Into this Alien Land...

"We are not left alone in this frightful world. Into this alien land God has come to us."

Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline; (as quoted by Stanley Hauerwas,With The Grain of the Universe)

Currently Reading...

"God is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion", Rob Lister, (Crossway, 2013)

I was first made aware of Lister's work by a dismissive passing comment on a blog that will remain unnamed here. The nature of the comment was such that one wondered if the blog writer had ever read Lister's book, but was merely dismissively reacting to the title. I also found that this book was recommended by my friend Dr. Ardel Caneday, a man whose theological judgement I respect. I have heard in recent days the impassibility of God has become such an issue in some quarters that one loose association of churches has actually split over the issue. This is not light reading. There are a plethora of footnotes included with the text. I am now halfway through this work, and so far am satisfied Lister's thoughts on the matter are headed in a direction I would be in general agreement with. I have my thoughts on the whole matter, but prefer to finish Lister's work before attempting an articulation of those thoughts.

"With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology", Stanley Hauerwas, (Brazos Press,2001)

This publication is the wriitten form of the lectures Hauerwas delivered at the 2000-2001 Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews. In those lectures as presented in this book form, Hauerwas gives an interpretation of American intellectual history with focus on William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Carl Barth. It is this philosophical and theological history that I find of interest and value. I am about a quarter or so into this one.

Tradition and Authority

For these determined “Biblicists” had their contemporary philosophy in their heads, took it with them to the Bible and so most certainly read themselves into the Bible no less than Church Fathers and Scholastics. They were no doubt free of Church dogma but not of their own dogmas and conceptions.

Luther and Calvin did not go to work on the Bible in this way. Neither should we. It is in the Church that the Bible is read; it is by the Church that the Bible is heard. That means that in reading the Bible we should also hear what the Church, the Church that is distinguished from my person, has up to now read and heard from the Bible. Are we at liberty to ignore all that? Do the great teachers of the Church, do the Councils not possess a –certainly not heavenly—but, even so, earthly, human “authority”? We should not be too ready to say, "No."

To my mind the whole question of tradition falls under the Fifth Commandment: Honor father and mother! Certainly that is a limited authority; we have to obey God more than father and mother. But we have also to obey father and mother.

And so I should call to all those who get excited when they hear the words Orthodoxy, Council, Catechism: Dear friends, no excitement! There is no question of bondage and constraint. It is merely that in the Church the same kind of obedience as, I hope, you pay to your father and mother, is demanded of you towards the Church’s past, toward the “elders” of the Church.

Karl Barth, Credo, “Appendix: Answers to Questions”

Odds & Ends

"In a age of relativism, orthodoxy is the only possible rebellion left." ~ Peter Kreeft

Living With the Mystery of Unanswered Prayer by Mark Daniels..

A little update on my trek through Credo by Karl Barth: I am through the chapter on the remission of sins. I can only read a page or two at a time and then my brain circuits are at the point of blowing a breaker... I find it odd that reading Barth's Credo has done more to confirm me in orthodox faith then anything I've read since my time in seminary. I find myself loving and embracing the Apostles Creed as a true statement of basic Christian belief and doctrine... It is odd that Barth can come across more orthodox then some of those in the broad tent of Evangelicalism.

It is hot; getting up in the low 90's which for our part of Michigan is hot. Back in May we got a central air conditioner to replace our window AC. It is getting a work out, and we are thankful to have it.

Other books in my reading pile: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury; All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren; War In Heaven (Kindle) by Charles Williams..

About ten days ago we did our annual pilgrimage through Ionia County, Michigan on the David Hwy. This year's field crops look so, so much better then they did on last year's pilgrimage; an indication of the abundance of rain we have had compared to last year's severe drought... We followed the road east past Westphalia where it becomes Price Rd. Supper was at the Big Boy in St. John's and then we came west on M-21. A nice evening with good friends for company...

Easter and The Day of the Lord

"On a final and comprehensive Easter Day the exultation of the Lord will be repeated. The interim period is running towards that Easter as the Day of the Lord. The church with all creatures in their sighing is, in this interim period, waiting and watching joyfully for that day."

~ Karl Barth, Credo, "Inde Ventures Est Judicare Vivos Et Mortuos"

Christ as the Foundation of Christian Faith

“…Christian faith stands or falls once and for all with the fact that God and God alone is its object. If one rejects the Biblical doctrine that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and indeed God’s only Son, and that therefore the whole revelation of God and all reconciliation between God and man is contained in Him—and if one then, in spite of that speaks of “faith” in Jesus Christ, then one believes in an intermediate being, and then consequently one is really pursuing metaphysics and has already secretly lapsed from the Christian faith into a polytheism which will forthwith mature into further fruits in the setting up of a special God-Father faith, and a special Creator faith, and in the assertion of special spiritual revelations. The proclamation of this polytheism can most certainly be a brilliant and a pleasant affair. But real consolation and real instruction, the Gospel of God and the Law of God, will find a small and ever-diminishing place in the proclamation. The Church of Jesus Christ as the assembly of lost and rescued sinners will come less and less to be built by this proclamation. How could it be otherwise than that error at a critical point makes it utterly impotent? It is just here that a circumspect Dogmatics will give warning. It will have to ask the whole Church to consider that ground out of which it has sprung and out of which alone is it able to live, is the admittedly rigid and uncompromising recognition that no one knows the Son, but the Father, and no one knows the Father, save the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal Him (Matt. XI. 27).”

Karl Barth, Credo, ”Et in Jesum Christum”