“God’s revelation does indeed take place not behind but in the words of Scripture. But the identification of revelation w/ Scripture is never direct. It is always indirect. No document of history can offer anything more than a witness to primal history.
The ‘witnesses to the resurrection’ still deal with the promise only. As far as ordinary history is concerned, the facts of the gospel story from the virgin birth to the ascension are enshrouded in such mystery as to admit of various interpretations. A true faith will not build its house upon the quick sands of ordinary history.
In all this opposition to the idea of revelation as directly identical with history, Barth is doing, in effect, what Kierkegaard did when he argued that truth is in the Subject.
Barth tells us that a true approach to theology must be existential. But a true existential approach is not possible on the basis of the idea of direct revelation. On the basis of objective or direct revelation, man is not really involved in the question of his relation to God. ‘Where the question is really that pertaining to man, there the subjective is objective.’
Man must meet God, then, not through direct revelation in history but man must meet God by becoming cotemporaneous with God in Urgeschichte.
CVT
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 309
1.) Scripture is not God’s revelation but has the potential of becoming God’s revelation in encounter.
2.) Scripture is a witness to history without being true history (this is Barth’s “Historie.”)
3.) True faith should not and cannot be anchored in the recorded history as penned by the authors of Scripture. The thought here is that if true faith is not anchored in Scripture then when Scripture is proved historically false then faith cannot be affected.
4.) In order for faith to be true faith and to be a genuine faith it must come from within the subject but not as based on an objective outside Historie word.
5.) Man meets God when man projects himself into his own god concept.
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“When Kierkegaard said that truth is subjective he did not intend this in the individualist and solipsist sense of the word. On the contrary, he intended to overcome subjectivism in the bad sense by speaking of God as the true and ultimate subject. Even so, this God as absolute Subject was only the projection of man as the autonomous subject.”
CVT
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 308
And because that last sentence above is true, even though existential “theology” seeks a God that is only the projection of man as the autonomous subject the end result is individualist and solipsist.
If God can’t be known then the “I-Thou” relationship is reduced to “I-I said Loudly” relationship.
____
CVT critiquing Kant again. Remember, modern scholars are trying to tell us that CVT was Kantian. Does a Kantian critique Kant like this?
“The critical philosophies of Kant and of recent dialecticism are indeed open for the idea of the religious. They make room for God. But always they make room for the kind of God who opens up the future for man as a realm of pure possibility. And always the end result is a monism in which man is absorbed into the God which man himself has projected as his ideal. Thus modern man is still going round in circles of his own consciousness writ large. The God of this religious consciousness, as qualitatively different from man, remains man’s hypostatized and personalized ideal. Like a rocket that needs first to be thrown up into the sky in order then to come with light from above, this God of recent dialecticism is an eject of man’s own consciousness.”
CVT
Christianity & Barthianism – p. 306
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The idea of Transcendence in Barth’s early theology was that of pure negation.”
CVT
Christianity & Barthianism
Barth’s “God” was so transcendent he couldn’t be reached. Being that transcendent (unreachable) the effect was to make Barth’s God to be totally immanent as man now was in control of how God would be described since the transcendence of God made God unable to describe Himself.
The Liberalism that Barth had been fighting had reduced God to man. Barth’s answer to Liberalism was to absorb man into God.
The end result was not much different except for style points.
Author: jetbrane
I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling.
I am postmillennial in my eschatology.
Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity
Reformed in my Soteriology
Presuppositional in my apologetics
Familialist in my family theology
Agrarian in my regional community social order belief
Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief
Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic
Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern
Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview
One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics
Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place
Some of my favorite authors,
Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc.
My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture.
Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.
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“Barth’s “God” was so transcendent he couldn’t be reached. Being that transcendent (unreachable) the effect was to make Barth’s God to be totally immanent as man now was in control of how God would be described since the transcendence of God made God unable to describe Himself.”
Apparently this kind of theological trickery was present already in the doctrines of Freemasons, who for their part were heavily influenced by Kabbalah – one might call this mock-devout method “kicking God upstairs,” or so high He cannot influence the things below:
https://freemasonrywatch.org/holly.html#VI
“Because of his transcendent nature, and therefore “un-knowable-ness”, the Supreme Being of the Kaballa needed to make himself comprehensible. Mackey stated:
“It was necessary, therefore, that, to render himself comprehensible, the EN SOPH should make himself active and creative. But he could not become the direct creator; because, being infinite, he is without will, intention, thought, desire or action, all of which are qualities of a finite being only.” (Ibid, p.167)
The roots of secular humanism with its deification of man and its anthropomorphizing of God are seen here as the Kaballist creates a god who is inept.
Anyone familiar with the history of religion begins to recognize who EN SOPH really is. He is a “first cause”, a “prime mover”, the “creative force” in the world. Yet, he is a “first cause” of limited capacity. He is a god who is manageable by man. He is certainly not the caring, compassionate, communing God of David and the Psalms.”