Seitz, Barth and some notes on Blessing

From C. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture pp. 147-52

'Blessing is the language of God's address to humanity's forfeit.'In Genesis 1:28, blessing is tied up with expansion and spreading out.p. 148: '...whatever is marring God's creative intent, be it rebellion in the Garden, murder, evil human imagination, or projects for overextension and totalitarian unity, God is planning a different way forward, which he means to protect and superintend. Election is the means by which sinful creation receives the blessing originally intended for it, for all nations and people. Mission understood in OT terms, then, is the address of blessing to the deficit and forfeit brought about by rebellion in its many forms.'

p. 149: 'Blessing will come through election, and mission - God's word of blessing to the nations - will be the means by which God uses Israel to accomplish this in a special way vis-a-vis all peoples.'As von Rad notes, blessing concerns Abraham first, but then also includes those on the outside who adopt a definite attitude toward this blessing.God's blessing of Abram is a repeat of the charge to humanity in creation... it involves Abram getting what the race sought in tower building.... it also entails blessing for others.

p. 152 'If blessing is the means by which God restores and brings into proper relationship the families of the earth, it remains the case that he uses Israel for this purpose in ways neither Israel nor the nations fully comprehend. What is required of Israel is faith and obedience to the pronise, which constitutes its only ground of existence in the world. Obedience to this promise allows blessing to occur, but it does not ensure it.''for the church rightly to speak of 'mission'...it is necessary to comprehend the logic of key OT notions of blessing''Blessing' is drawing on God's goodness...and receiving it... it is the good God extending his goodness to the creation, filling the creation with his goodness...

Karl Barth 'In all its otherness it is predestined to receive the divine good which has been revealed and communicated. This is what is ordained for man in the primal decision of the divine decree. the portion which God willed and chose for him was an ordination to blessedness. For to be able to attest the overflowing glory of the Creator is blessedness. God will man and elceted man with the promise of eternal life. Life as a witness to the overflowing glory of God is eternal life...' CD II/2 p. 169

But...
'Man was willed and chose by God with his limitations, as a creature which could and would do harm to God by the application, or rather the misuse, of its freedom. the danger-point of man's susceptibility to temptation, and the zero-point of his fall, were thus included in the divine decree.' II/2 p. 169