scholarly journals Humanity matters: The strange priestly yes of God actualised amidst the struggles of life

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Anlené Taljaard

Barth’s rejection of natural theology gives the impression that his theology holds only negative views of anthropology. A description of the office of the priesthood of Christ offers insight into how humanity matters in the theology of Karl Barth. The article argues that Christ, the priest, actualised and effectuated the strange priestly yes of God to humanity. The strange priestly yes of God to humanity can be understood, as grounded upon the radical yes of God to humanity, revealed and actualised in the incarnated person and redemptive history of Jesus Christ as the one who is the Son of God and the Son of man.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James P Haley

Karl Barth departs from historical Protestant orthodoxy in his unique adoption of the dual formula anhypostasis and enhypostasis to explain the union of divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ. For Barth, these concepts help explain why the person of Jesus Christ must not be viewed statically in his being as the God-man, but dynamically in the event of God’s movement of grace towards humanity. As such, Barth applies these concepts in his analysis of the Chalcedon definition of the Jesus Christ who exists as one person with two natures. In so doing, Barth further develops Chalcedon’s definition of the two natures of Christ based upon the hypostatica unio. Not only must Chalcedon be interpreted through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as event, but also event in the union of this human essence as the Son of Man as it participates in the divine essence. For Barth, the emphasis is not the combining of divine and human essence into one being, but that the eternal Christ has taken to himself human essence as the one Reconciler.


2012 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyarin

Professor Hanan Eshel, in memoriamAncient and modern readers have offered two basic interpretations of the “[One like a] Son of Man” () in Dan 7:13. One line of interpretation holds that the One like a Son of Man is a symbol of a collective, namely, the faithful Israelites at the time of the Maccabean revolt.1 The other basic line of interpretation sees the One like a Son of Man as a divine figure of one sort or another, a second God, a son of God, or an archangel.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-175
Author(s):  
Warseto Freddy Sihombing

AbstractNo one can be justified before God for doing good deeds. No matter how good a man is, if he does not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he will not be saved from the wrath of God to come. There is no human being who is right before God, and no sinful man can save himself in any way. The only way out is in the way that God has given to the problem of all sinners, by sending Jesus Christ to the world to die for sinners. "And for this he came, so that every man believed in him, who was sent by God" (John 6:29). The Bible teaches that salvation is only obtained because of faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of that faith. This salvation is known as the statement "Justified by faith. Paul explained this teaching in each of his writings. This teaching of justification by faith has been repeatedly denied by some people who disagree with Paul's opinion. The history of the church from the early centuries to the present has proven the variety of understandings that have emerged from this teaching, but one important thing is that sinful humans are justified by their faith in Jesus Christ before God.Keywords: Paul;history; justified by faith.AbstrakTidak ada seorang pun yang dapat dibenarkan di hadapan Allah karena telah melakukan perbuatan baik. Sebaik apa pun manusia, jika dia tidak percaya kepada Yesus Kristus, Anak Allah maka ia tidak akan selamat dari murka Allah yang akan datang. Tidak ada seorang pun manusia yang benar di hadapan Allah, dan tidak ada seorang manusia berdosa yang dapat menyelematkan dirinya sendiri dengan cara apa pun. Satu-satunya jalan keluar adalah dengan cara yang Allah telah berikan untuk masalah semua orang berdosa, yaitu dengan mengutus Yesus Kristus ke dunia untuk mati bagi orang berdosa. “Dan untuk itulah Dia datang, yaitu supaya setiap orang percaya kepada Dia, yang telah diutus oleh Allah” (Yohanes 6:29). Alkitab mengajarkan bahwa keselamatan hanya diperoleh karena iman kepada Yesus Kristus. Yesus Kristus adalah obyek iman tersebut. Keselamatan ini dikenal dengan pernyataan “Dibenarkan karena iman. Paulus menjelaskan ajaran ini dalam setiap tulisannya. Ajaran pembenaran oleh iman ini telah berulang kali disangkal oleh beberap orang yang tidak setuju dengan pendapat Paulus. Sejarah gereja mulai dari abad permulaan sampai pada masa sekarang ini telah membuktikan beragamnya pemahaman yang muncul terhadap ajaran ini, namun satu hal yang terpenting adalah bahwa manusia berdosa dibenarkan oleh iman mereka kepada Yesus Kristus di hadapan Allah.Kata Kunci: Paulus; sejarah; iman; dibenarkan oleh iman.


