Barth on Anselm

Introduction

This essay describes Barth's analysis of Anselm's "proof" of God. As the essay unfolds, it will be shown that God speaks and that he speaks objectively. By this it is meant that God says things that can be understood by the mind in much the same way we understand persons who speak to us. This can be looked at christologically. Jesus spoke and still speaks as Scripture. By the communicatio idiomatum the words of Jesus are also the words of God. As we understand the human words of Jesus, we understand them as God speaking, as God's words. The difference between God's speech and other speakers is that God's words are eternal, and further, they lift one into the presence of the transcendent God who, even as he speaks, lives in light approachable. The essay follows.

Barth on Anselm

Barth began as a liberal theologian, a partisan of Schleiermacher, but broke with him for three principle reasons -- the outbreak of WWI and the capitulation of the liberal theologians to the Kaiser's war policy, Barth's witnessing of a miracle wrought by the Blumhardt's in the name of Jesus, and his discovery of what he called "the strange new world in the Bible." (1) The result was his epoch-making edition of The Epistle to the Romans.

Barth's Romerbrief, however, did not really solve the problem of liberal theology. It had no concept of God's act, an act in which God miraculously becomes present to human knowing. All it really did was deny the liberal assumption that the "feeling of absolute dependence" was tantamount to a revelation of God. Or, to put it differently, the Romerbrief affirmed God's transcendence, but failed to do justice to the incarnation. Later, Barth was to say of it,

Then, in face of the prevailing historism and psychologism which had ceased to be aware at all of any revelation other than an inner mundane one within common time, the book had a definite antiseptic task and significance. Readers of it today will not fail to appreciate that in it Jn. 1:14 does not have justice done to it. (2)

It wasn't until Barth read Anselm's proof on the existence of God that he was able to break free of Schleiermacher and affirm the biblical notion that God can become objective in revelation. Barth wrote up his conclusions on Anselm in a book entitled, Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum. (3) For Barth, Anselm provided the key to his theological enterprise, and once he had the key, he began at once to work on his monumental Church Dogmatics. In regard to his study of Anselm, Barth commented,

Only a comparatively few commentators, for example Hans Urs von Balthasar, have realized that my interest in Anselm was never a side-issue for me or--assuming I am more or less correct in my historical interpretation of St. Anselm--realized how much it has influenced me or been absorbed into my own line of thinking. Most of them have completely failed to see that in this book on Anselm I am working with a vital key, if not the key, to an understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed me more and more in my Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology. (4)

In this essay I will set forth the essence of Barth's understanding of Anselm. I will speak of Anselm throughout, but in so doing I am always speaking of Barth's interpretation of Anselm. I will not present Barth's analysis in detail, only the underlying logic which makes it possible to grasp why and how Barth is a theologian of the objective school.

Finally, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Karl Barth. In the process, I read a number of theologians who had studied Barth. Very few of them seemed to have really penetrated to the heart of his theology. They failed to grasp the key insight by which to make sense of the whole of his theology. This essay presents that key insight. It comes from Anselm.

Anselm's Proof Was from and for Faith

Anselm is famous for his ontological proof for the existence of God. The proof defines God as "that which nothing greater can be conceived." Does God exist? If not, then God is not "that which nothing greater can be conceived," for God as existing can be conceived as greater than God as not existing. Therefore, God exists.

As many commentators have observed, and this includes Barth, this "proof" isn't really a proof in the logical sense. It wasn't a proof for Anselm as well. He had something else in mind. The "proof" is a way for faith to seek understanding. By faith Anselm already believed that God existed. Once Anselm believed, he sought to understand what he believed and the "proof" helped him do that. To use a scientific example, everyone knows that gravity exists. Fewer people understand that the gravitational force between two masses is directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Knowing that, one not only knows that gravity exists, one also has some understanding of gravity itself. Anselm believed God existed. He also wanted to understand the God in whom he believed. The "proof" is a way of understanding God. For that reason, Barth entitles his book on Anselm, Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum," where the Latin phrase means "faith seeking understanding."

