Barth’s Understanding of the Word of God, Anselm and the Human Being

A Theology of the Word of God

It is generally acknowledged that Barth’s theology is a theology of the Word of God. The notion
of the Word of God pervades his theological writings as the leading concept. His Church
Dogmatics begin with an extended treatment of the doctrine of the Word of God. In the
foreword of his Dogmatics in Outline Barth states that “the subject of theology is ... the Word
of God.”1 That there is a connection with his theological anthropology is less obvious.

The connection between Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God and his anthropology does,
however become apparent when one considers that in the Scriptures Jesus Christ is called the
Word of God (John 1:1). It is He who is the first and final reference point in Barth’s theology.
His Christological concentration implies an anthropology that takes its bearings on Christ as the
eternal Word of God.

The Centrality of the Word of God, it’s Actualization , Kant and Hegel: Some Introductory
Observations

The development of the centrality of the Word of God Barth himself notes. After Barth had
written his Römerbrief he became increasingly aware that the diastasis between God and the
human being he had highlighted there could not in itself be the final subject of his theology.
Christ had to become the centre.2 When Christ became the ultimate point of reference for Barth,
the Word of God became the banner under which his theology took shape.

1
Barth, Karl. Dogmatics in Outline trans. Walter M. Mosse (New York: Harper and
Row, Publishers, 1959) 5.
2
Barth writes about this shift in focus: “I simply could not hold to the theoretical and
practical diastasis between God and man on which I had insisted at the time of Romans, without
sacrificing it . . . I had to understand Jesus Christ and bring him from the periphery of my
thought into the centre.” qtd. in Eberhard Busch. Karl Barth: His life from Letter and
Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1994) 173. And with this moving to the centre, away from Kierkegaard, Barth
 Barth’s Christology and his doctrine of the Word of God represent two ways of speaking
about the same reference point. Barth’s threefold understanding of the Word of God illustrates
this. He starts with the affirmation that Jesus is the Eternal Word of God, most eminently. But
this Jesus is no longer on earth. He now is presented to us in the Bible. The Bible is the second
form of the Word of God. The witness of the Church to the biblical Jesus is the third form of the
Word of God. This is the proclamation of the Gospel by the Church as God’s Word about and to
human beings.3

The Word of God as presented to us in the Bible and as proclamation of the Church is
never directly and actually God’s Word, however. Neither is a theological understanding of,
for example the human being, directly God’s Word. It is analogous to God’s Word.4 Even the
threefold form of the revelation of the Word of God is the “earthen vessel of faithful witness
which God may freely choose to make a very word of revelation.”5

The making of the Word of God a very word of revelation is an act of God. Revelation
happens spontaneously and at different times. These happenings occur in reference to the Word
of God and apart from such happenings “the Bible is not the Word of God, but a book like other
books.”6 Barmen was such an event and what happened there was nothing less than an act of
God.7

Precisely this idea of the actualization of the Word of God, I contend, is conditioned by
Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics in Barth’s thinking. This has a bearing on how
Barth understands the human being as well. If God’s Word, as it is presented to us in Scripture
and preaching, is conditioned by the fact that it first needs to become God’s Word, then the
Word of God can never be described as directly and concretely relating to the human being.

embraced the concept of the Word of God as the concept “on which he took his bearings” Ibid.,
173.
3
Clifford in, Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1989) 25.
4
If one were pressed to describe Barth’s theology and his concept of God’s relation to
this World and humans generally, one could term his understanding of God’s relation to humans
and the world as actualistic. Cf. Hunsinger, George. How to Read Karl Barth. The Shape of His
Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) especially 30, 43-47.
5
Clifford in, Karl Barth 25.
6
Barth qtd. in. Ibid., 25.
7
Ibid., 25.
 More precisely then it is Barth’s perception of the indirectness of the actual Word of God,
which is controlled by Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics. In Church Dogmatics
Vol.I/1 Barth seeks to work out a doctrine of the Word of God, which elucidates and expands
upon this concept of actualization by putting forth his idea of revelation.8

A Kantian point of view is inherent in Barth’s conception of how Church Dogmatics are
scientific. In his Dogmatics in Outline, Barth writes, “no act of man can claim to be more than
an attempt . . . [and so] . . . even Christian Dogmatics is an attempt.”9 The assertion that
dogmatics is only an attempt, because it is conditioned by the human horizon of experience and
thought, is the reason why Barth calls dogmatics a science. Barth’s conception of science is
rooted in his own assumption of the radical distinction between God and the human being. This
radical distinction, is controlled by a Kantian point of view, as will be explained below.

The Hegelian point of view or philosophical dynamic in Barth is bound up with his view
that the Word of God ultimately is the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, as will be shown later. When
Barth refers to the Eternal Word, he refers to it as beyond the conditioned-ness of the temporal
realm. These conditions include human imagination, self-righteousness, rationalism and pietism.
For this reason one can also only properly speak about the human being from the eternal, that is,
from God’s perspective. This can only be done in faith.

Faith thus establishes the connection with the Eternal Word of God. By faith one can begin
to acknowledge the reality of the human being as revealed in God’s Word. Here one can begin
to acknowledge the eternal perspective, God’s perspective, as this is revealed in Jesus Christ.
And so, in principle, one is able to overcome the radical distinction between God and the human
being.

8
Barth positions dogmatics exactly between exegesis and practical theology. Dogmatics
concerns itself with what the Church is to think or say. Of course the Scriptures give the Church
the content for her proclamation. However the particular content of the Scriptures is to be tested
by dogmatics as critical science. The content as such is itself conditioned by history and the
human element in it. Dogmatics sort out what ought to be valid in the Church proclaiming the
Word of God. The authority of dogmatics itself is relative. Nevertheless it is the closest the
Church can get to the actual Word of God. Barth uses the analogy of parents in relation to their
children. “As natural parents do not stand before us like God but nevertheless are in authority
over us, so here too we have to do with a relative authority.” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics in
Outline, Trans. G.T. Thomson (Harper and Row, Publishers Inc., 1959) 12-13.
9
Ibid., 9.
 Precisely the way in which Barth seeks to overcome the radical distinction between God
and the human being by faith in the eternal Word of God is conditioned by viewpoints and
philosophical dynamics that are Hegelian. The work that is the link between Barth’s Kantian and
his Hegelian philosophical dynamics is his interpretation of Anselm in Anselm: Fides Quarens
Intellectum. I will return to this important work also.

Theological Anthropology

How is this all part of Barth’s theological anthropology? Having pointed to the centrality of the
doctrine of the Word of God and its integral connection with Jesus Christ as the Eternal Word
what remains to be said is how God’s perspective is the only perspective by which we can judge
and understand the human being, really and truthfully.

By faith we can enter into the truth of God concerning the human being. This truth is
revealed only in Jesus Christ as the true human. By faith we can acknowledge what we are, as
Christ was and is. Barth states it this way: “the ontological determination of humanity is
grounded in the fact that one human being among all others is the human Jesus. So long as we
select any other starting point for our study, we shall reach only the phenomena of the
human.”10 Rationalism and/or pietism, and modernism in general, start with the phenomena of
the human. Christian theology should not start with the human. It should start from the self-
revelation of God, and Christ is the only true human being of whom Christians predicate their
existence in faith.

Barth calls this human Jesus “the one Archimedean point given us beyond humanity, and
therefore the one possibility of discovering the ontological determination of humanity.
Theological anthropology has no choice in the matter.”11 The how is thus answered by keeping
in perspective that Jesus Christ is the ontological determination of humanity.

Besides Barth’s Christological ontological point of view he employs a concept of

relationality. In connection with his analogia fidei he applies the concept of analogia
10
Barth in Clifford, ed., Karl Barth: the Theologian of Freedom (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989) 227.
11
Ibid., 227.
relationis. With reference to the analogia relationis Barth deals with the image of God from a
Trinitarian relational perspective. It is ultimately from this perspective that Barth understands
Christ as the ontological determination of humanity.

Based on these observations, which will be further explained in what follows, I will
designate Barth’s approach ontological-relational. The order of words in these terms is
important taking into consideration that the context of the meaning of these terms is Barth’s
understanding of the nature and function of the Word of God.

Finally, all this is implicitly connected to the importance of the question of the historicity
of the Word of God in relation to anthropology. In regards to this fundamental issue my claim is
that Barth’s perception of the nature and function of the Word does not allow one to understand
and apply the Word of God directly historically and existentially. This is a result of Barth’s
employment of Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics. I believe that his one-sided,
indirect ontological approach is not according to the Word of God itself. In the end Barth only
allows the Word of God to speak one word in regards to God’s relationship with human beings:
to be human is necessarily to be with God. For Barth this being with God is a reality to be
acknowledged by faith as the only true and actual reality concerning human beings. This is
ontologically determined by Jesus Christ as the Eternal Incarnate Word.

The Historical and Theological Context of the Development of Barth’s

Theology of the Word

Barth’s own breakthrough came after he and his friend Thurneysen found themselves in an
impasse, theologically and pastorally. Schleiermacher, the major theological influence of their
time, had become unbelievable.12 They had come to a point where a new foundation for
theology needed to be established in order for them to be able to preach and teach within their
respective congregations.

12
Ibid., 97.
 Both Thurneysen and Barth questioned how they could continue speaking about God, if
they could do so at all anymore. They both began to study the Bible, and Barth began to
explore the letter of Paul to the Romans. He “gradually [became] aware of the Bible.”13 What
Barth came to understand was that “the collapse of our cause must demonstrate for once that
God’s cause is exclusively his own.”14 All human attempts at constructing anything that does
not first of all start with the reality of God and His revelation break down at the realization of the
breaking in of God’s Kingdom into this world. The world of the Bible, as the revelation of God,
became an altogether different world than Barth had lived in so far.15

The opening up of this new world of understanding resulted in Barth’s Römerbrief. This
work proved to be a lighting flash and a thunderclap on a clear day. It was Barth’s entrance into
the academic theological debate of his time. After the second edition of this work Barth was
offered a chair in Reformed Theology at the University of Göttingen.16

With this book Barth thought to have definitively broken with the liberal tradition in which
he had been schooled--and not only with liberal rationalism, but also with pietism. To Barth
both these movements represented two sides of the same coin.17 God, in His revelation, could
not speak where the human had spoken already. The acknowledgement of God’s work and
revelation also meant an acknowledgement of the human inability, sinfulness and death. Sin
divorces humans from God for it places the humans in the place of God by robbing God of His
honour. Death is the result of sin, and death is the separation from God: a state of affairs
without the possibility of a return to God unless God turns to us in Christ.18

It was in this state of mind, as presented in his Römerbrief, that Barth entered the
theological academic world. As professor of Reformed theology in Göttingen, the first project

13
Barth qtd. in Ibid., 98.
14
Barth qtd. in Ibid., 100.
15
Ibid., 101.
16
Ibid., 123.
17
In his commentary Barth always denies any place for a natural point of contact with
God. Rationalism and its ultimate manifestation in idealism, together with an attempt to reach
and/or comprehend God in a form of piety, always results in some form of confusion: a
confusion which ends up in delusion. Cf. K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford
University Press, 1968) 51-54.
18
K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford University Press, 1968) 167-
180.
he undertook was lecturing on the Heidelberg Catechism.19 This shows that at this point Barth
allied himself with the Protestantism of the Reformers. By studying the Reformers he
discovered that he had been more Reformed in his thinking than he had realized. He found this a
confirmation of the legitimacy of his position as professor of Reformed doctrine and thought.20
After his second semester at Göttingen, in the summer of 1922 Barth started to study
Calvin more seriously. He was overwhelmed by what he found.21 His own theological writings
also gained more and more notoriety. This obliged him to explicate and defend his position and
direction within the theological academic world and beyond.

Thus, Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God emerged out of historical and theological
circumstances. These circumstances shaped the form and content of Barth’s doctrine of the
Word of God to such an extent that what he preached and promulgated was an answer to the
problems he observed during his time.

The historical and theological elements are intrinsically connected and hard to divorce from
one another. Therefore in pointing to the historical-theological context of Barth’s development
of the doctrine of the Word of God I will refer to these elements interchangeably.

The Crisis of Theology

It is not understated that Barth lived in times of historical crises. He was born at the dawn of the
twentieth century. Two World Wars were fought involving most Western industrialized
countries. Germany of course played a most influential role in these wars. It was during the
time of the war in Germany that Barth developed his basic theological position.

Barth’s theological training was by and large coloured by nineteenth-century liberalism.

Starting in Berne, Switzerland Barth observed that the Berne masters gave him “a thorough
foundation in the earlier form of the ‘historical critical school’ [and he] was earnestly told, and
[he] learnt, all that can be said against ‘old orthodoxy’. . . and that all God’s ways begin with

19
E. Busch, Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994) 128.
20
Ibid., 129.
21
Calvin was a discovery for him. In Barth’s words Calvin was “a waterfall, a primitive
forest, a demonic power, something straight down from the Himalayas, absolutely Chinese,
strange, mythological; I just don’t have the organs, the suctions cups, even to assimilate this
phenomenon, let alone to describe it properly” Ibid., 138.
Kant and, if possible must also end there.”22 After Berne, Barth moved to Berlin where he
studied under Harnack from whom he heard that “the dogma of the early period was a self-
expression of the Greek spirit in the sphere of the Gospel.” 23 Also at this time Barth notes that
“the possibility of understanding the Bible in terms of the history of religion began to dawn on
me, and alongside Kant, Schleiermacher took a clearer place in my thought than before.”24

While in Berlin, Barth’s energetic involvement with Kant, Harnack, and Schleiermacher
culminated in his discovery of Wilhelm Hermann. He became a devoted follower and pupil of
Hermann to such an extent that Barth said that the day he read Hermann’s Ethics his personal
interest in theology began. It is from him that Barth received the Christocentric impulse.25

In 1908 Barth enrolled in the University of Marburg, his “Zion.” Here he delved even
more into the thoughts of Hermann who was professor at Marburg. Marburg around that time
was a stronghold of a particular strand of Neo-Kantianism. Prominent philosophers, such as
Hermann Cohen, and Paul Natorp, inaugurated what came to be known as logical idealism.26
Barth connected with these thinkers in his own activities as pastor and socialist.27

During his student life at Marburg and during his early activities as pastor, Barth met
Leonhard Ragaz, who influenced him much. Through Ragaz, Barth was confronted with the

22
Busch, Karl Barth., 34. With reference to Kant, Busch describes Barth’s involvement
with Kant as similar to a kind of conversion story. Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason aided in
the discovery that the Gospel was simple and that the concept of the good will was fundamental
to all of it (Ibid., 34-35).
23
Ibid., 39.
24
Ibid., 40.
25
Ibid., 40-41. According to Barth Wilhelm Hermann was “on the one hand . . . a
Kantian . . . and on the other a pupil of the younger Schleiermacher, not the older . . . [and it was
from him that he received] the christocentric impulse” 44-45.
26
I. M. Bocheński, Contemporary European Philosophy (California: University of
California Press, 1956) 90, 93. The Marburg school proposed a kind of Kantian Socialism. It
attempted to synthesize the Kantian notion of the moral sphere as a priori (Kant’s strictly formal
notion of the categorical imperative) with Marxist Socialism. Religion for Cohen was a form of
morality, and God “is no more than an ethical ideal, the goal presented as the fulfilment of one’s
moral task” (ibid., 94). Barth read Cohen extensively while being assistant pastor in Geneva.
Later on he refers to him in a speech to workers while being pastor in Safenwil. As professor of
Reformed theology Barth presents Natorp with a copy of his Romans as he visits Marburg.
Busch, Karl Barth., 44, 56, 136.
27
See note 68.
radical theme “that God was meeting men today in socialism.”28 And it was through the
influence of this person that Religious Socialism became a forthright movement in Switzerland
in 1906--a movement of which Barth was also a member.29

Hermann Kutter is another person who played an important role in Barth’s Life. Kutter
was also a member of the Religious Socialist movement. He stressed the importance of the real
and living God. From him Barth “learnt how to speak the great word ‘God’ seriously,
responsibly and with a sense of importance.”30

As the last and very influential persons in Barth’s early life as a pastor, I should mention
Christoph Blumhardt and his son Johann Christoph Blumhardt. Barth first met these persons in
1907. Barth’s eyes were then not yet fully opened.31 He met them again in 1915. At this time
messages by and long conversations with Christoph Blumhardt opened Barth’s eyes to a new
direction.

Christoph Blumhardt’s thought and conviction represented an interesting bridge between

knowledge of God and the Christian hope for the future. Through him Barth learned “to
understand God afresh as the radical renewer of the world who is at the same time Himself
completely and utterly new. For Barth this could be--and had to be--the starting point for further
developments.”32 After this meeting with Christoph Blumhardt, Barth felt a longing to “show
himself and others the essentials.”33

Behind Barth’s move into a new direction stood a historical experience of disillusionment.
The experience of disillusionment came with the outbreak of World War I. The outbreak was in
itself a horrible occurrence of which Barth says that it “shook him and disturbed him to the
depths of his being.”34 However, what proved to be more influential for Barth as a theologian
and a pastor was a manifesto supported by ninety-three German intellectuals allying themselves
with the war policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. He discovered

28
Busch, Karl Barth., 44.
29
Ibid., 77.
30
Ibid., 76.
31
Ibid., 44.
32
Ibid., 85.
33
Ibid., 86.
34
Ibid., 81.
that most of his theological teachers including Hermann and Harnack were among the supporters
of the manifesto.

