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installments of Rev. Relic's Articles
on the Apostles Creed , and in our Archives
If it is not about Jesus, it’s not about anything
(Motto
of the Fountain of Life)
SPS: Revisit
primary orthodox beliefs for refreshment and the strengthening of Faith.
Challenge: Examine
the beliefs and explore differing opinions in the spirit of intramural debate
among brothers, not in a sectarian diatribe among enemies.
Guideline: “For
what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of
all the philosophers, if we live without grace and the love of God?” Thomas a’Kempis
Motto: All for the
glory of Christ, Jesus.
12. OUR LORD
“The existence of
the man Jesus Christ is, in virtue of His divinity, the sovereign decision upon
the existence of every man. It is based
on the fact that by God’s dispensation this One stands for all and so all are
bound and obligated to this One. His
community knows this.
This is what it
has to make knows to the world.” (Public Forum)
Barth uses the term dispensation three additional times
in this chapter.
1: “…that this One
by God’s dispensation stands for all.
2: “Such is God’s
wise dispensation, this cohesion of each man and all men with this One.
3: In virtue of
God’s dispensation man is Christ’s property.”
How is this done?
“This sovereign, kingly decision in
Jesus Christ is grounded on the fact that by God’s
disposal this one man stands for all. It
is grounded in the sovereign decision of God – namely, the lordship of Jesus Christ
– is not a blind act of power in itself towards us men.”
I have never heard dispensation used in this
way. Barth here sees it as God’s eternal
action to us in Christ, not as different people, nations or institutions having
their assigned time and work and moving onto or off the pages of history.
Here we find echoes of Romans 5:8 and 1 John 2:2: “Before His eyes from eternity God keeps men,
each man, in Him, in this One; and not only before His eyes but loved and elect
and called and made His possession.”
(Here he makes the election and calling simultaneous. Brethren may debate the sequence of events,
however this is presented from God’s timeless view and absolutely true)
Barth discusses the commission of the Church in regard to the knowledge that Jesus is our Lord. “…that the community of Jesus Christ is not a reality which exists
for itself; it exists because it has a commission. What it knows it has to tell
the world.”
13. MYSTERY AND
THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS
This chapter concerns the “historical manifestation” of
Jesus Christ conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. In the previous chapters we have descriptions
of the subject. Now we find a number of definitions – conceived, born,
suffered, crucified, buried, descended, rose again, seated on the right hand of
God, from thence He shall come again…which describe an action or an event.
Barth talks of the sign and the thing. Christmas is the sign and the Incarnation is
the thing. He insists that they are
separate and co-joined concepts. I take
it to mean that Christmas is the Virgin Birth, which was the sign “that ye may
know.” He briefly deals with Jesus being
conceived of the Holy Spirit. Simply put
this means that the man Jesus Christ has His origin in God. Jesus owes His beginning in history to the fact that God in
person became man.
 |
| Gregory of Nazianzus |
In the ebb and flow of human history a point becomes
manifest…God becomes man. Being born of
a human mother carries great import. He
is a man like us. He is not only
physically like us men; He also assumes our human nature; that is your nature
brethren; it is my nature.
Protestants teach
that it is the nature we inherited from Adam.
It is the nature in which we all die (1 Corinthians 15:22). It is the nature which He redeems. He is the same as us without any
reservation. Church Father Gregory of
Nazianzus (d. 389) wrote, “For that which He has not assumed He has not
healed.” That means that Jesus assumed the nature of Adam for the salvation of
Adam’s descendants. Barth goes on to
show that the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD showed that Jesus was true God and
true man.
I believe this knowledge of Jesus’ humanity is difficult
to reconcile with the 1854 Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that holds
that by an act of God’s grace Mary was redeemed at her conception and preserved
free from original sin. Her sinlessness
nature allowed the meeting of divine and human.
The human nature that Jesus assumed was not mine or yours or Adams, but
the unique sinless human nature of Mary.
However for example, if Gregory is correct, then the two views are
contradictory.
Barth explains the significance of the
Incarnation/Christmas event having only a female
representative of the race of man. It
demonstrates that here man is to contribute nothing. Nonetheless, humanity is
not excluded for the human Virgin is there.
And Joseph, as representing the male dominated driving force of human
action and history; the originator and director of events for humanity is now
placed into the background as the powerless figure. God did not choose the 1st century male role
of the dominance of man, but the female role of the weakness of man who
responds to God only with the words, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it
unto me according as Thou hast said.’”
14. SUFFERED
Barth sees Jesus suffering as not limited to the cross.
