The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Karl Barth
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it seeks to offer a universally intelligible philosophy of the Absolute, to which the doctrine of the Trinity is in some amazing way to be attached. On this view the name Father, Son and Holy Spirit is just a special predicate of a subject with which we are already familiar, namely the Absolute. The traditional practice, which goes far back in theology, of speaking first of God’s essence and attributes and only then of the three-in-oneness, has helped to bring about this misunderstanding. But God’s majesty is to be measured just as little by the standard of the human idea of the Absolute as God’s personality is to be measured by the standard of our view of human personality. The human idea of the Absolute, which we are accustomed to think of as identical with God, is the reflection of the world, and in the end the disastrous reflection of human personality. Once again, if we had equated this idea with God, we would have set up the image of an idol. We have not to draw our knowledge of who God is from what we think we know about eternity, infinity, omnipotence and invisibility as conceptions which bound our thought. On the contrary, we have to draw our knowledge of eternity, infinity, omnipotence and invisibility from what we can know about God, from what God has said to us about Himself. If we choose to take the first way or the various ways into which this first way is generally divided—the famous via negationis, the via eminentiae, and via causalitatis—we could as easily conclude with the definition “God is nothing” as with the second one “God is everything” or the third “God is the One in everything.” And with it all, what we have defined, would not be God. On the contrary, we would have defined in one way or another the essence of that which is not God, we would have defined the creature, and in the end, as Ludwig Feuerbach has irrefutably shown, the essence of man himself. If we do not wish to end by really defining ourselves, when we think that we are defining God, we can only take the second way and therefore hold fast to the incomprehensible majesty in which God meets us in His revelation, the majesty of His person as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. His majesty consists in His being the archetypal Person, i.e. truly, really and genuinely a person. As a divine Person, He has freedom over Himself and over all things, as we saw above. But as a Person, in distinction from those images of our imagination, He is One Who knows and wills, Who acts and speaks, Who as an “I” calls me “Thou” and Whom I can call “Thou” in return. This is the true name of God declared by Him Himself, and in it we must seek also the whole mystery of His majesty. Apart from this name it would have to remain completely hidden from us.
THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GLORY OF MAN
(Art. 1c–2b)
Be whom we confesse and beleve all thingis in hevin and eirth, aswel Visible as Invisible, to have been created, to be reteined in their being, and to be ruled and guyded be his inscrutable Providence, to sik end, as his Eternall Wisdome, Gudnes, and Justice hes appoynted them, to the manifestatioun of his awin glorie.
ART. II
OF THE CREATIOUN OF MAN
We confesse and acknawledge this our GOD to have created man, to wit, our first father Adam, to his awin image and similitude, to whome he gave wisdome, lordship, justice, free-wil, and cleir knawledge of himselfe, sa that in the haill nature of man there culd be noted no imperfectioun.
I
The Reformed church and Reformed theology have never spoken about God and man as if God were everything and man were nothing. That is a caricature of Reformed teaching and we have already rejected such a preposterous view in passing, in our second lecture. By slightly altering a sentence formulated there we can say now “God alone is God but God is not alone.” God alone possesses divine glory, but alongside His glory there exists a glory which belongs to the world and to man. The world and man exist—in the way in which their existence is possible alongside God—but they do exist. They exist in the truth and independence, in the distinctiveness and beauty and with the teleological character, which it is possible for them to possess alongside God. But they do in point of fact exist in this glory which they possess alongside God. They exist in this their peculiar glory under the definite ordinance, by which they do not possess their glory from themselves, but receive it from God, and do not possess it for themselves, but in order that the glory of God might be the greater thereby; but under this ordinance they themselves do possess a peculiar glory, which it is quite certain God does not grudge them, rob them of or even diminish. Only by the overthrowing of this ordinance can they lose their peculiar glory. If they wish to possess it from themselves and for themselves, they will certainly cease to possess it. They have then fallen victim to shame, folly and death. On the other hand, if this ordinance is restored, in and with it the glory of the world and of man is restored also. It holds good therefore that in its overthrow and in its restoration also, the glory of the world and of man is founded on the glory of God, fully determined by it and bound by it.
II
Let us proceed from the simple fact that in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, God and man meet, and therefore are really together. We shall see later that we have to use an even stronger expression than this, and speak of God being one with man. But at this point the more guarded conception of God and man being together is sufficient. The name of Israel’s expected Messiah is, according to Isaiah 7:14, Immanuel, i.e. God with us. This teaches us as our first point that God is not alone. God’s revelation presupposes that there exists distinct from God a world in which He can reveal Himself and someone to whom He can reveal Himself. In His own eternal Being there is no need for any revelation and there can be no revelation there, because there is nothing hidden, since God is eternally manifest to Himself. If there is a revelation of God, then there exists alongside God an “other” which is not God. Revelation as the fact that God and man are really together is itself the evidence of the reality of the divine creation. By this it is revealed—apart from everything which revelation may mean in itself—that the world is not nothing and not mere appearance. In this fact, man above all, as the one to whom God turns in His revelation, is affirmed and taken seriously in his existence, is addressed as God’s vis-à-vis and partner and thereby honoured in his independence and acknowledged in the distinctiveness and teleological character of his created being. We cannot believe God’s revelation without at the same time being given to see the outlines of the reality of the world and of our own reality, which, though mysterious, ambiguous and puzzling, are yet unmistakable. This reality is not one which is founded or rests on itself, but is created by God But for that very reason it is a reality saved from nothingness and distinguished from appearance. More than the glory of the creature cannot be ascribed to it in the light of revelation. But this glory cannot be denied it in the light of revelation. God in His majesty as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit requires no other being and possesses all majesty in Himself, yet He does not content Himself with Himself and thus with the glory which He possesses perfectly in Himself. On the contrary, His glory overflows in His creating, sustaining and governing the world and in the world man, and in His giving to this His creation the glory of being the reflection (imago) of His own glory. The love of God consists in this, that though He does not need the world and man He will not be without them. He will not be without this reflection (imago) of His glory, or without the glory which creation is appointed to give back to Him again. And the peculiar glory of the creation is to possess this appointed destiny and to be obedient to it by virtue of God’s free love.
III
Let us return again to the fact of the meeting of God and man in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. This being together of God and man is grace. It is something which man needs. But it is God who has sought man, that they might be thus together and not man who has sought God. This teaches us as our second point that the creation is under a debt of gratitude to God. God’s revelation presupposes that the world and man stand in need of their Creator, that they have no power over Him and that He creates, sustains and governs them with divine freedom. They do not possess their glory in themselves but in their being permitted to reflect this divine glory by virtue of the overflowing glory of God. They possess it therefore