Barth’s reaction went deep, and he drew the conclusion that “their ‘ethical failure’
indicated that ‘their exegetical and dogmatic presuppositions could not be in order.’ Thus ‘a
whole world of exegesis, ethics, dogmatics and preaching, which I hitherto held to be essentially
trustworthy, was shaken to the foundations, and with it , all the other writings of the German
theologians.”35

This occurrence was the catalyst which pressed Barth to look for a new direction, a new
foundation, and a new starting point.36 What he saw as the reason for the ethical failure of his
teachers was their theological underpinnings, and not only those of his own teachers, but of all
nineteenth century theology. One theologian in particular began to emerge as the problem of all
of nineteenth century theology: Schleiermacher. “He was unmasked. In a decisive way all the
theology expressed in the manifesto and everything that followed it (even in the Christliche
Welt) proved to be founded and governed by him.”37 The new starting point had to be in direct
opposition to that of Schleiermacher.

This, then, is the context in which Barth met Blumhardt again, and it is Blumhardt
primarily that showed him the possibility of a new direction. Over against Schleiermacher’s
anthropocentrism, Blumhardt preached and acted on the premise that one must start with God
and his Kingdom. James Smart in his The Divided Mind of Modern Theology describes
Blumhardt’s influence on Barth and his friend Thurneysen as, “not man but God is the primary
reality, the first certainty . . . This they [Thurneysen and Barth] learned from Blumhardt, to begin
with God, and this was the startling reversal in their thinking . . . ” 38 Barth himself stated in a
book of devotions by Blumhardt that for him these devotions were “the most direct Word of God

35
Ibid., 81.
36
When Barth interprets his own theological development he again acknowledges that
the ethical failure of his teachers at the outbreak of WWI played a decisive role in his seeking for
a new direction. Barth in Green, Karl Barth Theologian of Freedom., 49.
37
Busch, Karl Barth., 82.
38
In introduction to Barth and Blumhardt, Action in Waiting (New York: Plough
Publishing House, 1969) 11-12.
into the need of the world that the war years have produced so far. I have the impression that
here is just what we would like to say--if we could!”39

What is clear is that Barth’s development of the doctrine of the Word of God can be seen
as emerging out of historical-theological crises. The development can be seen as a reaction
against the titan of liberalism, Schleiermacher, who was seen as the background of the ethical
failure in the historical crises. Blumhardt was the one who paved the way for the possibility of a
new foundation and direction. This new foundation was starting with God as God.

The instantiation of this new realization came in the form of an exegesis on Romans. To
this work I will turn to gain a better understanding of what was fundamentally wrong with
Schleiermacher and his legacy, according to Barth, and observe how Barth’s doctrine of the
Word of God took shape in this context.

A Theology of Crisis

The fundamental problem with Schleiermacher, and with all those who took their basic starting
point with him, was his subjectivity. Even Hermann who had been Barth’s main tutor still made
the human subject too much the important reference point.40 God had to be brought to the

39
Ibid., 19.
40
Prior to the break out of WWI and Barth’s major disillusionment with his teachers’
alliance with the war policy of the Kaiser, Barth having become active in the socialist movement
as a ‘Hermannian’ in principle still always attempted to construct a bridge between Hermann’s
subjective individualism as point of reference and active political and social life. Barth did this
by extending the influence and power of Jesus as going beyond the sphere of the self to the
sphere of the political and social in which the self existed. See Bruce L. McCormack, Karl
Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 86-87. This is
a marvellous book, which treats the development and emergence of Barth’s theology historically
and biographically. In this book, McCormack delineates Marburgian Neo-Kantianism (Cohen
and Natorp) and exposes its connections with Hermann’s theology. Barth as devoted pupil of
Hermann absorbs the same presuppositions prevalent in Hermann as borrowed from Cohen and
Natorp. According to McCormack this lays the ground work for Barth’s own special dialectic
with reference to the Word of God. McCormack traces Barth’s dialectic to this period and sees it
as the basic strand that unites all Barth’s writings starting from his sermons in Safenwil through
his editions of Romans to his last volume of Church Dogmatics. McCormack concludes by
saying, “One final observation: however critical Barth may have been of modern theology, it is
of utmost importance--if we are to have a more accurate understanding of the history of theology
centre and so serve as ultimate reference point. Ragaz as radical socialist even became
questionable. He too did not concentrate enough on the starting point God. And of Kutter’s
concept of ‘the living God,’ Barth had become suspicious too.41 Barth turned his attention to
the Bible and with the tools he had he began to interpret Romans. The Schleiermacherian
religiosity once and for all had to be overcome. The letter of Paul to the Romans was the
vehicle.42

The fundamental premise and starting point for Barth in interpreting Romans was the
intention that God must be left to be God and the human being the human being. In liberal
nineteenth century theology Barth felt that “man was made great at the cost of God . . . For this
reason Barth asserted, shouted, declared, spelled out in a constant variety of new dialectical
‘meanderings’ that God-is God.”43

in the last two centuries--to see that Barth was a thoroughly modern option. It was, after all, only
by presupposing the legitimacy of Kantian epistemology that he was enabled to envision the
dialectic of veiling and unveiling in God’s Self-revelation in the form he did.” I concur in
essence with what McCormack observes. His genetic approach is most illuminating, one that
also I attempt to employ with my emphasis on the context of the emergence of Barth’s Doctrine
of the Word of God. McCormack, however, overlooks the central importance of the message of
Blumhardt. About Blumhardt he speaks on pages 123-124. He does connect him with Barth’s
new direction, however he does not explore this important relationship any further. I made
reference to Van Til who also discovered Barth to be fundamentally Kantian and therefore
modern. However, on the basis of Barth’s Modernism, Van Til found Barth to be anti-Reformed
with his doctrine of the Word of God in connection with the clarity and historicity of it.
McCormack is sympathetic to Barth in this regard and expressed that I work with ‘wrong-
headed’ assumptions. The matter is finally about truth. In this case it all depends whether one
would acknowledges Kant to be a sound thinker in the line of Reformed theology; McCormack
apparently does, I do not (Personal Email Correspondence, McCormack, Bruce L, Veldman, M,
Jan, 12, 2000 to Febr, 01, 2000).
41
In a letter to Thurneysen, Barth writes upon having read an article by Ragaz “that he
makes very clear what he is lacking vis-a-vis Blumhardt and Kutter . . . Decisive for me is . . . the
starting point . . . Not a word of the “knowledge of God” or “conversion”, of “waiting” on the
Kingdom of God.” McCormack, 124. The concepts of waiting and knowledge of God are
important clues to Barth’s acquaintance with Blumhardt. These concepts would survive the
break up with liberalism. Kutter, however, by that time had become an impossibility for the new
direction. Barth had become suspicious of his concept of the ‘living God’ after Kutter’s
wartime book Reden an die Deutsche Nation. Busch, Karl 97.
42
Barth says about his decision to exegete the letter of Paul to the Romans that it was “to
snatch it from [his] opponents.” Barth in Busch, Karl 98.
43
Ibid., 119. “The Godness of God--that was the bedrock we came up against . . . ”
 It precisely occurred in the realm of religious thought that the human was made great at the
expense of God, according to Barth. Feuerbach was the one who had pointed to the cancer in
theology. In his analysis of religion, or theology for that matter, he set out to “transform the
theologians into anthropologists [with the thesis that] God, as the quintessence of all realities or
perfections, is nothing else but the quintessence, comprehensively summarized for the assistance
of the limited individual, of the qualities of the human species, scattered among human beings,
and manifesting themselves in the course of history.”44 Implied in this thesis is an
understanding of the Word of God “which should be understood as the divinity of the human
word, in so far as it is a true word, a self-imparting of the I to the Thou, and thus essential human
nature, and hence the essence of God.”45

In the religious realm it was Schleiermacher par excellence who had fed the
anthropolization of God and His Word. His “Christology and the doctrine of atonement [were]
seemingly projected back from the personal experience of the human subject.”46 Therefore, it
was precisely Schleiermacherian piety, religiosity, and the Enlightenment, that needed once and
for all to be countered. In philosophical terms, God again had to be asserted as the subject of
whom we are predicated in Jesus Christ.47 And this countering is what Barth, in principle, set
out to do in his commentary on Romans.

I say in principle because as far as Romans goes I contend that it merely prepares one for
the acknowledgement of this reversal. It seeks to make room for the Word of God, faith, and the
Holy Spirit. To understand how Barth seeks to make room is crucial for an understanding of how
Barth later seeks to bring Christ from the periphery to the centre of his thought. Precisely in

44
Karl Barth, Feuerbach. in Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom. Ed. Clifford Green.
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 92.
45
Ibid., 93.
46
Ibid., 94.
47
In a later lecture, in 1933, in which Barth examined the history and background of
Protestant theology beginning with Schleiermacher, he described Pietism and the Enlightenment
as “two forms of one essence, outwardly more different than they really were; both were united
in their attempt to incorporate God in the realm of sovereign human self-awareness. [And for
Barth, Schleiermacher as the Church father of the nineteenth century] was seen as the
representative of a theology in which man is left master of the field in so far as he alone has
become the subject, while Christ is the predicate.” (Busch, Karl, 221). In the nineteenth century
the most welcome events that pointed to the sore in theology and had remained un-scanned by
it, were “Feuerbach, Strauss and - Kohlbrügge . . . ” Ibid., 178.
these hows I detect Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics. For an examination of these
hows I will now turn to Barth’s Römerbrief.48

When Barth sought to find a wholly new theological foundation for preaching he wore
spectacles of particular kinds. In the preface to the second edition Barth made no secret of the
fact that besides Paul he drew his inspiration from Overbeck, a critical theologian who taught at
the University of Basel from 1872 to 1897, as well as Plato and Kant. He was seriously
introduced to Plato and Kant again by his brother Heinrich.49 In Concluding Unscientific
Postcript on Schleiermacher Barth out rightly states that at the time of writing this
commentary “father Kant, who had provided the initial spark for me once before, also spoke in a
remarkably new and direct way to me in those years.”50 One must take Barth seriously for
what he wrote at this point. How it can be taken seriously is evident from the text itself.

Barth’s first object in expounding Romans is truth, not Divinity. He agrees with Blumhardt
that “simplicity is the mark of Divinity.”51 However, this is precisely not where one can start.
The way to this simplicity first needs to be paved. For “the simplicity which proceeds from the
apprehension of God in the Bible and elsewhere, the simplicity with which God himself speaks,
stands not at the beginning of our journey but at its end.”52 Truth is not simple. It is
complicated, for life is complicated and the relation between God and the world is
complicated.53 Therefore in truth there needs to be made room for simplicity, for God and His
Word, for faith and the Spirit.

The only way humans can speak about truth and point to the simple is with a dialectical
method.54 This was the way Barth sought to go to the history beyond the historical. All he was
taught before was to be in awe of history which, however, rendered him incapable of doing

48
I use the translation of the sixth and last edition, working from the presupposition that
Barth employs the same ‘dialectical’ approach in all of them. (See note 83). In the process of
examining the how, I seek to, simultaneously, expose the material basis for this presupposition.
49
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) 3-4.
50
Barth in Green, Karl Barth Theologian of Freedom., 72.
51
Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 5.
52
Ibid, 5.
53
Ibid., 5.
54
“The matter in the text cannot be released save by a relentless, elastic application of the
dialectical method.” Ibid., 8.
serious interpretation. In response, Barth attempted to perceive the “‘inner dialectic of the
matter’ in the actual words of the text.”55 This inner dialectic corresponds to what Kierkegaard
called the recognition of the “infinite qualitative distinction between time and eternity.”56 This
recognition points to the ultimate relation between God in heaven and humans on earth. This is
for Barth the “theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy. Philosophers name this KRISIS
of human perception--the Prime Cause: the Bible beholds at the crossroads--the figure of Jesus
Christ.” It is in this manner and from this perspective that Barth claims never to go beyond a
critical exegesis.57

As I pointed out, it was the religious persons, the theologians under the influence of Pietism
and the Enlightenment, who needed to be countered. It was they who had not left God to be
God by seeking a point of contact with Him and their own subjectivity as first and final point of
reference. This seeking was not done critically enough. They had not been critical enough about
the human state and condition of their being and capacities. And thus they had failed to realize
what Paul meant when he spoke of a point of contact between God and the human in Romans:
“that which may be known of God is manifest to them.” (Romans 1:19). It is by interpreting this
verse critically that he is concerned with truth which is not simple. The truth concerning God as
manifested to humans is “the truth concerning the limiting and dissolving of men by the
unknown God, which breaks forth in the resurrection.”58 Thus, to know God is to know one’s
own boundaries, one’s own limitations.

Such critical knowing is itself grounded in a particular understanding of how the mind
perceives. Historically it was Kant who first in a definite way exposed the human
epistemological conditions of the mind. In this context Barth goes on precisely to allude to
Kant’s legacy. He states, “when our limitation is apprehended, and when He is perceived who,
in bounding us, is also the dissolution of our limitation, the most primitive as well as the most
55
Ibid., 10.
56
Ibid., 10.
57
Ibid., 10, 13. This phrase ‘critical exegesis’ I believe must also be interpreted very
literally. It has everything to do with Barth’s distinction between the words of the Bible and the
Word of God. The former pertain to the words of Paul which Barth seeks to understand, and the
latter to the Word of God, only to be pointed to (see page 72 of Concluding Unscientific
Postscript on Schleiermacher). Cf. Karl Barth, Ethics, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (New York:
The Seaburg Press Inc., 1981) 311.
58
Ibid., 45.
highly developed form of human self-consciousness become repeatedly involved in a ‘despairing
humiliation,’ in the ‘irony of the intelligence’ (H. Cohen).”59 In such a way the human can
know and must know that which is manifested to them by God of Himself. This is how God is
known and can be known.

Then Barth goes on to explain that this recognition of conditions and limitations can be
arrived at autonomously. He states, “the recognition of the absolute heteronomy under which we
stand is itself an autonomous recognition and this is precisely that which may be known of
God.”60 This then corresponds to Barth’s description of the essence of philosophy as the
perception of KRISIS.

The coming to the perception of this KRISIS autonomously is what Kant achieved in his
Critique of Pure Reason.61 At the crossroads stands Jesus who is the dissolution of
limitations.62 Religion barricades a true understanding of the relationship between God and the
Human. It bedazzles the human in making her believe that there is a point of contact. But this is
precisely its blindness, because it does not understand the human limitations vis-a-vis God.
Religion is the cause of self-delusion and self-righteousness.

So far I have shown how Barth sought to make room for the Word of God and faith.
Finally and even more fundamentally there is the necessity to let the Spirit speak. After all it is
the Spirit who works both faith and supplies humans with the Word of God.

How can the Spirit speak in the life of a human? Only after he or she is stung by the
torpedo-fish can the Spirit speak. It was Socrates who was called a torpedo-fish because of his
ability to bring his hearers to complete helplessness.63 This brings forth the possibility of the

59
Ibid., 45. H. Cohen was the founder of the Marburg School. He was a Neo-Kantian
who postulated the concept of the Ideal Epistemological Subject, a subject beyond all subjects as
the ground and determination of all subjectivity. Bochenski, Contemporary 90, 93-94 Cf.
McCormack 43-77.
60
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans., 46.
61
For Kant “no mode of knowledge is adequate for solving the deep problems of
existence and of man’s life--metaphysics is impossible.” Bochensky, Contemporary 4.
62
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans., 269. “But Jesus Christ is the new man,
standing beyond all piety, beyond all human possibility. He is the dissolution of the man of this
world in his totality.”
63
Ibid., 271. Barth appeals here to Socrates as one who paralyses like a torpedo-fish.
new human, the creation of the Spirit, when in “agreement with Kant, we deny ourselves every
aspect beyond that by which we are limited.”64 Making room for the Spirit is acknowledging
that by nature we leave no room for Him. For the Spirit “is describable only in negatives, He
nevertheless exists and we must preserve the paradox; . . . [therefore] our fear of denying Him is
far greater than our fear of betaking ourselves to the ambiguous and questionable realm of
religion.”65 The Spirit thus stands at the end of religiosity according to humans, and at the
beginning of God-induced religion.66

Conclusively then, only in these ways of making room for the Word, for faith, and for the
Spirit, God can remain God. God then is the “actus purus, pure reality and occurrence, unlimited
and unconfined, without beginning or end, place or time.”67 With this observation I have come
to Barth’s methodology in his Dogmatics as it is shaped and determined by his treatment of
Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.

