In this week’s reading of Church Dogmatics Barth works out the nature of revelation in conversation with the identity of God itself.
There were two amusing moments for me in this reading. One was when he said on p. 330:
-
The statement: Individuum est ineffabile, can indeed be made but characteristically it cannot be proved, whereas revelation is ineffabile which encounters and reaches man and proves itself to be such. From this standpoint, then, we finally achieve full clarity regarding what was said in 1. and 2. about the unveiling and veiling of God in His revelation.
Full clarity? Right…
The other amusing moment came at the end:
-
Any child knows that [the church's doctrine of the Trinity] uses some of the philosophoumena of declining pagan antiquity.
I confirmed this with my three year old. He said that he did, in fact, know this.
Otherwise, this chapter was a mixed bag for me.
What I absolutely loved:
Barth is insisting in this chapter that we must wrestle first with the question Who is God, first and foremost, rather than the question, What is God.
Abstract categories of God’s identity and philosophical speculations about the necessity of some god’s existence are not the stuff of Christian dogmatics. This is absolutely true. The idea that we can “prove” the existence of some “unmoved mover” (for example) tells us absolutely nothing about Christian faith. 
We must begin with the particular God who is revealed in the particular story of the Bible.
The other good things about Barth’s approach is that he is holding the line against those who want to suggest that Christianity is articulating universal truths that are generally experienced.
Barth avoids the temptation of this universalising by saying, no–God does in fact reveal. People in particular times know that in what are otherwise “historical” events God has made Godself known. Ultimately, of course, this is so in the revelation of God who is Jesus.
The place where I am not so happy with this chapter is the overall notion that it’s the Trinity that is the core of our understanding of God’s identity. While Barth is keen to make sure that the “who God is of whom we speak” is none other than “the God who has revealed Godself in this particular story,” the move away from the revelation of the story to the later reflection of the church on that revelation undermines the stated point.
The weakness of the approach is illustrated in the ways that it impacts exegesis.
Throughout the chapter we catch glimpses of where we’re supposed to recognize that it’s this God, this Trinity, who is at work. But all too often, these are not indications of Jesus as divine, or Spirit as divine person. Peter’s confession, even in Matthew, has nothing to do with Trinity. The baptismal formula in Matthew 28 is no more Trinitarian than Jesus’ baptism–and that’s not even getting to the Old Testament.
It’s the OT that creates the most significant challenges here. Can we so tie the identity of God with the Christian story that this same God is recognizable on the pages of the OT? Here is where the loss of narrative categories, and the adoption of the “philosophoumena of declining antiquity” is most unfortunate.
The continuity of God is a question for the NT writers, and we should follow their lead in recognizing that the God we worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who witnessed to Jesus by mighty deeds, the Father who did not spare his son but delivered him up for us all, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
I have enjoyed this series, but this post especially so. Count me among the post-philosophoumena
“Post-philosophoumena”–outstanding! Another “post-”. I should be keeping a list, I’m losing track…
I’m wondering if when you get through the end of the book and read through what Barth has to say about the persons of the Trinity, or what Barth calls God’s “modes of being”, you’d be frustrated with this material looking back on it. Barth uses classical Trinitarian language, but he’s not always doing the same things with it that the classical tradition is. For him to say that who God reveals himself to be is tied up with the Trinity is (I think) merely for him to say that God is the one who reveals HIMSELF, who REVEALS himself, and WHO reveals himself. That is to say God, in the OT and NT, is the God who is Revealer, Reconciler, and Redeemer, one God in three modes of being. Or to say it one more way, Barth isn’t primarily committed to there being three things called God who are somehow one or one thing called God who is somehow three in static essence, but he is interested in seeing how God stands on both sides of his redemptive work and mediates between them in an actualist way. When he does his three chapters on Father, Son and Spirit, I’ll be interested to see if you think he does his OT exegesis well enough – he certainly doesn’t find the OT an obstacle.
I think I am in agreement with Adam Nigh if I understand him correctly.
In your comments on 8.2, you expressed a difference with Barth regarding the Trinity being the core of our understanding of who God is.
It was not clear to me whether:
1. You are agreeing that the trinity is the basis of Christian understanding of God but that Barth just did not establish a Scriptural basis for that doctrine, or
2. If you are saying that you do not take the trinity as the basis of the Christian understanding of God, or,
3. You meant something entirely different.
If # 1, I think Barth would agree with you. He admits on p 310 that we cannot confuse the biblical witness to God in his revelation with the doctrine of the Trinity. This is, I think, one of those recurring cases where the fact has to first be revealed to us, and that allows us to look for the evidence. That is most clear in the use of the OT in his argument, but it is a distinguishable Christian examination of the OT he is conducting, and not one made by a Jewish rabbi or a philosopher.
If #2, then my reading of Barth indicates a very basic and fundamental difference in what the two of you believe. The importance to Barth of the trinity as the basis of the Christian understanding of God cannot be overstated. It is, I think, the single thread throughout his Church Dogmatics.
If #3, please excuse my misunderstanding.
As always, thanks for your ideas.
Student
Student,
Adam is trying to help me see Barth’s depiction of the Trinity as tied to the Biblical narrative. it’s that narrative of the actions of God that I want to keep primary, and that Barth has done a good job of allowing to lead his discussions up to this point in CD. I don’t like giving God as Trinity a controlling place, and I know Barth does. I find that it causes us to say too many weird things about the Bible, which is my concern as an NT scholar. But Adam is encouraging me to take a wait and see approach, anticipating that I’ll be happier as things move along. I plan on taking his advice.