1. So many other languages and so little time to look up the translation.
2. So many philosophers and theologians referenced! It’s like entering a maze of a thousand minds.
3. I didn’t realize how grating it would be to read this much text where the nouns and  pronouns are exclusively masculine. Is this a German translation issue?

In the past week a few things have helped. The major change is that I’m taking a class on Karl Barth. Part of that class is reading Eberhard Busch’s The Great Passion. I’ve found it extremely helpful for context and biography. I’m also trying to take to heart something Dr. Hunsinger said. He mentioned in lecture that Barth can be read devotionally. I haven’t been thinking about the reading in this way but Hunsinger’s comment made me shift my perspective in this direction.

I end with this quote from Busch (39) for those of us battle fatigued by children, partners, new classes, applications, systematic theologies in progress, roasting giant spits of meat, etc.:

This dogmatic is a gigantic work that can frighten off even the well-disposed and discourage them from reading it (I almost raised my hand as I read this line). Its very appearance often gives the impression of something unapproachably monolithic, a heavenly metaphysics remote from time… It must be said that an age when everything goes by so quickly, when what is desired is a fast-food theology, is not a time when access to a work of this kind is easy. Those who say that they have no time, those who are content with slogans, do best to ignore these volumes.

Anyways, I just finished § 5 today (I’m a bit behind). I’ve reflected on parts of it before, having just “switched” to blogging about sections rather than about a chunk of 15 pages… but I thought I’d offer a few thoughts anyways, mainly on § 5.4 The Speech of God as the Mystery of God.

I found this section to be particularly interesting and insightful, especially the first few pages of it, where Barth focuses on the matter of mastery in the field of theology. Barth begins by cautioning theologians who claim mastery, who are sure of themselves(who have, as he puts it, “a certain assurance of voice, speech, and attitude” (162).) He seems to have such a strong handle on what this looks like in theology, pointing out the ways that “this assurance, confidence, and sprightliness are perhaps all the greater because we are clever enough to include an element of uncertainty or comforted despair or even a line of death or the like in our more or less spiritual calculations” (163). He goes on to explain that the need for humility in our proclamations that stems from the mystery of God.

Like I said already, I was particularly interested in the first few pages, where Barth exhorts his readers of the dangers of mastery because of the mystery of God. This struck me so much because of (surprise, surprise) the overlap I notice with Foucault’s criticisms of the mastery of Western man as evidenced in the reign of European humanism. In courses with J. Kameron Carter and Willie Jennings, Barth (and Bonhoeffer, and others) have been used as a constructive theological response to the theology that undergirds the production of the Western imperial subject. Carter talks about this in terms of the “Western, Imperial God-Man.” In a course last semester on Black Intellectuals and Religion, we explored the way theology operated discursively to produce this subjectivity, and how there might be spaces in theology for it to operate otherwise— a sort of “theology against itself.”

Barth was a key interlocuter in the course, but nonetheless, I was surprised when reading this section just about how overtly Barth acknowledges and resists Western imperialist mastery, and its operations in theology.

“We must accept that fact that only the Logos of God Himself can provide the proof that we are really talking about Him when we are allegedly doing so,” Barth writes (163). “For according to all that we can know of the how of the Word of God, one thing is ruled out. It cannot be an entitity which we can demarcate from other entities and thereby objectify, even though we do wit with supreme humility and discretion” (164). I love how Barth points to our attempts to objectify and therefore control God’s Word “Only God conceives of Himself, even in His Word,” he continues. “Our concept of God and His Word can only be an indication of the limits of our conceiving..”

“It is for this reason and in this sense that we finally speak of the Word of God as the mystery of God,” Barth writes. And then there is the line that is perhaps my favorite Barth quote thus far:

“The issue is not an ultimate ‘assuring’ but always a penultimate ‘de-assuring’ of theology, or, as one might put it, a theological warning against theology, a warning against the idea that its propositions or principles are in themselves like the supposed axioms of mathematicians and physicists, and are not rather related to their theme and content, which alone are certain, which they cannot master, by which they must be mastered if they are not to be mere soap-bubbles” (165).

Throughout the rest of the section, Barth goes on to unpack what he means by “the mystery of God,” exploring what he names as its secularity and one-sidedness….

My new plan? Starting with § 6, I’m just going to blog for each section, with maybe some throw ins on other days with quotes I like, questions, etc..

That being said, I did do the reading today, but I am trying to finish an incomplete from last semester and its gotten to the point where blogging on Barth is problematic procrastination rather than welcome procrastination.

