Two Kingdoms=Two Christs? (VanDrunen Review V.3)

June 24, 2010

In the section on the doctrine of the two kingdoms in the age of Reformed orthodoxy, my suspicion is immediately aroused by VanDrunen’s invocation of the Scottish Presbyterians as leading proponents of two kingdoms thinking.   These Scottish Presbyterians are often known as “Covenanters” for their signing of the National Covenant in 1638, a document that united both civil rulers and churchmen in the task of protecting the Reformed religion in Scotland.  This document repeatedly blurs together civil and ecclesiastical concerns, going so far as to cite passages such as these from Parliamentary Acts: 

“Seeing the cause of God's true religion and his Highness's authority are so joined, as the hurt of the one is common to both; that none shall be reputed as loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord, or his authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not give their confession, and make their profession of the said true religion” and “That all Kings and Princes at their coronation, and reception of their princely authority, shall make their faithful promise by their solemn oath, in the presence of the eternal God, that, enduring the whole time of their lives, they shall serve the same eternal God, to the uttermost of their power, according as he hath required in his most holy word, contained in the Old and New Testament; and according to the same word, shall maintain the true religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of his holy word, the due and right ministration of the sacraments now received and preached within this realm, (according to the Confession of Faith immediately preceding,) and shall abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary to the same.”  These passages are quoted, mind you, not in order to contest them, but as the legal basis upon which the Covenanters take their stand.  They go on to pledge their resolve to faithfully serve both the King and the cause of true religion, since these two are inseparably conjoined, and to resist equally enemies of the king and of the true religion.  

Documents like this should be enough to tell us that, whatever the sense in which these fellows may speak of “two kingdoms,” it is certainly not in the sense VanDrunen has in mind.  Nevertheless, it is certainly true that some of these fellows have some troubling things to say.  For instance, we again find some strikingly dualistic language.  Turretin is at pains to state that the redemptive kingdom “is not mundane and earthly, but spiritual and celestial” (177) and “Rutherford distinguished between one kingdom ruled by God as creator (and hence temporal and mundane) and the other kingdom ruled by God as redeemer (and hence spiritual and heavenly)” (177).  Now this “and hence” befuddles me--both of them do.  Why should creation necessarily be merely “temporal,” and thus, in this context, temporary?  In this picture, it is as if God just created a physical world for kicks as something he was just going to dispose of a little later on in favor of a “spiritual, heavenly” world.  On such a model, how are we to take the current creation seriously at all, or attribute any significance to life in the body?  And why should redemption be necessarily “spiritual” and “heavenly,” as if God could not possibly redeem this earth or our earthly existence, but could only redeem us out of it, or redeem some “spiritual” dimension of our existence that floats uneasily above this world?  This sounds more like Manichaeanism than Christianity.  Of course, Turretin and Rutherford are far from the only Christians to speak this way--such dualism has been a long-standing malady in the Church.  But inasmuch as much recent theology has helped us to break free of it and return to a more Biblical, creation-affirming stance, I find it bizarre that VanDrunen wants to lead us back into captivity, as it were.

But there are still more troubling problems in this section.  Remember that whole scary bit about the extra Calvinisticum and the dual kingship of Christ back in the chapter on Calvin?  Well, VanDrunen finds all this more systematically and explicitly stated by Turretin.  He summarizes Turretin’s statements thus: “Christ rules the one kingdom as eternal God, as the agent of creation and providence, and over all creatures.  Christ rules the other kingdom as the incarnate God-man, as the agent of redemption, and over the Church.  The latter kingdom is redemptive, the former is non-redemptive.  The latter is exclusive, the former is inclusive” (177).  This kind of sharp separation of two distinct roles in Christ raises significant questions of Christology and Trinitarian theology.  Such sharp discontinuity implies that these two different kingships of Christ have no essential relation to one another; they are just two different offices that happen to be filled by the same person, just as (to use the example I used above in chapter 3) I happen to be both an investment advisor and also a research student in Reformation political theology, two widely distinct roles that have little effect on one another.  Such hat-wearing may be common enough in human affairs, but orthodox theology has long recognized that it is problematic for theology.  The heresy of modalism was condemned precisely for such a hat-wearing view of God.  God, the modalists claimed, was not really three distinct persons, but was one person who opted to reveal himself under three different guises, carrying out three different offices.  Now, that’s not what’s going on here, but the same basic concern presents itself.  The problem with modalism, orthodox theology contended, was that it asserted a sharp discontinuity between the immanent and economic trinity, between who God was and how he revealed himself.  God manifested himself in history as three agents, and yet he was only one agent--if this was true, then God had not truly revealed himself.  Don’t we have the same the same problem with this bifurcation in Christ?  Christ manifests himself in Jesus of Nazareth as redeemer, and this self-revelation bears little or no relation to his pre-existent role as the eternal Son who governs a creation without redeeming it.  How does Jesus Christ faithfully reveal to us the Father, then, if he is not even a faithful witness of himself?  

