Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth
My wife is the best wife ever! She got me the entire set of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Christmas!
Posted on December 25, 2010, in Random News and tagged Karl Barth. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
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This is great William! Merry Christmas. We were looking forward to hearing how you liked them. Alicia told us that it was coming.
HAHA, awesome William! Hot off the press too. It’s on my list and you cannot beat the price
Only something lovers of theology would appreciate. I’m officially jealous!
Hello, William. I have a question for you, as I know of few others who have gotten the whole Dogmatics set (and the picture here demonstrates clearly that you have).
Berkhof points out in his Systematic Theology that Barth stresses subjective experience to the point that Scripture, the ultimate objective revelation, cannot be accepted as perfect. Christ is stressed as Word to the exclusion of Scripture being the revelation of God. (p.34)
The problem with this, of course, is that Christ is received not through a self-revelation of God in word but through individual revelation or revelations. It sounds good, “Having no doctrine, only Christ,” but without Scripture man makes of Him different things than what He is revealed to be.
So, my question is: Have you run into this directly, or can you see from separate parts how this can be inferred from Barth’s thinking?
thomasanswered
SDG
Hi,
First, I’d like to correct you (or Berkhof? or both?) and say the Bible is not the ultimate objective revelation of God, Jesus is (Col 1:15-20; Heb 1:1-4). Now to your question, I haven’t gotten that far into Barth, but I’ll let you know when I feel more competent to answer your question, and I remember to come back to this stream of comments in my blog.
Thanks for you comment! Peace!
William, I thank for your reply.
It would be to correct Barth, actually, if he indeed has presented this as such (and the verses you quote would well go toward refuting him, Christ being the express image, the λόγος, the very expression of God, God of God). My concern is that, in making Jesus Christ the ultimate subjective, Barth opposes Scripture as the objective (and this, from him, a fatal conception), the former not seen as God presents Himself but seen as an individual finds Him, the latter something we read, something that may be good, but not the way we know Christ.
Why is this important in Barth? He supposedly stands close to the doctrines of Reformed Christianity, many still considering him as Reformed; however, if indeed the above proves to have been his view, it would obviously be contrary to what the Reformation taught and the Reformed teach.
I quote Berkhof: “Revelation [to Barth] is always something purely subjective, and can never turn into something objective like the written Word of Scripture, and as such become an object of study.” So, according to what I understand of Barth (in a completely second-hand manner, I admit), he believes in existential moments of understanding Christ, which are apart from Scripture.
I suspect, from your comment about Christ being the ultimate objective revelation of God, that you would oppose any suggestion that Christ is what an individual makes of Him and would be on your guard against any such suggestion in Barth’s Dogmatics.
I happily anticipate any future comment, as you make your way through Barth’s writings.
Glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thomas