I’ve recently begun reading Barth’s Church Dogmatics and it’s been interesting. I haven’t been posting as frequently just because either I’m not sure exactly what Barth is saying (or the implications of what he’s saying) or because I’m too busy just trying to get through the book (it’s taking me an hour to read about 10 pages!). There’s definitely a lot of things in CD that I appreciate so far. Barth seems to have immense respect for the Reformers even if he may disagree with them (quotes a whole bunch of them: Calvin, Melancthon, Turretin, Gerhard, Chenmitz, Polanus, Wollebius, and so on. . . Luther’s quoted almost every other page!) and he also quotes from Roman Catholic theologians, Eastern Orthodox, the early Church Fathers, and a handful of his own contemporaries (obviously he makes reference to Schleiermacher and von Harnack, but I was surprised and delighted to find him quoting Bavinck). Much of what I’ve read so far seems to resonate with Luther’s theologia crucis–if there’s anything Barth refuses to do, it is to go beyond what God has revealed to see him “in the nude” (as Luther would say).
Anyway, I probably will not be posting as often these next few months, but I’ll be posting quotations here and there of things that are interesting, helpful, odd, or all of the above.
For now, here’s Barth on the concept homoousia:
. . . The concept of homoousia is not an attempt at independent, arbitrary, so-called natural knowledge of God. It seeks to serve the knowledge of God by His revelation in faith. We have not concealed the historical and material ambiguity of this particular concept. Hence we neither can nor would hide the fact that considered in itself it serves the knowledge of God very badly. For philosophers and philosophical theologians it has always been easy game. But it may be that very little depends on its immanent soundness or unsoundness. It may be that even in its obvious frailty it was the necessary standard which necessarily had to be set up in the 4th century and which even to-day, as often before, has still to be kept aloft against the new Arians, not as the standard of a foolhardy speculative intuition of the Church, but as the standard of an unheard-of encounter which has overtaken the Church in Holy Scripture. If this is so, of what avail is anything that might be said against it? Do we not have to be aware of all these objections, and yet still acknowledge it as the dogma which the Church, having once recognized, can never let go again? For in all its folly it is more true than all the wisdom which has voiced its opposition to it. We have no reason to take any other view of it. We are under no illusion as to the fact that we do not know what we are saying when we take this term upon our lips. But still less can we be under any illusion as to the fact that all the lines of our deliberations on the deity of Christ converge at the point where we must assent to the dogma that Jesus Christ is ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, consubstantialis Patri. (CD, I.1 p 440-41)
For those who are interested in Barth a new collection of essays titled Engaging with Barth should be helpful (Michael Horton is one of the contributors). Also, van Genderen and Velema interact a lot with Barth in Concise Reformed Dogmatics from a more confessionally Reformed perspective.
Filed under: Church History, Creeds and Confessions, Karl Barth, Quotes, Reformed Theology , Church D, Church Dogmatics, Homoousia, Karl Barth, Nicene Creed, Theologia Crucis