Moreover, we might well ask, what exactly is the theological point in asserting that it is Christ, the second person of the Trinity, who executes this kingship over creation, “as eternal God, as the agent of creation and providence, and over all creatures”?  This office bears no relation to his distinctively Christological work, to his distinct second-personhood within the Trinity, but rather appears simply as a function of his generic God-ness.  In what sense is it Christ who exercises this particular kingship and not rather God the Father?  This turns out to be no mere idle question when we see how Samuel Rutherford assigns the two kingships--to “God as creator” and “God as redeemer.”  VanDrunen takes note of the distinction in language: “while Turretin speaks of the temporal kingdom as ruled by Christ as God, with the Father and Spirit, Rutherford simply speaks of this kingdom as ruled by God (the creator).  But the theological idea expressed by these theologians is substantively identical” (178).  

He returns to it later, at more length: “Rutherford’s language is similar though not identical to Turretin’s, and their substantive theological claims are the same.  As noted above, Rutherford put the temporal kingdom under ‘God the creator’ and spiritual kingdom under ‘Christ the Redeemer and Head of the Church.’  In speaking futher about the former, he writes that it is ‘not a part’ of Christ’s spiritual kingdom and thus states bluntly that the civil magistrate ‘is not subordinate to Christ as mediator and head fo the church.’  Along similar lines, he says later that ‘magistrates as magistrates’ are not ‘the ambassadors of Christ’ but ‘the deputy of God as the God of order, and as the creator.’... In light of this evidence, I suggest that Turretin and Rutherford teach the same doctrine in these passages, though from somewhat different angles.  Turretin answers Yes to the question whether Christ rules the temporal kingdom, but with qualifications (i.e., that he does so only as eternal God, with the Father and Holy Spirit, as creator/sustainer); Rutherford answers No to the same question, but with qualifications (i.e., that God the creator does rule this kingdom).  When the qualifications of each are compared to the other’s, the effect is the same.  To put it as precisely as possible, they both teach that the Son of God rules the temporal kingdom as an eternal member of the Divine Trinity but does not rule it in his capacity as the incarnate mediator/redeemer” (181).  

In his haste to reconcile Turretin and Rutherford here, VanDrunen has, in my view, stumbled headlong into what looks like serious Trinitarian heresy.  Rutherford’s viewpoint, whatever its weaknesses, seems to me to at least be theologically coherent and safe, if I am correct in interpreting “God the creator” to mean for him “God the Father.”  In this model, God the Father creates and governs the world, and delegates authority to magistrates as governors of the world,  and God the Son redeems this creation, and delegates authority to the Church as a redeemer of the world.”  This basic model certainly needs work, but it is reasonably stable and has been frequently employed in political theology.  But what Turretin (and certainly what VanDrunen) is saying seems different.  They posit a disjunction between what the Son does in his own person, and what he does as a member of the Trinity, as generic God.  This suggests that there are four agencies in the Godhead--one for each of the persons, and one for “eternal God”--the unity of the three persons, thus turning the three-in-oneness of orthodox theology into a three-plus-oneness.  Moreover, it suggests that, while one of the Son’s offices is executed coordinately with the Father and Spirit (that of governing creation), another is unique to him as Son (redeeming the world), thus violating the fundamental dictum of Trinitarian orthodoxy: “in the opera ad extra, the works of God are undivided.”  We must affirm that, in all his work, the Son works both uniquely as himself, and coordinately with Father and Spirit as a member of the Trinity.  Finally, we have here what looks like undisguised modalism: a sharp rift between what the Son does (and thus, who he is) as incarnate mediator, and the Son as “eternal member of the divine Trinity”--in other words, the incarnate mediatorial work of Christ turns out to just be a hat-wearing, an identity fundamentally separate from the eternal life of the divine Trinity, and of the Logos himself.  To put it simply: for VanDrunen, Jesus Christ the Son of God does not even really show us himself, the Logos, much less show us the Father, as he claimed to do.  He is merely an avatar.  

