Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Quote - Barth on God and Truth

Sorry posting has been so light this week; I've been engrossed in other writing projects, and will likely remain so for at least the next week. In the mean time, here's another quote that I find interesting, by Karl Barth, in his Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (no, Evangelicalism is not merely an American aberration!). I'm not sure what he means by appealing to the Greek aletheia here, but I like his emphasis on God's truth (or, I would say, our ability to know it) being necessarily historical and revelatory. It is only because God reveals himself in history that we can know him at all:

The object of evangelical theology is God in the history of his deeds. In this history he makes himself known. But in it he also is who he is.... The God of the Gospel, therefore, is neither a thing, an item, an object like others, nor an idea, a principle, a truth, or a sum of truths. God can be called the truth only when "truth" is understood in the sense of the Greek word aletheia. God's being, or truth, is the event of his self-disclosure, his radiance as the Lord of all lords, the hallowing of his name, the coming of his kingdom, the fulfillment of his will in all his work. (pg. 9)

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