Reading Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics

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§4. The Word of God in its Threefold Form

• Context: §3-7, “The Word of God as the Criterion of Dogmatics” – Related readings
• Editions: Henderson ed. vol. 1; Study Edition vol. 1.
  (More on editions, Volume-Parts, § = “paragraphs”, Leitsatz, pagination, structure.)
• Volume-Part: I.1, §4, pp. 88-124.

Leitsatz: “The presupposition which makes proclamation proclamation and therewith makes the Church the Church is the Word of God. This attests itself in Holy Scripture in the word of the prophets and apostles to whom it was originally and once for all spoken by God’s revelation.”

Questions for discussion:

1. Read the Leitsatz for this paragraph aloud.
   • Which phrases did Barth develop with greatest care?
   • Which phrases are most interesting, significant, or meaningful to you?
2. How does Barth’s discussion of this paragraph relate to your life?
3. Which of the Reading Questions is most interesting to you?
4. Did any of the quotations relate to, or illuminate, Barth’s text for you?
5. Did any reading guides (e.g., Mangina or Bromiley) or other related readings throw light upon Barth’s text for you?

Questions for reading:

1. The Word of God Preached (pp. 88-99)

1. Barth asserts that proclamation must ever and again become proclamation. How is this similar to the way in which the elements of the Lord’s Supper must ever and again become what they were not before?
2. How is the Word of God the commission upon whose givenness proclamation rests?
3. How is the Word of God the object or theme of proclamation?
4. How is the Word of God the judgment of proclamation?
5. How is the Word of God the event in which proclamation becomes proclamation?
6. How is Barth’s account of the Word of God as an event of proclamation consistent with his “not only… but also” critique of transubstantiation?

2. The Word of God Written (pp. 99-111)

1. Holy Scripture is similar to Church proclamation in that both are witnesses, like John the Baptist’s pointing finger (p. 102). Explain.
2. How is Scripture dissimilar to Church proclamation? (102)
3. Why is the apostolic succession to be understood spiritually rather than institutionally, mechanically or legalistically? (103-104)
4. Why is it important for the Church to be confronted by an authority outside itself, by a criterion that cannot be dissolved into the Church? (104-106)
5. Why does Barth argue that the Bible constitutes itself as the Canon, rather than the Canon being constituted by the Church? (107-110)
6. Why is the promise of Immanuel, God with us sinners, an ultimate word that imposes itself upon us? (107-108; cf. quotes below by Godsey and Hart)
7. Beyond the text: How would Barth’s view of Scripture qualify the Church’s use of creeds, new revelations (e.g., The Book of Mormon) or other extra-canonical writings?

3. The Word of God Revealed (pp. 111-120)

1. What is a witness? (111)
2. Kierkegaard distinguished between the apostles and geniuses. How does Barth affirm this distinction to elucidate the concept of revelation? (112)
3. Excursus, p. 112: Read James E. Davison’s discussion of Matthias Grunewald’s painting, “The Crucifixion,” which hung on the wall above Barth’s desk as he was writing the Church Dogmatics (cf. Mangina, p. 12). Examine Grunewald’s Crucifixion at the Paris WebMuseum, especially Grunewald’s depiction of the finger of John the Baptist.
4. Why does Barth assert that “we do the Bible poor and unwelcome honor if we equate it directly” with revelation (p. 112)?
5. In what four senses does revelation engender the Bible (p. 115)?
6. What is the content of revelation (pp. 115-116, 119), and why does this lead to a Christ-centered interpretation of the Bible?
7. How does revelation reflect the freedom of God’s grace (p. 117)?
8. “Revelation in fact does not differ from the person of Jesus Christ nor from the reconciliation accomplished in him” (p. 119). Explain.
9. Barth concludes this section by referring to revelation as the first form of the Word of God, the condition of the other two. Why does proclamation through preaching and Scripture occur ubi et quando visum et Deo (“where and when it pleased God”), in contrast to revelation, which occurs illic et tunc (“there and then”)? (cf. quote by Baxter, below)
10. Beyond the text: How does Barth’s view of revelation contrast with the Islamic understanding of the revelation, transmission, and translation of the Qu’ran?

