Living in the Faith of Jesus, the Christ: listening to the early Karl Barth

In this post I am continuing the reflection about what it means to share the faith of Jesus. That may sound a little different to you as you might have expected me to say: "what it means to believe in Jesus as the Son of God," or "what it means to be a Christian." I certainly could have used either of those other phrases, but I purposefully choose "what it means to share the faith of Jesus, the Christ."

And, it will take me some clarification to say what I mean by this phrase. First, by share the faith of Jesus, I mean to "participate in the faithful response of Jesus to God, but also to participate in the faithful response of Jesus to humanity on behalf of God." It is this two way faithfulness of Jesus that creates the reality that we participate in, which we call "faith." In several parts of the New Testament, Paul writes that our reconciliation with God and our redemption from destructive forces depends on the faithfulness of Jesus, and our participation in that faithfulness which begins with complete dependence and trust in God's faithfulness towards us and in the miracle of Jesus' human faithfulness to God (and, humanity). Somehow,Jesus, whether acting for humanity towards God or acting for God towards humanity, is the revelation of true God and true humanity. What Jesus opens up for all people is a pathway to a deep communion between God and human beings. What human beings come to share in is the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is like humanity is being adopted into this close and genuine communion between the Father and the Son, with human beings being the adopted brothers of Jesus.

This sounds less like science fiction, or if it still sounds like science fiction, it has such a sense of family and intimacy that it begins to feel very "close to home" for us human beings. Maybe it just begins to sound "too good to be true." For, now we are talking about the Creator of the Universe treating small, limited creatures like us 'like family.' From outside the community of faith, and maybe also from inside, this might sound delusional, or at least like the imaginings of humans who greatly exaggerate their importance in the cosmic scheme.

But, this familial language really gets to the heart of the experience of faith. Paul says that we no longer have a spirit of bondage and fear, but that God's Spirit cries out from within us, "Abba, Father!" expressing the ecstatic love of a little child for his or her Daddy (or Mommy). This is written in Romans, chapter 8 in the New Testament.

But, in the early days of neo-orthodox preaching and writing (at the end of the First World War), this biblical image of the profound experience of unity between God and humanity was emphasized to reveal (expose) the depths of alienation that we experience between ourselves and God. And, this existentialist emphasis on alienation went further to describe the alienation between human beings and the alienation even within individual human beings from their own self. I think Heideggar(not a theolgian, but existentialist philosopher) used the term "thrownness" to describe the consciousness of 20th century human beings in the West. Thrownness is something like finding yourself on the ground in a strange place, not knowing how you fit in, how you got there, where you are going or how you really relate to anyone or anything around you or how to understand yourself.

For Barth, and the early 20th century existentialist thinkers, whether Christian or not, it was this deep sense of alienation that we all shared in the depths of our beings. For them, the confidence in modern science was shaken, the confidence in traditional religious orthodoxies was shaken as well. And, Barth thought that the sense of alienation was experienced in an even deeper way when a person caught a glimpse of this profound unity and meaning expressed in Paul's preaching about God's gracious embrace of humanity in Jesus, the Christ. Because, as Barth said, this profound sense of meaning and unity is exactly what we don't have in modern life, within or without the Church. And, Barth experienced and believed that it was in facing this existential crisis or truth of our existence that the way towards "faith" was opened for us.

As I have studied more about mystical writers in Christianity, and as I have become more and more drawn into the tradition of apophatic theology (deep emphasis on the experience of "unknowing," and of being "undone" and entering into a darkness of thinking and knowing and believing as the way of faith), I feel more and more that the early Barth was really giving expression to a deep "apophatic" experience, and that he was clearly and faithfully in the old sacred "negative theological experience" in the Church, but living it out in a new age.

When the young Barth spoke of this deep sense of alienation as it related to faith, and as the expression of a faith that so many 20th century human beings could relate to, he protested against the prevailing theologies of his day. Barth's position was overagainst the confident academic liberal theologians who felt their beliefs fit comfortably within the modern scientific culture, and overagainst the dogmatic and somewhat less academically secure conservative theologians who felt that their beliefs, though not well accepted by scientific culture, were nonetheless true to the old tradition, whether that tradition was found relevant or not by the modern world. And, Barth's position clearly arose from a powerful sense of the reality of God in conflict with the modern age, but also deeply in conflict with the Church in the modern age. And, there was no retreat from this reality of God, either by hiding out in some worn out orthodoxy of days gone by or by hiding out in some new orthodoxy of the contemporary culture. For Barth, who was shaken by his experience of the living God as he "reread" scripture and re-experienced what it was to live before God and with his fellow human beings, there was no avoiding this earthshaking, soulshaking reality of God's presence. And, the first thing Barth heard from God to himself and the modern world was a profound 'NO," a NO to human arrogance and presumption that had thought it was above God, or at least, thought it was self-sufficient. What Barth saw in the 20th century was at the very point that human beings thought they had conquered the mysteries of the world through science, human beings were on the verge of destroying themselves. In the most cultured, scientifically advanced country on earth had arisen the greatest enemy and evil of humanity, the Nazi regime. Barth's theology arose out of this experience as he was teaching in Germany at the time, and as he was exiled from Germany for his teachings against the way of the Nazis.

This extreme sense of alienation (thrownness in Heideggar), was an expression of life in the modern western world, and was an important part of how Barth and neo-orthodox theologians were finding their way to an authentic understanding of faith that they were communicating to people both within and outside the Church.

I'll continue these ramblings later in a third part, and with the next part I will try to say how Barth experienced the great "NO" of God to himself and humanity as the beginning of meaning in the modern world, as the beginning of a new creation from the ashes of the old.

If you have time to look on the internet, see if you can find a copy of Barth's sermon which reflects on the sinking of the Titanic. It was around 1916, I think,and he was a young pastor at the time.