David Congdon’s Universal Salvation
Reading his book, The God Who Saves, chap. 3
I’m reading David Congdon’s new book The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch and writing about it as I go. Last time I tried to give an overview of what he calls the heart of his book, that is, his account of salvation in the third chapter. I stopped just short of explaining how Congdon argues for universal salvation and refrained from offering any critique. Today I’ll attend to those two tasks.
To review my summary from last time, Congdon wants theology to center around soteriology — that is, around salvation. The problem: We don’t have a single account of salvation in the Bible or the Christian church at large. Furthermore, accounts of salvation depend largely on what we identify as the problem from which God saves us. Congdon describes how early Christian adjusted their expectations for God so they differed from their prior Jewish expectations. That is, they left behind hope of political or national salvation and formed the expectation that salvation “could be actual and effective without any external or empirical evidence” (72). Nevertheless, they hoped that one day their hidden knowledge of salvation would be made manifest for the world to see and expected a return of Christ in glory. We still await that return, and Congdon advises that we reinterpret the second coming of Christ in an “existential and present” sense rather than a “cosmological and future” sense (70). At bottom, salvation for Congdon amounts to existential cocrucifixion with Christ. When we experience this cocrucifixion today, that experience is for us the return of Christ. Rather than having a portion of salvation now and awaiting a fuller measure at the close of history, salvation is “wholly past, wholly present, and wholly future” (85, emphasis original).
David Congdon’s book offers a universalist dogmatic sketch on which all people are saved (I discussed univeralism in my first post). How then does Congdon understand salvation as or via cocrucifixion with Christ to include all people? This is the burden of the remainder of chapter 3.
Axiomatic for Congdon is the notion that “salvation takes place where we are placed outside ourselves . . . being-outside-ourselves simply is what it means to have a saving faith” (90). In order to save all people, God simply needs to place all people outside themselves. But how can faith be construed as something that happens to a person, rather than a possession or activity or posture of a person? Congdon draws on infant baptism as discussed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the needed distinctions. Bonhoeffer distinguishes between “fides directa and fides reflexa. The former refers to an act of faith that takes place in the consciousness without being consciously reflected upon, while the latter is a conscious reflection upon this act of faith” (90). So we have an act of faith in the consciousness and conscious reflection upon the same. This is a legitimate distinction. No thing — other than reflection upon reflection — can be the same as reflection upon itself. A closely related distinction is between “actus directus and actus reflexus, that is, between a direct act of consciousness and the consciousness of subsequent reflection” (90).
With these distinctions in hand, Congdon contrasts infant baptism as actus directus and adult baptism as actus reflexus. One requires conscious reflection. The other does not. Yet Congdon still describes actus directus and fides directa respectively as “a direct act of consciousness” and “an act of faith that takes places in the consciousness.” Just because something lacks reflection, on these definitions, it doesn’t seem to follow that it is either actus directus and fides directa. These seem to require consciousness, as he defines them, even if they are not consciously reflected upon. Nevertheless, I think that Congdon wants to use these terms in a sense such that no awareness of the direct act or faith is required, and certainly they occur without any reflection.
Using these distinctions, Congdon essentially argues that a person can have saving faith in God and be saved without their consent or awareness, just as we may baptize and infant. In fact, he argues, all people are saved at this unconscious level, even if they then reflect upon it. Just as an infant is wholly outside of themselves, in terms of existing wholly dependent upon others, so also “whoever shares in the existential posture of the child is an unconscious Christian” (94). This, it turns out, includes everyone at some point in their existence, at least in birth and death:
[W]e can be confident, based on the logic of the kerygma, that every person has been or will be an unconscious Christian. For some, unconscious faith might only occur in a moment of literal unconsciousness — at birth or at death, where we are placed wholly outside ourselves. Others will encounter eschatological existence in moments of pure being-for-others, such as at the birth of a child, in the ecstasy (ek-stasis, lit. “standing outside oneself”) of love, or in the ethical encounter with a neighbor in need. Still others will be placed outside themselves through the aesthetic experience of the beautiful, which constitutes “an elemental interruption of our framework of reality” that allows us to “see anew” our worldly context by giving it “a direction to the future, to a future that makes whole.” . . . In our estrangement from the world and our own existence, we gain a new understanding of ourselves and the other. However it occurs, each person will, at some moment, participate in the authentic existence promised by and actualized in the eschatological kerygma. Insofar as they are placed outside themselves, faith recognizes that it is Christ himself in whom they are placed (97–98).