Jesus’ entire life
fell into the category of suffering.
He is persecuted
all His life, as stranger in His own family.
His entire life is lived in loneliness…in the shadow of the cross.”
In a legal action Jesus is accused, condemned and
punished. In this legal action, in this
verdict is disclosed man’s rebellion against God. Jesus carried the wrath of God His whole
life. “In this Passion the connection
becomes visible between infinite guilt and the reconciliation that necessarily
ensues upon this guilt.”
Barth concludes
the chapter with the confirmation that Jesus became the entire rebellion, sin
and guilt of man and He is man’s entire reconciliation.
15. UNDER PONTIUS
PILATE
 |
| Jesus Before Pilate |
Including the name Pontius Pilate illuminates the fact
that this Passion “…took place in our time in the center of the world-history
in which our human life is played out.”
In the next passage Barth advises Christians not to seek escape from
this life since Christ also lived it with its “utter unloveliness and
frightfulness.” “We must not take flight
to a better land, or to some height or other unknown, nor to any spiritual
Cloud-Cuckooland nor to a Christian fairyland.”
Intramural Discussion:
In defense of the monastics, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Benedict,
they in large part preserved the Gospel during dark times in civilization.
Their lives may be
Strange Christianity, but they were not heretical.
Pontius Pilate “represents world history, so far as at
all time it is ordered on State lines…What takes place in the world is always
ordered by the state as well…” Pontius
Pilate represents State order, State power and in Pilate juxtaposed with Jesus
it reveals itself in its evil form, in all its human perversion and
unrighteousness. Barth says the State is
exposed to be a monster. This is the
State exercising its almighty power as it is described in the New Testament, in
Revelation 13, as the Beast from the abyss.
The Passion of Christ unmasks the Beast.
The Revelation of Christ to John judges and condemns this Beast, whose
name is polis (Greek for city, or state, or government).
Barth again calls for taking the Confession into the
public forum. “Paul summoned the Roman
Christians (by extension) to renounce all non-political Christianity,
and rather to recognize their responsibility for the maintenance of the
State. Barth is not speaking of
renouncing political causes but rather to acknowledge the State as being
divinely appointed from God.
These is a difference between the state governments
described by Paul in Romans and by Jesus in Revelation.
That monumental
difference is that in Romans, the government of God is appointed from God to
provide order for our good (restrained power flowing from law). In the Revelation end time, Jesus will remove
all spiritual, ethical and moral restraints from government. It will then act according to its
unrestrained carnal nature. At that time
the state will be appointed by God for wrath and to execute wrath.
Regarding Christian political activity: Barth intimates that all German Christians
should have spoken out against Nazism as we know did Bonheoffer. Wilberforce’s Christianity was invaluable in
the fight against the slave trade. Rev.
Martin Luther King was invaluable in the march toward civil rights. Not all Christians are gifted to this level
of participation. But we all can take
our confession into our corner of the world by living our conversion in the
shopping mall, the workplace, the truck stop, on the side of any hill where our
lights can shine.
Intramural Discussion:
A sizable numbers of Christians disagree with Barth and feel
uncomfortable participating in the World’s social systems including
governments. We will not address that
issue now. However, we may ask are there
any guidelines for Christian participation or support of activities operating
under Christian sanctions?
What about
supporting Social Gospels, Liberation Theologies, Feminist Theologies or
Christian causes in general? Applying
the gift of the Holy Spirit in a just cause is not the same as suborning
personal agendas under a just cause and clothing it in Christian
principles. Is the just cause used to
glorify Jesus, or is it a vehicle for personal glory or satisfaction? One way of sensing the difference between a
Holy Spirit led cause and an agenda driven cause is to listen to the
rhetoric. The true is a persistent
respectful call for what is right couched in humility in which Jesus is actively
glorified.
The false is a shrill
call demanding rights; often it is confrontational; rife with self or group
empowerment; using the name Jesus to manipulate behavior. The difference, I should think, is not hard
to detect. When you hear it, you
recognize it.
16. WAS CRUCIFIED,
DEAD, AND BURIED,
HE DESCENDED INTO HELL
Barth points out that the Western Church has inclined
towards "theologia cruces", theology of the Cross; that is toward things
surrounding the Good Friday event. The
Eastern Church has inclined towards theologia gloriae, theology of glory; that
is toward things surrounding the Easter event.
He puts it however, that Good Friday cannot exist without Easter and
Easter without Good Friday. He phrases
it; the humiliation exinanito and the exaltation exaltatio. The humiliation is decidedly visible in the
process of suffering crucifixion under Pontus Pilate, dying, being buried and
descending into hell.