The Authoritative Sources of Anselm's Faith

Although Anselm began in faith, he did not believe in a vacuum. He began with authoritative sources. For Anselm, those sources were Scripture, the Creeds, and the tradition of the church. These sources claimed that God exists, and by faith, Anselm believed these sources.

The Transcendent God Can Speak

But Anselm sought more than faith. He wished to known God, to understand him. Yet Anselm scarcely believed this was possible. The sources told him that God was utterly different from all created things. In other words, God was not an object like other objects. He was beyond all objects, uniquely himself, comparable to none other. How could he, Anselm, a mere mortal, know a living God who lived in light unapproachable?

Even so, Anselm believed that God could take the texts of Scripture, the words of preaching, the creeds of the church, and speak as these created mediums so that God would come before his mind as an object for his knowing. As this happened, God would speak to Anselm and Anselm would know God and not simply believe that God existed. To repeat myself, although God was unlike any object, God could, binding himself to the statements of authoritative texts, take form as an object before Anselm's mind and enable him to have some understanding of God.

For God to speak, however, a miracle would have to occur. As a finite human being, Anselm could not make God speak, nor was God's speech a property of the created order. As things stood, God might or might not speak to him, and Anselm may or may not understand God's Word even if God did speak. Anselm was utterly dependent upon God's action, an action he could not control. Therefore, Anselm began with prayer, praying that God would reveal himself as an object to his understanding.

He [Anselm] interprets the plight of man in his failure to know God, a plight which even the believer shares, as being due to the fact that he is involved in the remoteness of God from a humanity that is sinful by inheritance. This remoteness is clearly an objective remoteness of God himself God is absent, he dwells in light unapproachable. (5)
Strictly speaking, it is only God himself who has a conception of God. All that we have are conceptions of objects, none of which is identical with God. ... He is all that we are able to say about him and is not only wholly-other, though certainly he alone is true and real, unique and in a category all his own and known only to himself. Therefore, every one of the categories known to us by which we attempt to conceive him is, in the last analysis not really one of his categories at all. God shatters every syllogism. But just as everything which is not God could not exist apart from God and is something only because of God, ... so it is possible for expressions which are really appropriate only to objects that are not identical with God to be true expressions, ... even when these expressions are applied to God who can never be expressed. (6)

Faith, according to Anselm, does not come about without something new encountering us and happening to us from the outside ... The seed to be received is the "Word of God" that is preached and heard; and that it comes to us and that we have the rectitudo volendi [right will] to receive it, is grace. (7)

This attitude [Anselm desiring to pray] is not just that of a "pious" thinker who offers his work to the service of the divine work that his work may be done well. It is that of course. But above and beyond that it is a specific and perhaps the most decisive expression of his scientific objectivity. Everything depends not only on the fact that God grants him grace to think correctly about him, but also on the fact that God himself comes within his system as the object of his thinking, that he "shows" himself to the thinker and in so doing modifies "correct" thinking to an intelligere esse in re [knowledge of the thing itself]. Only thus does the grace of Christian knowledge become complete. (8)

God Revealed a Name to Anselm

As Anselm pondered the text, prayed and sought God's living Word, God spoke to him. He revealed a name to Anselm. That name, which Anselm heard in Latin was: Aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. Translated, this means "that which nothing greater can possibly be conceived."

Anselm Understood the Name

As Anselm heard this name, several considerations come to the fore. First, Anselm did not believe that this name was simply a human construct which merely "pointed to" the ineffable while leaving him devoid of any real knowledge of God. This was the position of Guanilo, one of Anselm's critics. Guanilo thought God incomprehensible, and by definition, the incomprehensible could not be comprehended in words. Anselm knew quite well that God was incomprehensible. That is why Anselm began in prayer. But Anselm also claimed that the Transcendent could speak, that the Incomprehensible can become comprehensible, that God can be known, and known in a language that he, Anselm, could understand. That is what Anselm prayed for, and that is what happened when God revealed the Name, "that which nothing greater can possibly be conceived."

