Dogmatics in Outline, Ch. 5 – God in the Highest

As we get into the declarations of the Creed, Barth picks up the pace. It’s almost as if he got excited while giving these lectures, and that excitement comes through in the printed version. I really like his proposition for this chapter/lecture:

God is He who according to Holy Scripture exists, lives, acts, makes Himself known to us in the work of His free love, resolved on and consummated in Jesus Christ; He, God alone. 

The heart of what I think Barth is trying to say through this whole chapter is that the God we worship, the God we know and love is the God which is revealed in Jesus Christ and through Holy Scripture. He is not our discovery. We didn’t evolve into this conception of God. We did not uncover him. He revealed himself to us, and this is the only reason we know him or anything about him.

This chapter reminds me of a conversation I watched with Orthodox priest and professor, Fr. John Behr. In this conversation, Fr. Behr says, “More often than not we think about ‘What is God?’ And we normally think of him in superhuman projections.” Yet, this is not the way, as Christians, we should approach God. Our question, for Fr. Behr, is not ‘What is God?’ but, ‘Who is God?’ He says this question is “absolutely central” for the Christian, and this question is answered “simply by the person of Christ.” This revelation of God in Jesus Christ is getting a little ahead of our path through the Creed with Barth, but I think it is pertinent because the person interviewing Fr. Behr questions him with, “By starting with the question, ‘Who is God?’ rather than ‘What is God?’ are you not presupposing the existence of God already and taking us down a path that some people may not be willing to begin to walk?” Fr. Behr’s answer is brilliant and inspiring. He says, “You can’t presuppose the existence of God without specifying which God it is that you presuppose exists. Well, this is the One I confess to be God.”

This is where I think Barth is driving to through this chapter. He is using the proclamation of the angels when they announce the birth of the Messiah to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest,” (Lk. 2:14) as a way to speak about the first article of the Creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty. God is Almighty. He is the highest. He is beyond categories. Quoting Aquinas, he says, “Deus non est in genera,” God is not in a class. God is not one of a species. He is not a member of a group. He, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exists above, higher than, all else. As Fr. Behr reminds us, God is not the sum of all good superhuman projections. He is higher than that.

As humans, we can only conceive of things and persons in categories. We do this naturally and without thinking about it. If God is the Highest, if he is above categories, how are humans supposed to conceive of him? How are we supposed to find him? Simply put, we cannot. Barth, following Kierkegaard, says, “Note well: In the whole Bible of the Old and New Testaments not the slightest attempt is ever made to prove God.” (37) This is crucial to understanding God as he is confessed in the Christian Creed. If God could be proven, he would be like the other gods who have been discovered in human history, he would be one in a genera, in a class. But he is never in these categories, he is unsearchable, his ways are inscrutable (Rom. 11:33). He can only be revealed, and only it is only he who can reveal himself.

This is precisely what Christianity is, the self-revelation of God to human beings. Therefore, “the highness of God consists in His thus descending” (39). Or, as Fr. Behr puts it, Jesus “shows us what it is to be God in the way that he dies.” For Origen, the whole event of kenosis, of God the Son pouring himself out into human flesh that takes will embrace death on a cross, is the revelation of God.

So, the Creed’s proclamations about God, beginning with “I believe in God the Father, Almighty,” is not something we discovered, it is what we confess because it is what has been revealed to us by himself. 

This puts us in a place of humility. This reminds us that we cannot “get to” God, he must come to us. And he has. He has come to us and revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ and through Scripture. The very fact of us being able to confess this God is the “proof” that this God is alive and wants to be known by human beings.

Dogmatics in Outline, Ch. 4 – Faith as Confession

In this chapter, this is when the rubber of faith hits the road of life.

Faith is not a thing to be held in isolation. It is a confession, and a confession is always public, before others, and the Christian confession is particularly bright in the face of opposition or persecution. The open confession of one’s faith brings people of the same faith together and creates “a community, a togetherness, a brotherhood.” (29).This seems very important to Barth, and it’s no wonder, when we consider that he lived and worked through the rise and fall of the Third Reich and all it meant for Germany, western Europe, and Christianity at that time. In some ways it seems that Barth is touching on here one of Bonhoeffer’s greatest concerns, namely, a “costly discipleship” that was not, that could not be hidden away in the secret places of one’s life.

“Faith without this tendency to public life, faith that avoids this difficulty, has become in itself unbelief, wrong belief, superstition. For faith that believes in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit cannot refuse to become public.” (29). For Barth, the public confession of faith included, but was so much more, than what we might normally think of as evangelism. Certainly, we should be telling people about the beauty and majesty of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. But the public confession of faith, for Barth it seems (and I whole-heartedly agree) should be part of everything we do. He says that we need to translate our faith-language (the language of the Creed?) into the “language of the newspaper.” By this, I think he means a few different things, but among them, he means to say that our Christian language needs to be translated into our life practice, even in regards to, maybe especially in regards to, areas of life that seem outside the bounds of faith/religion.

