Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.
The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §16 states: "According to Holy Scripture God’s revelation occurs in our enlightenment by the Holy Spirit of God to a knowledge of His Word. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is God’s revelation. In the reality of this event consists our freedom to be the children of God and to know and love and praise Him in His revelation."
In subsection §16.1 ("The Hoy Spirit the Subjective Reality of Revelation"), Barth launches out on what he calls the "third and last step in our development of the concept of revelation as the necessary basis of a Church doctrine of the Word of God..." (203). According to Barth, here's what we know so far:
1) First, it is derived from the incarnate Word: "It derives from the Word that became flesh. That the Word was made flesh was not without meaning for the world of flesh. It was not a superfluous occurrence which might have happened anywhere and at any time. The fact of the occurrence has not passed unnoticed by the world and it has not left it unaffected. This was the Word by which all things were created. It was the Word by which God supports all things (214).
2) Second, it means the Church is limited to a life for Christ's sake: "But this life of the children of God is always a life for Christ’s sake. The foundation of the Church is also its law and its limit. We might say that it corresponds to the anhypostasis of Christ’s human nature. By its inmost nature the Church is forbidden to want independence of Jesus Christ, or sovereignty in thought or action. If it did, it would relapse into the unjustified and unsanctified nature from which it is withdrawn in Christ" (216).
3) Third, this life lived and limited for Christ's sake is fundamentally (to use Bonhoeffer's phrase) a life (lived) together: "Seeing then that the life of the children of God is a dependence upon the incarnate Word, it is a common life. Not secondarily, but primarily and radically, it is the life of a community. A Church community or congregation, as distinguished from all mere association, is grounded in the essential being of those who are united within it. But they are what they are from and by the Word. Their existence is none other than that of the Word" (217).
4) Fourth, this implication: "The life of the children of God, and therefore the Church, the subjective reality of revelation, is divine and human, eternal and temporal, and therefore invisible and visible. It is also human, also temporal, also visible. Always in its entire hiddenness in God it is also an historical reality. How can it be otherwise, seeing it has its origin, its ground, its centre in the incarnation of the Word?" (219).
Barth nows turns his attention to the question "What is the Church?" He's already been suggesting it is a locus in quo centered upon Jesus Christ. But the Holy Spirit plays a role in the definition too.
Barth argues that even in its subjective reality, revelation bears signs of its objective reality as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Of these signs, Barth says:
Amen.
From the doctrine of the Trinity we know that to the question, how the state of revealedness is achieved for us men, there can be only one answer. The one true God and Lord Himself, in the “person” of the Holy Spirit, is His own state of revealedness for us (204).But we have questions:
But the imperative question here is this. What is the meaning of revelation as the presence of God Himself, so far as it is not only an event proceeding from God but also an event that reaches man. To what extent, in the occurrence of revelation, are we men free for God, so that He can be revealed to us? To what extent is there in this occurrence a revealed state of God for man, and to that extent a human receptivity for God’s revelation? The object of this question we call “the subjective reality of revelation.” By this is meant no less than the answer prescribed in Holy Scripture, namely, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
At the corresponding point in § 13, I we asked how in the freedom of God it was real that His revelation reached man. Our question now is: In what freedom of man’s is it real that God’s revelation reaches him? (204).Barth suggests that not only does scripture witness to the Word, Jesus Christ, but to a group of people who are recipients of the Word and come to constitute a community together with God:
The fact and form of the coming of God’s Word to man so that man becomes a hearer and doer of it, the fact that Jesus Christ the Son of God acquires many brothers and His eternal Father many children, the fact of the fulfilment of grace: these very facts constitute an integral part of the biblical testimony to revelation and of revelation itself, and that part belongs directly and indispensably to the substance of the record. We can say, not only that “God with us” is a fact, but also, and included in the former statement, that “God with us” is a fact [...] Not God alone, but God and man together constitute the content of the Word of God attested in Scripture (207ff).These recipients, the church, are hearers of the Word who stand at a definite and particular place in history:
By God’s election and calling, by his hearing of the Word, by the witness of the Holy Spirit, this man is distinguished not only invisibly and inwardly, but also and in spite of all that remains invisible and inward in the reality of the revelation which comes to him, very visibly and outwardly. He stands at a definite place in history, which not by accident, but by a most definite necessity, is this particular place and not another. Revelation does not encounter man in any general way, as though it were the eternal definition or eternal meaning of all time, or the general solution of the riddle of temporal occurrence (209-210).The Church is derived, of course, from Jesus Christ:
The place or area in history at which—and at which alone—reception of revelation is achieved, the visible and invisible coherence of those whom God in Christ calls His own and who confess Him in Christ as their God, in other words the Church, has no reality independent of or apart from Jesus Christ (214).That the Church has its origins in Christ has four implications:
1) First, it is derived from the incarnate Word: "It derives from the Word that became flesh. That the Word was made flesh was not without meaning for the world of flesh. It was not a superfluous occurrence which might have happened anywhere and at any time. The fact of the occurrence has not passed unnoticed by the world and it has not left it unaffected. This was the Word by which all things were created. It was the Word by which God supports all things (214).
