Do we really get Romans?

Do we really get Romans? A little Badiou and Žižek can help.

It's been said that reformations and revolutions in Christianity begin with a re-reading of Romans.

That is certainly true of the Protestant Reformation with Luther's epoch-shaking insight into the meaning of the phrase "the righteousness of God."

It is true as well of Barth's commentary The Epistle to the Romans, which in the words of a Catholic commentator "burst like a bombshell on the playground of the European theologians." Barth's leveraging of Paul's argument in Romans served, in the shocking aftermath and disillusionment of the First World War, to turn the scholarly, cozy, and complex arguments of 19th century Protestant thinkers on their head and usher in the relatively long era that we today know as Neo-Orthodoxy.

The long-tenured regime of Neo-Orthodoxy collapsed - quite quickly really - in the mid-to-late 1960s with the cultural revolution of that period, which coincided with the rise of both religious studies as an "alternative", at least in America, to the intellectual cartel of Barthianism and the Barth-based mainline Protestant establishment and the emergence of so-called "secular theology," which gradually morphed into a new establishment with its own signature and features. Much of today's Christian postmodernism has this latter development as both its source and heritage, although it is also fair to say that its initial impulse in the form of applied Derrideanism was derived from the sense of a thoroughgoing "gappiness" in conventional liberal constructions of God along with the realization that there was room for postulating a "holiness" that could be glimpsed in all the holes of the not-so-monolithic text. That is the genealogy of all "religion without religion."

Secular theologies, whether they be grounded in the grand narratives of 19th century bourgeois progressivism or the "apocalypse now" and "destruction of metaphysics" themes of the post-Sixties decades, are always the products of good economic times and social stability. The varieties of "crisis" theology" - the original terminology for Neo-Orthodoxy - find fertile soil in political or economic anxiety and social upheaval. All the current discussion of what may be coming "after postmodernism" may be setting the stage for the emergence of a 21st century crisis theology, though one completely and obviously unlike what reigned from the 1930 up to the 1960s.

Besides Romans, crisis theologies - if that's really the word we want to use - always turn out to carry the genetics of a previous and hitherto marginalized philosophical movement. Luther relied indirectly on nominalism for his critique of Thomism, indulgences, and Catholic sacramental theology. Barth "discovered" Kierkegaard. If a new crisis theology is in the making - most likely with its own re-appropriation of Romans - what might that be?

H/T: THE CHURCH AND POSTMODERN CULTURE: Conversation .

Karl Barth On Easter

Jesus as Victor:

The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind – and truly it is burning – but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.

(Dogmatics in Outline, p. 123)

A Synthesis Of Luther And Barth's Trinitarian Metaphors

Jack Kilcrease on Luther and Barth's Trinitarian metaphors:

Barth's metaphors have to do with seeing, Luther's with hearing. This makes sense in light of how they understand divine revelation. Barth views divine revelation as the unfolding of a single subject (God) in an act of revealing himself in time. He does this by echoing his eternal decision to be "one who loves in freedom" in the temporal narrative of Jesus. This temporal narrative is "unveiling" is further echoed in "Jesus, Bible and proclaimed Word" which echoes the Father, Son and Spirit, as "revealed, revealer, revealing." Barth's view of revelation is essentially analogical. Analogy has to do with a kind of visible similitude between things and therefore envisions human knowledge (following Aristotle) as a kind of intellectual vision.

Luther's theology works on the basis of hearing. In other words, God's agency manifests itself through the law which is present and visible through all creation. Human can observe how the world works and see what God's legal will is. They can also see this in the horrific act of judgment that God causes to take place in salvation history. Nevertheless, God promises his grace and enacts under his act of judgment and under act of weakness. The supreme one is the cross. We are told that Jesus is God and that the cross is an act of grace. Nevertheless, all we see is weakness (a weak, beaten and dying Christ) and condemnation (i.e. a symbol of Israel's sin and continuing exile). Contrary to this, we hear "surely he was the Son of God" and "today you will be with me in paradise." Consequently, revelation's hiddenness is transcended only by hearing the Word. Proper knowledge of God is set against analogical and visible knowledge of God, and placed in the realm of hearing.

