What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be free? These are the types of questions that have often plagued the Christian theological dialogue for centuries. Indeed, these theoanthropological loci have been the source of much consternation and division; that is, depending on how disparate Christian thinkers conclude on an answer to these questions. Often, whether in the theological or philosophical realms, answering these questions are reduced to, generally, two disparate tribes: 1) Arminian/Libertarian Free Agency, and 2) Calvinism/Compatibilist Determinism. There are of course other iterations of expression along the continuum that these seemingly two polar opposites are comprised of; but again, and generally speaking, this is what we have seen play out—with reference to our original questions—within the development and history of theological ideas (e.g., Augustine/Pelagius; Luther/Erasmus; Calvin/Pighius et al.)
In contradistinction, Athanasian Reformed theology, after Barth (and Athanasius), elides the seemingly unavoidable binary that the annals of history have been scorched by. We focus on the freedom of God as the only ground from whence any notion of freedom might be construed. The arguments surrounding freewill vis-à-vis human agency, before God, all start with an abstract soteriological question bequeathed to the church by, primarily, St. Augustine. Augustine’s bequeathment comes primarily from his commitment to Neo-Platonism, and how he thought of the relation between the eternal forms and their shadows in temporal history. Without getting into that now, we can only gesture at it for time and space constraints. It is Barth, as already noted, who offers an alternative way to reformulate these questions and answers; not from an abstract lens grounded in various humanity for whom God gave His life alone; but from the concrete humanity of God, as that is given for us in Jesus Christ. When Jesus is the ground from whence all theological questions flow, we are sure to be provided with the answers that God has freely chosen to bequeath upon us by His dearly beloved Son.
In the following passage from Barth, he is describing what, from his christological lights, a genuine human being is comprised by. In a way, without all of the context, when the reader reads this, it might sound like Barth is speaking abstractly about a needed performativity of humanity before God. But know, he is referring to God’s humanity for us in Jesus Christ (and yet, dialectically so).
What can and does happen in the human decision as such is that man offers himself to God. He thanks God. He is responsible before God, i.e., he makes himself a response to the Word of God—no less but also no more than that. He gives what he has, i.e., what he is, and therefore himself. No less than this is required of him. Less than this is not sufficient to constitute true humanity. To offer himself and place himself at the disposal of God—it is to this that he is summoned and for this that he is strengthened and empowered. Doing this, he is established as a human subject, and posits himself as such. Failing to do it, he fails to realise himself as man. For to do this is his only possibility. Offering and disposing himself to go to God and to be obedient to the divine call: “Come,” he pushes open the gate and steps out into freedom. As he does so, he is a creature which transcends the limits of the creature. And in this way he is the human creature. No less than this is required of him. If he did not do this, if he decided differently, he would not be man. But also no more is required of him. It is not required of him that he should make himself into a gift which necessarily satisfies and pleases God. It is required of him rather that he should know himself and will himself on the basis of the fact that he is called by God; that he should affirm himself as the being which sets out on its journey to God and is therefore taking the step of freedom. But it is not required of him that he should place himself at the side of God, or that his action should decide or anticipate this justification before God. He can take the first step, but he cannot ensure that it will successfully lead him to the goal at which he aims. He cannot give mor than he has. It is not within his power to make himself right and acceptable and well-pleasing to his Creator, and therefore worthy of being with Him. This is a matter beyond his control. He cannot impart or attribute it to himself. He cannot ensure that he will come to God merely by setting out to go to Him. Hence his going to God, his responsibility before Him, must be of such a kind as to realise and express his limitation. It must be a pure self-offering. It must be free from any sort of encroachment. It must renounce any suggestion that man’s decision might anticipate the decision which only God can take. Man’s responsibility before God must consist in a self-offering to God which is referred to God’s own decision and dependent upon it. Only when it has this character does it happen that man comes as well as goes to God, so that he himself transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.[1]
Barth’s claim that to be ‘real man,’ that the creature must transcend his own impotent limits, is functioning as something like a witness. A witness to the reality that what is required of ‘real man’ remains the impossible possibility that really and ultimately can and has only been achieved by the Son of Man for us. The underlying premise to Barth’s inklings on ‘real man’ is clearly in reference to who he takes to be the only real man in all of history: i.e., Jesus Christ.
Getting back to the opening of this article, the reader might be wondering how the aforementioned gets us past the binary that say Calvinism and Arminianism operate from vis-à-vis human agency/freewill in salvation. Barth, rather than starting in abstract people, those who have been “predestined” to be the elect of God, starts with the premise of a concrete person; the Theanthropos (Godman). What this move does is focus our attention on the altitudes God is expecting of [hu]man to genuinely be [hu]man. God has a holy requirement that a genuine humanity will meet in relationship to who God is. Since fallen humanity is unable to reach these heights it is has been required of God, if indeed reconciliation is to obtain between God and humanity, that God provide ‘Himself a lamb.’ It is God’s desire, because of who He is as eternal and triune love, within Himself, that God created to begin with. It is God’s desire to have fellowship and participation with us as counterpoints upon whom He, in His other-processive life, might fellowship and enjoy eternal bliss with. And it has always already been God’s free choice, to be God’s image for us in Jesus Christ (Col. 1.15); indeed, this has always been the goal of original creation in the first place: to elevate us in the humanity of Christ, His image for us, into eternal participation and interpenetration with Him by the grace of adoption. And so in this, He pre-destined Himself to be for us as He elected to be us in the humanity of Jesus Christ, that we might, again by grace, become one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6.17).
All of the above noted, the reader still might be wondering: “okay, so how does this implicate human freedom in salvation?” In a nutshell, it works off the assumption that there is only one genuine freedom for the human being to truly be free from—God’s, since God alone is free. This is how [hu]man ‘transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.’ He or she moves within the freedom for God that God is first for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus has trailblazed the way for a real humanity, as the firstborn from the dead, to become real humanity; that is rightly related to God, as God has always intended. By the Spirit, the human can now correspondently say Yes and Amen to God, from God’s Yes and Amen for them in the vicarious human agency of Jesus Christ. Our freedom as human beings before God is funded by God’s freedom to be for us; and in this freedom, as we become united to Christ, not just ‘carnally’ but ‘spiritually,’ it is herein whence the human being becomes genuinely human. This is because, following the logic we have been operating with thus far, based on the premises set by Barth, what it means to be really human is to really be resident in the bosom of the Father through participation and union with the Son. We seek God, therefore, because He has first sought us in Christ. He is free to do that, and ironically, by His very freedom, by Him penetrating the ‘unhealed’ of our fallen human natures through the hypostatic unioning in the incarnation, we become participant in His freedom. It is a freedom that only has eyes for the living God. And it is these eyes that portend the entailments of what it genuinely means to be human and free; that is in right and forever relationship with the God who created us just for this very purpose.
More to be said, of course! But hopefully you can start to see, maybe only in a liminal way (but hopefully more!) how this reframing of things, that is through a christological frame, gets us far beyond the usual antics that surround this long and entrenched battle between the saints of old and today.
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2 §44 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 182.