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Chapter Two
Creation and Economic Life
Introduction
Our objective in the previous chapter was to discuss Barth's doctrine of the Trinity, together with those ideas that enabled us to move from life in God to God's actions in history. In this chapter we wish to begin to discover how economic life may be governed by political decisions. Economic life is concerned with using material objects for human welfare. Political life can and does involve decisions and actions which determine how material products are used for human consumption. Barth's doctrine of creation describes some of God's decisions and actions with respect to using the material world to enhance human existence. It also includes elements of how human beings use and should use the created world. His doctrine of creation has its basis in his exegesis of the two creation accounts of Genesis and is found in III:1 of the Church Dogmatics. Barth exegetes the first creation account under the title "Creation as the External Basis of the Covenant," while the second account is exegeted under the title "The Covenant as the internal Basis of Creation." As these titles suggest, his exegesis of the two Genesis accounts establishes a relation between creation and covenant. In the fourth chapter we shall show that political life is an aspect of the covenant, so that everything we learn here about the relations between the covenant and the economic aspects of creation will apply to the relations between political realm and economic life with certain restrictions which will be indicated in their place. Therefore, in this chapter, we shall investigate Barth's doctrine of creation, and begin to lay the the foundations for understanding how economic and political life are related.
Creation and Covenant
We shall follow Barth's exegesis of the two creation accounts. Before we plunge into the details of his exegesis, we need to be able to see the picture as a whole. We can gain a glimpse of the whole by describing how Barth relates creation and covenant, as this relationship guides the whole of his exegesis. Our ultimate goal is to know how the political order is responsible for economic life. Barth's exegesis does not lead us at once to that goal, and therefore our discussion of how covenant and economic life are related will have to go beyond Barth in a number of places. We can do this from a Barthian perspective if we are aware of Barth's exegetical presuppositions, so that our extension of Barth will remain true to his original intent. Therefore, prior to our following Barth's exegesis, we need to do two things. First, in the context of Barth's doctrine of creation, we need to outline the major ways in which creation is related to covenant. Our discussion of the relation between creation and covenant will have its basis in the results of the previous chapter. Secondly, we need to determine Barth's exegetical presuppositions. We can do both of these at the same time, as Barth's exegetical presuppositions flow naturally out of his understanding of the relationship between covenant and creation. Then, with our basic map of the territory in mind, and armed with a knowledge of how to proceed exegetically, we will then advance with Barth into his exegesis of the two creation accounts.
How does Barth distinguish between covenant and creation? The origin of the distinction lies within the Triune life. We will focus on two aspects of the inner triune life which result in creation and covenant, their distinctiveness, and their relatedness. Within himself God eternally begets the Son in the togetherness of mutual love which is the Holy Spirit, (1.2) and (1.3). The phrase "eternally begets" means at least two things. First, it means that God creates, and this is expressed in the idea that the Son is begotten of the Father. The inner triune reality of God's begetting the Son is the basis for God's work outside himself, his act of creating the universe. Barth expresses it as follows:
As the Father, God procreates Himself from all eternity in His Son, and with his Son He is also from eternity the origin of Himself in the Holy Spirit; and as the Creator He posits the reality of all things that are distinct from Himself. The two things are not identical. Neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit is the world; each is God as the Father himself is God. But between the two, i.e., between the relationship in God himself and God's relationship to the world, there is an obvious proportion. In view of this it is meaningful and right to designate God the Father in particular (per appropriationem) as Creator and God the Creator in particular (per appropriationem) as the Father.(1)
By virtue of the fact that God in himself creates, the world exists. Secondly, God loves. In himself, from all eternity, the Father loves the Son, and, outside himself, he loves those he has created. God first creates, and then he continues to relate to those he has created, and they are called to respond to him and to enter into personal fellowship with him and one another. We may initially understand the covenant to be acts of encounter or fellowship with God and among peoples. When Barth exegetes the Genesis accounts, he does so from the point of view that covenant is the internal basis of creation. As we follow his exegesis we will note that covenant entails mutual speaking and listening among peoples and with God; it involves acts of blessing and assistance, protection, and concern, and it includes hostile acts of encounter among peoples such as the Exodus, the Conquest, and the Exile. Since the covenant exists as events of encounter, it of necessity takes a social form. Covenant is a social history, and it has its basis in God who is social and historical in himself, (1.7) and (1.8) As God is in himself, so he is in his actions, and he wishes to enter into an ongoing history of fellowship with his creatures and he does so.
In other words, as God in Himself is neither deaf nor dumb but speaks and hears His Word from all eternity, so outside His eternity He does not wish to be without hearing or echo, that is, without the ears and voices of the creature. The eternal fellowship between Father and Son, or between God and His Word, thus finds a correspondence in the very different but not dissimilar fellowship between God and His creature.(2)
Creation refers to the existence of an object, covenant refers to God's communicating with the created object, and the difference between the two lies in the difference between bringing something into existence and then relating meaningfully to it. In Barth's words, "We have to make a self-evident restriction. Creation itself is not the covenant. The existence and being of the one loved are not identical with the fact that it is loved."(3)
Economic Life Defined
In light of this rudimentary distinction between creation and covenant we want tentatively to define economics, and then make an important distinction with respect to economic matters which will not only guide our study, but will be of decisive significance for determining the major results of this dissertation. The value of the definition and the distinction will lie in their being able to illumine the relevance of Barth for relating political and economic life. Let us now anticipate subsequent results and describe economic life as the cluster of activities devoted to the creating, sustaining, or renewing of human bodily existence. In light of this broad definition, God's creation of the material world is an economic act in that one of God's aims in creation is to create and sustain bodily life. In the next chapter we will note that Barth speaks of God's maintaining the bodily existence of Jesus from all eternity, or that God raised Jesus physically from the dead. We will understand these events as economic acts in the most general sense. In a more restricted sense, pertaining to human economic activities, economic life is the cluster of activities in which the products of nature are used to sustain and enhance humanity's bodily existence. Economic life pertains to using nature's resources to provide food, clothing, and shelter. In light of Barth's distinction between creation and covenant, economic activity can then be divided into two related aspects. One aspect of economic activity is directly concerned with the relationship to nature and to the products of nature that have economic use. This aspect deals with all the relationships between persons and things as found in the economic process. It involves such matters as growing food, mining, construction and production, transportation and distribution of products among peoples, and their use and consumption. We shall call this aspect the technical aspect of economic life. The technical aspect of economic life is in more or less in constant flux. Its essence is the human relation to the objects of nature as used economically, and this changes as the objects change, the relation to them changes, or differing peoples assume new relations to the given objects. The relations may change as new products are discovered, new lands or mines opened up, new resources exploited; or the old products and resources may be used in a more technically advanced manner; or differing peoples may change their relationship to the available economic objects, as when various nations or classes conquer the lands or productive systems of others. The technical aspect of economic life is important, in that it describes phenomenologically the fact that the earth yields its produce and by many and varied human relations to these products they find their way into human use and consumption. The importance of the technical aspect, of course, and its hope, is that this process will so occur that all people will be able to sustain and nourish their bodily existence.
There is another aspect of economic life. In the process of using nature and its products, human beings encounter one another socially and historically. They cooperate among themselves in economic endeavors, they struggle to achieve economic supremacy through political means, or they may choose so to order themselves as to compete economically with a minimum of competition or warfare. In any case, these social/historical encounters affect the economic system, including the technical aspect of economic life. Our fundamental question is whether and how the social order of the state should involve itself in altering the technical aspect of economic life, particularly as it relates to altering the economic system so that certain sectors have greater access to economic power and benefits. In this respect, a society could address itself to such questions as who will own the land or the means of production, how these assets are to be utilized, and who will receive their benefits. We shall call this second aspect the covenant or political aspect of economic life. Or, if our emphasis is on political life, we will call it the economic aspect of political life. The first aspect pertains to creation and the relation to the natural world, the second to covenant and historical and social relationships among peoples. In the Genesis accounts, God and humanity's relationship to nature occupies center stage. If the Genesis accounts had no interest beyond that of the human relationship to nature, if they were concerned only with creation and not covenant, then we could not address the second aspect of economic life. From our previous chapter we noted that Barth appropriates creation under the doctrine of God the Father. One aspect of God the Father is His hiddenness, (1.2), with the result that creation alone gives no knowledge of God's person, or how he has called people to relate personally to one another in the covenant aspect of their economic life. Creation does, however, provide human beings with the knowledge they need to develop the technical side of economic life, but it gives no insight into the covenant.(4) The creation accounts are, however, as exegeted by Barth, concerned with covenant, they establish a relationship between covenant and creation. Covenant is the internal basis of creation which in turn is the external basis of covenant. Read from this perspective, the creation accounts establish three sets of relationships: one between nature on the one hand and God and his creatures on the other as given in creation, one between creation and covenant, and relations among persons in the covenant. Putting these relationships together, we will be able to see how God and humanity's relationship to nature is related to their relationships among themselves. In other words, we will be discovering how people are called to relate to nature as an aspect of their covenant relations with one another. The technical aspect of economic life is one way in which human beings relate to nature. Barth understands political life, and this will include the political aspect of economic life, as an aspect of covenant relationships. Therefore, seeing how God and people relate to nature as an aspect of their personal relations with one another will show us how the technical and political aspects of economic life are related, or how economic activity is related to political activity. As we explicate these relations we shall verify our thesis that economic life has its basis in social history.
Creation and Covenant--Two Images
We have, in a rudimentary fashion, distinguished between covenant and creation. The distinction lies in there being a difference in the existence of an object and the fact that the object is loved. We now want to refine our understanding of covenant and creation, and we may begin by describing how creation and covenant, though distinct, are positively related to each other.
In the previous chapter we described creation and reconciliation as among the three primary acts of God united in the one history of God's election in Jesus Christ. We noted that Barth appropriates the one universal history of election into three distinct and related histories--creation, reconciliation, and redemption, corresponding to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, (1.5). These three histories are related and their relations depend upon the inner triune relations of the three persons. When Barth speaks of covenant, he means the history of acts of fellowship which has its fulfillment in reconciliation. The history of the covenant has its basis in Jesus Christ the reconciler. Therefore, covenant and creation are related since reconciliation and covenant are related, and their relations originate in the inner-triune life. "The decisive anchorage of the recognition that creation and covenant belong to each other is the recognition that God the Creator is the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."(5) In relating and distinguishing between creation and covenant, Barth employs two principle images. First, creation and covenant are related spatially as two concentric circles with Jesus Christ at the center. The inner circle is covenant, the outer is creation. This is the image that is in Barth's mind when he describes the covenant as the internal basis of the creation while creation is the external basis of the covenant. In terms of time, this implies that the time of the covenant culminating in the time of Jesus Christ is the basis of creation time, although creation time occurs first temporally. The first image follows from God's begetting the Son and only the Son, so that all his acts including creation have their ontic and noetic basis in the Son, (1.2). The second image is linear. The history of creation is the initial history which sets the stage for a subsequent history--the history of the covenant. These two histories, thought distinct, are in an indissoluble connection. Together they form the first two acts in the history of election which ends in the third act of the final eschatological age. The linear image follows from the fact that all God's actions are historical and that the Son comes from the Father, (1.2) and (1.7). We will now expand upon these two images, beginning with the image of the two concentric circles.
The First Image
Creation, as the outer of the two concentric circles, is what Barth calls "the external basis of covenant." In what sense is it an external basis? Creation is a basis in the sense that it provides the "ground and sphere and object and instrument" of covenant.(6) Creation provides the necessities of bodily existence, and makes available the external time and place in which the fellowship of the covenant can occur. Fellowship with God, and among peoples, does not take place in some timeless realm, nor apart from bodily needs, but only within time and upon earth. Furthermore, creation is a sovereign act of God. It cannot be abrogated and rejected. No mode of God occurs alone, all modes must be understood and occur only in relation to the other modes, (1.6). Therefore, the fellowship that occurs in covenant as appropriated to the Son can occur only in conjunction with creation appropriated to the mode of God the Father. The fellowship of social life occurs only by supplying the physical and temporal necessities of life. Therefore creation is indispensable to covenant, and to the social and political life that belongs to covenant. In this sense creation is the basis, the external basis of covenant.(7) From this we may conclude that the technical aspect of economic life is an indispensable prerequisite for human existence.
Although creation is the external basis of the covenant, it does not have priority over the covenant. The covenant has priority, it is the inner circle which supports the existence of the outer circle. This follows from the fact that the Father begets only the Son within the triune life, and ad extra God's first act is the establishment of the history of Jesus Christ as the basis of all other histories, (1.7). Jesus Christ is the fulfilled covenant, and therefore the covenant is the basis of creation.(8) When Barth places Christ and the covenant in the inner circle with respect to creation, he is saying something about the priority of personal fellowship over the relationship to nature. We shall show that economic relationship to nature is directed toward, and initiated, maintained, and transformed, by the social historical life of the covenant. We can express the priority of the covenant in another way--the purpose of the relationship to nature is to serve social relationships, and social relations initiate, maintain, and transform both the relations to nature as well as social relations themselves. Or, since the technical aspect of economic life involves relationships with nature and its products, we may say, that the technical aspect of economic life is to serve personal relations, and the political aspect of economic life is the process of determining how these personal relations can be best served by initiating, maintaining, and transforming both technical and political economic activities. These conclusions have their origin in the fact that God's economic activities, or the technical economic activity of meeting human bodily needs through the creation of the world, is ontologically dependent upon covenant. Therefore, at least as far as God is concerned, all economic activities are an aspect of his personal relations. God makes no "purely economic" decisions, "purely economic" meaning economic activities without any personal or political aspect. This follows from the fact that God begets only the Son, so that God's economic acts appropriated to the Father have their basis in the Father/Son covenant relationship. From this our thesis will follow, that economic life has its basis in covenant, where covenant is a social history.
The ontological priority of covenant can also be expressed in terms of time. According to Barth, creation time has its basis in the lifetime of Jesus Christ. We have already noted that the history of Jesus Christ is the ontological basis of all other histories. In the context of creation, Barth expresses the matter as follows:
In this case, too, the first and genuine time which is the prototype of time is not the time of creation but that of reconciliation for which the world and man were created in the will and by the operation of God. Real time, in this case, is primarily the life-time of Jesus Christ, . . . It was in correspondence with this real time, and as the necessary and adequate form of this event, that time was originally created--in and with creation and at the same time also as the form of the history of creation itself. We say originally because it was the beginning of all time. But it was created as a reflection and counterpart when we consider it in relation to its material origin and ground.(9)
When Barth says that the time of creation is a "reflection and counterpart" of the original time of Jesus Christ, he does not mean that creation history is the mere repetition of Jesus' history, or that what we know in creation can perhaps be discerned in the covenant of Jesus Christ alone. Both creation history and the time of Jesus Christ are distinct histories; neither one is a mere reflection of the other. They derive from the dis- tinctions within the triune life. They are not, however, totally independent. Each one is necessary for understanding the other, and both mutually illumine each other. This follows from the fact that each mode must be known in and with the others, (1.6). There is, however, a priority. Covenant is prior. With respect to economic life, the history of Jesus Christ emphasizes the covenant aspect of economic affairs, while creation emphasizes the technical aspect. Even in our investigation of creation, however, the fact that the history of Jesus Christ is its basis will imply that we can discern elements of the covenant aspect of economic life in God's creative activity. In the following chapter we shall continue our investigation of the economic aspects of covenant as they are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. At that time we shall complete our understanding of the covenant aspects of economic life. The relatedness of creation and covenant implies that the results we obtain here can and must be integrated with the results we obtain in the following chapter. In this way we may arrive at a comprehensive understanding of God's economic work in his major creative acts.
The Second Image
Although covenant is the ontological basis of creation, the history of creation precedes the history of the covenant. Within the Church Dogmatics the priority of covenant is seen in that Barth places election before creation, (1.5). Nevertheless, the fact that the Son comes from the Father, and the Father is pure origin, leads to covenant's occurring temporally after creation. When Barth speaks of covenant, he does not mean events of fellowship or communication in general, but first and foremost, the covenant is the specific covenant history narrated in Scripture. The covenant begins where creation ends. Its initial event is the fall, followed by events such as the call of Abraham, the Exodus, the Exile, and the prophetic movement. These Old Testament events of God's dealings with Israel culminate in the New Testament witness to the history of Jesus Christ, and this covenant history is the basis for God's work in present history as well as the final eschatological age. This entire history is constituted by special events in which God personally addresses and relates to his creatures. This series of events, seen as a history, follows upon and is indissolubly linked to the history of creation. In Barth's view, the biblical narrative itself forces us to interpret creation in connection with the history of the covenant. The biblical narrative links creation, Gen. 1 and 2, to the covenant history which begins in Gen. 3.(10) The continuity is made possible by the fact that both creation and covenant are histories, a series of acts of God, the first, creation, leading up to the second, covenant. The image here is linear, creation is the initial history that leads to covenant, and both histories are indissolubly connected.
But as God's first work, again according to the witness of Scripture and the confession, creation stands in a series, in an indissolubly real connexion, with God's further works. And these works, excluding for the moment the work of redemption and consummation, have in view the institution, preservation, and execution of the covenant of grace.(11)
Creation history and the history of the covenant belong together for another reason as well. Both times are times of grace apart from sin. No sin is envisioned in creation. It is a time of God's mercy. Both creation and covenant time are directly created by God, and can be contrasted with lost and human time in that the latter is time used in defiance of God's purposes. It is this time, the time of human sin, that is countered and redeemed by Jesus Christ. Though both creation and covenant time are identical as free from sin, they differ in certain respects. First, creation times does not encounter chaos, sin, and death. Chaos hangs over creation as a threat, but that threat does not become actual within creation itself. Sin occurs in the context of covenant; it is a violation of the covenant, and not a transgression of a law of nature. Secondly, the time of the covenant encounters opposition and overcomes it. Supremely the time of Jesus Christ is unfallen time, the time of reconciliation. Therefore, since both times are God's direct creation and free from sin, Barth will say that the true continuation of the days of creation is the lifetime of Jesus Christ.
