I don’t think your reading of Barth is right, since he was radically against the liberal protestant project. his liberalism was most manifest in his views on scripture and election, not the resurrection.

I think barth is far more orthodox than rauschenbusch and feuerbach and many evangelicals of his day.

I agree that historically the writers of the 1st 39 books aren’t assuming Jesus is the way that messiah will happen. You don’t even have messianic expectation as a distinctive religious thread until the exile. Messianic belief isn’t even tenable as an exegetical appeal until the exile. You can’t jsut read Jesus into scriptures he’s not present, we’d agree there. But the early church had a hermeneutic style that centralized around the life of Jesus as more authoritative than Torah, and I think they read Torah faithfully but they read it in subjection to Christ, they centralized salvation hsitory and the story of the exodus, their very identity in the way Jesus presented Himself as the author of what it means to be Israel.. The scriptures serve him, not vice-versa.

BUt like I said, this has been a great little chat, and I’m glad we had it. I hope we can continue to have dialogue. I really enjoyed this.

i do believe it can be argued that barth did not believe in a historical resurrection. i have also read barth agree that he is extremely biblical, but i would not declare him as extremely orthodox.

let me be clear since it didn’t get across the first time, i do not believe scripture cannot stand in theological opposition from each other. for example, passages that teach of God’s anger do not stand in opposition to passages that teach of God’s compassion.

thank you for the recomendations of wright and moltmann. they’re both on my amazon “wish list” haha.

blessings.

I think that you’re missing the point of colossians and other places that say He is the goal of creation, and that he’s the climax of the Christian story. History has been waiting for Him, and He sums up all things in Himself.

The salvation History is told by God, and the way God chooses to tell that story most clearly is Jesus Christ, so He is the place we always have to turn to understand what the scriptures are saying. He gives us our reading.

I’m not saying God doesn’t reveal himself to individuals, but that the community is the place of verification.

Barth never denied the physical resurrection. Bultmann did, and i don’t know which struass but mayhap he did. I’m not attempting to deny the historicity of the new testament’s resurrection account, i think that’s unfounded and unnecessary. But, not all the history Israel recorded is history. I think we can trust the early church that Jesus indeed resurrected. It’s not acceptable to assume a spiritual resurrection it’s not in keeping with the early church. I would recommend reading N.T. Wright for a great take on the resurrection that’s supremely historical, accurate, and beautiful. I’d start with his simply christian and surprised by hope.

If you read the prophets, they contradict each other, at least the minor prophets, the gospels contradict each others on matters of history, and john places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of his gospel where others say this is what he did that got him killed. I think that an infallible doctrine of scripture fails to understand the history of the bible and would rather ignore that fact and tend to make the bible divine, when what separates Christians from other religions is not the Bible in itself, but what the bible points to as a narrative whole, the incarnation, Jesus, the sole authority for all that we say or do.

He’s not just teaching his contemporaries when he says “you have heard it said” he’s speaking to us too. and i think we have to remember that we have heard it said, but Jesus is teaching us His way of reading the scriptures.

I’d recommend reading N.T. Wright, and some Barth too. Barth may be a hyper-calvinist in some respects, but he’s also amazingly biblical and you can see the depth of his devotion in his writing. If you’ve never had the pleasure, I’d recommend it. Jurgen Moltmann too.

i would be hesitant to state that ALL of scripture is pointing to Christ. as has been recently made aware to me, Jesus is arguably only alluded to a few times in the Torah and most are extreme stretches. i think it could be argued that the Scriptures all point to the redemptive work of God in human history which Jesus Christ plays a very significant role!

i agree with your comment on scripture needing to be interpreted in community. i would add, though, that God can and has revealed himself to individual persons, but more often then not those revelations need to be affirmed by the community of Jesus followers.

disagreeing with the scriptures would venture toward theologians like barth, strauss and bultmann who seem to deny the physical resurrection of Christ. is that acceptable?

i would disagree with you on the point that the Scriptures are infallible. i do not think that Scripture does or can stand in opposition to itself.

thanks for your thoughts!

I think scripture is always the witness to the divine word which is Jesus. I think scripture isn’t the ultimate authority, because that implies you can understand it by yourself. I think rather, scripture in community is the authority. wrestling with it in dialogue with others as a church body is where the authority of scripture is most present.

we should not live lives that oppose Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate authority, that means that the christian community is chaste, peaceful, non-violent, and concerned with the kingdom of god, as well as making suffering redemptive. The Christian community is one where the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are the primary form the lives of the believers take.

i agree with your position but it’s too abstract, which scriptures, and what does disagreeing with scripture mean? and what type of theology would you say disagrees with scripture? which interpretation of scripture?

i think that only jesus is infallible, making scripture infallible tries to put scripture on the same level as god. I think that this is always problematic. Inerrancy even more so, because the doctrine assumes it of original autographs which we don’t have, and it’s clearly problematic in the face of both liberal and conservative history. the bible was not written to be infallible, but to draw people into recognizing the King of Israel. It’s not a science text, it’s not a shopping guide, it’s an invitation to witness to the one scripture points to.

I think that scripture is an important way god reveals himself but not the only way, the christian community is a way to meet God’s love objectively, the sacraments, eucharist and baptism are especially powerful ways of God’s self revelation to the world today as the one who is still Immanuel, God with us. I think that your position is decent, but forgets that this story is one that is still alive today, one that we are participating in as the church. Church is the time between ascension and new creation. Our task as the church is to live lives that make sense of the life of Jesus, that make sense of our participation in the entire life of Christian history from israel to new creation.

I’d correct your last point to say scripture is a challenge, a voice that speaks to us and tells us we have encountered in its witness something powerfully objective and outside us, this man Jesus, who suffered and died as God, to bring God to the god forsaken.

again, i hope i’ve offered these lovingly, and would love to continue our chat.

vision and strength.