Faith, Freedom and the Spirit by Paul D. Molnar - EXCERPT

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© by Paul D. Molnar

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local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

Previously published material by Paul D. Molnar used with permission:

“Te Role o the Holy Spirit in Knowing the riune God.” In rinitarian Teology Afer Barth , edited by MykHabets and Phillip olliday, oreword by John B. Webster, pp. - . Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, . Usedby permission o Wip and Stock Publishers (www.wip andstock.com).

“Te Perils o Embracing a ‘Historicized Christology.’” Modern Teology , no. ( ): - . Used by permission o John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Blackwell.

“Te obedience o the Son in the theology o Karl Barth and o Tomas F. orrance.” Scottish Journal o Teology , no. ( ): - . Used by permission o Cambridge University Press.

“Can Jesus’ Divinity be Recognized as ‘Denitive, Authentic and Essential’ i it is Grounded in Election? Just how ardid the Later Barth Historicize Christology?”Neue Zeitschrif Für Systematische Teologie UndReligionsphilosophie Band Hef ( ): – . Used by permission o Walter de Gruyter.

Cover design: Cindy KipleInterior design: Beth McGill

ISBN - - - - (print)ISBN - - - - (digital)

Printed in the United States o America

As a member o the Green Press Initiative, InterVarsity Press is committed to protecting the environment

and to the responsible use o natural resources. o learn more, visit greenpressinitiative.org.

Molnar, Paul D., -Faith, reedom, and the Spirit : the economic rinity in Barth,

orrance and contemporary theology / Paul D. Molnar. pages cm

Includes bibliographical re erences and index.ISBN - - - - (pbk. : alk. paper). rinity--History o doctrines— th century. . rinity—History

o doctrines— st century. . Barth, Karl, - . . orrance,Tomas F. (Tomas Forsyth), - . I. itle.

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Contents

Pre ace

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

hinking About God Within Faith:he Role o the Holy Spirit

he Role o the Holy Spirit in

Knowing the riune God Considering God’s Freedom Once Again

Origenism, Election, and ime and Eternity

he Perils o Embracing a “Historicized Christology”

Can Jesus’ Divinity Be Recognized as “De initive, Authenticand Essential” i it is Grounded in Election? Just How

Far did the Later Barth Historicize Christology?

he Obedience o the Son in the heologyo Karl Barth and o homas F. orrance

A heology o Grace: Living In and From the Holy Spirit

Conclusion

Select Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index




Thinking About God Within Faith

Te Role of the Holy Spirit

I n his review o my book Divine Freedom and the Doctrine o the Immanentrinity , John Webster noted that it was “a piece o polemic in the best sense

o the term: critical analysis and clarication with an eye kept rmly on a richand ruit ul set o dogmatic commitments.” As such he suggested that it shouldbe read as “a ground-clearing exercise: part protest, part alarm signal, part dis-mantling o the shaky edice o modern economic trinitarianism.” Tat such a

“ground-clearing” exercise was needed at the time I think will be acknowledgedby anyone who realizes the importance o recognizing that a properly conceiveddoctrine o the rinity cannot simply be the embodiment o our human expe-rience o relationality or o our religious ideas writ large. Any serious under-standing o the doctrine o the rinity must be shaped by who God eternallywas and is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many reviewers saw clearly that whatI had to say about the immanent rinity as the indispensable premise o whattakes place in the economy was based on God’s personal economic sel -communication in his Word and Spirit. Tus it was not arbitrary. Yet, or somestrange reason there were some who claimed that I held that a proper under-standing o the doctrine could not begin with the economic rinity because Iwas critical o those who claimed that one could not begin thinking about the

1John Webster, “Review of Divine Freedom and the Doctrine o the Immanent rinity: In Dialoguewith Karl Barth and Contemporary Teology ,” Journal o Teological Studies , no. (April ):

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immanent rinity rom experience. O course that is not what I said at anypoint in the book. Any such idea would have circumvented revelation at the

outset in an attempt to know God directly instead o mediately through his in-carnate Word and through aith that is enabled by the Holy Spirit. Knowing Godthe Father through his Son and in and by the Spirit means acknowledging thatit is always God, who alone exists sel -sufficiently as the one who loves, whoenables our knowledge o him and our actions as those who live as his witnesseshere and now. What I argued was that a proper theology that begins in aith doesindeed involve our experience o God, but in that experience we know that it is

God and not our experience o God who is the object o aith and o knowledge.Tis chapter will involve a care ul analysis and comparison o the view o me-diated knowledge offered by Karl Barth with the view offered by Karl Rahner.Barth’s view, it will be argued, does justice both to knowledge and experience oGod just because it takes the action o the Spirit seriously and operates explicitlywithin aith all along the line. Rahner’s view, which intends to speak o ourknowledge and experience o God, as does Barth’s, differs rom Barth’s approach

by its apologetic attempt to validate knowledge o aith rom the experience osel -transcendence. By contrasting these views I hope to clari y why deism isunacceptable while thinking within aith is required in order to properly under-stand human and divine interaction, especially when it comes to knowing thatour experience o God really is an experience o God and not just an experienceo ourselves extended to the nth degree.

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Very early in II/ Barth objected to Augustine’s description o a type oknowledge o God in his Con essions that he considered to be problematicbecause it was an attempt to know God by way o “a timeless and non-objective seeing and hearing” (II/ , p. ). While Barth also noted that else-

2See, e.g., the review of Divine Freedom and the Doctrine o the Immanent rinity by Brian M. Doylein Horizons , no. (Fall ): - .

3Barth was not alone in this. Tomas F. orrance also opposed any sort of what he called “non-conceptual” or non-objective knowledge of God, and opposed the thinking of those who did notallow their concepts to be shaped by God himself acting for us in his Word and Spirit. See, e.g.,Paul D. Molnar, Tomas F. orrance: Teologian o the rinity (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, ), pp.- , , etc. Both Barth and orrance followed Hilary and argued that it is reality that deter-

mines meaning and not our words in and of themselves. We will discuss non-conceptual knowl-edge of God in more detail toward the end of this chapter.




