a part of human history, in the form of scriptural witness to and Church proclamation of Jesus Christ. It is not, then, to be sought elsewhere—above or beneath history, or as the whole of history, or as indiscriminately suffusing history and/or the cosmos.16 And here again, there is offense enough for everyone. While the particular, fully human words of scriptural witness and Church proclamation only become God’s Word to us when God freely chooses to speak through them in the event of revelation, it is nevertheless these particular human words through which God speaks. Consequently, it is this outside showing up on the inside—in the seed of Abraham, in the Jewish flesh of Jesus Christ as confessed by the Church—that causes all the trouble for us moderns (and postmoderns), who are concerned both about imperialistic discourse in general and the Church’s interpretive imperialism in relation to Jews and Judaism in particular. In the confession of the Jew, Jesus Christ, as the one Word of God for and to the human being, we cannot escape the fact that the world, the nations, all of human, and indeed, non-human created reality receives its meaning through the lens of Abraham and the history of Israel. Neither can we escape the fact, then, that Barth’s doctrine of revelation, with Jesus Christ as the content of the revealed Word, is organically linked to the doctrine of election.17 It is this doctrinal “perfect storm”—the folding together of revelation, Christology, and election in Barth’s fundamental theological assumptions—that constitutes the structural and substantive elements of the interpretive imperialism entailed in an understanding of Christian faith that takes Abraham as a model. (One might be tempted to include ecclesiology in this portentous doctrinal convergence, especially given that the primary activity of the Church, proclamation [in Barth’s view], constitutes one of the three forms of the Word of God that is Jesus Christ. This organic link is very real in Barth’s thinking, but it is a strictly ordered link, whereby the life and activity of the Church are strictly dependent upon the living reality of Jesus Christ, rather than identical to it. We will revisit this in our reading of Ruether, who does indeed include ecclesiology in her own analysis of the perfect doctrinal storm of Christian anti-Judaism; and that analysis and its resultant remedy, I will argue, is worse off for that interpretive decision.)
We will proceed, then, by focusing on a reading of Barth’s doctrine of election, in order to trace the consequences of this doctrinal “storm.” For it is his doctrine of election that offers the clearest example of how the very goodness of the news of Jesus Christ for the world (as the one—albeit threefold—Word of God spoken in the event of revelation) necessarily entails the apparent ethical bad news of Abrahamic interpretive imperialism in relation to both the nations, generally speaking, and, more specifically, the children of Abraham in the particular relation of the Church to Israel. This paradoxical turning of the Abrahamic interpretive imperialism of Christian faith “back” upon the children of Abraham is the inevitable consequence of the fact that the irrevocable affirmation of Abraham and Israel in the perfect storm of revelation, Christology, and election comes by way of their displacement by the one Jesus Christ from whom they receive their meaning. This displacement is all the more pronounced by the fact that the one Jesus Christ is confessed (as Messiah of Israel and Lord of all creation) by the Church. This radicalization of the displacement, wherein Abraham and Israel appear not only to receive their meaning through the particular lens of Jesus Christ, but through the lens of the Church’s confession of Jesus Christ, raises the specters of traditional supersessionism and anti-Judaism in Barth’s theology.
In the remainder of this chapter, then, we will look at how Barth understands the Abrahamic interpretive imperialism (in relation to all neighbors) entailed in the folding together of revelation and Christology with the doctrine of election to guarantee the wholly unalloyed goodness of the Gospel for all. In the following chapter, we will continue with our reading of his doctrine of election, using Barth’s pattern of the threefold form of the one revelatory Word, Jesus Christ, to mark the particular ways the Abrahamic interpretive imperialism entailed therein turns back to cast a distinctive shadow upon the children of Abraham. Our ultimate concern will be how and to what extent this shadow undermines the goodness of the news.
The “Perfect Storm:” Guaranteeing the Christian Gospel as “Unalloyed Good News” for All
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
