bits of barth
Barth CD I/1
"...inscrutability, hiddenness is of the very essence of Him who is called God in the Bible"
"when the Bible gives an account of revelation it means to narrate history"
"the threefold yet single lordship of God as Father, Son and Spirit is the root of the doctrine of the Trinity"
"The situation would be hopeless if it were our task here to say what is really meant by 'person' in the doctrine of the Trinity"
"revealer, revelation, being revealed; holiness, mercy, love; good friday, easter, pentecost; creator, reconciler, redeemer..."
"none of the Three may be known without the other Two but each of the Three only with the other Two"
"[the Trinity] ...we should not be surprised at the incomprehensibilty in which it remains for us as it becomes comprehensible to us"
"God is unknown as our Father, as the Creator, to the degree that He is not made known by Jesus"
"Jesus did not proclaim the familiar Creator God & interpret Him by the unfamiliar name of Father. He revealed [His] unknown Father"
"God [as] Father denotes the mode of being of God in which He is the Author of His other modes of being"
"the Son is from the Father & the Spirit is from the Father & the Son, while the Father is from Himself alone"
"the Father is not only God the Creator, but with the Son and the Spirit He is also God the Reconciler & God the Redeemer"
"It would be just as improper to say that God the Father died as to say that Jesus or the Spirit of Pentecost created heaven & earth"
"this Father of His is God. He who reveals Him, then, reveals God. But who can reveal God except God Himself?"
"only the son who is already recalling his father's house knows that he is a lost son"
"reconciliation or revelation is not creation or a continuation of creation but rather an inconceivably new work above and beyond..."
"Jesus is the revelation of the Father and the revelation of the Father is Jesus" word.
"As we owe life to God the Creator, so we owe eternal life to God the Reconciler"
"We believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ. He has a claim on us and control over us. He commands and rules"
(3) "...in the process in which creation & sin... are not interfused but opposed even as they exist together"
(2) "He has come into being as the worm has come into being... He has come into being as man comes into being"
(1) "begotten... He has come into being in the context of sex and the nexus of the species..."
"it is not true that these names [Father & Son] are just freely chosen and in the last analysis meaningless symbols"
"We can speak of the truth only in untruth. We do not know what we are saying when we call God Father & Son"
"He is the eternal Word of the Father who speaks from all eternity, the eternal thought of the Father who thinks from all eternity"
"The Holy Spirit is the authorisation to speak about Christ... He is the summons to the Church to minister the Word"
"The Holy Spirit is the Lord who sets us free and by receiving Him we become the children of God"
"Even in receiving the Holy Spirit man remains man, the sinner sinner"
"eternity comes first and then time, therefore the future comes first and then the present..."
"God remains the Lord even and precisely when He comes into our hearts as His own gift, even and precisely when He fills us"
"No other intercedes with Him on our behalf except Himself. No other intercedes with us on His behalf except again Himself"
"The Holy Spirit is the fellowship, the act of communion, of the Father & the Son"
"The Holy Spirit is the love in which the Father loves the Son, and in which the Son loves the Father"
"[God] is the Father of the Son in such a way that with the Son He brings forth the Spirit, love, and is in Himself the Spirit, love"
Paul Lehmann: the angels are alone among God's creatures in having the time to read Barth's Dogmatics. one down, twelve to go.
bits of barth
Barth CD I/1 9:44 am
"fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet"
"the sword of God's real judgment does hang over our heads when we take up and pursue this work [dogmatics/theology]"
"what finally counts is whether a dogmatics is scriptural. If it is not, then it will definitely be futile..."
"the path of Roman Catholicism & the path of Protestant Modernism differs from the path of the Evangelical Church"
bits of barth
Barth CD I/1 8:05 am
"in my work one is compelled as believer & theologian to do the impossible, namely, to jump over one's own shadow"
(3) "...a stimulation by the inner life, a basing of man's whole life on this mystery that is beyond himself"
(2) "...a making present of remote times, an obedience, a decision, a halting before the mystery..."
(1) "as man knows God's Word... there takes place an understanding, a personal involvement, an acceptance, an assent, an approval..."