4. The Unity of the Word of God (pp. 120-124)

1. Barth argues that there is no distinction of degree or value between the three forms of the Word of God, nor may they be known in isolation from one another. How does his understanding of the threefold form of the Word of God thus echo the doctrine of the Trinity?
2. How does Barth’s understanding of the threefold Word of God relate to the homoousion, the doctrine of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ?
3. Excursus, pp. 121-124: How can a theory of biblical inspiration paradoxically lead to a situation where the Church forgets, or neglects, that God Himself speaks? What dangers is Barth here warning the Church about? (cf. quote by Deddo, below)

• Has Barth established his Leitsatz for this paragraph?

What others say:

1. “Unlike most Protestant dogmatics, we do not begin with the doctrine of Holy Scripture, but with the Incarnation itself. Here we see that the ‘revealed Word,’ which has happened once and for all time in the historical event of Jesus Christ, must be given a prior and determinative position above and beyond the ‘written Word’ and the ‘preached Word,’ which must ever again become God’s Word. Thus the Bible can never become a ‘paper pope,’ but retains its basic character as witness.” John Godsey, Karl Barth’s Table Talk, p. 5.
2. “If we think in terms of the order of our knowing, then it is with preaching that the church must begin. We hear the gospel expounded or proclaimed from the pulpit, or in some other context. Behind such preaching lies the given text of Scripture with which the preacher must wrestle, and the meaning of which she must seek to unpack for her hearers. But the text is not, in this sense, the ultimate referent of her words. For there is another more ultimate authority to which Scripture itself points, which lies beyond its words, and which engendered and called forth those words of witness in the first place. This other reality is, of course, the event in which God acted decisively for our salvation in the life, death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. It is this which is the real object of Christian preaching. Thus the ontic order, the order of being, is the precise reverse of the noetic. It begins with Christ whose saving economy in due course calls forth Scripture as a witness, and this in turn leads to the preaching ministry in the church.” Trevor Hart, “The Word, the Words, and the Witness: Proclamation as Divine and Human Reality,” in Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Reading of His Theology (Wipf and Stock, 1999), pp. 32-33.
3. “The manner of God’s making Scripture theologically reliable is in a double act of revelation. The first is in giving Himself to be known, objectively, for example in the person of Jesus, and subjectively in the giving to the apostles the capacity to know Him. The first ‘act’ of revelation thus straddles objectivity and subjectivity and engenders the record known as Scripture. The second act of revelation is God giving Himself to be known, objectively in the Scripture record, which is wholly about Jesus, and subjectively in the giving to the readers the capacity to know Him. This second ‘act’ of revelation equally straddles objectivity and subjectivity, and is never completed or finished for the relationship between God who is giving Himself to be known, and the reader who is receiving the capacity to know God is a continuing relationship: it has to be ‘new every morning’ or it is not knowledge of God at all. Although the apostles witness to this, neither they nor the written words of Scripture, still less the readers of Scripture ‘possess’ this revelation: – it is the free gift of a sovereign God.” Christina A. Baxter, “The Nature and Place of Scripture in the Church Dogmatics,” in John Thompson, ed., Theology Beyond Christendom: Essays on the Centenary of the Birth of Karl Barth, May 10, 1886 (Pickwick Publications, 1986), pp. 33-62 (quote on p. 35).
4. “So, all of our obedience, including studying Scripture, reading Scripture, listening to the Scripture preached, then, is done by faith in the actual living God as if this God was present and real and active today. Because what Barth saw is, when the German church separated Scripture from the living God, they manipulated that Bible to serve the needs and the desires and even the ideals of Nazi Germany. So they became lords over the Bible and used their methods, you see, to move it around to fit their needs and ideals. And the only way, Barth saw, is we have to bring back in the sovereignty of God which is the active living grace of God present in our lives to overcome our resistance to the grace of God that we might really hear his Word again to do that. So yes, Barth’s view of Scripture is: Scripture is connected to the Living Word and that’s what makes the Bible the Bible, and if you separate them, the Bible becomes nothing – we become lords over it. So yes, I don’t think that’s a low view of Scripture. It’s a high view of God and his Word.” Gary Deddo, You’re Included video (Grace Communion International; more)

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§3. Church Proclamation as the Material of Dogmatics

• Context: §3-7, “The Word of God as the Criterion of Dogmatics” – Related readings
• Editions: Henderson ed. vol. 1; Study Edition vol. 1.
  (More on editions, Volume-Parts, § = “paragraphs”, Leitsatz, pagination, structure.)
• Volume-Part: I.1, §3, pp. 47-87.