64
Ibid., 271. Cf. McCormack in regard to what extent Barth was influenced by Kant. He
states that “Barth’s theological epistemology in Romans II stands everywhere in the long
shadow cast by Immanuel Kant.” Bruce L. McCormack Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic
Dialectical Theology. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 245.
65
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans., 274.
66
“Though we know full well that no behaviour of ours can correspond with the Spirit,
yet it is precisely this recognition that may occasion the Spirit to intervene on our behalf, to
correspond with us, and justify those who are not justified. Therefore once again, lest we should
sin against the Holy Ghost [the unpardonable sin!], we choose for ourselves the behaviour of
religion by which we cannot be justified.” Ibid., 274.
67
Ibid., 274. God thus described as actus purus is exactly what stands at the back of
Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God. It is this concept of Barth, which Bonhoeffer criticises
in Bonhoeffer, D. Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic
theology trans. H. Rumscheidt (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).
Barth’s Primary Texts on the Word of God

1. Barth’s Interpretation of Anselm as it Pertains to His Doctrine of the Word of God

Barth’s treatment of Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God is the basis of the
process of thought employed in his Church Dogmatics.68 I am interested in this process of
thought as it relates to Barth’s understanding of the Word of God and his anthropology.

As far as Romans is concerned, Barth’s intention was to point out that the anthropological
basis of all nineteenth century theology, starting with Schleiermacher, was futile. In that sense
Romans can be seen as making room for faith, the Word of God, and the Spirit. What I mean is
that by it Barth made room for these three fundamental necessities for theology. It was the
“consciously and consistently executed anthropological starting point”69 that needed to be
countered. Romans was the break with this starting point in so far as it pointed to the bankruptcy
of the anthropological starting point.

As I observed earlier, Barth saw that he needed to overcome his continual and primal
emphasis on the diastasis that exists between eternity and time, God and the human. He did this
by bringing Christ from the periphery to the centre of his theology. He was enabled to do this by
employing a methodology inherent in Anselm’s ontological proof for the existence of God. His
Church Dogmatics testify to the centrality of Christ and the influence of his interpretation of
Anselm.70

68
This is not a claim that others have made, but one that Barth himself acknowledges. I
will quote in full what Barth says about this book in the preface to the second edition. “Only a
few commentators, for example Hans Ur von Balthasar, have realized that my interest in Anselm
was never a side-issue for me--assuming I am more or less correct in my historical interpretation
of St Anselm--realized how much it has influenced me or been absorbed into my line of thinking.
Most of them have completely failed to see that in this book on Anselm I am working with a
vital key, if not the key, to and understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed
me more and more in my Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology.” Karl Barth.
Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1962) 11.
69
Karl Barth. The Theology of Schleiermacher. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1982) 270.
70
In the preface to the second edition of Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum Barth
himself verifies that this book was the breakthrough to his Dogmatics. He states: “so far as I was
concerned, after finishing this book I went straight into my Church Dogmatics and it has kept me
 Again the question as to why Barth perceives this book to be so important for the rest of his
life is paramount for an understanding of how Barth perceives the nature and function of the
Word of God.

If Romans was written to counter the anthropological starting point of others’ interpretation
of the human-God relationship, then Barth’s treatment of Anselm’s ontological proof of the
existence of God cannot assume this starting point. In his interpretation he understands
Anselm’s proof as faith seeking understanding.71 The proof being a result of faith seeking
understanding precludes the possibility of assuming or finding a common ground from which
one can come to a knowledge of the existence of God. Barth starts his treatment by pointing to a
necessary negation which amounts to a denial of the anthropological starting point or horizon.

For Anselm the act of believing “does not mean simply a striving of the human will
towards God but a striving of the human will into God and so participation (albeit in a manner
limited by creatureliness) in God’s mode of Being and so a similar participation in God’s aseity,
in the matchless glory of His very Self, and therefore also in God’s utter absence of necessity.”72
In other words the that of God cannot be arrived at by a human will striving towards God.
As a matter of fact, the that of God should not even become the question. If it does then this
presupposes a common ground from which all humans can strive towards God as if they were
outside of Him. What precedes this question is an inquiry into the what of God. This is the
question behind the human will striving into God.73 In this way the anthropological horizon
must vanish and make place for the theological horizon.

Faith is the means to be initiated into the theological perspective or horizon. After all, it is
faith seeking understanding that Anselm is concerned with, not understanding seeking faith. Yet

occupied ever since and will occupy me for the rest of my days.” A stronger statement as to the
importance of this book in Barth’s development and process of thought is hardly possible.
71
Barth states that faith does not require a proof of God’s existence. “There is absolutely
no question at all of a requirement of faith. Anselm wants ‘proof’ and ‘joy’ because he wants
intelligere and he wants intellegere because he believes.” Karl Barth. Anselm: Fides Quaerens
Intellectum. (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1958) 16-17.
72
Ibid., 17.
73
I owe the distinction and the priority of the ‘that’ and the ‘what’ to Van Til. Cornelius
Van Til. The Defense of the Faith. (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.,
1980) especially 9-13. I believe in this respect Van Til connects with Barth’s methodology.
it is faith that seeks understanding. How then can faith know God? The answer to this question
is worked out in Barth’s interpretation of Anselm’s process of thought.

Essentially faith knows God by participating in the knowledge that God has of Himself and
allows humans to share with Him. Thus, this sharing is not only possible--God as Creator has
already shared this knowledge of Himself by creating humans in his Image. Faith actualizes this
potential. The Word of God as preached and heard appeals to, and encounters this potential.
Faith then desires to know, to understand.74

This knowing nevertheless remains within the theological horizon because faith
acknowledges that God is the source and the cause of that knowledge of truth of Himself, and so
also of ourselves. The “God in whom we believe is the causa veritates in cogitatione.”75 The
necessity of theology is thus inherent in the faith-acknowledgement that humans are necessarily
bound up with God. And once the will has become obedient in love, then faith seeks to know
and understand the One with whom he or she is bound up.

If the necessity of theology is bound up with the existence of God and His relation to the
World and humans, it still begs the question how theology is possible. This question Barth
answers by referring to what Anselm perceives as the object of theology.

With reference to this question Barth could have easily gone back to what he stressed in
Romans, namely the diastasis between eternity and time, God and the human being. The
question pertaining to the possibility of theology implies the paradox of God’s relation with
humans. However, if in Romans Barth stressed the impossibility of the possible,76 then through

74
Anselm describes the image of God as potential as “the imago summae essentiae (of
the holy Three-in-One-ness of God) per naturalem potentiam impressa--.” It is a naturally
impressed image which by faith, as the change of will, “per voluntarium effectum expressa.”
Karl Barth, Anselm., 19-20. This is essentially the basis for Barth’s concept of Christ as the
ontological determination of humanity. I work this out in the discussion on the connection with
the word of God and the Trinity.
75
Ibid., 21.
76
In Romans Barth announces the theme of the Epistle as the words of Paul the believer
testify to us the faith of a man who affirms the “‘No’ and [is] ready to accept the void and to
move and tarry in negation.” Karl Barth. The Epistle to the Romans. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968) 42. Grace, as God’s Yes, is the possibility of God, recognized in the
impossibility of humans. “Grace is the impossibility which is possible only in God, . . . Grace is
man’s divine possibility, and, as such, lies beyond all human possibility.” Ibid., 231, 242.
Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum he is enabled to stress the possibility of the impossible.
This, in essence, is done by bringing Christ from the periphery to the centre of His thought.77

The proper object of theology is the revelation of God. The possibility or impossibility of
theology, however, is not so much tied to an argument that views the revelation of God as a
possible viable alternative to other possible sources of truths. Such an approach is precluded by
referring back to the necessity of theology. Rather, the difficulties one encounters in doing
theology is a result of the tension between the subjective and the objective Credo.

The objective Credo is that which the Church confesses to be true. This serves as the un
indictable point of reference. The objective Credo includes the Bible and the confessions of old.
The subjective credo refers to the human word of preaching as it expresses the ‘Word of Christ’
as the truth faith holds it to be.78 It is between these two credos that the dialectical dynamic
plays itself out. Faith seeking understanding moves between these two poles. It moves from the
point of reference as the Godly-possible to the understanding as the humanly- impossible. Faith
grabs hold of what is possible by God. And so the possibility of theology depends precisely on
the actualization of the Godly-possible in the sphere of the human-this-worldly understanding.

The Godly-possible, more precisely, is the ratio veritates.79 It is the ultimate reference
point for faith. As reference point it can be described as the objective Credo. However, the fact
that it is the Godly-possible ought to place the human always in a position of humility. To start
properly with God is to start continually and consistently with God. In this way humility in the
face of God is the background of theology as science and theological work as scientific. The

77
One must keep in mind that even though there might be a change in emphases from
Romans to the Church Dogmatics, the dialectic between the possible and the impossible is still
maintained. The problem of the God-human relation in the Church Dogmatics is highlighted
from the positive to the negative of the dialectical poles and finally resolved in a higher
dialectical inclusion with reference to the inter-Trinitarian acts of God. The Word of God serves
as the medium for the acknowledgement of the acts of God. The impossibility is then bound up
with the way one views the relationship between the Word of God and the words of humans.
78
Cf. Karl Barth. Fides Quaerens Intellectum (Cleveland: The World Publishing
Company, 1958) 24.
79
Karl Barth, Anselm., 26.
latter can be described as pertaining to subjective credo. Barth elucidates this in his Dogmatics in
Outline to which I referred in the introduction.80

The objective Credo as reference point is the reason for and the possibility of Dogmatics.
As such the objective Credo corresponds to the Word of God.81 What needs to be taken very
seriously is the fact that the Word of God is the reference point. As reference point the Absolute
Word of God lies outside the words of humans, and even outside the Bible, as relative to that
Word. In this way a point of reference is merely a reference to a point, and this must be taken
very literally. The point itself is always beyond the pointing. For these reasons Barth calls
Dogmatics a critical science.82

The task of Dogmatics characterized as critical must be taken quite literally, and should not
be divorced from the context of Barth’s own theological development. Barth states that “in the
science of Dogmatics the Church draws up its reckoning in accordance with the state of its
knowledge at different times. Dogmatics will always be able to fulfil its tasks only in
accordance with the state of the Church at different times.”83

This being so one might ask to what extent Barth’s Dogmatics is relative to the time in
which he lived, or relative to the development of his own theology. Maybe even the conception
of Dogmatics as critical might then become relative to his own theological development and
become suspicious. Barth states it very strongly: “if there exists a critical science at all, which is
constantly having to begin at the beginning, dogmatics is that science.”84 To begin at the
beginning time and again, which is the description of the nature of dogmatics as critical,
corresponds thus to the dialectical movement between the objective and the subjective credos,
which itself is to initiate and sustain the advancement “from credere to intellegere.”85

The characterization of Dogmatics as critical is the précis of the possibility of theology.

With this concept we see the transposition of the dialectic employed in Romans from a negative

80
Karl Barth. Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Haper and Row, Publishers, 1959) 9-14.
81
“There would be no dogmatics at all, unless the Church’s task consisted centrally in the
proclamation of the Gospel in witness to the word spoken by God.” Ibid., 11.
82
Ibid., 12.
83
Ibid., 10-11.
84
Ibid., 12.
85
Karl Barth. Anselm., 24.
into a positive one. The dialectic is catapulted into the sphere of the Word of God with faith as
its basic starting point. What I mean is elucidated by Barth under the discussion of the
conditions of theology.

“In its relation to the [objective] Credo, theological science, as science of the Credo, can
only have a positive character.”86 This positive character is precisely due to the transposition of
the dialectic employed in Romans. As I observed there, Barth moved from the impossible to the
possible to break through the anthropological horizon of the legacy of Schleiermacher. In
Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, and from then on, Barth moves from the possible, as the
assumption of faith, to the impossible, as the condition of our humanity.87 This positive
character goes even beyond the vertical-dialectic of the relation between God and the human,
the possible and the impossible. It has a twofold character for it not only affirms the truth of
faith but also, and possibly more importantly, the reality to which this faith clings
acknowledges.

The theologian must ask the question, “to what extent is reality as the Christian believes it
to be?”88 This question cannot be pushed beyond the limits of even faith-existence. Faith
cannot go beyond the Credo. It however can seek to understand the content of the Credo in
so far as this is the form of revelation as given. For example, when one speaks of the Trinity or
the incarnation, one must not seek to comprehend the possibility of the that of these facts. The
theologian can merely inquire into the what of these facts, or what Barth alludes to as “the inner
necessity.”89 So by faith one can only acquire the understanding of the nature of God which by
its very attributes then also, necessarily, encompasses His existence.90

86
Ibid., 26.
87
“That is to say: While I believe, I also believe that the knowledge for which I seek, as it
is demanded and rendered possible by faith, has faith as its presupposition, and that in itself it
would immediately become impossible were it not the knowledge of faith.” Ibid., 26.
88
Ibid., 27.
89
Ibid., 28.
90
This, of course, is how Anselm proceeds in his proof of the existence of God. The
name, or concept of God, which we humans have and can have of Him defies the description and
affirmation of that being that-then-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought as non-existent.
Therefore God exists.
 As far as theology is concerned, however, humans can only have inadequate conceptions of
God. “The actual Word of Christ spoken to us is not an inadequate expression of its object,
though of course every attempt on our part, even the highest and the best, to reproduce that Word
in thought or in speech is inadequate . . . All that we have are conceptions of objects, none of
which is identical with God.”91 This reinforces the dialectic between objective Credo and
subjective credo. In so far as the objective Credo is only reference point, it aims at reinforcing
the distinction between God and the human being. God is the Wholly-other. However, because
of the necessity of theology, which is grounded in the God, who is the summa veritas and the
causa veritates, 92 humans nonetheless can have and must have conceptions of their Creator and
Redeemer. These conceptions, even though they can in essence not be identical with God, can
nevertheless be appropriate and true with reference to God. In this sense theology is speculative
in that it approximates its object relative to the conditions and context in which it attempts to
express its truths.93

The dialectic between the objective Credo and the subjective credo is further qualified by
distinctions that need to be made between our knowledge and reality, and God’s; between the
the word of humans and the Word of God. I have noted that the objective Credo is to be
understood as reference point. It is a reference point, because God is the Wholly-other. As such
God is in relation to our understanding, the ratio veritates. “Strictly understood the ratio
veritates is identical with the ratio summae naturae, that is with the divine Word consubstantial
with the Father.”94 The human knowledge and the human word need to be distinguished from
this ultimate ratio.

When speaking of the Scriptures as Word of God a distinction needs to be made between
the outer and the inner text. Barth places Anselm, with his doctrine of Scripture, between the
liberals of his time-- with his approach of faith seeking understanding and not understanding
seeking faith-- and the ‘positivists,’ the traditionalists of his day who would see the Scriptures

91
Ibid., 29.
92
Ibid., 18.
93
“Not all ‘speculative’ theology says what is true. But even theology which does say
what is true is still ‘speculative’ theology.” Ibid., 30.
94
Ibid., 45.
consist of outward truth statements.95 Barth interprets Anselm as conceiving of an outward text
which is related to the inner text as witness to the truth in the inner text. The truth found in the
inner text can only be the result of “a distinct intention and act and also--and this is decisive--
only by virtue of special grace.”96 Our faith clings to that truth as our mind seeks to understand
it.

Can our understanding ever achieve the ratio veritates? No, for then one would need to be
God. God at all costs needs to remain God. He cannot become subject to our conceptions. Our
conceptions only approximate and are limited by the horizon of our own history and conditions.
Nonetheless, we must have an understanding of God and the World and ourselves, for theology
necessitates it. How humans can have this understanding is related to Barth’s further distinctions
between ratios as they are correlated with the distinction between the outer and the inner text.

Barth feels justified making the distinction between the human “knowing ratio and . . . the
ratio that is to be known, the ratio that belongs to the object of faith itself.”97 The object of faith
must itself be understood as the active subject for faith. The ratio veritates or the ratio Dei is the
primary object of faith. But because it is God who is this object, and as such the Christian God
who creates, reveals, and redeems and so necessitates theology and understanding, He is at the
same time the active subject for faith. “What is meant by the human ratio with regard to the
truth can therefore in no circumstance be one that is creative and normative.”98 It is the Divine

95
The terminology Barth uses here is clearly out of his own time. This goes along with
his claim that theology is always bound by the history and conditions of the theologian himself,
even with the way one sees Scriptures. Barth has no qualms about being accused of reading
something into the eleventh-century thinker. “Who can read with eyes other than his own?” Ibid.,
9.
96
Ibid., 41. Here Barth goes beyond the Reformers, as he interprets Anselm. The
Reformers always held to a view of Scripture, which stressed its perspicuity so as to leave the
unbeliever with no excuse when confronted with God’s Word. It is here where Barth’s actualism
finds its bearing. Barth speaks of a special act of grace, which is an act of God. In essence
Barth’s whole theology of the Word of God is anchored in this perspective of the Scriptures as in
need of becoming the Word of God by a special act of grace of God. This is what I described
previously as the vertical-dialectic inherent in Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God.
97
Ibid., 44. Barth alludes to Anselm’s use of Latin cases which indicate action on the
part of the knower, the ablative case of ratio, and the object of the action of the knower, the
accusative case of some form of ratio. This is the basis on which Barth justifies his distinction.
98
Ibid., 46-47.
Word that is creative and normative and thus is the source and reference point for all
human understanding.99

As far as truth is concerned Barth refers to the noetic ratio. It corresponds to that which
can be known about reality. This is what is in the understanding. However, the reality that can
be known precedes the knowledge of it. This is termed the ontic ratio.100

Yet it must be kept in mind that Barth is still speaking of the human understanding. In
other words, one is always still dealing with speculative theology. God as God is still beyond
our conceptions as the ratio veritatis, the ratio summae naturae. In the Credo and in the Bible
this ultimate ratio is hidden and our ratios only resemble the truth and reality of God from time
to time. “Thus: from time to time in the event of knowing, it happens that the noetic ratio of the
veritas conforms to the ontic and to that extent is or is not vera ratio-- . . . Fundamentally, the
ratio, either as ontic or noetic is never higher than the truth but the truth is itself the master of all
rationes beyond the contrast between ontic and noetic deciding for itself, now here now there,
what is ver ratio . . . ”101

In conclusion as far as the Bible as Word of God is concerned it can now be said that it is
the inner text of the Bible that testifies to the truth of the outer text. It is also the inner text that
should correspond to the ontic and noetic ratios in the human understanding as faith seeks it.
Yet the dialectic between the word of humans and the Word of God still holds force, for even as
far as the noetic and the ontic ratios are concerned they are still subject to the act of God by his
special Word of grace. Faith grabs hold of this Word, yet it is only from time to time, from event
to event, that it knows how to correspond to the Truth. It must not despair, however, because the
necessity of theology precludes it finding true answers anywhere else. It is even true that when it
finds the answer it is an answer that is fundamentally and exclusively the actualization of a
reality and truth that has been established already. How this truth and reality is established
already is only to be found out by seeking to understand the essence and nature of God as He has
revealed Himself in, by, and through His Word, Jesus Christ.

