The following comes after a long small print section from Karl Barth. I wanted to transcribe the whole thing, but I neither have the time nor the energy; the following will have to suffice. What we will be reading is a summary, by Barth, of the small print section I just mentioned. It is one of the richest things I have ever read on how a Christian ought to think the violence and brutality of the Old Testament. Rather than reading all of that away as reflecting a genocidal God of war, it does the canonical soul well if we simply read the Old Testament as if its whole telos is indeed Jesus Christ. If we do this, the seemingly futile brutality and judgment and wrath of God we see often displayed on its pages comes to make sense; but only if understood from the frame of reference that understands that Jesus Christ is the ineffable God who holds all reality together, ensarkos. Barth, a modern (but orthodox) theologian doesn’t attempt to explain away the violence of the “Old Testament God” (like Pete Enns et al does); instead, true to form, he contextualizes it in the cruciformed shape of God’s immortal and ultimate life. Barth writes (in brief):

The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is that there God’s condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, really smiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel. It did really fall on the sin of Israel, our sin and us sinners. It did so in such a way that in what happened there (not to Israel, or to us, but to Jesus Christ) the righteousness of God which we have offended was really revealed and satisfied. Yet it did so in such a way that it did not happen to Israel or to us, but for Israel, for us. What was suffered there on Israel’s account and ours, was suffered for Israel and for us. The wrath of God which we had merited, by which we must have been annihilated and would long since have been annihilated, was now in our place borne and suffered as though it had smitten us and yet in such a way that it did not smite us and can no more smite us. The reason why the No Spoken on Good Friday is so terrible, but why there is already concealed in it the Eastertide Yes of God’s righteousness, is that He who on the cross took upon Himself and suffered the wrath of God was no other than God’s own Son, and therefore the eternal God Himself in the unity with human nature which He freely accepted in His transcendent mercy.[1]

If you read closely you can see Athanasius (i.e. annihilation language) informing Barth; and you can see his thinking forming towards what is only nascent in Barth’s thought in regard to a doctrine of election (which comes in the next volume II/2). This is an extremely aesthetically pleasing statement from Barth, for all types of reasons. It is conceptually rich with thinking on God’s No hidden in the Yes of God; with a way to read the OT in a Christ concentration; with a conception of atonement theory wherein God’s wrath is taken by God Himself in the Son, the Judge judged. The mystery, majesty, and yet concreteness of it all, particularly as Barth is able to explicate things in his way, is rather astounding; it is an occasion of worship for me. To contemplate the depth dimensional realities of the Christ, in the sort of symphonic ways that Barth is masterful at, is such an edifying experience. This is why I read Barth, because he points beyond his frail and sinful self, and points to His Savior, and mine, Jesus Christ.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 §30 The Doctrine of God: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 145.