karl barth
Eugene Peterson's "The Pastor: A Memoir" has become somewhat of a manifesto for me. Someday, I hope to write more of what it's done for me, is doing for me... Eugene's books have been my sanity - a true lamp to my pastoral feet - time and time again. Once, many years ago, I met him at a conference on spiritual formation in LA. But that's another story for another time.
In the meantime, I've started immersing myself in Karl Barth. I've read sizeable chunks of Barth over the years, and a lot of books about Barth and his theology (theologies? two? or three? consistent? etc). But I haven't spent much time in Barth directly, mostly because I hadn't found much that caught my heart in the bits of Barth that I'd read. Graham Tomlin once told me that I spent too much time in the secondary sources and not enough in the primary, and that's true - I've always used secondary sources to give me a sense of whether I wanted to invest time and emotional energy in the primary.
Also, Barth's lately become a touchstone of theological "cool" in some circles, and I tend to react negatively to such things, no doubt due to my finely-honed cynicism, pride and critical spirit.
And then Eugene gave me good reason to dive into Barth qua Barth. In "The Pastor", he speaks affectionately of Barth as his theologian:
He became the theologian I never had, a theologian who got me interested in God as God, not just talk about God. Franz Kafka in a letter wrote, "If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?... A book must be like an ice-axe to break the sea frozen within us." This first book of Barth's that I read was "like an ice-axe.
So... I started in on Barth's Church Dogmatics last week. If there's one theologian I really need to know well, it's my pastor's theologian.
And to keep myself reflecting on what I'm reading, I'm both tweeting and writing here on bits and fragments that I'd like to reflect on, thoughts and phrases that seem representative of Barth, critical to his argument such as I understand it.
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1 12:17 am
"we stand before the fact of heresy. concretely, we stand before the fact of Roman Catholicism..."
"not all human talk is talk about God. it could be and should be. there is no reason in principle why it should not be"
"if the social work of the church as such were to try to be proclamation, it could only become propaganda..."
"God may suddenly be pleased to have Abraham blessed by Melchizedek, or Israel blessed by Balaam or helped by Cyrus"
"He can establish the church anew and directly when and where and how it pleases Him"
"if the question what God can do forces theology to be humble, the question what is commanded of us forces it to concrete obedience"
"God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog"
"proclamation... is always and always will be man's word. when and where it pleases God, it is God's own Word"
"nor can one see in the Asiatic crudities of Bolshevic ideology a rival which is even remotely a match for the Church's proclamation"
"the central factum on which dogmatics focuses will always be quite simply the Church's Sunday sermon of yesterday & tomorrow"
"the simplest proclamation of the Gospel can be proclamation of the truth in the most unlimited sense..." (1)
"... and can validly communicate the truth to the most unsophisticated hearer if God so will" (2)
"without the ambivalence, the liability to misunderstanding, the vulnerability... it could not be real proclamation"
"the Bible is God's Word to the extent that God causes it to be His Word, to the extent that He speaks through it"
ζωὴν αἰώνιον
reading, reflectinglistening, communing practicing, becoming • failing, receiving recovering, returning • not hurrying • settling into eternity.
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1
"... all planned apologetics & polemics have obviously been irresponsible, irrelevant & therefore ineffective"
"theology... cannot be done except at the heart of the conflict between faith and unbelief..."
"the conflict of faith with unbelief can be truly significant only as and when it is a conflict of faith with itself"
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1 7:11 pm
"human affairs - even those over which we think we have some control - often take a different course from the one planned"
"I regard the analogia entis as the invention of the Antichrist..."
"I believe that I understand the present-day authorities of the Church better than they understand themselves..."
"fortunately the reality of the Church does not coincide with its action"
"there never has actually been a philosophia christiana, for if it was philosophia it was not christiana, and if it was christiana..."
"...the Christian Church certainly does not number Aristotle among its ancestors"
"dogmatics is possible only as theologia crucis..."
"dogmatics must always be undertaken as an act of penitence and obedience"
"we always seem to be handling an intractable object with inadequate means"
moving on...
The problem is that most people, having attained a position of power, are reluctant to leave it and venture into new territory. Often, having racked up accomplishments and seen them celebrated, they are fired up by the possibility that, with a little more time, they could do more. In some cases, they cling to office because their age suggests they will not go on to scale any greater heights. Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld described this phenomenon in his decades-old book, The Hero's Farewell. In it Sonnenfeld noted that while some aging CEOs exited gracefully while they still enjoyed wide acclaim, many hung on too long, reluctant to face their own mortality. There was William Paley, the titan of CBS, who challenged his biographer by asking just why he had to die. And there was Armand Hammer, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, who put in place a long-term incentive plan for himself with a ten-year payout horizon — when he was in his 90s. Few executives or political leaders are as wise as UCLA's legendary basketball coach, John Wooden, who retired after winning his tenth championship — quitting while he was on top.
My wife has a phrase, "leave before the party's over," which contains much wisdom about the importance of leaving positions before our charms have faded, and about the discipline required to do so.