and economic structure, Barth moves himself toward integrating historical problems and social criticism into his exegesis of Romans. Rather than dwelling on the difference between the times in terms of historical criticism, Barth, along with St. Paul, makes an attempt to articulate a struggle for the new world that the Bible promises.
Exegesis moves in retrospect as well as in prospect toward the future of God, which means, for Barth, a conversation between the wisdom of yesterday and the wisdom of tomorrow. For example, one must consider Barth’s exegetical study of Rom 8:9–15 and Romans 13 from the angle of his political involvement with social questions: religious socialism in Switzerland and Leninism in Russia, for example. The creation waits in eager anticipation for the revelation of the children of God. God as the coming new reality makes us stand in solidarity with God’s fight and thus with God’s coming victory. Life in Christ and its nature lie just in the perspective of the future. This perspective of God’s future, which is realized in reborn communion with Christ, drives us to be responsible for what God creates and prepares in the world (R I:238).
Blumhardt’s message, which articulates the suffering of the oppressed for freedom in God’s future, influenced Barth’s understanding of the relation between the faithfulness of God and eschatology. The suffering of the oppressed can be “a part of nature history of the Spirit” (R I:240). The renewal of the world begins with the new humanity of the children of God. The real content of apocalyptic eschatology can be seen in its taking sides with the oppressed in the present. In Barth’s words, “God is one-sidedly a God of the lower but not a God of the upper, indeed, without reservation, a God of the small (i.e. the totally marginal)” (R I:367). Furthermore, Barth’s social criticism can be well articulated from his concise remark in Romans II in that the “historical critics, it seems to me, must be more critical” (R I:xviii).
Ursprung as the Eschatology of God
Barth’s thesis that the world remains the world but that God is God tells that the world must be transformed by this “but God is God,” notwithstanding. Barth is convinced that there must be a fundamental difference between God and the world. The world is not capable of knowing naturally who God is. However, a relation of God and the world is structured in a dialectical and organic way rather than remaining dualistic. According to Barth, the power of God erupts from above, cutting through the world longitudinally or perpendicularly. Barth’s eschatology of senkrecht von Gott aus is first of all to be seen in light of God’s reconciliation with the world in Jesus Christ. In the universal/cosmic reconciliation of God with the world, a turning back of humankind to its origin (Ursprung) occurs. God proves God’s faithfulness to the world—beyond human sacrilege and injustice—and God’s loving power to the world (R I:67). The revelation of God in Christ is not emptied but is the fulfillment of history, culminating in the law and even to the present.
Therefore history stands in the effecting domain of God in the present. The revelation of the faithfulness of God becomes visible because it is the effecting power in all (R I:69). The world of God is not a purely transcendental world without relation to this world. But in Christ the world turns to its origin and the world of God breaks through this world, achieving a provisional victory (along the lines of Blumhardt’s message of “Jesus is victor”) in historical events. Therefore the breakthrough of God in history occurs in now-time.
Barth’s understanding of reconciliation, which is universally/cosmically set in motion in Jesus Christ, is deeply related to the redemption of the world that religious individualism and liberal theology lack the ability to understand. Although Barth turned away from J. T. Beck,6 Blumhardt’s influence remains compelling in regard to the cosmic perspective in Romans. Of Rom 8:19–22 Barth says, in a Blumhardtian fashion: “The actual sonship of God which we do not have yet, but expect is the ‘redemption of our body,’ the victory of God in the materiality of the whole creation of which our own existence is only particle and example. ‘This is our aim and our hope’” (R I:247–48). The solution of the world enigma and eschatology are not separated from each other because the whole creation waits for humanity, that is, the revelation of the children of God. Our hope for the future of God is not mere waiting for an event in the outer world, but “we are called and capable of one day becoming the mediator and helper for the destroyed world, one day to speak the redemptive words as a strange and hostile objectivity and power of destiny” (R I:245). The Spirit as the Spirit of radical transformation pours upon us, so that “we might strongly call for more Spirit to enter the world, for a continuation of the Spirit’s outpouring on all flesh” (R I:246).
The kingdom of God has been implanted in history and nature, and like a germ cell will continue to grow until the consummation of the kingdom on earth becomes complete and the entire cosmos is restored. This refers to Barth’s understanding of the organic growth or organism of God’s kingdom. Through our reception into the body of Christ, our fellowship with God becomes part of an organism, in that individual parts are completed in this organism and stand in living connection to each other. The kingdom of God as organism embraces the whole cosmos. Nevertheless, God’s involvement with the world does not mean mere identification between God and world. Rather, it points to a dialectical and organic relation initiated by God’s movement from above. Barth’s phrase of “organic growth” does not mean a mechanical construction based on any possibilities existing in this world; rather it refers to the new life’s possibility created in Christ. As God becomes living to humans, humans are in turn living in God. In Christian faith, humans enter into the kingdom of the absolute spirit. “Through the disposition which is given to faith by the faithfulness of God, humans are a part from individuality, life stance, and performance, implanted transcendental-organically into the living growth of divine righteousness” (R I:80). This refers to the practical shape of analogia fidei which later was in full bloom in Barth’s theology.7
Speaking of Sache (on Rom 1:16–17), Barth states:
The Ursprung, which was always claimed, known, yearned for, and under pain sought after, opened its mouth again. The divine word, “it shall be” is again fulfilled. . . . Nothing historical, rather the precondition of all history. . . . The opening of a new aeon, the beginning of a new world in which God once again has power. This power of God stands behind us. This is our gospel that we announce. This is our Sache. (R I:7–8)
What Barth seeks in Romans I is to understand the power of God in the resurrection of Jesus Christ which has a universal/cosmic dimension and content. What is behind Barth’s concept of Ursprung as God’s eschatological reality is his theological concept of God’s universal reconciliation with the world, in line with Blumhardt’s. Through the term origin Barth portrays humans in an immediate relation to God. In fact, we could see the whole actuality, namely, the invisible nature of God mirrored in the visible. There is no outside without inside, no phenomena without essence, no works without the eternal power and Godhead. Human beings are capable of seeing things as they are and as having their own origin in the eternal power and Godhead. Because the cosmos is produced out of creative reason (logos), and because this creative reason dwells in us, we can say the God-idea is known to humanity, God has made Godself known to us (R I:15). However, the seed of the immediate knowledge of God in us was crushed because of the fall. Although the fall made a secret out of the divine, there is no longer a secret to those who have been born in Christ: “God speaks in Christ and we hear in Christ. The power of God is no more secret to us. It reveals itself more and more as the life of our life” (R I:420).
Through revelation, which means a breakthrough of God’s will from heaven to earth, from God’s consciousness to human consciousness, the original nature of God, that is, the pristine divine nature, has appeared in humanity. God no longer leads us to war against the world but declares it as God’s world, being in solidarity with it (R I:61). Humanity’s experience as the children of God is not based on our religious experience but on the Spirit as the object in which our spirit takes part. God is at work in and through humanity as a result of God’s universal power (R I:237). When humankind is restored, God’s own Spirit steps in to take the place of the flesh (R I:60).
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