He says in 1933 there were many who were “serious, profound and living Christianity and confession… But unfortunately this faith and confession of the German Church remained embedded in the language of the Church, and did not translate what was being excellently said in the language of the Church into the political attitude demanded at the time; in which it was clear that the Evangelical Church had to say ‘No’ to National Socialism, ‘No’ from its very roots.” (33) Christian language had remained so embedded within the Church that it was unable, or Christians were unwilling to let their confession effect their politics. This is interesting because, at the time, Germany was the place to be for serious Christian scholarship and education. The German Church was a pride for the nation, even amongst those who did not have an active faith or believe in God. It was precisely this pride, this association of being German ad being Christian that prevented them from translating. Because they already thought they were speaking one language, they failed to speak up against the rise of a true evil. Many became complicit out of ignorance, others were complicit because of fear. In either case, the vast majority were unwilling to confess their Christianity in light of the rising power of Hitler and the Nazi party.

This is why faith is, for Barth, a “decision.” (28). The decision is a “Yes” to one thing and necessarily a “No” to another. If a person is going to say “Yes” to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that person must say no to that to which Jesus is opposed. You cannot serve God and… This decision is not a simple act of will, and I’m not sure the typical questions of whether or not a person has free will are in view here. Rather, this is an existential decision. It is a mode of being. It is a leap of faith. It is to make one’s entire life a “Yes” to Jesus, the Gospel, and the kind of life and speech that is fitting of a person who has said “Yes” to Jesus with their mouth.

But in order to make this translation, we must know our own Christian language well. We must let the life of Jesus Christ and his teaching form and transform us. We must not let the language of the world, the language of what is outside the Church, translate itself into Christian terms. The greatest example for this is what happened in Germany with the Reichskirche, the Reich’s Church. Germans had translated the language of nationalism and the Nazi ideal into the language of the Church, and thereby justified their fears, aggression, and injustices.

This takes me back to the first sentence of this chapter: “Christian faith is the decision in which men have the freedom to be publicly responsible for their trust in God’s Word and for their knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ, in the language of the Church, but also in worldly attitudes and above all in their corresponding actions and conduct.” People are made free in faith, truly free. They are free to live the life of the Kingdom. But, since we are still living in this world, we are responsible to bring this freedom to all who would have it. Our life is not our own, and like the life of our Savior, our life is for the Other, not only for God, but for the world. Barth says, “where Christian faith exists, there God’s congregation arises and lives in the world for the world…there the Church gathers on its own behalf, the communion of saints. Yet not for its own purposes, but as the manifestation of the Servant of God, whom God has set there for all men, as the Body of Christ.”

Faith as confession, then, is not just the Church telling people about Jesus, it is the Church living in the world as the Servant of the LORD from Isaiah, broken for the transgression of the world, bruised for the world’s iniquity, and bringing healing to the world by the stripes on the Church’s body. This can be done through proclamation, but it is also done in the way we do our politics, the way we run our businesses, the way we go to school, the way we facilitate our services. Faith as confession, for me, means we truly begin to live the life Jesus called us to in the Sermon on the Mount. It means we kill our own nationalism, in whatever form it takes, we shun the pursuit of money, we turn the other cheek, and embrace prayer, fasting, and giving as a way of life. This is for the world, that the world might be saved through our confession, or testimony, which is to not love our lives unto death.

Dogmatics in Outline, Ch. 3 – Faith as Knowledge

Christianity and Reason have always had a terse relationship. We have not known quite what to do with Reason. On the one hand, we have the beloved Apostle calling the Son of God “Logos” in the beginning of his gospel and the likes of Origen and Clement, both of Alexandria apparently leaning heavily on the philosophical ideas of their time. While on the other hand, there is Paul exhorting the Colossians to, “see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit” (2:8), and Tertullian asking, “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?” For a while it would seem that the Church’s relationship with Reason would settle down in Aquinas’ work and even, at some level, that of the Reformers. But the 20th Century rolled in to the sound of shouts of hallelujah and speaking in tongues, a movement that would often come to embrace an anti-intellectual mode of being, a movement that at this moment is the fastest growing Christian community in the world.

Barth begins this chapter by reminding us that it was the devil, Mephisto, who said, “Despise only reason and science, man’s supremest power of all.” Christianity cannot be anti-rational for the very fact that we have as our Lord and God the Logos-become-flesh, Jesus Christ. There are many ideas and meanings behind the statement, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and God was the Logos” (John 1:1), but they are not less than or other than the basic idea of logos as reason.

This is important because, in order to be meaningful to the world, Christianity must be intelligible. This is not the same as saying that Christianity has to “make sense” at every point. Miracles, even in the ancient world, never “made sense,” even if they were more believable at the time. The very idea of God, uncreated and eternally here, does not make sense (why is there a God instead of nothing at all?) But these do not make Christianity irrational or anti-rational.

Faith is knowledge, then, because faith is itself a kind of knowing. In the first chapter, Barth calls dogmatics a science, because dogmatics (theology) is the study of God and the church. It is knowledge. In order to be knowledge, what dogmatics discusses and proclaims must be knowable. God must be knowable. But this is where science as we normally think of it and faith diverge. The knowledge we acquire by scientific endeavors comes about by our own effort. We come with the question, we develop the means by which to discover the answer to our questions. We interpret the results. This is a powerful truth about humanity, and it is not to be rejected or villainized. But the knowledge of God cannot be “got” by human effort, it can only be a gift from God himself.

