On Being Dead, Then Alive: The Christian Feeling

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The following from Karl Barth encapsulates what I was attempting to get at in my recent post on Colossians 2.20. He writes: 

In the eternal election of the one man Jesus of Nazareth, God, merciful in His judgment, appoints for man a gracious end and a new gracious beginning. He makes him die in order that he may truly live. He makes him pass in order that he may acquire a real future. The purpose of the election of this One is God’s righteous and saving will to deal with man’s need at is very root and to show this man the supreme favour by taking his place in the person of this One, taking away from man and upon Himself the bitterness of man’s end, and bringing upon man the whole joy of the new beginning. Thus the election of this One is His election to death and to life, to passing and to new coming.1 

There is a primordial, an apocalyptic reality to this that needs be felt in the Christian’s daily life. The Christian existence is one that is ‘constantly being given over to the death of Christ, that the life of Christ might be made manifest in our mortal bodies.’ I want to impress this upon my brethren and sistren in the most stringent of ways possible; for without grasping this, the Christian life only remains an anemic formalism wherein the power of God is only known in name only. The Christian, definitionally so, is ‘in Christ’; they are ‘one spirit with Christ’; they are ‘dead and hidden in Christ, who is their life.’ This cannot remain an intellectualism, but must be pressed into by an ongoing dialogue with God as we participate in the intercessory session of the Son of the Right-Hand. We are creatures of the ‘new-coming,’ who is the eschatos of God’s life for us, Jesus Christ.  

An aside: My appreciation for Barth, just as with my appreciation for TF Torrance, is that they are dialogical theologians. They are not analytic theologians, and thus resist being categorized within analytic or scholastic categories. And yet I see many attempting to do this with them. This practice ought to be shuttered post-haste! This passage from Barth, and many found in TFT’s works, illustrate the sort of theologians they were. They were theologians engaged with the speaking God. 

1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 §34-35: Study Edition (New York, New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 64. 

3 thoughts on “On Being Dead, Then Alive: The Christian Feeling”

  1. ‘Dialogical’… not ‘analytical’ theologians. An effective and reasonable descriptor! And consistent with the theology practiced by Israel and the Apostolic community in response to God’s self-revelation. Even Calvin’s approach is so inclined, yet sensitive to the responses necessary to address the prevailing discourse of his time.

    I think this is an acceptable and effective clarification, Bobby.

  2. As Evangelical Calvinists we are proponents of ‘dialogical theology,’ which we list as one of our theses in our book (with development). And of course we take this from Barth’s ‘dialectical theology,’ which he defines early, in his Gottingen Dogmatics, as akin to a dialogical theology. And dialogical theology is really a function of doxological theology; the mutually implicate each other.

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