Barth conversations online

There is a new discussion of Barth - that annual festival. Here is a lovely quote for the exegetes

Whoever does not continually ‘read in’ because he participates in the subject matter cannot ‘read out’ either

I would add - If you are not read, you cannot read. (Read the first read red.)

I am astonished at how impreceise I still am after more than 40 years in the precise languages of programming. It is easy to lose faith in oneself. In an imprecise language like English (or Hebrew) is it impossible to be precise. Is God able to be known in one who is imprecise?

Worship the God you know

Rachel's repost from three years ago here touches the question that has been circling my head for a few weeks - God asks: what will you say about me? what can you say about me?

What indeed can we be sure of in the mass of subjective experience we have that counts as our 'knowledge'? And what is that knowledge? Some set of postulates? Some experience? Some inner thoughts and arguments? Must I reflect on such and report? And what if my report does not agree with my tradition? or of what others say of my tradition?

Why indeed would I look for words to express what I know?

A close and well-educated friend asked me the meaning of good in the opening chapter of Genesis. I did not agree with his initially stated assessment from a dictionary. Whatever the 'good' is that is attributed to creation, I deem it the same good that is attributed in Psalm 34 - taste and see that the Lord is 'good'.

Have I any knowledge that would lead me to live this good? God forbid that I should lack it. What use is life to me if this good is not known and how shall I come to know it if I do not?

I learned my dialogue with God somewhat like the jagged graph in that post from yesterday. Perhaps the graph will peter out to zero - or with a change in form will find itself filling more and more with a knowledge that is good.

Here is a bit from Job 10 that combines the extremes.

In your knowledge I am not wicked
but there is not from your hand a rescue
your hands shaped me and made me
together on every side yet you swallow me
Remember please that as clay you made me
and to the dust you will bring me

Have you not as milk poured me out
and as cheese curdled me
skin and flesh - you clothed me
and with bones and sinews you hedged me
life and loving-kindness- you made for me
and your visit - you watch my spirit
and these things you treasured in your heart
I know this is with you

Elisha again

John Hobbins has been true to his fierce knowledge - but I am going to suggest that the power to kill as he rants about here and here and in many stories in the Bible is a power to kill 'by the sword of the word', that is for us who believe, by the death of Jesus - a death that results in healing.

This is a note that I will need to come back to. No killing of real people in the flesh by the political violence that is perpetrated by human governments or the vigilante subjectivism that could emerge from the thicket can be justified in human terms. Whose Spirit do we have?

On the bear front following the curing of the waters, Elisha needs a reading in this Spirit - if it is to be something other than a nasty story. I am not ready to defend this position. I have had to use the violent protection of the state personally - and I, like all hobbits, am protected by a greater human violence that plays itself out on distant shores, though it can affect lives not far from me.

Job and Covenant

Ticciati has a short section on Barth's theology of Job and its relationship to the rich young man of the gospel (Matthew 19:21) who went away downcast at the command to give up all that he has and follow Christ. Short - about 40 pages or so - long enough for me to get impatient. But I did read it.

One nice thing I found was the focus on the word δοκιμάζω, to test, examine, prove in the New Testament and its relationship to our obedience to 'the command', this being our response to that which brings us to our selves and in the sense of completion, allows God to work in us. (I am not quoting her here - but searching for words to express what I think she and Barth are getting at.) I was delighted to see her suggestion that the NT words translate the Hebrew בחן - for which I chose 'scrutinize' - for it is us as the object of God's scrutiny that is the context of 'the command' to which we must respond if we are to live. (I can see from a brief scan of usage in Romans that I might get distracted from Hebrew to Greek some day - but I think there is not time.)

Touching this only briefly, I moved into her new reading of Job and find that Job's troubles parallel the curses of the Deuteronomic covenant. Perhaps this is obvious. I have said here that I thought of Job as not directly related to 'covenant' per se - but I see now it could be a deliberate 'scrutiny' of the reward and punishment legal aspects of covenant. Also - Job as servant, like Israel and servant, Jesus as servant, and us too - then come into the frame - do we serve 'for nothing'? Or is it only reward and punishment that motivate love - for better for worse, for richer for poorer...?

She contends that what is "at stake in the book of Job is ... the Deuteronomic Covenant itself." So this book has more in common with e.g. Psalm 89 than I had been thinking. Job can even be seen as an image of Israel during its trial in exile.

Just to touch on the direct allusions to the covenant, consider the successive destruction of Job's livestock and children, Deuteronomy 28:31-32 and the final straw, Job 2:7 echoes Deuteronomy 28:35. All this in the context of blessings and cursings.

I note how Paul uses Deuteronomy 30:14 in Romans 10:9 and see that I may indeed be able to read the NT in a completely different light having given some detailed time to the Hebrew Scriptures. Now I must continue to read this detailed and close-reasoned book. I think I see the mark of Cambridge reasoning and writing - very detailed. I tried reading some of it out loud - and decided that some sentences were not necessary and that many large words are needed to express theology accurately - whew! I shall be happy to return to the word of the story itself. She will, of this for some reason I am sure, succeed in expressing without 'explaining away' a significant reading of Job that will be helpful.

Ticciati on Job's Dilemma

I hope to blog on this extremely well written book. This morning I looked ahead to the Hebrew section and was pleased to find it focus on the מוכיח arbiter/umpire of chapter 9 and to link this to the bi-directional intercessory role of the prophet in Israel. Then I realized I was not being patient, so I went back to the theological sections. I will repeat her word study in a later post with a full listing of the uses of יכח - prove, reprove, etc since this is a theme in Job (15 occurrences - earlier study here).

Her first three-word summary of Barth's 6-million-word Dogmatics is the link in his commentary on Job to 1. the pure, 2. the suffering, and 3. the speaking forms of God's relationship to Christ. Ticciati summarizes Barth's relating of this to the threefold structure of Job. She intends to prevent the closing of the questions raised by Barth's relating of 3 to 3. (Her introduction reminds me of Frye's advice noted here.) The issue relates to the question - is it the same Job in the frame as in the poem? Also to be remembered is the question - why is Job not more explicitly used in the NT? Or are there veiled allusions as I have suggested in a few places? (Note the strong relationship, for instance, of Ephesians 1 to Job 42 in the matter of inheritance and those things that are prepared.)

Here is a paragraph of her summary.

... the matter in which [Job] is both right and wrong.] Job is right insofar as he recognizes that it is still his God who appears to him in this alien form, thus acknowledging God's freedom to adopt this alien form as such. However, Job can no longer recognize in this alien form the familiar contours of his own God, with whom he existed in a relationship [the pure] characterized by blessing on the one side and righteous obedience [for naught] on the other. And on the basis of this known relationship, he demands [the speaking] that God put off his alien form [the suffering], revealing himself once more as the God Job knows him to be. Job holds up his preconception of God as a standard to which God must conform, thus denying God's freedom to be God in the other form in which he now appears. This constitutes Job's wrong.

The note about hand would confirm the identity two of the forms in which God appears.