In this schema, truly we can say blessed are the poor, the marginalized and the godforsaken. For they, having been placed outside of themselves by the world in its cruelty, thereby experience cocrucifixion with Christ, which amounts to being saved. It seems as if, on Congdon’s account, any form of suffering or dependence upon others, whether it be chosen or imposed, amounts to cocrucifixion with Christ and serves as the place where the second coming of Christ happens anew.
[T]he inbreaking of Christ’s reign is a reality for those excluded from every banquet and feast, and only because of this can we be confident that it is a reality also for each of us in the eccentricity of our unconscious self-understanding, our unreflective being-outside-ourselves. . . . [E]ven when our lives come to an end and the world seems to have lost all meaning, we can say in truth that, in him, the kingdom of God has come near (102).
By way of my response and critique, I should say that although I have read this chapter closely I have not yet read the rest of the book. It could be that my concerns are addressed down the road, but I suspect that since Congdon describes this chapter as the heart of his account, what he says here will remain to the end.
I really enjoyed reading this chapter and appreciate a number of the problems that Congdon identifies. First, I agree that we lack a single biblical account of Christian salvation. I also agree that the early church revised their Jewish apocalyptic expectations to a large degree. In fact, after reading Albert Schweitzer, I’m inclined to think that Jesus even revised his expectations for God throughout the course of his ministry. Encounter with God is going to shake up prior expectations. I also agree that the Christian church needs to reckon carefully with the delayed return of Christ. The New Testament makes much better sense (again see Schweitzer) when we realize that its authors initially expected Christ to return in glory within their lifetimes. I also think that cocrucifixion with Christ, perhaps interpreted differently, is a powerful theme around which to articulate salvation. In fact, Schweitzer makes a similar point when he contrast’s Paul’s account of salvation via being crucified and raised with Christ to John’s account of salvation via being born again. I also think Congdon rightly distinguishes faith from reflection upon faith and I am open to the idea that God is pleased with people who lack reflective beliefs about God in virtue of a more direct acquaintance with God. And finally, I agree that all people are objects of God’s saving deeds. I could probably come up with even more that I value in this book so far. Nevertheless, I have some major reservations — even granting all that I value in this book. I can’t do justice to these points without writing my own book, but I’ll try to sketch my concerns here.
First, Congdon’s eschatological trajectory — from cosmic and future to existential and present — seems like a mistake in as much as it replaces the one with the other. I agree that “already but not yet” is an overused and trite summary of Christian existence. Even so, I think that Christian existence involves enjoying the first-fruits of that which is to come. These first-fruits consist of the presence and power of God’s Holy Spirit at work in willing humans, transforming them progressively into the image of Christ, empowering anyone and everyone who would cooperate with God’s Spirit to become like Jesus, the man in whom we finally see the image of God clearly. It is on the basis of this experience of cooperation and fruitful transformation that Christians can have hope for a future of even deeper union with God in Christ. Eschatological expectations well up within those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. The more we receive, the greater our hunger. These expectations do not rest upon a literal or otherwise hermeutically naive interpretation of apocalyptic passages within the New or Old Testament. Instead these expectations rest upon a present fellowship with God in Christ, a fellowship whose quality leads us to expect that it will outlast our own death. As such, eschatology in my view should be existential and present yet also cosmic and future, although I recommend a very generous dose of agnosticism concerning the details of our future expectation. What we should expect is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ, not even a seemingly godforsaken death.