The only way to avoid this frightful conclusion, it seems to me, is to insist, with the New Testament, on the deep unity between Christ’s work as creator and as redeemer, as the one “by whom all things were made” and the one who “makes all things new.”  The opening to the Gospel of John makes this all as clear as one could wish (what follows is my own translation, as literal as possible): 

“1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 

2 This one was in the beginning with God.

3 All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be that came to be. 

4 In him was life and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness overtook/understood it not.

6 A man named John came to be, being sent from God.

7 He came for a witness so that he might bear witness concerning the light that all might believe through him.  

8 That man was not the light but he came that he might bear witness concerning the light.

9 He was the true light who lightens every man who is coming into the world.  

10 He was in the world and the world through him came to be and the world did not know him.

11 He came unto his own and his own received him not.
12 As many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believed in his name, 

13 those who not from blood nor from the will of the flesh nor from the will of man but from from God were born.  

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the unique one from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 John bore witness concerning him and cried out, saying, "This was of whom I said to you that he coming behind me should become before me, because he was earlier than me." 

16 And from his fullness we have all received and grace because of grace.

17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.

18 No one has seen God at any time, but the unique Son, who is in the bosom of the father, that one has exegeted him.”

This passage is uncompromising: it is the Word who was God and through whom all things came to be that himself became flesh, whose glory, that is to say, whose true dynamic identity, we witnessed, from whose fullness we received grace.  In him from the beginning was the life that by his life he brought to the world.  From the beginning he shed the light of his grace in the world, and finally he came to offer in himself the fullness of grace to the world which he had created.  In so doing, he perfectly revealed (“exegeted”) not only himself as he had been from all eternity, but also God the Father.  This Word who becomes flesh is not only the Creator from all eternity, but is redeemer from all eternity, and comes into the world so that men his creatures might become “sons of God”--what they were created to be in the beginning. 

Now, how exactly all this cashes out in terms of the nitty-gritty of political theology, and of Church and State, still needs a lot of work.  But it is at least clear that, however we cash this out, we cannot do so in a way that seeks to drive a wedge between Christ the creator and Christ the redeemer.  

The Calvinistic Extra-Large with Fries on the Side (VanD Review III.2)

May 13, 2010

Now, VanDrunen starts out by seeking to relate Calvin to what has gone before, telling us that “Lying behind Calvin’s discussions of the two kingdoms is an Augustinian two cities paradigm...a fundamental antithesis divided Christians from non-Christians” (71).  This, however, is not what his two kingdoms are about.  “Both of Calvin’s two kingdoms are God’s, but are ruled by him in distinctive ways....Christians are members of both kingdoms during their earthly lives.  Calvin perceived a clear difference between these two kingdoms but not a fundamental antithesis” (71).  Alright, so what are these two kingdoms?  VanDrunen quotes the famous passage from Institutes III.19: 

“Let us observe that in man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bound to perform....the former species has reference to the life of the soul, while the latter relates to matters of the present life, not only to food and clothing, but to the enacting of laws which require a man to live among his fellows purely, honourably, and modestly.  The former has its seat within the soul, the latter only regulates the external conduct.  We may call the one the spiritual, the other the civil kingdom” (III.19.15, quoted on 72).  

If he were merely drawing a distinction, but not making a separation, then we might deem it a somewhat unhelpful distinction, but I could live with it.  But then Calvin goes on to say (and VanDrunen goes on to quote him), “Now these two, as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other.  When the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other.  For there exists in man a kind of two worlds, over which different kings and different laws can preside” (ibid).