Leitsatz: “Talk about God in the Church seeks to be proclamation to the extent that in the form of preaching and sacrament it is directed to man with the claim and expectation that in accordance with its commission it has to speak to him the Word of God to be heard in faith. Inasmuch as it is a human word in spite this claim and expectation, it is the material of dogmatics, i.e., of the investigation of its responsibility as measured by the Word of God which it seeks to proclaim.”

Questions for discussion:

1. Read the Leitsatz for this paragraph aloud.
   • Which phrases did Barth develop with greatest care?
   • Which phrases are most interesting, significant, or meaningful to you?
2. How does Barth’s discussion of this paragraph relate to your life?
3. Which of the Reading Questions is most interesting to you?
4. Did any of the quotations relate to, or illuminate, Barth’s text for you?
5. Did any reading guides (e.g., Mangina or Bromiley) or other related readings throw light upon Barth’s text for you?

Questions for reading:

1. Talk about God and Church proclamation (p. 47)

1. The Church reflects a visible cleavage in the world, that is similar to talk about God within and without the Church. How is Church talk about God different from other talk about God? (47-49)
2. By “proclamation” Barth does not mean speech addressed to God, nor good works. But rather, if proclamation is the attempt to speak the Word of God Himself, by what right do we do so? (52; cf. quote by Hart, below)
3. Why does Barth emphasize the Church’s proclamation as commissioned? (53-55; cf. quote by Purves, below)
4. Church proclamation includes preaching (distinguished from moral exhortation) and the sacraments. What is the Evangelical understanding of the relation between preaching and the sacraments? (56-58)
5. How is preaching a repetition of the promise of God, given to us here and now? (59-61)
6. How does Modernism substitute social action and moral exhortation for preaching? (61-64)
7. Why does Barth describe Modernist dogmatics as a conversation of humanity with itself (p. 62)? How does making human experience the norm reduce dogmatics, or talk about God, to talk about ourselves?
8. How does Barth critique the incidental place of the sermon in Catholic dogmatics (p. 67)? Is making the Church the dispenser of grace another way of making human experience the norm? How does this undermine the freedom of God’s grace and marginalize the preaching of the Word of God? (64ff.)
9. On p. 68ff., how does Barth contrast the impersonal conception of grace as a causal influence in both Modernist and Catholic dogmatics with the understanding of grace in Evangelical dogmatics as free and personal, resulting from Word and faith?

2. Dogmatics and Church proclamation (p. 71)

1. What makes Church dogmatics unconditionally free when it intends to proclaim the Word of God? (72ff.)
2. Can a Church that fears the world also fear God? (74ff.)
3. The singing, worship, social work and missions of the Church are not exempt from self-examination by dogmatics. Nevertheless, why is dogmatics the servant rather than the lord of other aspects of Church life? (83)
4. Proclamation of the Word of God is also at the same time the word of man, which brings the responsibility of dogmatics to test its truth. Yet preaching does not consist of reading study notes from the Church Dogmatics from the pulpit! How does dogmatics differ from preaching, and how may dogmatics serve preaching? (79)
5. Why can Church dogmatics not aim to be a timeless system (p. 79)?
6. Why does Barth assert that Church proclamation is the concrete datum with which dogmatics begins? (pp. 77, 82)
7. Which of the three distortions of the place of dogmatics is most tempting to you (pp. 83ff.)?

• Has Barth established his Leitsatz for this paragraph?

What others say:

1. “It is not the preacher’s word that heals, blesses and announces hope or that convicts, transforms and declares forgiveness. The preacher’s job is to bear witness to what the Lord is saying to the people as the Word of God.” “The defining matter of the church’s life is not to convert and bring people to faith (the evangelical heresy!) or to bring in the ethical commonwealth (the liberal heresy!). The defining matter for the church’s life, for which the church exists, is to bear witness to Jesus Christ. He, not we, converts people and brings in the reign of God.” Andrew Purves, The Crucifixion of Ministry (InterVarsity Press, 2007), pp. 90, 132.
2. “The proper basis of Christian talk about God, of knowledge of God, is precisely this unexpected and undeserved address of God: God’s own proclamation to humanity, his speaking of the divine Word. And the proper form of all theological endeavor is that of response. Christian preachers, says Barth, dare to speak about God. But they can do so only on the presupposition that God himself has spoken first, that he has addressed human beings, has addressed them as human subjects, and that his address compels them also to speak. Otherwise their speech would be the ultimate presumption.” Trevor Hart, “The Word, the Words, and the Witness: Proclamation as Divine and Human Reality,” in Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Reading of His Theology (Wipf and Stock, 1999), p. 29.