In this skepticism of the possibility (maintained by Anselm) of a knowledge of God, Guanilo appears as a great champion of the concept of the incomprehensibility of God. Ought there really to be a word capable of giving knowledge of God; should any human word about God be more than a reasonably meaningful symbol of a human, an all too human, desire, that is never fulfilled, to comprehend the incomprehensible? These are the questions he [Guanilo] feels compelled to address to Anselm. (9)
That there ever could be words which even in themselves do not remain "mere" words but are a divine revelation in the guise of something "conceived" by a human brain in accordance with human logic and expressed in human Latin--that, in complete contrast to Anselm, was for him [Guanilo] a totally foreign concept. (10)

Thus in no sense is he [Anselm] of the opinion that he produced this formula [the Latin phrase Anselm heard] out of his own head but he declares quite explicitly the source from which he considers it to have come to him: when he gives God a name, it is not like one person forming a concept of another person; rather it is as a creature standing before his Creator. In this relationship which is actualized by virtue of God's revelation, as he thinks of God he knows that he is under this prohibition; he can conceive of nothing greater, to be precise, "better," beyond God without lapsing into the absurdity, excluded for faith, of placing himself above God in attempting to conceive of this greater. Quo maius cogitari nequit only appears to be a concept that he formed for himself; it is in fact as far as he is concerned a revealed Name of God. (11)

The Comprehensible Name Preserved God's Transcendence

Further, in revealing this name, God did not cease to be transcendent. The name itself, when properly understood, prohibited Anselm from forming concepts of God since God is greater than any concept that Anselm could form. And, from Anselm's point of view, he did not form a concept of God on his own initiative. It was given to him by revelation. As Anselm received the Name, "that which nothing greater can be conceived," he understood it as a command that he should not attempt to form conceptions of God since the Name tells him that God is beyond anything he could possibly conceive. But Anselm did not conceive the Name. He thought it, but he did not create it. It was given to him by God's act, by God's speech. It was revelation, a Word of the Lord.

God as the Name Was Present in Anselm's Mind

As Anselm received the revelation of God's name, he recognized that this event took place in three ways. First, the Name appeared in his mind. It was a concept in his mind. Secondly, he not only realized that the name was in his mind, he knew it had been given to him by God. He, Anselm, had studied and prayed, but it was God who had given him the Name. As a result, he believed that God existed in his mind in the act of revealing the Name. Finally, Anselm believed that he had been given true knowledge of God, that God had in some way become comprehensible by means of the Name. Therefore, he went from God in his mind to God as an independent existence, so that he truly knew God as he was in reality beyond Anselm's mind.

No one doubts the first of these three ways, that Anselm entertained a Latin phrase in his mind. The second claim, that God himself existed in Anselm's mind with the revelation of the Name, is a direct result of Anselm's understanding of revelation. Revelation is not simply an event in the mind. It is that, but it is also an event in which God acts, in which God becomes present, affects the mind from without as a divine Word. As such, the Word of revelation differs from ordinary words. Ordinary words convey knowledge of various realities, and at least in contemporary thought, do not bring the things themselves within the mind. But that is not the case with God. When God speaks, he becomes present as his Word. For Barth, and for Anselm if Barth understands him correctly, this belief that God becomes a human word implies that when one hears this human word, then God exists in the mind of the one who hears. This, for Anselm, was an article of Christian faith. As in John 1:14, if the "Word became flesh", then wherever the flesh was, there was the God the Word. The "flesh" in this case is the Latin phrase given to Anselm. If God took form as that Latin phrase, then wherever the phrase is, there is God. The phrase was in Anselm's mind, and therefore, he believed God was in his mind as the divine Word. Therefore, Anselm will claim that his Christian opponent, Guanilo, should not cast doubt on Anselm's claim that God was in his knowing as he ponders the Name that God has given him.