hinking About God Within Faith

where in his City o God Augustine himsel advanced the kind o “mediate,objective knowledge” that Barth himsel believed was the only way we could

have knowledge o God through his Word and Spirit, Barth persistently rejected any sort o “non-objective” knowledge o God because any suchknowledge necessarily and always bypasses the place and manner in whichGod reveals himsel to us, namely, his incarnate Word. Any attempt to knowGod that seeks some orm o direct knowledge o God (a knowledge withoutthe mediation o his incarnate Word), in Barth’s view, always would mean theinability to distinguish God rom us; and that would then mean our inability

to speak objectively and truly about God at all. Barth there ore understoodaith to mean “the knowledge o God” (II/ , p. ). But this meant theknowledge o God as an object; knowledge o the truth. Yet, because God isnot an object within a series o other objects, it is impossible to come to anobjective knowledge o God via “a general understanding o man’s consider-ation and conception, but only in particular rom God as its particular object”(II/ , p. ). For Barth, “God is not God i He is considered and conceived as

one in a series o like objects. . . . Faith will have to be denied i we want totake our stand on this presupposition. God, as the object o knowledge, willnot let Himsel be placed as one in a series” (II/ , p. ). For this reason Barthinsisted that he did not teach “this distinction between the knowledge o Godand its object on the ground o a preconceived idea about the transcendenceand supramundanity o God,” and neither did he teach it “in the orm o anaffirmation o our experience o aith”; instead he insisted that he taught itbecause o what he ound “proclaimed and described as aith in HolyScripture” (II/ , p. ). And that aith, according to Barth, “excludes any aitho man in himsel —that is any desire or religious sel -help, any religioussel -satis action, any religious sel -sufficiency” (II/ , p. ) precisely becauseaith in the biblical sense “lives upon the objectivity o God. . . . ake awaythe objectivity o this He [namely, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit] and aithcollapses, even as love, trust and obedience” (II/ , p. ).

I mention this understanding o aith here because, while my rst book onthe rinity was an attempt to explain that unless our God-talk is grounded inGod’s own existence, that is, an existence that God retains even in his closestunion with us, which does indeed take place in revelation (which includesGod’s actions as reconciler and redeemer) and in aith (which involves our




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acknowledgment o God as God and our ellowship [communion] with God),all our talk about God and our relations with God become simply descriptions

o our own religious experiences and agendas instead o descriptions o whoGod is, what God does or us in history and how God enables us to live theli e o aith. Te act that so many theologians thought they could begin theirtheologies not only with some sort o sel -condence in the strength o theirreligious experiences, but that they could even claim that “trinitarian li e isalso our li e” suggested to me that those approaches to God had missed God’sobjectivity precisely because they did not in act begin and end their thinking

in aith by acknowledging God’s objectivity as just described.Because I ollowed Barth to insist that unless God’s actions or us in

history are seen against the background o God in himsel who was andremains eternally triune and could have remained the triune God withoutus, even though in act he chose not to, some readers erroneously concludedthat I had adopted a view o God as independent o us in the sense that Godremained locked up within his own trinitarian relations and thus remained

apart rom us. Any care ul reader o my rst book on the rinity certainlynever could have reached that conclusion. Tose who did reach that con-clusion did so, I suspect, because they had already collapsed the immanentinto the economic rinity by implicitly and explicitly arguing or a “de-pendent” deity, that is, a God whose eternal being was and is in some senseconstituted either by his decision to be in relation with us or by his actuallyrelating with us in history. My rst book was an attempt to show that whena properly ormulated doctrine o the immanent rinity is allowed tounction throughout one’s theology, then one o the things that is necessarilyexcluded as a possibility is the idea that God’s relations with us in historywere or are in any sense necessary to him. In this regard I made a distinctionbetween actual necessities and logical necessities, the ormer re erring tothe act that when God acts toward us in his Word and Spirit, we can thensay that it was necessary or God to be incarnate, or instance, but only in

4See, e.g., Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God or Us: Te rinity and Christian Li e (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, ), p. . Tus, “Te life of God is not something that belongs to Godalone. rinitarian li e is also our li e .” She continues with the logic implied in this remark andconcludes that “Te doctrine of the rinity is not ultimately a teaching about ‘God’ but a teach-ing about God’s li e with us and our li e with each other .” Nothing could be further from the truth,as I showed in my previous work.





the sense that, in light o the act that that is how God has chosen to rec-oncile the world to himsel , we cannot think o God in himsel at all without

thinking o God through his incarnate Son as the reconciler and redeemer.But that does not mean and can never mean that God realizes his Sonshipor any aspect o his eternal triunity by means o suffering or us or by meanso his becoming incarnate and acting or us as the reconciler and redeemer.We will consider some o these ideas once again as the book develops.

T A G W E

All o this is by way o saying that in this sequel to my rst book on therinity, I will still be in dialogue with Karl Barth and contemporary the-ology. But this time, instead o doing a ground-clearing exercise by showinghow and why a doctrine o the immanent rinity is crucial to every aspecto theology, I will attempt to show (without orgetting what was establishedin that book) exactly how one might begin a theology with “man in thepresence o God, his action over against God’s action.” In other words,

instead o beginning with the doctrine o God, I will begin rom the humanside with our human experience o God. But I will attempt to do so in sucha way that what is said derives rom an understanding o God’s actions inrelation to us as the basis on which all human action ourishes and hasmeaning. Karl Barth once said that “ rinitarian thinking compels theology. . . to be completely in earnest about the thought o God in at least twoplaces: rst, at the point where it is a question o God’s action in regard toman, and secondly, at the point where it is a question o man’s action in

5P NC , p. . When asked whether he really believed that he could begin his Church Dogmatics with any doctrine other than the rinity, Barth responded that because Christian truth is a “liv-ing whole” where every point aims toward the center, it must be possible to begin dogmatics withany doctrine, including the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Barth said, “we might even beginwith the Christian man!” ( Karl Barth’s able alk, recorded and ed. John Godsey [Richmond, VA:John Knox, ], p. ). Noting that he had opposed Friedrich Schleiermacher and subjectivismbecause it was necessary at the time, he suggested that at another time theologians might even“begin with Christian subjectivism” (p. ). Barth insisted that theology must be free enough toproceed as Schleiermacher did by “ ending with the rinity” and still be correct. Of course, forBarth freedom meant nding the truth in Christ alone through the power of the Spirit, and tothat extent even his understanding of faith and experience is shaped by his trinitarian under-standing throughout. Here, though I now will begin with our experience of God in the economy,I still argue, with Tomas F. orrance, that any doctrine that is held apart from the doctrine ofthe rinity becomes seriously distorted whenever that happens. See, e.g., Christian Doctrine oGod , p. .