Jesus exaltation is accomplished in the mystery of
Easter.
“...this
glorifying is certainly a self-glorifying of God; it is His honor that triumphs
there: ‘God goes up with a shout.’ But the real mystery of Easter is not that
God is glorified in it, but that man is exalted, raised to the right hand of
God and permitted to triumph over sin death and the devil.”
Barth’s phrasing of this truth caught me off guard in its power. According to the Trinitarian distinction of
the personal and the universal application of grace, this statement pertains to
all of mankind.
“The death of
Jesus Christ accomplished His law.” By
this Barth means that in the death of Jesus Christ, the Persons of God have
acted as the Judge and the Defendant.
They have passed
verdict, which was carried out upon the Defendant. Barth says “As God’s grace is irresistible,
so His judgment is irresistible.”
Crucified:
“Crucified means rejected; handed over to the death of the gallows
inflicted on the heathen.” This is the
judgment of God on the human creature.
“What befalls Christ is what ought to befall us.”
Dead: “
Death is
the end of all present possibilities of life.
Dying means exhausting the last of the possibilities g
iven to us.”
Death is “t
he last action that can happen in
the creaturely existence.”
I think that
Barth is saying that after physical death the last possibilities of salvation
for the unevangelized dead are exhausted.
Buried: Barth
points out that the greatest names of one generation or culture will be
forgotten by later generations. That is
what being buried means. In the grave
all humans fall into forgottenness; and that is the judgment on man. He says this is God’s answer to sin: “There is nothing
else to be done with sinful man, except to bury him and forget him.”
Descended into hell: “Hades in the Old Testament sense
is…where man continues to exist only as a non-being, as a shadow…the dead can
no longer praise God, they can no longer see His face…It is a state of
exclusion from God.”
Here Barth says,
“God comes in our place and takes our punishment upon Himself. Thereby He actually takes it away from
us.” This refers to all the above.
Intramural discussions:
The power of unbelief!
First: If Christ
suffered and died for all of us, I must ask, what remains for the unrepentant
to suffer? God’s justice is satisfied;
there is no more punishment for anybody.
But there will be the residual consequence of unbelief. That is voluntary exclusion from and
separation from God. And it yields
suffering which is not God’s judgment, but our judgment; our willing
self-condemnation.
Second: Barth
illustrates that Christ was rejected, denied, buried, excluded and forgotten
and fulfilled divine judgment in our place.
Yet the unrepentant suffer rejection, denial, exclusion etc., as
residual consequence of unbelief because, tragically their suffering is
self-imposed judgment. Their suffering
will be commensurate to the amount of guilt or hate that they eternally refuse
to relinquish. It is as C.S. Lewis
pointed out. At the Great White Throne
Judgment, God will say to them, “Thy will be done.”
Third: What is the
implication of excluded from or forgotten of God? Some speculate it is existence as a
non-being. Existence as a non-being is
an illogical construct, a contradiction.
The unrepentant cannot exist independently outside God’s knowledge or
excluded from His sustaining power.
Nothing can. Therefore exclusion,
forgotten, separation from God etc., must be understood from the unrepentant’s
point of view as they suffer the residual consequence of their unbelief.
Closing doxology:
Hear oh nations, hear oh peoples; The Lord Jesus, The LORD our Christ is
one, yesterday, today and forever. AMEN
___________________________________________________________
THE APOSTLE’S CREED-6
If it is not about Jesus, it’s not about anything (Motto
of the Fountain of Life) Part 6
SPS: Revisit
primary orthodox beliefs for refreshment and the strengthening of Faith.
Challenge: Examine
the beliefs and explore differing opinions in the spirit of intramural debate
among brothers, not in a sectarian diatribe among enemies.
Guideline: “For
what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of
all the philosophers, if we live without grace and the love of God?” Thomas a’ Kempis
Motto: All for the
glory of Christ, Jesus.
17. THE THIRD DAY
HE ROSE AGAIN
FROM THE DEAD
“In the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, man is once for all
exalted, and through the Holy Spirit discovers his right against all his foes
and his freedom to live a new life, in which he no longer has sin and its curse
of death, the grave and hell, in front of him but behind him. What had been impossible for man has now come
to pass. Barth phrases it thusly:
“God has so to speak abandoned the sphere of His glory and man may now take this place.” Barth emphasizes
the new beginning. “On the third day there
begins a new story of man…begins a new Aeon…entirely new life…a new world.”
“…but simultaneously this future is already present in
the
Easter message.”
