I’ve actually made my way into the third volume of Barth’s Church Dogmatics. I think I’ve understood a total of 50 pages in the first two volumes… total. Okay… I’m lying. It’s less than that.

In II.1 he takes up the doctrine of God. Barth combines the love of God with the fear of God. The love of God actually needs to come first.

He is worthy of our love, and in a way that no one or nothing else is worthy. Loving God does not disappoint. The beauty of God is that he makes himself known to us. God offers himself to us, creating the possibility to know him.

Barth says that out of that love must now flow fear. If we love him above all things, we now realize we must fear him above all things. We need to understand that we are to fear the One who reveals the Word to us. That is an awesome thing.

…there is no belief and trust in the Word of God, no obedience of faith, and therefore no obedience in general if man is not compelled to fear God.

If we sometimes fear, and then find that sometimes we cannot fear God… then he is not really God to us.

Barth explains the three-fold rationale for fearing God, as he did with loving God.

1. God is in himself to be feared.

2. This compulsion comes from the fearful encounter with God. To encounter God is to have a sense of fear and awe at some point. He wills himself to be known.

3. God opens our eyes and ears to his fearfulness so that our fear before him is realized.

Fear is to follow love. Fear has to be explained from love.

The content of the knowledge of God as bound to the Word of God is the existence of Him whom we must fear above all things because we may love Him above all things.