tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post1912485022523263761..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: R. Dale Dawson: The Resurrection in Karl BarthBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-70660434303903589992007-04-16T11:20:00.000-04:002007-04-16T11:20:00.000-04:00Ben,George Hunsinger seems to be suggesting that y...Ben,<BR/><BR/>George Hunsinger seems to be suggesting that you have misread Barth's doctrine of God. How do you respond to his his substantive first comment?Dai Corleonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15333621156097621666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-47543666987215396632007-04-15T18:12:00.000-04:002007-04-15T18:12:00.000-04:00To Alan,The New Testament makes it clear that that...To Alan,<BR/><BR/>The New Testament makes it clear that that Jesus was and remains the victor over death, and that it could not have been otherwise. <BR/> <BR/><I>But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it</I> (Acts 2:24). <BR/> <BR/>Death could not possibly hold him: <I>in him was life</I> (Jn. 1:4).<BR/> <BR/>Therefore, when he took our sin and death to himself, it was not he who was destroyed, but they which were destroyed in him -- at inconceivable cost. This is the mystery of our faith.<BR/> <BR/>Nevertheless, it seems best to say that the resurrection was more nearly the work of God's sovereign freedom than the outworking of some ontological principle. Yes, the resurrection is grounded in the glory of the Father (Rom. 6:4), and therefore in the divine trinitarian life, but all the more in power and freedom of the living God (1 Cor. 6:14). For it was finally a matter not so much of the divine being as it was of the divine being in act.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-34375514414073748792007-04-14T12:59:00.000-04:002007-04-14T12:59:00.000-04:00I really appreciate this post on Barth, as well as...I really appreciate this post on Barth, as well as past ones that I'm working my way through. I have only a dilettante's knowledge of Barth, so I'm very grateful for the education!The maidenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01158682036840381823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-4952920871647312462007-04-14T07:10:00.000-04:002007-04-14T07:10:00.000-04:00Thanks for raising this point, Byron. Although I f...Thanks for raising this point, Byron. Although I focused on Dawson's point about the generation of the Son (since I thought this was his most interesting proposal), he also has a lot to say about the Spirit. On the one hand, he disagrees with the view that Barth has an underdeveloped doctrine of the Spirit; but on the other hand, he argues that Barth should have also offered a specific account of the Spirit as the one who "effects the once for all transition from death to life" in the resurrection of Jesus (pp. 223-27). <BR/><BR/>On the whole, though, Dawson views Barth's doctrine of the Spirit very sympathetically -- and in any case, he rightly emphasises (following George Hunsinger) that Barth's full doctrine of the Spirit was never written anyway, so that it's a bit underhanded to criticise his dogmatics for lacking a <I>comprehensive</I> pneumatology!Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-61377995965230284712007-04-14T05:24:00.000-04:002007-04-14T05:24:00.000-04:00Much discussion of the trinitarian being of God he...Much discussion of the trinitarian being of God here (thanks for yet another review Ben!), yet it is all about the Father and Son. Does Dawson discuss the role of the <I>Spirit</I> in resurrection for Barth? Does Barth have much to say on this point? Another well-rehearsed criticism of Barth is the relative paucity of his comment on the Spirit.byron smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17938334606675769903noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-58479316454430411942007-04-13T23:48:00.000-04:002007-04-13T23:48:00.000-04:00Dr. Hunsinger - Could you still affirm that "the r...Dr. Hunsinger - Could you still affirm that "the resurrection is indeed grounded in the reality of the immanent Trinity"? Meaning that Jesus' humanity, as the humanity of God, cannot remain dead, cannot be held by the pangs of death? The resurrection would then, in some sense, be an intra-trinitarian movement becaue Jesus' humanity is hypostatically united to the second person of the Trinity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-43522695185744924112007-04-13T19:36:00.000-04:002007-04-13T19:36:00.000-04:00Thanks - Barth's Resurrection of the dead is one o...Thanks - Barth's <I>Resurrection of the dead</I> is one of my favorite commentaries.