Barth says, “Church proclamation is language, and language not of an accidental, arbitrary, chaotic and incomprehensible kind, but language which comes forward with the claim to be true and to uphold itself as the truth against the lie. Do not let us be forced from the clarity of this position. in the Word which the Church has to proclaim the truth is involved, not in a provisional, secondary sense, but in the primary sense of the Word itself–the Logos is involved, and is demonstrated and revealed in the human reason…”

Faith is knowledge precisely because their is a Subject to be known. There are things about the divine Subject, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that can be known, which ought to be known by his people. And there things about the Church who is called and formed by God and the cosmos created by God that can and ought to be known. The Church’s proclamation, the Creed (the Apostle’s for Barth’s book, but I would also add and be more inclined toward the Nicene Creed) is the utterance of the Church’s knowledge of God, and that knowledge is true. True in a deeper sense than the way 1+2=3 is true.

Barth touches on the question of whether revelation is a valid way of knowing in a tangential way. This is something he takes for granted. So much so that he is able to say that “Christian faith is concerned with an illumination of the reason,” without qualifying the statement. There is something about the brashness, the audacity of a statement like this which I appreciate.

For Barth, the reason we can have faith as knowledge is because God has made himself known. God wants to be known. God wants to be experienced. This runs counter to how many people, even many Christians think about God. People tend to think that God wants to remain hidden, that faith is blind, and that any real faith in God must be held regardless of our experience. In the documentary Ja und Nein, Barth talks about revelation and says that, if one only ears that hear, “we could hear him constantly” because he is not dead, but is alive and speaks today. If we had eyes to see, we could see God in “the beauty of spring.” This revelation happens outside the Bible, but it does not replace the Bible, for Scripture is the sure testimony of God revealed in Jesus Christ, in whom “God spoke for himself unambiguously.”

This is the crux of the matter for Barth’s theology as a whole, and I think of Christianity as a whole. Jesus Christ is the Word of God spoken to humanity as a revelation of himself. Everything hinges on and turns on Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Word of God before church proclamation (preaching/teaching) is the Word. Jesus is the Word of God before even the Bible is the Word. The Word written and the Word proclaimed are derivative of the truth, the reality, that the Son of God is the Word of God in himself. “There is no genuine rust, no really tenable, victorious trust in God’s Word which is not founded on His truth (Jesus); and on the other hand no knowledge, no theology, no confessing and no Scripture truth which does not at once possess the stamp of this living truth. The one (knowledge/theology/confession/Scripture) must always be measured and tested and confirmed by the other (Logos/Jesus).”

I’ve grown tired of the phrase, “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship,” because I feel like it has become trite. Yet, the statement is true for Barth. Christianity is not nor cannot be another religion with ambiguous deities and moral codes. Christianity is knowing God by meeting him through faith in Jesus Christ, who is his Word incarnate. If our Christianity is anything other or less than this, than it is not Christianity, it is merely another religion.

The Word of God (Logos/Jesus) is the reason underlying, undergirding, underneath, within, behind, animating all things because it was through Jesus that God created all things. Therefore, when a person believes in Jesus, when a person trusts in Jesus and knows him, that person also finds the ground of their own being and finds the meaning of their own existence. Barth says when we know God through his Son, when we trust God through his Son, there exists within us the “inmost familiarity with the ground and goal of all that happens, of all things.” The peace that passes all understanding, then, comes from the fact that our beginning and ending, our foundation and telos, are in God. We are participating in the very ground of being, and when we are in this relationship with God, we know our telos, our goal and end, our perfection is to be with him where he is and to see his glory. It is to finally know as we are known.

Dogmatics in Outline – Ch. 2, Faith as Trust

In chapter 2 of Dogmatics in Outline, Barth begins to comment on the Apostles’ Creed. What may be surprising to some, but shouldn’t be to anyone familiar with Barth, is that he doesn’t jump immediately into the meat of the Creed, “I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” or even, “I believe in God.” He begins with, “I believe.” It becomes apparent very quickly that this “I believe” is not incidental, it is not merely there as a necessary introductory clause to the Creed. It is as necessary a part of the Creed as any of the creedal statements that follow.

The reason the “I believe,” (Credo – Latin, Πιστεύω/Pistevo – Greek) is such an important part of the Creed is because it is the human’s response to the statements of the Creed. Statements are made to us:

The God who exists is the Father. He is Almighty. He is the Creator of heaven and earth.

Jesus Christ is his only Son, and he is Lord. He was born of a virgin, he was crucified, he died, he was buried, he descended into hell, and he rose again from the dead three days later.

The Holy Spirit is a member of this holy Trinity (admittedly, the theology of the the Holy Spirit in the Apostles’ Creed is very thin, lol).

And to these statements we pronounce, as individuals and as a community, our Credo! our “I believe.” This is similar, I think, to Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 2:19-20, For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. Paul’s move into this statement is strange, to say the least. He’s talking about his desire to go to Corinth and his inability to do so, and is defending himself, apparently, against those who say he is a flake. This is not a biblical study, and so I will not go into all that is happening here. Suffice it to say that Paul moves into a declaration that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he has been proclaimed to the Corinthians, and together, they have given God their “amen,” their “pistevo,” their “credo,” their, “I believe.” But they were only able to utter their amen because Jesus was proclaimed, and because, and here we see Barth’s Reformed background shine through, because God had empowered them to do so.