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§2. The Task of Prolegomena to Dogmatics

• Volume-Part: I.1, §2, pp. 25-44.

Leitsatz: “Prolegomena to dogmatics is our name for the introductory part of dogmatics in which our concern is to understand its particular way of knowledge.”

• Context: §1-2: “Introduction”; Related readings
  (More on Volume-Parts, § = “paragraphs”, Leitsatz, pagination, structure.)
• Editions: Henderson ed. vol. 1; Study Edition vol. 1.
  (More on editions.)

Questions for discussion:

1. Read the Leitsatz for this paragraph aloud.
   • Which phrases did Barth develop with greatest care?
   • Which phrases are most interesting, significant, or meaningful to you?
2. How does Barth’s discussion of this paragraph relate to your life?
3. Which of the Reading Questions is most interesting to you?
4. Did any of the quotations relate to, or illuminate, Barth’s text for you?
5. Did any reading guides (e.g., Mangina or Bromiley) or other related readings throw light upon Barth’s text for you?

Questions for reading:

1. The necessity of dogmatic prolegomena (p. 25)

1. Why does Barth argue against prolegomena conceived as establishing a natural “point of contact” between the proclamation of the Church and innate human “capacities”?
2. How do well-intentioned prolegomena, which involve opportunistic apologetics or natural theology, compromise the proclamation of the Church as a witness of faith?
3. What are the three reasons why Barth argues that “all planned apologetics” become irresponsible, irrelevant and ineffective – merely “confident distractions” to dogmatics? (p. 30)
4. What might a legitimate apologetics learn from dogmatics?
   • Beyond the text: How would a legitimate apologetics, according to Barth, differ from both “presuppositionalism” and “evidentialism”?
5. Unlike apologetics, dogmatics is concerned with error in the Church. Why is the recognition of heresy (“divergent faith”) important to dogmatics? What is the relation of heresy to prolegomena?
6. Barth contrasts Evangelical dogmatics sharply with both Modernism (19th-century Protestant liberalism from Schleiermacher to von Harnack) and Roman Catholicism. Why is he so forceful at upholding this distinctiveness of Evangelical theology?
7. Beyond the text: Neither Modernism nor Catholicism remains the same today as they were when Barth was writing these pages (e.g., many Catholic observers attribute the reforms of Vatican II as arising in part from Catholic dialogue with Barth).
   • From what you know of later theological developments in the 20th century, do you think Barth would revise anything if he were writing today?
   • Why might a liberal Protestant and/or a Roman Catholic today, or centuries hence, nevertheless benefit from reading Barth?

2. The possibility of dogmatic prolegomena (p. 36)

1. “God speaks.” How is this necessary for theology to be possible? Why does Barth reject a purely human possibility of Church dogmatics?
2. Why does Barth argue against prolegomena conceived as establishing a natural “point of contact” between the proclamation of the Church and innate human “capacities”?
3. Barth contrasts Evangelical dogmatics sharply with Modernism (pp. 36-40). What are the main features of Church proclamation in Modernism?
4. How does Modernism retain a human possibility for dogmatics?
5. Barth contrasts Evangelical dogmatics sharply with Roman Catholicism (pp. 40ff.). What are the main features of Church proclamation in Catholicism?
6. How does Catholicism retain a human possibility for dogmatics, absolutized in the Church?
7. What is the Evangelical conception of grace?
8. Why is grace a distinguishing mark of Evangelical dogmatics?
9. How does the Evangelical understanding of grace contrast, according to Barth, with both Modernism and Catholicism?
10. The Word of God, a possibility beyond human capacities, is the norm of Evangelical dogmatics. How does this differ from Modernism and Catholicism?
11. Beyond the text: How does Barth’s argument for the necessity and possibility of dogmatics depend upon his argument in §1 that theology as a scientific pursuit, i.e., as a particular way of knowing, requires its proper principle or ground, rather than arising from a mixture of alien criteria?
12. Beyond the text: How would you summarize in your own words Barth’s view of the particular way of knowledge of Church dogmatics? For example, how would you improve on the following summary?
    “God is Lord; God speaks; we hear the Word of God by the Holy Spirit; we proclaim a witness to the Word by grace.”

• Has Barth established his Leitsatz for this paragraph?