Barth uses a chess analogy to describe
this present future.
Brethren, please permit me to use football. The score is Jesus 100, Enemy 10. It is the 4th quarter with two minutes to
go. The game is won, even though a few
plays can be run. As Barth says,
“Actually he (the Devil) is already mated…It is in this interim space (last two
minutes) that we are living.” Everything
old has passed away. Everything has
become new.
 |
| Theologian Karl Barth |
Barth vigorously declares:
“One thing still holds, and only this one
thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this,
like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness.” Amen Herr Barth.
Brethren, please permit a paraphrase:
“
We must separate the need to know knowledge
of salvation from the nice to know knowledge; we must separate faith in God
from knowledge of God.” First we must honestly
ask ourselves, “
Do we read the Bible to change our lives or do we read to win
theological arguments?”
Do the answers
we seek point back to Jesus or to a peripheral nice to know item?
For example, how should we deal with divisive questions
like pre-tribulation rapture, or the eternal punishment, or limited
atonement? Do our “correct” positions on
these doctrines take precedent over our active faith in Jesus, over our living
faith in Jesus, over our a personal relationship with our Lord and Redeemer
Jesus?
Barth echoes Thomas a Kempis who wrote the “Imitation of
Christ,” perhaps in 1427. Thomas
commented upon the importance of the proper focus and the place of knowledge in
chapter one page 3, “Indeed, it is not learning that makes a man holy and just,
but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God.
I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it.
For what would it profit us to know
the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the
philosophers, if we live without grace and the love of God?” Amen Thomas!
18. HE ASCENDED
INTO HEAVEN, AND SITTETH ON THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY
To this point the creed has dealt with the God’s
completed actions through Jesus.
Each
event, humanly speaking, had a beginning and an end.
First He was begotten then conceived.
He was born, suffered, was crucified, died,
was buried.
He descended and He rose.
But now Jesus is seated at the right hand of
God.
Now He is engaged in a continuous
activity having no end.
All the past
activities are past.
His presence at the
right hand of God ushers humanity from the past of expectation into a new
present.
It is our present, the
end-time, the time of the Church.
The work of Jesus Christ happened once for all. His death and resurrection are not the stuff
of fable, they were witnessed. The aim
of His work is the foundation of His Church and that is that the omnipotence
and the grace of God are active in Jesus and are one and the same thing.
The completion of
His work was not an ending. It is the
beginning of the end-time. It is the
time in which the Church has to proclaim to the entire world the gracious
omnipotence and the omnipotent grace of God in Jesus.
Barth writes, “With this ‘He sitteth on the right hand of
God the Father’ we obviously pass into a new time which is our present time,
the time of the Church…” Barth says
twice more in this section that the grace of God is the omnipotence of God.
19. THE COMING OF
JESUS CHRIST
THE JUDGE
Barth offers a few remarks concerning the Christian
concept of time. “The Church’s
recollection is also its expectation…He shall come again as the person He oncewas.” “But Jesus
Christ’s yesterday is also His to-day and His to-morrow.”
“We are going to meet Him from whom we come.”
He also puts forth that in the Apostles Creed we have
explored that He was and that He is.
Here is the reality that He will come again, and in this consists the
substance of the Church’s message.
“From thence He shall come.”
Barth uses the scriptures that He shall come
on the clouds of heaven…as the lightning goeth out from East to West.
He says that these are metaphors of reality
in the sense that His coming is such that “
No one will any more be able to
deceive himself about this being reality.”
To judge the quick and the dead: Barth writes. “Jesus Christ’s coming again
for judgment; His ultimate and universal manifestation is often described in
the New Testament as the revelation. He
will be revealed, not only to the Church but also to everyone as the Person He
is. He will not only then be the judge,
He is that already; but then for the first time it will become visible, that it
is not a question of our Yes and No, our faith or lack of faith. In full clarity and publicity the ‘it is
finished’ will come to light.”
Barth
references the Heidelberg Catechism Question 52 to emphasize that Christians
should view His coming to judge the quick and the dead with joy.
Another point is that the Biblical judge is not primarily the one who rewards or punishes,
but the one who restores.
20. I BELIEVE IN
THE HOLY GHOST
1: The giving and
gift of God is the Holy Spirit:
This giving and gift is when humanity belongs to Jesus
Christ in such a way that they have freedom to recognize His Word as addressed
to them, His work as done for them, the message about Him as their task; and
then to experience freedom to hope for the best for all other men.
This recognition
and freedom is not a result of their human capacity, will or knowledge. It is solely on the merit of the free gift of
God which He in His freedom gives to them.