Now this is the sort of thing that, to my mind, only makes sense when read as a rhetorical overreach for a specific goal.  Do we as Christians really want to say that our Christian faith affects only our souls, and that, when considering it, we ought to call off our minds from any consideration of external conduct?  To suggest that the “life of the soul” is unrelated to “matters of the present life” can only be read, in my mind, as a foolish rhetorical excess or as dangerous Gnosticism.  Now, to be fair, VanDrunen much later on expresses some reservations about this language, saying (I will quote him in full): “One question that may be put to Calvin briefly at this point is whether his distinguishing the two kingdoms in terms of things that are ‘external’ and ‘internal’ or that concern the body and the soul accurately captures his intentions in regard to the institutions of church and state.  Calvin surely did not mean to suggest that the spiritual kingdom is concerned only about things that are immaterial, since he assigned to the church tasks such as diaconal relief of the poor and administration of the sacraments....one wonders whether this less than precise language contributed to the lack of full consistency between his theology of the two kingdoms and his views on concrete social matters” (91).  But, if VanDrunen doesn’t think this is quite the best way of identifying the dividing line between the two realms, I’d like to hear him articulate carefully where the line is, since so much weight is being put on it.  What are these “spiritual” things that have nothing to do with civil, temporal things, with matters of everday life?  This is no trivial question.

Some light (but little comfort) is provided as VanDrunen lays out “three important attributes of each kingdom that display the contrast of one with the other.  The three attributes of the kingdom of Christ are its redemptive character, its spiritual or heavenly identity, and its present institutional expression in the church.  The three attributes of the civil kingdom are its non-redemptive character, its external or earthly identity, and its present (though not exclusive) expression in civil government.”

So, first, let’s see what he says about this redemptive/non-redemptive business (hint, it’s pretty wild stuff, and piqued my interest about as piquantly as anything has piqued it all week).  VanDrunen wades into this topic via Calvin’s discussion of Christian liberty.  To be concise, I’ll just say that VanDrunen points out how Calvin invokes the two kingdoms doctrine in III.19.15 of the Institutes as a way of clarifying how the doctrine of Christian liberty is not supposed to overturn all human authority.  He summarizes Calvin’s point thus: “the redemptive doctrine of Christian liberty applies to life in the spiritual kingdom but not to life in the civil kingdom.  No human authority can bind the believer’s conscience in regard to participation in the spiritual kingdom of Christ....In the external things of the civil kingdom, in contrast, salvation in Christ does not at all diminish Christians’ obligation to obey magistrates” (74).  Now, whether or not VanDrunen is interpreting Calvin rightly here, I have major questions about the attempt to broaden this principle into the dictum: “God rules the spiritual kingdom as its redeemer and the civil kingdom as its creator and sustainer” (74).  

I must confess that I just don’t know how to make sense of this kind of statement.  I ask, is the civil kingdom not then fallen?  Presumably VanDrunen must admit that it is fallen.  Then I must ask, is God happy for it to remain fallen?  Where there is economic injustice going on, are Christians not to seek to bring redemption and Christ’s love to that situation?  Where there is violence and political oppression going on, are Christians not to seek to bring redemption and Christ’s love to that situation?  Where falsehood is being taught in schools, are Christians not supposed to bring the light of Christ’s truth there?  

I suppose I know how VanDrunen would have to respond here.  He would insist that yes, each of these situations must be remedied, but not redeemed.  They must be remedied in accord with the natural law, not redeemed by evangelical law.  So, where there is economic or political injustice, Christians should join with unbelievers in seeking reform according to the natural laws of equity; Christ’s love is not necessary to fix the problem.  Where falsehood is being taught, Christians should appeal to reason to prove the truth, rather than proclaiming special revelation.  But this doesn’t seem to do the trick, for at least three reasons.  For one, assuming the natural law to be sufficient, is it not true that our ability to grasp it properly has been undermined by sin?  We need the light of redemption to be able to see natural law rightly, to make use of it in reforming our fallen world.  For another, even if we have perceived natural law rightly, the strength and purity to apply it rightly and steadfastly is impossible without the grace of redemption.  Finally, assuming we have perceived and applied the natural law rightly, is this really enough for Christians?  If the Gospel reveals to us a justice that is made perfect in mercy and love, are we to be satisfied with a civil kingdom ruled by justice alone, without the perfection of mercy and love?  From my reading, it seems to be that many people would be; many Christians would be happy if the “civil kingdom” operated according to sub-Christian standard of justice and morality, while reserving Christian virtues for the Church alone, but I admit I am unable to think that way.  

