Joshua Lim: “Barth was of little help here. His constant criticism of all human
knowledge, a consistent overflow of the Protestant notion of total depravity
mixed with Kantian skepticism, led to a point where no one church or person
could be trusted–for God is ever the Subject and can never be made into an
‘object’ that is controlled by man. Though Barth was undoubtedly reacting to
the Protestant Liberalism of his time, his own christocentric solution only
held things in abeyance without giving a permanent solution. Ultimately, by
insisting so heavily on the event character of revelation, the focus on the
actual content of revelation itself could only be blurred. As one Catholic
theologian put it, Barth’s “insistent cry of ‘Not I! Rather God!’ actually
directs all eyes on itself instead of on God. Its cry for distance gives no
room for distance.”
For my part, the
precise content of revelation is exactly what is at issue in this debate. The
positing of a fundamentally invisible Church that has no means of
distinguishing branches within and schisms from itself thereby disqualifies
itself as a true mediating authority between the individual and God. As I've
said before, an individual cannot be the arbiter of divine revelation and a
receiver of it at the same time. Revelation in its precise content is the fuel
for liturgical action, whether public or private. If we have an ecclesiology
that does not in fact allow us to know what God has said, we cannot do it. We
cannot do the gospel.
I have never been averse to the acknowledgment of human finitude,
to the likelihood of my own failures and misjudgments concerning even very
important matters. But to surrender to this thoroughgoing skepticism especially
in the name of hermeneutical humility presents an obvious problem which might
have been missed: if the matters of theology are not simply ad hoc expressions
of personal preference or cultural inertia, we must have a principled way to
say, "I follow these men, and these doctrines as opposed to others."
The new ecumenism seems to flatly ignore the real implications of lowest common
denominator dogmatic theology. Worse still, it does not do justice to the men
who pledged their sacred honor, and often their very lives, in defense of particular doctrines, which, despite the
inevitable multiplicity, contains ample evidence of the desire for truth. If
the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ finds fault with her children and the men
who led them astray, some such as myself find a far greater fault in the notion
that it is a fool's errand to seek a singular truth, and a reliable means by
which to distinguish it from error. Theological skepticism is flatly contrary
to the message of the Incarnation, whereby God himself took on flesh to
overcome human weakness, rebellion, and sin. Shall we say that he in any way
was less than victorious in his effort? Is it not wiser to say--somewhat
ironically along with Barth--that our separated communities, which are the
visible manifestation of our inability to profess a common faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, constitutes a grave sin? Is it not also an intellectual sin
against ourselves and God to feign agreement where it does not in fact exist?
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