...the Church makes a mistake about the Bible, so far as she thinks that in one way or other she can control right exposition and thereby set up a norm over the norm, ad ought to and can seize upon the proper norm for herself. Bible exegesis should rather be left open on all sides, not, as this demand was put by Liberalism, for the sake of free thinking, but for the sake of a free Bible. Self-defence against possible violence to the text must be left here as everywhere to the text itself, which in practice has so far always succeeded, as a merely spiritual-oral tradition simply cannot, in asserting its own life against encroachments by individuals or whole areas and schools in the Church, and in victoriously achieving it in ever-fresh applicatios, and so in creating recognition of itself as the norm.
-Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1
(trans. G. T. Thompson; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936), 119.
Reminds me of the Spurgeon quip about defending the Bible is like defending a lion (which gets quoted in various forms, so I won't try a verbatim quote). There is, however, a place for certain kinds of defence (
apologia); Barth is not justifying a fundamentalist fideism (which is how the Spurgeon quote is often used), but is speaking specifically about defending the freedom of exegesis, allowing God to speak afresh through the Scriptures.
Ten points for the country. Fifteen for linking to the photo I posted earlier of the building in which this armour is kept.
Posts
