JD, sorry I don’t have time to read
the bloviating—your O’Reilley Factor is showing. Izzy
From:
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Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 7:12
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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
