bits of barth
Barth CD I/2 11:24 am
eugene peterson, karl barth & : why I'm still tweeting cryptic bits of barth http://goo.gl/qvl8K
"the Church is no longer the Church where it does not know a higher authority than its own"
"...for the Word of God is not spoken to individuals, but to the Church of God, and to individuals only in the Church"
barth's beautiful & brilliant account of why & how to confess our faith in public, with confidence & humility: http://goo.gl/VzaXl
"...before I myself make a confession I must myself have heard the confession of the Church"
"if I have not heard the Church, I cannot speak to it…"
"I cannot thrust myself into the debate about a right faith which goes on in the Church without first having listened…"
"my first duty is to love & respect [the confession of the Church] as the witness of my fathers & brethren..." http://goo.gl/CnsCX
If he keeps writing like this, I will no longer be able to simply listen & process at a safe distance… http://goo.gl/CnsCX
"the immediate goal & necessary result of a debate on true faith is that those who take part in it should make a common confession"
"wherever there is this agreement, & therefore a Church, debate about true faith has reached its goal"
humble access
The prayer of humble access, from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1662:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
hearing & receiving
If he keeps writing like this, I will no longer be able to simply listen and process at a safe distance... I'd better immerse myself in some other bits of Barth that will alienate me and thereby protect me from genuine affection, allowing me to preserve my pretense of neutrality. Barth, CD I/2, p. 590
...in what I hear as the confession of the Church, I will certainly have to reckon with the possibility of falsehood and error. I cannot safely hear the voice of the Church without also hearing the infallible Word of God Himself. Yet this thought will not be my first thought about the Church and its confession, but a necessarily inserted corrective. My first thought in this respect can and must be a thought of trust and respect which I cannot perhaps have for the men as such who constitute the Church, but which I cannot refuse to the Word of God by which it lives and Jesus Christ [who] rules it. How can I know Jesus Christ as the Lord who has called me by His Word if in relation to the rest of the Church I do not start from the thought that despite and in all the sin of the men who constitute it it too has been called and ruled by the same Word? Because my sins are forgiven me, I am bold to believe and, in spite of the sin of which I am conscious, to confess my faith as created in me by the Word of Christ. And if this is the case then in relation to the rest of the Church and its confession I cannot possibly begin with mistrust and rejection, just as in relation to our parents, no matter who they are or what they are like, we do not begin with mistrust and rejection or with the assertion that we must obey God rather than man, but with trust and respect and therefore, in the limits appointed to them as men, with obedience. As in and with the confession of the Church I hear the infallible Word of God, I have to reckon first and above all with the lordship of Jesus Christ in His Church and the forgiveness of sins, which is operative in the Church; not with sin and therefore with the possibility of falsehood and error which it involves. And this means that I have not primarily to criticise the confession of the Church as it confronts me as the confession of those who were before me in the Church and are with me in the Church. There will always be time and occasion for criticism. My first duty is to love and respect it as the witness of my fathers and brethren... This is how the authority of the Church arises. It always arises in this way, that in the community of hearing and receiving the Word of God which constitutes the Church, there is this superiority of the confession of some before others, this honour and love, this hearing of the confession of some before others, before the latter go on to make their own confession. Before both and therefore above both is the Lord of the Church with His Word. Only under His Word can some confess and others hear their confession before they confess themselves. But under His Word there does arise this priority and superiority of some over others, the necessity that in the Church we should listen to other men before we go on to speak. Under His Word there is, therefore, a genuine authority of the Church.
public faith
A beautiful & brilliant account of why & how to confess our faith in public, with confidence & humility. Barth, CD I/2, p.588-589:
...the Church is constituted as the Church by a common hearing and receiving of the Word of God... The life of the Church is the life of the members of a body. Where there is any attempt to break loose from the community of hearing and receiving necessarily involved, any attempt to hear and receive the Word of God in isolation - even the Word of God in the form of Holy Scripture - there is no Church, and no real hearing and receiving of the Word of God; for the Word of God is not spoken to individuals, but to the Church of God and to individuals only in the Church. The Word of God itself, therefore, demands this community of hearing and receiving. Those who really hear and receive it do so in this community. They would not hear and receive it if they tried to withdraw from this community.
But this common action is made concrete in the Church's confession. We will take the concept first in its most general sense. Confession in the most general sense is the accounting and responding which in the Church we owe one another and have to receive from one another in relation to the hearing and receiving of the Word of God. Confessing is the confirmation of that common action. I have not heard and received alone and for myself, but as a member of the one body of the Church. In confessing, I make known in the Church the faith I have received by and from the Word of God. I declare that my faith cannot be kept to myself as though it were a private matter. I acknowledge the general and public character of my faith by laying it before the generality, the public of the Church. I do not do this to force it on the Church in the peculiar form in which I necessarily hold it, as though I were presuming either to want or be able to rule in the Church with my faith as it is mine. On the contrary, I do it to submit it to the verdict of the Church, to enter into debate with the rest of the Church about the common faith of the Church, a debate in which I may have to be guided, or even opposed and certainly corrected, i.e., an open debate in which I do not set my word on the same footing as the Word of God, but regard it as a question for general consideration according to the Word of God commonly given to the Church. But because my confession is limited in this way, I cannot refrain from confessing, I cannot bury my talent. Irrespective of what may come of it or whether it may be shown that I have received ten talents or only one - I owe it to the Church not to withhold from it my faith, which can be a true faith only in community with its own, just as conversely it cannot be too small a thing for the Church, in order to assure itself afresh of a true faith in the community of faith, in order not to miss anything in its encounter with the Word of God, to take account even of my confession of faith and to enter into a debate which is open on its side as well.
But it is obvious that before I myself make a confession I must myself have heard the confession of the Church, i.e., the confession of the rest of the Church. In my hearing and receiving of the Word of God I cannot separate myself from the Church to which it is addressed. I cannot thrust myself into the debate about a right faith which goes on in the Church without first having listened... If my confession is to have weight in the Church, it must first be weighted with the fact that I have heard the church. If I have not heard the Church, I cannot speak to it... If I am to confess my faith generally with the whole Church and in that confession be certain that my faith is the right faith, then I must begin with the community of faith and therefore hear the Church's confession of faith as it comes to me from other members of the Church. And for that very reason I recognise an authority, a superiority in the Church: namely, that the confession of others who were before me in the Church and are beside me in the Church is superior to my confession if this really is an accounting and responding in relation to my hearing and receiving.
middle-class morality?
Ernest Hemingway is supposed to have pointed out to Scott Fitzgerald that the rich were not really different except in having more money. McCloskey makes a similar observation about those with less: “The poor are not better than you and me. They’re just poorer.” Individual success in the market does not require another’s failure, so personal wealth is not an indicator of moral culpability: “Guilt over success in a commercial society is for a victimless crime.”
via The Weekly Standard.
Seriously?
bits of barth
Barth CD I/2 9:39 am
"If Holy Scripture is not the Word of God... it is possible to have a Church of ineffective although quite impeccable orthodoxy"