The real time which we are priviledged to have in and with Jesus Christ is God's time of grace--the time of the old and new covenants . . . And this time is the true counterpart of the time of creation. This time-- and the same cannot be said of "our" lost time--is the true continuation and sequel of the days, the week, in which God in his goodness created all things and finally man.(12)
Since both creation and covenant time are brought together as God's one time for his creatures, the results pertinent to economic life that we obtain from both these histories must be brought together as well.
Creation as Saga
Throughout our discussion we have spoken of creation as a history. We must specify more concretely what Barth means by this. That creation is historical follows from the fact that the triune God is historical in himself, and that creation has its basis in the history of Jesus Christ.(13) By "historical," Barth means that creation is a series of events brought into existence by God's acts. The Word of God brought creation into existence in six days. Each new word creates new realities, and although these realities are integrated with previously created realities, they do not emerge from them by natural processes, but are utterly new in the sense that they have no causal antecedents except for the prior Word of God. Barth adopts the word "saga" to describe the historical character of the Genesis accounts.(14) He uses this term in contrast to two other words, "history" in the historicist sense, and myth. In contrast to "history" in the usual sense, the Genesis sagas cannot be ordered into a coherent scheme of immanent historical causality, nor were they humanly observable. They deal with events and occurrences, and in that sense have an historical character. But these events, the events of the days of creation, for example, are non-historical in the sense that each occurs by God's free creative act, and results in the formation of realities that were not immanent within prior created realities. That is, the events of creation lack historical antecedents, they come from nothing except for the creative Word of God. This is an affirmation of creation ex nihilo.(15) In this sense they are non-historical; they are not historisch. As such, the events of creation have an intermediary quality, they are historical as occurrence, and non-historical as newly formed events. They share this intermediary quality with the events of the covenant which also exist as occurrences, but only as given in God's act.
If the history of the covenant of grace with its miracles, and especially its great central miracle, is not only undoubtedly historical but also (to the extent to which it is itself a continuation of the history of creation) highly "non-historical," we can only say of the history of creation in itself and as such that it is by nature wholly "non-historical," and that the biblical accounts of it are also by nature wholly "non-historical" and can only be read and understood as such.(16)
On the other hand, Barth distinguishes creation history from myth. Myth, and here we may recall our earlier discussion, deals with general principles and timeless truths. Myths are a poetic version of existence. The point of myth is to look beyond its narration to its underlying timeless reality. God and his activity are unessential to myth, in that the mythic gods are representations of cosmic powers and processes. Barth observes, for example, that mythic versions of creation portray reality as being created from the bodies of the gods. By contrast, the triune God creates ex nihilo through his Word.(17) As described in the creation saga, his work is the work of the triune God, who is utterly distinct from his creation, hidden beyond it, yet Lord of its existence and able to create it and then continue to act within it in a triune fashion. As the creation of the triune God, creation already prefigures the covenant which follows from it, in that neither creation nor covenant deals with timeless principles, but with the encounter of the triune God with his creatures, the event of the Word of address and the miracle of the resurrection of the dead. We may now advance by presenting three of Barth's exegetical presuppositions which guide his exegesis of the creation accounts.
First Exegetical Presupposition
First, Barth interprets the creation sagas Christologically.(18) This exegetical presupposition follows from the fact that the Father begets only the Son, and that creation was made through him, (1.2). Christ's history is the ontological basis of the creation sagas. Apart from a Christological exegesis, however, the creation sagas are silent with respect to the nature of God. But, when exegeted Christologically, they reveal the nature of God the Creator. This presupposition forms the backbone of Barth's exegesis of the creation accounts. He begins his volume on creation with the statement that "the insight that man owes his existence and form, together with all the reality distinct from God, to God's creation, is achieved only in the reception and answer of the divine self-witness, that is, only in faith in Jesus Christ, . . ."(19) In exegeting Genesis from a Christological perspective, Barth rejects two alternate possibilities.(20) First, the interest of the stories is not general truths, whether metaphysical or scientific; and secondly, the creation sagas cannot be severed from the history of the covenant, but must be interpreted from its perspective. The creation sagas speak of creation in general, the formation of the external world, its light, firmament, land and seas, vegetation and animal life. But that is not their primary interest. Their primary concern is the specific, the particular, the particular events of the covenant, and from that perspective, the significance of the external world is perceived. For example, the separation of the waters on day three (Gen. 1: 9), or the fact that God placed Adam in Eden (Gen. 2:15), refer first and foremost to Israel's entrance into the land, and then from that particular point of reference, to the general existence of land and its usage. In other words, with respect to economic life, creation is not primarily concerned with land or its usage in general, but how land is utilized by a specific people (Israel), and from the point of view of specific historical events, the entrance into the land, its defense, and its loss in exile. The specific historical events that occur in the context of covenant make it possible to see how the economic relationship to nature, the production of food, clothing, and shelter, function in specific covenant relations between peoples and God. The liberation from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan, and the loss of the land due to the broken covenant, are all covenant events which occur between peoples and God, and each of these events involves a relation to specific lands such as Egypt and Canaan. It is from this specific point of view, the perspective of the covenant, that creation in general is to be interpreted. Creation can and must be interpreted in this fashion since covenant is its basis, center, and goal. In speaking of creation and covenant as God's first two works, Barth will say: "As God's first work, it is in the nature of a pattern or veil of the second, and therefore in outline already the form of the second."(21) Or again, the "whole bible speaks figuratively and prophetically of Him, of Jesus Christ, when it speaks of creation, the Creator, and the creature. If, therefore, we are to understand and estimate what it says about creation, we must first see that--like everything else it says--this refers and testifies first and last to Him."(22) Therefore, our first and most fundamental exegetical presupposition will be that we will interpret the two creation sagas Christologically, in light of the history of the covenant as culminating in Jesus Christ.
Second Exegetical Presupposition
Our second exegetical principle follows at once from the first. In Jesus Christ God is revealed as pure mercy and grace. As the Father of Jesus Christ God is the Creator, and his creation is pure benefit and mercy.(23) Apart from Jesus Christ and creation's connection with covenant, creation cannot be seen as the work of a just and merciful God.
It is not self-evident that the reality which surrounds man, even his existence, is a reflection of the benevolence of the One to whom it owes its reality. In and for itself it is certainty not this. Menacing evil, or a polluted source of no less evil than good or menace than promise, might equally well underlie it as the benevolence of the Creator.(24)
But the God who creates always acts as the Father of Jesus Christ, so that his work as Creator is an aspect of the love that was revealed in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God's acts are pure mercy and grace. Therefore God's acts in creation are an expression of his grace, his love of humanity. "Creation is understood and apprehended as grace in faith in Jesus Christ. That is why this faith is life in trust and confidence in the Creator, in unchangeable and never failing hope in His benevolence."(25) We will read the creation stories from the perspective that nothing in creation as created by God inevitably entails human misery. As created by God, creation is pure benefit, and therefore the origin of economic suffering cannot be found in a general cosmic order.(26) We cannot, for example, accept Malthus, or Marx's belief in the ascending exploitation of the masses as the precondition of an utopian age, or certain features of current economic thought which holds that economic contractions and their resultant suffering are necessary and salutary for a nation's economic vigor. The economic misery of the contemporary world does not lie in God, nor the world he has made. We shall show that economic suffering is a consequence of sin. Sin, from Barth's perspective, is not the transgression of a law of nature, but a violation of the covenant, and Barth deals with sin in the context of covenant rather than creation.(27) Through our study of Barth's exegesis of the creation sagas we will be able to show that economic misery is a consequence of breaking covenant, but we will not be able to delineate the character of economic sin until we speak of the fulfilled covenant in the following chapter.
Third Exegetical Presupposition
We will, following Barth, interpret the creation sagas eschatologically. Since all God's works involve each mode, and since the Spirit is the giver of life, the Spirit is active and present in creation.(28) It is God the Holy Spirit that comes forth from God, who in himself is the communion and love between the Father and the Son, and therefore, outside God, the agent through which the creation and the creature is maintained in relation and communion with God. Creation has its ontological and noetic basis in Christ, and it has its separate from yet related to existence with God because of Spirit. The work of the Spirit in creation will find its complete realization in the eschatological age. At that time the threat and chaos that hangs over the original creation, a threat which became actual in the subsequent history of sin, will be completely abolished, and God's good creation will be restored in a new heaven and earth. That is, the creation sagas, when interpreted in terms of Word and Spirit, contain within them the promise that the economic deprivation of the present age will be abolished in the age to come.
In conclusion, our aim in this chapter is to follow Barth's exegesis of the two creation accounts. We will discover how God and humanity in Jesus Christ make economic use of nature in the context of their social historical relationships. We will interpret the Genesis stories in terms of Word and Spirit, and this will imply that creation is pure benefit.
Epistemology, Creation, and Covenant
We may take advantage of our present context to comment on a matter that will be relevant to our work in the final chapter. Our objective in that chapter we will be to integrate our Barthian results with an empirical socioeconomic analysis of one aspect of economic life. At that time we will be coordinating two forms of knowledge, the knowledge of revelation as given in the covenant, and empirical knowledge as gained through a socioeconomic analysis. How are these two forms of knowledge related? Since Barth rejects natural theology, the knowledge of the world gained through observation and reflection cannot overlap with theological knowledge as revealed in the covenant. Empirical knowledge belongs by appropriation to creation as corresponding to God's remoteness; the knowledge of revelation belongs to the covenant as fulfilled in the Son. These two forms of knowledge are distinct since Father and Son are distinct within the triune life. They are also related since covenant and creation are related, and their relation reflects the image of two concentric circles. The clearest expression of this relation is found in The Church Dogmatics, Volume Four, Part Three, in the section entitled "The Light of Life."(29) In this section Barth discusses empirical knowledge or common sense, as the human capacity to know and observe the world.(30) This general human knowledge includes the exact sciences,(31) and will of course include the information given through an empirical socioeconomic analysis. Barth calls this knowledge the "lights of creation." This knowledge is necessary, it enables human beings to order and shape the world, and to exercise freedom and responsibility within the created order.(32) But the lights of creation are not the Word of God, they say nothing of God and his covenant. Nevertheless, just as creation serves the covenant as its external stage, the lights of creation serve the Word of God.(33) In the event of revelation the Word integrates and orients the lights of creation to the one Light which is Jesus Christ the Light of Life.
The positive thing which takes place in the confrontation of the little lights of creation with the great light of its Creator is that they are not passed over or ignored, let alone destroyed or extinguished, but integrated in the great light. They are not incapable of this integration. How could they be? They were created by him and certainly not created accidently or without purpose.(34)
The image that Barth employs at this point is that the Word as the center gathers and integrates the other words which exist on the periphery. Furthermore, the Word of grace makes this human knowledge itself binding as a part of the Word itself. In other words, the words that exist on the periphery become elements in the Word as they are incorporated into the Word of grace with the consequence that the results of observation become part of God's Word as spoken in a specific moment.(35) This follows from the fact that no mode of God occurs without the others (1.6), and therefore the Word of grace corresponding to the Son does not occur without the knowledge of creation corresponding to the Father. The fact that God does not pass over or avoid these words, let alone destroy or extinguish them, means that his creatures are commanded to do likewise with the result that Christian preaching and theological exposition can and must make use of empirical observation and reflection and integrate this knowledge into its theological context.(36) We shall do this in the final chapter. We may now turn to the first account.
The First Account
Introduction
Our purpose in this section is to follow Barth's exegesis of the first creation account, Gen. 1:1-2:4a. In comparison to the second account, which emphasizes that covenant is the internal basis of creation, the first account places greater emphasis on the architectural structure of creation as an external framework in which the history of the covenant may occur, and only hints at the covenant history toward the end of the account. The first account proceeds by a series of words spoken by God. By virtue of these words God successively builds the creation, act upon act, word by word, until, at the end of six days, the whole is completed. The final and seventh day is the culmination of the preceding six days of labor. During those six days God provided the setting for what occurs on the seventh day. On the seventh day God and his people rest and fellowship together, so that covenant is the aim and purpose of the work of the preceding six days. Barth describes the first account as follows:
It describes creation as it were externally as the work of powerful but thoroughly planned and thought-out and perfectly supervised preparation, comparable to the building of a temple, the arrangement and construction of which is determined both in detail and as a whole by the liturgy which it is to serve. But the beginning of the peculiar occurrence to which creation points is touched upon only towards the end, and therefore on the fringes of the account; but with sufficient reticence not to allow us to forget that creation is one thing and its continuation in the history of the covenant of grace is quite another.(37)
We must now consider the words by which God built up creation, especially focusing upon the economic aspects. The most salient, initial observation must be to note the significance of labor. God labored for the sake of his creatures (Gen. 2:2), who rested with him on the seventh day. Our Scriptural quotations will be taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
The First Words
The account begins with the words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This, in Barth's view, is an introductory statement referring to what follows, and not a statement saying that creation has now taken place. Creation occurs only by virtue of the succeeding commands, the labor of the six days, which builds creation step by step. Creation actually begins with the statement in verse three where God says "Let there be light." Since verse one is a preamble, referring to the creative activity that begins only with verse three, it does not mean that the waste and void of verse two, or the darkness that existed upon the face of the deep, were created by God. Darkness and chaos are not created by God. God creates only the good; his creation is pure benefit. It is precisely chaos, a wasted and empty world, that God does not create. The waste and void refer to the fact that in deciding to create God, rejected a multitude of possibilities. These rejected possibilities are the waste and void of verse two which hang like a shadow over the world that God will create beginning in verse three.(38) These rejected possibilities are not, however, chaos in general, or simply our view of a world gone amuck. Only in Jesus Christ will we be able to see the nature of these rejected possibilities. When Barth insists that the waste and void of verse two are possibilities rejected by God, he is claiming that chaos, including economic misery and suffering, are not willed by God, but that God did and does reject economic misery. God rejected it in the first creation, and by virtue of his work in Jesus Christ, he rejects it today. Therefore Barth will say, "Gen. 1:2 speaks of the 'old things' which according to 2 Cor. 5:17 have radically passed away in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It tells us that even from the standpoint of the first creation, let alone the new, chaos is really 'old things,' the past and superseded essence of this world."(39)
The First Day
We now come to the first act by which God creates the world. In verses three through five a number of things happen. First God says "Let there be light," there was light, God sees that the light is good, he divides it from the darkness, he calls the light Day and the darkness Night, and the evening and morning were the first day. We may begin with the fact that creation begins by God uttering his Word.
Creation begins on the first day by God uttering the words, "Let there by light." The phrase "And God said" begins each of the six days of God's creation (vv. 3, 6, 9, 14, 24) and is a striking feature of the creation narrative. Creation comes into existence by the Word of God. We have already explored aspects of God's acting in his Word. In this context Barth wants to emphasize that creation is not an emanation from God, it is a distinct reality, created by God through his Word and not constructed from the being of God. By contrast, mythic versions of creation, current at the time of the formation of the Genesis narratives, portray creation as deriving from the body of the gods, from their spittal, their tears, or even from their clothes.(40) Creation through the Word not only emphasizes the distinctiveness of creation from God, but also its existence as determined by God's Word and his continued Word as he acts within and upon creation. None of creation's structures or powers have divine legitimacy, they were created distinct from God, and as subject to his rule they may be at any moment abolished. The entire old creation, including the world's social and economic systems, is subject to the Word of God who is Jesus Christ, and in whom the old is passing away and all becoming new. Therefore, speaking of the Word by which God creates, Barth comments:
Until the end of all time, when it will again affect all heaven and earth, the same Word will declare the old to have passed and the new come, and with this declaration it will itself affect the passing of the one and the coming of the other. This is the context in which the way-yo'mer Elohim of Gen. 1:3f has also to be read (without detriment to its obvious and specific meaning) if we are to grasp its obvious and specific meaning.(41)
Not only does God form creation by his Word, but by this same Word he creates the history of the covenant so that both nature and social history belong to the way-yo'mer Elohim spoken in creation. Both are shaped and transformed by God's Word. The fact, however, that creation is shaped by the history-creating Word, implies that its structures and powers are subject to history and that the human relationship to nature, including the technical aspects of economic life, is historically shaped and formed. We will describe this more concretely in subsequent paragraphs. Since both nature and social life are subject to God's Word, economic life has its basis in history, in the Word which creates history.
The Significance of Objects and Relations to Them
God's first creative Word was "Let there be light." Light is the first material object created by God. We may now ask a fundamental question, one that brings us at once to one of the major results of this chapter. What is the significance or ultimate import of objects and human or divine relations to them? Specifically, what is the significance of material products and the economic activity of relating to them? With respect to the light and the material world as created by God, Barth presents three alternatives in order to clarify his position. Briefly, the interest of the biblical writers is not science or cosmology. They are not primarily interested in how the material objects relate to one another (science), nor in how humans exist within the natural order (cosmology), although they recognize the importance of both these relationships. For example, the Hebrew writers knew very well that light is associated with the sun;(42) they were not totally naive scientifically. And they knew that other peoples, as explicated in their myths, saw themselves in a special relation to the sun, and therefore worshipped the sun. The primary significance of light for the biblical writers, however, though obviously significant for science and cosmology, is how light functions in the covenant as an aid or witness of the personal relationships between God and people and among peoples. Therefore, the creation of light is put before the creation of the sun, which is not only an offense to science, but was in obvious contrast to the surrounding mythic versions of reality. Barth asks why the biblical writers adopted this order.
