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Sunday, October 2, 2011

Barth on faith and the lie of "with the help of God"

“The church is death before resurrection, the fasting of a bride who does not have her bridegroom, a solitary company in a desert with no support. Jesus is the hidden God who can be apprehended only indirectly not through works but through faith.” Barth

and one more from Barth
“Who does not substitute for the righteousness of this unapproachable God some very refined, very excellent, very significant, righteousness of his own, to which is added, of course, some such phrase as ‘with the help of God’ or ‘trusting in God’? Who does not substitute some plan or program or method, some new thing, some new ‘interpretation of the truth’, some movement or task, which gives us less to create but more to do, less to ponder but more to talk about, less to endure but more to undertake, than does the righteousness of God? And so we introduce a ‘thing’ by which men--and especially religious men--secure an advantage for themselves. Immersed in the happiness of doing and speaking and inaugurating, busy with reforms and revolutions, they are able to forget the judgment hanging over their heads, and so the ‘thing’ on which they are engaged turns out more to their credit than if they were to seek naught else but to fear and to love God above all things. Was there ever a period when the Church was free of the temptation to substitute a human righteousness of its own for the righteousness of God?”

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