The Bible, the Word of God
Karl asked on Sunday for a ‘simple’ explanation of what is meant by the Bible as the word of God. Here’s one short selection from Karl Barth, one of the major theologians of the 20th century, in an essay on that question. It’s not a straightforward answer, and it may actually raise more questions than it does answer, but I think he’s making an important point—namely, this: the Bible can be considered the authoritative word of God because it testifies to the authoritative Word of God become flesh, Jesus. The Bible gets its unique authority from the unique object of its testimony. This doesn’t address the question of how it was recognized, which is yet another good question, but only that it was recognized as a trustworthy witness. Here’s the quote.
The prophetic-apostolic witness, through which the congregation of Jesus Christ is established, is the single normative form of the Word of God for that congregation. There are many things in the heavens and on earth, but there is only one God. There are many ideas about God, but there is only one true knowledge of this one God, true because derived from God’s self-testimony. There are many events, powers, forms, and truths which are important, worthwhile, and indispensable for us, but there is only one Word of God, only one Jesus Christ, in whom the confrontation of the gracious God with sinful humanity took place once for all. And because not all, but only these particular people are the elected, called prophetic and apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ, there are many hidden forms only this one visible form of the one Word of the one God. Only in this form is God’s Word finally, decisively normative, binding, and authoritative. The Church of Jesus Christ acknowledges the unique Word of the unique God in this uniquely visible and uniquely normative form. In this knowledge, it sets the biblical canon.*
This is a strong statement—strong about Christ, first and foremost, but therefore strong about the Bible. What do you all think of this?
* Karl Barth, “The Authority and Significance of the Bible: Twelve Theses,” in God Here and Now, p. 60.
9 October 2007 |
tags: Bible, Christology, Fellowship of Hope
![[RSS for this post]](/images/feed-icon-14x14.png){kind=icon}
It would be interesting to compare how the choice of metaphor for understanding the Bible influences the thought of Barth and Origen.
Barth conceives of the Bible as the Word of God, placing it between the Son above and with preaching below as three “forms” of the Word.
Origen thinks of the Scripture in the continuum of the body of Christ: “The Logos becomes intelligible to us…in His historical, resurrected, and eucharisted body, in his ecclesiological body (whose members we are), and in His body as Sacred Scripture whose letters are animated by His living Spirit” (Origen in Classics of Western Spirituality, xii).
The Church only comes into Barth’s consideration in its form of preaching – its own self-critique? – as the lowest form of the Word. For Origen – if the order of von Balthasar’s list is to be trusted – the Church is closer to Christ as his body than the Scripture (although granted that the three form one sacramental whole).
I am somewhat perplexed with how Scripture gets to be called the Word for Barth. You paraphrase him by saying that it gets this title because it testifies to the reality. But isn’t this a kind of confusion of the finger and that to which it points that Barth so railed against? It seems there is a missing step in the argument – it is not enough to note the Bible’s testimony to the Word to justify approaching it as a form of that Word.
For this reason I prefer the Balthasarian paraphrase of Origen. The Church is the body of Christ because it is mystically grafted onto Christ by the Spirit. The Scriptures are Christ’s body because they are the Church’s self-expression by the power of that same Spirit. Self-expression not as an obsession with its own humanity, but self-expression as that which it truly is: humanity conjoined to God by God. The canonical corpus is the self-expression of humanity incorporated into God’s resurrected-because-crucified corpse. Origen’s scheme justifies a Christic appellation for Scripture in a way that Barth’s does not.
would’t it be easier to say that Van Bathhalsazar is reacting to a post-Bultmanian understanding the Bible as opposed to one historically recognizable by the Vincentian canon?
Well, not for me, at least. Largely because I have no idea what “post-Bultmannian” specifically refers to, nor its relationship to Vincent of Lerins. In any case, though, the question at issue is Karl Barth’s choice of analogy for the Scriptures, and I’m especially unsure of the meaning of “post-Bultmannian” when it is applied to Barth. Maybe you can explain what you mean a little more?
If I understand Karl Barth’s statement correctly, it is also a strong statement about what the visible church or congregation is or at least should be…
“…And because not all, but only these particular people are the elected, called prophetic and apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ, there are many hidden forms only this one visible form of the one Word of the one God…”
I think that’s right, though Barth’s “particular people” in that quote aren’t first of all the church in general but the writers of Scripture. Still, the oneness and uniqueness runs all the way through for Barth: the one Jesus Christ, the one testimony of and to Jesus Christ, the one people who are the body of Christ.
Brian, do you know much about how Barth understands the notion of the “Body of Christ”? I’d be interested in more details, cause I sure as heck don’t know anything.