“There is nothing, nothing at all, to justify the belief that God has created us for the practice of this self-emptying, or that it has to be recognised [sic] and adopted as the way to reconciliation with God. When a man ventures to make this experiment, where does he find himself but in the enclosed circle of his proud being and activity? If faith in its negative form is indeed an emptying, then it is certainly an emptying of all the results of such practices of self-emptying. It begins at the point where all the works of man are at an end, including his quiescence and silence and anticipatory dying. Christian faith is the day whose dawning means the end of the mystical night.”
Karl Barth, CD IV.1, 629.
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Yes, but what does it mean?!
Don’t say “yes” before you know! But feel free to return to Cappadocians. I didn’t mean to awaken you from your patristic slumbers!
That’s true, but does anyone really ever know what Barth is saying? Of course, my yes could just be echoing the eternal yes of God in Christ which may or may not lead to universalism.
Sometimes it’s good to wake from my Patristic slumber, because then I realize how much better it is than anything else.
“When we speak of God who is in Himself the self-moved word of His own non-creatureliness, we can only mean God’s own self-disclosure of the eternal yes that is Himself is His right hand justly governing while His left rules over that which He did not create, yet is Lord over and cannot be subservient to.” (Not really a quote, just a bunch of Barth phrases strung together.)
It would be fun to make a Barth mad-lib. I bet there’d be dozen of people who would think that’s funny.
A Barth mad-lib would be great! “The dog ate [noun] for supper, but then felt [long an extremely convoluted sentence with even longer footnotes] later that night.”
On another note, your link to this blog on Google+ is wrong. It takes to you a Chinese website.