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regard to God” ( P NC , p. ). Tis means that whether theology beginswith God or with the human, it must be aware o the act that God the

Father encounters us in his Word that is spoken to us; and through theSpirit o the Father and the Son, God himsel enables us to hear his Word.Because God encounters us in this way, Barth said, a theology guided bythe rinity “cannot seek to have merely one centre, one subject. . . . o theextent that it sought to resolve itsel into a mere teaching o God’s action inregard to man, into a pure teaching o the Word, it would become meta-physics” (P NC , p. ). Yet, any theology that “sought to resolve itsel into

a teaching o man’s action in regard to God, into a pure teaching o theSpirit . . . would become mysticism” ( P NC , p. ). Either way, we wouldend with a God who is not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit because this Godcannot be known via metaphysics, that is, by exploring being, because the-ology is ocused not on being in general as is metaphysics but on the spe-cic being and action o the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in himsel as theone who loves in reedom and as the one who loves us in his actions or us

and with us in history. Or we might conjure a God who can be known di-rectly and not mediately. Such a God would end up being identical withourselves, such that one might then say “trinitarian li e is also our li e”! Inthis book I will ollow Karl Barth once again and argue that “A pure teachingo the Word will take into account the Holy Spirit as the divine reality inwhich the Word is heard, just as a pure teaching o the Spirit o the Son willtake into account the Word o God as the divine reality in which the Wordis given to us” (P NC , p. ). Beginning in this way does not mean I amabandoning what I said previously about the immanent rinity. What itdoes mean is that a serious theology properly ocused on the Holy Spirit asthe enabling condition o our knowledge o and love o God will alwaysallow or the act that knowledge o and relationship with God meansunion with Christ and thus union with the Father. rinitarian thinking

6Again Barth claimed that “Tere is no reason why the attempt of Christian anthropocentrismshould not be made. . . . Tere is certainly a place for legitimate Christian thinking starting frombelow and moving up, from man who is taken hold of by God to God who takes hold of man.Let us interpret this attempt by the th-century theologians in its best light! Provided that it inno way claims to be exclusive and absolute, one might well understand it as an attempt to for-mulate a theology of the third article of the Apostles’ Creed, the Holy Spirit. . . . Teology is inreality not only the doctrine of God, but the doctrine of God and man. Interpreted in this light,th-century theology would not have forgotten or even suppressed, but rather stressed, the fact





thus will always allow God himsel to be the determining actor in all thatwe think, say and do.

T I H S

As is well known, Barth was critical o Schleiermacher or ocusing too muchon our human relations with God, although he did not condemn him out ohand because he believed that “A genuine, proper theology could be builtup rom such a starting-point” ( P NC , p. ). Tat anthropocentric startingpoint might work, according to Barth, but only with “an honest doctrine o

the Holy Spirit and o aith” ( P NC , p. ). In spite o the dangers, whichwere all too obvious to Barth, and which I tried to point out in my rst bookon the rinity, namely, the danger o reducing God to a description o ourown experiences o ourselves and the danger o con using God with ideasdeveloped on such a basis, I agree with Barth that theology could begin withthe human as long as it is “the pure theology o the Holy Spirit; the teachingo man brought ace to ace with God by God, o man granted grace by grace”

(P NC , p. ). But it is crucial to note that or Barth one cannot have aproper theology o the Holy Spirit without recognizing “the divinity o theLogos”; a theology o the Holy Spirit must be a theology o aith that provesitsel such by the act that “it is the divine Word that orms its true centre”(P NC , p. ). In contrasting Martin Luther’s view o aith with Schleier-macher’s, Barth discloses what would become a persistent theme throughoutthe Church Dogmatics, namely, that true aith arises as a necessity because itis a miraculous creation o the Holy Spirit. Tat does not mean that the Spiritreplaces our human decision o aith; rather it means that our ree humandecision is an act o obedience that is constrained by the hearing o God’sWord spoken to us through the scriptural witness. Tat is why, in contrastto Schleiermacher, Barth could say

He [Luther] neither needed to model the concept o aith to comply with acertain world view, nor did he need rst to work out the indispensable natureo this concept. Te concept o aith, rather, is already posited, both in itscontent and in its range, in and with his conception o the Word. ( P NC , p. )

that man’s relation to God is based on God’s dealings with man, and not conversely” (Karl Barth,Te Humanity o God , trans. Tomas Wieser and John Newton Tomas [Richmond, VA: JohnKnox, ], pp. - ).




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Te difference, in Barth’s view, lay in the act that “the divinity o the Logos is pre-supposed as unequivocally as . . . the divinity o the Holy Spirit”

(P NC , p. ). Without this decisive connection, in Barth’s view, one mustwonder whether it is the Holy Spirit that is in view at all!

Among contemporary theologians, Barth’s student Tomas F. orrance sawand maintained this connection with unparalleled determination by taking hiscue rom Athanasius, who insisted that our understanding o the Spirit mustbe governed by our understanding o the Son who is homoousion with theFather so that the Spirit, who is one in being with both the Father and Son and

who is sent by the Father and by the Son, must never be con used with thehuman spirit. Tat, or orrance, was the crucial error embedded, or instance,in the theologies o Rudol Bultmann and Paul illich. I will not develop or-rance’s important and help ul thinking here because there will be occasions orthat development as the book proceeds. Here I simply note the importance oconnecting the Spirit and the Word in such a way that one could not in truthbe re erring to the Holy Spirit i and to the extent that one’s thought is not

necessarily and rom the outset governed by the Word and by aith.Tis insight led to another. While aith is indeed a human action, as justnoted, most attempts at apologetic theology inevitably try to establish thedivinity o Christ in a way that bypasses the Holy Spirit as the one who aloneenables true aith. As orrance emphasized, and Barth would agree, no onecan say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit. Hence, in his Christology, orranceinsisted that we must begin with the “ act o Christ,” by which he meant thatwe had to begin our thinking by acknowledging his true divinity and his truehumanity as witnessed in the Scriptures. Tere was no way we could buildup to this recognition and knowledge, in his mind, because the only way tograsp it was through the actions o the Word and Spirit, on which we utterlydepend. In other words it had to be revealed to us, and revelation includedthe idea that the Holy Spirit was active here and now enabling our hearing othe Word spoken by and through that Spirit. It is extremely interesting tonote that or Barth, Schleiermacher’s mistake at this point was that “As anapologist he was bound to be interested in understanding revelation notstrictly as revelation, but in such a way that it might also be comprehensible

7Incarnation , p. .





as a mode o human cognition” ( P NC , pp. - ). Tis led him to offer a view o mediation that did not see aith as revelation and thus as “a correlate

to the concept o the Holy Spirit . . . but as a correlate to this human expe-rience [religious consciousness as such]” ( P NC , p. ). And this led himto conceptualize aith and Christ by equating them with experience andhistory so that he turned “the Christian relationship o man with God intoan apparent human possibility” ( P NC , p. ). At this point Barth maintainsthat the Re ormation theologians never took this approach because there wasonly one mediation o God to humanity, and that is the mediation o “the

