A reading from 1.1, Dogmatics, Word of God, p107 got me to thinking :
If we attach our understanding of scripture to scripture, if we, then, canonize "scripture," we make scripture tradition instead of what God intended it to be -- His self-revelation to man. If our understanding does not pass away at our passing, it will die in time - an aspect of the consequence of the passing of time. The tradition will die - making room for another. Ir may take hundreds of years, but it will pass. But scripture will continue as time and a multitude of passing traditions have testified.
"After any exegesis propounded in it, even the very best, it has to realise afresh the distinction between text and commentary and to let the text speak again without ... hindrance, so that it will experience the lordship of this free power and find in the Bible the partner or counterpart which the Church must find in it [the Bible] if it is to take the living successio apostolorum seriously." (Barth , .107)
[emphasis mine].
To put it simply -- we should ever be in the hunt for an unbiased reading and rereading of the divine text. More than anything else placed in the church, the biblical record is the successor to the apostles. [And God used the Church to collect and order this Bible. That is why the historical Church should not be ignored.]
If one thinks Barth did not have the highest regard for the Bible as the Bible -- it is because she has not spent one minute considering his comments about same.
And how does he defend the Bible as the Bible? "......the Bible is the Canon just because it is so." Remarkable. We evanglicals have to argue the Bible's validity into continued existence. Barth simply accepted it as a matter of faith. Let's send him to hell for that , shall we ?? !!!
jd
