2. The Root of the Doctrine of the Trinity (post 3)
After the long excursus (examined in the previous post 2), a brief review of Barth’s argument in this chapter might be helpful. Barth seeks to find the roots of the doctrine of the Trinity in Scripture —not the doctrine itself, but its roots. “God’s revelation is God’s own direct speech which is not to be distinguished from the act of speaking and there is not to be distinguished from God HImself, from the divine I which confronts [a human] in this act which says Thou to him. Revelation is Dei loquentis persona.” (I/1/8:304)
God’s revelation is a ground which has no higher or deeper ground, but is an absolute ground in itself, and there is no human court to which there can be any possible appeal. It is “not be compared with any such [human reality], nor judged and understood as reality and truth by reference of such [human reality].” (I/1/305) It is self-authenticating, vertical reality imparted to a particular human being at a particular time and place. Any statement about God’s Trinity cannot claim to identify the doctrine with revelation, but is an analysis of what the revelation denotes which the Church has undertaken over time. It is an interpretation of revelation.
Positively, statements about the Trinity may “purport to be indirectly, though not directly, identical with the statement about revelation.” (I/1/309) (Note here: about revelation, not the act of hearing or receiving revelation itself.) “The Bible can no more contain the dogma of the Trinity explicitly than it can contain other dogmas explicitly.” (I/1/310) It “does not confront the specific errors of Church history as such . . . There is no meaningful way in which one could or can refuse Arius or Pelagius, Trindity Roman Catholicism or Servetus, Schleiermacher or Tillich, directly out of the Bible, as though their errors were already answered there totidem syllabis et literis, chapter and verse . . .” (ibid.) The biblical witness to God in his Revelation cannot be confused with the doctrine of the Trinity, but the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity lies in revelation. (I/1/311) “God reveals himself as the Lord: in this statement we have summed up our understanding of the form and content of the biblical revelation.” (I/1/314)
Characteristically, Barth develops this statement in three-fold fashion: Revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling, imparted to [humans], or the God who by nature cannot be unveiled to [humans].” (I/1/315)
- This revelation is in the form of a history or series of histories of specific acts, “a significant and effective element of human life in Time and historical relations.” (ibid.) Revelation is true and concrete, and is that which [a human] cannot provide for [itself], what only God can give . . what God does give [a human] in his Revelation.” (I/1/316)
- In self-unveiling, inscrutability, hiddenness, “is of the very essence of Him who is called God in the Bible.” (I/1/320). “It is the Deus revelatus who is the Deus absconditus, the God whom there is no path nor bridge . . . Only when we have grasped this do we see the full range of the statement that . . . [God] has assumed form for our sake.” (I/1/321) But this form is not some third thing: “it “means that God HImself controls not only [the human] but also the form in which He encounters [the human].” (ibid.) God cannot be grasped by a human, confiscated, and put to work: it is free loving-kindness, not a credit. No form can encompass God; God’s self-giving remains a human’s only hope. (I/1/324)
- The third stress is “imparted to [humans]” (ibid.) —to a specific human occupying a specific historical place. But historical does not mean “historically demonstrable or historically demonstrated . . . not what is usually called ‘historical’ (historisch).: (I/1/325) The neutral observer might observe the form of revelation but not the revelation itself. Rather revelation means a concrete relation to concrete humans, once for all, in a specific time and place. Each specific act of revelation is incomparable and cannot be repeated: “To hear the Bible as the witness to God’s revelation is in all cases to hear about this history through the Bible.” (I/1/326)
This is the launching point for Barth’s long excursus regarding revelation, myth, and saga (examined in the previous post).
The revelations attested in the Bible do not manifest “a universal or an idea . . . which can then be comfortably compared with” other ideas. (I/1/329) “The term historical can only denote event as a fact over which there is no court by reference to which it may be regarded as a fact.” (ibid.) In brief, “revelation comes vertically from heaven.” (ibid.) It happens to a historically situated, fully contingent human.
If the goodness and holiness of God are neither experiences we can manufacture nor concepts we can form for ourselves but divine modes of being to which human experiences and concepts can at least respond, then their conjunction, their dialectic, in which both are only what they are, is certainly not a dialectic which we can know, i.e., achieve for ourselves, but one which we can only ascertain and acknowledge as actually taking place. And this actual occurrence, this being ascertained and acknowledged, is the historicity of revelation. (I/1/330) Though the humans to which revelation has been imparted “cannot grasp God in His unveiling and God in His veiling and God in the dialectic of unveiling and veiling, [they] can at least follow Him and respond to Him. (ibid.)
“The fact that God can do what the biblical witnesses ascribe to him, namely, not just take form and not just remain free in this form, but also in this form and freedom of His become God to specific [humans], eternity in a moment, this is the third meaning of His lordship in His revelation.” (I/1/331) “. . . The Lordship of God in this third sense is one of the decisive marks of revelation.” (I/1/332) This mark is Spirit: not just the spiritual basis of human life, but “as the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and therefore the same one God.” (ibid.)
God’s veiling, unveiling, impartation, or form, freedom, and historicity, or Easter, Good Friday, and Pentecost, or Son, Father, and Spirit: when this is truly grasped, “our threefold conclusion that God reveals Himself as the Lord is not . . . an illicit move but a genuine finding . . . we may not conclude that revelation must indeed be understood as the root or ground of the doctrine of the Trinity.” (ibid.) “We have established no more than that the biblical doctrine of revelation is implicitly, and in some passages explicitly, a pointer to the doctrine of the Trinity.” (I/1/333) Much later, “We have established no more than that the biblical doctrine of revelation is implicitly, and in some passages explicitly, a pointer to the doctrine of the Trinity.” (ibid.)