The Humanity of God - Karl Barth

What does it mean to speak of 'the humanity of God'? Barth says:

...it is bound to mean God's relation to and turning towards man. It signifies the God who speaks with man in his promise and command. It represents God's existence, intercession, and activity for man, the intercourse God holds with him, and the free grace in which He wills to be and is nothing other than the God of man.

In the nineteenth century, theology spoke rather of the divinity of man. This was disastrous for theology, as it was indeed for the whole culture. In response, the dialectical theology of the 1920s sought to recapture the deity of God - his abosolute otherness and strangeness to humankind. That is: 'God's independence and particular character, no only in relation to the natural but also to the spiritual cosmos; God's absolutely unique existence, might and initiative, above all, in His relation to man.'

If this is to be developed or revised, it is in no way the case that this God-ness of God is to be jettisoned. But Barth admits that it was still the case that in this return to God's deity there was the possibility that all human activity and even existence would be rendered void. What he needed to remember was that God's sovereignty is a matter of God's sovereign togetherness with man - grounded absolutely and utterly in God alone, but a togetherness with man nonetheless. It is precisely God's deity which, rightly understood, includes his humanity.

This is of course a Christological statement. Actually, if we had begun (says Barth) from Christology the problem would have been non-existent. In Christ man and God are not isolated from one another - we see man exalted and God humbled in this one Person. And Jesus Christ is the Revealer of them both - he tells us what, or who, God is, and he also declares what or who Man is. In the existence of Jesus Christ there is no doubt that the priority rests with the free action of God in his condescension. 'Superiority preceding subordination.'

BUT: God's freedom in Jesus Christ is his freedom for love. God's sovereignty is what it is in light of his love for people. 'God's deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and for Himself'. [This seems to be counter to the emphasis in some latter US New Calvinist thought, which pictures God as always utterly self-reflexively self-interested.] When we look at Jesus we can see that God's deity includes (therefore) his humanity. In God's deity there is enough room for communion with man. God does not exist without man - not because God has any need for man to be truly God, or because in any sense he exists merely for the human being, but becasue it is in fact the case that he chooses to be with man as his partner.

So: 'in this divinely free volition and election, in this sovereign decision... God is human.'