Interesting stuff---I'd have to say that these two views are easily reconciled as the human experience with God's revelation of God's self has always been both visual and audible. And as we know God's fullest and final self-revelation was in Jesus Christ Himself---who was both seen and heard as the Word of God Himself. The Trinitarian implications of both of these views can be seen in these ways: Jesus Christ as the Word of God actualized, the Bible as the encounter in which we realize that Jesus Christ is the One True and Living Word of God and the Kerygmatic preaching of Jesus Christ the One True and Actual Word of God in which our Divine Election of and by God is revealed. This Election is most fully realized in the Cross and can only point to Jesus' self-sacrificial death upon the Cross. In this sense also the Word of God, God's revelation of God's self in Christ is both seen and heard as God in Christ is both the subject and object of our faith: the whole content and character of the Christian revelation.

Karl Barth also said in Credo: Volume IV of his Church Dogmatics:

It can be asserted and proved with the utmost definiteness and accuracy that the great theological-ecclesiastical catastrophe of which the German Protestantism of the moment is the arena, would have been impossible if the three words Filium eius unicum ["his only Son"] in the properly understood sense of the Nicene trinitarian doctrine had not for more than two hundred years been really lost to the German Church amongst a chaos of reinterpretations designed to make them innocuous. This catastrophe should be a real, final warning to the evangelical Churches, and, especially to the theological faculties of other lands, where, so far as trinitarian dogma is concerned, no better ways are being trodden. Christian faith stands or falls once and for all with the fact that God and God alone is its object. If one rejects the Bibhcal doctrine that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and indeed God’s only Son, and that therefore the whole revelation of God and all reconciliaion between God and man is contained in Him—and if one then, in spite of that, speaks of ” faith ” in Jesus Christ, then one believes in an intermediate being, and then consequently one is really pursuing metaphysics and has ready secretly lapsed from the Christian faith into a polytheism which will forthwith mature into further fruits in the setting up of a special God-Father faith and a special Creator faith, and in the assertion of special spiritual revelations. The proclamation of this polytheism can most certainly be a brilliant and a pleasant affair, and can win continuous and widespread approbation. But real consolation and real instruction, the Gospel of God and the Law of God, will find a small and ever-diminishing place in this proclamation. (49-50 – emphasis mine)

And with that I close---so what are your thoughts?

Welcome Back Fred!

First, I would like to welcome back my friend Fred H. Anderson to the Blogosphere with his new Blog: Neoorthodoxology. Secondly, I'd highly recommend reading his Lenten post: The Desert Will Blossom. Here is a snippet:

Jesus will have as his center God alone.
What Jesus insists on is remaining in relationship with God.

Thus it is appropriate that Jesus does not answer on his own terms alone.
Jesus refutes the devil each time by quoting scripture.
Jesus answers every temptation by a reminder of his relationship with God.
Jesus answers in terms of that relationship.
The desert forces the question,
but Jesus will not isolate himself from God.

The desert where we sometimes find ourselves forces the same question on us:
Will we be faithful
or will we not?

Of course, the question comes to us in more attractive wrapping than that.

The first temptation is to turn stones into bread:

“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

This is to satisfy our hunger at any cost,
to shrink to become nothing more than appetites,
a partial self
living a distorted existence.

Jesus knew that and responded with Deuteronomy 8:3:

"It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"

The second temptation is to replace God with something else.

"Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, 'To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.'”

Jesus knew that was a lie, and he responded:

"It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"

You see, what we put at our center,
if it is not God,
can never give us satisfaction,
but leaves us open to disintegration and despair.

The words of the Barmen Declaration show us our center:

Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death

.

