Settling-In for the Long-Haul with Barth:
More and More and More Readings
Re His Dogmatic Certainties

As intended pious behavior, The Epistle to the Romans needs to get my best reading. I have read it I say a couple of times at least, once a long time ago, and rapidly some days ago, with my slow and thoughtful reading now. My goal is to understand this preaching-- the What as the desideratum of the leaning author-- and along the way for hermeneutic try fathoming the How, and the How-of-What for this indulgence. Using the canon of Schleiermacher, all these 'three types of lectionary' are appropriate.

Of the three types of readings, however, the third is-- here now-- superior. Then the degree of repetitiveness and utterance of same-message-this-way, same-message-that-way, same-message-all-other-ways becomes like hearing a man out with greetings redundantly uttered each day. Then what Roman Jakobson called the 'phatic level' of communication-- intercommunion-- may set in, in neighborly ways of dealing with one-issue people in all walks of peripatetic philosophy.

The teachers of 'dialogue' would include Barth; oddly what I am encountering ('close encounters of the read-kind') is almost perfectly monologue. I think it is rude to interrupt the preacher, so for this homily of 500+ pages I need to heed more than answer. Should I occasionally punctuate this heeding with certain 'Amens'-- 'Truth'-- pertinent to expletive, one would have to say that I am in a tradition where such 'truthing' is a possibility, and not to be deemed impious of necessity.

Barth is saying ( up to and including comment on Romans 2:5) that revelation comes from the Void, that the Void instructs that there are those deprived of God-- the object of this homiletic treatment-- who need to discard profane human orientations and reconcile with the God who speaks from the Void. Barth as I suggest has already lined out the parameters of this message; I can with zero prophetic skills assert that this will be said again mutatis mutandis. Dialogue I shall in the long ride coming to page 544 (English trans) or page 525 (German text.)

But I do think that dialogue with Barth might be conducive to Amen/Truthing along the way, I say, to make this other than an obvious 'monology.' A heart that has been scarred by preacher's judgment SHOULD NOT 'apply' to this process; I need to get-over these scars of bygone to meet Barth the man for his purpose to get-right one now in his fold who may be going astray into sinful Hows and Hows-of-Whats.

The principle of charity-- a canon of logic-- requires my highest devotion to this text-- then to understand the man and motive behind the text. The principle of charity-- a Christian principle-- does mean loving the neighbor Barth as myself-- and thus truthfully addressing the preacher as the component of love that touches-self the. Amen.

...Whether I shall learn Barthianism thus well to practice his method with 'my little nutcracking hammer' on other projects to sufficiency remains to be seen. I shall to my utmost TRY however.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
Time of Compline
Day of St. Laurence Lauricatus, Hermit (Western Church)
Day of St. Diomedes, Martyr (Orthodoxy)