Believing with no other proof

Barth endorses Anselm‟s „Credo ut intelligam‟, presenting divine revelation as something which demands our faithful acceptance on its own terms. It establishes its own validity without needing to be proven or justified in terms of some other

standard. Barth presents a strategic view of the Word of God as the one source of truth which can never be overcome or assimilated, the one unconquerable vantage point. „In the Word of God it is decided that the knowledge of God cannot let itself be called in question, or call itself in question, from any other position outside itself.‟⁵⁸⁷

The incarnation is „the prime mystery‟, something which cannot be regarded as analogous to any other event and does not fit in any human philosophy. „It comes to us as a datum with no point of connexion with any other previous datum. It becomes

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the object of our knowledge by its own power and not by ours. We are not the masters, but the mastered.‟⁵⁸⁸

Although God allows himself to be known within a human frame of reference, this does not imply that he submits to the authority of that frame as if he were just

another part of the universe. Barth writes: „Knowledge of God is thus not the

relationship of an already existing subject to an object that enters into his sphere and is therefore obedient to the laws of this sphere.‟⁵⁸⁹ Barth therefore portrays Jesus as the truth who judges all systems of human thought and cannot be contained by them. He is adamant that there is no vantage point or other truth from which Jesus can himself be judged. He asks: „Is there any place from which we are really able to ask whether Jesus Christ is the light, the revelation, the Word, the Prophet?‟⁵⁹⁰ He answers: „To ascribe to ourselves a competence to put such questions is ipso facto to deny that his life is light, his work truth, his history revelation, his act the Word of God.‟

In this response, he explains that he has in mind Feuerbach‟s observation that theology is anthropology, and is wary of any approach which establishes a divine figure on the basis of its agreement with our own values and ideas. He asks: „Is his Logos no more than what we regard as the ratio of our own life-action? And therefore at bottom is his prophecy no more than the power and authority of our own self-declaration?⁵⁹¹‟

Barth criticises those who accept that „Jesus Christ is light, truth, revelation, Word and glory‟ and then seek to prove this with „a historical, philosophical,

anthropological or psychological investigation and exposition.‟ Attempting to justify Jesus Christ in terms of any other standard simply shows that it is the other standard which we hold supreme, rather than Jesus Christ. He writes: „On this procedure and the more basically the more skilfully we pursue it, do we not declare the very

opposite of what we intend, namely, that we do not really regard as a prophet the

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one whom we think we must help in this way, and least of all do we regard him as the prophet of God?⁵⁹²‟

Barth simply accepts the truth of Jesus Christ as something which justifies itself and has its own power to convince us. He focuses on the way that Jesus bears witness to himself, writing: „His self-attestation is in fact the absolutely dominating theme of the Gospel of John. Jesus not only is the light of the world, but as he is and shines as such, he also says that he is.‟⁵⁹³ He insists: „The life of Jesus Christ is light and prophecy. We do not venture it arbitrarily or at random, but on the basis of the fact that this life is grace, and grace is radiant as such. Hence there is no need to establish or justify its radiance from some other point. Indeed, all attempts to do this are forbidden.‟⁵⁹⁴

Kreck comments on Barth‟s use of John, including the themes of light and darkness, the need for new birth and the coming of Christ from above, writing:

„Barth‟s fundamental thesis, that God can only be known through God, that this happens only in Christ as the revealer, and that apart from him the Word lives in falsehood and darkness, indeed in death, finds here a surprising confirmation.‟⁵⁹⁵

Barth quotes John 18.37 („Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.‟) and declares that Jesus Christ is the truth which sets us free for the truth, so that we no longer have „the false freedom to ask for special confirmations of the truth from without.‟⁵⁹⁶ To seek any other proof is a „betrayal‟,⁵⁹⁷ as is described robustly in the Barmen Declaration, which Barth quotes from in this context: „We reject the false doctrine that the Church can and must, as the source of its proclamation, recognise other events and powers, forms and truths, as the revelation of God outside and alongside this one Word of God.‟⁵⁹⁸

Faith, for Barth, means an obedient attentiveness to the revelation of God shown in the scriptures, not the assent to any human system of ideas. While asserting the reality of revelation in human words among those who have faith, Barth denies that

592 CD IV.3.i, p. 74-75

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595 Kreck, 1978, p. 160, my translation

596 CD IV.3.i, p. 77-78

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the Word of God could form a set of data able to be mastered and manipulated by philosophers. He opposes any sense that God‟s particular acts of self-revelation can be treated as the raw material for any scholarship other than the reverent, obedient and faithful approach to dogmatics which he has in mind. He insists: „If a man, the Church, Church proclamation and dogmatics think they can handle the Word and faith like capital at their disposal, they simply prove thereby that they have neither the Word nor faith.‟⁵⁹⁹

Furthermore, Barth will not allow dogmatics to become one academic subject among many, fitting into a framework of methods and assumptions established elsewhere. It is not possible for theology to function authentically in this way, he believes. He writes: „Since the days of Schleiermacher, many encyclopaedic attempts have been made to include theology in the sciences… The actual result of all such attempts has always been the disturbing or destructive surrender of theology to a general concept of science.‟⁶⁰⁰ He also warns: „That he is the one Word of God means further that his truth and prophecy cannot be combined with any other, nor can he be enclosed with other words in a system superior to both him and them.‟⁶⁰¹

Barth‟s strategy involves close attention to the particularities of divine revelation, alongside opposition to any surrender to generalities imposed from elsewhere.

Dogmatics is worthy of serious study in the modern world, but is not something that can fit neatly into the assumptions of contemporary academia. There can be no true marriage between theology and the rest of human thought, for one party will inevitably overwhelm the other. Barth declares: „There never has actually been a philosophia christiana, for if it was philosophia it was not christiana, and if it was christiana, it was not philosophia.‟⁶⁰²

Theology cannot allow itself to be shaped or channelled or evaluated using any measures taken from outside. Instead, dogmatics has its own „criterion‟, which is

„Jesus Christ, God in his gracious revealing and reconciling address to man.‟⁶⁰³ The correct human response to the message of Jesus Christ is one of humble faith and

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thankful obedience, without seeking to test that message using criteria taken from elsewhere, or to tame the Word by absorbing him into a human system of ideas.