Lastly, I'd like to say Amen! At the center of Jesus is God as Jesus is both fully human and fully God and Jesus is the one Word by which we were created by God and by which we were Elected to New and Eternal Life in Him.

Karl Barth On Christmas

Karl Barth on the wonder of Christmas:

The wonder of Christmas is described in the article of the Apostles' Creed: "Qui conceptus est de spiritu sancto, natus ex Maria virgine"; "who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." Or, according to the formula of the Nicene Creed which is recited every Sunday, and on many other days, in the Roman Catholic mass and at least on Christmas and on other high festivals in the German Evangelical Church: "Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine et homo factus est"; "and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." What does this mean?

It certainly means God's presence in our world, His presence as man among men and therefore God's revelation to men. It means man's reconciliation with God. That this happened and still happens, is the substance of the Christmas message. God is the "He" of whom the Creed speaks. In Him is present not only light but the Light, the eternal Light, not only help, but the perfect,
ultimate Helper Himself, not only power, but the Lord of all powers, not only love but the Lover in whom all love is founded, who excels all love and who is so infinitely lovable because He is wholly Love, even if no one responds.

This God is conceived where we all are conceived. He is born of Mary. She who conceived and bore Him, plays our part in the wonder of Christmas, for it concerns us. God has come to us. "Disguised in our flesh and blood, is the eternal good."

In the name of the Messianic King whom Israel expected, the Church has rediscovered the name of "the eternal good' in which she believes and which she confesses. The name is "Immanuel," God with us. ( Is. VII.14).

Even described in such general terms Christmas can only be understood as a wonder. That there is this Love of which Paul can say that it never ends, is not a known fact nor some general truth symbolically represented in the Christmas message but also recognisable elsewhere. Can it really be true: God in our world, God in our world? The facts cry out against it, for they speak of God's remoteness from the world and the world's remoteness from God. It needs a confession of faith to recognise reconciliation as truth, a confession whose strength and weakness lies in the fact that it appeals only to revelation and that it can be made and received only by faith. The Creed of the Christian Church is this confession. It appeals only to revelation, it is made only by faith, it demands and expects nothing but faith when it calls the Love which
never fails, an event, saying: "Et incarnatus est."

Bruce Prescott On Reforming Baptist Identity

These are some good thoughts from Bruce Prescott's latest post---Mainstream Baptist: Reforming Baptist Identity:

Jesus revealed that the meaning of election is not about privilege but about service. Everyone who is chosen by God is chosen for service. Jesus also revealed the meaning of service to God. Jesus set aside his power and privileges and submitted himself to death on a cross in the service of God. That is what he was chosen to do. When he died, the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom. God himself tore down all the barriers that had been erected to keep people at a distance from his blessings.

Everyone who responds to the call of God has been chosen for service. Service to God always involves sacrifice. We have been commanded to take up our own cross when we follow Jesus. At the very least that means that we must be willing to share the blessings that God has given us with others.

Too many Baptists in America resemble the ancient Jews more than Jesus. They are more concerned about preserving the privileges of their nationality than with sharing the blessings of the good news about God’s love for all people.

Too many Baptists are among the armed vigilantes standing guard at our borders.

Too many Baptists are among the placarded protestors at tea parties blocking the entrance to our medical clinics.

Too many Baptists think God called them for pampering and privilege rather than for sacrificial service.

Blessings can quickly turn into curses when we insist on hoarding them all for ourselves rather than sharing them freely with others.