2) Second, it means the Church is limited to a life for Christ's sake: "But this life of the children of God is always a life for Christ’s sake. The foundation of the Church is also its law and its limit. We might say that it corresponds to the anhypostasis of Christ’s human nature. By its inmost nature the Church is forbidden to want independence of Jesus Christ, or sovereignty in thought or action. If it did, it would relapse into the unjustified and unsanctified nature from which it is withdrawn in Christ" (216).
3) Third, this life lived and limited for Christ's sake is fundamentally (to use Bonhoeffer's phrase) a life (lived) together: "Seeing then that the life of the children of God is a dependence upon the incarnate Word, it is a common life. Not secondarily, but primarily and radically, it is the life of a community. A Church community or congregation, as distinguished from all mere association, is grounded in the essential being of those who are united within it. But they are what they are from and by the Word. Their existence is none other than that of the Word" (217).
4) Fourth, this implication: "The life of the children of God, and therefore the Church, the subjective reality of revelation, is divine and human, eternal and temporal, and therefore invisible and visible. It is also human, also temporal, also visible. Always in its entire hiddenness in God it is also an historical reality. How can it be otherwise, seeing it has its origin, its ground, its centre in the incarnation of the Word?" (219).
Barth nows turns his attention to the question "What is the Church?" He's already been suggesting it is a locus in quo centered upon Jesus Christ. But the Holy Spirit plays a role in the definition too.
In our concrete description of the subjective reality of the revelation of God, we have made a fundamental statement, which we must now make clear to be such, if the description is to possess the character of a genuine recognition of reality. Strictly speaking, the indication of the Church, with which we had to begin, was in the first instance a demarcation of the area of the reality, although we could not speak of the area without at the same time speaking of the reality itself. But what fills this area? What happens in it? What is the Church? We shall have to extend our inquiries much further afield, with an inquisitiveness for definitions of content. The decisive answer and therefore the expression of what is fundamental in the description must certainly be to the effect that it involves the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, i.e., it involves the fact that, after He has become man in Christ for us, God also adopts us, in such a way that He Himself makes us ready to listen to the Word, that He Himself intercedes with us for Himself, that He Himself makes the speaking and hearing of His Word possible among us. Therefore the decisive answer to the question of the existence of the Church must certainly be to indicate the mystery of Pentecost, the gift which men who themselves are not Christ now receive in their entire humanity for Christ’s sake, the gift of existing from Christ’s standpoint for Christ and unto Christ, “the power to become the sons of God” (Jn. 1:12) (221-222).Now Barth turns to the question of how we can speak of the subjective reality of God's revelation having an objective reality too. As Geoffrey Bromiley notes in his Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, "opponents frequently accuse [Barth] of an ultimate subjectivity in which the Holy Spirit is equated with human reception and his objectivity as the self-revealing God is obscured" (28).
Barth argues that even in its subjective reality, revelation bears signs of its objective reality as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Of these signs, Barth says:
It is because these signs have been given, and by way of them, that men may receive direction and promise from the side of the objective reality of revelation, of the incarnation of the Word. The fact that God’s revelation is also a sign-giving is one side, the objective side, as it were, of its subjective reality. We are saying the same thing when we say that this giving of signs is the objective side of the Church as the sphere in which God’s revelation is subjectively real (224).These signs are the sign of election (circumcision), prophecy among the people of Israel (prophecy), the sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper), and the Church (225-227). And these signs are the work of the Word on humanity, by which the Word is apprehended in grace:
Since this sign-giving stands in the closest possible connexion with objective revelation, like that revelation it must be regarded as a divine act. It is the moving of an instrument in the hand of God. God is still the Lord over it and therefore free. In the mystery of His mercy He does not suffer any diminution because He avails Himself of this instrument. Since this sign-giving stands in the closest possible connexion with objective revelation, like that revelation it must be regarded as a divine act. It is the moving of an instrument in the hand of God. God is still the Lord over it and therefore free. In the mystery of His mercy He does not suffer any diminution because He avails Himself of this instrument (227).Barth launches into a four-page small print excursus on the sacraments (228-232). There is some great material here which bears closer attention if one wants a nice overview of sacramental theology. I won't review it all here, but at least share one of my favorites:
To ask whether there are not times when the divine revelation and salvation can be received without the necessity of baptism is a childish question. Neither in salvation nor in revelation can we speak of an absolute and, as it were, automatic necessity for the administration of the sacraments. The possibility has never seriously been discussed in the Church, for to tie us to the divine sign-giving would also be to tie God. But again this does not in any way alter the fact that baptism is once for all enjoined upon us. And, of course, what is involved in the water of baptism and in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper is the establishment and recognition of the sign of the concrete, living, creatively active lordship of God (231).In the final pages of this section, Barth turns his attention from the subjective reality of revelation as mediated objectively by God to the subjective reality of revelation as it is experienced by humanity.