99
Ibid., 46.
100
Ibid., 46-47.
101
Ibid., 47.
 If the dialectic between the Word of God and the word of humans is the vertical-dialectic
as necessitated by the limitations of the human and historical horizon, then as far as faith is
concerned, the supersession of this dialectic is established by the inter-Trinitarian relation of God
to be understood as the determination of true reality. This is essentially the ground of the
necessity and possibility of theology. Implicitly this then is also the ground of Christ as the
ontological determination of humanity. To understand how this is so, I now turn to Barth’s
Church Dogmatics, Vol. I/1.

The Doctrine of the Word of God as Expressed in Church Dogmatics, Volume I/1

I. The Word of God

If there is one fundamental difficulty Barth seeks to overcome in his Church Dogmatics, it
is precisely the possibility of doing theology or dogmatics at all.102 Ultimately humans stand
before a mystery which is at the same time the source and therefore the possibility of theology
and dogmatics: a mystery however it remains. For this reason prayer is the necessary condition
for doing dogmatics.103

The question after the possibility of dogmatics cannot however centre on the distinction or
opposition between reason and faith. The question is not how human knowledge can be possible
in the face of revelation, but what is real human knowledge of Godly revelation. It is ultimately
Christ Himself Who speaks to and is the being for human beings in this way. The question how
the Word of God is related to human beings, and their actions and thoughts, is treated in the
doctrine of the Word of God.

In the Introduction I referred to Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God in three-fold form. A
review is not necessary here. It is necessary to highlight and expose Barth’s understanding of
the relationship of the form in which the Word of God comes and the content of this Word as
they are related to the human being in reality. The question behind this investigation is an
understanding of Barth’s conception of the possibility of the experience of the Word of God.
102
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Vol. I. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955) 22-
23.
103
Ibid., 25.
 I am convinced that Barth’s concept of revelation stands or falls with his perception of the
experience of the Word of God. This investigation has in turn everything to do with Barth’s
conception of the Trinity in relation to his doctrine of the Word of God.

Barth’s insistence to continually and consistently start with God and His revelation is
conditioned by his understanding of the possibility of the Triune God to provide the occasion of
human participation and experience of His Word. The possibility of the experience of the Word
of God, however, must at all costs be articulated so as also to maintain the definite and eternal
qualitative distinction between God and the human being. Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God
and his Doctrine of the Trinity in relation to it precisely attempt to accomplish this.

There are thus three forms of the Word of God: the oral, the written, and the revealed. The
designation of them as forms must be taken note of. As forms they cannot be at this point
equated with the content. What Barth described earlier with the distinction between the
objective Credo and the subjective credo, between the inner and the outer text of the Scriptures,
and between the Ratio Dei and the human ratio, pertains also to the difference between the form
and the content of the Word of God, to a lesser or greater extent. The dialectic between God and
human beings, between the unveiled and the veiled, between God’s Word and the human word,
here plays itself out as the dialectic between form and content. Let me expand on this.

When Barth speaks of the three forms of the Word of God he always refers to them as
standing in a relation to something, which informs them. With respect to the preached Word of
God that which informs it is the actual event of the Word of God causing the preached word to
become the actual Word of God, from time to time.104

104
Ibid., 98-99. As Barth notes himself in this context, it is not merely coincidental that
with his notion of the Word of God becoming the actual Word of God a discussion of the Lord’s
Supper is connected. I contend that, in fact, this connection is pertinent on all accounts. Barth
allied himself with the Zwinglian-Calvinistic interpretation of the elements of the Lord’s Supper,
which strongly proposed that the finite is not capable of the infinite. One can see that Barth’s
Doctrine of the Word of God, against all the Lutherans of his day is a working out of this
‘Reformed’ view. Cf. Bonhoeffer’s criticism of Barth’s notion of revelation as pure act of God
in, Act and Being Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. Trans. H.
Rumscheidt (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996). In essence the difference between Barth and
Bonhoeffer is rooted in the difference between Reformed and Lutherans on this point. Barth’s
abundant references to Luther in this chapter of his Church Dogmatics with reference to the
 The written Word of God testifies also to events that point beyond itself. As canonized
Scripture, it is a recording of events that have already happened, of words that have already been
spoken. The Scriptures, however, maintain authority, and priority over the preached word today
because the Church’s recollection of revelation of God in the past has ascertained the canonized
Scriptures as her object. This is so because at the same time the Bible contains the promise for
future revelation for which the Church longs and upon which it depends for her existence.
However, the written word shares with the preached word that it too must from time to time
become God’s Word to us in virtue of the act of God.105

The eternal or revealed Word of God is the form of the Word of God as the actual event to
which the preached and the written Word point. It is that Word to which the biblical figures
witness. John the Baptist as the prophet standing between the Old and New testament is the
prototype of this witnessing. Here Barth refers to his beloved painting of Grünenwald in which
John is depicted with an elongated finger pointing to Christ on the cross. Yet Barth again
cautions that even the most faithful witness is not the event itself. In fact, this witnessing is
purely formally different from the event. In so far as it is the revealed Word it actually is the
Word to which the preached and written word testify. As such it is the unconditioned and at the
same time the conditioning form of the Word of God. It is the ground of all possible self-
realizations.106

Pertaining to the content of the Word of God, Barth discusses the nature of the Word of
God under the Word of God as God’s Language, God’s Language as God’s Act, and God’s

Word of God I think are misleading. Barth’s approach is mostly formal, whereas Luther spoke
of the Word of God appropriated in a existential, material way. Lutherans held that the finite was
capable of the infinite.
105
Ibid., 111-124. At this point Barth refers to the doctrines of the Lutherans of the power
of the Word of God and agrees with them, but not fully. This ‘not fully’ is precisely due to the
fact that Hollaz, whom Barth speaks about in this context, thought of the Word of God not as act
but as potential and as such needed no new act to make it God’s Word. God’s Word is God’s
Word even extra usum. Ibid
106
Ibid., 124-135. In this context, speaking of the unity of the Word of God, Barth draws
the attention to the Trinity. The three forms can be seen as analogy of the three-in-oneness of the
Father (revelation), the Son (Scripture), and Holy Spirit (preaching).
Language as God’s Mystery.107 The emphasis must lie on God to prevent any point of
connection with the human realm of self-induced possibilities.

The first important differentiation is that the Word of God comes to us as act of God in
speech. This speech is preeminently spiritual. As such it is not natural or human. Yet it is also
not not human, for in the form it comes to us it must be natural and human as well otherwise it
could not be understood. As speech of God it is thus primarily spiritual, and subordinately
human and natural.

Secondly, the act of God is personal: it is personal speech with which we are concerned,
because it is speech of a Person. As such it is concrete, and has objective content. However this
personal concreteness and objectivity is something that neither can be foreseen nor duplicated.
Here Barth is actually referring to the Word of God, as the unconditioned and at the same time,
the conditioning form. Ultimately it is, as God’s revelation, identical with Jesus Christ His
Son.108 However, it can only be this indirectly for us, namely as that which informs the form.
By virtue of the act of God it can become Jesus Christ for us.

Thirdly, when God acts He acts purposefully. His acts mediated through His Words have
an address and intentions. And as it is God who speaks, who is personal and addresses us, His
Word is something that comes to us as free and sovereign. It is wholly and only determined by
God when He addresses and acts towards us.109 This only may occur from time to time. It is a

107
Barth starts this paragraph by correcting his previous dogmatics in which he spoke at
this point of the move from the phenomenological to the existential. He regrets this terminology
for it feeds the misunderstanding that he again attempts to existentialize and so anthropologize
the revelation of God. In this context he speaks of Gogarten’s endeavour to seek a point of
contact in the human being with revelation. He warns Gogarten, even with reference to the War,
that it is possibly not wise to follow in Schleiermacher’s tracks. Ibid.,143-144.
108
Ibid., 155. Here Barth refers to John 1. There God’s Word is not different from
God’s Son. However at the same time God’s Word is not more then a signification for us. We
can only know and experience it through this name, this word. It is first self-referential and then
also a reference for us. In other words the distinction must be made between the Word signified
and the signification of the Word. Or, and let me be suggestive, between das Wort and das
Wort-an-Sich. Ibid., 156-157.
109
Ibid., 159. On this page Barth sets up his approach against those who place the
Doctrine of the Word of God within an anthropological framework. Barth places his Doctrine of
the Word of God within the framework of God’s freedom, His sovereign good pleasure, and His
purposeful acting towards human beings.
particular event that needs to be repeated without us being able to anticipate, or duplicate it.
Even the Bible as such, or the proclamation, cannot be equated or identified with it.
Nevertheless the Word, thus occurring, aims at our existence, because it is God our Creator Who
speaks as He spoke when we were created. And so it aims at establishing the renewal of our
relationship with God. He again sets up His covenant with us by His Word as Reconciler and
finally will show Himself to be the content of His Word at the end of time. This is the final and
most appropriate image of God as the content and fulfiller of His own Word. As such, He is the
One who is always coming to us from the outside and from the future, and so remains Lord of
His own revelation.110

The Word of God as God’s speech is the same as God’s act, understood from God’s side.
For God, Word and Act are one. In history, that is in the realm of human existence, we must
differentiate between word and action, promise and fulfilment. From God’s side, that is from
eternity, this distinction cannot be made. When God speaks, it is. God’s Word strictly and
formally speaking is God’s original utterance in His revelation: it is the time of Jesus Christ.111
This is the revealed Word of the God that stands at the back of all human utterances in so far as
these utterances attempt to point to Christ. Jesus Christ as the Eternal Word of God is the final
and ultimate reference point in whom act and word are one. Therefore the historical, as such, is
never the direct bearer of revelation.

Lessing’s big ditch, the dictum that the accidental truths of history are never the necessary
truths of reason, cannot be overcome in the way Lessing himself attempted to overcome it, i.e.,
with an appeal to the Spirit and Power, with an appeal to an inner relationship between us and
Christ. This would again amount to an anthropologizing of God and His Word. All those who
followed in Lessing’s tracks never found it difficult to view history as revelational. This was,
however in contrast to Kant.112 He essentially denied this possibility.

110
Ibid., 162.
111
Ibid., 164.
112
Ibid., 166-167. Barth does not side with Lessing’s solution of the ‘big ditch’ problem.
He, however, does acknowledge the observed difficulty. It is in fact precisely with his own
doctrine of the Word of God as his view of revelation that Barth attempts to circumscribe the
observed difficulty. Jesus Christ, as the Eternal Word and ultimate reference point, circumscribes
this difficulty in principle. In the end, for Barth too revelation is always historical, but history is
 Revelation as God’s act is directly in itself not subject to the problem of the historicity of
the Word of God.113 I ask, how could it be otherwise? God as God knows Himself and His acts
directly, and perfectly. He is identical with Himself and so is His Word identical with Him. It is
therefore only contingently that the Word of God may be established as Word of God and only
by virtue of an act of God.

Saying all this amounts in essence to a tautology. Philosophically all problems of logic are
only problems till they can be brought back to an original truthful relation of propositions. In
Barth’s analysis God can only be truly related to and with Himself. In the way of history, God
and human beings, cannot be brought back to an original, truthful relation. Only in revelation, in
Christ as the Eternal Word of God, can human beings be brought to an original truthful relation
with God. The problem of the historical is circumscribed by Barth with continual reference to
the Eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ. This is the only possibility amidst all human
impossibilities because it is the Godly possible.

With respect to the Word of God as the act of God it must finally be understood as God’s
mystery. If Barth has not already said enough about the human, natural, and historical incapacity
for the Word of God, here Barth emphasizes it again. The Act and Word of God as mystery is
beyond any possible or even imaginable description or reflection in terms of and with reference
to the natural, historical, human realm of limitations.

What is involved here is not merely a paradox. That in and of itself would only point to a
vertical dialectic. The vertical dialectic is superseded by another kind of dialectic. A dialectic

never revelational. In this he thus sides with Kant and the Enlightenment. The knowableness and
the experience of the Word of God must overcome this distinction, in my view, in order for it to
be true knowledge and experience of the Word of God. Cf. Peter Halman Monsma, Karl Barth’s
Idea of Revelation. (New York, Somerville: Somerset Press, Inc., 1937) esp. 147-200. I am
indebted to Monsma for indicating the incommensurability between form and content in Barth’s
idea of revelation. In my email correspondence with McCormack, McCormack acknowledged an
acquaintance with Monsma’s thought. He however disavowed of Monsma’s interpretation even
though Monsma’s approach is comparable to his own genetic approach. Monsma puts Barth’s
idea of revelation also in the context of Barth’s theological development referring even to private
conversations he had with Barth when he attended his lectures and spoke to Barth personally. I
contend that Monsma’s Nein to Barth is just as legitimate and justifiable as Barth thought his
Nein to Emil Brunner was. This in part accounts for the ‘wrong-headed’ assumptions
McCormack accused me of .
113
Ibid., 168.
which takes place in God, as triune God, Himself.114 Making room for the acknowledgement of
God’s own inner dialectic, Barth defines the mystery of the act of God as “the veiling of God in
which he meets us by actually unveiling Himself to us: because he cannot unveil Himself to us in
any other way than by veiling Himself.”115 This way of describing the mystery of the act of God
is to prevent any possible identification with the anthropological horizon. It is a way of
describing the form of the Word of God in a double indirect way: even when God is thought to
have revealed himself in spite of the human, natural, and historical forms (first indirect way) then
it still remains true that revelation remains veiled (second indirect way). The rending of this
unrendable veil is the miracle of God’s revelation as mystery.116

This double indirect way always accounts for the one-sidedness of the revelation of God. In
His veiling in unveiling and His unveiling in veiling God remains beyond anything that

114
McLean in his book, Humanity in the Thought of Karl Barth, also notes a continuity in
Barth’s dialectical methodology. For him there are five interpretive keys to the understanding of
Barth’s anthropology. I record three as they directly relate to my claims. Mclean asserts that,
“(1) the object generates the method, (2) form and content need to be understood together, and
(3) dialogical-dialectical thought is based on the model of conversation.” Mclean, Stuart D.
Humanity in the Thought of Karl Barth. (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark LTD. 1981) 13-14. On the
whole, Mclean interprets Barth with the purpose of making him accessible to social scientists
(vii). Therefore in my view he horizontalizes Barth’s Christological anthropology. I contend
that Barth supersedes the vertical-dialectic with reference to what takes and took place within the
Trinity. Mclean interprets and applies what has taken place within the Trinity in terms of an
interactional and relational model of conversation. In essence he too, therefore, loses the
possibility of referring to real experience of the Word of God. The Word of God merely
becomes an analogy, in his hands. Fundamentally Mclean highlights the converse of what I am
trying to say. He absorbs God in a human model of understanding. I contend that Barth absorbs
the human in God (see vii).
115
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 188.
116
Ibid., 191. In the section of elucidation on this concept of revelation, Barth states that
above all he seeks to protect revelation, that is Jesus Christ, from any direct or relatively indirect
proof of Christianity’s superiority to all other religions. What seems in the long run to be most
effective is to treat Christianity expressly, and unadulteratedly historical, and so not much mix
the categories of revelation and history. As we saw, for Barth history is never revelational. From
his Kantian point of view Barth treats history, and so also the historical Word of God, as
incapable of the infinite. For this reason we must treat Christianity unadulteratedly historical and
never mix history as such with revelation. From his Hegelian dynamic point of view revelation
is always in need of becoming historical. The Word of God therefore must also from time to
time become actual Word of God. I contend that Barth, because of his ontological-relational
approach, makes this becoming impossible and his view of the Word of God, conditioned in this
way, untrue.
acquiesces with us. His revelation cannot even be transposed into an intuition of our own or into
an attitude of correspondence. It is only in faith that we acknowledge the limitations of human
beings and simultaneously acknowledge the mystery of God in His revelation. In faith therefore
we are lead through form to the content of the Word of God respectively, and vice versa.117

Barth also speaks in different terms of this dialectic of veiling and unveiling. “The Word
of God in its veiling--its form-- is God’s demand upon man. The Word of God in its unveiling--
its content--is God’s turning to man.”118 Or simply put, the veiling, the form of the Word of
God is the Law, and the unveiling, the content is the Gospel. The former Barth interprets as the
opus alienum of God’s grace, and the latter as the opus Dei proprium.