"if [we] think we can handle the Word and faith like capital at our disposal, we simply prove that we have neither the Word nor faith"
"when we have them, we do not regard them as a possession but strain after them, hungering & thirsting, & for that reason blessed"
"faith is not one of the various capacities of man, whether native or acquired. capacity for the Word of God is not among these"
"the possibility of faith as it is given to man in the reality of faith... is loaned to man by God, and loaned exclusively for use"
"in faith man is capable of receiving God's Word... the Word of God is now the W heard by him & he is now the man addressed by this W"
barth & the soggy bottom boys. exclusively available at starbucks.
"he has not come to faith; faith has come to him through the Word. he has not adopted faith; faith has been granted him through the W"
"the Word of God becomes knowable by making itself known"
"what we had in view... should now have become provisionally comprehensible in all its incomprehensibility" hmm...
"even and precisely in the depths of unbelief faith hears the new summons to faith"
"to the extent another standard is applied here and not the Word of God itself, only confusion and destruction can result"
"this supreme authority which addresses the Church... is the free Bible, the Bible that remains free in face of all interpretation"
"we cannot speak as prophets or apostles. we cannot speak with the full assurance of the biblical witness: 'we beheld his glory'"
"the Word of God is above dogma as the heavens are above the earth"
"for the sake of dogma, dogmatics must deal with dogmas" :)
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1 5:28 pm
"the Lord of speech is also the Lord of our hearing. the Lord who gives the Word is also the Lord who gives faith"
bits of barth
Barth, CD I/1 10:51 am
"recall John the Baptist in Grünewald's Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger"
"could anyone point away from himself more impressively & completely?"
"we do the Bible poor and unwelcome honour if we equate it directly with this other, with revelation itself"
"the direct identification between revelation and the Bible... takes place... when & where the biblical word becomes God's Word"
"thus in the event of God's Word revelation and the Bible are indeed one, and literally so"
"on the one hand Deus dixit, on the other Paulus dixit. These are two different things"
barth's gospel - http://goo.gl/kLwpR
"[the act of revelation] is the condition which conditions all things without itself being conditioned"
"to say revelation is to say: the Word became flesh" btw, I apologize (sort of) for the tweets. the practice is proving helpful for me, but I feel badly about cluttering your feed...
(2) "... both renounce any foundation apart from that which God has given once and for all by speaking."
(1) "As the Bible bears witness to God's revelation and as Church proclamation takes up this witness in obedience..."
"[the Word of God] is one and the same whether we understand it as revelation, Bible or proclamation"
"the revealed Word of God we know only from the Scriptures adopted by Church proclamation"
"the written Word of God we know only through the revelation which fulfills proclamation"
"the preached Word of God we know only through the revelation attested in Scripture"
"revelation, Scripture, proclamation : Father, Son, Holy Spirit"
"the Word of God has natural force too. but primarily & preeminently & decisively it has the simple spiritual power of truth."
"He is Lord of the wording of His Word. He is not bound to it but it to Him. He can use it or not use it..."
"what Holy Scripture proclaims as His Word can be proclaimed in a new wording as His Word so long as it is He Himself who speaks..."
"when God's Word is heard & proclaimed, something takes place that for all our hermeneutical skill cannot be brought about by [it]"
"this is also and especially true of preaching among both coloured and white heathens" say what?
barth's gospel
Here's a clear proclamation (CD I.1 §4.3):
God was with us, with us His enemies, with us who were visited and smitten by His wrath. God was with us in all the reality and fulness with which He does what He does. He was with us as one of us. His Word became flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. His glory was seen here in the depths of our situation, and the full depths of our situation were disclosed for the first time when illumined then and there by the Lord's glory, when in His Word He came down to the lowest parts of the earth (Eph 4:9), in order that there and in that way He might rob death of its power and bring life and immortality to light (2 Tim 1:10). This happened, and this is what the Old Testament as a word of prophecy and the New Testament as a word of fulfilment both proclaim as having happened, as having happened conclusively, totally and sufficiently.
Word.
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.