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The Christological Determinant in Barth's Doctrine of Creation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
Karl Barth's Christological formulation has taken with increasing seriousness the participation of Christ in the creaturely mode of existence. His effort to interpret the Chalcedonian dogma concerning reality of Jesus Christ as two natures, God and man, united without confusion, change, division, or separation, has contributed to his conception of the creature as existing with its own proper mode of being and activity. We are not concerned to trace in detail in this essay the developments in Barth's thought which have led to modification in his understanding of creation. Fundamentally, Barth recognises that the theology of Crisis characteristic of the second edition of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans so emphasised the timeless and transcendental character of revelation that it had no place for a conception of creaturely being and time as constitutive of the incarnation.
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References
page 119 note 1 Barth, KarlChurch Dogmatics 1 2, trans. Thomson, G. T. and Harold Knight, T. & Clark, T. (Edinburgh, 1956), p. 50Google Scholar; C.D. II.1, p. 635. Refer also to Barth, , Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans. Hoskyns, Edwyn (Oxford University Press, London, 1933), p. 103.Google Scholar
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page 120 note 1 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, vol. I (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1951) P. 133Google Scholar. We take exception to the interpretation of Tillich's Christology offered by Mollegen, A. T. in his essay ‘Christology and Biblical Criticism in Tillich’ in The Theology of Paul Tillich (Macmillan, New York, 1952), pp. 230–245Google Scholar. Mollegen says that the general tenor of Tillich's Christology stands with the classical dogma concerning the two natures. Actually, the way in which Tillich interprets the death of Christ means that the doctrine of Jesus Christ as continuing to be both God and man cannot have justice done to it.
page 120 note 2 C.D. IV.1.p. 10.
page 120 note 3 C.D. IV.1, p. 186.
page 120 note 4 C.D. I.2, p. 147. Parker, T. H. L. in Studies in the Fourth Gospel, ed. Cross, F. L. (Mowbray, London, 1957)Google Scholar, shows the extent to which Johannine writings have shaped Barth's mature theology. This is especially true of John 1.14.
page 121 note 1 C.D. II.1, p. 309. Barth is more consistent than Thomas Aquinas on the problem of the freedom of creation. Aquinas tries to explain creation as good in the sense of the diffusion of goodness on the part of an all-perfect being. Lovejoy, Arthur in The Great Chain of Being (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1953) PP. 65–98Google Scholar, rightly indicates that this view is antithetical to the concept of the freedom of creation.
page 121 note 1 Irenaeus, , Against the Heresies, book II, ch. 8, sec. 3.Google Scholar
page 122 note 1 Ritschl, Albrecht, Theologie und Metaphysik (Adolph Marcus, Bonn, 1881), p. 17Google Scholar. See also Mackintosh, H. R., The Person of Christ (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1913), p. 473Google Scholar. Mackintosh speaks of God's self-consistency which reveals itself in the mobility of grace. Sheer unchangeableness is not the proper way of describing God's essential nature of holy love.
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page 124 note 1 C.D. IV. 2, p. 38.
page 124 note 2 C.D. I. 2, p. 130. See also the discussion of physis in George Hendry, The Gospel of the Incarnation (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1958), 49–61.Google Scholar
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page 125 note 1 C.D. IV. 2, p. 70. See also the ‘Formula of Concord’, Article 8.
page 125 note 2 See Baillie, D. M., God Was in Christ (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1948), p. 53Google Scholar. Barth declares in C.D. IV.2, p. 35: ‘The truth is that this human history, “the earthly life of Jesus”, belongs with the act of God to that which is revealed.’
page 125 note 3 C.D. IV. 2, p. 106.
page 126 note 1 Barth, Karl, ‘Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie’, Theologische Fragen und Antworten (Evangelischer Verlag A.G. Zollikon, Zürich, 1957) pp. 54ff.Google Scholar
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page 128 note 1 C.D. III. 2, p. 588.
page 128 note 2 C.D. II. 1, p. 478.
page 129 note 1 Marsh, John, ‘Christ in the Old Testament’, Essays in Christology for Karl Barth (Lutterworth Press, London, 1956), pp. 41ff.Google Scholar
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page 131 note 1 C.D. I. 2, p. 158.
page 131 note 2 op. cit., p. 115. See also Mackintosh, H. R., The Person of Christ, p. 342fGoogle Scholar ‘ … It is indeed an error alike in method and interpretation when the Atonement and the Incarnation are viewed as rival or competing interests. … The person and the work of Christ have concrete and intelligible reality only as they constitute and define each other. …’
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page 132 note 3 ibid., p. 72.
page 133 note 1 Hoskyns, Sir Edwyn, The Riddle of the New Testament (Faber and Faber, London, 1931). p. 174.Google Scholar
page 134 note 1 Ignatius, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, ch. 1, ch. 3.