And here are my thoughts related to the post: Indeed God's call is a radical call to loving and self-sacrificial service to others---it is a lifelong activity as Karl Barth says:

“God so loved'—not the Christian, but—'the world'. 'I am the light of the world', says the Lord, and by His own self-giving He passes the light on to His disciples: 'Ye are the light of the world!' It is the duty of the real Church to tell and show the world what it does not yet know. This does not mean that the real Church's mission is to take the whole or even half the world to task. It would be the servant of quite a different Master if it were to set itself up as the accuser of its brethren. Its mission is not to say 'No', but to say 'Yes'; a strong 'Yes' to the God who, because there are 'godless' men, has not thought and does not think of becoming a 'manless' God—and a strong 'Yes' to man, for whom, with no exception, Jesus Christ died and rose again. How extraordinary the Church's preaching, teaching, ministry, theology, political guardianship and missions would be, how it would convict itself of unbelief in what it says, if it did not proclaim to all men that God is not against man but for man. It need not concern itself with the 'No' that must be said to human presumption and human sloth. This 'No' will be quite audible enough when as the real Church it concerns itself with the washing of feet and nothing else. This is the obedience which it owes to its Lord in this world.”

—Karl Barth, "The Real Church," Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings 1946-52 (London: SCM Press, 1954), 73.

Also:

To stand in the unconditional loving service of God and others, the church must first stop acting as if it or bible translations are the Holy Spirit---as if any human, human cultural biases or human institution can restrict and regulate, whom the Holy Spirit wills to call to ministry or in general---for a lot of people (mainly Fundamentalists and bible literalists) actually believe that they can usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit from willing, whom the Holy Spirit wills to call to the ministry or in general and/or that it is their task to determine whom can and can’t be called to the ministry or in general instead of the Holy Spirit alone---and in so telling the Holy Spirit what to do, they not only commit idolatry (ecclesiolatry as well as bibliolatry and poimenolatry/clericalism), but also worse than that it grieves the Holy Spirit (the only unforgivable sin). As Christ is the True pillar of the church for us and in giving the Great Commission, Christ excluded no one from ministering the Gospel, serving and being served including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and both women and men of every culture, climate, race, type and personality. Secondly, in the Bible, the unfolding of God’s will and self-disclosure of God’s self-revelation, in the Person and work of Christ---we find that God was most fully revealed as being Love itself---for Christ is Love---as Robinson (influenced by Paul Tillich) wrote: "For it is in making himself nothing, in his utter self-surrender to others in love, that [Jesus] discloses and lays bare the Ground of man's being as Love" (ibid., p. 75, italics added). He also wrote: "For assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love" (ibid., p. 105)--- (Honest To God --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A.T._Robinson). When we divinely encounter Christ as Love for us, in the advent of the proclamation of scripture---we see all of Christian ethics is contingent upon the moral axioms of the Higher Law of Righteousness, Love, Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness---the Golden Rule and to love God completely and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. If the sum and substance of Christian morality and ethics then is this---then why should we read Christian morality out of a vacuum with no insight, inquiry and reference to the Higher Law, on which the line of all Christian morality is drawn? For what profits one to have morality without love? For all of Christianity is rooted in loving service---just as Brennan Manning says*---quoting from Barbara Doherty: "Love is service. ‘There is no point in getting into an argument about this question of loving. It is what Christianity is all about---take it or leave it. Christianity is not about ritual or moral living except insofar as these two express the love that causes both of them. We must at least pray for the grace to become love.’" (*-pg. 29 of A Glimpse Of Jesus: The Stranger To Self-Hatred)

Respect For John Calvin

Due to my previous post TheoPoetic Musings: Fundamentalists Never Cease To Be Laughable sparking a heated discussion, here are some insights from John H. Armstrong:

MAY 20, 2009

A Reader's Guide to Calvin's Institutes

I would guess that 9 in 10 people I meet have no real idea what the term "Calvinism" actually means. Most have never read John Calvin. Most have only met a few very conservative Calvinists who promote things like TULIP and various scholastic readings of the great reformer. (And quite a few of these are mean, separatistic and critical of almost every other expression of the Christian faith) While the TULIP does have clear historical connection with the post-Calvin developments at the Synod of Dort in Holland (and thus the conclusions of the Synod are preserved in Reformed churches down to the present time as one of the three forms of confessional unity) Dort is clearly not the whole story. When TULIP becomes the strong focus then Calvinism becomes a lot like looking at a lovely person by staring at one, not so complete and not so clear, "photo-shopped" picture. And this picture is neither accurate nor helpful.