Everything depends not only on the fact that God grants him [Anselm] grace to think correctly about him, but also on the fact that God himself comes within his system as the object of his thinking, that he "show"' himself to the thinker ... (12)
But combined with this fatal flaw in his [Guanilo's] technical knowledge is the fact that for him quo maius cogitari nequit is just one percepta vox [perceived voice] amongst many others and is not a dynamic word of revelation; [for Guanilo] it is not the Name of God that is revealed and believed. (13)

Right at the beginning of this essay in the passage that we have already quoted more than once, Anselm declares it impossible for a Christian like Guanilo to act as if he knew nothing at all about what the formula quo maius cogitari nequit describes. Perhaps the insipiens [the disbeliever] (14) does know nothing (for he may remain insipiens even after the Name of God is proclaimed to him) but at least Guanilo, as spokesman for the insipiens, shares Anselm's knowledge of the esse Dei in intellectus [God in one's knowing]. As a Christian he [Guanilo] has part in this event of the intellectus [knowing], he is subject of an action of the intelligere [to know] and is therefore charged with it and called as a witness that in this event as such the esse Die [being of God] is reality. At least in ullo intellectu [in that (Christian) knowing] God is not just a vain invention but an object that is known. (15)

God as the Name Was Objectively Present to Anselm

It must now be asked, In what way is God present in Anselm's mind as he conceived the Name? It could be said, for example, that God is in the mind in an incomprehensible and ineffable fashion, and that Anselm expressed that sublime presence in the words of the Name, quo maius cogitari nequit. This was an possibility that Guanilo raised. Even if Guanilo could admit that God was present in and with the Name, he could still claim that the name only "pointed to" a mystery, leaving the mind devoid of positive knowledge of God himself.

Guanilo's second and cleverer objection is this: granted that the object designated quo maius cogitari nequit, just by this name being spoken and heard, exists within the knowledge of the hearer, is an object--yet this happens in such a manner as cannot be conceived. It has, so to speak, only an existence intended by thought, namely the existence which thinking endeavours (in vain) to ascribe to an object [God] which is described to it as existing but which as existing is totally unknown to it. Guanilo makes these statements on the following basis: we know the object designated quo maius cogitari nequit as little as we know that designated Deus [God] as an object known to us on the grounds of a definite perception or something analogous to a definite perception. (16)

This objection on Guanilo's part fails to grasp that it was the Name that was revealed. The Name was given, that was the primary datum. Prior to the name there never was anything else, such as a mystical presence which was subsequently given a name. The Name came first. It came from God. It was God's speech. It was not a name assigned to a mystery although it reveals a mystery. As such, the name represents God. It reveals God. It stands with God. God is objectively present as the Name for only in the Name, conceiving it objectively before the mind, is God known. When this happens, God is known as the Name. The fact that, apart from God's act, God in himself is incomprehensible does not preclude his becoming comprehensible when his Name is proclaimed and received. In other words, the divine presence in the mind only exists "in and with this event" of the Latin words that Anselm heard and understood. In the following quotation, the word "object" refers to God.

From these premises it follows that where something becomes known, as for example the object described as quo maius cogitari nequit, a representation of this object takes place by virtue of the act of knowing (intelligere) and within the event of knowledge (intellectus), so that we may say of it: it exists in and with this event (est in intellectu) [in the mind]. (17)

To put it another way: whoever hears the name, cannot avoid, but must have, some positive knowledge of God as the person believes and accepts the Name as being of God. By "positive," I mean something that one can understand, something that objectively comes before the mind. Positive knowledge makes some sense of God. It leads somewhere, has consequences for faith and action. In positive knowledge, God comes as the Name, and not merely a mystery pointed to by the Name.

All that is involved is: whoever hears the Name of God can--whether he does so is a different question, but he can--"thereby conceive something" because, if he really hears, he cannot possibly lack a revelation of the Nature of God and that is the point here. And to the extent to which he is able to do that he can hardly dispute the existence of God in his consciousness on the ground that for him the Name of God is an empty concept. (18)

Or, the matter can be seen from another angle. The fact that God is incomprehensible means that God cannot be known at all, not even intuitively through a mystical knowledge apart from God's speech. In fact, the Name precludes any sense of God whatsoever except that given as the Name. The Name, "that which nothing greater can be conceived," simply states that all human concepts, words, and intuitions have nothing to do with God. Only when God acts, speaks, proclaims the Name, does God become known, and that knowledge is positive knowledge given as the meaning of the words themselves. For example, the Name can inform the mind that God prohibits certain ideas in relation to him. This tells us something of God. It tells us that God prohibits all mystical intuitions of God since the mind can understand the Name to deny all concepts, intuitive or otherwise, except the concepts given when God speaks.

