[TruthTalk] On Barth

[Bill Taylor]

TTers,   In order to understand Barth's doctrine of inspiration, we must understand what he means when he says that the human words of Scripture enter into union with the Word of God who speaks through them. I have been hesitant to say much in regards to this topic because I am far from being a Barth scholar. However I have had enough theology from students of Barth to recognize when he is being misrepresented. And his doctrine of Scripture has definitely been misrepresented by some here on TT. No, he did not hold to the Protestant doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration (but as Kevin has so eloquently pointed out, there is no way for any of us to hold unequivocally to that doctrine, since none of us can prove that the original manuscripts were in fact infallible). But to acknowledge this is far from saying that he rejected biblical inspiration. Before he should be written off as a heretic or accused of exalting the "human" and following his own private "revelation," Christians ought to take into consideration what he actually taught. And so, in this post I will try to explain, no doubt in woefully inadequate terms, the distinctions Barth sought to draw in his theology of revelation -- to which the doctrine of inspiration was a sub-category.   Barth argued that over the course of Christian history, God has chosen to reveal himself to humanity via three forms, each of which manifest a duality in unity, having both a fully human and a fully divine aspect. The three forms are the man Jesus Christ, the text of Scripture, and the preached word. In order to understand Barth's theology as it pertains to revelation, it is essential that the reader carefully distinguish the sense in which these various forms are one from the sense in which they are yet three distinct realities; at the same time it is equally important to carefully differentiate their human and their divine aspects.   As it relates to the distinction which should be made between the three forms, we must not firstly confuse the preacher himself or his words with those of the apostles and prophets, which are the source of and the authority for his preaching. Likewise the human words of Scripture are not to be confused with the historical self-manifestation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. As the man Jesus revealed God with us, the human words of Scripture reveals God's Word to us. If we think in terms of the order of our knowing, i.e., the way we receive knowledge, then it is with preaching that the church must begin. People hear the Gospel expounded or proclaimed from the pulpit or on the street corner, or in some other context. Behind such preaching lies the given text of Scripture to which the preacher refers, the meaning of which he seeks to unpack for his hearers. But the text itself is not, in this sense, the ultimate reference of his words; for there is another more ultimate referential authority to which the Scripture itself points, which lies beyond its words -- and Who engendered and called forth those words of witness in the first place. This other reality is, of course, the event in which God acted decisively for our salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. It is this Christ who is the ultimate object of Christian preaching. The order of being is therefore the opposite of the order of knowing. It begins with Christ whose saving economy eventually calls forth Scripture as a witness, and this in turn leads to the preaching ministry of the church.   To miss these distinctions, according to Barth, is invariably to diminish and marginalize Christ himself as the ultimate source and form of God's self-revelation to humanity. This diminishment entails an absolutizing of Scripture as the ultimate referent of preaching (which is what I see several TTers doing) -- in which case it becomes opaque, rather than serving as the transparent witness to the risen Christ (which it is intended to be); either that or it involves a failure on the part of the preacher to stand under the authority of the apostles and prophets, in effect confusing the authority of their words with his own, which leads to a relativizing of the biblical text -- which in turn develops into a to-each-his-own form of authority (it's just me and the Holy Spirit, in other words, which is also a commonly touted position here on TT).   As it pertains to the human/divine distinction of each of these three forms, Barth believed that just as there was a legitimate distinction to be drawn between the humanity and the divinity of Christ, there are legitimate distinctions between the other forms. Specially, there is a legitimate human aspect to the written word of God, and there is a legitimate divine aspect to the preached word of God. Each of the three forms has a human aspect: the particular story of Jesus of Nazareth, the texts which the Church acknowledges as Scripture, and the very human words of the preacher. But in each case what must be recognized is that this human aspect as such, in and of itself, does not reveal God, but conceals him. There is nothing about the humanity of Jesus as such, nothing about the words of the text as such, nothing about the preaching as such, which compels faith or discloses God in any obvious manner. In other words, Barth recognized that it is entirely possible for intelligent humans to hear these human realities and NOT find themselves in the grip of a revelatory encounter with the God of the universe (every preacher knows this). In order for these human realities to reveal God, they must, as it were, be accompanied by or embodied with something more -- an activity of God himself which employs them as the instruments and agents of his self-revealing activity. It is this and this alone which grants humans the "ears to hear" the Word of God. But this something, this presence of God himself is not to be confused with the human realities as such. Just as in the incarnate person of Christ, we have both a fully human and a fully divine reality in genuine union, we also have in him a genuine and continuing contradistinction: the humanity of Jesus is in no way divine and the divine in him is in no way human; the humanity of Jesus does not become divine -- or even semi-divine -- likewise, for Barth, the words of Scripture, like those of the preacher, do not cease to be fully human. What those human words do is enter into union with the Word of God who speaks through them.   Hence for Barth, as a historically constituted and literary phenomenon Scripture has a permanence of form which enables it to stand identifiably over against and above the Church and thereby to act as an index or gauge of the church's faithfulness to the Word of God witnessed to within and through its pages.   Bill      ----- Original Message ----- From: Judy Taylor To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Cc: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 3:34 PM Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Albert Einstein & Karl Barth     JD, I have not and do not intend to read Karl Barth but I see from what you write that you look up to and respect him as a man of God.  I'm just wondering what, (other than confusion) could come from his writings?   Because to me it sounds like Barth exalts the "human" and follows his own private "revelation" - or does Wikipedia have it wrong?   judyt   Wikipedia states the following about Karl Barth: Barth's theology assumes a certain amount of the tenets of liberal Christianity, most notably the assumption that the Bible is not historically and scientifically accurate. Barth has been called by fundamentalist Christianity a "neo-Orthodox" because, while his theology retains most or all of the tenets of Christianity, he rejects Biblical inerrancy. His reconciliation of having a rigorous Christian theology without a supporting text that was considered to be historically accurate was to separate theological truth from historical truth. It is arguably for this belief that Barth has been criticized the most harshly by more conservative Christians such as the late Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer. The relationship between Barth, liberalism and fundamentalism goes far beyond the issue of inerrancy. From Barth's perspective, liberalism (with Schleiermacher and Hegel as its leading exponents) is the divinization of human thinking. Some philosophical concepts become the false God, and the voice of the living God is blocked. This leads to the captivity of theology by human ideology. In Barth's theology, he emphasizes again and again that human concepts can never be considered as identical to God's revelation. In this aspect, Scripture is also written human language, expressing human concepts. It cannot be considered as identical as God's revelation. However, in His freedom and love, God truly reveals the Godself through human language and concepts. Thus he claims that Christ is truly presented in Scripture and the preaching of the church. Barth stands in the heritage of the Reformation in his weariness of the marriage between theology and philosophy. Whether his sharp distinction between human concepts and divine revelation is biblical or philosophically sound remains debatable.