So, in light of my new plan, here’s my quote  for the day:

“It is not at all true that the Church is outside with God and the world is inside without God. Things can be seen thus only if the Bible and the Church are seen apart from the revelation that constitutes them” (155).

And, because I can, here’s a second one:

“The Church is the Church as it believes and proclaims that prior to all secular developments and prior to all its own work the decisive word has in fact been spoken already regarding both itself and also the world” (155).

In finishing up the section on the Word of God as the Speech of God, Barth acknowledges that “this being of Jesus Christ is not directly present to us. It must be present to us and can be present to us only indirectly, namely, through the proclaiming of the Word first by Holy Scripture and then also by the Church” (138). Then, in the Speech of God as the Act of God, he seems to take up this question of revelation more directly, addressing how “the fact that God’s Word is God’s act means first its continent contemporaneity” (145).

Highlights:

-       The section on the Word of God as the Speech of God was a bit preachy (not in a bad way!), Barth’s preacherliness definitely shines through this section, i.e. when he writes things like “In its form neither as a proclamation, Holy Scripture, nor revelation do we know God’s word as an entity that exists or could exist merely in and for itself. We know it only as a Word that is directed to us and applies to us” (139), or “God always has something specific to say to each man, something that applied to him and him alone” (140), or, how he ends the section, writing, “We can only cling to the fact—but we must cling to it—that when He spoke it was, and when He will speak it will be, the Word of the Lord, the Word of our Creator, our Reconciler, our Redeemer” (143).

-       The stuff Barth is saying about time, revelation, and history strikes me as really interesting, and worthy of much more reflection than I care to or have time to put in today. Just briefly, to note a few things that seemed interesting- 1) Barth’s emphasis on the concrete historicity of revelation seems to mean for him a sort of historical hierarchy by which revelation is understood. 2) Not recognizing this hierarchy seems to be connected with our humanizing of the Word of God—“when, contemporaneity, therefore, rests on the hypothesis of a merely quantitiative difference between them and us, then the concept of the Word of God is humanized in such a way that it is no wonder people prefer to use it comparatively rarely and in quotation marks…”(147). 3)the language of the “distinction of the times is one of order” seems particularly interesting… and finally, 4) the relationship between immanence and transcendence seems to be reflected on here in a way that seems intriguing. Perhaps I will reflect more on this stuff later, I have no doubt that it will come up again. Or perhaps someone else has something to say about this section?

Memorable Quotes:

-       “Understanding the Word of God not as proclamation and Scripture alone, but as God’s revelation in proclamation and Scripture, we must understand it in its identity with God Himself. God’s revelation is Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (137).

-       “Furthermore, the personal character of God’s Word means, not its devarbalising, but the posing of an absolute barrier against reducing its wording to a human system or using its wording to establish and construct a human system. It would not be God’s faithfulness but His unfaithfulness to us if He allowed us to use His Word in this way. This would mean His allowing us to gain control over His Word, to fit it in with our own designs, and thus to shut up ourselves against Him to our own ruin” (139).

-       “The problem of God’s Word is that this specific revelation of God is granted to this specific man to-day through the proclamation of this other specific man by means of this specific biblical text” (149).

Then, we come to § 5.1 and the beginning of § 5.2., where Barth addresses the Question of the Nature of the Word of God and the Word of God as the Speech of God, respectively. 5.1. is basically one looong section of small-print, where Barth is explaining how the remaining parts of the section differ from its version in an earlier edition. Barth is responding to the critiques of one of his reviewers, F. Gogarten, and takes his critique very seriously, albeit in a very different way then Gogarten intended. He reads Gogarten’s critique of the the first editions lack of “a true anthropology” as a sort of compliment, and goes on to critique what he sees as Gogarten’s natural theology. “Thus to understand God from man is either an impossibility or something one can do only in the form of Christology, and not an anthropology,” Barth writes. “On the basis of all these considerations,” he concludes, “I must not only decline  Gogarten’s invitation to improve my dogmatics by introducing a true anthropology. I must also eliminate all that might seem to be a concession in that direction in my draft of five years ago” (131).

In the beginning of § 5.2, Barth goes on explain that, “God’s Word means that God speaks” (132).