Barth begins his proposition for this chapter, written at or near the beginning of each chapter in italics, “Christian faith is the gift of the meeting in which men become free to hear the word of grace which God has spoken in Jesus Christ…” This meeting is between God and the human person. He acknowledges that faith is a gift, again setting him thoroughly in the Reformed tradition, yet a fact which any faithful reader of Scripture cannot deny. Yet, before we lump Barth in with other Reformed teachers, his subtlety of thought is immediately apparent: “the subjective form of faith, the fides qua creditur, cannot possibly be quite excluded from proclamation.” He doesn’t call this, at least not explicitly, choice, as it were, but he will not deny the subjective element of our faith.

I find this incredibly refreshing, especially from a modernist theologian. In a time when empiricism was king, he was able to say the subjective element of Christian faith, the experience and emotional response of the human was not merely the necessary equal-reaction to the cause of the gift and proclamation. Even though he clarifies that the reality behind the proclamation, the ground of the proclamation, of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is eternally greater than the human response, the human response is real. Again, he doesn’t call this choice, but maybe for him the Calvinist-Arminian debate was already too old and the terms overused, and therefore superfluous. I must also confess that Barth does not place near the same kind of importance as I would on the subjective nature of our faith.

What the “gift of the meeting” between the human and God creates is freedom.  The idea of freedom is very important in Barth’s work, and it is one of the ideas that first drew me to him. Interestingly, Barth’s discussions of freedom deal mostly with God’s freedom, but here human freedom is in frame. For Barth in general, it is in God’s freedom that the human finds their freedom, and I think that is what is happening here. God is free to give this gift of the revelation of himself, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and when the human receives this gift, they too become free in God’s freedom. Free to respond to this gift, free to receive it, free to utter their “I believe!”

Barth says, ” In Christian faith we are concerned quite decisively with a meeting. ‘I believe in’–so the Confession (Creed) says; and everything depends on this ‘in,’ this eis (Greek), this in (Latin). The Creed explains this this ‘in,’ this object of faith, by which our subjective faith lives.” Barth is stressing the “in” of the Creed in order to say it is not the statements of the Creed in which we believe, but it is God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in whom we believe. We do not believe in dogmas, we express them, we teach them, we study them, we work to get them right, but we do not believe in them. We believe in a Subject, we believe in the divine Person (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we believe in God.

In this and the next two chapters, Barth teases out different ideas inherent in the word “faith” or the phrase “credo.” Here, he talks about faith as trust. When we utter our amen to God, we are saying that we trust him. What he writes about this is beautiful and I cannot deny the temptation to quote him at length:

But this ‘I believe’ is consummated in a meeting with One who is not man, but God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by my believing I see myself completely filled and determined by this object of my faith. And what interests me is not myself with this object of my faith, but He in whom I believe. And then I learn that by thinking of Him and looking to Him, my interests are also best provided for. I believe in, credo in, means that I am not alone. God comes to meet us and as our Lord and Master He comes to our aid. We live and act and suffer, in good and in bad days, in our perversity and in our rightness, in this confrontation with God. I am not alone, but God meets me; one way or other, I am in all circumstances in company with Him. 

This is the heart, I think, more than “faith as knowledge” or “faith as confession” (the names of the following chapters) of what it means to say “I believe.” It is a confession of trust. But the confession comes after the proclamation, the trust comes after the experience of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God gives us this gift of not being alone, but being with him, and in that experience we are enabled to say, “I trust!”

This reality is concretized in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. This reality is made real to us subjectively in the Incarnation. For Barth, and for the Church, “when we say I believe in God, the concrete meaning is I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” The revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, given to us through the Holy Spirit is what makes this Faith believable, “trustable.” It is in Jesus that we see who God is and what he is like. Origen talks about this in detail, but he puts it marvelously in On First Principles 1.2.8, where he says that through the very act of kenosis, of pouring himself out, he becomes the “splendor,” the light of God’s glory, by which we are able to see God. Without this pouring out of himself, which includes Incarnation, life, death, and descent into hell, we cannot know what God is truly like. But since we see that God is is the kind of God that pours himself out unto death, we are enabled to trust him.

Thoughts on Dogmatics in Outline, Ch.1 – The Task

Karl Barth originally published Dogmatics in Outline in, I believe, 1946 or 1947. My English version was published in 1959 by Harper Torchbooks. They are the edited transcripts of a series of lectures he delivered in Bonn, Germany. He confesses he was hesitant to publish them, as they were delivered at “seven a.m.” and the chapters have a conversational feel which I am not used to in Barth.

I am reading through the book now in preparation for a free course on the Dogmatics in Outline hosted by Stanley Hauerwas (one of my favorites) and Will Willimon, with whom I am unfamiliar.