Author(s):  
Randall C. Zachman

Karl Barth seeks to restore the Gospel to the centre of Protestant theology by orienting dogmatic theology to the witness of the prophetic and apostolic authors of Scripture and to the theology of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Barth especially endorses Luther’s claim that the proclamation of the living and free Word of God in Jesus Christ lies at the heart of the commission laid on the church, and that the task of theology is to test the truth of that proclamation. However, Barth becomes increasingly critical of Luther and Calvin when they distinguish God revealed in Jesus Christ from God in Godself and when they distinguish a Word of God in Scripture—be it a Word of the Creator or the Word as Law—that is distinct from the one Word of God, Jesus Christ. Barth also disagrees with Luther and Calvin regarding the sacraments, insisting at the end of his career that Jesus Christ is the one and only sacrament of God.


1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Deegan

In this third part of volume III of his Dogmatics Barth sets forth the doctrine of divine providence as the objective and universal rule of God which establishes and encompasses but does not absorb the existence of the person or community which becomes the object of His preservation. Barth's steadfast aim has been to produce a theology dominated by its object, Jesus Christ. This part of the Dogmatics is no exception, for here he argues that the order of being and the order of knowledge start with the event of God's action in Christ. Hence he does not speak of a natural theology with an independent cosmological interest in the work of divine preservation, for he insists that Scripture is differently orientated. It does not witness simply to the highest being as first cause; it witnesses primarily to the Lord of history, the God of the Covenant. This means that the doctrine of providence does not become a Weltanschauung. What Barth says concerning this problem in C.D.III.3 should be read in conjunction with C.D.III.2, pp. 3ff. Because he affirms that the central concern of theology is the relation of God and man established in Jesus Christ he regards cosmology as a peripheral concern arid draws the line against attempts to integrate scientific views and theological interpretation into a comprehensive Weltanschauung. Yet he readily admits that the natural sciences which know their limits have their appropriate place in elucidating the nature of man against the background of creation.


1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203
Author(s):  
G. W. Bromiley

There is good hope that the present year will see the appearance of the English translation of IV, 3 of the Church Dogmatics, and with it the conclusion of the doctrinal treatment of the atonement1 and the publication of all the Dogmatik thus far available. Necessarily divided into two halves because of its great length, this third part is devoted to the prophetic work of Jesus Christ in reconciliation. It thus represents an original attempt on the part of the author to work out in detail a theme which has often been suggested in earlier theology, but which has never been given the treatment accorded to the priestly work on the one side or the kingly work on the other.


1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-425
Author(s):  
James Brown

‘In general, theological ethics has handled this command of God [the fourth Mosaic commandment] … with a casualness and feebleness which certainly do not match its importance in Holy Scripture or its decisive material significance’ (Church Dogmatics, 111.4, P. 50). Thus Karl Barth in the English translation of his Kirchliche Dogmatik (hereafter referred to as CD.). His own treatment is neither fragmentary nor perfunctory. There are references to ‘Sabbath’ in the indexes of six of twelve volumes of the Dogmatics so far published. The particular discussion of the Fourth Commandment occurs in his treatment of Special Ethics in CD. 111.4, where ‘the one command of God’ the Creator is set forth ‘in this particular application’ of ‘The Holy Day’ (p. 50). But for Barth the scriptural references to Sabbath rest have relevance to the doctrines of God, and Revelation; to the relation of God's Eternity to man's temporal being; to the biblical conception of Creation as the setting for the Covenant history of the Old Testament and the New Testament fulfilment of the divine purpose in redemption in Christ, to be completed and perfected in the ‘rest that remaineth to the people of God’ (Heb. 4.9). The treatment of the topic throughout the Dogmatics constitutes a corpus of exegesis and doctrine of which even a summary statement such as is here attempted might well be a useful contribution towards modern efforts at rethinking the Christian use of the Lord's Day.


