Steven J. Duby’s God in Himself

The glad pursuit of the knowledge of God is the invitation at the heart of Steven Duby’s God in Himself. ¹ Such knowledge – theologia – is without principal reference to the oikonomia of God’s external works; it is knowledge of God rather than simply knowledge of God’s acts. Although central to the catholic tradition of Christian theology, this sort of knowledge has been subject to significant critique and mistrust, especially among Protestant theologians. Against proposals that theology confine itself to the discussion of God’s economic works, or that Christian knowledge of God may be fittingly derived only from God’s historic acts rather than his causal relation to creation, Duby contends that theologia is not only possible but desirable as a foretaste of our eschatological communion with God. If the knowledge of God is truly eternal life (John 17:3), then to pursue theologia is to pursue our highest good.

Recent years have seen a slight change in tide within Reformed theology with respect to the doctrine of God. Many twentieth-century conversations about the coordination of theologia and oikonomia were marked by Barth’s outright rejection of natural theology or by a view of scholasticism as synthetic theology perpetuating a false nature-grace dualism. Often such convictions led to the view that an account of God’s nature properly determined by the logic of the gospel and free from intellectual syncretism would need to be based exclusively on the salvific work of the incarnate Christ. Against this background, a growing body of literature seeks to reaffirm that the classical Christian doctrine of God is not an unhelpful holdover which should be purged from a thoroughly Protestant or “evangelical” theology, but rather is thoroughly affirmed by theologians of the Reformation and deeply rooted in the logic and grammar of the Scriptures themselves. Nevertheless, significant and powerful critiques of traditional modes of knowing and naming God persist, while discussion continues about the precise manner in which contemporary Reformed theology might appropriate classical resources for theology proper.

It is to these conversations that Duby contributes his God in Himself. The volume responds to a wide range of modern criticisms of theologia, answering their charges by drawing especially on the Reformed scholastics and Thomas Aquinas. God in Himself also offers a substantial constructive proposal for the contemporary pursuit of the knowledge of God in his transcendence of the economy. The first chapter traces the place of theologia within the divine economy. Duby contends that Scripture itself teaches that the goal of God’s works is to communicate knowledge of God himself and not merely knowledge of God in his relationship to creatures: the knowledge of God granted by Scripture transcends awareness of God’s acts. A range of classical categories dispels anxiety about the nature of such knowledge. Human knowledge of God is limited, discursive, and ectypal; its character is both theoretical and practical; it is now pilgrim theology although it will one day arrive in patria. Resources such as divine simplicity and pure act alleviate the concerns of Luther or Barth about a deus absconditus.

In light of this sketch of the knowledge of God in salvation history, Duby uses his second chapter to provide a theological account of the natural knowledge of God. Such natural theology is both implanted and acquired. Engaging the work of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham among medieval theologians as well as the reformed views of Calvin, Turretin, and Junius, Duby responds to the famous objection of Karl Barth and to Bavinck’s critique of certain forms of Roman Catholic natural theology. He bolsters his case with a significant excursus on Aquinas and causal analysis. A scripturally grounded account of theologia, Duby concludes – rightly resourced by medieval and reformed theology – need not abandon natural theology. Accounts of the economic work of God need not exclude theological reflection on the created order in its relation to God. Rather, natural theology is itself caught up in God’s work to draw us to communion with himself.

Following this discussion of natural theology, chapter three advances the argument by considering the place of supernatural revelation, and especially of Christology, in the knowledge of God. Duby argues that while Christology is indeed the culmination of special revelation, it need not and should not be the exclusive basis, the first or the only principle of theology proper. Against the objections of Barth and those shaped by his concerns, Duby contends that we have no epistemic access to the person of Christ apart from Scripture and so it is wrong to take the Incarnation rather than scriptural revelation as the external cognitive principle of theological knowledge. The fullest intelligibility of Christ as God with us, moreover, depends upon having recourse to doctrines like divine aseity.

Duby acknowledges that his proposal will strike some as problematically metaphysical in its view of Christology, and the proper use of metaphysics is the subject of chapter four. Cognizant of a range of objections to the use of metaphysics in Christian theology, Duby argues that the science of metaphysics as such has as its object created being only, and so God’s nature does not fall within its purview. Christian theologia, then, may make analogical and ministerial use of metaphysical concepts to distinguish God from created being, not least in light of the precedent for so doing internal to the Bible itself. Properly articulated, a “metaphysical” theology does not pose God as the ontological counterpoint of creatures nor as the archetypal instantiation of generic being. Still less does it bifurcate an immobile divinity from the dynamic action of the Son’s incarnation. Rather, it underscores the wondrous nature of divine presence and the profound density of Christ’s salvific work.

Finally, Duby’s fifth chapter explores the legitimate use of analogy in naming God. The subject of analogy, its proper bases, and proposed alternatives have long been contested in theology. Duby here engages Aquinas and his varied interpreters, Duns Scotus and Ockham as well as Cajetan and Suarez, before turning to the Reformed scholastics and considering contemporary objections, including those of Barth and Pannenberg. He rejects the analogy of multa ad unum which would be predicated on a universal category separate from God that both he and creatures would instantiate. Instead, he elaborates the analogy of unum ad alterum, grounding it in creaturely participation in God. What emerges is a defence of analogy thoroughly conversant with the tradition but very much at the heart of Reformed theology proper.

The respondents to Duby’s book, N. Gray Sutanto, Scott Swain, and Dolf te Velde are each engaged in ongoing debates about the retrieval and rearticulation of traditional resources for Reformed theology proper, seeking to demonstrate the genuine catholicity of the doctrine of God in the Reformed tradition. As such they have approached God in Himself not only with sympathy but with constructive interests of their own, as they seek to advance the agenda of resourcing contemporary theologia.

Sutanto affirms his appreciation for the critical recovery of an account of natural theology as a product of divine action and grace rather than of human autonomy. In conversation with Cory Brock’s recent monograph on Bavinck and Schleiermacher, he discusses the former’s adoption of the idea of a “sense of dependence” through which God weighs on the human subject prior to reasoning, before exploring Bonaventure’s depiction of illumination and its account of God as the first thing known.

Scott Swain discusses the role of metaphysics in the missional confrontation between the good news of Christ and Greek philosophy and religion. He observes that Christian theologia is not only the subversion of Greek philosophical impulses, but also their fulfilment in the pursuit of knowledge and worship of God in accordance with his nature.

Dolf te Velde recognises in Duby’s defence of analogy a “generous Thomism” and seeks to articulate an account of Scotus’ univocity which had as its opponent not Aquinas but Henry of Ghent. Such an account of theological language, he argues, does not in fact collapse God and creatures into a single category, but coupled with disjunctive transcendental terms and formal distinctions, co-opts a “univocal core” that serves as a stable middle term in theological predication. Te Velde offers some Scotistic, Franciscan contributions to Duby’s portrait of theological language.

We are grateful too, to Steven Duby for his response to these papers. He writes in God in Himself that part of the supreme value of Christian theologia is precisely that it does not consist in anything “immediately practical” and is not “oriented to questions of technique and efficiency.” ² Sharing this conviction, our discussions have been marked throughout by a sense of the warm collegiality which should characterise those, whatever their differences, whose theology remains in via in this life.