men. It is, furthermore, the means by which he establishes them as more than isolated individuals or tribal clans or nations at odds, but as a community, a single people defined by relationship with God, the creator of all. Thus, Jesus saves not individuals but a people, the covenant people of God. But in doing so he fulfills the old covenant by creating a new covenant in his blood, sealed on the cross. To be redeemed, to be touched by the atoning love of Christ, is nothing other than to be included in this covenant, to be made a member of God's covenant family. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: indeed, for outside the church there is no covenant, and to belong to the covenant is to belong to Christ himself, our savior, redeemer, and friend.

4. Feast

God saves by feeding; his salvation is a feast. The Passover meal, the manna and quail in the wilderness, the feasts and festivals at the temple: bread and meat to eat and wine and water to drink are the telltale signs of the Lord at work to deliver from bondage and atone for sin. So in the ministry of Jesus, whose first sign changes water to wine at a wedding feast (John 2:1-11) and whose reputation for partying was so renowned that he was slandered as a glutton and a drunkard (Matt 11:19)! No surprise, then, that the central practice of the church instituted by Jesus himself is a meal of bread and wine—elements that signify and mediate the bodily presence of the risen and ascended Lord himself—which meal itself figures the final marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-10). The heavenly banquet is prepared, and Christ invites us now, even as he did on earth, to partake of this saving food and drink, that is, his own body and blood (John 6:53-58).

5. Marriage

As Israel is the bride of YHWH, so the church is the bride of the Messiah. "'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church" (Eph 5:31-21). This is true at the communal as well as the individual level, since Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that, just as a united to a woman become one flesh with her, so a person "united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (6:16-17). In the end, when God creates new heavens and new earth, the marriage of the Lord and his covenant people will be consummated, and God and Abraham's children will be eternally one, for God is one, and he will be all in all (15:28).

VI. Supernatural Elevation

1. Forerunner

Christ not only takes our place and lives a truly human life on our behalf. He blazes the trail of salvation, in whose wake we have but to follow. He charts the path to God, a path from conception and birth through growth and life to death, descent, resurrection, and ascension. Our lives are but imitations of his, the journey of the One who went before, the forerunner, the archegos (Heb 12:2). Where our nature has gone with him, so we will and may go—including into heaven (Eph 2:5-6), before the presence of God almighty. And along the way, all of Christ's action is our instruction (an axiom of St. Thomas Aquinas). We are followers in the Way and learners in his school, until we see him face to face.

2. Adoption

Jesus Christ is the eternal, unique, only-begotten Son of God, incarnate in and as a human being. But precisely in his becoming flesh and blood, existing in every way like us apart from sin, he extends his Sonship to us through baptism in his Spirit, the Spirit of Sonship, which is to say, the Spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15, 23). We thus become the sisters and brothers of Christ, and therefore, one and all, the children of God by adoption. Just as gentiles are adopted through Abraham's seed to be, by faith, the children of Abraham, so both Jews and gentiles are adopted through God's only Son to be, through the gift of the Spirit in baptism, the sons and daughters of God.

3. Spirit-sender

The external operations of the Holy Trinity are indivisible, both in creation and in salvation. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are alike and equally Creator and Savior. Thus the Spirit is present and active at every moment of the incarnation and career and saving work of the Son. Jesus is conceived by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, drawn by the Spirit, nourished by the Spirit, raised in the power of the Spirit—and when he ascends to heaven, Jesus pours our the Spirit he bore in his earthly life upon the apostles and, through them, all the baptized henceforth and forevermore. In sending the Spirit he sent the church, not alone, but filled by his presence, that is, the Spirit who makes him present in power, love, and peace. The Spirit gives life, and Jesus breathes the Spirit on us with unstinting grace (John 20:22).

4. Great exchange

Jesus not only substitutes himself as a man in our place; in his very being, in the hypostatic union that constitutes the eternal Son to be a man—perfect in divinity, perfect in humanity—he enacts the great, the beautiful, the happy exchange: he takes on our nature that he might gives us his. He assumes finitude, creatureliness, mortality; we receive the fullness of what it means to be the Spirit-filled Son of God the Father. The realities and shortcomings of humanity are his; the benefits and blessings of divinity are ours. The exchange happens in his own person, in the communication of properties between his two natures; and what happens there, in that one man, redounds to all women and men who share his human nature.

5. Theosis

Truly, in Christ, we "become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4). In the words of St. Athanasius, he became human that we might become divine. Or in C. S. Lewis's phrasing, the final end of the work of Christ is to make little Christs of all of us. And if Christ is God, then we are gods. Not, that is, that our nature is changed from human to divine. We remain human, as Christ remains human. Rather, our humanity is divinized, saturated with the divine glory and presence and consequently elevated to fellowship in the eternal communion of love that is the inexhaustible life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Spirit inserts us through the human nature of the glorified Son, Jesus, into this perfect circle of giving, sharing, and endless, enraptured happiness. We will see God, in the last, and to see God is to be conformed to himself, that is, to his image. And so we are, and so we will be. Soli Deo gloria.