Recapitulating what was said earlier in connection with this object: knowledge of the inconceivability of God cannot be played off against knowledge of his (intramental) existence because as knowledge of God and therefore knowledge of faith it rather presupposes the latter. It excludes far more radically than Guanilo appears to assume an intuitive knowledge on our part of God's Existence. (19)
The attempt to conceive of something by the word "God" and therefore of the esse Dei in intellectu [being of God in the mind] must not break down because God is a hidden God. As such he is also the God who is manifest, who even reveals himself in the real world of the insipiens [the disbeliever]. There is a conicere Deum [knowledge of God]. Where and when it actually happens is of course another questions. (20)

The Name Leads to God Beyond the Mind

Once Anselm had arrived at the fact that God has spoken to him, that he understood these words with his mind, and that God was in his mind as an object for his knowing, he was then summoned by the Name to believe that God was not only in his mind, but external to Anselm as a real existence. The Name itself demanded this step. It claimed that God was "that which nothing greater can be conceived." If God is in the mind, then clearly God in the mind and beyond the mind in reality is greater than God in the mind alone. Therefore, on the basis of the Name, Anselm believed that God truly existed, not only in the mind but beyond his mind in reality as a living God.

What Anselm regards as having been proved by what has gone before is that the thing described as aliquid quo maius cogitari non valet has existence not only in knowledge but also has objective (and to that extent genuine existence). Now how far has that been proved? In so far as it has been shown that God exists in the knowledge of the hearer when the Name of God is preached, understood and heard. But he cannot exist merely in the knowledge of the hearer because a God who exists merely thus stands in impossible contradiction to his own Name as it is revealed and believed, because, in other words, he would be called God but would not be God. Thus as God he cannot exist in knowledge as the one who merely exists in knowledge. (21)

The step from mind to God in reality on the basis of the Name seems straightforward, but there is more to it than that. Anselm does not believe, if Barth interprets him correctly, that God's existence in the mind together with the revelation of the Name "proves" the existence of God external to the mind. There could be some form of spiritual being in the mind that revealed a Name, but that being could have little or no existence beyond the mind itself. The step from the Name in the mind to God in reality describes the normal flow of the mental process, but it doesn't prove God's existence. For Anselm, that existence was already given in faith. Faith knows that God exists. The revelation of the Name drives the mind at once to contemplate God as existing both in the mind and beyond the mind. As that happens, faith recognizes and affirms its object. But the experience of hearing the Name and thinking of its consequences does not "prove" God's existence. An intuitive process can be illusionary. Faith is always required. Anselm did believe that God spoke to him and revealed the Name as a Latin phrase. As this happened, he experienced God and his mind was led by the Name to believe that God was beyond his mind in reality. The "proof" which resulted from the Name did not abolish the need for faith. It did, however, present the contents of faith to the mind in an orderly and intelligible fashion.

Anselm's hypothesis is certainly an expression, but not as Guanilo thinks empty words, but the Word of God--not as Guanilo thinks, an expression given and to be understood in isolation, but a Word of God within the context of his revelation, to which also belongs the revelation of his existence. It declares the Name of God from which Name we certainly cannot derive his existence, as Guanilo interpolates, but from which the impossibility of his non-existence (on the assumption of his revealed, unique existence as Creator--which Guanilo ignores) is perceived and which makes it possible to recognize in thought the Existence of God that is believed. This result does not satisfy Guanilo because he himself is obviously in search of a proof of God from some sort of experience, a proof which would have nothing to do with Anselm's intellectus fidei [knowledge of faith] and which would be excluded by Anselm's very concept of God. (22)