Barth time and time again cites Luther in this context. His quoting of Luther, in the way
Barth does it, is misleading. Barth collapses the law and the Gospel, whereas Luther saw it as
his obligation to, at all costs, distinguish between them.119 If the actual content of the Word of
God is the Gospel, and for Barth this is so because Christ is the actual Word of God
preeminently, and if the form is always and only that which is not actually the Word of God, then
the Law cannot be actually the Word of God and so collapses in the ultimate and only actuality
of the Word of God, the Gospel.

Although we are led in faith through form to content, and through content to form the one-
sidedness of the Word of God as mystery is primarily determined by the fact that it is God’s
Word. Therefore, at all times, if and when we grasp the Word of God in faith, it is actually the
Word of God grasping us. This is the work of the Spirit. The possibility of grasping, or rather,
of being grasped, lies entirely in the hands of the Holy Spirit Who is the Lord over the Word of
God and the Lord over our reception of it. This is ultimately how the Word of God comes to
human beings and is related to our natural and historical existence.

117
Ibid., 201.
118
Ibid., 204.
119
Werner Elert, The Christian Ethos. trans. Schindler Carl. J. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg
Press, 1957) 302-303, see also 297-330. Elert refers to Barth’s Evangelium und Gesetz. Over
against it he posits Luther’s understanding who wrote “‘A law that does not condemn is a
fictitious and painted law like a chimera or a tragelaphus’ (a frightening beast of medieval
mythology), . . . ” (303).
 The possibilities lie entirely in the hand of God and His Word and to these we cling in
faith. However I ask, how then is the Word effectual for us and in us? How is it possible to
know and experience the Word of God if all Barth has established so far is that humans can
know and experience the form, which is not the content? How is it possible that human beings
do know and experience the content if it is ultimately and only described as miracle, as act of
God in His veiled unveiledness and His unveiled veiledness, as mystery?

Barth points to the relation between the Word of God and anthropology by asking whether
human beings can be the bearers of the Word. In the context of this question he delineates the
shift from an essentially theoretical science (Thomas Aquinas) to an essentially practical one
(Duns Scotus) which culminated in a anthropological theology (Schleiermacher).120

Having said all this it follows that the answer Barth posits with his theology of the Word
of God is altogether determined by the question he sees himself answering with the tools he had
acquired in his own liberal training.

Returning to Barth’s answer, the context against which he posits his doctrine of the Word
of God, is clear. Clarifying the answer Barth sees as necessary, true, and real, he defines the
problem more narrowly as pertaining to the presupposition of a general capacity of religious
experience in human beings, which in turn can attain the critical significance of a norm.121 All
this, however, must be turned into the presupposition that there exists something outside of the
self which has the particular capacity, and it alone, for religious knowledge and experience and is
the cause and norm of all that is human. As such this something exists to such an extent that it
cannot not exist by the very definition of its truth and reality. This something is God, who exists
as mysterion in Jesus Christ as His revelation.122 In other words, God in His Word is and must
become the object and the determining subject of human reality.

What Barth counters here in the final analysis is an anthropological starting point. looking
at it from the perspective of the history of philosophy and theology, it is the Cartesian turn to the
subjective, that Barth counters here. Instead of presupposing the human being as the ultimate
determining subject, God is presupposed as both the object and determining subject for human
120
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 218-219.
121
Ibid., 220.
122
Ibid., 222.
beings. This is the core of Barth’s theological methodology. He begins with God-certainty and
so “in the real knowledge of the Word of God in which that beginning alone will be made, there
is also the event that it is possible, that that beginning can be made.”123

Barth contends that this is fundamentally a positive finding. I contend it is positive only in
so far as having established a reference point. To be sure, for Barth this reference point has its
own power, for it establishes its own hearers in obedience. Yet even as self-authenticating
reference point it must still be known and experienced as actually authentic for a true and real
self-understanding. The content of the Word of God as the mystery of the wisdom of Christ,
however, never actually touches the natural, historical horizon of human knowledge. Thus I
conclude as critique that the Word-in-Itself remains mystery in the phenomenal world.

When Barth speaks of experience of the Word of God, he describes a way of experiencing
the Word which amounts to experiencing God as the One who determines human self-
determination. The question still before us in the context of this concept, is, how does the
determination of the human being’s self-determination amount to experience of the Word of
God? Somewhere these two determinations must overlap to make experience of the word of
God real experience. Such overlapping Barth says comes in the form of the human being’s
determining self standing in “the secret judgement of grace” or disfavour of God, who alone
judges even this self-determination.124 How does this amount to experience of the Word of
God? It amounts to the experience of being directed, of being determined by the Word of
God.125

Again, however, Barth never gives an answer to the question, what is it to experience
determination. Pointing to experiencing being directed is again avoiding the real question for the
character, nature of the experience. Essentially Barth still only points to the form in which God’s
Word comes to human beings. The how of God’s Word coming to us in this way excludes an
actual positive affirmation of the content of the Word of God in relation to the human subject.

Ultimately for Barth, all that human beings can ever experience is what is only human.
Even the experience of the Word of God by humans is questionable as soon it becomes
123
Ibid., 223.
124
Ibid., 229.
125
Ibid., 230.
experience understood existentially. Then, according to Barth it would necessarily cease to be
experience of the Word of God. Therefore Barth answers the question what the experience of
the Word might consist of, a question so decisive for the whole problem of this section,126
finally with the concept of acknowledgement.

In acknowledgement the content of the Word of God becomes content for me.127
Acknowledgement is the human side of standing before God’s Word as knowledge, person,
power, as contingent contemporaneous revelation, as power of disposal to a necessity, as
decision of God in freedom, as enigma (twofold indirectness i.e, mystery), as one-sided (pointing
to the necessity of continued occurrences of the Word of God, i.e., the experience of mystery),
and as spiritual (as the Wholly Other). All these designations of the Word of God I treated in the
discussion of Barth’s perception of the nature of God’s Word.

Especially with respect to spiritual nature of God, acknowledgement must be understood as

pure acknowledgement. This means that it must point to the fact of acknowledging something
which is what it is solely on account of itself. Therefore experience as acknowledgement must
not be understood as acknowledgement of experience otherwise the Word of God as such would
again be subsumed under and within the human subjective historical horizon. As soon as that
occurs it ceases to be genuine experience of the Word of God, according to Barth.128

In this context Barth returns to the question regarding a capacity human beings have for
religious experience: a question which he sees at the back of all inquiries after experience of
God. Barth emphatically counters such an affirmation of such a capacity. Therefore and finally,
it must be said that the possibility of experience of the Word of God is not a predicate of human
beings. Such a predicate belongs only to God and his Word. Logically this must be so if we
remember that a logical problem is no longer a problem if and only if it can be brought back to
an original truthful relation.129 This falls perfectly in place with the core of Barth’s theological

126
Ibid., 233.
127
Ibid., 234.
128
Ibid., 235-238.
129
Bradshaw refers to the inter-Trinitarian movements of God as in se and ad extra. In se
refers to God as He is in himself, necessitated by nothing or no-one, existing in freedom. Ad
extra refers to God in himself as He is related to creation and humanity in Jesus Christ. This is
so from eternity as he has “determined Himself ad extra by taking temporal manhood into God
method, namely the reversal of the Cartesian turn to the subjective. Not self-certainty, but God-
certainty must be sought after.130 Acknowledgement, the concept that incorporates the
experience of the Word of God, therefore is acknowledgement of that which is certain in and
with God.

Jesus Christ is the content of the Word of God. However, Jesus Christ who is God-
incarnate is as such always beyond this or that human experience for as such He is God’s Word
as mystery. Therefore, all we can assert about the possibility of experiencing the Word are
vague descriptions, which are still dubious, in and of themselves. It is even possibly true that
when we encounter an event of God’s Word as an act of God, the nature of this event precludes
the possibility of even pointing to it.131 Precisely and only in this fashion of speaking of the
knowledge and experience of the Word of God, Barth sees his point of view as properly
countering philosophical Cartesianism in whatever way the latter is disguised.132 Being
determined by the Word of God is therefore at the same time being founded upon “this mystery
that lies upon his hither side.”133

Ultimately Barth says that “homo peccator non capax-...verbi Domini. It is this real
experience [of being not capable] of the man claimed by the Word of God, which decides and
proves that what makes it possible lies beyond it.”134 “This Beyond claims consideration as the
genuine irremovable Beyond that cannot be brought to this side, claims consideration as the
Beyond of God the Lord, the Creator the Reconciler, the Redeemer.”135

before creation. . . . In Jesus Christ [as rejected and elected human being] God determines
Himself as creaturely reality. . . . The election of Jesus Christ, in Barth, approximates such [an
identity] principle.” Timothy Bradshaw, Trinity and Ontology A Comparative Study of the
Theologies of Karl Barth and Wolhart Pannenberg (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1988)
50, 52, 56. Cf. Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism. (New Jersey: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing Co. 1977) “...,the ‘dialectic of grace’ that [Barth] seeks to vindicate over
against Kant and Hegel is one that lives by the mercy of what is virtually an identity
philosophy.” Ibid., 414.
130
Karl Barth, CD, I/1., 224.
131
Ibid., 247-248.
132
Ibid., 249.
133
Ibid., 250.
134
Ibid., 252.
135
Ibid., 254.
 This brings Barth’s whole discussion of the experience of the Word of God back to the
original truthful relation that inheres in and with the Word itself. The necessity, truth and reality
of the Word of God, is first and foremost that which it is in and by itself . Even the fact that one
has become a new being must be included in the necessity, truth and reality of the Word of God
itself. There is no human subjective correspondence to truth of the Word of God (emphasis
mine).136 Even if there is ever experience it must take place as a miracle. And when we speak
of miracle we must speak of God’s unveiling in His veiling and His veiling in His unveiling.
This is ever beyond the grasp of human beings because it is God’s grasping of human beings in
Jesus Christ, the necessary, true, and real human being, the ontological determination of
humanity.

As the conclusion of the section on the experience of the Word of God Barth returns to a
discussion of faith and the Word of God. It is faith which made possible the possibility of the
experience of God in the first place. The same things can be said about faith as
acknowledgement. Faith is experience, as acknowledgement was described as experience.

At this point one can observe how closely Barth allies himself with Anselm’s treatment of
the concept of faith. However, as I observed, Barth interprets Anselm in light of his own
problematic, i.e., in light of his seeking to overcome the anthropological horizon and ultimately
the Cartesian turn to the human subjective. It is against this background that Barth posits His
concept of God and Word of God as that which in mystery is both determining object and subject
of the faith, necessity, truth, and reality of human beings.

Faith does not come in a vacuum. It is as faith of a human being connected to God,
because God is connected to human beings. Here we can speak of a point of contact.137
However, it now has become clear that this point of contact is not a creational- historical, natural,
human one, but a revelational-historical, above natural, Godly one. As such it is the image of
God as it comes to human beings in the Word of God. Faith connects to that lost image, to that
lost point of contact. This is the starting point for a theological anthropology. In essence it is

136
Ibid., 255.
137
Ibid., 273. Cf. my discussion on the necessity of theology.
again the affirming of divine possibility.138 It is at this point then that Barth moves into his
discussion of the Trinity.

In conclusion, from the discussion of the Word of God in Barth three important
observations can be made. First, Barth never moves beyond an analysis of the forms of the
Word of God. He presupposes an absolute impossibility on the part of human beings for the
Word of God (Homo peccator non capax verbi Domini). The reverse of which implies that
actually the forms are all human beings can ever speak of. Second, in so far as Barth speaks of
the content of the Word of God, which in effect is that which ultimately constitutes God’s Word,
Barth never moves beyond it as a description as mystery. I contend that it is paramount to
concede to the knowableness and experience of the Word of God, in order to propose a concept
of revelation that is necessary, true, real, and relevant for human beings. Third, on the basis of
one and two, Barth can actually never speak of knowledge and experience of the Word of God
concretely, and directly.139

This brings me to Barth’s treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity in relation to his
treatment of the Word of God. In God alone the Word of God for human beings has certainty; it
has God-certainty.

At this point, the Kantian philosophical dynamics in Barth, as I referred to them with the
notion of the actual Word of God as the miracle in the phenomenal world as the Word-in-
Itself,140 are complemented by Hegelian philosophical dynamics which are expressed with
reference to the inner-Trinitarian acts and relations of God. One might say of Barth, that as a

138
Ibid., 273-278.
139
Cf. Peter Halman Monsma, Karl Barth’s Idea of Revelation. (Somerville, N. J.:
Somerset Press, 1937) especially 198-201.
140
Frans Rosenzweig speaks of Kant’s concept of the miracle in the phenomenal world,
as the miracle of freedom. With Hegel, he says, this miracle sank back into the phenomenal
world, and in this way Kant served as the godfather to Hegel’s concept of universal history.
Frans Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1985) 10. Hegelian philosophy overcame an absolute dichotomy by asserting an ‘innermost
interconnection.’ This innermost interconnection was the law which united thinking and being
which stood at the apex of his dialectical system and was first announced “on the scale of world
history in revelation” (Ibid., 6-7). I term Barth’s concept of the Word of God as miracle in the
phenomenal world. With Hegel’s notion of the innermost interconnection, as Rozenzweig relates
it, Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity in connection with his doctrine of the Word of God overcomes
Kant in a similar manner. I will return to this relation.
theologian he moved beyond the Kantian critical stance on the coat tail of Hegelian philosophical
dynamics. Barth overcomes the turn to the subjective, and grounds the objective ontological
determination of humanity with his doctrine of the Trinity, as it is rooted in his concept of
revelation.

ii. The Trinity

Speaking of the doctrine of the Trinity Barth bridges the Word of God and Trinity with his
idea of revelation. Revelation he sees as the root of the Doctrine of the Trinity.141 Was his
doctrine of the Word of God not already primarily concerned with revelation? Barth says that it
was concerned with revelation indirectly. There he was concerned with the becoming of
revelation. In this section he is concerned with the being of it. In revelation “reposes and lives
the fulness of the original being of the Word of God in itself.”142 Barth thus wants to deal with
revelation and so start with God, and not with the three forms of the Word of God as these
always relate to human beings.143

How does God relate to humans as He is in himself? What needs to be made clear is that
God as “Revealer is identical with His act in revelation, identical also with its effect.”144 So
even if we are looking for the effect, speaking now of the Trinity, we must observe how even the
effect of God’s act is accomplished in Godself first.

In this context Barth says, “Logically the questions are simply about the Subject, predicate,
and object of the short sentence, ‘God speaks,’ ‘Deus dixit.’”145 In this way Barth seeks to start
with God proper. “In God’s revelation, God’s Word is identical with God Himself.”146 I
pointed out that this cannot be said about the forms of the Word of God, in so far as they are
forms.

141
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 349.
142
Ibid., 351.
143
Ibid., 335.
144
Ibid., 340.
145
Ibid., 340. Barth points out that this statement has been misconstrued. Many thought
that it referred to some kind of implicit proof for God’s existence from the bottom up. This is
not what Barth had in mind. The existence of God is presupposed so that it also may be
understood. Barth still holds to the truth of this statement and repeats it ‘in all formality.’
 But Barth goes further then moving between form and content. When he speaks of
revelation strictly from God’s side, he maintains that then he cannot make the distinction
between form and content. The statement, “God reveals Himself as the Lord” is an analytical
judgement.147

With reference to this statement I go back to what I observed when Barth made this
distinction in the treatment of the Doctrine of God. I contended that on the basis of Barth’s
analysis and description of the content of the Word of God in connection with knowledge and
experience of the Word of God, he still did and could only speak of content in terms of form.
The content of the Word of God proper is Jesus Christ as act of God in the event of revelation.
So when Barth here points out that revelation proper defies the distinction between form and
content, I contend that the content as previously distinguished from form, is actually that which
Barth designates here as revelation. The characteristics are the same. Both the content spoken of
earlier and the revelation spoken of here as the Word of God is what it is on account of itself in
freedom.

It is precisely at this point that I contend that Barth’s Kantian philosophical dynamics are
complemented by Hegelian philosophical dynamics. The statement, God reveals Himself as
Lord, described as analytic, points to the superseding of the dichotomy between the Word of God
and human beings in Godself.

