How do we come to know God truly as he is in himself? Christians confess, almost universally, that Holy Scripture is the cognitive foundation of this metaphysical knowledge. Yet a range of views exists on how this metaphysical, or theological, knowledge of God is accessed in the Bible’s diverse, literary material. The contemporary effort to retrieve “pre-modern exegesis” has within its ranks a substantial number of thinkers advocating for a participatory, or sacramental, approach to biblical exegesis in the service of knowing God and his attributes (e.g. Matthew Levering, Katherine Sonderegger, Hans Boersma, Craig Carter, etc.). In this paper, I will argue that methods of theological formulation based on participatory metaphysics tend to either subvert the progressive nature of special revelation and/or disrupt Scripture’s internal, covenantal structure. Consequently, their interpretive approach to doctrinal formulation, specifically in the area of the divine attributes, permits unbiblical readings.
Two “participatory models” will be presented (via Thomas Aquinas/Matthew Levering and Katherine Sonderegger). Each of these models articulate a metaphysical emphasis that constitutes the central “longing” of the model. The “Levering-Aquinas” model longs for a properly conceived biblical history and the “Sonderegger” model longs for a meaningful biblical structure/form. It will be shown that each “longing” leads its respective model to embrace a participatory, or sacramental, metaphysic. This, in turn, underlies the embrace of participatory and/or “pre-modern” exegesis. At this point in the essay, it will be critical to detail the relevance of this taxonomy to the contemporary discussion amongst Evangelicals today, specifically as it relates to formulations of the divine attributes amongst classical theists.
My proposal is that a more satisfactory answer to both “longings” of the participatory models exist in an approach I will call the “redemptive-historical” model. This model is informed by a synthesis of the hermeneutics of the Reformed scholastics and the Biblical Theology of Geerhadus Vos. I will endeavor to show that one’s metaphysics of creation and of Scripture are intimately tied together and essential to doctrinal formulation. While they can undoubtedly be seen as participatory, we must not lose sight of other important features of these respective ontologies and the hermeneutical implications that result from them. The final section, therefore, seeks to properly formulate these principles in order to provide a reliable and faithful method in coming to know God in himself.
Contemporary retrieval efforts, within theology proper, have been largely wedded to “pre-critical exegesis,” the quadriga, and “participatory metaphysics.” This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion by offering a strong methodological alternative, while also working through the benefits and potential pitfalls of participatory metaphysics (and pre-modern exegesis) as it relates to the doctrine of divine attributes. Proper dogmatic formulation must preserve the essential role that Biblical Theology must play for Systematic Theology, grounding one’s doctrine of divine attributes in redemptive-historical, progressive revelation.