The real Calvin is flawed. But he is also an intriguing and very important figure in church history. No one can rightly defend Calvin's actions with regard to the killing of Michael Servetus. (Yet, just last week I had someone ask me if Calvin approved the martyrdom of many that he disagreed with. This is preposterous if you know the facts at all.)

I do not defend some of Calvin's ideas about predestination, such as the idea of "double predestination." I also disagree with some of the way he expresses other biblical truths. But I remind friends and foes alike that John Calvin wrote for reasons that were not rooted primarily in the doctrine of predestination. In fact, his views on this subject should never be divorced from the whole of his purpose or you will get a distorted view of the man and of his influence upon Protestantism, especially the Reformed Church.

My thoughts exactly Calvin should be respected for his contributions to theology and he often does get a bad rap, but so does Arminius and Barth. After all, they are humans---however that being said I agree with what John Armstrong said: "No one can rightly defend Calvin's actions with regard to the killing of Michael Servetus." No matter how apologists of Reformed Fungelicalism try to spin it: Thankfully Progressive Calvinists don't try to cover up Calvin's sins by defending them since they are indefensible just as Luther's Anti-Semitism and his inciting violence towards the Jews are inexcusable as well.

Thoughts On The Atonement

Due to Easter approaching soon, I've decided to do a post series on the Atonement. Here is a list of the categories in which I will divide this series:

‏

שִׁ֥יר הַשִּׁירִ֖ים, Intimacy And The Passover

Implications Of The Incarnation To The Atonement
---from searchingthescriptures.net.

Blood And The Atonement--- due to The Mysterious Cities of Gold finally coming out on an official region 1 DVD in April, I have been re-watching the fan-made bootleg copy that I obtained from Tim Skutt. Since The Mysterious Cities of Gold centers on various cultures of Mesoamerica and South America---this gave me the idea to explain the significance of blood to various religions.

Jesus As Victor: A Theology Of The Cross

In the meantime, see my friend Christian Beyer's post on the Atonement and Wade Burleson's post.

D. A. Carson Calls Christians To Biblical Prayers

D. A. Carson is one Conservative Evangelical scholar that I respect and admire, but his recent comments on prayer at Biltmore Baptist Church 's prayer conference are a little off. The Biblical Recorder reports:

Carson spoke about how the word of God should reform every area in a Christian’s life, especially prayer.

As Paul did in Ephesians 3, Christians should pray for the life-transforming power of Christ and a better understanding of the limitless dimensions of Christ’s love. In returning to a biblical standard of prayer, Christians must pray for Christ’s power to strengthen and transform. The Christian must cry out for “a demonstration of God’s power” to work in him, making him “the habitation of the almighty God,” Carson said.

Paul desired for the Ephesians to be established in the Savior’s transforming love and to know God’s love in such a way that “knowing it might surpass all that could be known.” Carson directed his audience to ask God “to show you the ugliness of sin and the spectacular love of Christ that deals with it.” Then “you will see how wide, long, high and deep is this love of Jesus that surpasses knowledge,” he said.

The church needs intercessors and Christians must beg God, as Moses did during the account of the golden calf, for mercy. Christians must beg God not to pour out upon His church the judgment it deserves. “Moses seeks the favor of God and asks Him to relent and not bring disaster,” Carson said. Moses pleads upon God’s mercy and God relents. God does not drift through interactions with His people but “He expects this unrelenting intercession, this dynamic experience,” Carson said.

Carson urged believers to acquire a vision of God’s holiness, the awfulness of sin and empathy for fellow believers that would “lead you to stand in the gap” as Moses did for the Israelites. He asked God to “blot out” his life if He would not forgive the Israelites. Moses stood in the gap, willing to take the punishment. Carson admitted, “It is rare I find myself thinking of things like that.” Yet, Christians must think and pray like that, he said.