The Name Revealed that God Exists in a Unique and Incomparable Fashion

Just as the Name rendered intelligible the existence of God both in the mind and objectively beyond the knower, the Name leads on to show that God exists in an unique and incomparable fashion. We can, for example, imagine many things as possibly not existing. Had the world been only slightly different, none of us would exist. Just as the mind can entertain the idea of something not existing, the mind can entertain the idea of something that must exist. Such an existence would always be, eternally and necessary to itself as existing. Such a being would be greater than beings which may or may not exist. Therefore, the Name leads the mind on to conceive of an eternal existence, to God who lives forever.

Of course, Anselm already knew that God was one who lives forever. He believed the authoritative sources. He could read, for example, these words from I Tim. 6:15-16, "God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen." By faith, Anselm accepted God's supreme existence. Once Anselm had received the Name, however, the Name itself invited him to understand that God was eternal, that God could not be conceived as not existing.

Further, we can conceive of something as good or bad. Something good we imagine as greater than something bad. In regard to God, we can imagine perfect goodness, mercy, and truth. God's eternal and perfect existence can be conceived in contrast to all that is transitory, faulty, and blemished. Again, the Name, "that which a greater cannot be conceived," leads the mind to conceive of God as perfect in every respect. If God were less than perfect, the mind could conceive of something greater than God, namely a perfect being. The Name prohibits that, and therefore, God is perfect. Barth quotes Anselm.

Therefore "something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived" exists in reality in such a manner that it cannot be conceived as not existing. (23) And so it stands, whatever exists apart from thee, the Only One, can be conceived as not existing. Thou alone of all being hast really true existence--and therefore thou alone of all beings hast perfect existence. For anything other than thee does not possess this manner of existence and therefore possesses but imperfect existence. (24)

This essentially concludes the "proof."

The "Proof," Faith Seeking Understanding

The "proof" was an exercise in faith seeking understanding. By faith Anselm knew the following: 1. That God is utterly transcendent, beyond every human concept. 2. That God can speak his Word. 3. When God speaks his Word, he is present in the mind as God the Word to those that hear him. 4. Those who hear and receive his Word know God as an object to their knowing. 5. That God exists. 6. That God is eternal, he must exist. 7. That God is perfect in every respect.

Anselm's faith sought understanding. He prayed, knowing that without God he could not conceive of God. God answered his prayer for understanding. God spoke a Name. Anselm received the name. The Name told him, quoting from the previous paragraph: 1. "That God is utterly transcendent, beyond every human concept." 2. Upon receiving the Name, Anselm knew that "God can speak his Word." 3. He knew that God "is present in the mind as God the Word to those that hear him." 4. As the Word came before his mind as a concept he knew that those who "hear and receive his Word know God as an object of their knowing." 5. The Name led him to understand that "God exists." 6. The Name led him to understand that "God is eternal, he must exist." 7. The Name led him to understand that "God is perfect in every respect."

As this happened, Anselm came to an understanding inherent in the Name, an understanding that led to God in all his perfections. It was an event of revelation, an event that began with the gift of faith and ended with the illumination of his understanding. It was grace. From first to last it depended upon God speaking to Anselm, coming "within his system as the object of his thinking, ..." Thus, Anselm ends his great "proof" in thankful praise to the wonderful God who humbled himself to speak to Anselm so that he, Anselm, might truly know a living God. Here are Anselm's words, quoted by Barth.

I thank thee, good Lord, I thank thee, that what I had first believed because of thy gift, I know because of thine illumining in such a way that even if I did not want to believe thine Existence, yet I could not but know it. (25)

Barth sums up the foregoing with these words,

It is a question of the proof of faith by faith which was already established in itself without proof. And both--faith that is proved and faith that proves--Anselm expressly understands not as presuppositions that can be achieved by man but as presuppositions that have been achieved by God, the former as divine donare [gift] and the latter as divine illuminare [illumination]. ... God gave himself to him to know and he was able to know God. On this foundation, comparable to no philosophical presupposition and inconceivable for all systematic theology, he has come to know and has proved the Existence of God. For that reason his last word must be gratitude. Not satisfaction over a work that he has completed and that resounds to his own praise as its master, but gratitude for a work that has been done and of which he is in no sense the master. God gave himself as the object of his knowledge and God illumined him that he might know him as object. Apart from this event there is no proof of the existence, that is of the reality of God. (26)