Father in the Son through the Spirit in the strict irreducible opposition othese ‘persons’ in the Godhead” ( P NC , p. ). Because this mediationsimply cannot be conceptualized “as a mode o human cognition,” Barthinsists that it “is unusable in apologetics” ( P NC , p. ). Tis is an enor-mously important point because i theology is aith in the Word o Godseeking understanding, then any attempt to ormulate a theology o aith thattries to build up to it will automatically subvert the truth, which is that the

possibility o theology is and remains grounded only in God and not in us.In the remainder o this chapter, then, I will spell out just how Barthunderstood aith as a mode o revelation in a way that did not underminebut rather enabled ree human decisions—decisions that became ree be-cause they took place in obedience to the only one who could truly enablehuman beings to act in reedom, namely, Christ himsel . Tere are veryinteresting descriptions o aith by Barth in CD I/ , II/ and especially in IV/ .I think it would help ul to see how Barth’s thinking is shaped by his view othe rinity with a view toward developing the thesis o this book, namely,that a proper understanding o theology starting rom the anthropologicalside can do justice both to divine and human reedom in a positive way aslong as it develops strictly within aith as enabled by the Holy Spirit. Techapter will conclude with a brie comparison o some o the key pointsstressed by Barth with another very different view o aith offered by KarlRahner. Te comparison will set into relie the point o this book: when theHoly Spirit is allowed to unction as the one who both enables aith andunites us to Christ, then we not only come to know God with a denitecertitude, but we come to know ourselves in Christ in positive ways thatwould be closed to us apart rom aith and revelation.




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T H S C F

In a sustained reection on aith in § o CD IV/ Barth begins by noting

that “Te Holy Spirit is the awakening power in which Jesus Christsummons a sin ul man to His community and there ore as a Christian tobelieve in Him” (IV/ , p. ). Te rst, most important point to note inthis context is that Christian aith is not “a act and phenomenon which isgenerally known and which can, as such, be explained to everybody” (IV/ ,p. ). Its possibility and reality simply cannot be explained “in the lighto a general anthropology” precisely because aith as a human action is

what it is by virtue o a divine action, namely, the action o the Holy Spirit.It is, in other words, enabled by a miracle—a special, new act o God thatis not demonstrable by considering a general anthropology but can only beacknowledged and lived. As we shall see, this position is diametrically op-posed to Karl Rahner’s view that “theology itsel implies a philosophicalanthropology which enables this message o grace [the Christian message]to be accepted in a really philosophical and reasonable way.” Barth in-

sisted that while the Christian religion is a “ act and phenomenon” that canbe considered and understood “historically, psychologically, sociologicallyand perhaps even philosophically,” the Christian aith cannot, because

“Christian aith is something concealed in the Christian religion (like thetrue Church in its visibility)” (IV/ , p. ). Tis is a crucial insight becausewhat is meant here is that aith is not grounded at all in itsel and there orecannot in any sense begin with itsel as a human experience per se. Faith

means allowing Jesus Christ, “the Judge who was Himsel judged or us,” toshape our knowledge o God and o ourselves. When that happens we rec-ognize that we are sinners who are opposed to Jesus Christ and in need oreconciliation even in order to know him. Te doctrine o justication

8Te truth that we, as sinners who are justied by faith, actually experience the Word of Godoccurs “in absolute independence of all the criteria of truth that secular or even the religiousman has rst to provide and apply critically before he very kindly resolves to let what is true betrue. . . . Te possibility of knowledge of God’s Word lies in God’s Word and nowhere else. In theabsolute sense its reality can only take place, and it can do so only as a miracle before the eyes ofevery man, secular and religious, Greek and Jew” (I/ , pp. - ). Miracle means that we reallycan know and experience God in faith. But the truth of what occurs in this experience “is notdependent on man,” cannot be reproduced in our experience and cannot be thought of as inher-ing within our experience because it “rests in God’s Word itself ” (I/ , p. ).

9FCF , p. .





there ore shapes one’s understanding o what it means to be human as aChristian within the community o aith. What is it that distinguishes

Christians rom non-Christians?Tis is an important question, given the act that Barth adamantly insists

that “ aith stands or alls with its object” (IV/ , p. ). Tat object o courseis Jesus Christ himsel risen rom the dead and present even now becausehe is “like a circle enclosing all men and every individual man.” Yet, “in thecase o the Christian this circle closes with the act that he believes” (IV/ ,p. ). In other words, Jesus Christ is the reconciler, the one in whom we

have been converted back to God, the one who lives eternal li e or everyoneeven now; he did what he did not just or believers but or unbelievers. Tosewho believe have the advantage o actually being there or the one who isthere or all; one who believes enters into relationship with Christ himsel .Faith, in Barth’s view, there ore is a ree, spontaneous action on the part othose who are compelled to nd their true center outside themselves and inJesus Christ himsel . One can thus see the power o Barth’s statement that

o believe means to believe in Jesus Christ. But this means to keep whollyand utterly to the act that our temporal existence receives and has and againreceives its truth, not rom itsel , but exclusively rom its relationship to whatJesus Christ is and does as our Advocate and Mediator in God Himsel . . . .In aith we abandon . . . our standing upon ourselves . . . or the real standingin which we no longer stand on ourselves . . . but . . . on the ground o thetruth o God. . . . We have to believe; not to believe in ourselves, but in JesusChrist. (II/ , p. )

Tis ree act o aith, however, is “a necessary work” that is “completelybound to its object” so that we are not in any sense in control. We simplynd ourselves, Barth says, “in that orientation” and “accept it” (IV/ , p. ).Tis is a work that can only be described as “renunciation in avour o theliving Lord Jesus Christ.” Nonetheless, it is a genuinely ree human work asan act o responsibility to Jesus Christ himsel . “It is really ours, the possi-bility o the entire creaturely and sin ul man; yet not in such a way thatcontemplating this man one can discover it or read it off somewhere in himor on him. . . . Te possibility given to us in aith is that it arises and consistsabsolutely in the object o real knowledge” (I/ , p. ).




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While Barth thinks o aith as obedience in order to guard against any idea

o a sel -grounded aith or any idea that we might control the subject matterhere, he unequivocally insists that this is a “ ree human act—more genuinelyree than any other” precisely because “It is also the work o Jesus Christ whois its object” (IV/ , p. ). Both o these actors must be held together be-cause, ollowing John : , it is the case that “Te Son makes a man ree tobelieve in Him. Tere ore aith in Him is the act o a right reedom, not al-though but just because it is the work o the Son” (IV/ , p. ). Importantly,

no one can be said to have this reedom “unless the Son makes him ree”because Christians are sin ul just like everyone else. Tere is a gul betweenourselves and aith, even though things did not have to turn out that way.Barth says, “Believing might have been more natural to [us] than breathing,”since we were created to be “the covenant-partner[s] o God and there oreor God” (IV/ , p. ). In this sense the great gul between us and aith issomething that is “contrary to nature” and is created only by our “being in

the act o pride.” No one has ever overcome this, not even the Christian—even the slightest slip toward supposing that we can believe o ourselves would simply continue that pride ul activity. Any sort o “sel - abricatedaith” on whatever basis is in act “the climax o unbelie .” Why does Barthtake such a hard line here? Te answer is simple: it is because it is not amatter o our doing something here or ourselves; rather it is a matter simplyo “ ollowing Him, o repeating His decision” (IV/ , p. ). Te reedom

experienced by Christians who have aith, then, is true reedom not becauseit implies an ability to choose between belie and unbelie , like Hercules atthe crossroads. Tat idea itsel is a great illusion. Any such prospect meansthat one has always already chosen unbelie . Tere is instead, Barth says, a

