Vanhoozer on Van Til and Barth (lots of names)

I should really be studying right now, but I couldn’t resist posting this quote. I have sometimes wondered, after hearing Van Tillian critiques of Barth, whether Van Til really understood Barth. Obviously, I don’t think Van Til completely misunderstood Barth (he probably understood him better than I do), but I do think that there are places, perhaps at the most fundamental level, where Van Til overlooked a few things. Here’s Vanhoozer:

Given Van Til’s well-known presuppositional apologetics, it is highly ironic that a faulty presupposition underlies, and hence undermines, his reading of Barth. Van Til reads Barth as being committed to a critical (i.e. Kantian) philosophy. Van Til seems not to have grasped the possibility that Barth may have had other, more properly theological, reasons for his dialectical approach. It has also been suggested that one reason behind Van Til’s “Barthian animus” is the apparent similarity between Barth’s theology and Reformed orthodoxy. Might it not also be because of a strong point of similarity between Barth and Van Til himsef? Many would place both thinkers together on the spectrum of contemporary theology: both were biblical fideists; both were uncompromising about their respective starting-points; both made the doctrine of the Trinity their key presupposition.
- Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation,” in Sung Wook Chung ed. Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006),  30.

Filed under: Karl Barth, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Cornelius Van Til, Karl Barth, Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Some More Barth. . .

Going through some of Barth’s Church Dogmatics for a research paper, I’m reminded of why I like the Swiss theologian so much:

We can indeed say that God hates sin but does not cease to love the sinner. But it is only as we see God in Jesus Christ that we can really say this. (IV, 1: 406)

Filed under: Karl Barth, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth

Beyond Literalism and Expressivism

In a chapter entitled Beyond Literalism and Expressivism, George Hunsinger describes what he calls Karl Barth’s “Hermeneutical Realism.” This way of understanding theological language avoids the naive univocality of literalism as well as the skeptical equivocality of expressivism, going beyond both, by describing the relation between text and referent as analogical.

This is something that has been on my mind the past few months (mainly because of Childs and Frei). I found the following quotation to be helpful:

Barth’s decision to construe the relation [between text and referent] as analogical rather than univocal or equivocal depended not on general considerations but on his reading of the texts as a modern human being within the community of faith. If one asked about the “semantic force” — that is, about the mode of reference — of the biblical texts, then the referent itself was the decisive factor, Barth reasoned, which ruled out both the “literalist” and the “expressivist” solutions. The “univocal” solution proposed by the literalists was ruled out because it could not do justice to the referent’s abiding mystery. It failed to honor the mysterious divine hiddenness in the midst of the divine revelation. Likewise, the “equivocal” solution proposed by the expressivists was ruled out because it could not do justice to the referent — this time to its self-predication. It failed to honor the perspicuous divine self-unveiling in the midst of the divine hiddenness. The alternative was therefore to construe the mode of reference “analogically.” The reticence of analogy honored the mystery, the predication of analogy the perspicuity, of God’s self-revelation as attested in Scripture.
- George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 221.

Filed under: Hermeneutics, Karl Barth, Quotes , Expressivism, George Hunsinger, Hermeneutic, Karl Barth, Literalism

Done!

Just finished the last page of Barth’s Church Dogmatics!

I’m starting summer Greek soon, so I probably won’t be posting often, but I will try to post more than I have these past three months. Stay tuned!

Filed under: Karl Barth , Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth

Barth on The Church’s Solidarity With the World

Here’s another quote from Barth. Here he talks about the Church’s solidarity with the world  as an implication of her existence for God (which necessarily follows from God’s being for the world):

Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely pious approach the children of the world as such, that those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with the unrighteous as friends, that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good or irreproachable to go down “into hell” in a very secular fashion. (CD, IV.3.2, 774.)

Filed under: Ecclesiology, Karl Barth, Quotes , Ecclesiology, Karl Barth

“All this I did for thee; What wilt thou do for me?”: The Wrong Way to View Sanctification

Here’s an excellent quote from Barth on his section on sanctification. It’s not uncommon to see preachers guilting their congregants into “obedience,” and then wrongly calling the resulting work sanctification. Obedience that does not flow from faith in Jesus Christ (not an abstract ideal which can be replaced, but the concrete  Jesus Christ who is the incarnate Son of God) is neither true nor acceptable obedience before God:

. . . Far too often the matter has been conceived and represented as though His humiliation to death for our justification by Him as our Representative were His own act, but our exaltation to fellowship with God as the corresponding counter-movement, and therefore our sanctification, were left to us, to be accomplished by us. “All this I did for thee; What wilt thou do for me?” The New Testament does not speak this way. It knows nothing of a Jesus who lived and died for the forgiveness of our sins, to free us as it were retrospectively, but who now waits as though with tied arms for us to act in accordance with the freedom achieved for us. It is natural that He should be thought of in this way when it is overlooked and forgotten that He is not only the suffering Son of God but also the victorious and triumphant Son of Man. He is this, too, in our place and favour. (CD, IV. 2 p 516)

