In a brilliant few pages from CD IV/1 (pp. 122-128), Karl Barth identifies the problem with the traditional way in which theology has treated the 'person' of Christ as a separate item to the 'work' of Christ:
This schematism seems logically very illuminating, and didactically useful. At a first galnce it may even seem unavoidable...Yet it is not really calculated to enable us to expound the actual subject-matter...
He goes on to complain that the NT never has a 'Christology' as such set apart or abstracted from what Christ did among men and women. So, he goes on:
We hasten to explain that the being of Jesus Christ, the unity of being of the living God and this living God and this living man, takes place in the vent of the concrete existence of this man. It is abeing, but a being in a history. The gracious God is in this history, so is reconciled man, so are both in their unity. And what takes place in this history, and therefore in the being of Jesus Christ as such is atonement. Jesus Christ is not what He is - very God, very man, very God-man - in order as such to mean and do and accomplish something else which is atonement. But His being as God and man and God-man consists in the completed act of the reconciliation of man with God.
The climax of his argument? His being as his One is His history and His history is this His being.
It's a great point. But perhaps he has been too harsh: of necessity theology makes distinctions but that doesn't imply separations. It treats ideas in their turn, because it is just hard for most of us to think of more than one thing at once!
2 comments:
Michael, thanks for the post. Call me crazy, but I just don't get Barth's statements about God's being is his act, and act his being. Apart from the fact I don't know what it means (does Barth?), Jesus distinguished between being an act when he spoke of knowing a tree (being) by it's fruit (act). Seems to me quite critical to hold this distinction, even though we can't separate them. Christ's act, ultimately tells us about his being: God proved his own love (being) for us in this: whilst we were sinners, Christ died for us (act).
Blessings for your new life and ministry at MTC!
wow this is great! I am a high schooler in socal who is competing in apologetics and this has definitely helped
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