As I was reading the first four chapters in preparation for the first session, I started to think I should write down some thoughts I had on the chapters in order to solidify my understanding of the texts. Then I thought, “I should keep these in my blog,” which I have ignored for several years now. My thoughts will be available to the public, whether for good or ill is yet to be determined. These are not academic thoughts, they are not intended to be rigorous or detailed or worthy of study. These are only me processing through what I am reading. If anyone happens to find and read these, I hope they are helpful, if not enlightening.

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Barth begins by saying that dogmatics is a science, namely, the science of what the Church teaches and proclaims. Therefore, it is the science of doctrine. This all sounds very modern and is fitting for a man such as Barth, who was working and writing through the climax of the modern period. I think Barth is communicating that dogmatics are the study and knowledge of what Christians believe and what they preach. That has been a Christian interest since the Church’s earliest years.

Dogma in the higher church traditions, such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, seems to this post-Evangelical to be fairly rigid. They are the things that must be believed and cannot be altered. I don’t think dogmatics is quite the same in Barth, though I could be wrong. Dogmatics, for Barth, is what the Church has always taught and believed. But even then, that privileges certain ways of believing and teaching. I think it is sufficient to say that, for Barth, dogmatics are foundational beliefs and teachings of the Church. This is not “what the Church has always said,” because what Barth is saying is not what the Church has always said, but rather he is commenting on what the Church has always said. This is the reason why the book is written as a sort of commentary on the Apostle’s Creed.

The first chapter is called “The Task,” and though he is describing the task of dogmatics, this is directly related to what the Church does, which is to preach. I’m using to preach fairly broadly, more so than I think Barth would, and by it I mean the declaration of the church (another Barthian term), which is above all other things the Gospel declaration, “Jesus is Lord.” The Church has been charged with the task of proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the Church is to do that in all that she does and says, in what she is as the Church. This task of proclamation is done by the Church “on earth and in time,” with all the struggles and failings, victories and blessings that attend living life on planet Earth. The proclamation of the Gospel is then, much like the content of Scripture, both a human-word and a divine-word. It is the word of God through human words.

Barth says, “As a science dogmatics takes account of the content of proclamation in the Christian Church. There would be no dogmatics and there would perhaps be no theology at all, unless the Church’s task consisted centrally in the proclamation of the Gospel in witness to the Word spoken by God.” This seems to me to be very important to the understanding of dogmatics, or systematic theology if you like, and why Christians do theology. Barth here asks two questions:

“What as Christians do we really have to say?” and,

“What are we to think and say?”

For many, especially in the traditions I come from (Pentacostal/Charismatic), have felt theology was an overdone task that leads people away from God. It is often felt that (academic) theology is a dead practice that cannot enliven the soul. The sentiment is summed up nicely in the axiom, “It’s not ‘seminary,’ it’s more like ‘cemetery.'” And, often, particularly in the West, this is true. Many young people, because they have not been taught how to think for themselves, find they cannot hold their faith when questions of authorship, dates, or historicity are posed, or when drastically divergent interpretations are presented. At this juncture, many lose heart and adopt a wildly “liberal” theological framework, often wherein the death and (physical) resurrection of Jesus are unimportant in order to keep their fledgling faith, or they opt out of Christianity all together.

But this isn’t a necessary reaction. Neither does this lessen or negate the importance of theological work within the Church. This might even prove why we need to continue the work of theology.

The Christian proclamation, “Jesus is Lord,” might seem like enough, but it cannot be. Simply for the fact that in response to this proclamation, one might say, “So what?”

Jesus is the one through whom God created the universe (in the Greek philosophical sense of the word) and by whom the universe is sustained (see Heb. 1:2-3). The universe, and we ourselves as part of it, exist within Jesus (it would be more accurate to say we exist in the Logos, but that’s a discussion for another day). And since we live in him, the statement that Jesus is Lord has ramifications on all we think, say, and do.

Because the Church is a proclaiming entity, it is imperative that the Church think about what she says. What she says, what she proclaims, what she preaches is derived from Scripture, and, according to Barth, in “guidance of its Confessions,” speaking of the historic Creeds. He continues, “Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation” by nothing other than the “standard of the Holy Scriptures” and guided by the Creeds. The testing must not be against anything else, for when we use anything besides Scripture and the Creeds to guide our testing of doctrine and proclamation, we are bound to go off course. Again, this isn’t to say that the Church never has anything new to say, that we can never have different interpretations of Scripture, or that there is one and only one meaning to the text of Scripture. It does mean, however, we have to resist the pull of compromise, making things easier where they need to remain narrow and making things difficult where they should remain easy and simple.

So, if the task of the Church is proclamation, the task of dogmatics is to make sure we are thinking and proclaiming rightly. Not necessarily correctly, but righteously. By this I mean that what we teach and preach, either to believers or unbelievers, must be right by God. It must represent him well, it must glorify him, it must lift people to God, and it recognizes that the depths and majesty of God and Scripture are so great that six million words in thirteen volumes (like Barth’s Church Dogmatics) can be said about God, his work, and his church, or, as the beloved apostle says, “I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

Inspiration and the Bible

Some things to consider when thinking about inspiration and the Bible.

 

-Nearly all doctrinal statements say something like, “We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God in the original languages.” That’s tricky for two reasons. First, we’re saying that the Bible is inspired/inerrant in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, not English or whatever language into which it is interpreted. Second, we’re saying it was inspired/inerrant when it was first penned by the original writer, not necessarily the manuscripts we’re translating from.