Anselm and the Church Dogmatics

In an earlier paragraph I quoted Barth to the effect that Anselm provided "a vital key, if not the key, to an understanding of that whole process of thought that has impressed me more and more in my Church Dogmatics as the only one proper to theology." When one reads the Church Dogmatics it becomes evident that the foundation of Barth's theology consists of two doctrines, Trinity and Christology. I now want to indicate, very briefly, how Anselm provided the key to these two doctrines.

First, the critical point in Anselm's "proof" was the event of the Word of God which came to Anselm as the Name. Barth's theology is a theology of the Word of God. That Word is Jesus Christ. As God speaks, he speaks Jesus Christ. This Word is spoken by the Father who "dwells in light unapproachable," to quote Anselm. When the Word is spoken, God the Son comes forth from the transcendent Father. Once spoken, it is heard as a human word and God becomes present within the hearer as a divine Word Jesus Christ in union with that human word. Then, within the hearer, God dynamically enables the hearer to receive, believe, and act upon the Word. All this is from Anselm.

Barth then identifies God the divine Word sent from the Father in union with the human word as Jesus Christ. God active in the hearer enabling the mind to know God is God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enables the hearer to know the God who cannot be known except by the Word Jesus Christ. All this is the work of one God who acts in three ways as three persons. This leads to Barth's doctrine of the Trinity. All this is inherent in Anselm in that the transcendent God, God the Father, speaks his Word Jesus Christ in human words, and then acts by the Spirit within the hearer to give the knowledge of God.

Secondly, as Anselm received the Name, he was given a word he could understand with his mind. This human word was an object to his knowing. God was present as this human word. The human word that Anselm received in Latin was also a divine Word since that human word was also God speaking. It was God the Son present "in and with this event" of God speaking his Word. There is not, as in Schleiermacher, a mystical feeling which then issues in human speech pointing to the ineffable. Rather, there is a Word, and God is bound to the human word in the sense of "the Word became flesh." (John 1:14) This leads to Barth's Christology, the denial of any natural or mystical knowledge of God and the affirmation that God is only known in his Word.

Further, God's speaking his Word is an event in space and time. It comes to a person from without. It is God addressing a person as Lord -- speaking, commanding, revealing, and requiring obedience. This Word from God is always a miracle, no less miraculous than the Virgin birth or the bodily resurrection. Barth believes these miracles. As miracle, God's speaking is not a property of the created order. God the Father creates, but it is God the Son who takes flesh, as miraculous event, word, and deed. Creating and taking flesh are two different things, and therefore, the event of the Word is different from the event of creation. The Father who creates is different from the Son who becomes incarnate though both are God. In this way, Barth preserves the inner-triune distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit. By contrast, Schleiermacher can make no distinctions within God. For him, the inner-triune relations refer only to distinctions within consciousness and not in the nature of God's acts.

A Few Corollaries

One corollary of this essay is that Scripture is not only the Word of God, centered in Jesus Christ, but also the words of God. This means that orthodox, biblical interpretation will first attend to the literal, grammatical meaning of the text, taking genre into account, and coordinating that meaning with the whole of the biblical revelation understood in a triune fashion. For this reason, it is best to say that the words of Scripture are the words of the human authors, and at the same time, the words of God. Or, to put it another way, God speaks as the words of Scripture rather than through them. The preposition "through" gives the impression that the Word of God somehow passes through the human aspect, usually resulting in the belief that the Word of God is a mystical "it," rather than concrete, objective content that we can understand. The perspective affirmed here is that the biblical words are God actually speaking to us, judging us, forgiving us, lifting us into his sublime and transcendent presence.

