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.