Why did Israel alone obviously do this? It is quite explicable if we note that the view and concept of light is intensively distinguished in this case by the fact that it is a sign and witness of the divine revelation, the first and most original correspondence to the divine Word. That which stands in primary and fundamental relation to the Word of God because it was not only created by it but because it was also created at once for its service, to be its sign and witness, cannot be dependent on the existence of sun, moon, and stars; it must precede their creation.(43)
In making this claim, Barth exegetes a number of biblical passage on light, showing that light is primarily seen in its function of revelation, not only revealing God, but revealing people to one another. Only in the light can people look one another in the eye, so that light is a created reality that God uses to make personal communication possible. Therefore Barth emphasizes that the Word of God, the Law, Israel, John the Baptist, the Gospel, and Jesus himself are called light, for each of them is a specific moment of personal disclosure.(44) Barth will say virtually nothing of how light is useful for warming the earth, or necessary for the production of food, because the primary significance of this particular created reality is how it functions and is used in the inter-personal relationships of the covenant history. What is established here for light, holds true for all of God's created realities. That is, the primary significance of any object, and both human and divine relations to that object, is how the object or relations to it function in the covenant history. This follows from the fact that covenant and creation are related, and therefore the objects of creation, and relations to those objects, are related to the social relations of the covenant. In turn, covenant and creation are related since God eternally begets the Son and only the Son within the triune life (1.2). Throughout Barth's exegesis we will demonstrate that all objects and relations to them are integrally related to the personal relations of the covenant. God creates vegetation on day three, for example, and a very important meaning of this is that he wished for people to have sufficient food. But the having of food is never divorced from the fact that it is God who gives the food and that he did so through the historical event of the Exodus. The technical economic activity of gathering food is not only a relationship of human beings to nature, but it is also simultaneously and foremost a relationship to a gracious God who delivered his people; and further, it is a relationship among peoples as Israel fought the Egyptians and Canaanites in their escape from Egypt and conquest of Canaan. The light, the food, and other created objects, provide the external basis by which covenant exists, and simultaneously they function within covenant relations as the way God and people use these objects as they relate historically to each other. It is from this perspective, and only from this perspective, that God calls the light good. Why is the light good, and why does God not call the darkness good? and why will God call the subsequently created realities good (vv. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.)? It is not because these created objects are good in themselves. "Nothing outside God Himself, and nothing that He Himself has created and created good, has any claim and right in and by itself to His good-pleasure and therefore to be called good with genuine and final truth."(45) Nor is anything good because human beings have perceived, or decided, that something is good apart from God's Word. People, things, and their relations, are good only as they exist in relation to God, good only as they function according to his good pleasure, and good only as he uses them to carry out his covenant purposes in relationship to the people he creates. "That it was good when He created it does not mean the impartation and appropriation of an inherent goodness which no longer needs the divine discovery. As its becoming good is a matter of divine creation, so its being good is a matter of divine seeing. But this seeing is grace."(46) When Barth says that "this seeing is grace," he is referring to God's continued active Word which directs and blesses created objects to his good purpose. Light is good because God is gracious, he uses light as he separates it from darkness and chaos, it functions as an instrument of his purpose in warding off the darkness and death which threaten his creation, and specifically, he uses it in blessing the creatures he intends to create. In other words, the relevance of created objects and relations to them, including economic objects and activities is twofold. First, they provide an external material basis for covenant life. Secondly, and this is our thesis, they function in the social history of the covenant as an aspect of the way people relate to one another.
We may note that God created only the light, he did not create the darkness. Creating the light was his first act, and the darkness and chaos of verse two is, is part, the result of his act in verse three, the act of creating light. The account does not say, "And God said, Let there be light and dark," but only, "Let there be light." Nor does God say that night and light are good, but only that the light is good.(47) The darkness, the night, came into "existence" only when it was separated off from the light. The light exists; the night "exists" only as the rejected possibility that occurs from actualizing the positive possibility of creating light. Had the aim of the Hebrew writers been to account for the scientific existence of night, or to give a complete account of the cosmos, they would have given the darkness and the night a more positive significance. But their governing presupposition was the covenant, and light functions within the covenant to enable people to see and hear one another, and therefore it enables and witnesses to the fact that God speaks to his people and therefore the light is good.
Finally, according to verse four, God "separated the light from the darkness." God did not abolish the darkness in its entirety. It remains separated away, yet by its continued existence it menances and threatens the light's existence. This threat which hangs over creation has become actual. Chaos and darkness have invaded the world. In the new creation, already inaugurated in Jesus Christ, all darkness will be put to flight. According to Rev. 21:2f, 22:5 there will be no night in the heavenly Jerusalem, nor will there be any sun or stars.(48) On the final eschatological day, the evil overcome in Jesus will be visibly abolished, and there will be no more threat. All of these concepts light, dark, day, night, have their primary meaning in terms of their historical covenant relevance, so that the existence of the darkness in the first creation testifies to its vulnerability to the destructive force of chaos, not only in the breaking of the relation between God and humanity, but as we shall see, for the rupture of all froms of relationships including economic ones.
We may conclude our treatment of the first day with a brief comment on the words "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." These words refer to the existence of the day as formed by the Word of God. The evening and morning do not refer to the creation of night, but only day, in such a way that the evening and morning surround the night. The evening refers to the day passed, the morning to the day ahead, and therewith to the promise of God that the night will pass and a new day will dawn. As created by the Word, day serves the light, and light and day together serve God's covenant purposes. God works in the day, and in each of the six days, and the meaning of his work is covenant, the Sabbath rest of the seventh day. As a result, time is not to be abstractly considered as chronology. The significance of any day is how it's time serves the covenant, and how the work done on that day provides for the covenant as its external basis.(49)
We wish to recapitulate briefly at this point as the foregoing conclusions are very important to us. We have said that objects and the human or divine relations to them have a two-fold significance. Objects and the relations to them are instrumental in creating the external basis of life, and secondly, these objects and how they are used are always in relation to the social historical relations of the covenant. From this it follows that the technical aspect of economic life, the human relation to economic objects, is aways related to the social historical aspect of economic life as encounters with God and among peoples. We shall continue to examine the relation between economic and social historical life, and to demonstrate our thesis that economic life has its basis in social historical life. The relationship between these two aspects may be denied. But from a Barthian perspective, such a denial would imply that God relates to nature without relating to the covenant. In other words, it would imply that God acts apart from the Son, and therefore within himself (since immanent Trinity reflects the economic Trinity), there would be an aspect or depth in God in which he lives or acts apart from the Son. This in turn is tantamount to God's not being trinitarian at every depth of himself, which implies some form of Arianism, or those heresies that posit an undifferentiated God in the depths of God. Barth will not accept this, and we summarized the matter in propositions (1.1), (1.2), (1.3), and (1.4).
The Second Day
We now come to the work of the second day. We may be brief. On this day God divided the waters above the earth from those below by the creation of a firmament. The word "firmament" has connotations of "something firmly pounded together" and denotes an earthen yet celestial dam which prevents the waters in the upper heavens from engulfing the earth in watery chaos.(50) The Genesis saga makes use of the natural science of its day which held that there existed a celestial roof of a hard material. Above this roof there was thought to be a celestial sea which was prevented from engulfing the lower world in watery chaos by the existence of the heavenly roof or firmament. Barth does not interpret this in a literal sense. His exegesis is a bit inconclusive. Specifically, he views the celestial waters as a "'higher power'--in the strictest sense of the term--which indicates the metaphysical danger under which human life is lived."(51) Regardless by what Barth means by "metaphysical danger," the point here, as made by Barth, is that God makes use of this physical firmament to ward off whatever may threaten the life of his people. God's use of the firmament is of a piece with God's work on all the days of creation. God is creating physical objects, and using them to construct a home for humanity. The aim of his work, and therefore the aim of work in general, is to establish a secure and ordered existence for those who are loved. Work is an expression of how one loves. It is a relation to nature and therefore belongs to the technical aspect of economic life, and it, at least on God's part, is a reflection of his covenant purpose of providing for his creatures' bodily needs so that they may exist in fellowship with him. By means of the firmament, human beings are given a space in which to live which is secured from the watery chaos which hangs over the earth. In the first creation the watery chaos is not totally banished, it still exists as a threat though held back by God's grace. In the final eschatological age, the threatening sea will be transformed into a sea of crystal in a new heaven above a new earth (Rev. 4:6, 15:2). It will become firm and transparent so that it no longer threaten the lower regions, and therefore, the firmament will be rendered superfluous. Heaven will be opened up to earth, and humanity will have direct access to God.(52) Just as in the creation of light, the firmament is not understood apart from the covenant. It is an aspect of God's personal care for his creatures, so that its being is not distinct from its function as the mode of God's care.(53) Finally, we may note that the second day does not end with the words "And God saw that it was good." The work of the second day goes together with God's work on the third day. On those two days God wards off the watery chaos in two acts and makes a home for human beings. We must now turn to the third day.
Day Three
We now come closer to the beginnings of economic life, the creation of land and the vegetable kingdom. This occurs by virtue of two utterances of God, his gathering together of the waters under the heavens into one place so that dry land appeared, and then his command that the earth bring forth vegetation each according to its kind. God saw that all of this was good. These two actions, in contrast to God's actions on the two previous days, begin God's acts upon earth and as such approach more closely the covenant history which takes place within creation. Furthermore, by virtue of God's creating vegetation we have the beginning of economic life. In this section we will be able to advance some initial conclusions as to how political life is related to economic life.
According to Barth, the purpose of God's actions on the third day is "the establishment of a sphere for human life, and especially the creation of the vegetable kingdom as the erection of a table in the midst of this house which is finally and supremely for man."(54) The image here is that of a workman who not only builds a house, but labors to provide food for the inhabitants of the house. God's first step in providing food for his creatures is to "let the waters under the heavens be gathered together upon one place, and let the dry land appear." We must now examine the significance of these waters that God gathers together, and thereby discern how their separation is a factor in the pursuit of economic activities.
The Gathering of the Waters
The waters of the second and third day, just as the darkness of day one, represent the forces of chaos overcome by God in the process of creating a good world.(55) The watery forces, according to Barth's exegesis, can be understood in several ways. First, there is the natural wonder on the part of the Hebrews that the sea was held at bay. With some exceptions, the Hebrews were not a sea-faring people and regarded "a sea voyage (Ps. 107:22f) with desert-wandering, captivity, and sickness as one of the forms of extreme human misery; of the misery from which it is the gracious and mighty will of God, which we cannot extol too highly, to redeem us."(56) The Hebraic horror of the sea was matched by their thankfulness to God for protecting the land from the sea, and for preserving them upon dry land. The sandy rim of the seashore was seen as a barrier erected by God, and as such, another example of his concern for their welfare, a concern that evoked their wonder and praise. That nature is so established that the sea does not swallow the land, though important, is not the primary import of God's gathering together the waters on the third day of creation. The primary relevance of this act lies in the fact that God brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea at the time of their deliverance from Egypt, and he further led them through the waters of Jordan as they entered the promised land.
If the processes and relationships of nature are to all appearance the primary things considered in this and the other passages, it must be added at once that the primary things which they really have in view are not the billows of the Mediterranean Sea, not the frequently mentioned "sand" of the Palestinian shore which forms its boundary, but the miraculous passage of Israel through the Red Sea as depicted in Ex. 14 and frequently extolled in later writings (cf Is. 43:6f., Ps. 106:9, etc), and its repetition at Israel's entrance into the land promised to their forefathers.(57)
It was at the Red Sea that God caused the waters "to flow back and to swallow up their persecutors," with the result that Israel was set free to enter the promised land.(58) The waters of verse nine therefore, have their primary significance in terms of history, events in which God made land available to people and delivered them from political oppression. Barth continues his exegesis by investigating a wide number of biblical passages relating to chaotic waters. In essence, they continue the theme first enunciated in Israel's escape from political bondage. The watery chaos of day three is first and foremost political oppression. These waters represent foreign invasion and terror, and God's act of gathering the waters together represents Israel's deliverance from her enemies. In the context of the waters of day three Barth comments,
The Babylonian threat against Jerusalem is the same in Jer. 6:23: "Their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses, set in array as men for war against thee, O daughter of Zion." And the prayer of Ps. 144:7-8 is in the same terms: "Send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of the great waters, from the hand of strange children; whose mouth speaketh vanity and their right hand is a hand of falsehood."(59)
From the above it follows that the term "waters" possesses three inter-related meanings. In a more literal sense it represents freedom from watery chaos, the sort of chaos an Israelite envisioned in a sea voyage. More specifically, and closer to its primary meaning, the waters represent the Red Sea and Jordan, and finally, escape from foreign domination as occurred at the Red Sea and Jordan. In all of these meanings the "waters," whether specific bodies of water such as the seas or the Jordan, or more figuratively as political oppression, were perceived as having their deepest significance in the covenant, in the historical social relations between God, Israel, and foreign powers. As in the case of light, so also water, whether literally or denoting political oppression, functions within the context of the covenant understood as God's concern for his people. Finally, as in the case of the darkness, Barth notes that the separated waters that menace creation will be abolished in the final eschatological age. In the new heaven and new earth there will be no sea, (Rev. 1:9-10), so that "man will be fully and finally freed from each and every threat to his salvation, and God from each and every threat to his glory."(60) We must now consider the establishment of the dry land and God's command that the earth bring forth vegetation.
The Appearance of the Dry Land
The creation of dry earth, and its bringing forth vegetation by God's command, is the positive side of God's work on the third day.(61) In contrast to the heavens and the sea, the earth is the special province of the human race. "It is inhabited by the human race and appointed for it. It is the home where he lives and dies. It is the place of his joy and sorrow, of his might and impotence, of his sin and worship--but all this in the course of the history with a view to which God created the whole cosmos, both upper and lower."(62) As the home of humanity, it is most importantly the locus of his personal relationships. When Barth says that the upper and lower cosmos are created with a particular history in mind, he is referring to the history of the covenant. It is upon earth that this covenant takes place. Although God's purpose on the third day is "the establishment of a sphere for human life, and especially the creation of the vegetable kingdom as the erection of a table in the midst of this house,"(63) he does not intend to imply that this house and its table was an end in itself. The purpose of the house and its food is to enable the covenant to take place. The goal of economic existence is enhanced personal relations among peoples and with God. This is seen in the teleology of the first creation saga; the aim of the whole is the Sabbath rest in which God and his creatures fellowship together on a day of rest. Furthermore, economic life makes this personal fellowship possible. The Sabbath rest of the seventh day, and the creation of humanity in the personal relationship of male and female on the sixth day, depend crucially upon the work of the previous days. Therefore, Barth will say that human beings are the most necessitous of all creatures in that being created on the last day of God's labor, they depend upon all that had gone before.
When man finally appears at the centre of all the older circle of creation, and when it is shown in fact that everything must serve him, it must not be overlooked that man is thus revealed to be the most necessitious of all creatures. Will his sovereignty over plants and beasts consist in anything but the fact that he has more to be grateful for than these other earthly creatures, not only for his own existence, but for that of the whole earthly sphere which is the indispensable presupposition of his own?(64)
The result of the foregoing is that creation, including economic life, is not only the external basis of covenant, it is the indispensable basis of covenant, and covenant is its goal. God provides the external basis for human fellowship by cumulatively constructing the world, and none of the cumulative acts can be eliminated or bypassed. The events of day three pertain to economic existence as a preparation for the fellowship of day seven. Therefore, we may conclude that a viable economic existence is a necessary, though possibly not sufficient condition, for vital social and political relationships. In other words, human beings cannot enjoy the blessings of the covenant apart from the grace of God who attends to bodily needs. "Thus man lives from the very first by God's grace as he lives from this table prepared for him prior to his creation. Every morsel of which he partakes is not only a sign of grace but the grace itself without which he cannot and would not live."(65) The basis of covenant's dependence upon the external creation is the fact that no mode of God exists apart from the others (1.6), so that covenant does not exist apart from creation.
We have already described how the waters separated by God on the third day have their primary reference in the history of the covenant. The same can be said for the dry land as well. The account has no philosophical or scientific interest in the origins of the dry land, but rather, the account is giving thanks for the vegetation of the promised land after the brutal wanderings in the desert.
It must not be forgotten that the green earth as such is to Old Testament man as much an antithesis of the destroying sea as of the barren dessert. The transition from vv. 9-10 to vv. 11-12 is the passage of a danger point which is not without an inner relationship to Israel's march through the desert. When the dry ground is freed from the sea, will it be only dry ground? This would be like a man escaping from one terrible monster and falling into the clutches of another. The desert is a "terrible land."(66)
In directing our attention to a specific land and to specific historical events, the account is not, however, reducing creation to covenant, but rather, interpreting creation from the point of view of covenant. In other words, the whole of creation, all lands and historical moments, are to be interpreted from the point of view of a specific land and specific historical events. That specific history is the covenant, and its external basis is the land of Israel. In chapter four we shall show in greater detail how God is integrating all times and places into the covenant history. The covenant is the ontological basis of all history, and Palestine is the territorial basis of other places in that it provides the norm for how land functions in and sustains covenant relations. In this way, by means of the covenant and its external basis, God acts in all times and places to bless people, and his blessing entails the separation of the waters, and the provision of dry land and food. Therefore Barth will say:
It is this land which the creation saga has in view when it speaks of the dry land separated by God's wisdom and power. And when it speaks of the land of the Israelite it speaks precisely of the whole earth which as such, by the ministry of Israel and in the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham, is to be revealed in its totality as the Lord's possession. Israel will be a blessing (the blessing) in the midst of the earth, between Assyria and Egypt (Is. 19:5).(67)
Therefore, in considering any given socioeconomic situation, the question may and should arise as to whether the patterns of control and ownership, and the distribution of benefits, corresponds to the normative pattern of the covenant, and does it lead to the blessing envisioned in the covenant. We shall investigate those covenant norms in the following chapter.
Finally, we may briefly note, that God calls his work on the third day good, and that he does so twice, corresponding to his creating dry land (vv. 6-8, 9-10), and then vegetation (vv. 11-12.)(68) The goodness of the earth and its vegetation does not in the first instance refer to the general fact that human beings need land and food for survival, although this is certainly true. Its primary reference is to covenant, to the fact that God in his mercy led Israel through the wilderness, that he gave them the land with its economic bounty, and that they were able to occupy the land and hold it against their enemies. The existence of this land, and their inhabiting it, are expressions of God's care as revealed in the social history of God's relations with his people and among nations. By virtue of this land and God's covenant history in this land, the earth as a whole is good in that throughout the earth he exercises his will as given through the covenant. In that sense the earth is good, and Barth expresses the matter as follows:
Good is the earthly life which has its beginning; good is the earth which is the scene of this life; good is the twofold form of life in which further living creatures are envisaged; good is God's presence in the wilderness, and His deliverance from the wilderness, and His transformation of the wilderness into a garden. It is all good because, with the separation of land from water, it all prepares and prefigures the history which is to take place on earth, and because as this preparation and prefiguration it corresponds to the will and Word of God."(69)
We will now draw a few conclusions from Barth's exegesis, conclusions that follow directly from his thought, although they are not directly found in Barth.