Not one, just he: Barth on the universal promeity of the gospel

"It happened that in the humble obedience of the Son He took our place, He took to Himself our sins and death in order to make an end of them in His death, and that in so doing He did the right, He became the new and righteous man. It also happened that in His resurrection from the dead He was confirmed and recognized and revealed by God the Father as the One who has done and been that for us and all men. As the One who has done that, in whom God Himself has done that, who lives as the doer of that deed, He is our man, we are in Him, our present is His, the history of man is His history, He is the concrete event of the existence and reality of justified man in whom every man can recognize himself and every other man—recognize himself as truly justified. There is not one for whose sin and death He did not die, whose sin and death He did not remove and obliterate on the cross, for whom He did not positively do the right, whose right He has not established. There is not one to whom this was not addressed as his justification in His resurrection from the dead. There is not one whose man He is not, who is not justified in Him. There is not one who is justified in any other way than in Him—because it is in Him and only in Him that an end, a bonfire, is made of man’s sin and death, because it is in Him and only in Him that man’s sin and death are the old thing which has passed away, because it is in Him and only in Him that the right has been done which is demanded of man, that the right has been established to which man can move forward. Again, there is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him. There is not one whose right has not been established and confirmed validly and once and for all in Him. There is not one, therefore, who has first to win and appropriate this right for himself. There is not one who has first to go or still to go in his own virtue and strength this way from there to here, from yesterday to to-morrow, from darkness to light, who has first to accomplish or still to accomplish his own justification, repeating it when it has already taken place in Him. There is not one whose past and future and therefore whose present He does not undertake and guarantee, having long since accepted full responsibility and liability for it, bearing it every hour and into eternity. There is not one whose peace with God has not been made and does not continue in Him. There is not one of whom it is demanded that he should make and maintain this peace for himself, or who is permitted to act as though he himself were the author of it, having to make it himself and to maintain it in his own strength. There is not one for whom He has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead.

"Not one. That is what faith believes. . . .

"When a man can and must believe, it is not merely a matter of an 'also,' of his attachment as an individual to the general being and activity of the race and the community as determined by Jesus Christ. In all the common life of that outer and inner circle he is still himself. He is uniquely this man and no other. He cannot be repeated or represented. He is incomparable. He is this in his relationship with God and also in his relationship with his fellows. He is this soul of this body, existing in the span of this time of his. He is this sinful man with his own particular pride and in his own special case. For all his common life he is alone in this particularity. It is not simply that he also can and must believe, but that just he can and must believe. And if the being and activity of Jesus Christ Himself is the mystery of the event in which he actually does so, then we must put it even more strongly and precisely: that in this event it takes place that Jesus Christ lives not only 'also' but 'just' as his Mediator and Savior and Lord, and that He shows Himself just to him as this living One. He became a servant just for him. It was just his place that He took, the place which is not the place of any other. In this place He died just for him, for his sin. And, again, in his place He was raised again from the dead. Therefore the Yes which God the Father spoke to Him as His Son in the resurrection is spoken not only also but just to him, this man. In Him it was just his pride, his fall which was overcome. In Him it is just his new right which has been set up, his new life which has appeared. And in Him it is just he who is called to new responsibility, who is newly claimed. It is just he who is not forgotten by Him, not passed over, not allowed to fall, not set aside or abandoned. It is just he—and this is the work of the Holy Spirit—who has been sought out, and reached, and found by Him, just he whom He has associated with Himself and Himself with him. God did not will to be God without being just his God. Jesus did not will to be Jesus without being just his Jesus. The world was not to be reconciled with God without just this man as an isolated individual being a man—this man—reconciled with God. The community was not to be the living body of Christ without just this man being a living member of it. The whole occurrence of salvation was not to take place but just for him, as the judgment executed just on him, the grace addressed in this judgment just to him, just his justification, just his conversion to God. The gift and commission of the community of Jesus Christ is personally just his gift and commission. And all this not merely incidentally, among other things, or only in part for him, but altogether, in its whole length and breadth and height and depth just for him, because Jesus Christ, in whom all this is given to the world and the community, in whom God Himself has sacrificed Himself for it, is Jesus, the Christ, just for him. That this shines out in a sinful man is the mystery, the creative fact, in the event of faith in which he becomes and is a Christian, so that he can and must acknowledge and recognize and confess as such what is proper to him as this subject.

"What do I acknowledge and recognize and confess as this subject? That Jesus Christ Himself is pro me, just for me."

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, 629–630, 754–755