Highlights:

-       The long section of small print where Barth responds to Gogarten’s critique is really interesting, and Barth hits on a lot of stuff here. Namely, he comes back to the critique of humanism, and lambastes Gogarten’s humanism and what he sees as his natural theology. He critiques this on a number of grounds, many of which have already came up in earlier passages. What struck me as particularly interesting was both his connecting of the modern theological problem with Catholic natural theology. I’ve mentioned it before, but it still intrigues me, and it is still new to me to think of the two as connected to one another. Moreover, I was fascinated in how he named this theology that refuses humanism as perhaps more relevant and helpful today. Also, finally, somewhat tangentially, I am fascinated by what seems to be significant differences in Barth’s first and second editions of things (that seems to be the case here and it certainly was in Der Römerbrief). When I someday learn German, I want to go back and actually see his earlier stuff…

-       In talking about the Word of God as the speech of God, Barth focuses on the spiritual nature of the Word of God “as distinct from naturalness, corporeality, or any physical event” (133). I don’t really like the way Barth dichotomizes the spiritual and the natural. He does say “there is nothing spiritual that is not also natural and physical,” (134), but then immediately goes on to talk about the spiritual realm over and against the natural realm. While I think I get that he is making these claims to avoid any turn towards natural theology, I worry about the tendency to scorn corporeality, and how that has been so historically detrimental to women…

Questions:

-       Well, in addition to my still unanswered question to Halden…. ….

-       I’m not quite sure I understand how Barth delineates the Word of God Revealed from the Word of God Written and the Word of God Proclaimed… Isn’t the Revealed Word of God, Christ, revealed through the written and proclaimed word? It just strikes me as odd that the word of God revealed is its own category that exists alongside the other two categories…

-       What does the symbol § mean? I assumed it just meant section? I tried to google it, but apparently you can’t google symbols?!

Memorable Quotes:

-       “If there is one thing the Word of God certainly is not, it is not a predicate of man, even of the man who receives it, and therefore not of the man who speaks, hears, and knows it in the sphere of the Church” (127).

-       “Might it not be to-day that a theology which refuses even in method to make common cause with the aforesaid “humanizing of life” be more relevant… than one which admits at the very outset that it can speak only a second word, a word on the situation (the situation outside the Church)?” (128).

-       “This direct discernment of the original revelation of God to man, the discernment of the creation of man which is also the revelation of God, has, however, been taken from us by the fall… and it is restored to us only in the Gospel…” (130). 

Today’s reading takes us from “the Word of God written,” to “the Word of God Revealed.” As Barth finishes up his discussion on the Word of God written, he seems to return to his earlier claims, before he expounded on proclamation and Scripture as sites of God’s revelation. Here, he focuses on how it is revelation stands at the heart of Christian thought and practice—pointing out that “engenders the Bible that attests it” which serves as the basis for church proclamation. Deus dixit (God said) is what stands behind Christian life and discourse.

Highlights:

-       When he is talking about the Holy Scriptures, Barth writes that “after any exegesis propounded in it, even the very best, it has to realize afresh the distinction between text and commentary  and to let the text speak again without let or hindrance…”(107). While I see what he is saying here, I get wary of claims to “let the text speak for itself,” perhaps because those claims are most often stated when people quote texts like Leviticus 18:22. It seems like letting the text speak for itself is often associated with prooftexting, as opposed to understanding the text in light of itself. I think Barth would agree with that, it’s just a bit funny/strange that he sounds like so conservative when he is talking about Scripture (I also noticed this when he writes that “No, the Bible is the Canon just because it is so” (107)).

-       When Barth is talking about the authors of the biblical witness, he writes, “as they understand themselves, then their self, which in its inner and outer determination and movement constitutes as it were the matter of their service, must be decisively understood by us from the standpoint of its form as a reference away from themselves. They do not speak and write for their own sakes….”(112). This, for Barth, is what gives the biblical witness authority, “because he claims no authority for himself.” I find Barth’s description of the self-negating subjectivity of the biblical witness interesting, especially in his locating authority precisely at this site. This strikes me as having interesting overlap with Foucault’s anti-humanism. I mentioned this in one of my first posts, I am just surprised at how it keeps coming up…

-       The “event” of Christ gets a lot of play in this section. Barth writes, “this fulfilled time which is identical with Jesus Christ, this absolute event in relation to which every other event is not yet or event, or has ceased to be so, this “it is finished,” this Deus dixit for which there are no analogies, is the revelation attested to in the Bible” (116).

Memorable Quotes:

-       “The promise given to the Church in this Word is the promise of God’s mercy which is uttered in the person of Him who is very God and very Man and which takes up our cause when we could not help ourselves at all because of our enmity against God” (107).

-       “The Bible is the concrete means by which the Church recollects God’s past revelation, is called to expectation of His future revelation, and is thus summoned and guided to proclamation and empowered for it” (111).