Some Conclusions
In our discussion of light we noted that any object, and human or divine relations to that object, existed in relation to the inter-personal relations of the covenant. This held true for all created things, and the human and divine relations to them. We now wish to narrow our focus to objects pertinent to economic life, and economic activities in relation to those objects. We defined the technical aspect of economic life as a relationship to nature in which its products are used for economic ends. Since all relations to objects are related to covenant relations, the technical aspect of economic life exists in relation to covenant, so that every economic relation to nature is simultaneously a covenant relation, or a social historical relation. The creation of the light, the act of separating night from day, the establishment of the firmament, the bounding of the seas, and the formation of dry land with vegetation, all took place in the context of social relations between God and his people. These actions help sustain bodily existence and are therefore economic actions. But they are simultaneously social actions, in that they derive from the covenant event of God's election of humanity in Jesus Christ, and express a social relationship in that they are expressions of how God cares for his people. Furthermore, these economic acts have an historical base. Their basis is God's action in creation, and creation is a history with the result that God's economic activities are grounded in history. From this perspective, the existence of the ordered universe as an economic order, the light, the bounded seas, and green earth, are the result of prior social historical acts in that the existence and ordering of these objects occurred as the result of a social history, the creation history of God's building a world for those he intends to love and does love by providing them with a secure economic existence. In other words, a given economic condition, the "economic order" created by God in creation, arose through and expressed a prior social history between God and his people. Or, focusing on the special history of the covenant that is internal to creation, the existence of Israel in Canaan, her economic relation to the land and its use, was the expression and the result of social historical events--her escape from Egypt, her conquest of the land, and her defense against foreign invaders. Each of these historical events entailed relations among peoples, the tribes of Israel in relation to the Egyptians, the Canaanites, and foreign powers. At each point in history, the relations of peoples or God to created objects simultaneously indicate an ongoing social history, so that the technical aspect of economic life expresses and is the consequence of an ongoing social history. In other words, the technical aspect of economic life, the condition of how people are relating to the world's products, their physical distribution and consumption, will express and reflect a prior social history worked out among peoples and with God. Furthermore, it can be seen that the technical aspect of economic life is initiated by, maintained, and transformed by social relations. God created the world and provided food for his people because he first chose Jesus Christ and all people in him. This was God's first act outside himself, and it was a covenant act, a Word of address expressing his choice of Jesus Christ and all people. In order to realize that first act he subsequently acted economically by creating the world and sustaining bodily existence, but this act was initiated through the prior covenant act of election. Again, with respect to the covenant history foreshadowed in creation, we may note that God separated the waters before he formed the dry land. In other words, Israel entered into political relations with Egyptians and Canaanites as the initial event of providing for her economic welfare. And further, she could maintain the technical aspect of her economic life only by keeping the waters at bay, that is, by defending the land against foreign invasion. In other words, the technical aspect of economic life is initiated and maintained by the social history of the covenant. Furthermore, the technical economic aspect is transformed through the social history of the covenant. In the following chapter we shall observe how God radically transforms the economic order through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this point, we may observe that Israel's social relations with Egyptians, Canaanites, and foreign powers, were significant in determining who related to the land and who benefited from its resources. The land, so to speak, functioned as an "object of exchange," between nations, or even with God, in that it was fought over between nations, given in God's grace, and withheld in his judgment. As these social relations unfolded, various peoples related to the land in varying relations, and these transformations of technical life were reflected in who benefited from its resources. Finally, recalling that covenant is the goal of creation, we may now summarize our results to this point. The technical aspect of economic life, as well as its political or social aspects, have their basis in social history. Within that context, economic life expresses and is directed toward a social history, and it is initiated, maintained, and transformed by the social history of the covenant. Since economic life has its basis in social history, politically responsible action in economic affairs, including changes in the technical aspect of who benefits from the land and its wealth, will require social actions among nations, classes, or persons. Strictly economic measures, changes in interest and exchange rates, devaluations of the currency, changes in money supply, and so forth, may effect changes in an economic system, but they will not reflect substantial changes unless the social basis of the system itself, the balance of power between classes and nations, is altered by historical action. We shall discuss this in greater detail in the final chapter.
Finally, and this will be corroborated as we continue both in this chapter and in the following chapter, we may note that control of the land is a central theme in transforming technical life. This is apparent in that Barth gives the Exodus, the Conquest, and Exile a prominent part in his exegesis. We shall make the struggle for control, whether of the land or the economic system in general, the linchpin of our economic analysis of the final chapter. We may now draw one final conclusion before continuing with Barth's exegesis.
In light of Barth's exegesis up to this point we may also observe that economic motives are influential in determining political objectives. God's motive in gathering together the waters was to provide a viable economic life. That is, economic life not only has its basis in political decisions, but political decisions have economic life as one of their primary motives. Economic motives are not, however, the final motives. God's final aim was covenant, enhanced relations among peoples. One of our conclusions in the next chapter will be that this final aim of covenant can become subverted, and that the drive for economic gain to the exclusion of social well-being can become a dominant force in political affairs. In that case an empirical analysis must illumine how this drive works itself out in political and economic decisions. But from God's point of view, in light of his actions, economic life must be attended to for the sake of the covenant, and he does so through his work on the third day.
We will conclude our discussion at this point with an observation relevant to our empirical analysis of the final chapter. We wish to determine the starting point for such an analysis, or to separate the essential from the non-essential in presenting such an analysis. At this point in our investigation we may notice that God has created and ordered a number of realities which pertain to economic life. We may think of the light, the firmament, the dry land, and vegetation. Focusing, however, on those matters that pertain most directly to economic existence, we observe that God creates the vegetation on the third day, v. 11, and on the sixth day, v. 29, he gives this vegetation to his newly created people for food. The fact that the earth produces food and that human beings can consume it are phenomena which belong to the external reality of creation. We have called this aspect of economic life its technical aspect. With respect to the technical aspect of economic life, the biblical writers at this point are solely concerned with the growth of vegetation and its consumption. What we observe here will be corroborated in greater detail in subsequent sections and above all in the following chapter. From the point of view of contemporary economics, no mention is made of other factors which could belong to the technical aspect of economic life, such as capital, interest, exchange rates, and balance of payments. The primary matter of interest is the productiveness of the earth, and its endpoint, human consumption. In the final chapter we will present an economic analysis with a social historical base. Our starting point for the technical aspect of this analysis will be the flow of goods from the earth to people who consume these goods. We will abstract from all other technical economic matters, and consider only the transformation of food and raw materials from their origins in the earth to their final formation into products for meeting human needs. We will observe that there are streams or webs of materials, flowing from their sources in the earth, being united and transformed (productive labor) into usable products, and finally contributing to human welfare or the lack of it. Since, from a Barthian perspective, the streams have their basis in social history, it will be our task to discover what sorts of social actions gave rise to these flows of goods, and how further political action may reroute these flows in directions consonant with God's purposes as revealed in the covenant.
Days Four and Five
Our treatment of the next two days may be relatively brief. On the fourth day the sun, moon, and stars are created.(70) What exactly do these luminaries do? Specifically, they do three things: first, they rule over the day and night and divide the day (light) from the night (darkness) (v. 14,16, 18); they are signs (v. 14); and they shed light upon the earth (v. 15,17). Except for their nature as signs, each of these activities is a concrete material indication of what God himself had previously done and, and given the cumulative nature of the account, continued to do. God had already divided the day from night on the first day, and this light was already shining on the earth when God created the dry land on day three. These luminaries, as heavenly bodies, merely reflect the prior action of God and follow upon his Word. They are also significant as signs, and as such indicate the existence of history and time. God created time on the first day by dividing the first day from the night. On day four he creates the heavenly bodies to mediate this time, so that by them the creatures he forms on the sixth day will be able historically to orient themselves. These luminaries have no divine power within themselves (the view of ancient astrology), nor are they simply the measure of undifferentiated chronology (a scientific view). Their relevance is their function in the covenant, their enabling God's covenant partners to direct themselves in history toward social ends. From this point of view, each moment is the time of the covenant, the time of hearing God's Word, the time of acting against the forces of chaos. In Barth's words:
The signs of the sky are of no value for the man who is merely concerned at random to orientate himself with the help of compass, clock or calendar, and to become the subject of any earthly history. They are of value only for the man whose day, season, and history are to consist in his participation in the separation of light from darkness, because the God who separated the light from darkness has created him in and as his own image, and because he was born and is called to be God's partner in the covenant.(71)
In verse 18 God calls these luminaries good. Their goodness, of course, is that they as created objects function in the covenant according to God's reign in that they enable human beings to join with him in the struggle against darkness in all its forms. Finally, Barth points out that the history of the covenant, and therefore this particular task of the heavenly bodies, comes to an end in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his future return. At that time the struggle with chaos will be over. The heavenly bodies will no longer mediate, for God will be present and visible in his own eternal light.
We will now consider the events of the fifth day.(72) On this day God created the fish and the birds to inhabit the seas and the skies. God saw that they were good and blessed them. Our treatment may be brief. First we may note that the fish and birds live in close proximity to the threatening seas, the seas separated from the dry land as in verse nine, and the celestial sea which was walled off in verse seven by the firmament. These creatures live in these regions, but they are not brought forth from them as vegetation was brought forth from the earth in verse eleven. A new verb form is used in verse twenty to indicate the coming into being of the birds and fishes, and this form indicates their direct creation by God, their relative independence from the rest of creation, and the fact that they did not emerge from the seas.(73) As such they indicate God's power over the waters of chaos represented by the seas and skies, as well as the sterility of chaos to bring forth life. As living beings, capable of movement and therefore similar to humanity, they inspire confidence as they inhabit those terrifying regions in close proximity to the inchoate waters. As such their function is to inspire confidence in God's grace, to witness to his mercy. The mention of great whales (the terrifying sea monsters who mythically represent the supposed dark and terrifying aspects of life), in verse 21, is a bit of Old Testament demythologizing, affirming the impotence of evil in the face of God's original good creation. No other specific animals are mentioned in God's creation on the fifth day. Once again, the primary meaning of created beings, in this case fish and birds, is their final significance in the covenant, in that fish and birds witness to God's power over the waters of chaos by inhabiting the seas and skies. For the first time in the creation story, v. 22, God blesses some of the beings he has created. The blessing of the fish and birds is a specific act within creation and an intimation of the covenant in the heart of creation. They require blessing because we are now moving closer to the creation of men and women. Men and women possess the power of independent motion and, like the animals, are creatures of movement and choice. As such, they are able to function within creation only by the continued grace of God. The relevance of this will now become more apparent as we discuss God's action on the sixth day, the creation of animals and humanity.
The Sixth Day
On the sixth day God creates, in two acts, the animals and human kind. We will not discuss the creation of the animals, but will pass at once to the creation of men and women, as this, in Barth's opinion, is the climax of the first six days of work. We will discuss several inter-related matters--creation in the image of God, God's blessing upon the human race, and his command to multiply and have dominion over the earth and its denizens.
The creation of the human race begins in verse twenty-six with the statement "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . " Creation in God's image is emphasized again in the following verse where, three times in quick succession, it is said that God creates, twice emphasizing creation in God's image, and ending with the statement that humanity was created male and female. The verb used in the thrice-repeated emphasis is the one used in the creation of the fish and birds, and in contrast to the verb used to designate the growth of the vegetables from the earth, denotes that human beings possess a distinctive autonomy with respect to creation by virtue of God's direct creative act. This distinctiveness is, according to Barth, to be found in several entirely new features with respect to God's creation of humanity. They are, the "Let us" of verse 26, the image of God, and connected with this image, the male and female of verse 27. These three novel features belong together and their interpretation belongs to Barth's anthropology. Although Barth's anthropology is pertinent to our pursuits, it is not within the main channel, and we will therefore restrict ourselves to indicating only certain salient features and their significance for our endeavor.(74)
The essence of the three novel features lies in their pointing to the fact that God and his people exist only as beings in the event of encounter. Within himself, God exists only in the inner-triune encounter of three modes related by two issues (1.1). Outside himself, God creates his people only in his image, as persons in encounter (1.4). The "Let us" of v. 26 refers to Trinity,(75) and outside himself, creating in God's image means creating each person as existing and able to exist only through relations with others, the male/female relation, v. 27, being the primary type of the human encounter. The event of encounter, the I/Thou relationship between persons is the image of God in humanity, and corresponds in its very dissimilar human sphere to the personal encounter within the triune God.(76) It is this image which makes human beings human. Apart from social relationship human beings cannot be fully human. The community, human beings in social solidarity, exists as the image of God. The solitary individual is not God's image since the image requires mutual encounter and relationships among people. This is reflected in v. 27 in that God creates humanity as male and female. In subsequent biblical usage, marriage, personal encounter between man and woman, will be used to indicate Israel's relation to Yahweh and Christ's relation to the church.(77) Only in relations with others can persons be themselves, or express their unique essence. Existence in social solidarity with others does not of necessity crush individuality. But rather, it is its expression, being analogous to Spirit which exists as the love between the Father and the Son. The human essence is crushed when the self, rather than choosing freely to enter into relations with others, chooses instead to live only unto itself or to assert its will against others without mutual cooperation and service.
The image of God is an event. Like all analogies of God in the created sphere it is not a static reality, nor is it a human possession. It is given in grace as an event, and therefore, God's first act subsequent to his creation of male and female is to bless them (verse 28).(78) By means of God's blessing people are empowered to communicate with one another and to act together. Since God's grace occurs as history, through events of divine action, the human essence is historical as well. Persons are who they are in the history of their acts of relatedness. Rather than the word "Jesus Christ," Barth will often use the words "the history of Jesus Christ," calling attention to the fact that there is no non-historical essence behind Jesus Christ, but Jesus is precisely who he is in his history of acts centering in his relationship to God and to others. Since God's grace is Jesus Christ, and since personhood is constituted through grace as repeated events of encounter, Jesus Christ is the foundation of all personhood.(79) The history of the covenant as events of personal relatedness forms the central history of all personal interactions. In the fourth chapter we shall see that Jesus Christ is the head of his community, Israel and the church, and by means of this community he is forming a new humanity in God's image. By means of the covenant, the primary history of Jesus Christ, God acts to redeem persons, understood as those in need of events of grace by which God relates his people to himself and to one another in community. The result of the foregoing is that personhood has its basis in social history, in the social history of the covenant of Jesus Christ. In conclusion, the image of God expresses itself in human community as given through events of personal encounter. It has its roots in God's triune nature, and is actualized as human history by God's continued grace in Jesus Christ. For this reason the "Let us" of verse 26, the image of God, male and female, and God's blessing as God's continued Word of grace, are brought into closest proximity in Gen. 1:26-28. We may draw one major conclusion from the foregoing.
The Social Form of Economic Responsibility
The triune God took responsibility for economic life. That is the overwhelming conclusion of this entire account. God created a world for his people, and provided for their bodily well-being. Secondly, his economic activities take a social historical form in that they have their basis in the covenant. God in himself exists in encounter, and all his works reflect the social historical form of his inner-triune being. The work of creation as appropriated under God the Father is in indissoluble connection with the covenant history of the Son, and it reaches its final consummation in a new heaven and new earth appropriated as the work of the Holy Spirit. Each mode of the Trinity works in conjunction with the other modes, and only in that form is it the work of the one God. In this work of the one triune God the created realities, the old and new creations, function as the means whereby God expresses his love for his creatures and provides for their economic well-being. In the very dissimilar human sphere there is a correspondence. If human beings act in response to God's grace, and if their works remain truly human, then economic life can have its basis only in social history, through events of relatedness in which people work together to provide the external basis of social life. Subject to the command of God, communities and persons are called to utilize the economic objects of the created world to express their solidarity and concern for one another. In making these comments we have not yet arrived specifically at how and to what degree the political realm is responsible for economic life. We have merely said that human action will take a social historical form if it is truly human.(80) We will address this matter more concretely in the fourth chapter when we discuss the state as a responsible institution.
Although we will discuss the matter more specifically in the fourth chapter, we can pause at this point to ask if creation reveals any distinctive social forms through which economic life may be organized. Is there, for example, an order of creation that divides humanity into various races or classes, which then pursue their own economic aims independently or even at the expense of one another. When God creates human beings he does not, contrary to his creation of the animals, create the human race in distinct groupings divided up according to its kind. There is only one form of differentiation, male and female. There is, according to the first account, and this holds in the second account as well, no order of creation by which humanity is divided into races, classes, or nations. "What distinguishes him from the beasts? According to Gen. 1, it is the fact that in the case of man the differentiation of sex is the only differentiation. Man is not said to be created or to exist in groups and species, in races and peoples, etc."(81) Two observations may be made at this point. First, the creation saga is the time of God's good creation, and sin is not a part of its history. Distinct classes and nations do not occur until Genesis eleven (the tower of Babel), and then as a part of the history of the covenant by which God curbs the destructive power of human sin by confusing the human language. We shall discuss this matter in chapter four, and one of our major conclusions will be that the state is not an order of creation. Secondly, the existence of only one human family in creation implies that the economic benefits of creation as well as the economic commands of creation, are given to the human family as a whole and not to specific classes, races, or nations. There is not, in other words, an order of creation that distinguishes certain classes or nations from others with respect to economic benefits. There are, however, distinctions among peoples with respect to economic benefits in the sphere of the covenant, and we shall discuss them in the following chapter.
In the context of our present discussion, we may raise a question pertinent to our economic analysis of the final chapter. We have distinguished between the human relationship to nature including its economic elements, and the social relations among persons as events of encounter. Which of these two relations differentiate human beings into distinctive social units? Or, to use current terminology, which differences are the more decisive, class or national differences? In the present context we may note that economic life is appropriated by Barth to creation, that it is implicit in the Genesis narratives we have been considering, and that it entails no division into various economic classes. With respect to technical economic activities, the relationship to nature and the material means of production, humanity is still one. In chapter four we shall observe that social divisions among people are a result of sin. Barth discusses sin in the context of covenant. In the sphere of the covenant, nationality, a common language, geographical locale, and shared history, predominate over the relationship to nature or to the means of production.(82) This is to be expected from Barth; his theology is a theology of the Word of God, and a shared language is of greater weight than a common economic lot. Nevertheless, having said this, we hasten to add that Barth allows for the possibility that many factors contribute to social formations, and these of course include economic considerations. In his words, "Economic, social, cultural, political and religious factors are the historical realities which underlie the existence and distinction of peoples. These can be very serious. They can go much deeper than any physical differences. They can cut right across the differences of language and location."(83) In the final chapter we will analyze certain economic and political relations with Latin America with a greater emphasis on relations among nations rather than class. In general, we will tend to place common language and national history near the forefront as forming differing social groupings, and modify that position in light of other factors which may seem important to our economic discussion of the final chapter.