In Kantian terms an analytic judgement is a judgement not subject to the problematic of the
possibility of a priori synthetic judgements. An analytic judgement according to its content is
merely explicative, meaning that nothing needs to be added to its content in order for it to be
necessary and true. As such “the predicate of an affirmative analytic judgement is already
thought in the concept of the subject, of which it cannot be denied without contradiction.”148 A
priori synthetic judgements, in Kant’s philosophy, deal with the coming to terms with the
empirical and the rational in the understanding.

146
Ibid., 349.
147
Ibid., 351.
148
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. (Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1977) 13.
 Barth utilizes Kant’s formal distinctions with reference to his own problematic of relating
the Word of God to human beings. Barth’s description of our knowledge of God could be
described in Kantian terminology as a posteriori analytic. This term formally implies that, that
which of itself is an analytic judgement can be known or experienced by a particular process of
empirical acquisition.149 The a posteriori must be left out in this context for Barth is dealing
with God as God is in Himself as Word and act. For that reason there is no need to make the
distinction between form and content, for strictly from God’s perspective His Word and Act are
one, i.e., God is not subject to a temporal working out of His Word as promise to be fulfilled.

This last observation relates to my claim that Barth employs Hegelian philosophical
dynamics. If Kant had thought to disprove Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of
God, Hegel deemed the existence of God to be a necessary outcome of the description of God as
“that which can be thought of only as existing; that is, that whose concept includes within itself
being.”150 For that reason Hegel thought of Anselm’s proof as the “first properly metaphysical
proof of the existence of God.”151

Kant had seen it wrongly, according to Hegel. Existence with respect to God is not a
predicate. Kant thought it was so. Hegel on the other hand conceived of God as “spirit itself in
its inner most life, the ‘wholly concrete totality’ of all possible determinations.”152

Barth does not share Hegel’s material conclusions, i.e., his historical dialectics. He
however does overcome the Kantian dichotomy between God and human beings, between
freedom and nature, between the noumenal and the phenomenal with Hegel, formally. This he
does by way of his interpretation of Anselm.

The formal similarity is Barth’s own description of the sentence ‘God speaks’ as including
subject and predicate, and his naming of the sentence ‘God reveals Himself as Lord,’ an analytic
judgement. In both, the subject and predicate are presupposed to be included.

149
Ibid., 26.
150
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1952) 135.
151
Gerald J. Galgan, God and Subjectivity. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.,
1990) 221.
152
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1925) 135.
 This is precisely how Hegel formally overcomes Kant’s critical philosophy. For Hegel
with reference to God the concept of existence properly belongs to the analysis of His being.
Hegel started to think from the unity of thought and being. Historically this was so with
reference to Parmenides. Then he investigated how this unity appears in becoming. Historically
this was the core of the philosophy of Heraclitus.153 The history of philosophy and the
philosophy of history exemplifies the dialectic of the becoming of being and the search for the
being of becoming.

Hegel’s dialectic which synthesizes the core problematic of the philosophy of being is
analogous to Barth’s positive answer to the dialectic of the Word of God and human beings.
The Word of God is first what it is in itself. As revelation of God it is identical with the act of
God and its effect. As such it already incorporates the outcome of its intended purpose. Yet, and
therefore I say that Hegel’s philosophical dynamics only relate formally to Barth’s concepts of
revelation and Trinity, because God’s Word stands in relation with human beings who are not
God in terms of the three forms of the Word of God, it continually needs to become through
these forms.154 The Word of God in relation to human beings, is always the Word of God in
becoming.

In faith, human beings must be ever aware of what this means for their own being. For
Barth this meant that human beings in acknowledgement of the Word of God are subject to its
determination as they are confronted by it. The human being in the act of acknowledgement
clings to that which is in God, necessary, true, and real, and so becomes aware of that which
already is and therefore needs to become. In this way, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is the
ontological determination of humanity.

153
Ibid., 137-140.
154
Hegel essentially horizontalizes revelation with his concept of universal reason. For
that reason Barth can observe that “Hegel’s living God--he saw God’s aliveness as well and saw
it better than many theologians--is actually the living man.” Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in
the Nineteenth Century, 419. For this reason I make the distinction between the vertical-
dialectic, which Hegel overcomes with reference to the vertical-dialectic itself, and the
supersession of it, which Barth does with reference to the Trinity. Barth’s idea of revelation is
fundamentally opposed to Hegel’s, for ultimately Hegel also still moved within the realm of
human subjectivity. Cf. Karl Barth, Ethics. Trans. Geoffrey. W. Bromiley. (New York: The
Seabury Press Inc., 1981) especially 311-318.
 My maintaining that Barth employs Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics is
because Barth saw himself as a theologian, not a philosopher. Therefore he did not necessarily
share their material presuppositions nor conclusions. However formally he adopted their
dialectic dynamic. From Kant he adopted the dialectical dynamic which stressed the limitations,
the impossibility of the human being coming to God to become who he ought to be. From Hegel
Barth adopted the dialectical dynamic which formally illustrated the concept of the possibility of
the human being becoming what in God’s Word already is. As a theologian Barth unites the
former with the latter with his own concept of the analogy of faith. By faith human beings know
who and what they are, because by faith they are connected with God who is both the subject and
object of faith in His Word which is always a word in becoming.

iii. The Word of God as Intricately Connected to the Trinity

In connection with the Doctrine of the Word of God, the Trinity must be understood as the
ultimate Subject of revelation.155 For Barth the stress must lie on the “final and decisive
confirmation of the insight that God is one.”156 That means that faith does not have three
objects but one, namely God as He is in Himself. The sentence “God reveals Himself as the
Lord” testifies to the oneness of God, for precisely in His Lordship God’s essence is expressed.
God as Lord over His revelation indicates God’s sovereignty and freedom over His own act with
regard to His own Word. This constitutes the unity of God in His three-ness.157

This emphasis of God as Lord over His revelation guards the distinction between Creator
and creature. It re-emphasizes the infinite qualitative distinction between God and the human
being, against modern naturalism and pantheism.158

Barth sees all anti-Trinitarianism either denying the true actual revelation of God, or the
unity of God; either they deny true Godly revelation by emphasizing the unity of God, or they
deny the unity of God by emphasizing the revelation of God. Against these tendencies Barth

155
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 409.
156
Ibid., 409.
157
Ibid., 401.
158
Ibid., 403.
seeks to posits his own description of a unity of God in revelation. He refers to Schleiermacher
as an example of over emphasizing the unity of God at the cost of his revelation. This was
expressed by Schleiermacher in his modalism. Revelation viewed only as mode of God’s
essence, which is itself beyond this revelation, is reducing revelation to a mere phenomenon.
Faith in such a concept of revelation then amounts to idolatry. Against this the unity in the
three-ness of God and His revelation must be affirmed so that revelation really shows forth God
as God and not as mere phenomenon.159 Christ is really God and is the revelation of God in His
Word.

Viewing the essence of God as Lord of His Revelation includes the possibility of God
manifesting Himself as three. This guards against emphasizing the threeness of God at the
expense of His unity. God is capable of distinction in revealedness.160 In His revelation God
gives Himself as three persons. His essence is thereby not annulled but affirmed. In this way
Barth seeks to maintain the unity of God in His revelation.

With the concept of revelation we become aware of the formal relation of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit as individual existences. As far as content is concerned, which actually relates to the
unity of God, Barth found it inexpressible. This is because revelation as we have it, know it, and
experience it according to its formal characteristics does not explicitly express this content.
Barth says it this way. He applies a ternary of 1) Revealer, 2) Revelation, and 3) Revealedness.
1)The Revealer is the ground of revelation as mystery. 2)“Revelation signifies something utterly
new over against the mystery of the Revealer.”161 As such it is the event of revelation as
hidden. 3)The Revealedness is the purpose of the first two. The unity of God essentially relates
to the inexpressible content of even the individual modes of existences. “For everything here
distinct in content must be thought of as being in its variety sublimated once more in the unity of
the Divine essence.”162

As far as human beings are concerned the proper and possible reference to God must be
made with regards to “the three individual modes of existence of the one God, consisting in their

159
Ibid., 404-405.
160
Ibid., 407.
161
Ibid., 417.
162
Ibid., 418.
mutual relationships.”163 “All we can know of God according to Scripture testimony is His
acts.”164 We do not know His essence which was defined as God’s Lordship over His
revelation, which as such is God’s freedom in decision.165

Essentially therefore, God’s essence can be described as God’s freedom. This corresponds
with Barth’s definition of God’s essence as God’s Lordship over His revelation. “On this
freedom rests the inconceivability of God, the inadequacy of all knowledge of the revealed
God.”166 If there were any conceivability it is due to a free act of God’s grace. This
conceivability is absolutely separate from who God is in Himself first.

In revelation the three-in-oneness, the essence of God, becomes conceivable. It becomes

conceivable only in inconceivability.167 Here we are back at God’s unveiling in veiling and His
veiling in unveiling. In essence Barth repeats here what he said in the context of the discussion
of the Word of God, but now with reference to the Trinity.

In the context of the discussion of the Word of God, I pointed out that Barth fundamentally
sought to counter Cartesianism. Barth countered Descartes’ self-certainty principle with his
own principle of God-certainty, and so denied any vestiges of capacity for the revelation of God
in human beings. Here this concept or principle returns with the emphatic statements: “The
Subject of revelation is the Subject that remains indissolubly Subject. We cannot get behind the
Subject. It cannot become an object.”168

These statements essentially indicate a reversal of the subject-object scheme of the

Renaissance and the Enlightenment.169 In the Renaissance and the Enlightenment the human

163
Ibid., 421.
164
Ibid., 426.
165
Ibid., 426.
166
Ibid., 426.
167
Ibid., 427.
168
Ibid., 438.
169
Dr. De Graaff sees in the doctrine of predestination of Calvin a manifestation of a
countering of the subject-object scheme, a scheme so pervasive in the Renaissance which later
became absolutely conscious in Descartes. Calvin understood the spirit of his times as an
incipient manifestation of the autonomous human being. The human subject gained more and
more centre stage. Against this manifestation he posited the reversal of this scheme and
understood God to be the ultimate Subject and the human being the object. His doctrine of
predestination evidences the result of this consistent either/or thinking. I see Barth following
being became the subject of determination and God the object determined. For Barth, God is
understood as the ultimate and indissoluble Subject of determination and the human being the
determined ‘object.’ This I regard as the ground motif and the core of Barth’s theology and
theological method.

The great question attached to this motif concerns the function of the Word of God. As
Word of God it must speak concretely as real speech to us, about us, for us, and ultimately in us.
Barth’s theology tends to be reduced to God’s monologue. When he speaks of God both being
subject and object of his own revelation, as producer and product of His own activity it testifies
to the truth of my observation. Grace must not be understood in such a way. Grace is inherently
dialogical.170

I observed so far that for Barth the essence of God can be described as God being the Lord
over His own revelation, that this statement is an analytic judgement, that the statement Deus
dixit includes subject, predicate, and object, that God is producer and product of His own
activity, and that in all this God exists in freedom, and as such is only unveiled in His veiledness
and veiled in His unveiledness. The rest of Barth’s treatment of the Trinity proceeds with these
established presuppositions in mind.

God as Creator and Eternal Father is always these as Lord. As Creator, God is Lord over
our existence as the One who has overcome this existence of ours. Death is the event of
recognition that God is our Creator. Our existence is “our will and ability to live in its limitation
by death.”171 God is Lord of our existence as the power superior to life and death. As such He

Calvin on this matter, but now after the occurrence of Descartes and Cartesianism. Dr. F. de
Graaff, Als Goden Sterven (Rotterdam: S.C. van Wieringen & Zoon, Alphen a.d. Rijn, 1970)
190-215.
170
Ibid., 192. Cf. The Star of Redemption In this book Rosenzweig develops his notion
of speech-thought. By doing this he broke through the grip of ontological categories in which he
saw western philosophy entangled. The fundamental notion in speech-thought is the
replacement of the copula is with the conjunction and. Revelation must be understood as
mediating between God and the human being and the World apart from Greek philosophical
categories of being. That grace is in this sense dialogical and not ontological corresponds to
Berkouwers’ claim that Barth falls into the nature-grace scheme, whereas the Reformers
employed a sin-grace scheme (cf. note 64). In the latter scheme the dialogical is not determined,
and I would say undermined, by primarily ontological considerations.
171
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 446.
really is the Lord of our existence as our Creator. “Our existence is held by Him, and only by
Him, over the abyss of non-existence.”172

God as Creator and Eternal Father is interpreted Christologically. Barth does not start with
referring to the Creation account in Genesis, but starts with Golgotha and the Resurrection. In
these two events God shows Himself Lord of our existence. Is the phrase, ‘Lord of our
existence,’ not equivalent to Creator?173 God is the Creator as the One who triumphed over
being as experienced and interpreted by us in Christ. Christ as the Victor over being and non-
being indicates that God the Father is Lord over our existence as Creator.

Having established God as Creator in this way, He is our Father, also and only first, with
reference to Christ as the Eternal Son.174 So God is first what He is for Himself. That includes
His relationship to us as Eternal Father. The adjective Eternal indicates this implicitly. Here
again we see the vertical-dialectic superseded by the inner-Trinitarian relations. In this way
Barth speaks of the indistinguishability of form and content.

In the supersession or sublimation of the vertical-dialectic one can speak of God as He is in

himself as Subject of revelation, indissoluble, and free. As such, existing in Trinity, God is both
content and form of His revelation. “There is here no question of any possibility of
distinguishing content and form, and regarding the content as Divine and necessary, the form as
human and accidental, the former as the essence, the latter as the historical appearance of
revelation.”175

It is exactly in this way that Barth seeks to counter natural theology and Cartesianism. At
this point of the discussion Barth’s pervasive Christology shines through most explicitly. It is
“in Jesus and only in Jesus [that God] becomes manifest as the Creator and so as our Father, it
follows that He is already what corresponds thereto, antecedently and in Himself, namely in his
relation to Him by whom He becomes manifest in his relation to Christ.”176

172
Ibid., 446.
173
Ibid., 446.
174
Ibid., 448.
175
Ibid., 448.
176
Ibid., 449.
 This is God’s “revelation of creation.” I say it is for this reason that, for Barth, the
historical can never be revelational, but that revelation needs to become historical--God’s word
for us is always God’s Word in becoming in the events of grace. It becomes what it already is,
antecedently. With respect to God as our Father, God needs to become what He is for us in Jesus
Christ.177 This closes the door to any affirmation of God’s Word as having any natural point of
connection with the human being as he or she exists historically. God’s Word is circumscribed as
first and exclusively speech to Himself. The mystery of God is sealed in the monologue of God
with Himself as Trinity.

Returning for a moment to Barth’s interpretation of Anselm, what we have here is an

affirmation of the necessity of theology. As, I noted, Barth conceived of faith as a desire to
participate in God’s mode of Being and so participate in God’s aseity. God’s mode of being in
God’s aseity was further connected to Anselm’s anthropology. God’s mode of being encounters
us in the Word which in turn encounters in us a potestas, a potentiality which Anselm described
as “the imago summae essentiae (of the holy Three-in-Oneness of God) per naturalem potentiam
impressa.”178 It is in faith that this potentiality is actualized.

Faith, and knowledge, and experience of the Word of God is essentially acknowledgement
of the necessity, truth, and reality of who God is in Himself. This is what faith seeks to
understand, and only in this way can the human being understand the self.

It is thus that the inner-divine truth and reality establishes certainty. This is the God-
certainty as opposed to self-certainty. In this way God is God. “It is--everything to be regarded
as an intra-divine relation of movement as the repititio aeternitatis in aeternitata!--the copy of a
type, the outcome of an origin, the word of a knowledge, the decision of a will.”179

Jesus Christ as God is also Lord over His own revelation. As revelation He recapitulates or
sums up the originality of divinity in His relation to the Father as Creator and Eternal Father. In
this way He is original creation revealed; He is God’s Word spoken to Himself from all eternity.
From this perspective “creation then means just divinity in its originality, above and beyond all

177
Ibid., 450.
178
See note 119.
179
Karl Barth, CD I/1., 452.
creatureliness.”180 As Word for us Jesus Christ is the original human being as divinity in its
originality. And so He is the ontological determination of all humanity.

The Holy Spirit as Lord is the one who sets free. “His operation consists in freedom,
freedom to have a Lord, this Lord, God as Lord.”181 In the application of the operation of the
Holy Spirit is it then yet true that homo peccator capax verbi divini? Far from it, it is more true
that the Word of God is, and has been, capable of sinful humanity. This is and was shown in the
revelation of Christ. Therefore the Holy Spirit is the actualiser of the potential which exists in
the freedom of God. The Human being is a child of God in order to become one.182

It is in faith that this occurs; faith in what already is from God’s side. The Word of God
has already been spoken to God Himself first, because it was God who spoke it. It is thus faith in
God’s monologue. God only speaks one Word, Jesus Christ. All other words are non-words, are
shadows, and ultimately pertain to that which is nothing in itself.

