Here and Now | The Proclamation of Jesus Christ

Karl Barth delivered a fascinating lecture on the relevance of the Christian perspective on "a new humanism" to a secular convention of Western European intellectuals in 1949. His introduction calls attention to the surprising flow of history. It was unthinkable fifty years earlier to invite a "superstitious" theological perspective into conversation with a strictly intellectual field. As Barth introduces the Christian faith to its dialogue partners, he explains that he will not be able to conceal the peculiar nature of God's revelation to humanity:

"The Christian proclamation would be misunderstood today, as it always has been, if it were presented as one among many theoretical, moral or aesthetic principles or systems, as one 'ism' in competition, harmony or conflict with other 'isms'."

Barth’s stance is rooted in the belief that the Christian proclamation is composed of a different substance than that from which concept, theory or principle is constructed. Every mode of knowledge is defined by the nature of its object. Therefore, the nature of God necessitates a different kind of touching, seeing and hearing than something that is simply of temporal origin.

God is eternal and transcendent, but he is not impersonal or unknowable. The God of orthodox Christianity is not an impersonal force like gravity which pushes toward the center of the earth without reason or care; neither is he like theory, a body of impersonal information to master. This truth requires that we wrestle with the Christian proclamation in a mode of knowledge that accounts for a God who cares, listens and speaks- a God who actually revealed himself by entering our history as the man, Jesus Christ. The idea of the incarnation is at the core of the Christian proclamation of God’s humanism: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

The Christian proclamation is that God is “here and now.” This means, according to Barth, that God is living, practical, and effective as opposed to distant, abstract and impotent. Is this true? If God really revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and if the nature of God requires a particular mode of knowledge then, Barth is right when he concludes:

“Above all, we shall not be able to conceal the fact that this very question of the 'here and now' of the Christian proclamation of God’s humanism [Jesus Christ] has the bittersweet character of being always and ever of being answered, whether positively or negatively, in the form of the most comprehensive, personal, and responsible decision.”

The form (or mode) necessitated by God’s humanism can be likened to the way in which a person decides to love and know another person. This is because love is the most comprehensive mode of knowing because it engages the whole being. For this reason relating to another through love is the most personal sense of knowledge. And finally, love is a decision for which each person is most responsible. It takes work, intentionality and action or it is not actually love. Cultivating a loving relationship with Amy through which I have a revelation of who she is has been, at least for me, a quite different process than the way in which I came to know that the quadratic formula is true. The nature of Amy the object dictated a very particular, exclusive and rewarding mode for knowing her.

God is an eternal being not subjugated by the properties of our world; at the same time, he is a personal being who revealed himself, in love, through Jesus. This is good news! For Jesus said:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”