What others say:

1. “The great problem of modern theology is how to disentangle the Christian understanding of God from all the twisted ideas that man thinks up out of the depth of his own being and from all the fanciful projections out of his own understanding.” Thomas F. Torrance, “Karl Barth: 1886-1968,” in Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990), p. 17.
2. “Barth sets himself from the outset firmly against all accounts of Christian knowledge of God which trace the proper basis of that knowledge to some inherent capacity for the divine, sense of absolute dependence, experience of the ultimate or the numinous, or whatever. Such accounts of the matter, he insists, cannot finally avoid capitulating to the accusation of Feuerbach that talk about God is in the end only talk about humanity. To seek to found talk about God, as much nineteenth-century theology did, by pointing to the possibility and actuality of such anthropological phenomena was to invite the reduction of theological assertions to anthropological ones. It was to focus in the wrong place, to become preoccupied with the human organ of response rather than that objective reality which stimulates it.” Trevor Hart, “The Word, the Words, and the Witness: Proclamation as Divine and Human Reality,” in Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Reading of His Theology (Wipf and Stock, 1999), pp. 28-29.

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§1. The Task of Dogmatics

• Volume-Part: I.1, §1, pp. 1-24.

Leitsatz: “As a theological discipline, dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God.”

• Context: §1-2: “Introduction”; Related readings
  (More on Volume-Parts, § = “paragraphs”, Leitsatz, pagination, structure.)
• Editions: Henderson ed. vol. 1; Study Edition vol. 1.
  (More on editions.)

Questions for discussion:

1. Read the Leitsatz for this paragraph aloud.
   • Which phrases did Barth develop with greatest care?
   • Which phrases are most interesting, significant, or meaningful to you?
2. How does Barth’s discussion of this paragraph relate to your life?
3. Which of the Reading Questions is most interesting to you?
4. Did any of the quotations relate to, or illuminate, Barth’s text for you?
5. Did any reading guides (e.g., Mangina or Bromiley) or other related readings throw light upon Barth’s text for you?

Questions for reading:

1. The Church, Theology, Science (p. 3)

1. Is it significant that Barth defines dogmatics as an activity taking place within the sphere of the Church?
2. Mangina distills Barth’s introduction into the phrase “God speaks.” How does this fact establish dogmatics upon pure grace?
3. Does the affirmation of dogmatics as an activity within the Church imply that theology presupposes grace, and that there are no adequate human conditions for a natural theology?
4. Is dogmatics according to Barth more of a dialogue with unbelief or a testing of the witness of faith?
5. How does Barth characterize the relationships between dogmatic theology, biblical science, and practical theology? How do these relate to church history?
6. Why is it important for dogmatics to be conducted according to a criterion derived from its own object, rather than invoking an alien standard?
   • Beyond the text: Does this discussion throw light upon the principle of kata physin (i.e., “according to its nature”) as the defining characteristic of scientific method? (That is, kata physin means that each science must develop a method appropriate to its subject matter.)
7. What are some of the ambiguities involved in defining scientific knowledge? What are some possible objections to the claim that theology is a science?
8. Why might we affirm that theology is a science, according to Barth?
9. Beyond the text: Does theological inquiry count as scientific if we define a science as an inquiry characterized by a kata physin methodology?
10. Beyond the text: Barth was neither a “presuppositionalist” nor an “evidentialist,” as those terms are often used today. Might Barth perhaps regard both of those alternatives as anthropocentric in methodology? How is Barth’s confessional approach to Church Dogmatics concerned rather with allowing the subject matter to determine, and progressively disclose, the appropriate methodology?

2. Dogmatics as an enquiry (p. 11)

1. For Barth, dogmatics is not static, but an ongoing enquiry. Why must Church dogmatics always remain open, rather than becoming a closed system of formal propositions set out in a rigid logical demonstration?
2. Beyond the text: How does the open-endedness of enquiry in Church dogmatics differ from a “presuppositionalist” approach to apologetics?
3. If divine truth is personal – Jesus Christ, the Word of God – then theological knowledge is irreducibly personal and involves obedience. How does Barth’s conception of theological dogmatics differ from popular definitions of “dogmatic”?
4. In what sense does dogmatics produce new knowledge? Does dogmatics involve novelty? Why are we always thrown back to the beginning and required to make a fresh start in each new age, culture, language and generation?
5. Beyond the text: Do these claims imply that dogmatics will be difficult and personally challenging, regardless of one’s mental gifts?