“necessity o aith.” In what does that consist? o answer this question it isimportant to see that aith does not stand “somewhere in ace o the possi-bility o unbelie (which is not a mere possibility but the solid actuality osin ul man)” (IV/ , p. ). Faith in this sense is no mere possibility vyingor respectability alongside unbelie . No. “Faith makes the solid actuality ounbelie an impossibility. It sweeps it away” (IV/ , p. ). Beyond this, aithactually replaces unbelie . Tat is what takes place “in the necessity o aith.”It is necessary because it is the only possible act that remains or us, that is,





“the genuinely ree act o aith” (IV/ , p. ).Te oundation o aith, then, that is grounded in this necessity consists

in the act that it is a joy ul and unquestioning act that simply “cannot becompared even remotely with the certainty o any other human action”(IV/ , p. ). But the whole point o this discussion is this: the necessity oaith just described cannot be ound within us at all. It cannot be ound inour good nature as God created it or in our sin ul nature that as such has nopossibility o aith. Indeed, “it does not even lie in aith in itsel and as such.It is to be ound rather in the object o aith” (IV/ , p. ).

One is not to seek this capability [o con ormity to God in aith] among thestock o his own possibilities. Te statement about the indwelling o Christthat takes place in aith must not be turned into an anthropological statement.Tere must be no subtraction rom the lostness o natural and sin ul man, aswhom the believer will or the rst time really see himsel . (I/ , p. )

Tis, because this sin ul person that I see mysel to be in aith “is dead inaith, in Christ, according to Romans : ., and I am alive in aith, a miracle

to mysel , another man, and as such capable o things o which I can onlyknow mysel to be absolutely incapable as a natural sin ul man” (I/ , p. ).Tis object, namely, Jesus Christ himsel , “ orces itsel necessarily on manand is in that way the basis o his aith” (IV/ , p. ).

Tis seems a strange way o putting the matter since it appears to suggestthat what takes place in aith is not the supreme act o reedom, but an acto being dominated by another—an act that would, by any human standard,

be considered abhorrent. Tis would be a monstrous misunderstanding othe matter, however. Barth speaks o necessity here because what happenedin the li e o Jesus Christ himsel was “an absolutely superior actuality” inthat our sin and ourselves as sinners have been destroyed in his li e o obe-dience or us, so that our “unbelie , is rejected, destroyed and set aside,” andwe are “born again” as those who are obedient and now have the reedomor aith. It is in that “destroying and renewing o man as it took place in

Jesus Christ” that “there consists the necessity o aith” (IV/ , p. ). WhatBarth is saying is that, objectively, Jesus Christ died and rose rom the deador everyone so that “ontologically there is a necessity o aith or them all”

(IV/ , p. ). Tis means that since Jesus Christ did what he did or all




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people, he is “not simply one alternative or chance which is offered to man,one proposition which is made to him. He is not put there or man’s choice,

à prendre ou à laisser [to take or leave]” (IV/ , p. ). Rather, “Te otheralternative is, in act, swept away in Him” (IV/ , p. ). Tat is what Barthmeans here when he speaks o necessity. Tere is only the possibility oobedience to a act that has been established—a act that is alone the en-abling condition o what it means to be truly human. Tat act is that we arenow ree in Christ to live as God intended us to live, that is, as those whond their truth again and again in Jesus Christ himsel , who is God acting

or us as well as the human mediator living aith ully in our place. Tis iswhat makes unbelie “an objective, real and ontological impossibility andaith an objective, real and ontological necessity or all men and or everyman” (IV/ , p. ).

Barth goes on to indicate that it is the Holy Spirit who is the “awakeningpower” o both this impossibility and this necessity. Con ronted by these, wediscover in aith that our only possibility is to choose that or which we have

been already chosen. While the divine decision is not made in us, it can berepeated in us. It is not made in us because we cannot destroy our old sin ulselves and establish ourselves as new creatures. In this sense believing is “anabsolute necessity” because it is our “most proper and inward necessity”;something that is not strange but “sel -evident.” In act Barth says that aithis the only human action that is sel -evident because it is the only ree choicethere is beside which there is no other choice! Once again, “Te Holy Spiritis the power in which Jesus Christ the Son o God makes a man ree, makeshim genuinely ree or this choice and there ore or aith” (IV/ , p. ). Andwhat is discovered is the act that in Jesus Christ, we come to know that weare at one with God and that by the power o his resurrection we have aithto accept the act that things are objectively the way they are because o him.Even though a person becomes and is a Christian inasmuch as aith “isorientated and based on Him [Jesus Christ] as its object, there takes placein it the constitution o the Christian subject. . . . In this action there beginsand takes place a new and particular being o man” (IV/ , p. ).

Just as sinners are what they do, so those who as sinners who now live anew birth in Christ by aith are what they do when they are “awakened toaith and can live by it” (IV/ , p. ). People awakened to aith by the Holy





Spirit pray the Lord’s Prayer, call on God the Father, recall the apostolicmessage. Tey are drawn rom “both Jews and Gentiles” and become the

body o Christ, their head, and partake o salvation because they are broughtinto peace with God as they have been “reconciled by Him to Himsel inJesus Christ” (IV/ , p. ). Tis has occurred or every person. But Chris-tians are those who “are the rst- ruits and representatives o the humanityand the world to which God has addressed Himsel in Jesus Christ” (IV/ ,p. ). Tey must give glory to the God who has done this, “the glory whichthe others do not give Him, and in so doing to attest to them that which they

do not know although it avails or them” (IV/ , p. ). All o this means thateach individual who has aith lives in community with others in a

royal reedom [which] is the reedom to stand in [the community] as abrother or a sister, to stand with other brothers and sisters in the possessiongranted to it and the service laid upon it. I aith is outside the Church it isoutside the world, and there ore a-Christian. It does not have as its object “theSaviour o all men, and specially o them that believe.” (IV/ , p. )

Does aith merely have a cognitive character or Barth? He has been under-stood this way. But this would be a mistake. Barth really thinks that, whileaith has no creative character, because “It is not their aith ulness whichmakes them this [Christian subjects]” (IV/ , p. ), nonetheless

the event o their aith . . . is more than cognitive in character. . . . It is clearlythe positing o a new being, the occurrence o a new creation, a new birth othese men. In their act these sin ul men conrm that they are the witnesses

o the alteration o the human situation which has taken place in Jesus Christ:not the men who are altered in it— or as such they cannot so ar be seen—butcertainly, and this is the astonishing thing—as those or whom it has hap-pened and not not happened, as the witnesses o it. (IV/ , p. )

