After Reading Barth, After Reflection

These are 'midnight thoughts' in reflection on having read thus far in Karl Barth:

A. I suppose there would have to be people-- yea a lot of people-- who would be edified by preaching that calls the Schleiermacherian trend (if it may be called that) some kind of heresy for hypothetically leaving-God-out-of-the-equation enough to foment war (Barth1 and thereafter). There would also be people in reference to Barth2 who have no problem with a kind of prophet who expounds on the 76 Latinate words of the Apostles' Creed in the certainty that this is --revelation-- a sure miracle. This seems to be exactly the What that Barth not with any sense of trying to persuade-- again hypothetically-- but to proclaim the Sure Word of God.

B. What may be hard for me is the insistence on Divine Certainty, which in my world has always been the "God's-on-our-side" of Pied-Pipers, demogogues, and in large complement psychotics. Now one with my biases, I trow, indeed might have difficulties with such call-of-Jahweh claims. I am one who holds to a notion that all-truth-is-God's-truth-- and 'by the fruits' of one's professed tautology -- the initial symbolic logic of utterance-- the A = B after the A = A. I would have no qualms whatsoever about claims that were backed with discipleship behavior. Since there is no authorized biograph of Barth, one is left to piece together motivational scenarios from what is known. And if true Barth to the degree that he is saintly would have no qualms for this method-- which does derive with precision from the Great Sermon of Jesus (see Matthew 7:20, etc.)

C. Following the semiotic of Verstehen, I can suggest that at least two scenarios may come from such ideal-typing. The first would be to depict the Sitz im Leben of Barth in penning his utterances. A second type might be the putative audience who would find Barthian contributions attractive. Other scenarios with other putative motivations for other audiences can of course be imagined. I shall for now only focus on these two typologies.

D. Barth is (scenario type one) motivated strongly to redeem the Church from the sinful tendencies he witnesses-- the lack of revealed preaching consistent with the Creeds and other testimonies of Christendom. To him and to his approach, a correct Kerygma would be one speaking with clarity and with certainty from God; he is sure that this will always produce messages exactly as the traditional witness of Christianity has been. From the factuality he would possess from God, the 'old old story' would be re-told for new ways and times, in a sure pastoralism.

E. The most-receptive audience for Barth would seem to be intrinsically Calvinist-- but with some decidedly non-Calvinist (possibly in this sense 'modern') slants-- away from predestination toward some hybrid that rather accomodates freewill. Barth is NOT fundamentalist: his preaching of the Word is self-reputedly founded in a textual understanding OF the science-of-religion; the preaching of this Word does seem to follow a crypto-Pentecostal model of sequence faith:knowledge. There may be some others who CERTAINLY are not Pentecostalists who cherish Barth's message, but from the look of it the most-receiving-audience would like some feeling for a prophetic certainty professed to darken prospects for those after Schleiermacher who were as interested in what I repeatedly have called the How along with the What.

F. I do not feel that I am errant for some hard study of Barth's psychosocial reality. That Barth's message does not 'swallow well' now simply has to do with the baggage of hard learned lessons about those who preach-- including the certain prophets who live in asylums and psychiatric nursing homes. Barth's life-- and life after death-- is seemingly only cursorily known apart from the written record-- including whatever record the Louisville Courier-Journal daily may have about the visit of Barth to local Southern Baptist Seminary some 10+ years after his death on December 10, 1968. But consistent with psychobiography, these matters and other indications of motivational time-series will have impact on the 'constellation' I can construct about this newer Protestant Church Father.

This construction of an ideal-personality-type is completely consistent with what I know to be true-- and likewise jibes perfectly with the "psychological exegesis" in the Schleiermacherian hermeneutic. Given the potential for quantification found in the Verstehenanalyse in Schleiermacher, Max Weber, and (I think) Wilhelm Wundt and Ewald Hering-- early psychologists in the tradition of phenomenology, I think I am on solid methodological and topical ground in pursuing this. To those would would cast aspersions on this project-- I would only ask simply, "What is the objection if I am only concerned for finding the truest-fit with reality?" Barth does believe in reality he pointedly says as proof of God's Providence. Ergo?

ANTEPENULTIMATE CONCLUSION:

My fatigue would be the only material factor working against these designs. From the look of it, Barth is only 'neo-orthodox' in a limited sense. There are emerging questions about what this professed orthodoxy consists; there is even a sense that in the universal/catholic sense Barth may not be so 'ortho'. He does not seem to mind 'cherry picking' texts-- does not mind picking-and-choosing his pre-text for dogmatism. This very tendency may have a motivational predisposition-- perchance to be 'gadfly' or provocateur. These are only tenuous and tentative pre-pre-pre-conclusions for now.

To the A = A presently I can feel only a tepid identification with Barth's Kerygma, for the reasons I have reiterated above and at other times. But to Barth's Christian behavior-- in the more-valid sense I shall evaluate his prophetic ministries. To the degree that human-all-to-human motives can be attributed to this Conservative Existentialist, I think I shall be able to claim missing-the-mark. I could never factually dispute Barth's 'transcendental' claim to be speaking/preaching God's Revelation; I could not even do this for the transcendental claims of a paranoid schizophrenic who surely felt he could slay his daughter with Divine Calling as Abraham might have treated Isaac-- 'because of being in the sanctuary with the butcherknife and the girl... and no lamb appeared.' Here with Barth as with the schizophrenic child-slayer, the standard will have been not so much the tautology-- always unprovable beyond A = A-- versus the consequence A = B of conduct derivative from tautological symbolism.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Veil (Coptic Daily Office)
Day of St. Louis of Toulouse (Western Church)
Day of St. Andrew Stratelates, Martyr (Orthodoxy)