 

-Ancient peoples simply did not think in literal vs. figurative terms, especially in the ancient Middle East. Questions about whether certain passages should be interpreted literally or symbolically would never have entered their minds. For most ancient peoples, especially in the ancient Middle East, events, historical or not, were soaked and dripping with deeper meaning.

 

-The Bible is not a science text, and cannot be read like a science text.

 

-The Bible is not a (modern) historical text, and cannot be read like a history text book.

 

-There are several different literary styles used in the different books of the Bible. If you try to read Genesis like Chronicles, or Chronicles like Romans, or Romans like Hebrews, or Hebrews like Revelation, you will read them wrong.

-Different books of the Bible were written at different times. The best way to figure out how to read a specific book is to familiarize yourself as much as you can with the literary style of the book, the time period in which it was written, and the cultural context in which it was written. (Who were the recipients? What was happening regionally and in the wider world? What year was this written?)

 

-The Bible is a religious text with religious agendas. It’s not trying to tell us how the universe was created, but that Yahweh created it. Not historically how David became king, but that God made him king and that it has spiritual implications. Not the chronology of Jesus’ life, but that he lived and his life had spiritual implications.

 

-Translation is interpretation. Period. Therefore, translations of the Bible are not inspired. Your Bible is not inspired, unless you’re reading an original text.

-Translation as interpretation is a spiritual exercise and is a beautiful process. Even when we’re interpreting from our own languages, it’s beautiful to think about what things could mean, not necessarily what we’ve been told they mean.

 

-OPINION: I don’t think the ink on the page is the word of God. The Spirit breathing into and through the original author is the word of God. The reader communing with the Spirit while they read and interpret is the Word of God.

 

-To read is to interpret.

-Study is not enough. In order to receive life from the Bible, a person must meditate on what they’re reading.

Jesus and the Nazis

 

So much turmoil is coursing through the soul of the nation.

Since the events that took place in Ferguson, MO, I have been at pains to find out what the Church’s response should be. Not only in response to what happened as a result of Michael Brown’s death, but to the explosion of racial tension, acrimony, and indignation. I can say, likely to the displeasure of many, that I have never thought the answer lay solely in the SJW campaigns, though I think activism and civil disobedience are effective and necessary. Regardless, I kept feeling there was something more to be done, specifically, by the Church.

Though I felt discontent with activism, that is certainly an aspect of it. I remember seeing images of Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Church marching and standing with Martin Luther King Jr. Those images moved me when I first saw them, and I knew the Bishop was doing justly (see Micah 6:8). We have known for centuries that God has called his people to act on behalf of the oppressed. I am tempted to dive into this matter more, and it really does need to be addressed, but this post is not the place for me to do that. Suffice it to say, we belong in the protests, and we need to stand against injustice, always.

But, there is more.

As the news of the White Supremacist protest began cluttering my Facebook feed, the familiar gnawing dread turned my stomach. I watched those men march down the street chanting “Blood and soil!” This phrase, a translation of the German, “Blut und bloden,” was used by Nazi leaders as it rose to power in Germany. It signifies the desire for a pure-blooded race of people (Aryan) and their rule (domination) of the land that feeds them. And though it should not be surprising by now that people with these ideologies still exist, I was surprised. My sentiments echoed those of so many, “We fought a damn war over this!”

The next morning, I followed the events as closely as I could, and was horrified when I found out someone had driven their car at 40 miles an hour into the crowd. Later, I saw the pictures of people being tossed into the air by the car. Later, I heard Heather Heyer, though I didn’t know her name at the time, had been killed.

My stomach dropped, and I felt a deep emptiness in my heart. It hasn’t gone away.

I kept asking the Holy Spirit, “What do we do? Where are we supposed to be? Where would Jesus be?” The answer seemed clear enough.

The Church belonged in front of that car.

Jesus came to the earth to bear the sins of humanity. Those sins were laid on him violently, brutally, and lead to his death. His stated purpose was to “set the oppressed free (see Luke 4).” He would confront the authority figures over and over again, condemning the way they oppressed the poor, and the way they treated minority groups. There is no room in his kingdom for this kind of ideology and behavior. And yet, his greatest activism were not found in his polemics against the Pharisees and Romans, it wasn’t even when he cleansed the Temple. His greatest form of activism was in the act of giving himself into the hands of the Pharisees and Romans so they could kill him. 

A phrase has been running through my mind since August 12.

For the life of the world.

Jesus died for the life of the world. Jesus was nailed to a cross for the life of the world. Jesus had twisted branches full of thorns forced onto his head for the life of the world. Jesus was beaten, chunks of flesh literally being torn from his body, for the life of the world. Jesus was punched in the face for the life of the world. Jesus was spit on for the life of the world. Jesus bled in intensity of prayer for the life of the world.

“The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh (John 6:51).”

This is where Jesus has called his Church. This is what he meant when he told James and John they would be baptized with his baptism, and drink his cup. This is what he meant, after his resurrection, when he told Peter, “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. Follow me.” This is what he meant when he told us to turn the other cheek. This is what Paul meant when he said he was filling up in his own body “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions (Colossians 1:24).” He has not called us to retaliation, but to sacrifice, the same sacrifice he gave, his own body. His own self.