Implications for Anthropology

When one speaks of Christian theological anthropology from a revelational perspective the
primary concern involves a comparison and contrast between the first Adam and the second
Adam, Christ. The interpretation of Adam and Christ is important for an identification of the
self. The question revolves around the issue of representation of equals or non-equals. For the
human being in this world, faced with the revelation of God in the Scriptures, the question is,
how is Adam and/or Christ representative of me? For Barth the answer to this question is that
Christ is the real representative of the human being, and that Adam is the unreal representative
of Christ.

I have referred numerous times already to Barth’s statement that Christ is the ontological
determination of humanity. On the basis of what I have observed so far, this statement is in line
with the general direction and methodology of Barth’s doctrine’s of the Word of God and the
Trinity. With reference to these doctrines the plausibility of this statement is implicit.
180
Ibid., 512.
181
Ibid., 523.
182
Ibid., 522-523.
 My observation that the Word of God in terms of its actual content is not experienceable or
knowable directly but only in a double indirect sense--in the unveiled veiledness and the veiled
unveiledness of God in Christ, connected with the observation that Barth supersedes or supplants
the vertical-dialectic between the Word of God and human beings with a grounding of reality in
the inner-Trinitarian relations of act and Word, shows that Barth is bound to treat anthropology
from an ontological-relational perspective. Revelation is the ground of determination for creation
with the result that creation must be understood as be only the unreal reflection of the ultimate
will of God. This implies that Christ is the real, the οντος ον, human being for human beings.
Human beings as they experience and know themselves as sinners, only experience and know
that which is ultimately nothing in itself. Only in faith they can acknowledge what is, and as
such, what is to come.

The confirmation of these observations is Barth’s treatment of Romans 5. Pauck says in

his introduction to this book that Barth “erects his theology on the doctrinal foundations of the
Word of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation.”183 Besides that, he sees Barth developing the
“doctrine of creation on the basis of soteriology [CD III/1].”184 Soteriology having become the
basis of the doctrine of creation (I observed this implicitly in the discussion of God the Eternal
Father as Creator), Christ, as the one who saves, becomes the ontological determination for
humanity. Christ who “is the revealing Word of God, is the source of our knowledge of the
human nature God has made.”185 This is a radical departure of all traditional theological
anthropologies.186 The traditional anthropologies had always taken the human subjective
historical horizon as point of departure and ultimate reference.

Coming to Barth’s interpretation of Adam and Christ in the context of Romans 5, he says
that the primary anthropological truth and ordering principle is Christ, the secondary one is
Adam. Barth interprets Paul’s τύπος το μέλλοντος, the type of Him who was to come, as Adam
foreshadowing Christ.187 This means literally that the primary anthropological truth and
ordering principle is a supra-temporal ontology secured and established in Jesus Christ as the
183
Pauck in. Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5. trans. T. A.
Small (New York: Collier Books, 1962) 14.
184
Pauck in. Ibid., 15.
185
Ibid., 15. Here Pauck quotes Barth in his introduction to this book.
186
Pauck in Ibid., 15.
187
Karl Barth, Christ and Adam., 39.
human being in our stead. Better said, Jesus Christ is the real human being in its real and desired
form. Human beings are to be understood as the type of the anti-type, Christ. “Adam can
therefore only be interpreted in the light of Christ and not the other way around.”188

Human existence as this is constituted by the human beings’ relationship with Adam, is
only to be seen as an indirect testimony to the reality of Jesus Christ. On its own, human
existence has no important independent status.189 Formally the relationship of human beings
with Adam and Christ are from the start closely connected. The question is, is Christ the Master
of Adam, or Adam the master of Christ?190 This of course refers back to Barth’s description of
the essence of the Trinity as God being Lord over His own revelation.

I noted that as Lord over his own revelation God has already spoken and thus established
what is necessary, real, and true. Christ as the true representative of humanity from a
revelational perspective is actually the master of Adam as the ontological determination of
humanity. However from a human perspective the representative identity of Christ for humans,
is couched in a greatest possible dissimilarity.191 Nevertheless, “it is Christ who vouches for
the authenticity of Adam . . . . All humanity of Adam is only real and genuine in so far as it
reflects and corresponds to the humanity of Christ. Our relationship to Christ has an essential
priority and superiority over our relationship to Adam. He is the Victor and we in Him are those
who are awaiting the victory.”192 All we human beings are, are ‘provisional copies’ of what is
real in Christ.193 In this way, Barth grounds creation in soteriology and implicitly history in
revelation. Christ as Victor over sin, death and history is the reference for people existing in
history. As such Christ has overcome that which tends to non-being in itself.

How has Christ overcome this? He has overcome this as the real content of the Word of
God, as the message of God proclaimed in the Gospel. God has overcome the impossibility of
the human beings with His own Eternal possibility. God cannot not exist, and so Jesus as God
and human cannot not exist as the true and real determination of humanity, from eternity. Evil

188
Ibid., 40.
189
Ibid., 41.
190
Ibid., 44.
191
Ibid., 44.
192
Ibid., 45-46.
193
Ibid., 45-46.
and sin and the sinful human being are faced by the impossible possibility of self-annulment,
when confronted with the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the true and real human. The self-
annulment is possible from their side, but eternally impossible from God’s side.194 Therefore
the Word of God spoken to Himself first in Trinity, established the impossible possibility. The
Gospel is the one and final true Word God spoke, and therefore still speaks, because He spoke it
from Eternity to Himself.

The Law as Word of God only points to the unreal in itself, for it points to the human being
who in truth is not by virtue of Christ having overcome that which tends to nothingness. This is
not to say that nothingness is not something to be taken as real, far from it. But we cannot take it
as real unless we view it from God’s perspective who took it for real in overcoming it. Human
beings do not even know what real nothingness is unless they are confronted by God and His
Word. Barth contends that by ourselves we might view nothingness as ultimate. In God, God
has really overcome it in Christ, from eternity. He has overcome it in election for in His election
He rejects what he does not elect. Nothingness is rejected by God’s No as the shadow side of
His Yes. God in His essence is Lord, and as such also Lord over nothingness. However he is
Lord over nothingness, because He chose being.195 That choice is represented by Christ in
revelation as the Word of God.

This is the opus proprium of God. It is what was designated as the Gospel. What God
does not decide and therefore nullifies can only be the aim of His opus alienum.196 This is what
was designated as God’s Law. And thus God only speaks with one Word in his Monologue.
The object of the Word of God as Law is ultimately unreal. It follows that when human beings
are addressed by God’s Law, the Law addresses that in them that which is ultimately not. Even

194
Karl Barth, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics Selections by Helmut Gollwitzer. trans.
G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark 1961) 134-135.
195
Ibid., 136-40. It goes too far to compare and contrast Hegel’s philosophy of being and
nothingness in this point. It suffices to say that here again one is confronted with Hegelian
philosophical dynamics. With reference to the strict law of non-contradiction, in Hegel’s
dialectic of becoming, ‘givenness’ is ultimate, for in the dialectic of being in becoming,
nothingness is sublated and results in givenness Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952) 139. Hegel’s nothingness is a link in
the necessary dialectical movement of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis and thus determined,
Barth’s nothingness is ‘Lorded’ over. Cf. Karl Barth, Ethics 311-318.
196
Ibid., 140-41.
if their knowledge and experience says things to the contrary, they should not fret but only
believe in that which is real.

What does this imply for theological anthropology? It implies that when human beings are
confronted by the Word of God they are confronted with an actuality that cannot in essence
correspond to what is experienced and known in the face of God’s holiness as expressed in His
law and in His Word.197 When the Word of God points out that human beings are sinners in
themselves it can only mean that they, in so far as they experience themselves as sinners in the
face of God’s holiness, should discard it as ultimately unreal. This must also be so since I
observed that God’s Word as Law only pertains to form and not to the ultimate content of God’s
Word. The ultimate content is God in Himself. Even as pertaining to this ultimate content
however, I observed that this we can neither experience nor know. Only faith remains. Faith in
the mystery of God’s own freedom.198

197
Here Emanuel Hirsch’s views are relevant. The rest of Hirsch’s theses I alluded to
earlier (see note 23) precisely deal with this observation. He affirms, over against Barth that:
Scripture calls for radical obedience to so appropriate a life under God in accordance with God
(thesis 2), the life to which Scripture bears witness consist of a life of surrender to God of the
whole human being (thesis 3), the personalities in the Bible testify to a real relationship with God
to which our lives should correspond and so see clearly how we are rightly related to God (thesis
5), the Bible is basically a book which contains real life stories which can be our guide in certain
circumstances and so clarify the “concrete aspect of divine activity and relation.” Barth in.
Revolutionary Theology in the Making (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1964) 83-87.
Barth’s understanding of Law and Gospel fosters, according to Dr. W. Aalders ‘Evangelical
anarchy.’ “Whoever disavows creation and the law with the Gospel, falls with his faith into
bottomlessness, into anarchy . . . It is not an unfounded accusation to say that the theology of
Barth has fostered the present day political and moral anarchy, rather than prevented it.” Dr. W.
Aalders in. Barth Kohlbrugge Mascot: Ontwikkeling of Breuk? (my trans.) (Kampen:
Uitgeversmaatschappij J. H. Kok, 1984) 32.
198
"But in his desire to acknowledge without qualification the absoluteness of the divine
freedom is Barth not in his own thought limiting that freedom? In forbidding God to allow us to
make valid inferences about him is not Barth in effect legislating for the Deity? For he is saying
that in order to be sovereignly free God must remain, in relation to us, arbitrary and
unpredictable. But in that case the Lord of the universe is not free to reveal his love to man so
definitively that we can rest upon it and draw inferences from it; not free to make promises upon
which he means us to rely; not free to act consistently and therefore predictably in relation to his
creation. Surely in insisting that we cannot presume to know, from the self-revelation in Christ,
what God is like and what he will do, Barth is overprotecting the Creator’s freedom. He is
applying to God an anthropomorphic conception of freedom which denies to the Creator the
ultimate freedom to commit Himself to man in a revelation of divine love which is to be taken
 This finally all accounts for his definition of sin as “itself not a possibility but an
ontological impossibility for humanity. To be in sin, in godlessness, is a mode of being contrary
to our humanity.”199 200 This is the outcome of Barth’s concept of the Word of God as I have
delineated it. This is the final anthropological implication of his idea of the Word of God in its
relation to the human being.

Having treated both Barth’s perspective of the Word of God, one of the most important
issues emerges. This is the issue of historicity. In what way is the Word of God to be
understood, interpreted, and applied as historical? The answer to this question is of fundamental
importance in the determination of human self-understanding. A theological anthropology
therefore needs a truthful understanding of the nature and function of the Word of God.201 This
is clear from my discussion of Barth’s ultimate claims with regards to the human being. Jesus

seriously . . . ” John Hick, Death and Eternal Life. (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers,
1980) 260-261.
199
Karl Barth, in Karl Barth Theologian of Freedom. Ed. Clifford Green (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1991) 231.
200
Hunsinger’s book, How to Read Karl Barth, discusses the motifs in Barth’s theology
with his actualism as leit-motif; his concept of revelation as connected to his Doctrine of God.
To expound on all motifs goes beyond the intent of this thesis. I highlight what he says in
connection with the motif of objectivism and quote: “it was God who set the terms for what was
real . . . .Anything opposed, hostile, or contrary to the reality of God was ‘unreal’ by definition.
Therefore for Barth, the ‘impossible possibility’ was not love but sin. Sin (and sinful human
beings) existed in a netherworld of unreality. Sin’s origin was inexplicable, its status was deeply
conflicted, and its destiny was to vanish . . . . Since God’s love in Jesus Christ established
Barth’s concept of the real, his anthropology of sin had to be articulated in terms of the shadowy,
conflicted, the unreal.” George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 39. Cf. Barth in CD IV/1.
201
In note number 24 I allude to a debate between Hirsch and Barth on this issue. The
theses and anti-theses there noted in principle set the guidelines also for my discussion. On the
relation of history and anthropology see also K. Runia, De Theologische Tijd Bij Karl Barth met
Name in Zijn Anthropologie (Franeker: T. Wever). This is an unpublished dissertation about the
relationship of theological time in Karl Barth and his anthropology. One of Runia’s main
conclusions is, “that the reaction against historicizing of revelation causes Barth to underrate the
truly historical character of revelation, which appears, among other things, from his conception
of the history of the Creation as ‘unhistorical time’ and from his definition of the time of
revelation as ‘eternal time.’. . . All this detracts from the true temporariness of the revelational
events such as we find it in the Bible (John 1:14). Ibid., 252. Barth expresses the relationship of
time, the human being, and the Word of God is this way, “The man whose temporality is the
subject of our investigation is the creature whose relation to God is revealed to us in His Word, .
. . ” Karl Barth, CD III/2, 438.
Christ as the ontological determination of human nature made Adam the provisional copy. It
made sin the ontological impossibility and made history subordinate to the eternality of
revelation. In what way is the Word of God historical or does it need to become historical for us
human beings?

I listed two theses (Hirsch) and anti-theses (Barth) as recorded by Barth himself. In
principle these two theses and anti-theses sum up the difference between Barth’s and
Kohlbrugge’s perspectives and application of the Word of God. Thesis and anti-thesis 1 concern
the historical correspondence of the believer’s life to the Word of God. Hirsch says that the
Scripture testifies to a life that should take shape in us, thereby presuming the historicity of the
truth of the Word of God which therefore possibly can correspond to the believer’s own
historical existence in the presence. Barth’s anti-thesis shows him speaking out of eternity for
time. The historicity of the truth of the Word of God is conditioned by an eternal perspective.
Christ as the eternal Word of God is the One who is witnessed to in the Scripture. His life
should take shape in us. And in so far as the latter happens the I is not the directly experienced I,
but the I as acknowledged as new creature in Christ. Thesis and anti-thesis 4 concern the
directness or indirectness of the way God’s Word speaks, or confronts the human being. Hirsch
says that Scripture is rightly understood if it is understood as a word directed personally to the
human being. Barth’s anti-thesis shows that Barth understands the Word of God as working in
an indirect way. As such the Word of God has first to create its real addressee as not a word but
the Word of God.

I have noted that Barth understands Christ to be the ontological determination of humanity.
This claim is intricately related to his interpretation of the concept of the image of God as it is
found in the Word of God. What needs to be said from the start is that Barth with this claim
ultimately and fundamentally speaks with one Word about one reality whereas Kohlbrugge
speaks with one Word and about two realities in reference to the human being.

For both, the crucial point is the question whether one is with or without God. Barth’s
interpretation of the Word of God, seeing it witnessing to one reality, shows that “basically and
comprehensively, therefore, to be man is to be with God.”202

202
Karl Barth, CD III/2, 135.
Barth’s Interpretation of the Image of God

I will discuss Barth’s interpretation of the image of God as found in Genesis in the context
of what he has said about Christ and creation, and the Holy Spirit and creation. This is the
soteriological framework which elucidates the interpretation of the human being in the image of
God. Barth also has a specific section on history, myth and saga. I will also incorporate this in
my discussion as it pertains to the question of the historicity of the Word of God in relation to
theological anthropology.203

Barth’s overarching framework is the fact that God created out of nothing. It illustrates
that God is the Subject, totally and exclusively, of all that is.204

Speaking about Christ and creation, Barth exegetically puts this theme in the context of
other biblical texts, like: Col. 1:17, Jn. 1:1, and 1 Jn. 2: 13. All these passages Barth sees as
testifying to “the ontological connexion between Christ and creation.”205 In these passages
Christ as the Word of God is said to exist before all things, that is, in the beginning.206 The

203
Karl Barth in. Karl Barth Preaching Through the Christian Year A Selection of
Exegetical Passages from the Church Dogmatics trans. G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance.
selected John Mc Tavish and Harold Wells (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1978). I chose to use this selection because in it Barth is portrayed as exegete.
Kohlbrugge was only an exegete. My final comparison between Barth and Kohlbrugge is
properly exegetical in this way.
204
Ibid., 49. At the same time that which is not is simply that which is not willed by
God. God, by creating overcomes what is not by not willing what He does not create. God
creates on the basis of what He has willed in His eternal council. God has willed to be a
covenant-partner with the human being in Jesus Christ. Essentially the creation of humankind
was an act of God’s grace which human beings rejected in the fall. They did not want to remain
in the grace of God which is His proper work, but instead chose that which God positively willed
not, which describes God’s alien work. Evil, and sin therefore pertain to uncreated reality. In
actuality creation and grace merge from the perspective of the eternal, in Jesus Christ. See CD
III/2, 4. The reality of nothingness, 368.
205
Karl Barth in Karl Barth Preaching., 51.
206
For a broader exegetical treatment on the fact that the Word was in the beginning see
also Karl Barth. Witness to the Word Karl Barth: A Commentary On John (Grand Rapids: Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986) 19-20.
Word of God was with God who created out of nothing. In fact God was the Word.207 Col.
1:15 specifically refers to Christ as the image of the invisible God who together are one.
Through Him all was created. Christ “is the beginning as God Himself is the beginning.”208

Besides that Christ existed in the beginning, Barth points to the fact that he existed as Lord
over all things. By Him and through Him all things were made. Passages such as Heb. 1:2, Jn.
1:3, Jn 1:10, Col. 1:16 “make it clear that the Son or Word of God or concretely Jesus Christ,
does not just become but is Lord of all things. For He is as God and with God, instituted as such
by God and by Himself in full divine dignity and power Creator of all things.”209

And finally in regards to Christ’s’ ontological connection with creation Barth emphasizes
the fact that Christ existed as mediator. He was already in the eternal decree of God the
mediator; the bearer of human nature, the humiliated and exalted as the bearer of our flesh; a
creature and precisely as such loved by God; and in this way the motivating basis of creation.210

On the basis of these three fundamental ontological connections between Christ and
creation Barth speaks of the Holy Spirit. In his comments on the work of the Holy Spirit it is to
be noted that his pneumatology is rooted in the established ontological connection between the
Word and creation. In the Old Testament, Barth observes that the Holy Spirit is the “conditio
sine qua non of the creation and preservation of the creature.”211 As such the Holy Spirit is the
actualiser and sustainer of that which “on the basis of its creation it was destined to be.”212 In
the New Testament Barth notes that the Spirit’s work is interpreted within a soterio-
eschatological framework. This is so with specific reference to Christ’s death and resurrection.
The last Adam, Christ, is life-giving Spirit by virtue of His resurrection from the dead. In
relation to the first Adam He is the one who makes living souls. The life-giving work of the
Spirit is thus rooted in the work and being of Christ to which it points and on the basis of which
it creates anew. This makes the work of the Spirit indirect, for the Spirit is life-giving only on

207
Ibid., 11. This is how Barth prefers to translate the first verse; “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God and God was the Word.”
208
Karl Barth in Karl Barth Preaching , 52.
209
Ibid., 52.
210
Ibid., 56.
211
Ibid., 57.
212
Ibid., 57.
the basis of what is already initiated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.213 In this sense the Holy
Spirit is again or rather still the conditio sine qua non of that which exists or is to exist. This is
how ultimately Barth sees the Word related to the Spirit, and the Spirit related to the Word.

