Critical Analysis
Barth opens section three with a discussion of God’s speech as imminently experienced in creation by human beings. He gives the term “proclamation” to any speech uttered by God through humanity as his mouthpiece (49). Proclamation is not limited to Scripture, but includes preaching, prayer, praise and potentially any speech uttered by an individual as part of the church.
It is difficult to determine exactly how proclamation relates to Barth’s understanding of the Word of God. Minimally, all true proclamation pronounces the Word of God and even can be said to be God’s Word. However, he argues that God’s Word encompasses more than the current proclamation of the church. Thus, proclamation and God’s Word do not form a finite one to one correspondence. Rather, the eternal Word of God seems to actualize itself in human speech at the decision and behest of God.
Barth also emphasizes the believer’s relationship to proclamation which is one of experience, obedience, and expectation. For example, Barth asserts that proclamation is a sacrament. Thus, members of the church must engage with proclamation or speech uttered is not proclamation at all. This encompasses the experience one has with the Word when one encounters proclamation as well as one’s obedience to its command.
Section four forms the core of Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God. He argues that the single Word of God takes three different forms: preached, written, and revealed. The Word of God preached continues to be human words in the same instant that it is also God’s words. In order to maintain the God-human connection, he calls the Word of God an event. It is within that event that God speaks through man using man’s words and without subsuming man’s will. At times Barth speaks about the event as though human language is adopted by God to become the Word of God like when he states that “human talk… [is] exalted” (92). However, in other places Barth indicates that God uses human speech as His speech, thus rather than an adoptionistic view, he articulates a doubly authored, but God originated, view of the Word of God preached.
Barth also holds the Holy Scripture to be the very Word of God. However, it is God’s Word by the fact that it is a “written proclamation” in a similar vein to spoken proclamation (99). However, the Holy Scripture has a special place with regard to proclamation in that it is for all peoples in all ages. Due to its utterance by prophets and apostles and its recognition by the church as canon, the Holy Scripture is not only the Word of God, but it also holds a magisterial place in the life and governance of the church and its members.
Holy Scripture also differs from spoken proclamation in that spoken proclamation exists as the Word of God in the moment it is spoken; whereas, Holy Scripture is locked in a continual process of becoming the Word of God in the present. This doctrinal assertion does not come from a relativistic perspective but from God’s eternal action in speaking. Scripture is not becoming something new but becoming what it already is. In framing the Word of God as an event, Barth is required to take this stance so that people can continue to experience the Word of God in the present.
The Word of God revealed is Barth’s way of speaking of revelation in terms of the written and preached word. Barth argues that the preached word and the written word are both real, concrete instantiations of the Word of God in historical time; whereas the revealed Word of God, or revelation, is the “the Word of God itself in the act of being spoken in time” (116). At first this may seem like a bifurcation of the Word of God; however, Barth affirms that the revelation of God and the Holy Scripture are in a position of identity with each other. Another point of perceived bifurcation occurs when Barth mentions that the Bible bears witness to the past revelation of God’s Word. However, in this statement he is referring to the two aspects of the Word of God. The written Word of God is a written statement of the divine revelation of God that occurred in a past event. The fact that the Bible is witness to revelation does not impugn its status as the Word of God.
Section five focuses on two aspects of God’s Word: (1) the fact that it is speech, and (2) the fact that it is a divine act. Barth argues that God’s Word is spiritual in nature and thus maintains distinction from physical events and corporality; however, he simultaneously argues that without a physical event, there would be no Word of God. He does not hold that the Word of God is contingent on the existence of creation Instead, he is making the argument that part of the purpose of the Word of God is to elicit certain effects in the realm of creation: “it aims at us and smites us in our existence” (139).
In terms of an act, Barth argues that one cannot encounter the Word of God without encountering God Himself in the process as the two are one. Along these lines, Barth argues for the aseity of both God and the Word of God. Thus, the power and authority of God is also the power and authority of the Word of God. This power is not a derivative power, but the absolute power of God to cause the effects He wills. In this section, Barth also identifies the Word of God with Jesus Christ.
