KARL BARTH

Doing theology in Barth's style is as exegesis of God's free, self-authenticating, Spirit-illuminated Word. Barth's warnings against embedding Christian truth claims in any prior theory of knowledge apply: if Christianity has no eschatological Word to explicate, then we are left only with liberal naturalism and historicism.

Barth insisted that to hear scriptural narrative as God's Word has nothing necessarily to do with defending its historical character or some particular historical element within it. His point was not that scriptural narrative contains no historical elements, but rather that the Bible's historical elements are always mixed with myth, saga and related forms of expression as vehicles of the Word. The Word is apprehended as event. It is never an object of perception or cognition. It does not seek to be mastered in order to be understood, rather it seeks to lay hold of us.

If truth is grace, it can be known only through grace.

Author unknown (see Christian Century, July 18-25, 2001, p. 29).