Tag: Revelation

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

“Incarnation of the Word” asserts the presence of God in our world and as a member of this world, as a Man among men.

It is thus God’s revelation to us, and our reconciliation with Him.

That this revelation and reconciliation has already taken place is the content of the Christmas message.

But even in the very act of knowing this reality and listening to the Christmas message, we have to describe the meeting of God and world, of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ — and not only their meeting but their becoming one–as inconceivable.

This reality is not given nor is it accessible elsewhere.

It does not allow us to acknowledge that it is true on the ground of general considerations.

Our experience no less than our thought will rather make constant reference to the remoteness of the world from God and of God from the world, to God’s majesty and to man’s misery.

If in knowledge of the incarnation of the Word, in knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ we are speaking of something really other, if the object of Christology, “very God and very Man,” is objectively real for us, then all that we can arrive at by our experience and our thought is the realization that they are delimited, determined and dominated here by something wholly outside or above us.

Knowledge in this case means acknowledgment.

And the utterance or expression of this knowledge is termed confession.

Only in acknowledgment or confession can we say that Jesus Christ is very God and very Man.

In acknowledgment and confession of the inconceivableness of this reality we describe it as the act of God Himself, of God completely and solely.

If we speak of it in any other way, if we deny its inconceivability, if we think that by our statements we are speaking of something within the competence of our experience and thought which we can encounter and master, we are speaking of something different from the dogma and from the Scripture expounded in the dogma.

We are not understanding or describing revelation as God’s act in the strict and exclusive sense.

We are speaking of something other than God’s revelation.

In the very act of acknowledgment and confession we must always acknowledge and confess together both the distance of the world from God and the distance of God from the world, both the majesty of God and the misery of man.

It is the antithesis between these that turns their unity in Christ into a mystery.

Thus we must ever acknowledge and confess the inconceivability of this unity.

 

from Karl Barth, “The Miracle of Christmas”, Church Dogmatics I.2, page 173

Monday, December 3, 2018

(God’s revelation in its objective reality is the person of Jesus Christ. This revelation becomes the object of our knowledge by its own power and not by ours.)

The act of knowing it is distinctive as one which we actually can achieve, but which we cannot understand, in the sense that we simply do not understand how we can achieve it.

We can understand the possibility of it solely from the side of its object, i.e., we can regard it not as ours, but as one coming to us, imparted to us, gifted to us.

In this bit of knowing we are not the masters but the mastered.

It is when we are in the act of knowing God’s revelation, amid the objective reality of it, in the act of knowing the person of Jesus Christ, that this must be said.

If we do not know this person, if we are unaware of the reality of “very God and very Man,” we will certainly not say this, but confidently ascribe to ourselves the possibility of knowing it.

If we are aware of it and declare that it is true, we will also be aware and will not hesitate to declare, that it can be manifest to us in its truth only by its own agency and not because of any capacity belonging to us; just as a man justified by faith in Christ, and he alone, is aware and confesses that he is a lost sinner, whereas one who has not received forgiveness will definitely regard himself as a man with power to justify himself.

Thus it is in the act of knowing revelation that it will always be and become a mystery to us.

It is indeed the prime mystery, because strictly, logically and properly, it is only of this object, of the person of Jesus Christ, that all this can be said.

That is the outcome of our Christological foundation and it remains for us now to make its content quite explicit and understandable.

 

from Karl Barth, “The Miracle of Christmas”, Church Dogmatics I.2, page 172

First Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2018

God’s revelation in its objective reality is the incarnation of His Word, in that He, the one true eternal God, is at the same time true Man like us.

God’s revelation in its objective reality is the person of Jesus Christ.

In establishing this we have not explained revelation, or made it obvious, or brought it in the series of the other objects of our knowledge.

On the contrary, in establishing this and looking back at it we have described and designated it a mystery, and not only a mystery but the prime mystery.

In other words, it becomes the object of our knowledge; it finds a way of becoming the content of our experience and our thought; it gives itself to be apprehended by our contemplation and our categories.

But it does that beyond the range of what we regard as possible for our contemplation and perception, beyond the confines of our experience and our thought.

It comes to us as a Novum (a new thing) which, when it becomes an object for us, we cannot incorporate in the series of our other objects, cannot compare with them, cannot deduce from their context, cannot regard as analogous with them.

It comes to us as a datum (a piece of information) with no point of connection with any other previous datum.

It becomes the object of our knowledge by its own power and not by ours.

 

from Karl Barth, “The Miracle of Christmas”, Church Dogmatics I.2, page 172