Second, I agree that cocrucifixion with Christ is important but in a different sense than Congdon depicts it. I agree that human selfishness (or self-centered existence or striving for absolute personal autonomy) are close to the heart of that which ails us as humans. But a related (and perhaps deeper) problem is that we fail to love as God loves, that is, with a self-sacrificial love that seeks the moral best for all others, even our enemies. The human predicament, as I see it, comes down to a conflict between the morally perfect will of God — a will to love — and human opposition and resistance to that will. If anyone, anywhere finds themselves (perhaps unconsciously) challenged to love as God loves and if they venture to do so, perhaps even being unwittingly empowered to do so by God’s Spirit — then that person is known by God whether or not they explicitly know God or know about God. This is because inasmuch as humans love as God loves, they truly embrace the character of God for themselves and demonstrate love for God and God’s ways. In this sense, humans can be “unconscious Christians.” One can love God’s ways without reflective knowledge about God.
God may challenge humans and even allow hardship and experiences of absolute dependence. But such challenges, as we all face them, are meant to foster trust in the loving character of God, not necessarily to directly place a person outside of themselves as the end in itself. Being placed outside of oneself, in Congdon’s sense, should be seen as an instrumental means toward a distinct redemptive end: that is, adopting a posture of trust toward God. This trust is inseparable from welcoming God’s will of perfect love as authoritative for a person’s own life and relationships toward others. But being placed outside oneself is distinct from embracing God’s will. Even in a moment of absolute dependence, objectively speaking, it seems to me that a person can nevertheless revolt against dependence upon God. I fear that this happens often. Perhaps you can baptize an infant, but an adult cannot be baptized against their will in any meaningful way — even if you dunk them.
Third, as I understand faith and salvation, they simply don’t make sense in a fully theo-actualized sense. As I use the term, faith isn’t something that happens to a person, it is rather a posture of one person toward another person, even if that other person is God. As such, I think faith is best characterized by something like personal trust, or self-entrustment to another. But faith as being placed outside oneself, perhaps by being godforsaken, seems to confuse the universal opportunity for faith as trust in God with faith itself. Congdon wants to use the word “faith” in a sense foreign to the way I use it. That’s fine, and may just amount to a semantic dispute. Indeed, if salvation just means what he says it means, then I can certainly see why it is a universal salvation. I see no reason to argue against the view that we all have or will have an experience of being placed outside of ourselves. But I deny that this experience is the experience of salvation, at least as I use the word. Rather, it is represents an opportunity for salvation. I maintain that salvation involves person-to-person reconciliation with God and with other humans.
One last point, which isn’t a criticism but rather a concession. Congdon’s account of salvation seems very bleak to me, in that he seems to be saying that our experience of cocrucifixion with Christ is all there is to expect of God. Given his emphasis on coocrucifixion via godforsakenness, it seems as if an eschatology of hope reduces to an eschatology of expecting to be forsaken by God. This may not be his intent, but it reads that way to me. Is this necessarily a problem for his view? I don’t think so. I’m reminded of the Book of Job and Job’s experience of being godforsaken (an experience that I think parallels the death of Christ in many ways). In that book, we lack clarity about what to expect from God. Job and his friends argue about expectations as they all interpret Job’s suffering and God’s role in various ways. The problem seems to stem from the incompatibility of Job’s (self attested) righteous moral experience, the traditional wisdom of divine-human quid pro quo, and the axiom that God will do no wrong. In a sense, the Book of Job offers an account of shattered eschatological expectations and a reduction of relations with God to the present yet godforsaken moment.
Perhaps we need to look at theology from this vantage point from time to time — lest our relation to God become one of religious manipulation. Can we embrace God’s love for others even when that love must serve as its own reward? Can we say with Paul that we wish “that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people,” or does self-abandonment finally have no place in our religion? Is the pearl of great price found in the present and existential apocalypse of God through cocrucifixion or does it belong to the future cosmological unveiling in glory? I think David Congdon’s theology, so far, reminds us rightly that the pearl of great price is found in the godforsaken moments, rather than in expectations of future glory. I would add, this is because God is himself the treasure, and this treasure cannot be had as a means to any other end. It must become the end in itself. Congdon’s account points me back in this direction, and even though I don’t like it, I am better for the reminder.
