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I, for one, would happily learn from such as these
three (Bill, Gary and John). When one is in a position to hear from 'teachers'
such as these, one is wise to keep uninformed criticisms to one's self. (Isn't
one, Terry?)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: March 01, 2005 08:12
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] On Barth
TTer's: What we have in the
following is the reason why I stay with this forum. In the midst
of extreme bloviation, we find the occasional gem. Bill is
not the only jeweler of this "gem"ational occurence, but the contribution
below certainly qualifies. Where Bill would credit Barth, and it
is a review of Barth's position(s), I credit God in Christ in Bill
Taylor. I have highlighted those comments that "jumped" out
at me with a few of my own comments. Bill can look forward to a
big hug from the Smithmeister in just a few days -- for this
writing ----------- movtivation enough for his
continued sharing on this forum.
Pastor
Smithson
In a message dated 2/28/2005 7:47:39 PM
Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
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.a profoundly simple
expalanation for the need and function of preaching. 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. The explains the "power" in
the "gospel" message. Scripture used in preaching is not
powerful becasue I can locate it with"book, chapter and verse."
Rather, it is powerful because of the originating life force (that
would be God in Christ).
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. Well
worth a review 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, to each is given a measure
of grace (?) 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
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