People have the characteristic o being witnesses to this alteration o thehuman situation in Jesus Christ. And while their aith does not cause themto be who they are in Christ, still their aith has a “certain creative character”

in that they actually do become Christians in the midst o others and thushave the characteristic o believers. Here is where the emphasis on the HolySpirit is important. Christ himsel , risen rom the dead, has proven himselto be “stronger by the irresistible awakening power o His Holy Spirit” (IV/ ,




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pp. - ). And it is because the Holy Spirit awakens people to aith throughChrist’s active power that itsel is “effected by Him, the event o his aith is

not merely cognitive as a human act but it is also creative in character” (IV/ ,p. ). Tis new being that is effective and revealed—this “new creation”—all “are the mystery o the One in whom he believes and whom he can ac-knowledge and recognise and con ess in aith” (IV/ , p. ). When Christencircles such a person, then that person necessarily does what must bedone in aith. Faith means that I discover mysel as one o those or whom

“ rom all eternity God has thought o . . . acted or . . . and called . . . to

Himsel in Him as His Word” (IV/ , p. ). My resulting activities are thoseo one who lives li e in accordance with this new situation. Te work o theHoly Spirit then consists in the act that in Him we are called to responsi-bility and claimed as those or whom Christ died and rose rom the dead—those whose pride was overcome and who in him live a new li e. Te mysteryand creative act that occurs here is that each person recognizes that grace,salvation and justication all took place just or each o us; that Jesus Christ

is there just or us. “Tat this shines out in a sin ul man is the mystery, thecreative act, in the event o aith” (IV/ , p. ). What, then, is the newcreation? Simply that each o us is compelled to acknowledge that “JesusChrist is, in act, just or me, that I mysel am just the subject or whom Heis. . . . Tat is the newness o being, the new creation, the new birth o theChristian” (IV/ , p. ). Tis does not occur in isolation, because Christdied or all o us. Yet this death or all includes us as individuals as well. Inspite o the danger o existentializing the gospel at this point, one cannotabstract rom the act that all that God in Christ has done or humanity, hehas done just or me. Yet again, this cannot be understood in terms o ageneral anthropology but only as a reality in and rom Jesus Christ himsel .Let me conclude this discussion o aith by illustrating how Barth developshis view o the specic act o aith with the concepts o acknowledgment,recognition and con ession. Tis is important because I will argue throughoutthis book that a proper view o our experience o God can never nd its truemeaning in our experience but only in Christ himsel and thus only in aith,and in that way theologians can do justice both to their experiences o Godin aith and to the act that it is the triune God and not their experience thatis truly known in the process.





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We begin by noting that one might think that recognition should come be ore

acknowledgment. And Barth says that in other cases this may be true; but itis not true in the case o Christian aith. In that case recognition is includedin the acknowledgment but “it can only ollow” because it is an act o “obe-dience and compliance” (IV/ , p. ). Tis is an extremely interesting point.What is meant here is that the knowledge o aith “is not preceded by any otherkind o knowledge, either recognition or con ession” (IV/ , p. ). Obediencecloses the door in a real sense to apologetics because what is known in aith

makes itsel known precisely in such a way that no one and nothing else canclaim our attention in the same way. Tat is why recognition and con ession

“are included in and ollow rom the act that they are originally and properlyan acknowledgment, the ree act o obedience” (IV/ , p. ).

Barth traces his view o obedience not only to John Calvin but to Romans: , where Paul describes the task o the apostolate as obedience. Specically,this aith as acknowledgment “will start with the act that the calling o

sin ul man to aith in Jesus Christ is identical with his calling to the com-munity o Jesus Christ built on the oundation o the apostles and prophets,the community which is his body, the earthly-historical orm o His exis-tence” (IV/ , p. ). Faith, then, will always involve some encounter withthe relative authority and reedom o the Christian community in itspreaching or teaching such that the person who experiences this will becompelled to accept and “submit to its law and desire to associate himsel

with it and join it” (IV/ , p. ). Such a person will not base his or her de-cision on what the community is and does as a “worldly phenomenon.”Wisely, Barth notes that it always was and is the “more than doubt ul Chris-tians who are impressed by the phenomenon o the Church as such and wonby it to submit to it and join it” (IV/ , p. ). A church that tries to impressothers in this sense is also quite problematic, because anyone who comes totrue Christian aith will necessarily encounter Jesus Christ himsel through

10As we will note in chap. , Barth allows for the fact that there is a good apologetics and a badapologetics. Good apologetics will be incidental and implicit because it will be based on thereality and possibility of the knowledge of God grounded in the Word of God, and it will not bebased on our free choices but on God’s choice of us. An apologetics based on our free choicesis a bad apologetics because it is self-grounded instead of being grounded in the enabling powerof the Holy Spirit (pp. - , ).




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the community, that is, in an encounter with the community. Tat meansthat such a person does not submit to the church “but to its law and there ore

to the Lord Jesus Christ Himsel , and that in so doing he will necessarilydesire to associate with it and join it” (IV/ , p. ). Te key here is to realizethat the church does not win people “ or itsel ,” but through its ministryJesus Christ wins people or himsel ; hence acknowledgment means thataith that gives rise to recognition and con ession means acceptance o JesusChrist himsel , the living Lord.

Negatively, this means that aith as acknowledgment cannot mean ac-

ceptance o some doctrine or proposition or report, because it is obedientacceptance o Jesus himsel who “is sovereign” and simply cannot be re-placed by the apostolic witness to him. Tis does not mean that Barth is herereverting to some sort o non-objective knowledge o God. What it meansis that, even though he thinks we cannot come to aith without “the articleso aith” or the statements o the creed, the power and truth o aith comerom the God who meets us in that encounter and empowers that aith. Tat

is why Barth insisted early on thatwhat gives aith its seriousness and power is not that man makes a decision,nor even the way in which he makes it. . . . Faith lives by its object . . . . Teseriousness and power o aith are the seriousness and power o the truth ,which is identical with God Himsel , and which the believer has heard andreceived in the orm o denite truths, in the orm o articles o aith.