With regards to the intra-divine economy, Barth calls the Holy Spirit “the inner-divine
guarantee of the creature.”214 What is accomplished from eternity in Jesus Christ is in some
sense “a matter of the self-justification and self-sanctification of God without which He could
not have loved the creature nor willed or actualised its existence.”215 The creature here
mentioned is first of all Christ, on the basis of which God loves the human being. This all is
actualised by the Holy Spirit.

The references to the indirectness of the work of the Spirit and the work accomplished by
God in His eternal council in His Word, Jesus Christ, have a direct relation to the discussion on
the historicity of the Word of God. Under this heading Barth makes the distinction between
what is eternal or what is from God’s side, and what is temporal, or what is from the human side.
In essence what I observed in reference to the Word of God, as that which needs to become
actual Word of God, can in some sense be repeated in the discussion of what purports to be
historical in the Scriptures. The nature of revelation is subject to the nature of the Revealer. God
is not as humans are, bound to the temporal horizon of this earthly existence. This is also true
with respect to the history recorded in the Bible.

For Barth the history of immediacy with God is non-historical.216 “The history of creation
is ‘non-historical,’ or to be more precise, pre-historical history . . . . In it Creator and creature
confront each other only in immediacy.”217 As such it is genuine history because it is a history
with God.

The history depicted in the Bible however is only a reference, a pointer to genuine history
as understood by Barth. It is a pointer to something that has taken place once. It is a referent to
events that have occurred in immediacy with God and as such are beyond anything that is

213
Ibid., 57.
214
Ibid., 58.
215
Ibid., 58.
216
Ibid., 61.
217
Ibid., 61.
reducible to other events as experienced within the temporal horizon of our own human
existence.

Turning now to Barth’s specific exposition of the image of God, the relevance of the
context which I elucidated will become clear.

Barth perceives the image of God as intrinsically connected to the Trinity. The Bible
speaks of God’s specific act of the creation of humans as preceded by, “Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness.” (Gen 1:26). The reference to plurality in God indicates that God
intended to create the human being in a special relation to Himself as plural.218

Barth in his exposition of the image of God, sides with Vischer and Bonhoeffer but goes
beyond both in terms of inner-Trinitarian ontological determinations. Vischer has shown him
that the image of God is expressed in reference to the fact that “God created the real counterpart
to whom He would reveal Himself.” 219 This is true even to the extent that “all creation aims at
the confrontation of God and man and the incontrovertible I-Thou relationship between Creator
and creature . . . which is the true and sole motive of the cosmic process.”220 This implies that
the image of God is most properly expressed in regards to God’s specific relation to the human
being. In creation God’s relation to the human being is the central focus and establishes a
personal link to His own work.

This approach is remarkably different than the usual discourse about the image of God.
Barth does not start with an analysis of the human being to determine which part of his or her
being corresponds to the being of God. No, the “biblical creation story is . . . not interested in
man in abstracto, in his soul or spirituality, in his body or even in the superiority over all the
creatures,” but the creation story is interested in “the future partner of the covenant, the kingdom
and the glory of God, in the earthly subject, addressed and treated by God as a “Thou” of a
218
Ibid., 70.
219
Ibid., 71.
220
Vischer in Ibid., 71. Barth together with Vischer asserts not only that the image of
God with respect to the human being is expressed in terms of encounter, but also that the human
being is ‘the sole motive of the cosmic process,’ which implies that theological anthropology
strands at the centre of Barth’s theology. This is true of course in conjunction with His overall
Christological focus. Barth states that the Word of God is primarily concerned with God and the
human being. “God alone and man alone are its theme.” Barth, Karl. CD III/2 (Edinburgh:
T.&T. Clark, 1960) 19. cf. Ibid. 3-54.
history which begins with creation and continues right up to the end of time.”221 The image of
God thus is expressed in the human being having been created as covenant partner, as a being-in-
relation.

This being-in-relation is therefore first of all a being-in-relation-to-God, but not only that.
Vischer might have expressed it clearly up to this point, Bonhoeffer explicates it further. Being-
in-relation in the context of the Genesis story has broader implications. The human being is said
to have been created in relation to other human beings as well, especially to his or her marriage
partner. The image of God is especially reflected in the way one human being is related to the
other. The creature is created in freedom as reflection of God’s freedom for the creature. This
creaturely freedom manifests itself in being freely related to other humans. “It is expressed in a
confrontation, conjunction, and interrelatedness of man as male and female which cannot be
defined as an existing quality, or intrinsic capacity, possibility or structure of his being, but
which simply occurs.”222

Essentially this is the analogia relationis. The human being is created as freely related to
others as God is related in freedom to him or her. As such and in this way the human being is
created in “free differentiation and relationship.”223

However, Bonhoeffer’s concept of the analogia relationis does not go far enough. Barth
extends it to the relation God has with Himself in the Trinity and so also with the creaturely
world. The human being, created in ‘free differentiation and relationship,’ is actually a reflection
of what “first takes place in God Himself.”224 God freely differentiated within Himself first:
“let us make man.” and so is and was first related to Himself. One could speak here of the
analogia relationis in eternity of which the human being in relation to other human beings is a
reflection in time. More precisely in Christ we have a reflection of how God is related to
Himself in eternity for time, for in Christ God’s love to the creature is manifested, Christ being

221
Karl Barth in Karl Barth Preaching, 71.
222
Ibid., 72.
223
Ibid., 72. This is specifically reflected in a marriage relationship between male and
female. In support of a high, and dignifying view of marriage, Barth quotes Kohlbrugge as
saying, “both [male and female] are created in the divine image . . . . filled by God and in God
with mutual divine love, from which we may understand and conclude the high dignity of
marriage.” Ibid., 72.
224
Ibid., 73.
both human being and God. In other words, God’s inner being “takes [. . .] form ad extra in the
humanity of Jesus . . . . The divine original creates for itself a copy in the creaturely world.”225

In summary, starting from my last observation, the image of God is to be understood first
of all as God’s image. That which is reflected in time with reference to the human being is
established in eternity and then also in time, Jesus Christ being the actual imago Dei in
relationis. The image of God with respect to the human being is expressed in the fact that he or
she is freely related in differentiation to and from other human beings. This, being freely related
in differentiation, resembles God’s free relation to the human being. The fact that God is related
to the human being in a special way, as covenant partner in Christ, for the rest of creation,
establishes that the image of God is to be understood as a being-in-relation, first to God and on
the basis of that, in a reflective manner, also to others.

With respect to the historicity of the Word of God it is precisely in regard to God’s relation
to Himself that Barth spoke of genuine history. This is the history of immediacy with God,
which from the human perspective was termed non-historical. From this it follows that if and
when humans speak of their nature in their own historicity they must speak about it and
understand it only in light of, and with reference to genuine history in which their being is
necessarily, truthfully, and really expressed in immediacy with God. Genuinely historical, as
Barth understands this, therefore one cannot speak of a state of being without God since the
human being’s state is ontologically, eternally determined by God Himself in Jesus Christ. The
Word and the Spirit point to this reality indirectly.

Speaking thus with one eternal Word about the reality of humans in their relation to God,
what does the Word of God mean when it speaks of the fall and sin? Is the fall real with respect
to human beings in the same sense as the eternal Word is really real with respect to them?

According to Barth, in the fall the human being listened to the serpent who promised the
impossible possibility.226 Sin is therefore to be understood as engaging oneself in something

225
Karl Barth CD. III/2. (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1960) 220-221. The latter part of the
quote is taken from his exegesis of John 17:20-21, Jesus’ High Priestly prayer, of which he
furthermore says, “The Father and the son are reflected in the man Jesus. There could be no
plainer reference to the analogia relationis and therefore the imago Dei in the most central, i.e.
the Christological sense of the term.”
that tends towards that which is not.227 The fall is a record of a human affirmation, instigated by
the serpent, of that which is not. “The result is that--by the action of the good creatures of God--
chaos in all its nothingness is brought into creation, and creation itself is given the character of
the chaotic and that which is not.”228

By not truly acknowledging that which is with God, the human being sins. The Word of
God shows us what sin is and it pictures “human nature in all its corruption and depravity.”229
It shows the human being that in his or her autonomy he or she is not acknowledging the
boundary of human creaturely existence vis-a-vis God. (See my discussion on Barth’s
interpretation of Romans 1:19).

However, the Word of God shows us more. It teaches that “in the radical depravity of man
there is necessarily hidden his true nature; in his total degeneracy his original form.”230 To be
sure “this cannot be grasped directly. Every supposed direct apprehension [of either our
sinfulness or blessedness] turns out to be false.”231 It is the Word of God that teaches us this
indirectly, and as such it is above and beyond even our dialectical philosophical
meanderings.232

What is direct is established in God in the genuine history with His Son and Holy Spirit.
The Word of God teaches this indirectly, confronting the human being in his or her self-
contradiction. This is another description of what sin is; it is essentially self-contradiction. “The
fact of his [the human beings’] fall cannot mean that what he is eternally before and from God,

226
Karl Barth in Karl Barth Preaching, 170.
227
Ibid., 170.
228
Ibid., 170.
229
Karl Barth. CD III/2 (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1960)
230
Ibid., 29.
231
Ibid., 29.
232
Ibid., 30. The being of the Word of God as above and beyond dialectical
philosophical meanderings corresponds to my observation in regard to Barth’s understanding of
the Word of God as that which comes to us from outside and as such confronts us in our totality
as the means of relating God’s subjectivity to us. God’s movement itself is still expressed in
Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics which relate to such an extent to the form and
content of Barth’s theology that ultimately God only speaks with one Word which as such is
beyond and above direct human experience.
His Creator and Lord, has been changed.”233 Therefore “the knowledge of the real man depends
on the recognition that he shares in divine grace.”234

The principle and presupposition with which theological anthropology must always start
and to which it must return is “that God the Creator is gracious to man His creature.”235 The
Word of God as Word of grace in Christ is the first and last Word to, and, about the human
being. As such it testifies and witnesses to one reality, that is our reality with God, whether we
humans wish to acknowledge this or not.

The implication for the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is that the creation and the fall are
essentially two sides of one coin. The coin is God’s reconciliation with the human being and so
with the world, in Jesus Christ. The fall, however, is on the shadow side of the coin and only
serves to indicate what it means to choose that which is really not. The light must fall on what is
really, and therefore actually, real with God. Being without God is really, ontologically
impossible.

Barth interprets the feeling of shame of nakedness primarily horizontally. He interprets it

on the basis of God’s established work, of our actual being with God. “The Work of God is
without spot, pure, holy and innocent . . . . [As such therefore] to be a creature of God is self-

233
Ibid., 31.
234
Ibid., 32.
235
Ibid., 34. cf. G. C. Berkouwer. De Triomf der Genade in de Theologie van Karl Barth.
(Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1954) esp. 209-257. In this work Berkouwer emphasises that Barth speaks
one-sidedly of the grace of God and so underscores the reality of sin. As a result Berkouwer
notices that for Barth there is no real transition from wrath to grace in the history of humanity.
Besides that Berkouwer observes that Barth places the triumph of grace before sin and so makes
sin the ontological impossibility. Grace is thus the general framework in which Barth places the
rest of the Christian doctrines. Grace precedes nature, because grace was already from eternity
established. see also Van Til, Cornelius. Christianity and Barthianism (New Jersey: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Co. 1977) esp. 134-135. Van Til quotes Berkouwer: “‘Our being in
Adam stands in advance (zum vornherein) in the light of the fact that we are in Christ. Only
apparently can we recognize Adam as our head.’ The triumph of grace is therefore of an a priori
nature. It is correlative to the ontological impossibility of sin. ‘This impossibility is raised above
all doubt in the pre-figuration of the creation triumph.’ Again the nerve between revelation and
history is cut. ‘We are confronted with ideas that lie on a totally different plane from that of the
Scripture when it tells us what God is not.’ On Barth’s view of impossibility ‘there is no
transition from wrath to grace in historical reality.’”
justification.”236 The result of sin, feeling ashamed for nakedness, is not in the first place an
awareness or acknowledgment of not being covered by the presence of God, of being or knowing
oneself unholy, but a denial and suppression of how God has created the human being, i.e., a
denial of what really is.237

With his specifically ontological approach, Barth loses the necessity for a direct
relationship with God through His Word and Spirit. The direct vertical relationship with God is
superseded in reference to the eternal ontological establishment of the human being with God, in
Jesus Christ. To this the Word of God, as we have it in Scripture, can only be indirect by way of
denying a direct historical relation of the human being with the Word of God as determinative of
his or her being in the face of God. There is then also no room for a direct correspondence of
experience between the figures of the Bible and today’s human being. The Bible itself too must
necessarily point beyond itself.238

236
Karl Barth in Karl Barth Preaching, 75.
237
Ibid., 75. Barth can appeal to recent psychology in support of his delineation of the
human being in relatedness and differentiation. Of course, according to Barth, the theologian
would say it differently and add many things, nevertheless recent psychology’s analyses of
being, specifically with respect to sex and identity, differentiation and relatedness, come close to
the truth. “There is even reason to rejoice that a modern doctor can say what he has to say in
such parallelism to Christian truth almost as though he had taken his bearings from Eph. 5 and 1
Cor. 6, . . . ” Ibid., 81.
238
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. (United States: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1935) Barth thinks that he must “keep his sure distance from the Lutheran est
and the Lutheran type of assurance of salvation. Can theology, should theology, pass beyond
prolegomena to Christology? It may be that everything is said in the prolegomena.” Ibid., 217.
Barth of course is thinking here specifically about the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist and
possibly about the Lutheran idea of baptismal regeneration. Because Barth thinks in ontological
categories his perception of the Word of God is caught in his own form of argumentation. He
identifies the problem around the Eucharist with the problem of the Word of God being the Word
of God by stating that homo peccator non verbi Domini. However, faith worked by Word and
Spirit is experience, because a true Christian faith unites the believer and Christ genuinely.
Therefore the est in Luther’s estimation is not ontological.
Conclusion

Barth mainly sought to counter theological Schleiermacherian subjectivity. The

manifestation of this subjectivity, for Barth were both Enlightenment rationalism and pietism.
Barth, I have endeavoured to show, employs Kantian and Hegelian philosophical dynamics in his
answer to Schleiermacherian subjectivity with his doctrine of the Word of God. In his exposition
of Romans, Barth applies a Kantian diastasis between faith and reason, God and the human
being. This discontinuity he maintains with reference to the direct historical human horizon
throughout his early and late theology. He, however, moves beyond it, or supersedes it, through
his interpretation of Anselm, by coming to an understanding of a continuity that exists with
reference to eternity and God Himself. The consequence is that the Word of God becomes only
an indirect witness to a truth and a reality, which is ontologically determined from eternity and
thus is unable to speak to and about human beings directly and historically. The Word of God in
Barth’s doctrine ultimately is only a witness to God’s monologue and so to a reality in which the
human being cannot be perceived as lost or without God. The law as Word of God and revealer
of human existential and spiritual sinfulness, has essentially lost, in Barth’s doctrine of the Word
of God, its power to uncover a real and true human aspect of reality in the face of God.

Finally, I contend that Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God--and implied in it his
understanding of the human being in the face of God--as essentially presupposing God’s
monologue, destroys the intention of God’s Word as direct, historical, and spiritual dialogue with
and about human beings.