Barth On The Bible

I have just returned from balmy New Haven, Connecticut, where I attended the Emergent Theological Conversation, which included in depth discussion with Miroslav Volf. I also had the distinct privilege of leading a break-out session on the theology of Karl Barth. I was kind of surprised by the turnout, which was larger than I expected. The discussion was terrific. One of the topics among the many that we touched on during our brief time together in this session was Barth's understanding of Scripture. I wished we had more time and could have have worked through some of the passages below. They are in consonance with Volf's response to a question about what he does with troubling biblical texts. He said one can be troubled by such texts, but can't expurgate them. I think the following passages flesh out the sort of spiritual posture that might under gird a trusting troubledness.

When the Word of God meets us, we are laden with the images, ideas and certainties which we ourselves have formed about God, the world and ourselves. In the fog of this intellectual life of ours the Word of God, which is clear in itself, always becomes obscure. It can become clear to us only when this fog breaks and dissolves. This is what is meant by the subordination of our ideas, thoughts and convictions. If the Word of God is to become clear to us, we cannot ascribe to them the same worth as we do to it. We cannot try to appraise the Word of God by reference to them; or to cling to them in face of the Word of God. The movement which we have to make in relation to it-and quite freely, of course-can be only that of yielding, surrender and withdrawal...The matter seems further complicated by the fact that God's thoughts in His Word do not come to us in abstracto but in concreto in the form of the human word of prophets and apostles, which as such is not only the expression of God's thoughts but also the expression of their own. It is the case, then, that the divine Word itself meets us right in the thick of that fog of our own intellectual life, as having taken the same form as our own ideas, thoughts and convictions. It is a "light that shineth in a dark place" (2 Pet. 1:19) But in fact this apparent complication makes it simple and easy to understand. The pure Word of God as such needs, of course, no explanation because, like the light of the sun above our atmosphere, it is clear in itself. But as such it would not have come to us, and we could have nothing to do with it. In fact, however, without ceasing to be clear in itself-clear always by reason of the clarity which it possesses in itself-it has come down to us through the testimony of apostles and prophets. For that reason it has come to need interpretation in so far as it has assumed the mode of our intellectual world and is thus exposed to the risk of being understood, or rather not understood, by us according to the habits of our mentality, in the relationship of reciprocal activity by which we are normally accustomed to understand human words. But just because it has compromised itself in this way, it has become capable of explanation; not only of fundamental self-explanation in virtue of its intrinsic clarity, but also of interpretation which its human witnesses are at least partially capable of giving, of the interpretation which the human hearers and the readers of these witnesses, again, at least partially, are also in a position to give, and finally of interpretation in the narrowest sense of the term, by which the members of the Church serve the Word of God and each man his brother. All this is possible because the Word of God is not given to us in abstracto, because it is real light, not merely in the for us inaccessible stratosphere of its inner existence, but also, thanks to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the witness of the prophets and apostles, in the atmosphere if our own intellectual world. This means that the subordination to the Word, which is the basis for its interpretation in so far as this is our responsibility, is no mere idea or empty postulate, in face of which the only possible actuality is that we set ourselves above the Word of God, and in the end probably in an absolute sense, as we are accustomed to do in regard to other objects.
[Church Dogmatics I.2, 716-717]

...because the interpretation of the Word of God can take place only through man's subordination, this subordination now comes concretely to mean that we have to subordinate ourselves to the word of the prophets and apostles; not as one subordinates oneself to God, but rather as one subordinates oneself for the sake of God and in His love and fear to the witnesses and messengers which He himself has constituted and empowered. In the real contrast between the ideas, thoughts and convictions which we meet in the words of the biblical witnesses and our own ideas, thoughts and conceptions, there can and must be practiced that proper subordination in which alone the illumination of the Word of God can take place at least for us...It is not as though we had simply to abandon and forget our ideas, thoughts and convictions. We certainly cannot do that, just as little as we can free ourselves from our own shadow. Nor should we try to do it; for that would be arrogance rather than humility. Subordination does not mean the elimination or annihilation of our own resources. Subordination implies that the subordinate is there as such and remains there. It means placing oneself behind, following, complying as subordinate to superior...[subordination] cannot mean that we have to allow our ideas, thoughts and convictions to be supplanted so to speak, by those of the prophets and apostles, or that we have to speak the language of Canaan instead of our own tongue. In that case we should not have subordinated ourselves to them, but at most adorned ourselves with their feathers. In that case nothing would have been done in the interpretation of their words, for we should merely have repeated them parrot-like...To this testimony of their words we must subordinate ourselves-and this is the essential form of scriptural exegesis-with what we for our own part hold to be true, beautiful and good. With the whole weight of our reason and experience we have to follow in the path of this testimony and become complaint to it. It is another matter that in the process elements in the stock of our experience will be set aside as superfluous and discordant, others receive quite a new form and yet others be newly added to this stock. The decisive point is that in scriptural exegesis Scripture itself as a witness to revelation must have unconditional precedence of all the evidence of our own being and becoming, our own thoughts and endeavors, hope and suffering, of all the evidence of the intellect and senses, of all axioms and theorems, which we inherit and bear as such...Scriptural exegesis rests on the assumption that the message which Scripture has to give us, even in its apparently most debatable and least assimilable parts, is in all circumstances truer and more important than the best and most necessary things that we ourselves have said or can say...The Bible is outwardly, so to speak, accessible only from a certain point below. Therefore we must take our stand at that point below, in order to look up to the corresponding point above. [Emphasis Mine]
[Church Dogmatics I.2, 718-719]

