Dovetailing with the last post I thought this paragraph I just read from Barth was quite apropos. It works off of the analogy of the incarnation, and in application focuses on the significance—and paradox—of living in-between the first and second advents of Christ. This fits well, I think, also with an analogy of Holy Saturday as a vista-point from whence we can perspectivize ourselves from the vantage point of living by faith not sight. As Barth notes, we gain our visible lives from our invisible lives as they are hidden with Christ before God (reminds me of Colossians 3). This is an astounding thought that what it means to live from the eschatos of God’s life in Christ, in the here and now, is to love God and neighbor. This is the most important thing to God; that we love each other as an expression of and witness to the eternal love that God has for the other as the esse of His triune Life. The broader context Barth is writing from here is his reflection upon the ‘Great Commandment’ (cf. Mt 22). He writes:

The connexion and the difference between the two commandments are plain when we remember that the children of God, the Church now live, as it were, in the space in between the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and in the time of the forbearance of God and their own watching and waiting. In effect they live in two times and worlds. And in both of these their one undivided existence is claimed absolutely by God, subjected to His command and engaged to obedience. There can be no question of any other Lord but God claiming our love, or of any other object but God wanting to be loved. But the love of the children of God corresponds to their twofold existence in two times and worlds. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ have taken place. On this basis they are already members and participants of the new world created by Him, by faith in the manifestation of the Son of God in and with the human nature which He has adopted, in and with the flesh which He has united to His deity and glorified by His power. Represented by Him, peccatores iusti, in His person they are already assembled before the throne of God, citizens of His everlasting kingdom, participators in eternal life. They are in Christ; and it is in the totality of this their hidden being, which is none other than their actual human and creaturely existence here and now, that in the way described they are put under the commandment to love God, to seek after the One who has first sought and found them. But by virtue of the coming but not yet visible lordship of Jesus Christ, in faith in His coming, comforting themselves with the promise of the forgiveness of sins, given in the Word made flesh for all flesh, they always stand in need of comfort and warning of this promise, because although the former time and world are past they still lie, indeed are, behind them. They have to wait and watch for their Lord as iusti peccatores. They have to serve Him in the relationships, connexions and orderings of a reality which has, of course, been overthrown and superseded by His resurrection, but not yet visibly abolished and replaced by His second coming, in the space between the times, where it doth not yet appear what they shall be. The “walk” in the light in face of darkness, and in this visible pilgrimage in all its hope and peril, which is simply the totality of their actual human and creaturely activity here and now, God has placed them under the commandment to love their neighbour.[1]

If you are familiar with ‘Apocalyptic theology’ you will recognize those sorts of themes embedded in this passage from Barth; and if you’re not, then just know you’ve been exposed to what is currently being called apocalyptic theology.

As we contemplate this space between the death and resurrection of Christ, and think that into what Barth is referring us to in regard to the space between resurrection and ascension, I think this provides us with rich and deep theological space for thinking about what it means to be living in the now and looking forward to the not yet; even as we live from the not yet. To love God and neighbor, as Barth presses, ought to be characteristic of living in-between. It is this character that bears witness to the reality of God’s life as our life; as we participate in and from the eternal Life that is shaped by its self-giveness, as it looks to the other as the ground of its unity. Here we can typify Easter-love as we live from the well-spring of that love as it is given power and shape through the resurrection and exaltation of humanity therein. An exaltation of humanity that is given its greatest orientation as it understands its whence as that is situated and ‘hidden’ in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; as the human who makes us human as He re-conciles us to the ordered life that God has always intended for us. That order is to love the other.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. –Colossians 3.1-4

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” –Matthew 22.34-40

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2 §18: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 211-12.