In response to Moses’ plea, God unpacks His character, showing He is compassionate and gracious but cannot let the guilty go unpunished. Moses begs God to go with the Israelites, whether he shows compassion or justly punishes them. He knew the Israelites were nothing without God. Believers must recognize, as did Moses, that without God, “everything else is a disaster.” There is no one to whom Christians can go except God. Therefore, pray and beg for God’s presence, regardless of what it brings, Carson said.

Revival is God-given, but Christians must reform their prayers so that they seek God and not an event. Prayer for revival must not simply be prayer for an experience. Rather, it must be that God’s people be holy and delight in Him rather than self-made pursuits of “religiosity,” Carson said. Christians must return to a biblical standard of prayer and not any other man-made measure. This is why Carson urged believers to pray scripturally and “find life, purpose, and hope” in Christ through His word.

While I agree with Carson, "Christians must pray for Christ’s power to strengthen and transform." However, I don't agree that we should pray "biblically"---whatever praying "biblically" means. Who gets to decide what a biblical prayer is anyway---you, me, D. A. Carson, the Pope, John Calvin, etc.? Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that believers should pray biblically. However, Christians should always pray Christocentricly as Jesus gives us the standard of Christian prayer in The Lord's Prayer:

Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9-13 ESV).

Prayers should also be individualistic and subjective as prayers are believers' intimate connection to the Divine. Praying scriptures is sometimes helpful though such as in the lectio divina model, but there are some scriptures we shouldn't pray such as Psalm 137:9 and Psalm 143:12 for example as neither one of those scriptures are consistent with God's self-revealed character in the person and work of Christ. After all, Jesus should be at the center of all our prayers. In closing, I will leave you with two quotes from Karl Barth on prayer:

"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
— Karl Barth.

[P]rayer is the most intimate and effective form of Christian action. All other work comes far behind, and it is Christian work… only to the extent that it derives from prayer…

See also: Karl Barth: The Liberation of the Christian: From Anxiety to Prayer and:

Jesus Christ lived the perfect life as God intended for man here on earth by deriving all that He did from God the Father. "I do nothing of My own initiative" (John 5:30; 8:28; 12:49; 14:10), Jesus said, "but the Father abiding in Me does His works" (John 14:10). Jesus lived the life of the Perfect Man2 for every moment in time for thirty-three years by constantly living in the prayer of faith. He chose to be receptive to the activity of God the Father in all that He did and said. Karl Barth explains,

"He became the first One properly to take and receive the divine gift. He takes up towards God the position of One who has nothing, who has to receive everything from God. He trusts in God that He will in fact receive it from Him. He entrusts everything to Him. This is how He lives...a life controlled and upheld by the grace of God. In all His life as a man Jesus was only and altogether a Suppliant. As the Son of God He is Himself altogether the divine gift and answer. God triumphed in this man. He did it because this man actually asked, and asking took and received; because this man sought, and seeking found; because this man knocked, and as He knocked, it was opened to Him. In this way God triumphed in the asking. This man prayed. He prayed to God for His unspeakable gift."3

Karl Barth On Grace

The Incomprehensibility of Grace
Posted on October 9, 2008 by Halden

“Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it. . . . Where the grace of God is, the very existence of the world and the very existence of God become a question and a hope with which and for which men must wrestle. For we are not now concerned with the propaganda of a conviction or with its imposition on others; grace means bearing witness to the faithfulness of God which a man has encountered and recognized, and which requires a corresponding fidelity towards God. The fidelity of a man to the faithfulness of God–the faith, that is, which accepts grace–is itself the demand for obedience and itself demands obedience from others. Hence the demand is a call which enlightens and rouses to action; it carries with it mission, beside which no other mission is possible. For the name of Him in whom the two worlds meet and are separated must be honoured, and for this mission grace provides full authority, since men are shattered by it.”

– Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans 6th Edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 31.

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Yet Another Interesting Barth Post

The Fire And The Rose Blogspot recently posted this post:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Review: P. H. Brazier, Barth and Dostoevsky
P. H. Brazier, Barth and Dostoevsky: A Study of the Influence of the Russian Writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky on the Development of the Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, 1915-1922 (Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2007), xix + 245 pp. $39.99 (paperback)

In his forward to Paul Brazier’s new book, Stephen Holmes begins by stating, “The book you have before you might surprise you” (xvii). Holmes was apparently skeptical about the prospect of a book looking at an historical period in Barth’s life already thoroughly covered by Bruce McCormack. Holmes goes on to say that he “expected little more than a conversation with, and perhaps some footnotes to, McCormack,” but that Brazier had convinced him that there was “extraordinarily interesting data” still waiting to be explored. The result of this exploration was Brazier’s dissertation, originally entitled “Die Freiheit in der Gefangenschaft Gottes”: The Nature and Content of the Influence of Dostoevsky on Karl Barth, 1915 to 1922, now published in the line of Paternoster Theological Monographs under the title, Barth and Dostoevsky. While the book illuminates and examines certain dimensions of Barth’s life that have been ignored by most Barth scholars, the data is not always as surprising as one might expect, nor is the data presented in a very accessible manner.

Read the rest of the review at the Center for Barth Studies website.

Posted by David W. Congdon at 10:54 AM

Labels: Barth, books, reviews

I like the literary connection with Barth. Dostoevsky's influence on Barth is new to me though I've always known about Mozart's influence on Barth---see:
Faith and Theology: Karl Barth: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Why Mozart? for example---but this insight is refreshing.

Faith and Theology: How to read Karl Barth: George Hunsinger's foreword to the German Edition

Faith and Theology: How to read Karl Barth: George Hunsinger's foreword to the German Edition

---Faith And Theology, once agan, has an excellent post on Karl Barth. I have to admit I have a somewhat slight bias toward Barth as I did my Senior Seminar research paper in Modern Theology on Barth And Theories Of Language's Use In Theology in 2003 with Dr. Steve Harmon. I wish I had had How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology, but one of the sources I did use is this book: Re-Figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth.

This section of Faith And Theology is the section that most grabs my attention:

...
I had already developed the idea of “motifs” as a way of introducing students to Barth. When I sat down to write my dissertation, I had expected to discuss them only briefly in the preface. As it turned out, however, the preface took over the work!

Since then I have continued to read Barth and teach his theology on a regular basis. I have found that explaining these “motifs” still helps students to gain a better grasp of his theology and to read him without becoming discouraged by the difficulties. It is almost always better to read Barth than to read about him. But reading him, as everyone knows, is not easy, and it helps to have some guidance. Since he is one of the greatest – and most inspiring – theologians in the history of the church, the richness of his work repays every effort to understand him. I keep reading him, because I keep learning from him. I find that the more I know, the more he has to teach me. I also find that when I feel depressed, he cheers me up!

At least three new insights have emerged for me in reading Barth, and my students have also found them to be helpful.

The first is rather simple but well worth knowing. Every “paragraph” in the Church Dogmatics is written around a single main point. Even when the Absatz may run on for more than one page, as sometimes happens, the rule holds. What this means is that it becomes possible for the reader to reconstruct Barth’s overall outline. Reconstructing the outline is not only a very good discipline, but also a way of not getting lost. By looking for the outline, one keeps one’s head above water. Every page of Barth’s dogmatics is literally teeming with ideas. It is all too easy to get diverted by an arresting point or by mistaking the part for the whole. I find that by digging for the main point of each Absatz and writing it down, I can help my students follow Barth’s argument much more readily than would otherwise be the case. Then, of course, it also helps to look for the sub-points within the Absatz, of which there are usually quite a few. All this may seem rather pedestrian, and indeed it is. Nevertheless, I have found it to be a most valuable procedure in reading the Church Dogmatics.