God's First Commands
God concludes his final day of work with a series of commands pertinent to economic life. These commands, directed to the whole human family, are that they should have the seeds and fruits of plants for food (verse 29), and that they multiply and fill the earth (verse 28). Several comments are in order. First, we may notice that God's first commands pertain to economic life. The emphasis in creation is the relationship to nature, and God's concern is with physical procreation, access to the land, and food. Secondly, God's first words, v. 28-29, pertaining to their use of the land and its produce, are preceded by God's blessing, v. 28a. This is due to the fact, and Barth makes this point, that the economic activities of controlling the land and utilizing its produce can be carried out only in the context of covenant, and under the leadership of God's grace.
To the particularity of the blessing granted first to beasts and then to men there corresponds the whole particularity of the fact that it is now possible for both to make use of this permission and promise. Provision is made for the practicability of their activity, but only in this way: "Behold, I have given you." . . . God's table will always be abundantly spread for all.(84)
Although the use of the land and the consumption of its products belong by appropriation to creation, their utilization has its basis in the grace of the covenant. The covenant, however, deals with another reality not directly envisioned in creation. It deals with sin. No sin is envisioned in God's original creation, though it has been invaded by sin, and this is readily apparent from the fact that God's original commands have been violated. The existence of mass hunger, dispossessed peoples, and starvation is ready evidence of that fact. In the sphere of covenant, God's commands to possess the land and eat of its produce may and can be revoked, and in the case of Jesus they are revoked in that he bore the effects of economic sin through fasting, dispossession, and physical death. We shall examine this matter in the following chapter.
The commands to eat in verses twenty-nine and thirty refer only to the eating of vegetation. Human beings are commanded to eat seeds and fruit, while the animals eat the coarser vegetation. In so far as creation is concerned, there is nothing inherently violent about economic life, whether it be class warfare, or the impoverishment of certain segments of the population as the supposed price for capitalist advancement.(85) Killing is not envisioned, just as the division into classes and nations is not envisioned. Revolution, killing, nations, states, and political life, belong to another order, the order of the covenant, and not the order of creation. The fact that killing occurs, that God required animal sacrifice of Israel, requires a different perspective.(86) But it does not belong to God's original intent, and even in the domain of the covenant it is only an interim regulation, whose necessity will be superseded on the final eschatological day.
Finally, we may note that God's commands to subdue the earth and to eat are the fulfillment of his work of the preceding days, and especially of his work on day three. These commands are spoken just prior to the seventh day which is a day of rest and fellowship. As such they indicate once more the external necessity of creation. The social fellowship of the seventh day is possible only because of God's prior work, and only in light of the satisfaction of bodily needs. In this connection we may note that God ends his creation on the sixth day with the statement that it is not only good, but "very good" (verse thirty-one). It is very good because on the sixth day God creates people who, by his continued blessing, are enabled to live together as his covenant partners. It is very good, because, in contrast to the good of the previous days, the aim of creation, the covenant, has been reached on the sixth and final day of work. This is reflected in the words "And it was so." (verse 30) which refer to the whole of God's prior creation whose goodness "means concretely that it was adapted to the purpose which God had in view; adapted to be the external basis of His covenant of grace."(87) We must now consider the seventh day.
The Seventh Day
We now come to the seventh and final day.(88) Although the actual construction of creation ended with the sixth day, the history of creation did not end there. The seventh day is allotted its span of time as were the previous days, and is characterized by its own peculiar activity. On the seventh day God ended his work, he rested, and then he blessed and sanctified the sabbath day. With respect to the seventh day, we may make three observations. First, by blessing and sanctifying the Sabbath day God set it aside for a particular purpose. Its purpose is covenant fellowship with his creatures. It is a day of felicitous personal interaction, a day for hearing the Word of God, and for resting from one's labor for the sake of fellowship. All of creation led up to that day, and in that day God rested from his former work for he had arrived at his goal.
With the realisation of man all creation received its culmination and meaning. When man had been realised before Him, God ceased from His work of creation. He halted at this boundary. He was satisfied with what He had created and had found the object of His love. It was with man and his true humanity, as His direct and proper counterpart, that God now associated Himself in his true deity. Hence the history of the covenant was really established in the event of the seventh day.(89)
Secondly, as the seventh day, the Sabbath is a definite part of creation time. It occupies a day of creation as did the other days. It belongs to creation, and therefore indicates the covenant that exists at the heart of creation. The existence of the seventh day brings creation into relation with covenant, and relates the work of God the Father to the specific work of God the Son in Incarnation.(90) It is the reality of the unity of the one God, and the fact that God can continue to act within creation through the special history of the covenant. In Barth's view, were creation limited to six days, it would have no integral connection to covenant, and to God's act in his Son. Finally, Barth points out that the seventh day for God is the first day for humanity, and that this first day begins with grace. All has been prepared for his covenant creatures. Without any work on humanity's part they receive the fruits of God's labor on the first of their days. In this way their life begins with covenant, with grace, and their economic life, their daily work, is initiated by grace as well. In Barth's words:
Rest, freedom and joy were not just before him. He had no need to "enter" into them. He could already proceed from them, commence with them. They had already taken place. He had already sat at the divine wedding feast, and having eaten and drunk could now proceed to his daily work. The "Lord's Day" was really his first day.(91)
In this fashion God took economic responsibility for his creatures. He provided for their every need before they asked, without their prior merit, and before they had done any work. The Sabbath rest as the time of God's unmerited grace is the result of God's labor, and we shall discover that it lies at the heart of Jesus' work as well. We may conclude this section with a brief comment on work.
Work entails a relationship to nature; in six days God created the external material world and ordered it as a sanctuary for his people. The relationship to nature given in work is simultaneously a social relationship as well in that the purpose of all work is to serve others. God's six days of labor was an expression of his love for his creatures, the way in which he concretely served them by meeting their material needs. All work is service, whether it be done willingly or unwillingly, and the consumption or use of objects produced by work is a social act in which those who create or produce the objects serve those who use them. This follows from the fact that all objects, and relations to those objects, including work, have their basis in the social history of the covenant. In God's case, he worked because he loved, and his work is the expression of the social fact of his love. We shall discuss this in greater detail in the second account, and to that we may now turn.
The Second Account
Introduction
We now come to the second creation account, Gen. 2:4b-25. The first account was concerned with the architectonic creation of the external basis of the covenant. In the second account we look at creation from the inside, and therefore, in much closer proximity to its basis the covenant. Barth exegetes the second account under the title "The Covenant as the Internal Basis of Creation." The second account is not a continuation, or as it has often been interpreted, a supplement to the the first account. It stands on its own feet, and must be seen in its own right as a second and distinct account of creation which views creation from another and important perspective. "Hence the second of the accounts must be read as if it were the only one. And superfluous though it may seem after reading the first account, the whole problem and theme must be reconsidered from another angle."(92) The subject matter is of course the same, creation, but since this second account is in much closer proximity to the covenant, its primary concern is with the human drama of God's dealings with the people that he has made. Our interest, of course, will be upon economic matters and their relation to the covenant. Since the second account differs from the first, we shall obtain additional results on how economic life and covenant are related. These new results, do not, in our view, contradict our previous conclusions. The two accounts together, at least with respect to the issue that concerns us, work out to give complementary perspectives, which, when taken together, enable us to approach the fundamental issue that stands before us. The fact that we obtained our previous results from the first account by bringing it into connection with the covenant will mean that the distance between the first and second accounts is not as great as might at first appear. As we proceed we will compare and contrast both accounts, and thereby arrive at a deeper awareness of how economic life and covenant are related. Our treatment of this second account will be somewhat shorter than our work with the first account. This is due to at least two reasons. First, the second account corroborates some of our previous results and therefore we do not need to discuss them here in great detail. Secondly, the second account is more intimately concerned with covenant. The heart of the covenant is Jesus Christ, and we will therefore discuss the most significant material relating to covenant in the following chapter on the economic aspects of Barth's Christology. Unlike our treat ment of the first account which proceeded day by day, we will begin with an overview of the text, and then follow Barth's exegesis which takes place in three segments, Gen 2:4b-7, Gen. 2:8-17, and Gen. 2:18-25.
Overview of the Second Account
The second account begins with Gen. 2:4b and the statement, "In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, . . . " In this statement two things may be noted at once. The first is a new name for God, Yahweh Elohim. The name "Yahweh," here introduced for the first time, is the name of the tribal God of the early Hebrews, and, as such, intimately connected with the giving of the Law and the forming of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel by which Israel came into existence as a people. The introduction of this name indicates that we are in closer proximity to the history of the covenant. Secondly, we may note that verse four says that the Lord God created the earth and the heavens, in contrast to the heavens and the earth of Gen. 1:1.(93) This reversal of order indicates that from the very beginning the emphasis in this second account is the earth, and as the account progresses it becomes even more specific and concrete. The narrative passes rapidly from the creation of earth and heaven, v. 4b, to the creation of humanity, v. 7. The creation of the external world is compressed into one sentence, vv. 4b-6, and the narrative hastens on to its true theme, the creation of the human race, verse 7. After the creation of the human race, there is at once a narrowing of focus, the scene shifts to one specific place, Eden (verse 8). There is even a hint as to its location, it is "in the east," v. 8, and rivers flow out of it, some of which are known. This is followed by a transition to a specific person Adam, v. 15, whereas in v. 7 God created humanity in general and breathed on them the breath of life. This narrowing of focus is the means whereby the biblical history brings creation into organic connection with the history of the covenant. Adam is still humanity in general, but he is humanity seen from the point of view of a specific place, that is, Eden. Adam represents the specific people Israel, and Eden their land Canaan; from that vantage point the whole is considered. The focus on humanity proceeds by two sections, humanity in general, vv. 4b-7, and then the specific history of Israel, v. 8, and following. "But as the first section has the earth in view, so the second has a definite place on earth, the region of the undivided river, the Garden of Eden. It is in this place that the totality is considered."(94) Adam is placed in a garden where he works as a gardener, and in this garden are placed two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These trees do not exist outside the garden. They correspond to Israel's having, alone among the nations, received the Word of God, both gospel and Law. Then Eve is created from Adam's rib. Their history is given, they sin, and their sin is the revelation of all sin. They are cast out of the garden. They beget children, and among their descendents is one Abraham, and from him the biblical narrative continues in the special history of the covenant which culminates in Jesus Christ. Although these particular events form only a very slender thread among the myriad of worldly events, they are, according to Barth, the set of events which reveal who God is and what he intends for his creation. It is from the point of view of the covenant, and ultimately from its center Jesus Christ, that we are able to understand the whole, both inwardly and outwardly.
In light of this overview of the second account, we may note that it telescopes rapidly to a specific place, Eden, and then to a specific person Adam, and continues from there with the events of Eve's creation, their fall, and the ensuing history of the covenant. In comparison to the first account, the major difference in this overview is that the second turns its gaze immediately to the covenant history that lies within creation. It is much less concerned with the external framework of creation as created day by day. Its concern is humanity, and the social history of the covenant which has its basis in Jesus Christ. In this sense the second account is more transparent to the presence of Jesus Christ. In Barth's view, Jesus Christ is the true and original Adam, and the second account speaks of him though in a veiled and hidden way. In the following chapter we will speak directly of the history of Jesus Christ. Since creation speaks of Jesus Christ, we will be in a position to relate what we learn here to our results there. That we can do so, however, has its basis in the fact that Jesus Christ is the basis of creation, and his presence is particularly visible in this second account if it is exegeted Christologically. Therefore Barth will say:
The main interest now is not how creation promises, proclaims, and prophecies the covenant, but how it prefigures and to that extent anticipates it without being identical with it; not how creation prepares the covenant, but how in so doing it is itself already a unique sign of the covenant and a true sacrament; not Jesus Christ as the goal, but Jesus Christ at the beginning (the beginning just because He is the goal) of creation. This is what we have now to maintain and appreciate. It must be conceded at once that without the existence of the second narrative we could hardly have the temerity to do this. But since the Bible offers us this second account we must and may attempt it.(95)
We may now begin with the first of the three sections exegeted by Barth.
Gen. 2:4b-7(96)
Gen. 2:4b-7 begins with the creation of the earth and heavens and ends with God's breathing the breath of life into his newly formed human race. The earth, as initially created by God (verses 4b and 5), was barren, no vegetation grew upon it. This was due to two missing factors. First, God had not yet watered the ground, and secondly, there was no one to till it. In verses six and seven God supplies these lacks by watering the ground with a mist and by creating the human race out of the dust of the ground and then breathing into them the breath of life. The word "man" as used in verse seven, and throughout the account, is the Hebrew word "adam." It derives from the word "adamah" which means the earth as a cultivated field.(97) Two observations flow from the etymology of this word as well as the meaning of the text itself. First, human beings were created for a specific task, to till the earth; and secondly, they are material or bodily--they are made of dust.
Adam thus means man of the earth or field or soil, the husbandman. In Latin, too, homo derives from humus. According to v. 5, this name must primarily mean that man is destined for the earth, for its service, i.e., its cultivation. But there is also the more precise meaning that he is himself of the earth, that he is taken from it by God's creative act, that he is formed out of the earth, that he is distinguished from the rest of the earth.(98)
In reference to the first observation, human beings are workers, they work as agricultural laborers. This is one aspect of their essence. In the previous account we concluded that human beings are essentially beings in encounter. They exist only in personal relationships. This emphasis receives an even stronger affirmation here in this second account as seen in God's fellowship with Adam in the garden and the creation of Eve. But, since the second account focuses more on humanity, additional elements appear which relate to the human essence. In particular, the account indicates that the human essence can be expressed only through work. This emphasis is strengthened by the fact that v. 5, in contrast to the first account, does not say that the plants are to be brought into being to feed human beings, but rather human beings are brought into existence to tend plants. Agricultural work is virtually seen as an end in itself.
It is to be noted how different this is from the first account, which is far more anthropocentric at this point, suggesting that the world of vegetation was ordained and created only to be the food of men and animals. For in this account [the second] it is a kind of end in itself. The perfect earth is not a dry, barren or dead earth, but one which bears shrubs and vegetation and is inhabited. God will plant it. But to make that which has been planted thrive, God needs the farmer or gardener. This will be the role of man.(99)
That human beings are to till the earth, in the first instance, is not because they need to do so in order to secure the external material necessities of life. It is because God has given the earth a hope in its own right, and the "hope of the arid, barren, and dead earth is that it will bear the vegetation planted by God."(100) Human beings labor to fulfill that hope. The earth requires constant care, each year it brings forth its vegetation. The work is continuous, and the command of God is to do this work. "In spite of all the particular things that God may plan and do with him, in the first instance man can only serve the earth and will continually have to do so."(101) In a future section we shall emphasize the social or covenant aspects of work, here the emphasis is on work in its technical aspect as a relation to nature. When it speaks of humanity being created to work, the creation saga means all human beings. We may recall at this point that creation does not envision any divisions into classes and races. All human beings are created for work; all are workers. It follows that God did not create a leisure class, nor did he create a society that creates a leisure class. He created all as Adam, as gardeners, with tasks to perform, seen here as ordaining human beings to till the soil as an end in itself. The nature of work, its basis and norm, is found first and foremost in Jesus Christ and his covenant which began in Israel. It is through the social history of the covenant that work is to be understood, and by means of that social history the earth is renewed through work. Work and all economic activities have their basis in covenant. This is the final meaning of Gen. 2:4b-7.
If we do not deny but believe this, we shall press forward to a final and deepest meaning of the content of the passage. He, Jesus Christ, is the man whose existence was necessary for the perfecting of the earth; for the redemption of its aridity, barrenness and death; for the meaningful fulfillment of its God-given hope; and especially for the realization of the hope of Israel.(102)
In relation to Jesus Christ and Israel, however, work, the cultivation of the earth, is the responsibility of all human beings whose created essence has its basis in Jesus Christ as the one who works to renew the earth. In the following chapter we shall discover how Jesus' work effects the renewal of the earth and assures its bounty for all people.
According to verse seven, the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."(103) Several observations are in order. First, the breath of God is, in one sense, no different from the blessing of God that in the first account was given not only to humans, but animals as well. All living beings are sustained in life through God's breath. The only distinction from the first account according to Barth is that God breathed life into his people in a most intimate and personal way--he "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This intimate, personal breath is the grace of God--his Word, repeated encounters whereby human beings are not only animate, but live as responsible covenant partners with God. Only in this way are human beings distinguished from the animals. Human beings are not distinct from the animals by their cultural achievements, their artistic or philosophical capabilities, or their spiritual qualities. The only distinction is that they are directly encountered by God.
And this and this alone is the distinguishing feature of man--his humanity--according to the passage. And it is to be noted that this rests on the wholly free and special election and compassion of God, and that it stands or falls with it. As long as it stands, God, who can repeat this in-breathing even when man's frame of dust has returned to dust, is always the confidence of the one whom He has elected and addressed in this way.(104)
Secondly, we may say that human beings are terrestrial, they come from and belong to the earth. Human beings are made of the dust, they are bodily, and they are directed by God to use their bodily capabilities in labor to cultivate the earth. That is the meaning of human life as given in this passage, and that is the purpose of God's encountering humanity as a living Word. Without God's living Word, human beings return at once into the earth, in which case their only hope is in Jesus Christ, in the resurrection from the dead. The breath of life breathed into the human nostrils is the means whereby God animates the barren clay of the human form so that it can cultivate the barren earth and give it life. Apart from the Word of God, the earth cannot be given its ordained cultivation. Both earth, and the human frame, without the Word of God are barren and dead.