-       “…the revelation to which the biblical witnesses direct their gaze as they look and point away from themselves is to be distinguished form the word of the witnesses in exactly the same way as an event itself is to be distinguished from even the best and most faithful account of it” (113).

-       “To say revelation is to say “ The Word became flesh”” (119).

Highlights:

-       I have not read any von Balthassar, but at this point, I am quite intrigued as well as confused by how a Roman Catholic could be “Barthian” and be actually liked by Barth. At least at this point, Barth has not been too kind to the Roman Catholic tradition. There has not been a day of reading where he doesn’t in some way, shape, or form critique Roman Catholic theology.

-       Not exactly a highlight, per say…there was a lot of small print in this section. So much so that I finally pulled up the Karl Barth digital archive for translation, which was really helpful.

-       Barth gets into some interesting stuff on transcendence and immanence, which is interesting considering it seems to be a pretty significant topic of debate in some theological circles. Barth, obviously, lands on the side of transcendence, but I found it interesting how he relates transendence to immanence, writing that “He is immanent in [the Church] only as He is transcendent to it.  This is the fact which makes the recollection of God’s past revelation different from reflection on its own timeless ground of being” (100).

Question:

-      My only question has already been asked, in the title for this post… Do I count days by the number of days since the beginning, including Sundays, which would make this day eight, or do I only include days of actually reading Barth, which would make this day seven? Hmmmm….

Memorable Quotes:

-       [In response to the notion that the Church is continued through the succession of the bishops which began with Christ]… “ It is to this that we can only say No. Est enim ecclesia coetus non alligatus ad ordinariam successionem, sed ad verbum Dei. Ibi renascitur ecclesia, ubi Deus restituit doctrinam et dat Spiritum sanctum.” [For the church assembly is not bound to the succession of ordination, but to the word of God. The church is reborn wherever God restores true doctrine and gives the Holy Spirit] (103).

-       “But no proclamation is real proclamation to the degree that over and above all this it does not rest on the commission which we cannot in any way take to ourselves… which we can only receive…we can only take up an attitude by repeating it as we think we have heard it and by trying to conform to it as well or as badly as we can” (90).

-       “The Word of God preached means in this fourth and innermost circle man’s talk about God in which and through which God speaks about Himself” (95).

-       “He is immanent in [the Church]only as He is transcendent to it” (100).

1. I’m really glad I’m doing this. It’s really helpful to have both the encouragement to do the reading, and the space to reflect on it and hear what others say. It’s only been a week, but I feel like I’ve already learned a lot.
2. I wish I either had the fancy new study edition or could read Latin, German, etc… trying to make sense of the small print is sometimes a little tricky not knowing the translations, and I don’t have the time or energy to go to the Karl Barth digital archive for the English translation every time…. Luckily, even though I am probably missing a little bit not catching everything in the small print, there is not a lack of material to engage with…
3. I like the routine I have going. Every day begins and ends with Barth. Every night, I do my reading for the following day, and every morning, as soon as I wake up and feed the dog, I make myself a cup of tea and write a blog post. I’m enjoying the rhythm.
4. I noticed that I ramble a lot when I blog.
5. I am also already enjoying having Sundays off. I had a few beers last night, and was out late celebrating a friend’s birthday. It was nice not to have any reading to come home too.
6. I have been especially inspired by the dedication of some of my friends….Talk about training up a child in the way she should go….

Dula does not end up landing in the same place as Barth (the book is an experiment in the theological possibility of companionship without the turn to the church) but his comments are instructive as we’re thinking about what’s going on in these first sections:

We could, like Karl Barth, refuse to make the church bear so much weight. Barth is as fond of the word ‘only’ as Milbank. But, for Barth, it modified ‘Jesus Christ’ not ‘the church.’ The Barthian option maintains the high expectations and standards, but doesn’t pin so much on meeting them. Better, doesn’t have to pin so much on the church meeting them because Jesus Christ met them on the cross and everything is pinned on that event. While ‘the world would be lost without Jesus Christ and His word and work… the world would not necessarily be lost if there were no Church.’ It is not clear, but I think it is highly doubtful that any of the theologians I have been concerned with would agree this claim of Barth’s (Hauerwas, Milbank, Pinches). But it is this which enables such radical dispossession on Barth’s part and his openness to outsiders. It also makes the acceptance of the fugitive possible, even necessary.

For Dula the problem is that “Barth’s ecclesiology sacrifices concreteness, loses some of its force.”