As I continue on with my linear read through of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics I have come across a small print section in CD III/3 §50, 30 wherein Barth is engaging with a doctrine of nothingness/sin. In this particular section he is commiserating with that Teutonic, Leibniz’s understanding on such matters. Without providing the necessary context I am simply going to drop some of my reflection on this following:
Leibniz’s anthropology, according to Barth’s reading, was highly monistic in regard to what it means to be human vis a vis God’s perfections. Indeed, a rather dreary prospect for the Eschaton. In the sense, that humanity by its necessary constitution must always live with the negation of privation within themselves in order to remain creaturely. But this would mean that a genuine participation or beatific vision in the eschatological life would never obtain. Because for Barth’s Leibniz, if such obtainment were to occur this would mean that humanity has crossed the Rubicon of divinity; viz., humanity would not just be like the Son, the eternal Logos, by grace, but by nature. So, true perfection, in Leibniz’s frame, always must remain out of reach insofar that what it means to be human for him, to be creaturely, is to always already have an in-built imperfection of the good as the primary component of what it means to be human.
Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled.
“I think instead of calling this a theological anthropology it would be more apropos to call it a kerygmatic anthropology; viz. an anthropology that is funded by the ground supplied for it by the Good News! that Christ is risen, that He is risen indeed!” Emet! (As you articulated in your referenced post… “A Kerygmatic Anthropology, Sept. 7, 2023)
Amen… thanks be to God for his inviolable grace found only in Christ Jesus… enforced on the ground of the requisite death of the Perfect Lamb of God’s own choosing. Such funding is never to be found deficit… even considering the weakness of imperfect human nature as created being.
“The Word of God forces those with eyes to see and ears to hear to recognize that the end of our humanity, as it is, is the cross of Jesus Christ; but that this isn’t its ultimate end. The cross of Jesus only becomes the soil that the seed of his broken life is thrown into, in order that it might rise and ascend again in its glorified and victorious status.” (As you articulated in your referenced post… “A Kerygmatic Anthropology, Sept. 7, 2023)
Amen… thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Amen amen, Richard. Grace all the way down, indeed.