“To receive the Spirit, to have the Spirit, to live in the Spirit means
being set free and being permitted to live in freedom…The Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of Jesus Christ.” Barth stresses
this point, when we speak of faith we include the concept of freedom.
2: He approaches
me and takes possession of me and I am thankful for this freedom:
Barth has strong teachings on freedom. He seems to echo St. Augustine in that the
Holy Spirit brings true liberty to our freedom.
Our liberty is the ability to known that God was made man and to
respond. The liberty to believe that
saving knowledge is not available to our carnal nature. Barth says that when man knows that God was
made man, man can no longer speak or act inhumanly. This is because we have a regenerated new
nature and our old man is dead.
When
Barth indicates that the Spirit enables us to have the knowledge of Christ and
to recognize that the message about Him is our task (taking our faith into the
public forum) he is on solid ground.
There is a technical point which I would like to make.
Possession
eliminates free will and is not what Barth means. The sense of the passage here is that of the
Holy Spirit indwelling us.
The Person of the Holy Spirit comes to us in His eternal indwelling, interaction and
interpenetration with the Trinity (a perichoresis).
21. THE CHURCH,
ITS UNITY, HOLINESS
AND UNIVERSALITY
Barth makes several points stated almost as epigrams.
“Today there is rather too much than too little said
about the Church. There is something
better: let’s be the Church.”
“It (the Church) cannot be formed by man’s
hands; that is why the zealous, swift founding of churches, such as took place
in America and also sometimes in Holland, is a doubtful business.”
“The first congregation was a visible group, which caused
a visible public uproar. If the Church
has not this visibility, then is it not the Church.”
“The truly ecumenical Christians are not those who
trivialize the differences and flutter over them; they are those who in their
respective Churches are quite concretely the Church…In Him, despite all
varieties in the individual congregations, we shall somehow be bound up with
one another,”
“So the Church must continually be occupied with the
exposition and application of Scriptures.”
“In it all the one thing must prevail: ‘Proclaim the Gospel to every creature!’”
This is a recurring theme in Barth: Take the confession
to the public forum.
22. THE
FORGIVENESS OF SINS
He reaches this conclusion. “For the relevance of holy baptism is this,
that we may our whole life long think upon the fact that we are baptized.” Even
in our Christian walk when we feel weak or overwhelmed, we are still baptized
and our sins are still forgiven. Barth
stresses that our forgiveness is not contingent upon the depth of repentance or
the effectiveness of our service. Our
act in the drama of repentance consists only in our accepting the situation
“that God sees you anew and adopts you anew in His light, as the creature you
are.”
This section echoes with the theme of the Christian
witness taken into the public forum.
Barth indicates that we stand in the cone of light which radiates from
Christ.
The Christian
moves in that light:
1) to be a light
himself;
2) to be messengers in Christ’s stead;
3) to bear witness of Christ is
for all men;
4) baptized persons become witnesses to themselves;
5) Baptism
recalls us to the service of witness;
6) this witness of the Word of God to us
is that with all of our sinfulness we are Jesus property and God says, “You are
justified.”
Other relevant passages are:
“When the Christian looks back, he is looking at the
forgiveness of sins….”
“The forgiveness of sins rests on the fact that this
dying took place at that time on Golgotha.
Baptism tells you that that death was also your death.”
“The righteous of Jesus Christ is now my righteousness. This is the
forgiveness of sins”
23. THE
RESURRECTION OF THE BODY AND THE LIFE EVERLASTING
In the previous section Barth points out that man looks
backward to forgiveness. In this section
he looks forward to resurrection.
“…the man who, in
other words, does not grasp the beauty of this life, cannot grasp the
significance of ‘resurrection.’”
“The man who does
not know what death is does not know either what resurrection is.”
“…since man is
permitted to take in Jesus Christ God’s place, there is bestowed upon him
unconditional participation in the glory of God.”
Comments: Barth’s
study of these orthodox truths uncovers old things already existing in the
Scriptures and is grounded in the Scripture.
The liberal speculation on truth and also I think the modern Word of
Faith movements discover new things that are grounded in historical process; or
dialectic; or private interpretation or private revelation (2nd Peter 1:20) or
imagination.
Let us conclude with this: “One thing still holds, and only this one
thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor…”
Closing doxology:
Hear oh nations, hear oh peoples; The Lord Jesus, The LORD our Christ is
one, yesterday, today and forever. AMEN
Rev. George Relic, Assistant Pastor
Fountain of Life Church, Washington PA
A Congregation of Grace Communion International