Filed under: Karl Barth, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Church Dogmatics, Justification, Karl Barth, Sanctification

Pleading Faith Rather Than Christ

Here’s a nice quote from Barth on man’s sanctification. It’s easy to forget that both sanctification and justification consist in our looking away from ourselves and looking outward to Jesus Christ. As soon as our gaze is taken off of Christ and placed on ourselves we will either end up as ‘pharisaic publicans’ (as Barth likes to put it) or we will end up wallowing in Bunyan’s ’slough of despond’:

As a being and work liberated from the unrighteousness of the old man and filled with the righteousness of the new he [believing man] cannot plead before Him his faith–let alone anything else. And remarkably enough, the more sincere and deep our faith actually is, the less we will find in our faith as in all our other being and activity, the more strange and impossible will be the thought that we can please God with this one work of faith, the more we will try to cling to the fact that we have died as the old man in Jesus Christ, and that we are created and alive as a new man in Jesus Christ, and that we have not to produce our own confirmation of this righteousness before God in our life and being, not our own Christian righteousness, not our own righteousness of faith as a product and achievement and state of our own heart and mind in which we can lay hold of the truth and power of the divine verdict. In faith the Christian will find himself justified because believing in this divine sentence fulfilled and revealed in Jesus Christ he dashes himself against the rock of that work of God which God has willed and done, certainly on behalf of man, but primarily for His own sake, to assert His honour and to maintain His glory against him. (CD, IV. 1 p 97-8)

Filed under: Karl Barth, Quotes , Church Dogmatics, Justification, Karl Barth, Sanctification

Five Books That Have Most Influenced My Reading of the Bible

I got tagged about a week ago by Richard and I just saw it on my dashboard. Here we go (in no particular order):

1. Kingdom Prologue - Meredith Kline
This was the main book that brought me over from dispensationalism and opened up an entirely new way of reading Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Although I’m not entirely settled on everything in KP, the book definitely shifted my entire approach to the Bible. Kline’s framework interpretation of Genesis showed me that there are other ways to inerpret/understand Scripture that are true to Scripture and consistent with science though not at all contingent on the latter.

2. Church Dogmatics - Karl Barth
I’m actually working through the 30 volumes (or 14 depending on which edition you have) right now. I’m almost done with III.4 and so far I’m loving it. There have been very few dull moments reading Barth. While I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, there are many things thatI have gained from my readings. Just to name a few: the fact that he is not content to merely dismiss Schleiermacher, but seriously engages him and takes whatever good things he can is admirable. It’s also interesting to see him interact with Roman Catholic theologians and agree with them on some points, but on other points (e.g., justification) be bold enough to say how wrong they are. His section on the teaching/hearing Church is a must read for every theologian. Finally, the greatest strength (and to many, the greatest weakness) of Barth’s theology is his thoroughgoing Christology. He refuses to keep Christology apart from any aspect of his theology. I feel this makes his theology a lot less arbitrary in certain aspects–which clarifies a lot–but (paradoxically) it seems to make other places in his theology more arbitrary (this may be due to my own theological blindness, though).

3. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative – Hans W. Frei
I absolutely hated this book by the time I was almost finished and it wasn’t until a few months later that I began to realize the impact it had on my thinking (Shane, if you’re reading this: thanks again for recommending it!). Reading this book allowed me to see how much the meaning of the text had shifted from the narrative in the text itself to the world behind the text (i.e., ostensive historical reference). I still don’t know what to think of Frei’s conclusions, but I do think he tracks a very important decline in the priority of the biblical narrative itself. This relates to Kline’s framework interpretation of Genesis–focusing on the ostensive historical reference, though it may at times be important, may end up being a hindrance to understanding what Scripture is actually about.

4. Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments - Brevard S. Childs
This book led to books 2-3 on this list. Andrew Compton blogged about Childs and Phil Sumpter seemed to really like him so I thought I’d give him a try and I ended up being blown away by his stuff. I think a good amount of that being blown away was due to the fact that he was the first “non-conservative” Biblical scholar I’d read, but I think that he presents some really profound and interesting material. His view of the shaping of the canon has helped me to see just how complex the issue itself is as well as helped me, again, to focus on the text itself for its meaning rather than the world behind the text. Another thing about Childs is his desire to let both the OT and NT speak in its respective voice without either separating or confounding the two. Barth’s influence comes out here–Childs keeps the two testaments together by their common subject matter, which is Jesus Christ. Out of excitment I read about five more books by Childs immediately after I’d finished his BT. There are several more sitting on my bookshelf, but those’ll have to wait until I’m done with CD.

