Obedience that Saves: a Dogmatic Inquiry into the Obedience of Jesus Christ in Karl Barth's Doctrine of Reconciliation as shown in his Church Dogmatics

Abstract

This thesis demonstrates the dogmatic significance the motif of the obedience of Jesus Christ has within Karl Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation as shown in the Church Dogmatics. The significance is shown by considering the threefold ‘directional’ manner that Barth treats the obedience of Jesus Christ: i) a ‘backward’ direction in drawing the incarnate obedience of Jesus into the triune Godhead ii) a present orientation in the sense of Jesus’ obedience displayed as it is in the incarnation, and iii) a ‘forward’ direction showing how the obedience of Christ leads to the obedience of those who are reconciled. At the same time, the investigation is conducted by addressing doctrinal or theological issues related to Jesus’ obedience arising from Barth’s treatment of the subject matter, rather than in chronological order as these treatments appear in the Dogmatics. The following two key findings are presented: first, in following the Tradition, Barth affirms the obedience of Jesus Christ as a genuine and authentic human obedience, involving an act of human volition in response to a higher calling or command. This genuine obedience of Jesus Christ comes to play a causative and instrumental role in God’s reconciliatory program with humankind. It is in the second key finding that we locate Barth’s distinctive contribution to the dogmatic significance of Jesus’ obedience vis-à-vis that of the Tradition. That is, Barth equates the incarnate obedience of Jesus Christ with the divine obedience of the eternal Son within the triune Godhead. In this move, Barth goes so far as to tether the command-obedience relationship between the Father and the Son in eternity to the eternally begetting-and-being-begotten relations of origin that characterize the Father and the Son within the divine processions. I argue that Barth is able to assert the notion of divine obedience only because of his underlying framework of actualistic ontology. This, in turn, is a framework specifying God’s eternal election of Jesus Christ as a divine action of self-determination that carries ontological implications for God’s triune being. Given that the second mode of being of the triune God from the outset is identified as Jesus Christ, Barth conceives the incarnate obedience of Jesus Christ as the divine obedience of the eternal Son under the trope of his actualistic ontology. The immediate result of such a conception is that the dogmatic role and function occupied by the obedience of Jesus Christ is extended from its usual domain within the economy of salvation to that of the divine will and purpose, and even to the immanent being of God. The obedience of Jesus Christ could in fact be said to occupy a co-participatory albeit asymmetrically ordered role in the determination of the divine ontology itself that arises from the divine election. Barth gives maximum space to the specification of the role and function of Jesus’ incarnate obedience in a manner unprecedented within the Tradition while preserving the divine initiative and primacy. God allows the incarnate obedience of Jesus Christ to have a part in the divine self-determination that arises from the eternal decision of (self-) election, but it is still God who elects, who so determines his being in just this way, revealing himself as the God who, as Barth states, “does not will to be God without us.” (CD IV/1, p. 7)