Word: barth
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What Theology Is. The foundation of Dogmatics is the faith held by the Christian churches: faith in the God who revealed himself through the Scriptures in the person of Jesus Christ. Faith, Barth says, is not an idea about God; it is man's humble, total acceptance of God brought on by God- "the consequences in man of the action of God himself." He flatly rejects all "natural theology," meaning man's systematic efforts to know God through the use of reason alone by speculating on natural mysteries-the "God is in the stars" theory. Barth insists that...
...known through a specific revelation of himself. Therefore Barth does not try to "prove" the existence of God in his Dogmatics; he starts with the reality of the God of revelation...
...Barth, theology cannot be free speculation ; it is correct only when it is obedient to what God says. Hence there can be no theology apart from prayer, and no theology apart from God's revelation. The revelation of God is a continuous act: God still speaks to man through the words preached by his church to those who accept Christ. Since this revelation continues within the body of those who witness to God, there can be no theology apart from the church and what it believes. Barth, of course, is appalled at the divisions of Christendom; yet he thinks...
...Divine Address. Barth accepts and welcomes scholarly criticism of the Bible, even when it shows the Scriptures to be full of errors and inconsistencies. He does not consider the Bible infallible, and he deplores orthodox Protestants who make it into "a paper Pope." Nevertheless, the Bible testifies to God's Word, which is revealed to man through human speech. The words that the Biblical writers use may not always be the appropriate ones, but they must be accepted as words elected by God. There can be, in Barth's view, no question of "disproving" the authority...
...decisive center of the Bible is its witness of Jesus Christ-the Son who became man, and by the humiliation of his death reconciled the sinful created world to the father. For Barth the Word of God came to man in the person of Christ, and Dogmatics is a Christocentric exploration of that word. Since Christ is man's only contact with God, Barth hammers every article of Christian faith into a firm relationship to Christ himself. He defines creation, for example, as the establishment of a place where grace would operate, and argues that God's creation...