It was not by reason of any immediacy to God proper to himself, but only by reason of God's free immediacy in His attitude to him, that he triumphed over the aridity, barrenness and deadness of the dust to which he is still subjected. When we say this we must not lose sight here of the beginning of the passage. On the contrary, we have to understand the passage as a self-enclosed circle. It is just because man, with God as his refuge and hope, can triumph over the earthliness of earth from which he comes and to which he must return, that he is destined, within the totality of the creaturely world to serve the earth as a husbandman and a gardener.(105)
We may note two things at this point. First, God's breath as an event of personal encounter is also an economic act in that it sustains humanity's bodily existence. The events of the covenant are the basis through which bodily existence is maintained. Further, and this will be strengthened when we consider Eden, the fruitfulness of the earth, or the conquest of its aridity, depends upon God's repeated breaths of personal fellowship and care. Economic productivity requires at least three things--it requires rain, human work, and fulfilled covenant relations. A breakdown in the covenant means a loss of economic vitality. When Jesus restored the broken covenant he restored the possibility of humanity's returning to its appointed task of tending the earth, and therefore he worked as the original and true Adam to tend the earth.
Some Contrasts with the First Account
We will conclude our discussion of Gen. 2:4b-7 by contrasting its results with some of the results of the first account. First of all, we must note that an entirely new element has been introduced at this point. The difference found its clearest expression in the fact that vegetation served as food in the first account, while in the second human beings serve the ground. In light of Barth's overall thought, and specifically, the fact that covenant is internal to creation, we must say that the primary aim of vegetation is to serve human ends and not vice-versa. Nevertheless, in the process of providing food for his creatures God does something else as well, something that limits the nature in which human beings may live and gather food. The earth has a legitimate need in its own right. It is to be respected. It cannot be wantonly exploited or laid waste. This of course leads us at once to environmental concerns, and though significant, we will consider the matter as beyond the limits of our study. Furthermore, work is seen here as an aspect of the human essence. Work is not simply the business of meeting the external necessities of life. The first creation account could lead us to that conclusion in that the aim of God's work was to make external provision for his creatures. Work is an on-going activity which not only meets human needs but fulfills the human essence and renews the earth. Were the external necessities provided, as in Eden, it would still be the human lot to work, to refresh and beautify the earth. Both accounts agree however on the fact that work, and therefore economic life, is an activity that requires the grace of God. The breath of God is given to enable humanity to till the soil. Economic life depends upon the social history of the covenant, upon the vitality of social relations and political life. In the first account God alone acted to overcome chaos, although our exegesis from the point of view of the covenant showed that it entailed such covenant events as the Exodus and Conquest. Here God acts, he creates and waters the earth, but Adam has a crucial role to fill in overcoming the earth's barrenness. Furthermore, there is a bodily aspect to human existence that is emphasized in the second account. The first account emphasized the image of God, the reality of the human encounter. The second account not only emphasizes the personal encounter with God, the breathing into Adam's nostrils, but that Adam was made from dust. Human beings are terrestrial beings; they are flesh possessing legitimate bodily objectives and needs. There can be no deprecation of the bodily aspect of human creation in contrast to what Barth takes to be the Greek view, or the view of traditional theology which has always emphasized the soul and disregarded the body.(106) Bodily needs and activities are of the utmost importance, and there is no salvation without attention to these bodily realities.
The man who is called by Him [Jesus] and who takes part in His way and work as a recipient and fellow-worker does not only receive something to consider and to will and to feel; he enters into bodily contact and fellowship. The man who comes to hear of the kingdom of God comes also to taste it. He comes to eat and to drink bodily, . . . "(107)
We may now summarize our results as follows: Barth's anthropology holds that human beings are a unity of body and soul (the living being of 2:7), and that they are maintained and directed by the Word of God. Barth rejects the view that there is a third element, the spirit, or that the person is a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit. Rather, the person is body and soul, bound together by God's grace which holds body and soul in order as spirit, but spirit not as a human possession, but grace given by God's Spirit.(108) In other words, there is no ethereal or eternal spiritual aspect in the Greek sense, but rather, body and soul, work and fellowship, the relation to nature and to others, are of the human essence and both must be sustained in and by the the grace of the covenant. Furthermore, work not only makes human fellowship possible by supplying physical needs, but it has as its aim the fulfillment of the earth, and this in its own right. We will now continue Barth's exegesis and investigate Gen. 2:8-17.
Gen. 2:8-17
Gen. 2:8-17 is the story of the Garden of Eden.(109) Our study of Eden will strengthen some of our former conclusions, and will enable us to advance several new ideas. We have already spoken of work in its technical aspect of relating to the soil; in this section we will discuss its covenant aspect, and show that all work is an aspect of the personal relation of service. We will show that our previous conclusions as to the centrality of covenant appear in the centrality of Eden, and that Eden is a paradigm of God's intended economic life for the whole of humanity. We will proceed by first contrasting Eden with the surrounding world. This will enable us to perceive Eden's central significance, and how all economic activity is related to Eden's economic blessedness.
The Centrality of Eden
The name "Eden" means delight, and the Garden of Eden is pictured as a place of delight and refreshment. In contrast to the land outside Eden, it is eminently fruitful and pleasant. It is like an oasis in the desert. "The whole description of this Garden--trees, a spring, and even a resting place for man--is obviously that of an oasis."(110) Like an oasis it is fed by a spring, which strangely becomes a river. This river becomes a mighty torrent and, at the borders of Eden, divides to water surrounding districts. This torrent can be contrasted with the mist of v. 6 which had apparently been effective. It brought forth the shrubs and herbs of v. 5, but it had not brought forth trees, which in Eden were a delight to the eye and good for food, v. 9.
Where shrubs and herbs were envisioned we now have trees which God has made to grow out of the earth. The same is true in respect of the conditions to make this possible. The expectation had been rain, but the fulfillment--the mist has evidently not been ineffective or niggardly--is a whole river watering the garden of Eden. So mighty is the river that contrary to the usual habits of rivers it later divides into four parts and fructifies other great areas outside of Eden.(111)
The image here is that the land outside Eden is a semi-arid region in contrast to Eden's lush well-watered land. The lack of sufficient water throughout the dryer region is supplied, however, by the river which bursts forth from Eden. It divides into four parts, representing the four points of the compass, and gushes forth to water the world. In this way Eden supplies the world with its water, and with it, the vegetative abundance that water brings. Furthermore, along the banks of these rivers, or at least according to Barth's exegesis, as a result of their flow, there are precious stones and minerals, Gen. 2: 11-12. The earth in all its usefulness to human beings, agriculture and mining, has its origin in Eden. Therefore Barth will say:
The meaning and assertion is undoubtedly that all the rivers of the earth and therefore all fertility, all possibility of vegetation, all life on earth, have their origin here in Paradise in the one river which springs forth from it. If man no longer lives in the Garden of Eden, if it has become inaccessible to him, he nevertheless lives by the streams and rivers of the earth; wherever there are fruit-bearing trees; wherever his labour on the land is not for nothing but serves the support of life; by the banks which in their final and supreme origin are those of the unknown and yet known, of the lost and yet real Paradise. Indeed as the narrative sees it, all the precious things of the earth including its minerals, some of which are enumerated in the description of the land of Havilah, have their origin in the river of blessing which proceeds from Eden. Thus it is not just life itself, i. e., the possibility of the life given by God to the earth and man, but also all the glory and beauty of this life which have their origin in it.(112)
We have given this extended quotation to emphasize a central point--namely that Eden is the source of the world's economic vitality, the source of all productiveness and life. As such, it is above all, a place of material blessedness. Its lush vegetation, particularly its fruit-bearing trees, its minerals and precious stones, abundantly fulfill the economic needs of its inhabitants, and its waters go forth to water and bless the world. We may now ask why Eden is so materially blessed.
The Christological Relevance of Eden
The Garden of Eden saga is creation history. As history, it takes place in a specific place. It lies "in the East," v. 8, and two of its rivers, the Tigris (Hiddekel) and the Euphrates, can actually be identified. But, from the point of view of contemporary geography, Eden cannot be found. Its location belongs to pre-history, the time and place prior to our times and places. Nevertheless, as indicated by the specific details of its geography, it is connected to subsequent times and places. Above all, it is indissolubly connected to the land of Canaan, and the history of the covenant which took place in Canaan.
No Israelite hearer or reader of this saga could be be surprised to hear of the act of God the Creator in establishing this place. For he himself was witness of an event closely corresponding to it. He lived in the midst of the fulfillment of the promise given to his fathers of a good land, good above all other lands, and destined to be the sanctuary of God. Indeed, he lived on its soil and was sustained by its fruits.(113)
Although Eden referred to Canaan, and its fruitfulness to Canaan's material abundance, it could not be said that Eden became a definite reality within Israel's history. The entrance into Canaan and her life in the land was only a moment in Israel's history. In its totality, her history was a history of bitterness, deprivation, and the loss of her land in the Exile. The blessedness of Eden never really occurred, although there were intimations that God could and would bless the land. Given the bitterness of Israel's history, the fact that she was "a chastised, suppressed, suffering and lost people, a dying and perishing people,"(114) it could be asked whether the hope of Eden was an illusion, or, as Barth asks the question, perhaps a "reference to a beautiful dream which dissolved on awakening?"(115) The basis of Israel's hope, the secret of the prophetic dream that Yahweh someday would redeem the earth beneath Israel's feet and give her respite from her enemies, was that she secretly carried in her national life the hidden history of Jesus Christ which in due time became manifest in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Eden, and, in Barth's view, Eden envisions and proclaims the reality of the external world as it occurs in the presence of Jesus Christ as the original Adam. Therefore Barth will say that there is a connection between Eden and the history of Jesus Christ. "Between the picture of Paradise in Gen. 2 on the one hand, and the form and work of Jesus Christ on the other, there lies the full, free and proper agreement which is not quite so obvious between Gen. 2 and 3 and Gen. 2 and the history of Israel."(116) Here Barth is saying that Eden is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that its fulfillment cannot be found in Israel with its history of suffering and deprivation. This is an important point for our purposes. In the following chapter we shall specifically consider the work of Jesus Christ. Unless we concretely connect Jesus Christ with Eden, it will be possible to emphasize the covenant aspects of Jesus' work to such a degree that we lose sight of the fact that one result of restoring the covenant is not only reconciliation among people, but the restoration of the earth to its intended fruitfulness for the benefit of God's creatures. This is, however, affirmed in a Christological understanding of Eden, namely, that reconciliation entails the restoration of a blessed economic existence. With respect to understanding Eden Christologically, Barth comments:
If this is true, the Christian reading of the Paradise saga is valid, its reference--and therefore the reference of the history of Israel prefigured in it--is to a reality: to the way in which the earth became a good land at a given place; to the way in which the man created by God was given rest in this place by the same God; to the way in which the river which was mighty enough to flow through the whole land and fructify it had its source there; to the way in which the Gospel and the Law, the justification of life by God and its sanctification for God, were one and the same, as was also sinful, dying, lost man and man unreservedly loved and blessed and glorified.(117)
Keeping in mind the centrality of Eden with respect to the world around Eden, the fact that the fruitfulness of Eden is given in Jesus Christ leads to the conclusion that the fruitfulness of all life in all times and places is found in Jesus Christ. Specifically, the waters of life that flow from Eden to fructify the world, have their origin in Jesus Christ.(118) The image here is that of Jesus Christ at the center, the garden of Eden, and the surrounding world. This image states geographically in terms of creation what can also be said with respect to covenant, namely, the centrality of Jesus Christ, the inner circle of covenant composed of Israel and the church, and its outer circle of the nations. Within these images, Jesus Christ is origin, center, and goal, so that geographically, Eden is humanity's original home and our final one as well. When God placed Adam in the garden, he claimed it for humanity, and he claimed it through humanity's solidarity with the original Adam Jesus Christ. Speaking of God's placing Adam in Eden, Gen. 2:8, Barth comments:
It translates the man created by God, "humanity" as such and absolutely, into a direct and specific divine sphere. It says that this specific divine sphere was his original home. It characterises man's fall as his unfaithfulness to the law of his original home, and his misery as his removal from the glory of this place. And it also says, of course, that this specific place will also be God's final goal for man.(119)
We may summarize. When God planted Eden, and placed Adam in it, he intended for Eden to be the home of all people and for all people to receive its blessing. The history of creation, specifically the Eden saga, belongs to the history of Jesus Christ. By means of this history God acts in the world to bless human beings, and in light of Eden, to bless them with economic well-being. As in the first account, we have concluded that covenant is central to creation. The matter, however, is more forcefully put in the second account, and this will become even clearer as we discuss the relevance of the two trees.
Two Trees
According to Gen. 2:16-17 God has placed two special trees in Eden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These two trees indicate God's presence in the garden, and that, in contrast to the surrounding lands, Eden is God's special dwelling place. The first tree, the tree of life, is the center of Paradise.(120) It indicates that Eden is the Holy of Holies. God dwells there, and all life in Eden, and the life that flows out of Eden to nourish the world, is the direct gift of God who dwells in Eden.
And so the tree of life is really the centre of Paradise; the sign of life as God gave it to man at his creation and as he was permitted to live it as a divine favour; the sign of the home in which man was given rest by God because God Himself, and therefore the source of his life, was no problem to him, but present and near without his so much as having to stretch out his hand. In the beginning there was this joyful message of life.(121)
Not only does the tree of life indicate that God supplies humanity's material needs, but also it indicates that God himself dwells in Eden, and that he desires fellowship with his newly formed creatures. In that sense Eden is the completion and basis of the fellowship of God with humanity begun when God breathed the breath of life into Adam's nostrils. In Eden God lives together with his creatures in a community based on love, mutual respect, and communication.
Here, in what the tree both represents and offers, the Creator is present with the creature which He has placed in it. God wills to be recognized, honoured and loved by man in what this tree represents and offers. While He gives man the enjoyment of the whole Garden and all its trees, by the planting of the tree of life in its midst God declares that His primary, central and decisive will is to give him Himself.(122)
Two things may be noted, God gives himself to Adam in the personal fellowship of the covenant, and as he does so he creates the external material basis of that fellowship by planting Eden and placing Adam in the Garden. That is, the giving of himself on God's part is not divorced from his taking responsibility for Adam's economic well-being. It is God who planted Eden, and God who placed Adam in that Garden, v. 8. We now come to a significant point for our consideration. Adam's continued well-being, both economic and social, was wholly dependent upon his relation to God. Economic well-being depends upon covenant. He was directly sustained, materially and socially, by God's presence as indicated by the tree of life. Furthermore, his relationship to God was guarded by a prohibition, as attested in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.(123) The tree of the knowledge of good and evil indicates the fact that God, and God alone, is the ultimate judge of good and evil. As the judge of all things God creates the good, and rejects evil, and upon that basis all life depends. Utterly and finally, Adam, in every aspect of his being, is dependent upon God's continued judgment to sustain the good life that God had given him. As in the first account, the goodness of Eden, as with any created thing, has its basis in the social relations of the covenant, in how it fulfills God and humanity's purposes as given in the covenant. The existence of the second tree, and the fact that Adam can utilize the economic bounty of Eden only through relation to God implies that Eden is good only as long as it functions within covenant. Apart from covenant, Adam forfeits his life, and Eden no longer fulfills its purposes as humanity's home.
To transgress the Word of the Lord means to do good or evil after one's own will. But this is something which must not be done because it is God who must decide concerning good and evil, commanding the one and prohibiting the other, whereas man, choosing after his own heart, cannot attain good but will do evil. This, then, is what God prohibited. This is the possibility indicated by the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden but also prevented by the commandment. This is the possibility whose realisation delivers man to death by removing him automatically from the the One with whom is the fountain of life.(124)
Therefore, Adam's blessedness, his economic well-being, and even his life, depend upon his steadily and cheerfully acknowledging the Creator as the One who has the sole right to determine Adam's understanding of how he should live in all the affairs of his life. So important is this point that God's first spoken words to the human race as indicated in this saga, Gen. 2: 16-17, is to give Adam permission to eat freely of the trees, to receive God's economic bounty, but only on the condition of not presuming, upon pain of death, to determine his own right and wrong apart from reliance upon the Word of God. When Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he made the decision to act according to his own lights. That is, he presumed to think and live apart from covenant, so that all his actions, including those of economic relevance, took place apart from covenant. Under these conditions he could no longer enjoy covenant fellowship with God, and further, he lost Eden and he lost the active support of God's grace by which he could sustain his bodily existence. Economic life refers to sustaining and enhancing bodily existence. Apart from God's grace, Adam lost the power to live physically; his body returned to dust. Further evidence of his changed economic circumstances is indicated in the fact that his removal from God's presence results in a drastically altered economic existence. Inside Eden his life is one of economic bounty and refreshing work. Outside Eden the land is cursed, it bears thorns and thistles, and only by bitter toil is Adam able to wrestle a living from it (3:17-18). The consequence of breaking the covenant was the breakdown of economic life, even in its technical aspect. Even outside Eden, however, God works with and extends his grace to his creatures. According to Barth's exegesis, the angel (3:22-24) which prevents Adam's return to the tree of life prevents Adam from avoiding death. Had Adam been given access to the tree of life, to God's grace, he would have lived forever. Yet it would have been a life of alienation from God, continued disobedience, loss of fellowship, continual dying in the midst of life. God averted this hell by expelling humanity from Eden and by his verdict of death, with the hope, and this is known only Christologically, of the resurrection from the dead.(125)
Sin
Adam's changed economic circumstances are a result of sin, sin understood as disobedience of God's Word. In Barth's view sin is a violation of the covenant, not the transgression of a law of nature.(126) Adam sinned by violating God's spoken Word, the verbal commandment not to eat of the tree. It was not a technical failure on Adam's part that led to economic hardship, but rather, a social failure, a failure to remain in fellowship with God. As a consequence, the technical aspect of economic life became much more difficult outside Eden, and eventually impossible, in that he could not maintain his bodily existence and he returned to the dust. This account does not tell us what sorts of sin lead to Adam's expulsion, except that it was a violation of God's Word. In the following chapter we will specify concretely what sorts of sin lead to economic deprivation, but all of them have their basis in breaking covenant, in the failure to obey God's Word and to keep covenant with others. From this perspective, the deprivations of contemporary economic life, mass-starvation and human exploitation, have their basis in rebellion against God and breaking covenant with one's neighbor.