Tis acknowledgment does not take place in a vacuum but in accordance

with the witness o the Bible and the creed; but it is acknowledgment o JesusChrist himsel and nothing and no one else. Substitution o the church’switness or o certain statements or Christ at this point would lead either tothe worst kind o alse orthodoxy or perhaps even to a Modernist dogmaticsthat, as Barth once suggested, “hears man answer when no one has calledhim. It hears him speak with himsel ” (I/ , pp. - ). Instead, Barth insiststhat even as a ully human act, aith has its reality only in the direct en-

counter with its object and thus “only as the gif o the Holy Spirit o JesusChrist Himsel , only as the work o obedience which is pledged to Him andthe reedom which is given by Him” (IV/ , p. ). In rejecting “ alse or-

11Karl Barth, Credo (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), p. .





thodoxy” Barth himsel noted that his thinking might appear to be inagreement with both Wilhelm Herrmann and Rudol Bultmann. Yet, he

doubted that or these theologians Jesus Christ alone was the “basis o theact o aith” such that the negation had to be made only on that ground andnot on the ground o some sort o “ethico-anthropological propositions”(IV/ , p. ).

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Having dened aith as a basic act o obedience that consists in “compliant

taking cognisance” (IV/ , p. ), Barth moves on to explain what he meansby recognition. And it is more than a little interesting. Here is where thosewho mistakenly accuse Barth o deism miss something truly indispensable.Following Calvin and Paul, Barth wishes to stress that “All true knowledgeo God ( omnis recta Dei congitio) is born o obedience” in order to show thatas a basic act o aith “this obedience is not an obedience without knowledge,a blind obedience without insight or understanding, an obedience which is

rendered only as an emotion or an act o will” (IV/ , p. ). Tis, becauserecognition is, in Barth’s view, contained already in the acknowledgment asa second thing enclosed within the rst. Tat is why Barth notes that Calvinsharply rejected the scholastic idea o implicit aith , which he equated with

“a readiness to subject reason to the teaching o the Church” (IV/ , p. ).Tis, or Calvin, was a alsehood “which would not merely bury the trueaith but completely destroy it,” because aith is not based on or located inignorance but in knowledge, and in this case it is based in knowledge oGod’s revealed will and thus in the graciousness o the Father and in theatonement made by Christ himsel .

Here is where Barth’s rejection o non-objective knowledge and or-rance’s rejection o non-conceptual knowledge (which amount to the samething) pay dividends. Tere is recognition in the basic act o acknowl-

12For a full and quite interesting discussion of acknowledgment see I/ , pp. - , where Barthpresents nine points aimed at stressing the ideas just discussed by noting that human ratio in-cludes all of our experience (feeling, will and conscience) as well as action, such that our freehuman self-determination is not at all limited or put aside but rather, in obedience to the Word,it is governed by God’s own self-determination to be our God. Obedience suggests that we arein a personal relationship to God and thus we must yield to God who has supremacy. God’sWord bends us but does not break us by bringing us “into conformity with itself ” (I/ , p. ).




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edgment because the living Lord Jesus Christ makes himsel known throughthe biblical witness and the proclamation o the church not as some ormless

reality or insome eatureless way which is at the mercy o every possible conception andinterpretation, but He does so as a genuine object with a very denite ormwhich cannot be exchanged or mistaken or any other orm, which is deter-mined by His own being and His own revelation o His being, which is Hisauthentic orm. (IV/ , p. )

And this occurs only within the sphere o the biblical revelation and thechurch’s proclamation as they present the true knowledge o aith in andthrough their own obedient witness. But what orm does Barth have in mindhere? In a more general or basic sense he is thinking o Calvin’s statementthat God the Father is avorable to us because o the reconciliation accom-plished in Christ. But in a more developed sense he is thinking o Luther’sstatement that he believed that Jesus Christ is his Lord and then ollowedthat with urther statements o the creed, namely, that he was begotten o

the Father, that he was truly human, was born o the virgin Mary, that heredeemed him and reed him rom sin, death and the devil’s power throughhis blood and not with silver or gold, and that he is ree to live righteouslyin his kingdom since Jesus has been raised rom the dead and “lives andreigns to all eternity” (IV/ , p. ).

Nonetheless, Barth contends that Christian aith should be varied be-cause, as the true Son o God who presents himsel to believers, Jesus Christ

is “eternally rich.” Even though Jesus himsel is “single, unitary, consistentand ree rom contradiction” as the one witnessed by Scripture and pro-claimed by the community, his orm is “inexhaustibly rich”; that is whybelievers must see him “in new lights and new aspects” (IV/ , p. ). But itis also important to stress here that the limit o true knowledge o JesusChrist is also ound in the scriptural witness and in the proclamation o thechurch. Respecting this limit is the only way to know whether we have true

knowledge o Jesus Christ. Why is this so? Te answer is simple. It is becauseoutside the scriptural witness and the church’s proclamation “Jesus Christhas no orm or us; He is not an object o our knowledge and He cannot beknown by us” (IV/ , p. ). o this extent, believers whom he has encoun-





tered in this sphere “will not even try to seek Him outside this sphere” (IV/ ,p. ). Tis is a critically important point, especially today when so many

think that they not only can but that they must seek Jesus by identi ying himwith whatever actions o reconciliation one may nd anywhere in the world. Barth is absolutely adamant about this: to seek Jesus outside this spherewould have to mean that “both Jesus Christ and [that person’s] aith woulddissolve into nothingness” (IV/ , p. ).

Tis is where the authority o Scripture and, in subordination to Scripture,the propositions, con essions and dogmas o the church have their place.

Knowledge o aith in this sense means that those who believe in Jesus Christattested in Scripture and proclaimed by the church are associated with acommunity that is in that same school and learns together with that com-munity. What, then, is the ultimate judge or criterion o whether one knowsthe truth or has true aith? It is certainly not the church or any individualwithin it. Rather, it is Jesus Christ himsel who “is the ultimate Judge whothey are that truly recognise Him when they acknowledge Him” (IV/ ,

p. ). Going urther, Barth asserts that we must not be taken in by any sorto “anti-intellectualism” to suppose that “there is not a denite element oknowing” within this sphere o Scripture and the church because “I webelieve, then . . . we know in whom we believe” (IV/ , p. ). While theremay be much that we need to learn, Barth says “we are never complete ig-noramuses, who cannot distinguish and think and speak” (IV/ , p. ). Inthis sense everyone who has aith will have some knowledge and in act

“without an initial knowing there can be no initial aith, or aith takes placeonly in that sphere o Scripture and the community in which Jesus Christhas orm and is an object o knowledge and can be known” (IV/ , pp. -). o that extent every Christian is a theologian, even i only in a very basic

13See, e.g., my discussion of the thinking of Gordon Kaufman in Paul D. Molnar, Incarnation andResurrection: oward a Contemporary Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), pp. -. Instead of salvation referring to a unique action of God in Christ and through his Spirit,

Kaufman redenes salvation in a purely social way to mean “all the activities and processeswithin human affairs which are helping to overcome the violence and disruptions and alien-ations . . . promoting personal and social deterioration and disintegration” (Gordon D. Kaufman, Teology or a Nuclear Age [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, ], p. ). Because for Kaufman,Jesus is only a “paradigmatic exemplication” of various dispositions such as peace, joy and love,all activities of reconciliation and healing at work anywhere in the world should be equated with“the salvic divine spirit—the spirit of Christ—at work in the world” (p. ).