The content of the Bible, and the object of its witness is Jesus Christ as the name of the God who deals graciously with man the sinner. To heed and understand its witness is to realize the fact that the relation between God and man is such that God is gracious to man: to man who needs Him, who as a sinner is thrown wholly on God's grace...To hear this is to hear the Bible-both as a whole and in each one of its separate parts. Not to hear this means eo ipso not to hear the Bible, neither as a whole, nor therefore in its parts. The Bible says all sorts of things, certainly; but in all this multiplicity and variety it says in truth only one thing-just this: the name of Jesus Christ...The Bible remains dark to us if we do not hear in it this sovereign name...Interpretation stands in the service of the clarity which the Bible as God's Word makes for itself...From the standpoint of what the biblical witness says, the fog and darkness of the human world of thought consist in the fact that, while it arises and subsists as our world, it constantly exposes our nature, the nature of sinful man, without the name of Jesus Christ, and therefore without the God who deals graciously with us. The nature of this man is a striving to justify himself from his own resources in face of a God whose image he has fashioned in his own heart, to make himself as great as possible and therefore at the same time to make God as small as possible.  But if the Word of God has actually come into its own, and if it is to be clearly seen, the only thing which can happen to the world of thought which exposes the nature of man is that it should at least give ground (for we cannot simply free ourselves from it, nor ought we try to do so, since emancipation from it is identical with the resurrection of the flesh), that it should become fluid, losing its absoluteness, subordinating itself and following the Word as a tamed beast of prey must follow its master.
[Church Dogmatics I.2, 720-721]

Comments

[Joel Laramee]

I don't understand those passages very well. Perhaps a follow-up blog, to digest them a bit, and share why they excite you?

[tim keel]

It was great to be with you, bro.

[wezlo]

Dude, this is so freaking true. I'm not sure why "emergent-types" embrace mystery and then freak out when God doesn't act the way we want God to act. BE freaked out by GOD for crying out loud! Or do we only accept mystery when it's warm and fuzzy?

In leading the Biblical Evangelism study at my church - that's one of the highlights, this stuff doesn't make sense to us, the people don't act like us, think like us, or live in our "ordered" world - but God met them, called them, and has communicated through them (and, I hope, still does).

When Miroslav put forward his aversion to the idea of final judgment, but equally put forward his unwillingness to take his eyes OFF that potential he hopes can be avoided, I knew I was in the presence of someone I wanted to keep listening to.

[bj woodworth]

this sounds like critical realism. in the words of NT Wright in NT and the people of God,
Critical realism, "is a way of describing the process of 'knowing' that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence 'realism'), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiraling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known” (hence 'critical')… our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning realities independent of the knower, is never independent of the knower."

Am I right?

[Lynn Wetherbee]

A similar sentiment to that of Volf and Barth, on the topic of troublesome biblical passages, comes from feminist theologian Roberta Bondi, who defends the use of the Lord's prayer for worship and piety with patriarchal and kingdom/hierarchical language intact... "trusting that because God intends our life and not our death, Jesus could not possibly have intended to make the political statement [opponents of the prayer] think Jesus is making. As a result, [in rejecting the prayer] they neither allow this prayer to challenge what is most oppressive in the church and larger culture, nor do they begin to make use of it to begin to heal all the oppressed and suffering parts of themselves as individuals." (excerpted from Trinity, Community and Power, 2000; p. 54)

I affirm Barth's point about the importance of assuming a posture of subordination to the scriptures, trusting that God's Light and Life resides in all of them, despite the cultural packaging always present in the writing and interpreting of them. Yet I wonder if he extends that call for us to subordinate ourselves to the Light and Life of God present, albeit obscured and foggy, in all of humanity and creation. We must become truly humble people indeed to take this message to its (to me) logical conclusion. At any rate, I am curious, in light of the above passages, about how Barth's pneumatology (and even eschatology) fits into his whole framework.

Thanks for the good read, Pastor.

[scj]

Friends,

Thanks for the comments on this one. Joel and Lynn, I will follow this piece up shortly to address some of the thoughtful questions you raise. B.J., yeah, I see it as compatible with the Polanyi, Wright, Torrance discussion of critical realism.

best,
scj