Finally, the centrality of covenant with respect to economic life is readily visible in this second account. Since the second account is more transparent to the reality of covenant, we find in Gen. 2: 16-17 the dependence of economic life upon covenant explicitly expressed in a succinct form. God tells Adam that he may freely eat, but only within the context of the covenant as witnessed by the two trees. By contrast, the first account is more concerned with covenant's external basis, and therefore, the covenant as encounters between God, Israel, and the surrounding nations appeared only by virtue of Barth's Christological exegesis. In both accounts, however, the existence of Israel (Adam) in the land (Eden) is of paramount importance, and reinforces the conclusion that a central social fact underlying economic life is who controls the land or the use of its resources.
Work
With respect to what we have called the technical aspects of economic life, we may note that, as in the first account, the emphasis in the Eden story is upon the availability of the land and its products for food (Gen. 2:16). Other technical economic activities are not mentioned, with the exception of one other factor, and that is work. Work is the technical activity of converting nature's resources into products for human consumption, and human beings share this activity with animals although in a more complicated form. For human beings, however, work is associated with the covenant. In the first account only God worked, and the aim of his work was to prepare the external conditions of covenant so that work was an aspect of covenant purposes. In the second account, human work comes into prominence. From the point of view of the world and people outside Eden, God creates workers, vv. 4b-7, and this general truth has its basis in the specific event of God placing Adam in Eden, the commission, v. 15, "to till it and keep it," as prefiguring Israel's entrance into and use of the land. We may now investigate several related questions: What makes work possi ble? what is the nature of work as a human activity? and how does work relate to the covenant?
We may begin by observing that the planting of Eden, v. 8, and the fact that God places Adam in Eden to till it, v. 15, refer to Israel's conquest of the land, and her labor within it.(127) These events belong to the history of the covenant, they are social historical events between God, Israel, and the foreign nations. These events, in Israel's view, were initiated by God's grace, and therefore reveal his desire that his people have land and work. The covenant is central, and with respect to land, Eden is central. It is through the covenant and its central place that the whole is to be known. The fact that the saga is creation history, that it refers to the whole world from a particular point of view, implies that it is God's purpose that all people everywhere have access to the land, its resources, and to work. God makes it possible for people to work. He, in modern parlance, provides jobs, and he does so through grace, historical events in which nations confront one another with the aim of securing land and work. Therefore, we may say that work has its basis in covenant, in social history. Before work is possible, jobs must be secured and maintained, and this occurs through social relations. This is indicated in the saga by the statement that "God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it," v. 15. The "taking " and "putting" of this statement refer to the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan. And secondly, we may say that it is God's purpose that all people have the opportunity to work. We may now ask, what is the nature of work?
Barth draws a contrast between the work done outside Eden, v. 5, and Adam's work as commissioned by God in v. 15. Within Eden, Adam is a fruit gardener. The fact that Eden grows trees, in contrast to the shrubs and herbs outside Eden, means that Adam tends the garden and eats of its fruit rather than tilling the soil, v. 5. As a fruit gardener Adam's toil is actually his recreation, his rest, and satisfaction. The abundance of the garden and the productiveness of its trees relieve him of arduous toil, and his fellowship with God and confidence in his continued care relieve him of all anxiety.
What characterises this place according to the saga is the higher or highest vegetation. It is only in and with the later and true history of man, outside Eden, when it becomes inaccessible to him, that the field will come again into the picture and work on the field will really be necessary as on the original view. Here in the Garden man is really at rest in respect of nourishment, and his work--stated in terms of the first account--is the permitted minimum of the Sabbath which does not disturb the freedom, joy, and rest of his existence.(128)
Or again:
According to v. 5, God created man to "serve" the earth. This destiny is not cancelled by his translation into God's Garden, for only here can it find its confirmation. The fact that he is brought here does not mean that he is translated into a kind of fool's paradice that Moslems expect hereafter. He is "given rest," but that does not mean that he has not to act. According to the basic view of the saga, perfect joy and work are not yet divorced. It is only when man lives far from Paradise (3:17) that the ground is cursed, that it bears thorns and thistles and is tilled in the sweat of his face.(129)
Several conclusions follow from these passages. First, the notion that God made human beings as workers is confirmed from within the covenant itself. Work is of the human essence, and God made it possible for Adam, and through him all people, to work. Secondly, although work is of the human essence, it is not God's intent that it be a bitter struggle for existence. As envisioned by God it does not pit one person, class, or nation against others. Work, as part of the human essence, is Adam's joy, his rest, and his pleasure. Only through the violation of the covenant, rebellion against God and tyranny against neighbor, do the conditions arise where people have no access to work, or are forced to work under conditions that do not supply their basic human needs. Finally, although the saga indicates that "perfect joy and work are not yet divorced," it does not indicate that the purpose of Eden was to provide a place of luxury or of leisure. Adam does work, he is not "waited upon" by God or others, and in spite of the lushness of Eden's vegetation, he does not live in luxury. In Barth's words, "'Yahweh plants a park' (Gunkel). This interpretation of v. 8 is not incorrect, but it lays too great an emphasis on the Persian root underlying paradeisos and is thus misleading, since what is envisaged in v. 15 is not a place of leisure or luxury but a glorious sphere of activity."(130)
At this point we may briefly return to a previous issue. We have said that economic life is an indispensable precondition for a vital covenant existence. This is confirmed in the second account as well which speaks of land and work as the necessary environment of Adam's fellowship with God in Eden. The question arises, is a vital economic existence a sufficient condition for a vital social life? Or, once the workers have been given land and work, will there then be a new social era free of economic and social exploitation? From the point of view of the Genesis sagas, the answer is no. Economic life is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a blessed social life. According to the first account, human social life began on the seventh day in the context of God's economic mercy, but this was not sufficient to prevent the breaking of the covenant. In the second account, Adam was placed in the Garden, given land and work, and he still rebelled against God, broke covenant, and thereby lost Eden as well. Historically, these events refer to Israel's capture of the land and its bounty, and then the repeated failure to keep covenant with God. From this perspective the Marxist vision of a just economic order does not guarantee perfected covenant relationships, which in turn implies the collapse of a just economic order. On the other hand, vital covenant relations are both a necessary and sufficient condition for a blessed economic life as economic life depends upon covenant.
With respect to the technical aspects of work, we have seen that it is part of the human essence to relate to nature in work, that this work in the sphere of creation is the minimum work of the Sabbath, and that the provision of work does not guarantee a felicitous social life. We now turn to the social aspects of work, work understood in terms of relations among peoples. We may ask, how is Adam's work connected to the covenant, or whom does he serve through his labor?(131)
Work as Service
According to the Genesis saga, Eden is God's sanctuary. He plants it, v. 9, and he waters it. He has given to Adam the task of its on-going care. The dominant image here is that of God as a King with Adam as the royal gardener.
Its [the garden] decisive determination consists in the fact that it was planted by God, and belongs to him, and is thus assigned to man. In this sense the well-watered plain of Jordan (Gen. 13:10) and the future Zion (Is. 51:3) are compared with it as the "garden of the lord," the latter being called the garden of God in Ezek. 28:13 and 31:8.(132)
As the royal gardener Adam serves God by his work; that is the social significance of his work. And here we must bring out a point obscured or unacknowledged by Barth's exegesis, but one that follows inevitably both from his exegesis and the overall meaning of his theology as a whole. That God placed Adam in the garden, that the garden belonged to God, and that Adam was to care for it, means that a principle manner in which Adam related personally to God, in addition to Adam's obedience and fellowship represented by the two trees, was by means of his work. Adam was God's servant, the meaning of his life was to serve, and the activity of his serving was work, in this case agricultural work. Similarly, in the first account, God served humanity through his work by establishing the external basis of human life. Here, we see the converse, Adam serves God as his gardener.(133) Barth comes much closer to understanding work as service in his treatment of work in the context of his ethics of creation.(134) Here he makes the point that the aim of life is service of God and the coming of his Kingdom. The service of God, however, requires the affirmation of humanity's physical existence since human beings exist only as body and soul in their unity. Bodily life must be maintained, and work is the affirmation of human existence as a bodily existence.(135) It is done in obedience to God, and is itself a form of service to God and others.(136) Furthermore, since persons exist only through encounters with others, work has a social nature. This social character is preserved as human beings work together to provide for their material welfare, and in doing so, they serve one another by enhancing the lives of others through their labor.
Human work can and should take place in co-existence and co-operation. But in reality it does so in isolation and mutual opposition. It should provide each of us with our daily bread in peace, offering us an opportunity for the development of our particular abilities and the corresponding accomplishments, and thus liberating us for the service which provides the real meaning of our lives.(137)
The social nature of work is destroyed, and here Barth directly criticizes capitalist economic life, when competition becomes the ruling force of economic relations, or when labor is reduced to a purely economic relation determined by cash paid for services rendered.(138) It is not at all obvious to Barth, however, that the transition to socialism will solve this problem. In his view the exploitation may simply take a different form, namely "that of a state socialism which is in fact directed by a ruling and benefit-deriving group."(139) By contrast, both Genesis accounts indicate the social nature of work as expressing one's love for another. In the first account, God served the human race by building a world for them, and by providing a table for them in the midst of that world. In the second account, God worked for Adam, he planted and watered, (v. 8 and 10), and Adam responds by tending the garden. In fellowship with God, under the guidance of God's determination of right and wrong, Adam is intended gladly and humbly to join himself to God's enterprise and do God's work, a labor that leads to Adam's own well-being. Work then is ultimately a personal relationship, it begins with a decision to serve oneself and/or others, it is maintained through personal relationships with others, and its goal is to serve human life. This implies that work is not neutral in itself, nor is it in the first instance a relationship with the environment. Work relates to others, it meets others' needs, and it is done in response to the need or command of others, whether commanded by force or persuasion. The relevant question is, who serves whom by working, who is the lord and who is the servant, what person, nation, or class, serves other persons, nations, and classes. One element of our empirical discussion in the final chapter will be to address this question. At that time we will view commerce as streams of products originating in the earth and transformed by work into products of human consumption. Those whose work contributes to the formation of these products work for those who use the products. In this way, commercial relations are an aspect of covenant relations, since objects and relations to them as in work occur in the context of social historical relations and indeed express those relations.
Eve
We have now essentially concluded our study of Barth's exegesis of the two creation accounts. With respect to the second creation account, Barth continues with a third and final section, his exegesis of Gen. 2:18- 25. Gen. 2:18-25 is the story of Eve's creation from Adam's rib. We will not present the results of Barth's exegesis at this point. Barth introduces a number of new ideas, many of them revolving around the relationship between the sexes as the fundamental inter-personal relation. We have already discussed this matter, in so far as it relates to our study, in our comments on Barth's exegesis of the sixth day of the first account. Barth's exegesis of both accounts emphasizes that covenant is the consummation and goal of creation. According to Barth the second saga reaches its climax and conclusion with the creation of Eve and Adam's cry, "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."(140) With that cry the reality of covenant as the goal of creation is confirmed. It is noteworthy that Adam did not find the required human fellowship in his work, in his relationship to nature or to the animals. Only with the creation of Eve, and Adam's recognition of her, was the covenant actualized in the human sphere. Furthermore, the distinction between creation and covenant is maintained; a fresh new creative act of God is required before the capacity for personal relationships between people characteristic of the covenant can be realized within creation history. The relationship to nature, or the forms of production necessitated by work, did not give birth to Eve. Social relations are not the consequence of the mode of production, just as covenant is not the result of the human relationship to creation. When Adam slept, God acted in a fresh creative event, bringing forth something new that was not inherent as an emergent possibility within the previously created world.
This sleep, moreover, means that he knew as little about the event as he knew about his own creation and the creation of earth and heaven. The question is still one of the pure emergence of the creature, which as such cannot be an object of its own observation and perception. We are still in the history of creation, which as such can only be a saga of creation.(141)
That covenant is however the climax and goal of creation means, on the other hand, that there is a positive relation between covenant and creation. They are not autonomous realms, but integrally related, and in that respect covenant relations give the shape of economic life and not vice-versa.
We will now summarize our results from this chapter as follows. Our results pertain to the relation between covenant and creation. Since Barth discusses political life under covenant and economic life under creation, everything we can say about creation and covenant apply to economic and political life as a special case within the more general framework. Finally, in determining these relationships we must remember that these are not general relations that hold in all times and places. These relations occur only in the event of grace. Their basis is the triune God and analogies of Trinity occur only through the event of the Word. We are not, in other words, proposing a general theory. Nevertheless, if our conclusions reflect God's revelation as understood by Barth, then, in the event of grace, these relations will hold and will call for action according to their norms. As we proceed we will locate each proposition in the inner- triune life of God. Barth's theology is, however, based in Scripture. It is not deducible from a set of propositions having their basis in the triune God. Therefore, we shall understand each proposition as partially based in prior propositions originally derived from God's inner-triune nature. Each proposition has its basis in Scripture, and each in turn says something about God's inner-triune nature since Barth moves from below to above as well as vice-versa. Barth's logic is organic rather than deductive from above.
Final Propositions from Chapter Two
2.1 Economic life refers to those activities pertaining to the creating, sustaining, or renewal of bodily existence. It is composed of two related aspects, relations to nature, the provision of food and shelter, and relations among persons, nations, or classes in reference to economic activities. The former we have called the technical aspect of economic life, the latter the covenant, social, or political aspect. The technical and social aspects are distinct from each other but intimately related. This distinction and relatedness has its partial basis in (1.5).
2.2 The triune God took responsibility for economic life, and he did so in a triune manner by relating creation and covenant, economic with social affairs. Furthermore, as seen in the second account, he called humanity to act responsibly as well. Responsible economic life for Adam meant economic affairs directed by the covenant relationship to God. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4), (1.5), and (1.9).
2.3 Economic life, including its technical aspects, has its basis in covenant, in social history or political life. The technical aspects of economic life express, and are initiated and maintained by, directed toward, and transformed by the social history of the covenant. This follows from the fact that covenant is the inner basis of creation. The ultimate significance of economic objects or relations to them (work), is how they function in social/historical relationships. Something is good only with respect to its goodness as determined by covenant or social relations. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.2), (1.4), (1.7), and (1.8).
2.4 Since economic life depends upon the social history of the covenant, it is a dynamic, decisive, social activity, in which God and his people provide for humanity's material welfare. The norms for economic life are given by Word and Spirit. Economic affairs are not ultimately ruled by economic or historical laws apart from grace. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4) and (2.3).
2.5 The technical aspect of economic life is an indispensable prerequisite for human existence, including political and social life. This follows from the fact that creation is the external basis of covenant. A bountiful economic existence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for social well being. An inadequate economic existence will lead to ruptured political and social relationships. Therefore, since economic life depends upon social life, a primary social task is to establish a vital economic order as the indispensable external basis of the social order itself. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4), (1.6), and (2.3).
2.6 Covenant vitality, or social and political well-being, imply a vital economic life, but not conversely. The breaking of the covenant leads to economic loss; hence a primary social task is the process of determining what sorts of personal relations can best serve economic life. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.3).
2.7 Creation is pure benefit though threatened by chaos. This threat will be abolished in the final age. Economic life does not, by nature, entail human suffering and deprivation. Economic suffering is the result of sin, sin understood as the breaking of the covenant and not the transgression of a law of nature. The external blessedness of the Sabbath rest or Eden are normal economic conditions. These conditions will be restored in the final eschatological age. Jesus Christ renews the earth by restoring the covenant which is the basis of technical economic activities. This proposition has its partial basis in the inner-triune fact that God loves (1.2) and (1.3), and therefore creation expresses his love as benefit (1.4), (1.2), and (2.3).
2.8 Human beings are essentially social and historical, they exist through events of encounter between persons. The image of the triune God is community, persons in their events of encounter, and not the individual apart from others. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4), (1.7), and (1.8).
2.9 Bodily being is an integral part of the human essence, and therefore economic life is essential to the development of personhood. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4) and (1.6) in that the bodily aspect is appropriated to creation, the soulish to covenant, and no mode exists without the others and hence body and soul are together.(142)
2.10 It is of the human essence to work. Productive work requires God's blessing and breath, and by his blessing work is joy, the minimum of the Sabbath rest. It requires covenant, and in the human sphere it requires social and political events of encounter among peoples. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.4), (1.6), (2.3), and (2.5).
2.11 Work is a relationship to nature, and more fundamentally, it is also a covenant relation. It is an aspect of how one serves another, of how one loves or disregards others. The flow of nature's products as channeled and formed by work reveals how various social classes or persons relate to one another through the relation of workers and servers, consumers and served. Furthermore, God's original intent is that all people be given work, and that work be the minimum of the sabbath, his joy and recreation, in fellowship with God and others. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.3) and (2.7).
2.12 God's intention is that the whole of humanity possess the earth and eat of its produce. By nature, the earth does not belong to a specific class or nation, and God's economic commands are directed to the whole of humanity. The division into spheres of economic interests and warring classes is a result of the fall. Nor is violence or killing a part of economic existence. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.1) and (2.7). Creation is distinctive (2.1) with respect to covenant in that sin occurs only in the context of covenant (2.7).
2.13 From a Barthian perspective, the technical aspects of economic activity can tell us nothing of the political aspect, or how we are to treat one another as we use the world's resources to meet bodily needs. This is found in the covenant, and will be attended to in the following chapter. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.2) and (1.4).
2.14 With respect to the technical aspect of economic activity, the interest of Genesis is the fruitfulness of the earth, work, and the consumption of the earth's fruitfulness. Other technical economic activities are not mentioned. Therefore, we will base our empirical analysis on the flow of products as transformed by work. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.4) and (2.5).(143)
2.15 With respect to the social relations that undergird economic life, the control of the land and its resources as socially determined is a crucial social and economic consideration. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.3) and (2.5).
2.16 The tendency of Barth's thought is to emphasize national over class differences, common language over common economic lot, although this is not an absolute determination. This proposition has its partial basis in (2.3).
