Barth on Truth

"Truth permits no one to use it as a plaything; and it puts an end to all tragedy. Truth is far too merry and noble for us ever to justify our present life and address the present moment: 'Remain with me! thou art so fair!' Truth is far too grim and terrible for us ever to desire to wrest it to ourselves, for example, by despairing and putting an end to our life." - Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans(Oxford: 1968), 287.

(Barth is commenting on Romans 8:11 and, in context, is referring to the Spirit who "is the Truth", but it reminds me of Ben Myer's recent post on "Writing and truth-telling."

Barth on Grace and Disturbance of Soul

"Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God....grace means bearing witness to the faithfulness of God which a man has encountered in Christ, and which, when it is encountered and recognized, requires a corresponding fidelity towards God" (31).

"He who is under grace can no more adjust himself comfortably to sin than the sinner can toy with grace as with an alternative human possibility" (217).

"To the man under grace, righteousness is not a possibility, but a necessity; not a disposition subject to change, but the inexorable meaning of life; not a condition possessing varying degrees of healthiness, but the condition by which existence is itself determined; not that which he possesses, but that which possesses him" (220).

"If we are able to endure life apart from this possibility [of obedience]; if we are content with something less; if we trim and adjust grace so that it dovetails in with other possibilities;--grace is not grace. If we are able to escape from that naturally Christian--Medieval!--disturbance of soul; if all that is in us does not stretch out towards a sanctified life prepared for and open to the righteousness of God; if we do not long for a life running so nigh to the righteousness of God that it would break visibly through in our members, in our mortal body;--grace is not grace" (223).

Quotations from Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans(Oxford: 1968).

Paulinism on the brink of heresy

Here is some more good stuff from the introduction to Barth's commentary on Romans. Barth is talking about reading carefully, but I think he is also illustrating what it means to stand under the authority of Scripture--not deciding what we moderns can take or leave, but wrestling especially with the parts that moderns (and post-moderns) find disturbing.

"Paulinism has stood always on the brink of heresy. This being so, it is strange how utterly harmless and unexceptionable most commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans and most books about Paul are. Why should this be so? Perhaps because the uncomfortable points are treated according to Wernle's recipe." (13)

Wernle's recipe:

"Wernle wrote of me with some bitterness: 'NO single aspect of Paul's teaching seems to cause Barth discomfort. . . . There remain for him no survivals of the age in which Paul lived--not even trivial survivals.'" (11)

"In contrast with this comfortable dismissal of uncomfortable points it has been my 'Biblicism' which has compelled me to wrestle with these 'scandals to modern thought' until I have found myself able to undertake the interpretation of them, because I have discovered precisely in these points the characteristic and veritable discernment of Paul....When I am named 'Biblicist', all that can rightly be proved against me is that I am prejudiced in supposing the Bible to be a good book, and that I hold it to be profitable for men to take its conceptions at least as seriously as they take their own." (12)

Barth and Barrett on Criticism

Barrett comes first because he is summarizing F.C. Baur (1792-1860) with whom he is here in agreement:

"[O]ur sources . . . do not tell the same story, and the historian's task is not to harmonize them but to set them over against one another. This is criticism; and it is when the reader observes that the first Christian decades were not a period of universal peace that he begins to ask why Acts gives the impression that they were, and to inquire what tendency led Luke to write as he did" - C. K. Barrett, Acts (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 2.lxxiii.

And here is Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: 1968):

"The commentator is thus presented with a clear 'Either--Or' The question is whether or no he is to place himself in a relation to his author of utter loyalty. Is he to read him, determined to follow him to the very last word, wholly aware of what he is doing, and assuming that the author also knew what he was doing?...Anything short of utter loyalty means a commentary ON Paul's Epistle to the Romans, not a commentary so far as is possible WITH him--even to his last word. True exegesis involves, of course, much sweat and many groans" (17).

But utter loyalty can be misunderstood:

"It is precisely a strict faithfulness which compels us to expand or to abbreviate the text, lest a too rigid attitude to the words should obscure that which is struggling to expression in them and which demands expression. this critical freedom of exegesis was used by Calvin in masterly fashion, without the slightest disregard for the discipline by which alone liberty is justified. The attentive reader will perceive that I have employed this method, believing it to be demanded by the text. ... I have resolutely determined not to make use of the method in order to criticize Paul..." (19).

I don't mean to set Barrett and Barth completely over against each other, as Barrett has been accused of being too Barthian himself. But it is interesting how Barth--fully aware how classic historical criticism operates--seeks to move beyond it:

"I have nothing whatever to say against historical criticism. I recognize it, and once more state quite definitely that it is both necessary and justified (6). . . . When, however, I examine their [historical critics'] attempts at genuine understanding and interpretation, I am again and again surprised how little they even claim for their work. By genuine understanding and interpretation I mean that creative energy which Luther exercised with intuitive certainty in his exegesis; which underlies the systematic interpretation of Calvin; and which is at least attempted by such modern writers as Hofmann, J. T. Beck, Godet, and Schlatter. For example, place the work of Jülicher side by side with that of Calvin: how energetically Calvin, having first established what stands in the text, sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and the man of the sixteenth century hears. The conversation between the original record and the reader moves round the subject-matter, until a distinction between yesterday and to-day becomes impossible." (7)