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.
