jt: One or two comments
forthcoming.... so that Lance doesn't go to sleep on us, between
selling books he can prove that I don't understand anything Barth, Bill,
Jonathan, he and JD are saying....
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 08:12:22 EST [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
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.
jt: This is NOT a doctrine of
scripture - it is a doctrine of Barth and Barth alone. Scripture itself
teaches that "ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God" which is the
same as verbal inspiration is it not? Jesus said
His Words are Spirit and Life? Just where does scripture itself teach
such a union with humanity and why would Karl Barth want to humanize
God?
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).
jt: Now you misrepresent Kevin
Bill because he never once stated that the scriptures are not divinely
inspired. His point is that there is no original manuscript
available to justify all of the ongoing nit picking about Hebrew and
Greek mindsets and words. Surely at some point we will come to our God given
senses and learn to believe His Word and trust in the ongoing ministry of
His Spirit.
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.
jt: The above dualities in union
are a figment of Barth's imagination and they are his and his alone.
The scriptures teach the following:
There are three who bear witness
in heaven which are: God the Father, God the Word, God the Holy Spirit (1
John 5:7)
There are three who bear witness
on earth, they are: The Spirit, The Water, and The Blood
(1 John 5:8)
Barth's three forms are as
follows: The man jesus, The text of scripture, The preached word (no
scripture reference at all)
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.
jt: I'd like to know which words
of scripture are human and which ones are inspired and who has the authority
to make the cut and after this I would like to know how one discerns this
"historical person of jesus Christ" outside of scripture which has both
human and divine words according to Barth.
Do we need to consult the
Magisterium or raise him from the dead to find out?
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.
jt: Profoundly simple?
You've got to be joking JD. It is all as clear as mud and it
convolutes the clear Word of Truth with Barth's own concepts.
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.
jt: If he is trying to unpack
something then he is trying to give understanding that can ONLY come by way
of the Spirit of grace. The text of scripture is what is supposed to be
both preached and taught. Understanding comes from
God.
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).
jt: Scriptures teach that one must
first believe before receiving the "power to
become" a son of God (John 1:12) - Where is scriptural validation
for this "being is opposite of knowing" Barthian concept and what "life
force" are you talking about JD? The power of God in the gospel and
the life force accompanying the preaching of the "cross" is the Holy
Spirit.
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).
jt: How can Barth make such a
statement when before his ascension Jesus Himself spoke of how all things
had to be fulfilled which were written about Him in the law of
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms (Luke 24:44) and
look at what He did next. He opened their understanding
that they might understand the scriptures. This is what
we need - some understanding because it is Karl Barth who is doing the
marginalizing ....
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
jt: Well let's just take a
course in Humanism 101 then... It's like oil and water - it does not
mix. Jesus had a human body but he was not exactly like us other than
taking on our image and likeness. He took upon himself the form of a
man. You are now accepting him in Karl Barth's likeness.
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.
jt: No big secret - this activity
of God which grants humans the "ears to hear" is the Holy Spirit.
What's so surprising about that? It has nothing to do with any human
aspect... Only the Spirit works and He annoints God's Word, never human
words...
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 (?)
jt: We have the Lord from heaven
in human form - otherwise Jesus lied when he told the Jews that they were of
the earth and He is from heaven. (see John 3:13, John 6:33-35) I wouldn't go
there... Let it RIP - hopefully with Barth (if he
repented).
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.
jt: Heresy. Mixture
are not from God and Jesus never was "fully human" - He inhabited a
body which he willingly gave as a sacrifice for us. Too late for Barth to
have his pipes cleaned. He is trying to mix the holy with the
profane. Making Jesus human so that he can make humans holy but it
doesn't work quite that way.
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
jt: How sad Barth spent so much time
as a critic rather than a doer of the Word.
