There is no point in dogmatic thinking and speaking if in it all systematic clarity and certainty is not challenged by the fact that the content of the Word of God is God’s work and activity, and therefore God’s free grace, which as such escapes our comprehension and control, upon which, reckoning with it in faith, we can only meditate, and for which we can only hope. It is not from an external attack of doubt or criticism but from its own very concrete focal point and foundation, from the source of all Christian and therefore dogmatic certitude, that all its insights and first principles, the nexus of its axioms and inferences derive; and even these statements are constantly questioned both as a whole and in detail, and their temporariness and incompleteness exposed. The focal point and foundation themselves determine that in dogmatics strictly speaking there are no comprehensive views, no final conclusions and results. There is only the investigation and teaching which take place in the act of dogmatic work and which, strictly speaking, must continually begin again at the beginning in every point. The best and most significant thing that is done in this matter is that again and again we are directed to look back to the centre and foundation of it all.
–Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics 1/2, 868)
2 replies on “Barth on the Center of Orthodoxy”
I mean, really, how dangerous can Barth be if no one knows what he is talking about? I have got to believe that MS Word but a big red line under that whole first sentence. I do not say that as a final conclusion though.
Ha! Maybe it is clearer in the original German (or not!). Such ambiguity is one reason why Barth is easy to misunderstand, or misapply, and one reason why fundamentalists feel the need to define themselves against him. OTOH, Barth’s principal enemy, Cornelius Van Til, can be equally abstruse.