1. The Word of God as Preached
In §§ 2 and 3 Barth set out some of the formal disciplinary boundaries for understanding the teaching of the Church, and the task of dogmatics to reflect upon its message and mission self-critically. He only touched upon the real content of church proclamation, however, since his subject was “prolegomena:” those things which (he felt) must be said first in order that the most important things may later be said clearly. In §4 Barth begins to formulate these most important things by turning to the major concept which undergirds all the Church Dogmatics: the Word of God.
Rather than starting from a purely theoretical viewpoint, Barth further turns to the most obvious referent of “the Word of God:” the weekly (or daily) sermon –ordinary proclamation in church. The presupposition which makes proclamation proclamation “and therewith the Church the Church” is the life-function of preaching: this actual event in which human words can become the Word of God.
Barth finds four decisive connections between “dogmatic prolegomena” (which responds to the question: how are dogmatics possible?) and the concept of proclamation (when and where does the Word of God happen?). These four connections “may be compared to that of four concentric circles.” (I/1/89)
1. The Word of God is the commission upon the givenness of which proclamation must rest, if it is to be real proclamation. God’s word signifies God’s positive behest: we cannot validate it humanly because we cannot grasp it — but it is active when and where it wills to be there and to be active. “God’s positive command . . . which is present and at work when and where it wills to be present and to be at work” (I/1/90) “Real proclamation, then, means the Word of God preached and the Word of God preached means in this first and outermost circle man’s talk about God on the basis of God’s own direction, which fundamentally transcends all human causation, which cannot, then, be put on a human basis, but which simply takes place, and has to be acknowledged, as a fact.” (ibid.)
2. The Word of God is the object which as such must be given to proclamation, in order that it may be real proclamation. “Real proclamation, then, means God’s Word preached, and in this second circle God’s Word preached means human talk about God on the basis of the self-objectification of God which is not just there, which cannot be predicted, which does not fit into any plan, which is real only in the freedom of His grace, and in virtue of which He wills at specific times to be the object of this talk, and is so according to His good-pleasure.” (I/1/92)
3. “The Word of God is the judgment in virtue of which alone proclamation can be real proclamation. Proclamation is also asked whether it is true.” (ibid.) The truth question intrudes here. Usual human truth is to be judged partly by the nature of its object, partly also by the situation and desire of the speaker. (It uses embedded forms of life, to use another vocabulary from Wittgenstein.) But proclamation as such (in both Word and Sacrament) presupposes that neither the nature of the object nor the situation or desire of the speaker are or can become sufficiently clear as to enable a human to judge the truth of the Word of God. Barth never denies other criteria, but this one criterion is beyond human grasp. Humans cannot but 1) recollect this one criterion different in kind from all others, given to our knowledge without it having been known to anyone and 2) expect that this criterion (which at present we really do not know, or know only through that recollection) will give itself again. This recollected and expected criterion of truth, is the Word of God. (I/1/93) “This criterion which is recollected and expected, though not at our disposal in our own or any present, is the Word of God.” (ibid.) . . . “Real proclamation, therefore, is the Word of God preached, and in this third inner circle the Word of God preached means human talk about God which by God’s own judgment, that cannot be anticipated and never passes under our control, is true with reference both to the proclaimed object and also to the proclaiming subject, so that it is talk which has to be listened to and which rightly demands obedience.” (ibid).
4. Finally, “the Word of God is the event itself in which proclamation becomes real proclamation. It is not just the commission that man must have received.”(ibid.) For Barth, this is the decisive word. “It is the miracle of revelation and faith when the misunderstanding does not constantly recur, when proclamation is for us not just human willing and doing characterised in some way but also and primarily and decisively God’s own act, when human talk about God is for us not just that, but also and primarily and decisively God’s own speech.” (ibid.) Not only fully human –but primarily and decisively God’s. Human volition and execution (i.e. performance) it not omitted, does not simply vanish. As Christ became truly human and divine, so real proclamation becomes an event on the level of all other human events. The human element is also created by God –and becomes a factor over against God only in the state of disobedience, i.e. our state of sin. “Without depriving the human element of its freedom, its earthly substance, its humanity, without obliterating the human subject, or making its activity a purely mechanical event, God is the subject from whom human action must receive its new and true name: not just a title tacked on; no, the name which belongs to it as essentially and primarily as possible in the full supremacy of the will of its Creator and –p095– Lord.” (I/1/94-95) “The Word of God preached means in this fourth and innermost circle man’s talk about God in which and through which God speaks about Himself.| (I/1/95)
Characteristically (seen by now) Barth defends his four circles in a long bibliographic excursus in which he compares his outline with a “fine essay” by Adolf von Harnack which faces the problem of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church’s potestas, right down to the doctrine of papal infallibility.
One can immediately regard how closely Barth interweaves his personalist understanding of revelation, his understanding of Word as Event, with the two natures of Christ reflected in the very grammar of the Proclamation of the Word of God. Contrary to all institutional structures, this is a radically contingent understanding of Church proclamation as rising and falling with the moment of the presence of the free grace of God. No wonder this has been regarded as intolerable innovation by Berkouwer and Van Til (on the Protestant right) and misunderstood as a dialectical distraction (ultimately) by Roman Catholic readers such as von Balthasar.
Rev. and page numbers corrected, October 2019