Whether speaking of the cosmos and all that is contained therein or the testimony of Holy Scripture, revelation both reveals and conceals God. Why? Because we are not God. There is an infinite qualitative distinction between the creature and the Creator. We can never know God as He exists in himself since we are not God and because he is completely set apart from us. We are even limited to fully knowing any thing as it exists apart from us or even the thing we call our self due to our finitude; we are unable to know exhaustively or omnisceintly. Therefore, our knowledge of God and everything else is limited to our finite perception. We know things after a certian fashion: a creaturely frame of reference. Our knowledge of God and reality is analogical. We interpret God and the world on the basis of our humanity. We have no other vantage point. To know God, then, is also not to know him; revelation is a veiling and unveiling. It is unveiling in the sense that we are truly able to know God within the bounds of our creaturely capacities. It is veiling in the sense that we cannot know God as he knows himself -- immediately and exhaustively.
Karth Barth is helpful in his stress upon this dialetic of veiling and unveiling as well as his emphatic contention that God is qualitatively distinct from humanity. However, his solution to the Creator/creature division minimizes the objective side of epistemology. For Barth, revelation is a moment of encounter that is beyond space and time. For the infinite to come into contact with the finite demands, according to Barth, an existential meeting that transcends objective reality. This does not mean that we cannot turn to the witness of Scripture or of nature to know things about God, but that God is speaking through these types of testimony in spite of their limitations. God uses the means of human witness to commune with the human, but that testimony is not intrinscally able to reveal God. It is only by means of God's gracious act of joing himself to that witness that allows a person to come into contact with him. Barth believes that the human being and his/her innate capacities cannot know God apart from the event of irrational (beyond reason) faith -- God bestows knowledge of himself upon the human apart from any supposed prior knowledge of himself. Faith is the gift of God that allows the finite human to actualy know God, but this knowledge is beyond human predication. Otherwise, Barth believes we would somehow possess God. The analogy of faith (human knowledge of God gained from the event of God's gracious revelation) is limited to the irrational moment. It cannot be objective for to do so would lower God to human finitude. Barth has a valid concern, but it is unnecessary to minimize human predication in favor of a purely transcendental moment of encounter between God and the human subject. To speak of God and to say true things about God is not to possess him or lower him to our level. He is ever and always beyond us, but we cannot know him apart from our lowly vantage point. It is not idolatrous to claim that humanity has the intrinsic capacities of knowing God (after our limited fashion -- analogically), if not for the very fact that God is the one who bestowed those capacities upon humanity. Idolatry is using those capacities to assert one's rule over God. Our finitude is not the problem, rather, it is our sinful nature.
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Funny you should post this today- I am revising for my Oxford finals on this subject.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the piece but I think your last paragraph might be confusing two orders of knowing especially:
"but it is unnecessary to minimize human predication in favor of a purely transcendental moment of encounter"
Ive probably misunderstood both you and Barth but it seems that though you are quite right that we can know about God and that this is not possessing him, this is not the kind of knowledge Barth is referring when he discusses 'encounter'.
In Romerbrief 1.19-21 Barth allows for very limited knowledge in the order of knowing, (knowing information about). Cohen calls the results of our sad preference for idols over this limited knowledge, "the irony of intelligence".
It seems to me that the thing Barth is mainly concerned with is the type of knowing that is in the order of being- that is relating to/ with God. Using the analogy of relation Barth develops a highly dynamic relational revelation, which overcomes our sinful nature- which you rightly say is the problem. It is not really baldly existential like Bultmann but in its ongoing presence more transhistorical, like Heidegger- (though Barth was independent of H)
He also says we do have a latent correspondence but this is not the same as what you call "intrinsic capacities of knowing God". He would certainly deny this kind of analogy of being- as would Aquinas without proper qualification.
People often say that we are created in His image and end up positing a univocity of being. This is exactly what Barth thinks caused the decline in theology over the late medieval and enlightenment periods. This 'image'- our latent capacity- is not our brains capacity to discover but our persons capacity to 'relate' since this is who God is- according to Barth- the History of his own relations with Himself, (4.1). We can't relate with God because this image has been marred in us. Relating is an type of knowing that belongs to eternity hence our inability to cross the polar zone of the time/eternity dialectic.
Hence your picking up of faith as the gift that allows us to relate over- the time/eternity dialectic- with God not to know stuff about him! But the analogy of faith is the most static aspect of the analogy of relation which is much more interesting.
But perhaps I ramble...
Enjoy Louisiana :)
Thank you for your comments and forgive me for the extreme delay in response. I did not spend much time online while visiting family in Louisiana.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct in saying that Barth holds to a dualistic theory of knowledge. He certainly qualifies informational knowledge from relational knowledge. But, is it necessary to hold one type of knowing over against the other? Barth believed that propositional knowledge of God was an inadequate starting point due to the qualitative distinction between God and man (the sin nature is not of first importance though it does subsequently factor in).
You mention the high degree of emphasis Barth places on the relational character of God and say "this is who God is - according to Barth - the History of his own relations with Himself". I agree that this is the view of the Image that Barth holds to and this is in part the problem I have with his position. It appears to be overly reductionistic to limit the Image to relationality while minimizing the place of the person's rational abilities. Also, to say that God is relational and that humanity is therefore essentially relational is a type of the analogy of being. I do not think Barth says that this relationality is simply "marred" but rather it is completely destroyed in fallen humanity. The analogy of faith perhaps restores this analogy of being (humanity's relational likeness to God) via the work of the Incarnate Christ. I say perhaps because I am not sure that Barth is ever content with the use of the phrase "analogy of being".
Barth believes there is a similar/dissimilar connection between God and the human. The place where it lies for him is solely in a relational knowledge that transcends space and time, for to place it any lower for Barth is to lower God to the creaturely realm. To hold to a latent correspondence in any sense (beyond us and within us) is to claim an analogy of being. Why limit the analogy to a type of knowing that is beyond space and time? To hold to an analogy between us and God that includes rationality and even dominion does not place God on our level because the analogy (similar/dissimilar) bars us from univocity. Humans can never be exactly like God. The Creator/creature distinction remains whether we are speaking of a transcendental type of relationality or our creaturely capacity to understand propositions.
I believe Barth's distinction between knowing information about versus knowledge of persons sadly divorces the former from the latter. They are different types to be sure, but to separate them so strongly elevates one at the cost of the other.