Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Genius of Karl Barth

Last night I was reading The Humanity of God by Karl Barth for class. I've read Barth before but one word he used or created really caught my attention. I'll let Barth speak for himself. The paragraph goes like this.

"But did it not appear to escape us by quite a distance that the deity of the living God-and we certainly wanted to deal with Him-found its meaning and its power only in the context of His history and of His dialogue with man, and thus in His togetherness with man? Indeed-and this is the point back of which we cannot go-it is a matter of God's sovereign togetherness with man, a togetherness grounded in Him and determined, delimited, and ordered through Him alone...Who God is and what He is in His deity He proves and reveals not in a vacuum as a divine being-for-Himself, but precisely and authentically in the fact that He exists, speaks, and acts as the partner of man, though of course as the absolutely superior partner. He who does that is the living God. And the freedom in which He does that is His divinity."

Togetherness, not community or fellowship, but togetherness. Interesting to think on ?