“The Word of God which is revealed in revelation declares that man is not actually free for God. This is already expressed by the fact that it is actually the Word or the Son of God who is revealed… God comes forward Himself to be man’s Saviour. This presupposes, and is already proclaimed as a truth of divine judgment, that man cannot be helped in any other way. It is not merely that man lacks something which he ought to be or to have or to be capable of in relation to God. He lacks everything… He is not only a sick man, but a dead one. It was because the world was lost that Christ was born. Therefore, from the very standpoint of Christ’s birth we have to say, in the very strictest sense, that the world was lost... Man is free in many respects, He possesses many of the possibilities common to all creatures… but he does not possess the possibility of communion with God.” – K. Barth, “Church Dogmatics” I.2, p. 257
Within this section of his Church Dogmatics, Barth expresses his conviction that the revelation of God – rather than being the mere subject of man’s interpretation and criticism – in reality both binds and defines humanity itself. It binds us in that the revelation of God comes to mankind in the incarnation – the Word made Flesh – and so, in assuming humanity itself, that Word of God becomes the unavoidable master of humanity. In that same move, the revelation of God also defines humanity by mankind’s role as a participant in the equation of that very revelation; the revelation OF God and FOR mankind. In the sovereignty of God and the inescapable authority of His revelation, we are seized by the divine Word of God. The paradox of this seizure lies in Barth’s understanding that it is in the binding of humanity to the Word of God by and through the Holy Spirit that we actually find that genuine freedom for which we have been created and to which we are called: the freedom of man for God.
This humiliation and negation of the ways in which we would seek to understand true human freedom apart from the work and word of God is a timely and compelling message. Left to our own devices, mankind is ever tempted to remain imprisoned by our own endlessly self-referential visions of freedom; supplanting our subjective, blurry, understanding of ultimate reality for the objective clarity of God’s illuminating self-revelation for us. We are all too pleased to subjugate Christ to be molded by the forces of own sense of self-knowledge and personal experience, rather than allowing our eyes to be opened – or lives surrendered - to the authority of Christ as judge and redeemer of all human knowledge and experience. Until we receive that revelation of the Holy Spirit which both captures and liberates us as people who are finally and ultimately free for God, we remain prisoners of our own miniscule possibilities. For Barth this is only overcome when, “… the self-enclosed uniqueness of man, who only has and knows his own freedom, is overarched and enclosed and finally relativised through the uniqueness of God and His freedom, the freedom in which He is resolved to have fellowship with this man and once and for all to be his Lord.” (p.260)
It is the incarnation of Christ, and the Holy Spirit that enables us grasp the significance of that incarnation, which causes the revelation of God to bear so inescapably upon Humanity: either drawing us into the light of God’s reconciliation in Christ or into the heat of God’s judgment through him, God has caused his self-revelation to come to bear upon the world. The ‘freedom’ of man apart from God is an illusion of the most subversive nature, imprisoning man in the emptiness of endless self-pursuit. Even when this self-freed man turns his eyes to consider God, it is as one entirely lacking the resources and power to do so: it is Babel - a ‘tower to Heaven’ so piteous that God must condescend to stoop down to even cast judgment upon it. Who will free us from this all-consuming idolatry of self?
For all the muddy waters that may consist of Barth’s writings when considered as an entire corpus of work, I find his understanding of the subjectivity of mankind in the face of the objectivity of God continually refreshing and compelling. In an age, much like that of Barth, where there is a tidal pressure in our western world to objectify personal human experience at the expense – or total ignorance – of God’s revelation of Himself to and for us in Christ, it remains a helpful and life-giving reminder. In the midst of our brokenness and futility, we cling to God’s Word-made-Flesh and to the words of the Apostle that: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5:18-19)
No comments:
Post a Comment