Ghost Signs: St Louis

Near Ballpark Village, downtown. 

Barth's Dogmatics, §4, the Word of God in its Threefold Form

My blog project for 2019 is to take notes on Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. My folks purchased
whole English-language set for me forty years ago, and subsequently I wrote my doctoral dissertation on a portion of Vol. III, part 2. For this blog project, I’ll study the Dogmatics by paragraphs, taking notes. See my December 2, 2018 post for Barth's overall plan for his series.

Paragraph 4 of Church Dogmatics is "the Word of God in its Threefold Form." "The presupposition which makes proclamation proclamation and therewith makes the Church the Church is the Word of God. This attests itself in Holy Scripture in the word of the prophets and apostles to whom it was originally and once and for all spoken by God's revelation" (I/1, p. 88). Arnold Come summarizes: "The event of God's free self-revelation by his sovereign address to men is his Word. The Word of God never occurs in sheer immediacy. It was objectively and concretely present in Jesus Christ. Proclamation is a recollection of Jesus Christ. Scripture is the precipitate of the earliest proclamation. Both the Written Word, and the Proclaimed Word based upon it, become the Revealed Word when God freely chooses to be immediately present to men through them. So God's speech is his presence in his whole Trinitarian Person" (Barth's Dogmatics for Preachers, p. 89).

The presupposition of the event of proclamation is the Word of God. In this first form of the Word, God's Word is God's positive command, an event in which proclamation becomes real--a new event and an object of human perception. This does not remove the human element from proclamation, but in human preaching and human obedience to God, proclamation is "the even of God's own speaking in the sphere of earthly events," a "new robe of righteousness thrown over" the human words of preaching (p. 95).

Because of the Scripture Canon, the church is not left to its own words. The Word of God as Scripture "it does no seek to be a historical monument but rather a Church document, written proclamation (p. 102). The Church is measured by and comforts to the prophetic and apostolic proclamation of God. Ideally, exegesis lets the canonical text speak. Scripture is a human word of people who anticipated and later saw the Word of God revealed in Christ, and the Bible becomes God's Word in the event of revelation. "The Bible is God's Word to the extent that God causes it to be His Word, to the extent that He speaks through it" (p. 109).

The Bible, then, is not God's past revelation but bears witness to past revelation through the event of God's Word. The Bible's authority is that it points to God's revelation as, in Grünewald's "Crucifixion" (above),  John the Baptist points to Christ. The Bible "must continually become God's Word" because of God's freedom to make Godself known (p. 117).

Finally, the unity of God's Word as revealed, written, and preached find analogy in the triunity of God (p. 121). Barth takes on Protestant Orthodoxy's views of scripture in the ensuing fine-print discussion.

Humboldt's "Personal Narrative"

I love antique books, during the last few years I've been collecting a few notable science books from
the nineteenth century. I like to write about them on this blog, teaching myself many new things in the process.

The last time I wrote about one of my science books was the August 7, 2017 post. Here is a book that I intended to take on my recent Galapagos trip: Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, During the Years 1799-1804, by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, published by M. Carey in Philadelphia in 1815. This translation was first published in London. Darwin had brought a copy with him on his long Beagle voyage, and I thought it would be a fun and very nerdy thing to do, too. Thank goodness I didn't, because my bags were already heavy, and the trip was physically tiring.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a German explorer and naturalist and a pioneering scientist in geography, biogeography, and ecology. His multi-volume work Kosmos was a very

popular account that drew together several fields of the physical sciences. I will write about those books, too, eventually. The Humboldt Current off the South American coast, and many places and institutions are named for him, although he isn't well known today.

Darwin and artist Frederick Edwin Church were inspired by Humboldt to journey to South America, where Humboldt had crafted accurate maps, the envy of cartographers. I formerly admired Humboldt,
I now almost adore him, wrote Darwin. Alfred Russel Wallace, explorer John Muir, and  many others drew inspiration from the German scientist.

Here is a good article about the book: http://naturalhistorynetwork.org/journal/articles/1-alexander-von-humboldt’s-personal-narrative-of-travels-to-the-equinoctial-regions-of-america/

Here is a good article about how Humboldt's narrative influenced Darwin: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancellor_Humboldt.html

On Humboldt and his influence, I've been reading Laura Dassow Walls, Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). See also Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). On Church and his painting The Heart of the Andes, see Stephen Jay Gould, “Church, Humboldt, and Darwin: The Tension and Harmony of Art and Science,” in Franklin Kelly, with Stephen Jay Gould and James Anthony Ryan, The Paintings of Frederic Edwin Church. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1989. 94-107.

Here is an upcoming meeting in Ecuador--at the university that facilitated our Galapagos trip this month--in celebration of Humboldt's 250th birthday in September. https://humboldt250-ecuador.org

*****

Here is the antique book that I actually did take on the trip. It's an 1890 printing of Darwin's Origin of Species, which had gone on someone's trip to Columbia in 1950. I incorporated the book in to my poetry book Backyard Darwin and thought that I had to take this Origin to the Galapagos! I kept it safe from sun screen, however.

Visiting the Galapagos

Because of other commitments--and the fact that my new CPAP machine cured me of the insomnia that used to provide me extra writing time--I've fallen off on my blog posts for quite a while. I'll try to be more regular, especially now that I've finished a major trip.  

On March 8-17, I accompanied a Webster U biology class to the Galapagos Islands. I'm no biologist but I've had a longtime interest in Darwin and evolutionary theory, especially as it influences the religion and science discussions. Here are a few photos from that wonderful journey!  (Here are a few more.) 

 Sally Lightfoot crab 

Lava lizard

Yellow warbler 

Lounging sea lion

Male frigate bird 

Sunning iguana 

An older tortoise 

Albatross egg (but no mom in sight)

Cactus finch nest

San Cristobal Darwin

Frigate birds in flight

Blue-footed boobies