The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Karl Barth
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the example of the Nicæan symbol the Confessio Scotica terms the object of creation “all thingis in hevin and eirth, aswel Visible as Invisible.” This expresses the clear, correct and important fact that the world of spirit is no less created by God than the world of nature and the world of nature no less than the world of spirit. There would be no point in preferring one of these realms to the other, as if spirit (or according to others, nature) had its glory in itself, and therefore did not stand in need of the grace of the Creator. Neither of these realms stands in direct relation to God, however highly idealistic philosophy may prize spirit or the opposing materialistic philosophy may prize nature. And neither of these realms is absolved from the duty of gratitude, however much the idealists may despise nature and the materialists spirit. But this is true also mutatis mutandis of the antithesis between coming into being and passing away. Both of these extol the glory of God—not only the majesty of what we call growth, progress and fulfilment of life, but also the darkness of what we call decay, destruction and death. On the other hand, it would be the sign of a narrow outlook to look for God’s glory only on the dark side of creation and not on the bright side also. Both coming into being and passing away stand in equal need of the overflowing grace of the Creator, in order to possess their own particular glory. The same is true also of a third antithesis—the antithesis between the law of necessity which we see governs all created life, and the freedom which we are summoned continually to manifest in the midst of this necessity. The summons of freedom is one whose universal claim we can as little gainsay as we can that of necessity. But the need for grace from the Creator is not greater in the one and less in the other. Freedom has no less glory of its own than necessity and necessity shares in the overflowing glory of the Creator in no lesser sense than freedom. The distinctions which we draw by means of such conceptions within the world created by God can be justified and helpful. But they are, at all events, provisional and relative. The ordinance of which we spoke is valid for all levels of the world—for all the heights as well as for all the depths. It is the ordinance of gratitude—“We believe all thingis in hevin and eirth, … 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.”
IV
Let us return once more to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. It is man who meets God here and it is man whom God is with here. Why does God not meet with Sirius or the rock crystal? Or with the violet by the roadside or with the boa-constrictor? Yes, why not? But this is not what we are asked. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ—in the man Jesus Christ—is what alone distinguishes man, yet definitely distinguishes him within the rest of creation. We will not be guilty of the presumption of asserting that it is man who is specially appointed and qualified to receive the divine revelation. From what source could we know that? But we can and must establish that it is man for whom the divine revelation is appointed. This teaches us a third point, that Man has been called to present to the Creator the gratitude of the creation.
The special position of man will best be defined in this guarded way. We cannot ascribe to ourselves more than what is the significance and purpose of the whole creation. We exist for “the manifestatioun of God’s awin glorie.” We possess our glory in serving the glory of God. We cannot know whether there may not be other beings who—perhaps in a far more perfect way than man—present to the Creator the gratitude due to Him from His creation. We are certainly not always wrong, if we believe we hear a song of praise to God in the existence also of Sirius and the rock crystal, of the violet and the boa-constrictor. But however that may be, we can know with regard to ourselves that we are not excused if we are not grateful—for in our existence as men we are certainly called to such gratitude. In the creation story in the Bible (Gen. 1:26 ff.)—a passage adopted by the Confessio Scotica—we read “God created man ad imaginem et similitudinem ipsius,” i.e. to be the image and likeness of Himself. This is misunderstood already in the Greek translation of the Old Testament—the Septuagint—and it is to be feared that the Confessio Scotica also fell into this misunderstanding,—as if what was described here was a condition or quality of being God’s exact likeness, imparted to man at his creation and attaching to his existence thenceforward, so that we would have to ask in what respect this condition of being like God is really to be perceived now in man as man, or in what respect it was to be perceived in Adam. We would then have to ask if for example man’s reason or his humanity was the image of God. For answers of this nature men will seek in vain. For the text speaks not of a quality, but of that for which man’s “nature” is appointed in his existence, life and action. Man is appointed to be, and it is his glory to be, the image of God, to reflect His glory and therefore to be grateful to Him. It is as man that he is appointed for this. And therefore he is appointed to recognise God’s glory and so to act as to give God the glory, since in these consist human existence, life and action. He is appointed to recognise that God is the one and only Lord and to act in a way which takes this into account. He is to recognise God’s majestic Person and to act as one responsible to this majestic Person. We cannot know if this recognition and this action, for which man is appointed, is more pleasing to God than the roaring of the sea, or the gentle falling of snow flakes. Once again we are not asked this. But what we can know is that at any rate we are summoned so to know and act, summoned to the knowledge of God and the service of God as certainly as we men quâ men are called to be His image and to show Him gratitude—the same gratitude which the whole creation owes Him. The sea and the snowflakes owe Him this gratitude too, but our gratitude can take only the form of the knowledge of God and the service of God; for we are not snowflakes or drops of water. And in this form our gratitude will be directed towards the Creator and Lord of the whole earth, the Creator of the sea and the boa-constrictor. How could we honour Him, if not as the One who has also created all other creatures for His glory? This is the source of the confidence in which we may move about in the midst of the whole world, as we wander through its heights and depths. We cannot have confidence in any creature, since we can have confidence in God alone, but we can and should have confidence in the case of every creature in its Creator and Lord. But to do this, to be able to live a life of trust in God in this dark world, we must do what we are under an obligation to do—we must show gratitude for the unspeakable grace of our creation and must reflect God’s glory, and this is effected by our recognising Him and doing what is right in His sight.
V
Let us note in conclusion that the whole subject would consist in abstract conjectures and reflections devoid of any significance for life and also destined to break down at once as empty speculations, if they sought to be anything else than an exposition of the fact that God has revealed Himself to man in Jesus Christ. What do we know from any other source about “God,” the “world” and “Man,” and their mutual relations? We know absolutely nothing, and everything becomes confused myth and wild metaphysic as soon as we turn aside from the statement of that fact by which God Himself has confirmed, explained and laid down the relationship of God, the world and man, and God’s ordinance. By God’s taking thought for man in Jesus Christ, now as in the past, He has provided us with knowledge about the creating, sustaining and governing of the world and man and about His glory and ours. Any book other than the Gospel, which we might open here, in order to find out about God, the world and man, could only lead us astray. It was no mere chance that the Confessio Scotica in its exposition of the Creation of man and his special appointment to be God’s image, did not use the word God abstractly but said concretely Our God, Immanuel. To learn to see the Creator and Lord of all in “Our God,” Immanuel, Jesus Christ, is the problem of the Christian doctrine of creation, a problem which is difficult and yet easy, easy and yet difficult.
(Art. 2c–3)
Fra quhilk honour and perfectioun, man and woman did bothe fal: the woman being deceived be the Serpent, and man obeying the voyce of the woman, both conspyring against the