In the sixth section, Barth addresses the difficult question of whether or not and to what degree people can have knowledge of the Word of God. Early on in this section, Barth takes the relationship between God, the Word of God, and mankind as properly basic. It does not need to be held as a presupposition, nor does it need to be proven. From this base, he proceeds to demonstrate that mankind cannot understand or comprehend the Word of God unless the Word of God chooses man to understand it. Thus, he asserts that mankind has been given all the faculties to understand the Word of God but still requires an act of faith to be in possession of the knowledge of the Word of God. Finally, Barth denies any form of Cartesian certainty concerning the knowledge of the Word of God and affirms that Christians can only have partial confirmation that what they know is indeed the Word of God.
Critical Evaluation
There are two paradigms central to Barth’s thoughts on the doctrine of the Word of God: (1) his three-fold form of the Word of God, and (2) the Word of God as event. These two concepts lead him to say seemingly contradictory things throughout his treatise; yet, when the terms he uses are properly exegeted, his position becomes clear. The Word of God is divine, is a divine speech-act, and is instantiated in preaching, writing, and revelation. Though difficult to accept fully, Barth’s doctrine of the Word is brilliant in that it captures the way that God exists as Word, the ways that the Word comes into contact with man, and the way in which the Word effects man.
However, there are a number of points on which Barth could have made his view clearer or provided a greater degree of differentiation. First, Barth comes very close to saying that preaching is on par with Scripture. They are both forms of proclamation and both come with the full authority of God. His argument for the everlasting nature of Scripture is based on the existence of the office of the Prophet and his doctrine of the Canon; however, it is hard to see ontologically how spoken proclamation differs from written proclamation. Yes, one has been accorded everlasting use and the other only momentary use, but in terms of being God’s Word they still seem identical.
Second, Barth’s theology does an excellent job at solving the original language to modern translation issue. He argues indirectly that the original writings are just as much the Word of God as the modern translations in so far as God is speaking through them. However, this raises the problem of practical trust in the Scripture and interpretation issues. If there is a mistake made in translation or if an unintended meaning is communicated to an individual, the written Word seems to cease to be the Word of God to the individual. This does not mean the Word of God has ceased to be the Word of God, but that God has ceased to speak through those human words to that person. What then is a person to do? Barth’s answer is couched in his belief that one can never truly know for certain whether one knows the Word of God. This understanding may leave room for doubt about whether certain actions taken by the church or individuals truly reflect God’s Word, and thus there seems to be at least the potential for a confusion in the church as to how authority is exercised. It would be interesting to see how Barth would recommend handling conflict in the church.
Critical Analysis
In the thirteenth section, Barth attempts to defend Jesus Christ as the objective reality of revelation. He begins by grounding this reality in a trinitarian framework within which God the Father acts as the source of revelation, God the Son is the objective fulfillment and embodiment of the revelation, and God the Spirit subjectively fulfills the revelation in humanity. Barth subsumes all apostolic and prophetic utterance under this paradigm. Pre-incarnation prophecies attest to Jesus’ preexistence whereas apostolic witnesses attest to Jesus’ continued existence post-ascension. Barth then makes a pivotal move by declaring that the pre-incarnate Jesus and the post-ascension Jesus are one in the same with His “once-for-all” existence (12). Thus, the Jesus that existed in the incarnation is the same Jesus that exists now and is contemporaneous with the church. Through his historically connected transcendental view of Jesus, Barth is able to finally argue that Jesus is both fully God and fully man in line with the historical church councils.
In the second part of section thirteen, Barth raises the question of how Jesus Christ could be revelation to mankind. Barth couches his answer in a discussion of God’s veiling and unveiling. He argues due to mankind’s sin, man is blind to the reality of God and God must hide Himself from man. Revelation becomes the key to providing a true communication between God and man in a sinful world. Referring to the trinitarian framework of the previous section, God the Father sends the Word as revelation to be incarnate in human nature so that His revelation can be understood by humans who have human faculties. God the Father also sends the Spirit to overcome the sin and rebellion in man, thereby restoring their ability to receive the revelation of God through their faculties. Thus, God’s hiddenness is overcome by his own work in crossing the creator/creation barrier and in mending the damage done by sin to mankind. Barth ends this section by elucidating man’s part of receiving revelation by simply stating that in order to understand man first must believe.
