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Barth interestingly (CD 1.1, p. 410) suggests a correspondence between soteriology and Trinitarian theology: "reconciliation or revelation is not creation or a continuation of creation but rather an inconceivably new work above and beyond creation, so we have also to say that the Son is not the Father but that here, in this work, the one God, though not without the Father, is the Son or Word of the Father." And he criticizes Schleiermacher for "consistently" treating reconciliation as a mere "crowning of creation" and "interpreting the Trinity modalistically." There is certainly a problem with Schleiermacher at this point, if Barth is right that he "regarded sin quantitatively as a mere lack," but I don't see that there is a necessary connection between modalism and a conception of reconciliation as a bringing-to-fulfillment of creation.
Consider: What if Adam had not sinned? What "second work" would have been left for the Son after creation by the Father? Surely it would have been some completion of creation, bringing it to eschatological fulfillment and ultimate union with the Triune God (perhaps through an incarnation). Sin doesn't fundamentally change this trajectory for creation, though the invasion of Sin does mean that the path to the eschatological fulfillment runs through not only an incarnation but a propitiatory death and a justifying resurrection. I don't see how this implies or even hints at modalism.
Also, Barth's comments seem to imply too strong an appropriation of creation to the Father. The Son, after all, is also the One by whom all things are made.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 at 12:46 PM
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