The concept ofanalogia fideithus emerges as the great epistemological presumption of our thesis. It presumes that only a Christological view of the personal capacity for moral knowledge will suffice. Furthermore, it presumes that the innertrinitarian life of God is the premise for dogmatics and ethics. As Jüngel discovered in his search for aChristological natural theology: “We are, indeed, working with a presupposition here.”75 Precisely. This is the presupposition which makes evangelical ethicsevangelical. While this presupposition entails the miracle of faith, it does not imply that theological knowledge is either impossible or inaccessible. It does not even deny the possibility of a point of contact; to the contrary, as we have seen, the point of contact is given in the faith of Christ, and we can therefore arrive at a coherent statement ofOffenbarungsmächtigkeitbased in the miracle of faith. Barth states as much in his definition of “the real point of contact”—
The image of God in man of which we must speak here and which forms the real point of contact for God’s Word is therectitudowhich through Christ is raised up from real death and thus restored or created anew, and which is real as man’s possibility for the Word of God. The reconciliation of man with God in Christ also includes, or already begins with, the restitution of the lost point of contact. Hence this point of contact is not real outside faith; it is real only in faith.76
The real point of contact occurs not as a characteristic of the “formal”imago, but rather as the epistemic event of God’s self-revelation in which human understanding is transformed by the miracle of faith. It is a self-actualizing possibility:
for the capacity of human language to communicate (“bear witness”). I take exception, however, to
McCormack’s conclusion that “Theanalogia fideiis itself aninherently dialectical concept”, on the grounds that this interpretation may invite the same conflicts we have already encountered with dialectical epistemology. McCormack does not, however, intend to impute such a form of dialectical epistemology to Barth’s theology— hence, his phrase “critical realism” is an attempt to avoid confusion over his use of the word “dialectical”;Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 16-7.
75
Jungel, ‘Extra Christum…’, 180. 76
We can establish it only as we stand fast in faith and its knowledge, i.e., as we turn away from ourselves and turn our eyes or rather our ears to the Word of God. As we hear it, we have the possibility of hearing it.77
“Turn” and “hear” are the effective verbs in this understanding.78 These are personal actions which involve the person-as-knower in the event of moral knowledge. This follows sensibly from the ineluctable mutuality ofratio cognoscendiandratio essendi. Knowing and Being are combined in the reality of God as self-demonstrating event, knowledge of which is grounded in personal participation in the concurrent movement of faith, guided by the Holy Spirit. Knowing-as-Being leads therefore to Knowing-as-Acting through a person’s
participation in the process of knowledge. This is the epistemological corollary to the
ontological actualization of being-as-knowing.79In this sense of understanding what it means to be a person-as-becoming, we see that the meaning of the self is grounded in the self- determining event of God as eternally “Becoming-Who-I-Am”.80 Knowledge is thus not an objectifiable realityper se, for it has no existence outside the person-as-becoming, but is rather a consequence and aspect of a person’s relationship with the source of knowledge. What does this mean for our understanding of the person as a knower ofmoralknowledge?
Metanoia
& moral knowledge
Turnandhear. These are the essential verbs for knowledge of God, and hence for theological knowledge of the moral order. In the New Testamentmetanoia(μετάνοια) is of course the word which conveys this sense of turning, or repenting, in the context of faith, truth and discipleship.Metanoiais the event, action and process in which a person’s
understanding and knowledge are transformed.81 This event is the existential human reality
77
CDI/1, 236. 78
This language echoes the parabolic teaching of Jesus and the prophets [Matt. 13:10-17, Mark 4:12, Luke 8:10, John 12:40; cf. Isa. 6:9-10]. The function of the parables is to bring about a transformation in understanding—to
turnand tohear. 79
Michael Polanyi develops this concept inPersonal Knowledge; he puts it aptly: “Knowledge is anactivity
which would be better described as aprocessof knowing” (The emphasis is mine.)Knowing and Being: Essays,
ed. Marjorie Grene (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1969) 132. 80
Hence, Jüngel’s title,Gottes Sein ist im Werden. 81
Murray Rae says it well: “The result is that the knower is not left as she was but is transformed through the knowing process. The knower is made a new person under the impact of the new relation…”; Rae, ‘“Incline Your Ear so that You May Live”: Principles of Biblical Epistemology’, inThe Bible and Epistemology: Biblical Soundings on the Knowledge of God, eds. Mary Healy and Robin Parry (Milton Keynes, U.K.; Paternoster, 2007) 161-180, 161.
Chapter 6: Transformation of Persons 152 which corresponds to the epistemic miracle of faith in which the human person participates in the self-revelation of God. Metanoiathus refers to the transformation of the human person in the actualization ofOffenbarungsmächtigkeitas an epistemic event.Metanoiais the human side of what it means to “participate in Christ”—a continual event in the life of faith. This is a continual relationship, and not a once-and-for-all moment which a person can set aside and “get on with life”.
Because the Christological source of this relationship does not change from one moment to the next, so also it would be a mistake to presume thatOffenbarungsmächtigkeitbecomes something other than the miraculous event in which God’s Being-in-Becoming is continually and always the life-giving reality of revelation. To shift the hermeneutic focus to a singular “moment of conversion”, would be to reject the very premise of theanalogia fidei, and to reintroduce the problems inherent in the concept of the bifurcatedimago.
The transformation (metanoia) of the person-as-moral-knower is thus a concomitant reality of moral knowledge. This is why we have paid so much attention to the meaning of Offenbarungsmächtigkeitfor theological anthropology. If we get this concept wrong, we run the risk of embarking upon some other route to evangelical ethics which presumes to bypass the miracle of faith. The possibility of a point-of-contact (Anknüpfungspunkt)simpliciter, is not the problem. Even the “formal”imago, simpliciter, is not the problem. Even Barth is willing to admit that “a man is a man and not a cat.”82 The problem arises when these concepts are given force to present other possibilities for real knowledge of God by
discerning themeaningof the orders of creation, through other epistemological routes apart from the event of participation in Christ, i.e., apart from the relational event of faith. The real problem is whenOffenbarungsmächtigkeitis construed as a human capacity, because that idea imports moral significance into the naturalhumanum. Up to this point, Brunner’s
dialectical theology is unproblematic.83 Past this point lies the abyss of which Barth warned. This is whyevangelicalethics, when speaking of human understanding of moral knowledge, will ground that understanding in terms of participation in the self-revealing, innertrinitarian life of God.84
82
Nein!, 88. 83
Joan O’Donovan sees the flaw in Brunner’s importation of “revelational content” into his dialectical doctrine of the “formal”imago, concluding that this “functional deflation of the “formal factor” signals the collapse of the nature/grace dialectic in its epistemological and ontological aspects.” Joan O’Donovan, ‘Man in the image of God: the Disagreement between Barth and Brunner Reconsidered’,Scottish Journal of Theology 39(1986): 433- 459, 441.
84
Ethics, 461. Bruce McIntyre offers helpful insight, in understanding the criterion to define “theimago Dei, the