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way since they have true thoughts o Jesus Christ. Still, anyone who wants aJesus “without orm” is not only no theologian, but such a person is not even

a Christian, according to Barth. “For Jesus Christ is not without orm, butin the sphere in which he [the Christian] encounters Him He is both ormand object” (IV/ , p. ).

Moreover, the knowledge o aith, together with the recognition thatollows, is not in any sense “abstract” because while it is theoretical, it is alsopractical, and it involves us in a denite relationship and leads directly toknowledge about ourselves in that we know that we are the ones whom Jesus

Christ has reed rom sin and the devil through his death and resurrection(IV/ , p. ). Here Barth breaks with the traditional order o moving roma more general knowledge o God, aith, dogmatics, the Bible, then pro-ceeding to assent, in the sense that people decided to accept these abstracttruths or themselves, and nally they attained trust ( ducia) in them andgrasped their true meaning. For Barth this procedure is impossible becausewhen aith is tied to Jesus Christ, then there can be no neutrality. Tere can

only be a “decision o obedience” (IV/ , p. ). Abstract knowledge in thiscontext would have to be a knowledge that actually takes place outside aithin Jesus Christ, and in Barth’s eyes this would essentially describe “a theo-logian abstracted rom the act that he is a Christian.” Barth rightly believesthat such an idea “is one which has no substance” (IV/ , p. ). For Barthour knowledge and our recognition can never be neutral but always an “ex-istential knowledge” that involves “knowledge in the active recognition o[one’s] aith” (IV/ , p. ). Going urther, Barth insists that active recog-nition must lead rom knowledge to awareness and thus to “the sel -understanding and sel -apprehension, o the whole man, thus becoming anaction and decision o the whole man” (IV/ , p. ). When we discover thatJesus died or us and rose or us, this leads to a total disruption o our livesthat takes the orm o a ree action “which is characterised as a basic act bythe act that it is . . . the act o [one’s] heart” (IV/ , p. ).

Here Barth notes that we are at a dangerous point because we are talkingabout “penultimate things” and not “ultimate things,” since what has beendescribed is a total disruption or disturbance o our lives but not an absoluteone. Here one speaks o a “radical” but not an “eschatological decision” andindeed o a “ ree act o man, o the human heart, grounded in the act o God,





but not the act o God itsel and as such” (IV/ , p. ). Te danger at thispoint, evident in the younger Luther’s theology and in the theology o Rudol

Bultmann, is the tendency to con use what happened decisively in the li eo Christ or us with some sort o reenactment o that history in us. Teresimply cannot be an identication o what happened in the history o JesusChrist and what he accomplishes in his Holy Spirit when “he makes Himselthe object and origin o aith” (IV/ , p. ) with our ree action o aith.

“What takes place in the recognition o the pro me o Christian aith is notthe redemptive act o God itsel , not the death and resurrection o Jesus

Christ, not the presentation and repetition o His obedience and sacriceand victory” (IV/ , p. ). In this regard Barth claimed that Bultmann’sconception was little more than an

existentialist translation o the sacramentalist teaching o the Roman Church,according to which, at the climax o the mass, with the transubstantiation o theelements—in metaphysical identity with what took place then and there—thereis a “bloodless repetition” o the sacrice o Christ on Golgotha. (IV/ , p. )

With the later Luther, Barth wants to stress that aith means recognizingand apprehending Jesus Christ as the one who died and rose rom the deadin our place without con using aith with Jesus’ dying and rising again, andwithout con using Christ’s own history with what takes place in aith. Tatis why one cannot speak o what takes place in aith as “an absolute distur-bance or an eschatological decision or the redemptive act o God” (IV/ ,p. ). Barth repeatedly insists that Jesus Christ is and must always remain

the “object and origin o Christian aith” (IV/ , p. ). But that means thatany ocus on the saints or on ourselves with the idea that Jesus’ li e historyis repeated or reenacted in such histories is a terrible mistake because italways means that Jesus Christ has ceased to be that object and origin inpractice but not in theory. Tis was the counterquestion that Barth had orHans Urs von Balthasar, whom Barth praised or his christocentrism andor his assessment o the CD while noting that Balthasar complained mildly

about Barth’s “christological constriction.” It is this complaint that sug-gested to Barth that Balthasar had con used Christ and Christians inpractice i not in theory, because such a complaint illustrates a tendency toallow the doctrine o justication to absorb that o sanctication, which is




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then understood as “the pious work o sel -sanctication which man canundertake and accomplish in his own strength” (IV/ , p. ). Hence Barth

opposed not only the younger Luther and Rudol Bultmann but alsoBalthasar and other Catholic theologians who claimed Christ as theircenter but then tended to con use Christ with the lives o the saints andwith their own sanctication. For Barth “Te being and activity o JesusChrist needs no repetition. It is present and active in its own truth andpower” (IV/ , p. ).

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At this point Barth introduces the concept o analogy to explain aith as a reehuman act that really does change our entire human situation. What happensto people when they come to aith is that they have to shape their existencein a manner “parallel to the One who as [their] Lord took [their] place” (IV/ ,p. ). One must con orm onesel to the object o aith, namely, to JesusChrist himsel , whose death and resurrection occurred or that person. Tis

is not the nal thing because at this point the nal thing can only be said oJesus Christ himsel ; it is, Barth says, “the greatest penultimate thing” (IV/ ,p. ). And that means that such a person o aith is “with God” and “on theway to this end” (IV/ , p. ). In aith we are ree to live as Christians “in thelikeness o Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection” (IV/ , p. ). Whatwe discover about ourselves is that we most certainly are not in any sense “akind o second Christ” (IV/ , p. ). Tat would lead us out o aith andknowledge o Christ because he would cease to be another, that is, an objecto aith. We are not the reconciler who became a servant and obeyed theFather and was the Judge judged in our place. “Te glory o God has not beenrevealed in me as in His resurrection. Far rom being a Saviour, I am only aproud man like all other men, and as such I have allen a prey to eternal deathand perdition” (IV/ , p. ). All that I can do is believe in Jesus himsel , whoalone is my savior. And even this is possible only “as He encounters me in thewitness o Scripture and the proclamation o His community, only as Heawakens me to it by the power o His Holy Spirit” (IV/ , p. ). But Barthsays that in this awakening and encounter with Jesus himsel , we can seeourselves, without o course becoming like him, as determined by him and

“stamped by Him” (IV/ , p. ).

Faith, Freedom and the Spirit by Paul D. Molnar - EXCERPT

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Transcript of Faith, Freedom and the Spirit by Paul D. Molnar - EXCERPT