In any case, this way of looking at things is much more problematic if you understand the “civil kingdom” not as “the civil magistrate,” as VanDrunen wants to take it, but to mean “external conduct,” as Calvin puts it.  I can’t imagine even VanDrunen wanting to say that “external conduct’ does not belong to God’s work of redemption.  But these are big-picture questions about VanDrunen’s whole undertaking, and I’ll lay them aside again for now to attend to his argument in this section, which starts getting really interesting in the next page or two.

VanDrunen asks whether this dualism he has just presented fails to give us a “religiously unified” or “Christological” view of life, as the neo-Calvinists object.  He replies that it does not; Calvin gives us a unified Christological account, but one that is cognizant of the “fundamental distinction between God’s non-redemptive work of creation and providence through his Eternal Son and his redemptive work through the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ” (75).  “Yes, but these two works are two moments in the life of the same person, the second of which brings the first to completion,” we want to object--but VanDrunen will not let us even get past “Yes, but--” before he has an answer for us--the infamous extra Calvinisticum, or if, you really need a translation, the “Calvinistic extra.”  This key point of Reformed Christological doctrine maintained, against the Lutherans, that even when he was on earth, Christ’s divine nature was not confined to his body, but existed “etiam extra carnem (‘even outside of his flesh’).”  In other words, even while Christ the God-man was stretched out upon the cross, Christ the divine Son was simultaneously in heaven (or rather, in all places), upholding the heavens and the earth by his power.  

Now, having been raised as a good Calvinist, I do believe that this doctrine serves to safeguard certain important points that have to be clung to (which is, after all, what Christology is all about), but I do recognize that it is a rather scary and potentially problematic way of expressing things.  It’s like a cross-beam that you have to put into your theological structure to hold it all together, but if you put too much weight on it, the whole thing will collapse.  And reading VanDrunen, I understood finally why the Lutherans have always been so uncomfortable about the Calvinistic extra and unwilling to go that route.

Here’s what he says, 

“This gives Calvin categories for affirming that the Son of God rules one kingdom in a redemptive manner and the other kingdom in a non-redemptive manner.  In his description of Calvin’s social thought, John Bolt helpfully explains: ‘As mediator, the divine Logos is not limited to his incarnate form even after the incarnation.  He was mediator of creation prior to his incarnation and as mediator continues to sustain creation independent of his mediatorial work as reconciler of creation in the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.’” (75)  

Now this is some pretty scary stuff--it looks like what we have here is the development of a “Christology” that can be abstracted from the concrete man Jesus Christ, in whom alone the Logos has been manifested to us; a gulf is being opened up between the immanent Christ and the economic Christ.  Now, the way I learned the extra Calvinisticum, the point was to safeguard the idea that Christ was still fully divine while incarnate, not to drive a permanent wedge between the non-incarnate Christ and the incarnate Christ.  And the way I learned theology, the whole point of affirming that the same Christ was both creator and redeemer was to help us understand that redemption was new creation, was the Son’s bringing to fulfilment of the work that he had begun in creation--the Son’s work of redemption was his perfection of his work of creation, and in his redemption lay the revelation to men of his creating and sustaining.  But now VanDrunen and Bolt want to tell me that far from comprising a unified work, they are two totally different activities that just happen to be done by the same person, much as I study theology most of the time but also do part-time work for my dad and I’s investment advising firm from time to time.  And they want to lay all this on the slender and tender thread of the extra Calvinisticum. Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I found myself having to take some slow deep breaths after this section.  

Whatever the case, VanDrunen has stretched his argument well beyond Calvin at this point.  While he claims that later Reformed theologians did indeed develop this notion of dual mediation (which is still not necessarily the same thing as the extra Calvinisticum) as a basis for a two kingdoms doctrine, he can say no more of Calvin than that he “laid the groundwork.”  And even there, if you look at the footnotes, you find this: “While I suggest here that Calvin’s understanding of the extra Calvinisticum is theologically coherent with and in some sense precedent for the later Reformed doctrine of the two mediatorships of Christ, W.D.J. McKay has argued for an element of discontinuity between Calvin’s understanding of Christ’s kingship over the nations and the understanding of seventeenth-century Reformed thought” (76).  In other words, “Actually, it turns out that my whole thesis here may be fundamentally flawed, but let’s just pretend that it isn’t.”  Sorry, VanD, I’m not going to let you get away with this one.  