Another deceptively simple point for the beginning reader is to keep an eye out for the antecedent to Barth’s pronouns. Almost everyone has had the experience of reading Barth, feeling that one is following the train of thought, and then suddenly getting to the bottom of the page and finding that one is hopelessly lost. At this point it is easy to give up with the sense that Barth is just too hard to understand. Very often, however, all that has happened is that the reader has lost track of the antecedent to Barth’s many pronouns. (I can’t imagine what it would have been like to try to follow this material, which began as classroom lectures, by ear.) In any case the pronouns are like the bread crumbs in “Hansel and Grettel”. One only needs to trace them back in order to get out of the forest. For an especially vexing passage, I sometimes underline the antecedent twice, once I have retrieved it, while then underlining the subsequent pronouns once. The passage is then much easier to follow if I need to revisit it for purposes of further study or instruction.

Finally, there is the matter of actualism. Even as I was writing this book, I felt that I didn’t have it fully worked out. Now after all these years I think I have a better grasp of its peculiar complexities. Much of what is distinctive in Barth, as well as much of what is difficult, hangs upon it.

Since not everything can be unpacked here, a few remarks will have to suffice. Barth’s proposal that God’s being is in act is an idea that expresses the heart of his actualism. Barth regards salvation in Christ as a perfect work (opus perfectum) that is also a perpetual operation (operatione perpetuus). The perpetual operation adds nothing new in content to the perfect work, which by definition needs no completion. Yet it belongs to the perfect work’s perfection that it is not merely encapsulated in the past. On the contrary, it operates perpetually to make itself present for what it is, again and again. Barth would sometimes articulate this idea in terms of Heb. 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever.” The event of Jesus Christ, he would say, is not only “a past fact of history,” but also “an event that is happening in the present here and now,” as well as an event that “in its historical completeness” and “full contemporaneity” is also “truly future.”

... (Read more in the hyperlink provided above).

Looking At Resurrection With Faith And Theology

Faith and Theology: Resurrection as God's self-determination: a note on Adam Eitel, Bruce McCormack and Rowan Williams

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The best section is:

Here’s what Williams has to say:

“Jesus’ life is historical, describable…. But there is a sense in which the raising of Jesus … does not and cannot belong to history: it is not an event, with a before and after, occupying a bit of time between Friday and Sunday. God’s act in uniting Jesus’ life with his eludes us: we can speak of it only as the necessary condition for our living as we live. And as a divine act it cannot be tied to place and time in any simple way. It is, indeed, an ‘eternal’ act: it is an aspect of the eternal will by which God determines how he shall be, his will to be the Father of the Son…. The event of resurrection, then, cannot but be hidden in God’s eternal act, his eternal ‘being himself’; however early we run to the tomb, God has been there ahead of us” (pp. 89-90).

The resurrection is an eternal act in which God determines the kind of God he will be. It is an act in which the trinitarian persons are differentiated: Father, Son and Spirit relate to one another in this event. The resurrection is God’s determination to be the triune God – so that God’s decision about his own being is fulfilled not in the abyss of eternity, but in this unique occurrence within human history.

---which is an allusion to Karl Barth's Christocentric Election.

Indeed Christ is both our Elector and the Elected One of God---Electing Messiah and Messiah Elect.

Faith and Theology: On Kurt Cobain and Karl Barth: the possible impossibility of theology

Faith and Theology: On Kurt Cobain and Karl Barth: the possible impossibility of theology

Some Blog posts of interest

On the book,"The Shack": http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/shack-attack.



On Lego Martin Luther: http://www.reyes-chow.com/2008/01/when-luther-and.html.



And check out Karl Barth Rap, also on Bruce Reyes-Chow's Blog: http://www.reyes-chow.com/2008/01/karl-barth-rap.html.