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-36650908577200893542007-04-13T18:37:00.000-04:002007-04-13T18:37:00.000-04:00Hi Michael -- yes, I think you're right. And of co...Hi Michael -- yes, I think you're right. And of course, in his mature work, Barth himself was much more emphatic about the fact that the resurrection really <I>happened</I> in our own space and time (even though one can only describe this event using literary forms like "legend" and "saga"). <BR/><BR/>The "empty tomb" is a good index of the way Barth developed here. As Dawson points out in the book, Barth's earlier work characterised the empty tomb as irrelevant, but by the time of the <I>Church Dogmatics</I> Barth was insisting that the empty tomb is "indispensable".Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-88317073623207635012007-04-13T18:00:00.000-04:002007-04-13T18:00:00.000-04:00I think Barth is right to insist that the resurrec...I think Barth is right to insist that the resurrection is not an ordinary historical event but a history changing one. However, I have always thought that his desire to protect the resurrection from those who think of it as just another historical event leads him to go too far--such as saying that the empty tomb is irrelevant and that there is no historical basis for belief in the resurrection. Without meaning to do so, this move always made Barth appear to fail to recognize that this history changing, cosmic event came IN history--in the same world in which we humans live, move, and have our being.<BR/><BR/>The empty tomb may not create faith (one can alway explain it away), but a full tomb would have negated faith, because no first century Jew would have called a non-physical afterlife for Christ by the term "resurrection." Barth's view here is not the insubstantial one that Bultmann's was, but he tended to overreact to fundamentalist historicism in ways that made him seem to many (most?) evangelicals as removing the resurrection from history.<BR/><BR/>There has to be a way to protect Barth's really valid concerns without making the same moves. It is here, Ben, that I think Pannenberg is most on the right track.Michael Westmoreland-White, Ph.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06343135380354344847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-48089548084143320392007-04-13T16:29:00.000-04:002007-04-13T16:29:00.000-04:00I think it is a mistake to say that for Barth God'...I think it is a mistake to say that for Barth God's being is "identical" with his act. While there is an occasional text that would support this interpretation, Barth more often takes the considered view that God's being is "in" God's act. The relation between God's being and God's act is not one of simple identity but rather of unity-in-distinction.<BR/> <BR/>When God's being in and for itself is then blurred with God's being for us, the first mistake is compounded, gravely, by a second. <BR/> <BR/>Nothing in the created order can possibly be a "ground" for God's eternal trinitarian being, or on the same order with it, not even God's act of raising Jesus Christ from the dead. <BR/> <BR/>The death of Jesus brings not a threat to the Trinity – an absurd idea – but the dissolution of death itself – the death of death in the death of Christ, as John Owen rightly phrased it. <BR/> <BR/>The resurrection is not "primordial" but contingent. It does not "actualize" God's pre-temporal act of election in any constitutive sense. It is in no way the event of God's "self-constitution."<BR/> <BR/>Errors of this order will not lead to any creative theological advance, but only to a dissolution of the gospel.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-70906368460736734712007-04-13T16:27:00.000-04:002007-04-13T16:27:00.000-04:00Hi Bisaal. Yes, the early Christians (and Barth, ...Hi Bisaal. Yes, the early Christians (and Barth, of course) believed in an actual event -- but they believed that this event was <I>eschatological</I>, i.e., that the end of history had arrived in advance in the resurrection. So you could perhaps describe that as "an event on the horizon of history".Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-17681819054702921152007-04-13T03:18:00.000-04:002007-04-13T03:18:00.000-04:00"an event on the horizon of history, creating and ..."an event on the horizon of history, creating and sustaining history"<BR/><BR/>What does that mean?.<BR/>Were early Christians converted by the belief in an actual resurrection or by "an event on the horizon of history"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com