I'm starting out on my attempt to read a whole volume of Barth's Dogmatics (Volume IV Part 1) - The Doctrine of Reconciliation. I found this quote in the foreword that Barth wrote for this volume that I thought was timely at Easter:
"I have been very conscious of the very special responsibility laid on the theologian at this centre of all Christian knowledge [the doctrine of reconciliation]. To fail here is to fail everywhere. To be on the right track here makes it impossible to be completely mistaken in the whole."
What an enormous responsibility and urgent demand it is for preachers to grapple with Easter and atonement! Ironically, some would argue that Barth was mistaken here. I will reserve my judgement...
Just an observation and question. When I was at Sunday School 35 - 40 years ago (my how time flies...) God had a capital letter (still does) and so did His works and His son. He always assumed capital proportions.
Now God and his works and his son have undergone a downgrade. In my blogs and assignments I still use Capital H - and feel hopelessly old-fashioned compared with the little h of almost everyone else.
When was he down-sized? Why?
In the comments of the last post BAndy asked what this image is about. I tried to answer but the answer was going to be too long for comments so I thought I'd post what Hans-Ruedi Weber says in his book On a Friday Noon: Meditations Under the Cross because that's where I got the image from. It's quite long quote because I want to add the context that goes before Weber's description of Rocha's sculpture.
"What are the main characteristics of Jesus on the cross in present-day Latin America? First of all, he is a political Christ. He stands on the side of the poor and exploited. This is a favoured theme of several Latin American cartoonists, for instance the Brazilian Claudius Ceccon who shows how the fat and powerful ignore the cross, be they politicians, military or clerics. Similarly, the Mexican Rolando Zapata, in his scene at Golgotha [which I couldn't get a copy of to post], contrasts the brutal power of police terror with the power of love and innocence. The cross is not visible, but the presence of the crucified Jesus has been discerned by a little child. The suffering country of Chile has been drawn in the form of someone nailed to the cross, and in a song by the Uruguayan poet Daniel Vigietti the death of Cailo Torres is seen in the light of the Golgotha event: "In the place where Camilo fell there grew a cross, not of wood but of light... They nailed him with bullets on a cross, they called him a bandit like they did Jesus." The crucified Lord is seen as the one who turns things upside down, the true revolutionary. In a painting by Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, the risen Christ is even shown with an axe cutting down his own cross. For centuries in Latin America the cross was a;most totally identified with the crown and the powerful. With similar exclusiveness many contemporary Latin Americans now link the crucified Jesus with those who struggle against the military power establishment.
Secondly, for those who are involved in this struggle for change and justice Jesus on the cross becomes the pioneer, the one who has preceded them into the torture chambers. He is the tortured Christ and therefore the brother of those who now suffer cruelly. No one has expressed this more strikingly than the Brazilian sculptor Guido Rocha. Suspected unjustly of being a member of a subversive group, he was tortured in Brazilian prisons. Only a few months before the military take-over in Chile he sought freedom in that country, where he was soon imprisoned again. Now he lives as a political refugee in Switzerland. During the cruel torture sessions in Brazil, when hovering between life and death, the person of the crucified Jesus gradually imposed himself on the artist. Since then he has modelled one tortured Christ after the other. Under the modelling fingers of Rocha the face of Jesus takes on quite unconsciously the features of one or the other of the artists former fellow prisoners who died in the torture chambers. Rocha does not think of Jesus as the Son of God, the sacrifice offered for our sins or in any other such classic Christian dogmatic ways. "The characteristic of Christ is that his life was totally coherent, so coherent that the world could not stand him." This is what Rocha wrote under one of his sculptures of the tortured Christ. When crying out in pain Rocha remembered the cry of Jesus on the cross, and this cry of Golgotha became for him a great promise: here was a man who passed through the deepest of human sufferings and nevertheless remained fully human, fulfilling his mission of love, being a man for others, until the ultimate hour of truth. There was no gap between his message and his life and death. Therefore the almost unbearable face of the dying Christ, possessed, it seems, by evil spirits, is not an image of abhorrence for this Brazilian artist, but an image of hope."
Obviously as a Christian I'd want to say more than Rocha about the cross, but I'd never want to say less than Rocha.
"God is his [sic] own decision" - Karl Barth. Barth means that in freedom, God defines who God is. What does easter (the death and resurrection of Christ) tell us about who God is?
I've finished 3 years here at NBC. I now understand the rhythms of ministry much better and it makes planning much easier. As part of my planning for the year, I've compiled a list of non-sermonic books that I plan to have read by the end of the year.
The ones I haven't read before are at the bottom and end with Richard Bauckham's Bible and Mission. The others (predominantly books on preaching) I've read before but want to go over again. Throughout the year I'll post some quotes and reflections on the books I'm reading. I have a few more to add to the list (one is at home and others are coming from Amazon.com). I've pecked around Barth on specific topics or sections but I've never sat down and read one of his volumes of Church Dogmatics (the fat ones at the bottom). I'm going to give it a go this year (wish me luck)...