The revelation of God in its subjective reality consists in the existence of men who have been led by God Himself to a certain conviction. They believe that objective reality in revelation exists for them. They believe that it exists for them in such a way that they can no longer understand their own existence by itself, but only in the light of that reality: not apart from it, therefore, but only in relation to it. They cannot, therefore, understand themselves except as the brethren of the Son, as hearers and doers of the Word of God. It will be noted at once that we have taken a leap in thought. We had been speaking of the divine sign-giving by whose mediation revelation, or Jesus Christ, reaches man. We had previously intended to go on to speak of the way in which revelation comes to man. And now we are suddenly speaking of men who are already convinced, who by divine conviction have already discovered that they are brethren of the Son, hearers and doers of the Word of God. Obviously we have not said a single word about the decisive thing, namely, about the way in which it comes about that, when the signs, have been given, a man encounters and receives them as the signs of revelation, and therefore in and with them encounters and receives revelation itself (232).
It is quite true that we have not said a single word about this: we have simply taken a leap at this point. But this was not due either to forgetfulness or embarrassment. For that is exactly what has to take place at this point: it is the positive side of that which has to take place. God’s revelation in its subjective reality is the person and work of the Holy Spirit, i.e., the person and work of God Himself. This does not mean that we cannot say anything about it, that we have to be silent. How can it possibly mean that? In this matter we have to follow Holy Scripture, which testifies that the person and work of God are manifest. Silence about the person and work of God means only that we reject the witness of Holy Scripture, and ultimately that we deny God’s revelation. But we do not deny it. We acknowledge it. Therefore we must be clear that just because the person and work of God are concerned in it, our acknowledgment necessarily means that we start from the fact of it (232-233).How believers come to see themselves in the objective light of the reality of revelation is a mystery, which comports with so much else in Christian faith. Nonetheless, it happens.
It is only by starting at this point, by getting away from revelation and out into this sphere, that we can make definite assertions about revelation, though revelation itself, to the extent that it is identical with the person and the work of God, can never be the object of specific assertions. We see this in the case of Christology. Christology can proceed only from the fact of Jesus Christ. On the basis of that fact, and with a proper awe for the mystery of Christmas, its function is to denote in this world the one specific point in the world: that the Word became flesh. And even as it does this, it can never add the decisive thing, that is, how it all happened, how revelation became objectively real within this world. It is exactly the same with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit by which the objective reality of revelation becomes a subjective reality. We have to respect the mystery of the given-ness of this fact as such, i.e., as the inconceivable and therefore the unspeakable mystery of the person and the work of God (233).
It is only by starting at this point, by getting away from revelation and out into this sphere, that we can make definite assertions about revelation, though revelation itself, to the extent that it is identical with the person and the work of God, can never be the object of specific assertions. We see this in the case of Christology. Christology can proceed only from the fact of Jesus Christ. On the basis of that fact, and with a proper awe for the mystery of Christmas, its function is to denote in this world the one specific point in the world: that the Word became flesh. And even as it does this, it can never add the decisive thing, that is, how it all happened, how revelation became objectively real within this world. It is exactly the same with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit by which the objective reality of revelation becomes a subjective reality. We have to respect the mystery of the given-ness of this fact as such, i.e., as the inconceivable and therefore the unspeakable mystery of the person and the work of God (233).
Subjective revelation can consist only in the fact that objective revelation, the one truth which cannot be added to or bypassed, comes to man and is recognised and acknowledged by man. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit. About that work there is nothing specific that we can say. We can speak about it only by sheer repetition, that is, by repeating what is told us objectively, that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” The work of the Holy Spirit is that our blind eyes are opened and that thankfully and in thankful self-surrender we recognise and acknowledge that it is so: Amen (239).As Bromiley concludes in his Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, "What we can say is that the existence of these people in whom objective revelation is also subjective revelation involves the ministry of the Holy Spirit as impartation: as Christ's ongoing work in adoption, calling, union, and faith."
Amen.