Author(s):  
Wolf Krötke

This chapter presents Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It demonstrates the way in which Barth’s pneumatology is anchored in his doctrine of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit is understood as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the One whose essence is love. But Barth can also speak of the Holy Spirit in such a way that it seems as if the Holy Spirit is identical to the work of the risen Jesus Christ and his ‘prophetic’ work. The reception of the pneumatology of Karl Barth thus confronts the task of relating these dimensions of Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit’s distinct work is preserved. For Barth, this work consists in enabling human beings to respond in faith, with their human possibilities and their freedom, to God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ. In this faith, the Holy Spirit incorporates human beings into the community of Jesus Christ—the community participates in the reconciling work of God in order to bear witness to God’s work to human beings, all of whom have been elected to ‘partnership’ with God. Barth also understood the ‘solidarity’ of the community with, and the advocacy of the community for, the non-believing world to be a nota ecclesiae (mark of the church). Further, to live from the Holy Spirit, according to Barth, is only possible in praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyarin

AbstractMy specific project in this paper is to combine several related and notorious questions in the history of Judaism into one: What is the nexus among the semi-divine (or high angel) figure known in the Talmud as Metatron, the figure of the exalted Enoch in the Enoch books (1-3 Enoch!), "The One Like a Son of Man" of Daniel, Jesus, the Son of Man, and the rabbinically named heresy of "Two Powers/Sovereignties in Heaven?" I believe that in order to move towards some kind of an answer to this question, we need to develop a somewhat different approach to the study of ancient Judaism, as I hope to show here. I claim that late-ancient rabbinic literature when read in the context of all contemporary and earlier texts of Judaism—those defined as rabbinic as well as those defined as non-, para-, or even anti-rabbinic—affords us a fair amount of evidence for and information about a belief in (and perhaps cult of) a second divine person within, or very close to, so-called "orthodox" rabbinic circles long after the advent of Christianity. Part of the evidence for this very cult will come from efforts at its suppression on the part of rabbinic texts. I believe, moreover, that a reasonable chain of inference links this late cult figure back through the late-antique Book of 3 Enoch to the Enoch of the first-century Parables of Enoch—also known in the scholarly literature as the Similitudes of Enoch—and thus to the Son of Man of that text and further back to the One Like a Son of Man of Daniel 7.


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Struthers Malbon

AbstractFrom the point of view of "narrative christology," not only does the Markan Jesus attempt to deflect attention and honor away from himself and toward God, but he also refracts—or bends—the "christologies" of other characters and the narrator. The image comes from the way a prism refracts "white" light and thus shows its spectral colors. When a thing is bent and looked at from another angle, something different appears. The most obvious way in which the Markan Jesus bends the "christologies" of others is by his statements about the "Son of Man," especially in juxtaposition with "christological titles" offered by other characters and the narrator. No other character or the narrator speaks of the "Son of Man," thus "Son of Man" depicts the Markan Jesus' distinctive point of view. The implied author of Mark challenges the implied audience to deal with the tension between an assertive narrator who proclaims "Jesus Christ, the Son of God" and a reticent Jesus who deflects attention and honor, challenges traditional views, and insistently proclaims not himself but God. To resolve the tension in favor of the narrator (as does Kingsbury) or in favor of the Markan Jesus (as does Naluparyil) would be to flatten the implied author's multi-dimensional narrative and its multi-layered "christology." The implied author of Mark sets up this tension to draw in the implied audienc —not to resolve the tension but to enable hearing of the story of Jesus in its full complexity and mystery.


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