The bravery needed to act in this way is far greater than the bravery and strength needed for retaliation and revenge. Who can love like Jesus did? Yet, that is the life which he called us to live. To love like he loved. To lay down our lives for the wicked and the good. To give our flesh for the life of the world.

Where does the Church belong?

We belong in the middle, between the fomenting rage of injustice, taking and absorbing the wrath of humanity. We belong in the crossfire. We belong in front of the car. I’m well aware this doesn’t make sense. How will this fix anything? Maybe it won’t. I don’t think that’s really the point. But Jesus did it, and he reversed Adam’s curse. Maybe, just maybe, if we acted like Jesus, we could reverse the curse of racism in our nation. The prospect is terrifying. I’m terrified. But this calls for the “leap of faith” Kierkegaard urged us to so vociferously. To jump in blind, willing to give everything, knowing that on this side of death we will receive a blessing from God.

Can we tarry with him?

 

 

Walls

Her eyes stared into nothing. At least an hour had gone by as she lay in the bathtub. This moment passing into the next, indistinguishable from the one that came before, or the one into which it flowed. Her consciousness floated on the surface of the water like her long hair. Drifting back and forth. A single candle set light dancing across the walls and water.

She could remember running through the yard, her short legs pounding the ground. Her mom’s laughter and innocent taunts echoed from somewhere in the distance.
Where are you?
She remembered her father walking through the door in the dark. She lay still on the couch, every effort given to imitating sleep. He sighs. Strength wraps around her legs, cradles her head, and she floats to the room washed in pearl light. He whispers her name. Warmth permeates her self from inside. His fingers brush over her head and through her hair. Her eyes whisper open as he leans over to kiss her forehead. The silhouette in the doorway assures her All is well. All is well.

What happened?

A life. The crawling days of childhood ended before she was ready. Adolescence ended with a crash, with bleeding noses and the vanishing friend. In her dreams she tried again and again to reach her before the outside swallowed her, before the sky stole her away and never gave her back.

Misunderstanding and fear and love are volatile mixture. No house is large enough to hold the reaction inside its walls. Is there another choice? Get out onto the other side of these walls. Push. Push. Push. How many arms would she try out for measure before she found the right pair? Would she finally stop looking? Days run now.

What is trust? She had been more naked than she was at that moment, suspended in the water. But when she walked down the street, more naked than she was laying in the water, no one saw her. No one could see her. No one knew what it meant to be naked. The more she shed, the less she was seen. Trust molted. As it fell away, she clothed herself. The less naked she was, the more clothes she wore, the colder she had grown.

The water was cold. It was so nice when it was warm. With consciousness skimming across the water, she couldn’t make herself move. She wanted the water to be warm again.

She wanted to be warm again.

Alone

Tiny pop of lips parting for air
Rush of liquid finding a way from teeth to throat
Beating heart against the bars

A son hiding from a father’s unexpected conflagration
A mother making a room a place to be
A room where passed time means safety from

A room where learned to be alone
A room where Alone learned

Absence is safety
Absence, no one knocking
Absence, a name called from somewhere
Absence, a crippling safety

La Résistance

The election is days away. With each day, my heart grows heavier. Most of my readers and friends have some clue about the ideas I have concerning the Church and the political process. Namely, I feel the Church should pull out of the process, and be something distinct from government entirely. I really need to dedicate a blog to that subject alone, but this can’t be that post. In fact, in this post, I won’t ask anyone to forego voting this cycle. Ultimately, people need to follow their conscience concerning the roles of Church and state, and I can’t impede on that. So, if you feel like voting Clinton, or Trump, or some other third party, please do so with your conscience under the discipleship of Jesus.

Now, to be on with the real subject, political resistance.

Whether or not a person feels they should vote, the problem every Christian needs to acknowledge is the current relationship between the Church and politics is sick, at best. This is not specific to one party. The GOP and Evangelicals have a history together, and this is what most people think of when they talk about an unhealthy relationship between Church and state. But I’m thinking of both (all) parties, especially since more and more young adult Christians are finding their beliefs and convictions line up closely with the Democratic Party. If things continue this way, in a very near future, the way people feel about Evangelicals and the GOP will be the way they feel about Millennial Christians and the Democratic Party.

This shift from Conservatism to “Liberalism” has been fueled by two, probably legitimate, desires in young Christian Americans. The first is a longing for an authentic Christianity that more closely resembles that taught by Jesus in the Gospels, and the example of the early Church. The second is a desire to no longer be bound by lifeless religiosity, conventions that know how to only say “No!” without real connection with the Spirit of Jesus.(This negative Christianity, that can only say “No!” instead of “Yes!” has been the cause of so much Church fall out and the Christian inability to function as normal human beings who can talk about and enjoy things like alcohol and sex, among other things.) An offshoot of the second reason is the desire to be culturally relevant to an America that was not only hostile to the typical expression of Christianity, but unmoved by it.