Ratzinger on Christ as Word

Sorry, but I feel compelled to continue the onslaught of Ratzinger. I've finished the book now finally, so it can't continue forever. This, in keeping with my typical laziness, will essentially be a copy-and-paste from something I already typed up for someone:

Why is Christ the perfect self-revelation of God? How do we know that in Christ, we're getting the real
thing, the authentic revelation of God? How can we be sure that the Christ about whom we learn is really how
Christ was? In other words, how can we be sure that "Jesus" and "Christ" are completely equatable?
Ratzinger says it is because, for Christ, being and word, being and action, are merged, in a way that they
are for ordinary fallen men:
"with Jesus, it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, the differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office; the office is the person. . . . there is no private area reserved for an 'I' that remains in the background
behind the deeds and actions."
"To understand him as the Christ means to be convinced that he has put himself into his word. Here there is no 'I' (as there is with all of us) that utters words; he has identified himself so closely with his word that 'I' and word are indistinguishable: he is word."
I shall attempt to unpack the significance of all this. See, the dilemma is that for any of us, who we are as a person always eludes grasp to some degree; it cannot be defined or confined in what our various positions in life are, what our actions are, what our words are. It can be glimpsed, but discovering the true authentic person is so very difficult. When people seek to get to know each other, how do they do it? Well, largely through words--through conversation. But how authentic is this? I can be deceptive in what I choose to say, and you can't always tell the difference. I may not be intentionally deceptive, but I may be selective in what I choose to say, so that my words are not always an accurate representation of my thoughts. People have habitual ways of expressing themselves (known as social skills) that put somewhat of a disconnect between the way they come across to others and the way they really are. How authentic then, are words? With humans, we can never really be sure we know who someone really is merely by their words. So we have the benefit of actions, right? You know someone partly by the things they do. But again, how can one be sure these are not just part of a self-scripted drama? Or, again, if not deceptive, selective...my actions only make public a small sliver of me. Or, again, my actions could be tailored to fit certain circumstances, so that they come to represent more what I am expected to do than who I really am. There is again a disconnect--how do we get at the authentic person behind the mask of words and deeds? To some degree, we never can, in this life, at least.

But Jesus Christ transcends that disconnect--for him, his words, his teachings, are inseparable from his being; he is incarnate Word. At the same time, his deeds are inseparable from his being; his role as prophet, priest, and king, is the authentic full revelation of his being from all eternity. He is the divine essence in pure, unimpeded action. At the same time, he is the perfection of humanity, because, as the first human who is fully, authentically himself, he satisfies at last the human thirst to truly know one another, to commune with one another, and he prefigures for us the perfect transparency we will
enjoy in our glorified state.

A couple long quotes showing how Ratzinger starts to apply this:
"His crucifixion is his coronation; his kingship is his surrender of himself to men, the identification of word, mission, and existence in the yielding up of this very existence. His existence is thus his word. he is word because he is love. From the Cross faith understands in increasing measure that this Jesus did not just do and say something; that in him message and
person are identical, that he is all along what he says. John needed only to draw the final straightforward inference: if that is so--and this is the Christological basis of his Gospel--then this Jesus Christ is 'word'; but a person who not only has
words but is his word and his work, who is the logos ('the Word', meaning, mind) itself; that person has always existed and will always exist; he is the ground on which the world stands--if we ever meet such a person, then he is the meaning that comprises us all and by which we are all sustained."

"For anyone who recognizes the Christ in Jesus, and only in him, and who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, anyone who grasps the total oneness of person and work as the decisive factor, has abandoned the exclusiveness of faith and its antithesis to love; he has combined both in one and made their mutual separation unthinkable. The hyphen between Jesus and Christ, the inseparability of person and work, the identity of one man with the act of sacrifice--these also signify the hyphen between love and faith. For the peculiarity of Jesus's 'I', of his person, which now certainly moves right into the center of the stage, lies in the fact that this 'I' is not at all something exclusive and independent but rather is Being completely derived from the 'Thou' of the Father and lived for the 'You' of men. It is identity of logos (truth) and thus makes love into the logos, the
truth of human existence. The essnence of the faith demanded by a Christology so understood is consequently entry into the universal openness of unconditional love. For to believe in a Christ so understood means simply to make love the content of faith, so that from this angle one can perfectly well say, love is faith."