<\/p>
George Hunsinger describes one of the implications of Barth\u2019s \u201cactualism\u201d in this way: <\/p>\n
Negatively [actualism] means that we human beings have no ahistorical relationship to God, and that we also have no capacity in and of ourselves to enter into fellowship with God. An ahistorical relationship would be a denial of God\u2019s activity, and an innate capacity for fellowship would be a denial of God\u2019s sovereignty. Positively, therefore, our relationship with God must be understood in active, historical terms, and it must be a relationship given to us strictly from the outside . . . . Our relationship to God is therefore an event ( How to Read Karl Barth <\/i> , p. 31). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That gives me pause, on two points. First, if the relationship comes \u201cstrictly from the outside,\u201d is there really any relationship? There is nothing innate in me that serves as a \u201cfoundation\u201d on which a relationship with God can be built; but if that\u2019s the case, am I actually relating to God, or is God\u2019s relationship to me a moment in God\u2019s relationship to Himself? Does creation have any integrity, any independence? Grace, Hunsinger says, is the \u201ccondition for the possibility\u201d of relationship. Which is true. But is there, in Barth\u2019s system, room for creation grace, grace that is identical with the gift of existence itself. This is one of the many places that I see Barth\u2019s theology suffering from a weak theology of creation. <\/p>\n
Second, this casts a shadow over Barth\u2019s Trinitarianism. The phrasing sounds like an anthropological application of modalism, and that raises the issue of theological modalism. Are Father and Son really other to one another? <\/p>\n
No doubt I\u2019ve phrased that ill. But I sense mischief in the notion of \u201cactualism,\u201d or at least in Barth\u2019s treatment of it, or at least in Hunsinger\u2019s summary of Barth\u2019s treatment of it. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Hunsinger describes one of the implications of Barth\u2019s \u201cactualism\u201d in this way: Negatively [actualism] means that we human beings have no ahistorical relationship to God, and that we also have no capacity in and of ourselves to enter into fellowship with God. An ahistorical relationship would be a denial of God\u2019s activity, and an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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