5. On Being a Theologian of the Cross – Gerhard O. Forde
This isn’t explicitly related to reading Scripture, but it was for me. Luther’s distinction between a theologia gloriae and a theologia crucis is, I believe, something that  applies to all spheres of theological exercise. One could say that it was Luther’s theologia crucis that opened my fundamentalist ears to even bothering listening to Kline or Barth or any of the other guys listed above. Forde clearly and profoundly expounds Luther’s theologia crucis. I think this is a book every Christian must read (a cliché, I know).

Filed under: Book Recommendations, Karl Barth , Book Tag, Brevard S. Childs, Gehard O. Forde, Hans W. Frei, Karl Barth, Meredith G. Kline

Barth on the Basis of Prayer

In his section on prayer, Barth discusses the real basis of prayer. Before positively establishing it, he discusses those things which are not the real basis of prayer.

First off, neither our recognition of our need nor our need itself teach us to pray. Barth says,

It is not the case that need teaches us to pray. It may also teach us an anxiety that does not pray but curiously competes with a prayer which it naturally thinks rather curious itself. It may also teach defiance, cursing and scoffing. It may also teach us to beg. It may also teach resignation. At best it will teach us to work. Even deprivation of God and desire for Him can obviously lead past prayer to the strangest by-ways of individual and collective self-help. (CD, III.4 p 91)

Secondly, it is also not “awareness of the presence of all blessings and goodness in God, of their origin and emanation from Him” that “will in itself and as such lead  a man to prayer . . .” Rather than being the real basis of prayer, this awareness may very well

lead us to consider that if it rests with God to give us all that we truly lack and desire, and if we may seriously assume that He really can and will do this, and actually does it, then we must obviously suppose that He knows our legitimate needs better than we do, and even before we ourselves discover or state them.

Thirdly, we cannot “maintain that, in childish defiance of all these arguments, the demand for divine help and gifts will necessarily drive man to utterance, to formal and serious petition, and therefore to prayer.” (92)

It may well turn out, and necessarily so in most cases, that in his very awareness of need man is so oppressed by the distinction and contrast between himself and God, between the majesty of God and his own unworthiness, that he hesitates to worry Him with his desires and requests. [. . .] The result of all this is that prayer is hindered , that man has not the heart really to pray, namely, to bring his desire to utterance, even though it may really be there.

Barth sees the problem with these three bases lying in the fact that with them “we simply move round in a circle, and this is not the circle of a rolling but of a stationary wheel which can never roll without outside impetus.” The basis for prayer cannot lie within us or in our own ability to recognize certain things about God or ourselves rather, “its cause must lie outside the circle.” He continues,

The real basis of prayer is man’s freedom before God, the God-given permission to pray which, because it is given by God, becomes a command and order and therefore a necessity. As he is created free before God, man is simply placed under the superior, majestic and clear will of God. He is not, therefore, asked about his power or impotence, worthiness or unworthiness, disposition or indisposition, desire or lack of desire for prayer, but only whether it can be otherwise than that God’s will shall be done by him and in him, and therefore whether he has not to pray irrespective of all possible objections and considerations. What God wills of him is simply that he shall pray to Him, that he shall come to Him with his requests. He wills this just because it is a realisation of the natural relationship between them both, between God and man. This is true as seen from man’s side. As the creature of God he can only come to God and speak with Him as a suppliant, and he is directed to do so. But it is also true as seen from God’s side. For He is the God who lets man come to Him with his requests, and hears and answers them. He is God in the fact that He lets man apply to Him in this way, and wills that this should be the case. . . . (92-93)

Filed under: Karl Barth, Quotes , Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth, Prayer

A Brief Barth Update

For about two months now I’ve been spending six to eight hours a day in Barth’s Church Dogmatics. I’m going to be starting the nineteenth volume (III.4) tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be done with all 30 volumes by the end of July (when I start summer school).

For anyone who plans on reading all of it, I would recommend reading it chronologically. Partly because I’m just anal-retentive, but also because I think that Barth works off the stuff he’s already written (not necessaily explicitly) so it helps to have read it. If anything, read I.1 and I.2 since in those two books he places dogmatics in its proper context (i.e., as serving Church proclamation).

While I don’t agree with (or even understand!) all of what Barth says, I’m definitely enjoying following along with his thoughts and I’m liking certain aspects of his methodology–especially what George Hunsinger calls Barth’s “particularism”.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll update a few more times before July, but until then auf wiedersehen!

Also: I found this site to be particularly helpful before I began trekking through CD.

Filed under: Karl Barth , Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth