Karl Barth |
A good example can be found in the way
Barth approaches Romans 9–11. When his thesis of biblical text as
witness to revelation is read in conjunction with his understanding of
Jesus Christ as the object of that witness, and with his understanding
of Jesus Christ as therefore the electing God and the elected man, then a
particular set of theological lenses for reading Romans 9–11 come into
view. Barth’s approach is well stated by Douglas Sharp:
[Barth's] exegesis [of Rom. 9--11] presupposes the identity of revelation/incarnation and election, and can be seen to consist in the interpretation of an objective reality (Israel and the Church) which he finds imaged in the text. The truly significant element of the exegesis is the fact that it is not so much the intepretation of biblical revelation as it is an interpretation of a medium which is itself an interpretation of revelation. This is to say that the exegesis of Romans 9–11 is an interpretation of an interpretation. Jesus Christ is the revelation, and Barth views the existence of the community as an interpretation of that revelation. Thus Barth interprets the community in its two forms in terms of the primary reality of Jesus Christ’s election.
This argument corresponds with what we
discovered in reading Barth’s exegesis of Romans 9–11. The two forms of
the community, Israel and the church, were read by Barth as witnesses to
the two-fold determination of Jesus Christ for both judgment and mercy;
here Christology intensively occupies the horizon of interpretation. We
may recall how different this is to Calvin’s approach. Calvin’s
covenant hermeneutic for Romans 9–11 (arguably the most salient feature
of his exegesis) is influenced by Christology. But his hermeneutic is
not christologically intensive, because he does not see Christology as
the meaning of certain verses where Christ himself is not
mentioned or as providing the typological structures for Israel and the
church within the details of the text.
It is now clear that Barth’s reading of
the Bible displays a heremeneutical paradigm that is created not just by
Barth’s doctrine of election as it has emerged out of his reading of
the Johannine Prologue, but just as closely by a tightly related set of
well developed and consistently applied hermeneutical convictions that
have operated at least as far back as CD I/2. As Barth comes to
provide extended exegesis of biblical texts as part of his doctrine of
election, his understanding of interpretive freedom and responsibility
ensures that his exegesis of election will be carried out in a manner
that may be described as intensively christocentric. This is because his
account of the required subordination of the biblical interpreter to
the witness of revelation is itself intensively christocentric. [David
Gibson, Reading The Decree: Exegesis, Election, and Christology in Calvin and Barth, (London: T&T Clark, A Continuum imprint, 2009), 190-91]
I am actually not totally sure I am altogether comfortable with interpreting scripture the way Barth does, in toto, but I am quite close. I see all of the OT, for example, prefiguring the preincarnate Christ; and then the OT given it's proper orientation in its fulfillment in and through Jesus Christ's actual incarnation (and all the attendant realities associated with that). Nevertheless, in gist, I am heading more in the direction of Barth, than what Gibson describe's of Calvin's approach as soteriological-extensive (which we can get more into later); if possible, I might be somewhere in between Barth and Calvin. Which really, that's right about where T.F. Torrance was at.
PS. Just so you all know, if not apparent, I often work through my thinking right here at the blog, in the open. So, a post like this represents that mode of my blogging existence; I'm in process here.
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