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Dan
Love and Fear of God
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…
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Dan
Not Using the Talent is a Grievous Sin
My text for Sunday is Matthew 25:14-30, variously called the parable of the talents or the parable of the coins or the parable of the gold… something like that. Reading Barth again, I happened on a passage in I.2 where he refers to this parable. He uses this parable as an illustration of the Church that hears but does not…
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Dan
A Barth Quote
At long last I have made myself pull out Barth again. Thankfully, I have a few notes underlined so I can try to catch up where I was in his volume. This is on the Church confession. It must be distinctively heard in the Church as the distinctively articulated voice of the fathers and brethren in faith. The Church lives…
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Dan
Keep It Simple Saints
Two days in a row where I actually read something out of Barth that made sense! Look out! This quote is so incredible: “The divine simplicity precedes every man-made complication. Above all the misery of the Church is the glory of the commission with which it is entrusted.” Good stuff. For all the complaining and griping we like to do…
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Dan
Look! A Sentence I Understood in Barth!
I am almost through the second volume of Church Dogmatics. Every once in awhile I find something I actually understand! “The proclamation of the Church is pure doctrine when the human word spoken in it in confirmation of the bliblical witness to revelation offers and creates obedience to the Word of God.” Okay, I will admit that when I just…
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Dan
The Power of the Word and the Scriptures
I am picking up Barth again, slogging through the second volume (which is actually 1.2). The power of the Word and the Scriptures is key for Barth. The section I am currently working through is incredibly exciting. (No, really. It is.) The Church is not merely a human institution. This is not “a human polity, monarchical, aristocratic or democratic, in…
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Dan
Why the Scriptures?
“From a human standpoint the preservation of the Church depends, therefore, on the fact that Scripture is read, assimilated, expounded and applied in the Church, that this happens tirelessly and repeatedly, that the whole way of the Church consists in its striving to hear this concrete witness.” (Karl Barth)
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Dan
The Double-Edged Sword of Updating Confessions
Confessions of faith are vital for a church. Barth’s position is that all confessions arise out of conflict. This is true. The Nicene Confession arose out of conflict over the deity and humanity of Christ. Confessions, in Barth’s view, come into a need for revision from time to time because of conflict. Controversies arise and further examination of a part…
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Dan
No love lost for liberalism
Theologically speaking, Barth had no love lost for liberalism. The emptiness of liberal theology is what drove him back to the Word in the first place. He spares no feeling for the failure of the Church to proclaim the Word of God. The catastrophic crash of orthodoxy in the 18th century, the consequences of which we still have to carry…
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Dan
Nuggets I am getting…
“It does not become God’s Word because we accord it faith but in the fact that it becomes revelation to us. But the fact taht it becomes revelation to us beyond all our faith, that is God’s Word even in spite of our lack of faith, is something we can accept and confess as true to us and for us…
Tag: Church Dogmatics
