1. The Question as to the Knowability of the Word of God
At the very beginning of this section, Barth offers a recapitulation of his argument thus far. (He will do so again at the beginning of §7.)
- In §3 the mandated content of Church proclamation is in the concept of the Word of God; dogmatics as the scholarly examination of Church proclamation naturally follows suit;
- In §4 the entity signified by the concept “The Word of God” is real in Proclamation, Scripture, and Revelation;
- in §5 the inquiry turned to the nature of this concept and entity, and it showed God’s language, God’s act, and God’s mystery as its three distinct but not different determinations.
Barth’s own preference might be to proceed immediately to the basis for these finding, to a preliminary determination of the concept of dogmatics. But first, in view of previous critiques, he addresses specifically the question of the knowability of the Word of God.
The concept of Church proclamation (as well as Church dogmatics) obviously implies or takes for granted that “it is possible for man to hear and even speak, and hence also to know, the Word of God.” (I/1/187) Barth immediately carefully qualifies this statement. It does not apply to human existence in general as a kind of innate human ability or categorical capability, but only in the definite area (or arena) of human existence, the Church. But even in this limited aspect, it is humans who are called to hear and utter the Word of God –very particular humans, in very particular situations. Otherwise the entire concept of the Word of God is objectless and meaningless, and “the Church would have to be called a place of self-deceptions without parallel.”(I/1/188) This is the point of the so-called “new atheist” critique of theism in general, and of Christianity in particular.
Barth anticipates here his sense of the Church as encounter, event, or confrontation: not as a structure or institution:
In the concept of the Church as a place where the truth is spoken and heard, and in the concept of Church proclamation and dogmatics as a meaningful activity, it is presupposed that there can be knowledge of the Word of God by [humans]. (ibid.)
This is entirely different from the natural knowledge of God implied limit-situations for all humans in the theologies by Tillich or Rahner.
But as knowers especially in this case, humans are got at by known object. They exist no longer without it, but “with the same confidence with which they dare to think in general they must think of it as a true reality, as true in its existence and nature.”(ibid.) This truth has come home to believers personally; they have become the property of its truth. “Face to face with this truth they can no longer withdraw into themselves in order to affirm, question or deny it thence. Its truth has come home to them, has become their own. And in the process they themselves have become the truth’s. This event, this confirmation, in contrast to mere cognizance, we call knowledge. Cognizance becomes knowledge when man becomes a responsible witness to its content.” (ibid.)
In this way:
- Knowledge of the Word of God is the presupposition of the Church;
- The Church is the presupposition of knowledge of the Word of God.
(Church as encounter, event, and mystery, not as institution or organization.) The question properly is, how can [humans] know the Word of God? (I/1/189)
Barth immediately delimits this claim further:
1. The question is not, “how do [humans] know the Word of God?” The question is not about the reality of their knowledge. The answer to the correct formulation can only consist “in the repetition of the biblical promise given to the Church and the reference to its coming fulfilment, and only in so far as the Word of God itself is added to this human repetition and reference and undertakes to give the real answer.” (ibid.)
2. The question is not, how can humans in general know the Word of God? “Where the Word of God is known and therefore can be known, it must have been spoken and it must have come as a divine call to specific” humans. “God knows them, . . . who on specific occasions know God’s Word as real hearers and proclaimers, who are thus able to know it, and who thereby constitute the Church as living human members in the body of Christ.” (ibid.)
3. The question is not, “how do Christians know the Word of God,” insofar as it would have to be qualified as “called and elect Christians.”(ibid.) God knows those who become true hearers and proclaimers; humans know other humans simply as those who face “the question how it is possible that they should know the Word of God.” (I/1/190)
4. Barth must proceed with philosophical and epistemological indefiniteness, not only to avoid predetermining an answer to the question, but so as to respond to the question in such as away that the truth of the Word of God does not depend upon a philosophical or epistemological formulation which may necessarily change with the discourse of those studies. “[T]he problem of knowledge cannot be presupposed with such distinctness here even as a problem if we are not to incur the most serious risk of anticipating the answer in the presupposition in a very definite and perhaps most inappropriate way. What knowledge means as knowledge of God must in no case be introduced in a definitive form into investigation of this question” (ibid.) In an excursus Barth responds to the criticism that in his theology one cannot get an answer to the question, “How can I succeed in affirming the Word of God?” “The answer to the question as thus posed would obviously have to be the statement of a way or method by means of which this “success” can be achieved. Who tells us whether this question may be put at all and therefore whether any meaningful answer can be found at all?” (ibid.) . Knowing God and the Word of God is not like any other knowing at all. “A result of the uniqueness of this object of knowledge might well be that the concept of its knowledge cannot be definitively measured by the concept of the knowledge of other objects or by a general concept of knowledge but that it can be defined at all only in terms of its own object.” (ibid.)
Rev. and page numbers corrected, Jan. 2020