3. Dogmatics as an act of faith (p. 17)

1. As an act of faith, how is dogmatics characterized by Anselm’s description of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding)?
2. Why does Barth warn against the anthropologizing of theology (p. 19)?
3. Why does dogmatics require faith?
4. Does the personal faith of the theologian matter? (pp. 18-21)
5. Why does dogmatics require obedience?
6. Is dogmatics an abstract intellectual pursuit or a personal journey of obedience?
7. Why does dogmatics require repentance?
8. Why does dogmatics require prayer?
9. What makes dogmatics unique among all sciences (p. 23)?
10. Beyond the text: How was Barth’s theology related to his experience as a pastor at Safenwil, or to his ongoing ministry among prisoners in Basel?
11. Beyond the text: Is it salutary for an academic theologian to be engaged in pastoral and/or preaching ministry?
12. Beyond the text: Does Barth show evidence of being aware of the study of theology, doctrine and the Bible by non-confessing scholars? How does he interact with the results of their study, or engage with their work? What is the relationship he envisions between Church Dogmatics and non-confessional study? (That is, between confessional and non-confessional approaches?)
13. Beyond the text: What is the relationship Barth might envision between Church Dogmatics and the theological endeavors of non-Christian religions? (That is, between diverse confessional approaches?)

• Has Barth established his Leitsatz for this paragraph?

What others say:

1. “Barth insisted on the activity of God as the mark of his transcendence and freedom and independent objectivity. It is just because God activity reveals himself, because his revelation is and ever remains pure act which will never resolve itself into some effective receptivity or subjective condition of ours, that we may continue to encounter it as genuine revelation, as Word of God addressed to us from beyond ourselves, which we cannot and must not mistake for a word of our own or convert into a word we can tell ourselves. God’s Word is unlike our words, for it is creative Word, Word that is also act, and so Word that resists our attempt to domesticate or subdue it to forms of our own understanding, Word that acts creatively upon us, thereby calling us in question and summoning us to conform ourselves to it. Indeed God’s Word is an act of aggression on his part, for it is the Word of his grace that contradicts us in our self-will, and so confronts us with a decision in which we have to act against ourselves in self-renunciation and repentance. It is thus through the objection of God’s active revelation that we are able to distinguish it from our own subjectivities and know it to be really objective reality independent of us, real Word of God from God, as distinct from mere word of man.” Thomas F. Torrance, “The Intellectual Context of Barth’s Thought,” in Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990), pp. 42-43.
2. “The methodological closeness of theology to empirical science is seen at a deeper level in the essentially scientific way in which it develops its method, for it does not bring to its task a method it has already thought out or acquired, but elaborates a method only in its actualisation of knowledge. Neither theological science nor empirical science knows a method in abstraction from the material content of its actual subject matter. Thus the questions theology asks are not correlated with the subject but with the object. Moreover, when it brings questions to its object, it is only in order that they may be called in question by the object and be restated in accordance with what is further disclosed about the nature of the object. They are questions designed to let the object declare itself, and so are framed as questions that the object by its nature puts to the inquirer. In so far as they are thus correlated with the subject they are acts of self-criticism designed to clear away all artificiality and to open a way for seeing what is actually there and for learning what the objective reality has to disclose unhindered and undistorted, as far as possible, by any prior understanding on the part of the subject undertaking the inquiry. The questions that are put are only designed by the theologian or the scientist in order to let himself be told what he cannot tell himself and must genuinely learn. The universe like its Creator always takes us by surprise. For theology this kind of open-ended inquiry is a humble exercise in repentant rethinking.” Thomas F. Torrance, “The Intellectual Context of Barth’s Thought,” in Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990), p. 66.
3. “The procedure common to theological science and all other genuine science is one in which the mind of the knower acts in strict conformity to the nature of what is given, and refuses to take up a standing in regard to it prior to actual knowledge or in abstraction from actual knowledge. Rigorous scientific knowledge is one in which the reason does not proceed in the light of some inner dialectic of its own, but one that arises out of determination by the object known and derives from the rationality and necessity of that object. In theological knowledge the reason lets itself be determined by the nature of God in his revelation, and adopts a mode of rationality that corresponds with God’s objectifying of himself for man. That is epistemologically the meaning of faith – faith is not in the slightest degree any irrational leap, but a sober commitment to the nature of the given reality, a determination of the reason in accordance with the nature of the object as it becomes disclosed, an orientation of the mind demanded of it in encounter with its unique and incomparable object that is and remains subject, the Lord God…. Hence theological knowledge is not a scientific explication of the nature of faith, but in faith an explication of understanding of the independent reality known.” Thomas F. Torrance, “The Intellectual Context of Barth’s Thought,” in Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (1990), pp. 68-69.