On Barth
Last night, I reworked some of this stuff for the blog. I covered the first and second chapters. The Task and Faith as Trust.
I liked what he had to stay about the Task of Dogmatics. Dogmatics is particularly concerned with the proclamation of the Gospel, which is the central task of the Church. It is done in time, ("it is an articulation in accordance with the state of knowledge at different times"), by people who freely participate in the life of the Church. This articulation will never be done perfectly, it is liable to error because it is thinking and articulation done by men. So, I was wondering why we can't dispense with absolute dogmatics in the same way that we have said we will dispense with Truth. Why do we have to appeal to Apostolic Authority? Why not realize that "even dogmatics with the best knowledge and conscience can do no more than question after the better, and never forget that we are succeeded by other, later men; who we hope will think and say better and more profoundly what we were endeavoring to think and to say. We must use our knowledge as it has been given to us today." We won't have the kind of certainty we could have by getting our dogmatics from Apostolic Authority but we will have a better understanding of the contextualized nature of the gospel, because it to was revealed in time. And its interpretation is also historically sensitive.
The difference between dogmatics and Truth might have to do with the Gospel being revealed to the Apostles. But what is said to them is not what is accepted by any Christians as the only stuff necessary to the Gospel. If the apostles got the whole thing then you would think that the early church would have been the ones who had it better then anyone else, because they were closer to the unadulterated gospel. But actually, we have to take what was said and work it out, which is the task of dogmatics. So there isn't a time when we can say, here is where the gospel got revealed in such a way that we don't have to do any work to understand it. Interpretation is taking place from the beginning. So I think that appealing to Apostolic Authority so that you can be sure that you have the full gospel is like saying that you can get absolute Truth.
I like Barth's emphasis on Biblical authority with tradition. I was a bit skeptical of his 'Word of God' talk about the Bible until he clarified. He said that Holy Scripture, as the witness of the prophets and apostles to Jesus, is the word of God because it proclaims Jesus Christ, the Word of God. So the first standard for Dogmatics is the account in the Holy Scriptures. Barth then gives an appropriate place for tradition when he likens tradition's authority to parental authority. It is a non-binding authority which is still taken seriously.
Then he gets into Faith as Trust. And this is where I loose him. I mean this is where I don't agree but I don't totally disagree with some of it either. I guess its like listening to my parents. I understand what they are saying and I see why it makes so much sense to them but I don't agree. Yet I don't adamantly disagree either. I can question their way of thinking but I haven't been able to totally chuck it off. So, Barth is talking about the creed and the phrase 'I believe.' He rejects 'subjective' talk about faith for 'objective' talk which he sees as focusing on the what of belief and not on the subject's experience when he believes. His rhetoric makes the point in an extremely strong way. "whoso should keep his life shall lose it; but whoso gives it up for my sake shall gain his life. Whoso means to rescue and preserve the subjective element shall lose it; but whoso gives it up for the sake of the objective, shall save it." So focusing on the human experience of faith and not on what you have faith in will cause you to loose the faith. Sure, there might be a danger here but I don't think that it has to be a necessary connection. I think that you can do both.
Then he says that 'I believe' is consummated in a meeting with God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is suppose to interest you is not yourself and your faith but the object of your belief. We have no rights to this meeting but through grace we receive it. The meeting is a meeting with the word of grace spoken in Jesus Christ. God coming to us says 'I am gracious to you.' God meets us in Jesus Christ, him who is 'true God and true man for our good.' So that "when we say, I believe in God, the concrete meaning is that I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." This meeting is the freedom to hear God's Word, to hear Jesus. The he gets really Calvinistic and talks on about how it is grace to hear the word and grace all over again if we have ears and eyes to hear it. Then he says that if you have ears and eyes to hear you will have faith in the gospel with such confidence that you can't withdraw from it. People themselves are unfaithful: "the human path is a path from one disloyalty to another..." but because God says that He is with us we are to live in the certainty of that proclamation.
Barth then says that the Gospel is the new law. That Gospel and law are not to be separated. Since we have the Gospel we are not left to our own wayward ideas but we have His commandments. So faith is not an ideal for us but a commandment. It is not a goal but something that we are free to trust. But once we trust it must be exclusively, once for all, in spite of anything else. He says there is of course doubt, but once someone believes there is a change in their character, and anyone who has to deal with unbelief should not take his own unbelief too seriously. So he gets the idea that we are ruined by God and he says there can be doubt, but we should ignore it. Typical.
But wait... he deals briefly with God's absence. Look out there is a long quote coming: "God is hidden from us outside His Word. But He is manifest to us in Jesus Christ. If we look past Him, we must not be surprised if we fail to find God and experience errors and disillusionments, if the world seems dark to us. When we believe, we must believe in spite of God's hiddenness. This hiddenness of God necessarily reminds us of our human limitation. We do not believe out of our personal reason and power. Anyone who really believes knows that. The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts. We would rather not live by grace. Something within us energetically rebels against it. We do not wish to receive grace; at best we prefer to give ourselves grace. This swing to and fro between pride and anxiety is man's life. Faith bursts through them both."