In section nineteen, Barth simultaneously asserts that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is a witness to divine revelation. Barth’s reason for the Word of God/witness distinction is rooted in his desire to be Christological. The Bible is not an end but a “sign” which points toward a superior authority, God Himself (1). As such, he holds that the Bible does have “normative and critical” authority over church proclamation; thereby creating a hierarchy in his Word of God structure outlined earlier (2). As the highest earthly form of the Word of God, Barth argues that believers can and should take the authority of Scripture without reference to philosophical proofs or argumentation in a fideistic sense. Barth recognizes that ultimately this thinking requires logical circularity but dismisses any attack by stating that it is simply required. He closes his first point by affirming the principle that Scripture must be the authoritative interpreter of Scripture and that in the act of exegesis the author of the text is the determiner of meaning not the exegete.
In the second part of section nineteen, Barth formulates his doctrine of inspiration and infallibility. He uses the incarnation as the primary model; in the same way that the divine Logos is present in the full humanity, so is the Word of God present in the Bible. The presence of the Word of God in the Bible upholds the identity principle in the same way that Jesus is both God and man without mixing natures. Barth holds that inspiration is contained not in the authorship of the Bible but in the continual “repetition” of revelation in the Bible (80). Thus, the Bible is not infallible in its “linguistic, historical, and theological character” (79). Rather, Barth asserts that in spite of its human fallibility, God has used human speech to declare and proclaim infallible revelation.
Section twenty is focused on defending the authority of the Bible. Barth sees the written Word of God as a witness to the divine revelation that came through the incarnation of Christ. Thus, the Bible, as the Word of God, is supremely authoritative for the church. However, he recognizes that there is still a problem of interpretation. To solve the problem of differences of interpretive opinion, Barth looks to the Holy Spirit’s action in the church through Scripture and directly in the lives of those who derive church authority from it. He argues that the Holy Spirit will “confront” the church just as Jesus confronted the apostolic witnesses. Thus, the question of authority is not whether one gets interpretation right or wrong, but whether one obeys Scripture in the revelation confrontation that the Bible itself asserts will happen. This is why Barth later declares that the authority is not in the Bible as text, nor even fully in the human authors; rather, the authority over the church is the voice of God Himself.
This thinking leads Barth to a cutting conclusion and critique of the church. To frame his critique, he argues that what distinguishes Evangelicals from non-Evangelicals is the assertion of the primacy of Scripture in the life of the church. From this point he proceeds to outline a variety of schisms, disagreements, and sectarianisms that people perceive as maintaining the life, truth, and vitality of the church. However, Barth argues that these things are all representative of a denial of the Word of God as authoritative in the church. Rather than being based on the correctness of Biblical interpretation, Barth states that many of these arguments are rooted in personal philosophical differences that at core reflect the broken, divided, and fractured nature of humanity rather than true issues. He ends this section by stating that if the church will live under the Word of God it will live, thrive, and find unity with itself. If it chooses to live outside the Word of God it will ultimately fracture, fight with itself, and die.
Critical Evaluation
Barth deftly deals with any attempt to create a historical Jesus that has authority over the church. His assertion that the documents of the New Testament are neither secularly historical nor systematic in their scope while asserting that they are “proclamation and witness” indicates that the one whom they point to is not up to human interpretation. One can no more whip up an interpretation of a witness than one can change the objective subject who is being witnessed about. This is due to Barth’s understanding of the role of revelation’s continual nature through the power of the Holy Spirit. By maintaining Scripture as the Word of God, he roots interpretation in the Holy Spirit’s interaction with the church and not in secular, philosophical musings.
Barth’s assertion that the authority of Scripture is circular logic and must be held by faith has hints of a variety of different theological possibilities. At times, Barth spoke as though he thinks of Scripture’s authority as being properly basic but lacks the language and the philosophical framework to discuss that concept. Other times, Barth’s theology on the grounding of Scriptural authority shows similarity to modern presuppositionalists who argue along similar lines that all axiomatic statements must be held as such even though they represent circular logic. Ultimately, it seems like he misses the opportunity to ground the acceptance of scriptural authority solidly in God himself or in how God designed human beings to axiomatically operate with the understanding of God’s Word as authoritative.
Finally, Barth’s final critique of the modern church was exceptional. There is ample Scriptural warrant that divisions in the church and church schisms ultimately develop out of a resistance to the Word of God and the gospel, and Barth’s unearthing of that premise is refreshing. It would have been even better to see specific examples of this or for Barth to have given a practical means for the church to come back under the authority of the Word once it has strayed. However, Barth’s comment that once the church leaves the umbrella of the Word it will die is poignant for modern day churches. fffffff
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