Each flavor has its particular danger. The Conservative side is in danger of holding legalistic standards over others and over unbelievers (all the while letting themselves getting away with the same sins, and crushed by shame) apart from the experience of communion with Jesus. The Liberal side is in danger of allowing serious compromise into their lives, choosing sinful lifestyles in the name of being culturally relevant and not being religious. This, too, happens apart from communion with Jesus.

Communion is the hinge one which this all swings. The reason, a reason, the Church is at war with itself, at least in the political arena, is because we are choosing sides and participating in this system apart from communion. If we are not first and foremost disciples of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for us to participate in this country as Christians. Republicans and Democrats, yes, but not as Christians, not as witnesses, and therefore, always at the mercy of the current of culture, unable to change the direction it heads. Significantly, both sides want to help change the direction of culture, influencing it in a Gospel way. I ask the question, if there is no actual communion with Jesus, how can we influence the culture with the love of God?

I believe it is time to resist the system at every angle, time for the Church to no longer let its voice be manipulated by the vicious and disgusting politics that happen in this country. If we are honest with ourselves, neither party, no party, speaks with the authority of Jesus Christ because no party is concerned with Jesus and the Gospel. Again, this isn’t a direct call to quit voting or work in the political system, but it is imperative that we change the way we approach the political system specifically, and culture generally. This is where the Sermon on the Mount comes in.

This message which Jesus gave to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, is the guiding principle for the Christian. The beauty of it is, since Jesus moves the commandments from outward actions to internal ways of being, we are given no choice but to wait for the word of God, the voice of the Spirit, in every moment of crucial decision. There are no correct answers, no laws for us to follow, only a voice to hear and obey. That is why the Sermon is resistance against the system, against the culture, and why it will be the way to engage with and transform both. Anyone who knows me, or is familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, will know immediately that his teachings are highly influential in my train of thought, right above the Desert Fathers of the third and fourth centuries. Let’s allow him to say something about the Sermon:

“I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all this hocus-pocus sky-high–like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt-out shells behind. The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this.”

Bonhoeffer thought the Sermon was “the deciding word on this whole affair.” Are you concerned about social justice? Are you offended by the beggar on the street corner? The Sermon speaks, “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. (5:42)” Are you poor? Are you rich? Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, (5:3)” and, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (6:19, 21)” Are you concerned about the moral direction of our country? Do you try to stay away from legalism? Jesus warns, “You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks with lustful intent has already committed adultery in their heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out… (5:27-29)” We could all use Jesus’ warnings about anger, “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… (5:22)” Next time you want to have an outburst of anger toward a Trump supporter, or a Clinton supporter, or any of their followers, remember that one. How can we forget the (in)famous, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, (5:39)” and, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. (5:44, 45)”?

My point is, it’s not just Conservatives or just Liberals who need to start taking the Sermon on the Mount seriously. It’s every Christian. It’s you and I. The Sermon speaks to every disciple, and if anyone would be a disciple of Jesus Christ, they must take the Sermon seriously, or risk discovering they never were a disciple to begin with (see 7:21-23).

This is the way of resistance. In the end, a person can vote for whomever they want, but what truly matters is whether or not they are being Salt and Light. For “if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?“

In the end, Christians of both political persuasions must give up hope in the political system, at least as a means of establishing a good society, whatever that means to each person. Even more importantly,

we have to stop fighting one another over political parties.

We are one Church, and we are called to be witnesses of Jesus Christ in our country by how we act, not by what we say is right, not by legislation, not by what we say isn’t wrong, not by political persuasion, and certainly not by accusing our brothers and sisters to those outside the Church. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.“

We must be the Church before anything else. We must be disciples of Jesus before we are Democrats or Republicans or Moderates. Our allegiances and guiding principles must belong to Scripture and the voice of God above all else. It is the Church’s job to stand over against the government, whatever form it takes, and declare the word of God, and shelter all who flee to her for refuge from the governments. It is our duty to be a preserving agent (salt) in the world, while the state is called to “bear the sword.” (See Romans 12)

There is so much to say. I have so much to say and have thought, wrestled, and prayed about this particular subject for a few years now. The Sermon on the Mount is where I am landing. I have had some radical(?) ideas in the last couple years about proper Christian response, not simply to this election, but to the political system in general, and I feel this Sermon is the sun around which all other ideas have to orbit. So if this is a call, and I hope you read it that way, it is not to vote for anyone person in particular, or to not vote (which is what I am choosing), but to commit to taking the Sermon on the Mount seriously, to commit to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, encouraging our brothers and sisters in the Church in the areas we find easy, and allowing ourselves to be challenged and changed by Jesus’ words in the Sermon, and by those who find those parts easier. We are in this together, whether we like it or not.

Last election cycle, I said that the next would leave Christians in a particularly difficult situation. The details of it worked out a little differently than I thought, but the overall effect is the same. Christians have as options people who care nothing for the Gospel or human dignity. Whichever way a Christian might vote, they are doing so by necessarily making significant compromises to the Gospel and to Jesus. Maybe it’s always been this way, but it seems out in the light this time around. At this point, we can only be blind to that fact by conscious decision. I believed then, and I believe now, that this is God’s way of breaking the unhealthy relationship the Church has with the State, forcing us to realize we have to go about engaging with culture in a different way, and giving us little option but to either continue in compromise until our voice is completely obliterated, or become the Church.