A second corollary is that God is objectively present in the sacraments. The two sacraments, baptism and Eucharist, are comprised of three aspects -- ordained by Christ, a visible sign, and lastly, God's grace, his action. This action is objective; that is, it entails God speaking and acting in ways that have miraculous effects on people. If Christ is objectively present in the Eucharist, then his presence does not depend upon the subjective attitude of those who partake of the sacrament. He is there, active, speaking, making a difference in matters of fact. Of course, as the Anglican Reformers affirmed, those who receive the sacrament must respond in faith if the sacrament is to work for their blessing rather than their condemnation. Among other things, being objective in the Eucharist means that Christ personally addresses the whole person, even the entire congregation, and his objective presence has effects -- he addresses believers, heals them body and soul, convicts of sin, forgives, addresses the heart, will, and mind in ways that can be understood, and enters into a personal relationship with those who receive him in faith. Faith is the human response to God revealing himself objectively. There is no need for Christ to be physically present as transubstantiated bread and wine in order for Christ to be objectively present and active. He lives at the right hand of the Father, but by the Word and Spirit, he acts throughout the world. The words, "he acts," means that his whole person is active, his divine and human natures, body and soul, will and mind, as represented by bread and wine, affecting believers in all dimensions of life. There is a need, however, for the signs and the words of institution to be set forth in accordance with the scriptural revelation, for it is by revealed words, as this essay describes in regard to a name, that Christ becomes present and active.

A third corollary is that Christian ministry consists in setting forth Christ in words and deeds that reflect the ministry of Christ as narrated in the gospels. Preaching, teaching, counseling and healing are ways that Christian ministers set forth in their own words and deeds the words and deeds of Jesus. One of the turning points in Barth's theological development was his encounter with the Blumhardts. The Blumhardts, father and son, after witnessing a miracle of exorcism, began a ministry of healing which eventually opened out on the eschatological hope that God would heal not only individuals, but the whole of society as well. Barth describes this miracle in a section entitled "Jesus is Victor," the words uttered by the demon as it left the possessed woman.(27) Christian ministry, as seen in the Blumhardts and affirmed by Barth, has its foundation in the belief that Jesus authorizes those who belong to him to do his deeds and speak his words. As they do these things, Christ becomes objectively present, doing today what he did in the time of his first appearing.

Karl Barth -- Objective Theologian

In another essay on the objective and ecstatic ways of knowing God, I described the essence of the objective view in these words: "In the objective view, God is transcendent as Father but becomes objectively present as God the Word in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ." Barth would affirm this. In that same essay I also compared the two ways of knowing God in a series of fourteen contrasting statements. Barth would affirm virtually every one of the statements that belong to the objective way of knowing God. Barth is a theologian of the objective school.

Endnotes

1. Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, translated by John Newton Thomas and Thomas Wieser (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), p. 40. 2. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I:2, p. 50. 3. Barth, Karl. Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum. Translated by Ian W. Robertson. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960. 4. Barth, Anselm, p. 11. 5. Barth, Anselm, p. 38. 6. Barth, Anselm, pp. 29-30. 7. Barth, Anselm, p. 19. 8. Barth, Anselm, p. 39. 9. Barth, Anselm, p. 79. 10. Barth, Anselm, p. 82. 11. Barth, Anselm, p. 73. 12. Barth, Anselm, p. 39. 13. Barth, Anselm, p. 114. 14. The real translation here is "fool," but in practice it refers to someone who hears the Name and refuses to acknowledge God as its author. 15. Barth, Anselm, p. 113. 16. Barth, Anselm, p. 112. 17. Barth, Anselm, p. 110. 18. Barth, Anselm, p. 115. 19. Barth, Anselm, pp. 113-4. 20. Barth, Anselm, p, 118. 21. Barth, Anselm, p. 128. 22. Barth, Anselm, p. 131. 23. Barth, Anselm, p. 143. 24. Barth, Anselm, p. 154. 25. Barth, Anselm, p. 170. 26. Barth, Anselm, pp. 170-1. 27. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part Three, First Half (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1976), pp 165ff.