The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Karl Barth
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betrayed, eo ipso, that He was not the one and only one and so was not God. He would have betrayed Himself to be one of those principles underlying human systems and finally identical with man himself. But the Confessio speaks not of one of those principles nor of man but of God, and therefore of One through whom all things exist, and who wills to be known through no one except through Himself.
There exists a conception of the unity of all being in its totality. All human thought takes this into account. And this conception can even gain remarkable depth and richness by means of the conception of the uniqueness (the one-and-onlyness) of all being in its individuality. All human thought has taken this also into account from the start. We may adopt this hypothesis of the one, and we may recognise and formulate this cosmic problem of the one as such. Yet in doing so we have done absolutely nothing that would have even a distant connection with the knowledge of God. The secret fire of all or almost all philosophies and religions is kindled by the charm of the idea of mathematical unity, intensified by the charm of the principle of individuality—not to speak of the fire which political domination has needed, whenever the world or a part of it has been ripe for such a domination. But a wrong is done and a strange fire is brought to the altar, if men seek to kindle the fire of the knowledge of God by this charm—and from time to time the Fathers did do this. Thomas Aquinas’s sentence that “Deus non est in aliquo genere” (Sum. Theol. 1, Ques. 3, Art. 5) must be rigorously applied to the genus “unity” or “uniqueness” (one-and-onlyness) also. What falls under this genus is as such not God, even if it were the ultimate and highest conceivable or perceptible unity of the world. The God of Mohammed is an idol like all other idols, and it is an optical illusion to characterise Christianity along with Islam as a “monotheistic” religion.
True knowledge of the one and only God, knowledge of Him in the sense of our Confession, is based on the fact that the one and only God makes Himself known. Everything is through Him Himself or is not at all. He makes Himself known through Himself by distinguishing Himself in the world from the world. Otherwise He cannot be known at all. He can be known, because He arises—“Arise, O Lord”—in human form and therefore in a way that is visible and audible for us, i.e. as the eternal Son of God in the flesh, the one and only God in Whom we have been called to believe, Jesus Christ. He proves Himself in Jesus Christ to be the One to whom no one and nothing is to be preferred or even to be compared, “cuius neque magnitudini neque maiestati neque virtuti quidquam, non dixerim praeferri, sed nec comparari potest” (Novatian, De Trin. 31). Because He manifests Himself thus, He makes Himself knowable to us not through revelation of some sort or other, but through the fact of His self-revelation. On this Paul also has based the knowledge of God as the one and only God in contrast to the many “gods” further on in the passage already quoted. “But to us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things, and we by Him.” This “but” which belongs to the self-revelation of the one and only God, is what brings about “the destruction of the gods,” of which we have spoken.
IV
Let us conclude by putting this to the test. And in this connection it is quite legitimate to turn our thoughts to the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). Which will prove itself to be the one and only reality—man and his principles or He whom the Confession contrasts to them on the ground of His self-revelation? Is man able to sustain his part as the one and only reality and thus do justice to his claim to freedom and lordship? This he is unable to do, because in the very playing of this part he has to furnish and fill his picture of the world with the objective principles above mentioned, and they in their turn win and exercise dominion over him; for he has to live in the world which corresponds to his picture of it. They will remind him forcibly enough of the fact that he is not the one and only reality and that he is not free and does not possess any power. Man must live as a slave to those powers whom he has made his masters. But do these world powers then—nature or spirit, destiny or reason, desire or duty—possess the character of being the one and only reality and therefore that of lordship? And which of them really does so? All previous experience seems to teach that their mutual conflict does not reach any decision. But even if a decision were one day to be reached, which of these world powers could—or could they all together?—be powerful enough to make a real prisoner of man and of human self-assertion? Spirit, nature, reason, duty, desire—which of these has power to make man completely prisoner? And though man is powerless to maintain himself as the one and only reality, does he not at least possess sufficient power to set his own subjective self-assertion against the world powers which are after all the offspring of his mind? Does he not therefore possess sufficient power at least to call in question their claim to be the one and only reality? When and where did mankind really entrust or commit themselves totally and without reservation to nature or spirit, destiny or reason, desire or duty? Man may not know how to escape them, but he does know how to make reservations for himself in relation to them, “si fractus illabitur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae.” The conflict between these two parties, man and the powers of his world, over their right to be the one and only reality cannot be settled but ends in indecision. But the conflict is settled already where the parties to the conflict are man on the one hand and the one and only God in His self-revelation on the other. As these two stand face to face, there is decision, a command and a choice which commit man at this point, where man stands before God in His revelation. A claim to lordship is put forward possessing the power to achieve its end. Here man can obey completely, trust completely and commit himself completely and here he can worship. Here man will be able to recognise the one and only God by the fact that He is the one and only God, and here He is the one and only God because He reveals Himself as such. To achieve this result as the conclusion of this test is something which is in no one’s power. The decision, with which it does reach its conclusion, is faith in Jesus Christ, and in saying that we are saying once more that the one and only God Himself is He Who reveals Himself as the one and only God. But in saying that we are saying also what is decisive—what in the sense of the Confession must be said about the words “We acknawledge ane onelie God.”
THE MAJESTIC, THE PERSONAL GOD
(Art. 1b)
Who is Eternall, Infinit, Unmeasurable, Incomprehensible, Omnipotent, Invisible: ane in substance, and zit distinct in thre personnis, the Father, the Sone, and the holie Gost.
I
Reformed teaching gives a twofold answer to the question, “Who is the one God?” In the first place, He is majesty (He is eternal, infinite, immeasureable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible, as the Confession says). Secondly, He is a Person (since in His simple, majestic essence He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit).
It is well to note at the start that this explanation is introduced in the Latin translation of the Confession by the expression “eundem etiam credimus …” The knowledge of the one and only God, the knowledge that He is and who He is, is the knowledge of faith. Faith knowledge in the sense used by Reformed teaching does not mean a knowledge which is based merely on feeling, which is peculiar to the individual and which therefore has no binding character for others. On the contrary, no more objective and strict form of knowledge can exist, and no type of knowledge can lay claim more definitely to universal validity than the knowledge of faith. It is certainly true that it differs completely from anything else which man calls knowledge, not only in its content, but in its mode of origin and form as well. But this difference consists precisely in the fact that it is bound, a fact which excludes all arbitrariness and chance. The very question “Who is God?” is not one of those questions which man puts to himself and is able either to put or not to put to himself. On the contrary, on every occasion that he raises it in earnest, he is compelled to raise it, because without his ever coming to think of it of his own accord, this question is put to him in such a way that it must be faced and cannot be evaded. Also in answering it he will not be able to choose, but he will have to obey—to read off, spell