Here we have a basketball mystery: a player is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.

via NYTimes.com.

Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly ­reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”

more:

Having watched Battier play for the past two and a half years, Morey has come to think of him as an exception: the most abnormally unselfish basketball player he has ever seen. Or rather, the player who seems one step ahead of the analysts, helping the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways that appear to violate his own personal interests.

Barth, CD I/2, p. 748-749:

If we consider what men are doing in the Church, ourselves or others, it is only by a crude self-deception that we can come to the conclusion that the Word of God is really being preached there. And when we have grown tired of this self-deception, if we still consider men in the Church, we shall arrive at the diametrically opposite but no less arbitrary conclusion, that the Word of God is not being preached in the Church...

What has to happen in order that the proclamation of the church may be the Word of God, and that men in the Church may really proclaim the Word of God, has already happened, as, generally speaking, everything that has to happen in order that the Church may live as the Church of God has already happened. Provision has been made that in the Church men may again and again believe and hope and love, that in it the name of God may be constantly invoked in thankful prayer, that in it the disciples of Jesus may ever and again suffer, and that in it brother may find brother and receive his help.

All that has been provided. No presupposition is required from us. We are not even asked whether we see it all performed and fulfilled by ourselves or others. Our business can only be that of accepting as something which has happened for us and to us that which has already been performed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ in respect of the whole life of the Church. It is always in this acceptance that the Church lives its life as created by Jesus Christ and rooted in him.

The same is true in relation to the proclamation of the Word of God, which is only one of the functions of the Church. It can only be a question of accepting what has already been created and founded in Jesus Christ. It is not we who have to care for the truth and validity of the identification of proclamation in the Church with the Word of God. We have to accept that it is so and allow it to be true.

Because Jesus Christ is risen, because God's revelation and testimonies are therefore given to the Church, it receives and holds His commission, which means that it has Himself in its midst as the Lord of its speaking, the Lord who in and through its speaking bears witness to Himself. Humanly speaking, it is a stark impossibility which stares us in the face - that men should speak what God speaks; but it is one which in Jesus Christ is already overcome. At the hands of those for whom it was in fact an impossibility, it brought as a blasphemer to the cross the One for whom it was not an impossibility, in order that it might be revealed in His resurrection as the new possibility for man, to be imparted by Him to His prophets and apostles and to be conveyed by their witness to the Church.

Barth CD I/2 10:24 am

testify: http://goo.gl/UFPs0

10:37 am

"called by the Church into the Church, we ourselves become the Church into which we are called" http://goo.gl/fgK1z

10:53 am

"the content of the Bible & the object of its witness is Jesus Christ as the name of the God who deals graciously with man the sinner"

10:54 am

"the Bible becomes clear when it is clear that it says this one thing: that it proclaims the name Jesus Christ"

11:15 am

"there has never yet been an expositor who has allowed only Scripture alone to speak... no one does that, for no one can"

11:55 am

"if we are not to dispute the incarnation... we cannot contest the use of philosophy in scriptural exegesis" http://goo.gl/BR2kL

Barth, CD 1/2, p. 729:

In attempting to reflect on what is said to us in the biblical text, we must first make use of the system of thought we bring with us, that is, of some philosophy or other. Fundamentally to question the legitimacy of this necessity would be to question whether sinful man as such, and therefore with such possibilities of thought as are given to him, is called to understand and interpret the Word of God which encounters us in Scripture. If we cannot and must not dispute this, if we are not to dispute the grace and finally the incarnation of the Word of God, we cannot basically contest the use of philosophy in scriptural exegesis.

Barth, CD I/2, p. 711:

To be a member of the Church in relation to Scripture which founds, maintains and rules the Church, means not only to hear, receive and believe the Word of God, and so in one's own life to become a man directed and consecrated by the Word; more than all this it means to take seriously and understand as one's own responsibility the effective operation of the Word, its being continuously expressed and heart, its being continuously proclaimed and made fruitful.

The Word of God wills always to be newly and more widely heard in the Church, and beyond the Church lies the world, where by the Church it also wills to be always heard. Because of his freedom which is grounded in this Word, a member of the Church cannot retain a passive, indifferent and merely waiting role in face of this will of the divine Word, as though anyway, in its own time what has to happen will happen. Certainly, it will happen, but not without us. We have seen that we ourselves stand at the present end and goal of the way which the Word of God takes in approaching men. We ourselves are thus present when the way leads on into the Church and the world.

Called by the Church into the Church, we ourselves become the Church into which we are called. Yet we cannot merely note that the Church is calling and wait to see whether and how far the Church will continue to call. Rather we ourselves have become the Church in person, and as such have been made responsible for its future. And this means in concrete terms that we are responsible participants in the great event by which Holy Scripture lives and rules in the Church and in the world.