2.17 The Word of grace and empirical knowledge are related and distinguished as are the Father and Son, or creation and covenant. The Word of grace integrates empirical knowledge to itself as its periphery, and this one Word comprising both elements becomes the binding Word of God. This proposition has its partial basis in (1.1), (1.4), and (1.6).
Endnotes to Chapter Two
1. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 49. Barth follows the first article of the creed in appropriating creation to the doctrine of God the Father. See points (a) and (b), pp. 11-15 of III:1.
2. Ibid., p. 50. 3. Ibid., p. 97.
4. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV:3, first half, pp. 142-3, 147, 149-50.
5. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1. p. 48. 6. Ibid., p. 47.
7. Ibid., pp. 43-44, 47, 95-96, 143, 156, 177-8, 207, 230-32, 251. We shall also verify this in detail as we proceed,
8. Ibid., pp. 28-34, 51-56. 9. Ibid., p. 76.
10. Ibid., excursi pp. 63-65, 233-34. See pp. 59-72 passim on other aspects of the continuity. Since Barth distinguishes between histories, he can separate the history of creation from that of on-going history. Creation, for Barth, is pre-history, it occurs prior to the history of the covenant. It provides the external basis for covenant, and it does not evolve. God does not continue to create the old order, but preserves, accompanies, and rules it as the external basis of covenant, (Church Dogmatics, III:3, pp. 68, and note titles of the first three parts of section 49, pp. 58-154). By contrast, Segundo does not distinguish between a history of creation and that of subsequent history. There is one history, and an element of its evolutionary advance is the extraordinary progress that has taken place in what we have called the technical aspects of economic life. These technical developments, in Segundo's view, give us the technical capacity to construct a more healthful, humane, economic existence. (The Community Called Church, pp. 118-120; Our Idea of God, p. 44; Evolution and Guilt, p. 11.) From Barth's perspective, we may note two things. First, evolutionary advance within general history does not merge into a capacity to hear the Word of God apart from grace. (This follows from the nature of grace, but with respect to an evolutionary view, note, Church Dogmatics, III:2, pp. 82-84.) And secondly, we shall show that economic vitality depends upon grace, upon hearing the God's Word. According to Barth's exegesis, creation is wholly good; as created, it provides for humanity's economic welfare (Eden) and does not wait for future technical developments to insure its bounty. Rather, economic suffering is the result of sin, the refusal to hear the Word of God and respond to it. Therefore, the technical aspect of economic life is not as decisive for Barth as it is for Segundo.
11. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 43.
12. Ibid., p. 74. For the discussion on creation time, the time of the covenant, and fallen time, see pp. 72-76. Also comments 211, 276.
13. Ibid., III:1, pp. 14-15. We established this in the first chapter in the discussion on the eternal generation of the Son.
14. Ibid., pp. 76-92.
15. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I:1, p. 413; III:1, pp. 16, 78; III:2, pp. 152-157; III:3, p. 73.
16. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 79.
17. Ibid., excursus pp. 87-90.
18. The covenant or political aspects of economic life are known only Christologically, the technical aspects are known through natural knowledge, and the relation between the two is given through a Christological understanding of God and humanity's economic relation to creation. To date, the discussion of Barth's socialism has yet to make sense of the fact that Barth discusses economic life in the context of creation, and therefore economic life contains a natural element. Our approach is a novel one.
19. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 3. The primary conclusion of Barth's initial section on creation, pp. 3-41, is that creation can be understood only Christologically.
20. Ibid., pp. 64-65, also 92-94. 21. Ibid., p. 44.
22. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
23. Ibid., the sections "Creation as Benefit," pp. 330-334, and "Creation as Justification," pp. 366-415. Note also comments, Church Dogmatics, III:3, pp. 38-41.
24. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 38.
25. Ibid., pp. 41-42. See the excursus pp. 39-41, where Barth presents the biblical evidence for the goodness of God the Creator's being revealed in Jesus Christ.
26. Here we find a decisive difference between Barth and Segundo. According to Segundo, creation advances by means of higher synthesis, but these higher levels of complexity culminating in love are opposed by a counterforce which is itself a constituent element of creation. This counterforce is entropy, the inclination toward simplicity and minimum effort. Entropy has its basis in the fact that the supply of energy is fixed; its distribution may vary, but not its quantity. Higher syntheses require higher concentrations of energy, and this implies low energy simplicity and routine at lower thresholds. Therefore, routine and simplicity must exist in order for more complex syntheses to occur at higher levels. This occurs at the social level in that human life requires pyramids of lower-level routines culminating in the complex structures that characterize social life. (Evolution and Guilt, pp. 17-20, 22-25, 35-39, 69-73, 84.) Furthermore, Segundo visualizes entropy as a power. He calls it concupiscence or sin, and it is an involuntary structure that is inherited, both at the personal and social level. At the social level it leads to indifference, exploitation, and cruelty. Furthermore, each level sums up all prior levels, and realities at any one level exist analogously at lower levels. Consequently, sin or concupiscence exists analogously as the structure of existence at levels below the strictly personal and social level (25-27, 69-73; see pp. 51-60 on sin's social character, and comments pp. 107-110). From this point of view, chaos and sin belong to the natural order. They are necessary as the simplicity and routine which dialectically impede and allow higher syntheses. "The process itself is significant. The historical process is one, and it is directed by Yahweh himself toward the fulfillment of his promises. Within this process evil does not proceed from another God nor does it belie Yahweh's benevolence. It is a necessary part of the process, and hence it merits epithets that take due account of its ambiguous--or better--dialectical role: the same process is due to Yahweh and Satan." (p. 71.) Barth, of course, will have none of this. Although the power of chaos hangs over creation, it is not an essential ingredient of creation. Barth is able to make this statement since he distinguishes creation history from general history. General history is history subject to the power of chaos, and Segundo's analysis is a description of general history conceived in evolutionary terms. Segundo's view allows the possibility of justifying economic misery as belonging to the nature of things. Economic suffering could be understood as the degradation and lack of technical complexity that must exist on certain levels in order for higher economic levels to occur as more complex syntheses.
27. We shall present the evidence for this shortly.
28. See Barth's discussion, Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 56-59.
29. Barth, IV:3, first half, pp. 38-164. 30. Ibid., pp. 136-165.
31. Ibid., p. 147. See also, III:2, pp. 12-13, 23-25.
32. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV:3, first half, pp. 143-50.
33. Ibid., pp. 137-163. 34. Ibid., p. 156. 35. Ibid., p. 157.
36. Barth reaches similar conclusions in the context of his anthropology under heading of his doctrine of creation. There he asserts that certain results of the natural or anthropological sciences can give what he calls "symptoms" of the true human nature, once that nature is first known by grace, that is, in Jesus Christ. See Church Dogmatics, III:2, the comment the bottom of page 74, and the discussion beginning p. 75. See also concluding comments, pp. 121-2, after Barth has discussed several anthropological alternatives.
37. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 98.
38. Ibid., excursus, pp. 102-110, and particulary the conclusions on p. 108.
39. Ibid., p. 110. 40. Ibid., pp. 112-13.
41. Ibid., p. 115. See comments pp. 114-5. 42. Ibid., p. 120.
43. Ibid., p. 121. 44. Ibid., p. 120. 45. Ibid., p. 122.
46. Ibid., p. 122. 47. Ibid., pp. 121-3. 48. Ibid., pp. 121, 129.
49. Ibid., pp. 129-133. 50. Ibid., p. 136. 51. Ibid., p. 139.
52. Ibid., p. 141. 53. Ibid., p. 140. 54. Ibid., p. 144.
55. Ibid., pp. 144-49 for the discussion that follows.
56. Ibid., p. 149. 57. Ibid., p. 146. 58. Ibid., p. 147.
59. Ibid., p. 148. 60. Ibid., p. 149.
61. Ibid., pp. 149-56, for the following discussion.
62. Ibid., p. 150. 63. Ibid., p. 144. 64. Ibid., p. 143.
65. Ibid., pp. 152-3. 66. Ibid., p. 155. 67. Ibid., 151.
68. Ibid., pp. 152-6. 69. Ibid., p. 156.
70. Ibid., excursus pp. 159-68. 71. Ibid., pp. 163-4.
72. Ibid., pp. 169-71, and the excursus, pp. 171-76, for Barth's discussion of the fifth day.
73. Ibid., pp. 171-72.
74. An article by Verne Fletcher gives an excellent summary of Barth's doctrine of co-humanity as it appears in his doctrine of creation and in his Christology. Fletcher relates Barth's concept of co-humanity to the search for human community, and concludes that Barth's concept "is obviously incompatible both with a social theory which asserts the primacy of autonomous individuality and, on the other hand, with a theory which holds that the primary reality is Society, the State or a particular collectivity." (Verne Fletcher, "Barth's Concept of Co-Humanity and the Search for Human Community," South East Asia Journal of Theology 9 [April, 1968: pp. 36-48], p. 50.) Fletcher understands Barth's co-humanity to imply, and here he quotes Barth, a rejection of state coercion (Marxism), as well as capitalist individualism (p. 51). Apart from grace, the matter of the individual versus the society cannot be resolved.
75. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 191-2. Barth's belief that the "let us" refers to Trinity follows ultimately from his Christological presupposition that the Old Testament revelation is secretly in itself the beginning of the revelation in Jesus Christ in which God is revealed as triune. According to Barth's exegesis, if the "Let us" referred to an angelic entourage of created beings, then according to verse twenty-seven, humanity would be created in the image of God and this entourage. As it stands, the verses indicate that humanity is created only in God's image, and not in the image of other beings. Further, according to verse twenty-six, there is in God a plurality.
76. Ibid., pp. 183-7 and the excursus pp. 191-206, for this point and the material which follows. In this excursus Barth examines alternate views of the image of God, pp. 192-6. He presents his own view, pp. 196-8, and then presents corroborating ideas from both the Old and New Testaments, 198-205. Anthropology is the theme of Church Dogmatics, III:2, and in that volume, part 2 of section 45 (pp. 222-284), Barth deals with humanity in its basic form as beings in encounter. See, for example, comments, pp. 226-8, 243-50. See also, Karl Barth, Against the Stream, edited by Ronald Gregor Smith, (London: SCM Press, 1954), especially point two, pp. 187-188.
77. Barth, Church Dogmatics, section 46 of III:2, pp. 285-324, describes the male/female relation as the fundamental human form of being in encounter, pp. 288-293, and this in turn reflects Yahweh's covenant with Israel, pp. 297-9, and Jesus' relation with the church, pp. 300-324.
78. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 188-91.
79. Ibid., pp. 190-91, 201-205. This is readily apparent from the order of Church Dogmatics, III:2. Barth begins with a section 43, in which he discusses the basis of anthropology and concludes that it must be built on Christology, pp. 41-54. The remaining sections of this volume, sections 44-47, all begin with Christological portions. See index, pp. xiii.
80. A number of commentators have noted that Barth's conception of the social nature of God leads to a social conception of human life. Dannemann, for example, relates Barth's understanding of God's social nature to the social character of human life, both in the sphere of creation and of covenant. (Ulrich Dannemann, Theologie und Politik im Denken Karl Barths, [Munchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1977], pp. 136-9.) Our results affirm these conclusions with the caveat that the word "social" is defined by God's act and not by general conceptions of social life. This raises the question as to whether Barth's theology supports socialism as a political alternative. The thesis has been proposed that Barth did not affirm socialism as a general theory of social progress, but that his theology does lead to an affirmation of socialism on pragmatic or practical grounds. (Marquardt, p. 15; Hunsinger, Radical Politics, p. 8. Andreas Lindt concludes that Barth's theology leads to an affirmation of socialism, not as holy doctrine, nor as a doctrinaire program, but the best practical alternative at the given moment. Andreas Lindt, "Karl Barth und Der Sozialismus." Reformatio 24 [July-August: 394-404], p. 404. Barth himself, at one point, indicated a preference for socialism. Karl Barth, The Church and the War, translated by Antonia H. Freendt, (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1944), p. 39.) In our fifth chapter we shall present an empirical analysis of one aspect of contemporary economic history, and in light of that analysis assess the practical significance of Barth's theology. The fact that God is social within himself, and that economic life has its basis in social history, will lead us to make use of a socialist analysis of economic life in contrast to a capitalist one, and to argue for forms of acting responsibly in economic affairs that have greater affinity with socialism rather than capitalism. We will not reach those conclusions, however, because we believe that Barth's theology affirms socialism. We shall show that Barth resolutely refused to directly link the Kingdom of God with any social program. Barth's theology is a theology of the Word. The Word does not proclaim the practical validity of socialism as a general truth. Depending upon the Word, one may affirm socialism in a given context, but never on general grounds as either a practical or theoretically valid goal. Our position does not deny that Barth was a socialist. But if, at a given moment, he affirmed socialism on practical grounds, it could only be because he felt directed by the Word toward a practical affirmation of socialism, rather than because socialism was a practical goal of his theology. This assumes that his actions were consistent with his theology.
81. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 186.
82. See Barth's discussion on "Near and Distant Neighbors", Church Dogmatics, III:4, pp. 285-323. Barth raises the question as to what factors are relevant for hearing the Word of God in one's concrete circumstances in life. He begins with a common language and location, and shared history, and these give rise to national differences. He notes that these differences are significant for shaping human life, but he will not allow any of these to limit the Word of God. National boundaries are fluid with respect to this Word, p. 300. In Church Dogmatics, IV:4, The Christian Life, pp. 219-224, Barth places political and economic absolutisms as the first and second of the Lordless Powers, thereby recognizing both political and economic factors as powerful determinants of human behavior. Karl Barth, The Christian Life, (Church Dogmatics Vol. IV, Part 4, Lecture Fragments), trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981.)
83. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:4, p. 294.
84. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 207. See discussion pp. 205-208 for comments on God's initial commands.
85. Violence, in Segundo's view, is an essential element of the order of things. The evolutionary advance does not increase the available supply of energy, but only its distribution, so that preferences for certain complexes imply losses of energy in other areas. These other areas will have violence done to them as they are ignored or subjected to deadening routine. (Evolution and Guilt, pp. 17-20, 22-25, 116-8; The Liberation of Theology, pp. 157-162.) By way of example, Segundo points out that Jesus did violence to some in order to have the time and energy to attend to others. (Our Idea of God, p. 169; The Liberation of Theology, pp. 162-65.) The crucial question is, who benefits from the limited supply of energy, and what other classes and orders are subjected to violence in the process? Segundo chooses for the poor and oppressed, and this implies a degree of violence against their oppressors. For Barth, violence is not inevitable. As we shall see in chapter three, aspects of Barth's theology indicate a preference for the poor, but this does not of necessity entail violence against the upper classes, since the Word of God is not limited in its "supply of energy." But that does not imply that the Word cannot call people to violent action. Barth's view of violence is close to that of Bonino, who notes that Scripture advocates violence in certain contexts, and not in others, and this depending upon "God's announcement-commandment, as concrete acts which must be carried out or avoided in view of a result, or a relation, of a project indicated by the announcement-commandment." (Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, p. 117.) With respect to Barth, we shall address the matter in chapter four, and conclude in chapter five that the failure to provide an adequate economic existence is grounds for violence.
86. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 211-2. 87. Ibid., p. 213.
88. Ibid., pp. 213-9, and the excursus pp. 219-228, for Barth's treatment of the seventh day.
89. Ibid., p. 217. 90. Ibid., pp. 223-5, and especially 224.
91. Ibid., p. 228. 92. Ibid., p. 229. 93. Ibid., p. 234.
94. Ibid., p. 250. 95. Ibid., p. 232.
96. Ibid., pp. 234-9, and the excursus pp 239-49, for Barth's discussion of Gen. 2:4b-7.
97. Ibid., p. 244. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid., p. 235.
100. Ibid., p. 237. 101. Ibid., p. 235. 102. Ibid., p. 239.
103. Ibid., pp. 235-8, 242-7, for Barth's discussion of Adam's being created from the ground.
104. Ibid., p. 236. 105. Ibid., p. 237.
106. Ibid., p. 243, and statements, Church Dogmatics, III:2 , pp. 325, 389-90. Bonino calls the denigration of the body and of work, and its expression in idealistic philosophy and theology, the "idealist inversion." He suggests this inversion both originated in and fortified certain social and economic conditions: "Is it purely fortuitous that this idealist interpretation should have been developed by Greek philosophers living in an aristocracy of idleness in which manual work was confined to slaves?" (Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, p. 110.)
In a similar vein, Barth observes that the church has consistently overvalued the soul, and ignored the body and thereby "shown a culpable indifference towards the problem of matter, of bodily life, and therefore of contemporary economics." When has it not, in Barth words, "stood on the side of the ruling classes." (Church Dogmatics, III:2, p. 389.) The thrust of Barth's criticism at this point is directed toward the church and its theology, and to do this he makes use of a number of Marxist ideas. Marquardt quotes these ideas as well, but describes them as judgment on Barth's part against bourgeois society, rather than a judgment against the church (p. 315). This is not an accurate reading of Barth on Marquardt's part, and he does not continue on with Barth's discussion of Marxism. Barth describes Marxism as living on in "that soulless figure of a man," as a "violation of history," and that its material emphasis on human nature is an "error," and "a curse lying on this matter" which will one day avenge itself, and "take on more and more of the spirit, or lack of spirit, of that robot man." (Church Dogmatics, III:2, p. 389.) Barth does not castigate Marxism for this failing, but judges the church whose ethereal notions lead to the outbreak of a materialistic creed such as Marxism. Barth makes similar remarks in another context in response to suggestions that Marxism represents the anti-christ. Rather than focusing on the evils of Marxism he turns to the church. "Has the church appreciated the fact that the materialism of Marxism contains something of the message of the resurrection of the flesh. I would be able to start from there. The fatal mistake of Christianity is that it has identified itself with the conservative classes: the church and army, the upper classes, the aristocracy and the monarchy." [Karl Barth, Der Gotze wackelt, (Berlin, Kathe Vogt Verlag, 1961), pp. 120-1.] Barth's theology is a theology for the church. He was concerned for society, but through his efforts in the church and not conversely. Barth wrote a church dogmatics, not a political dogmatics; his first emphasis was theology, not political science. He uses Marxism at this point is to call the church to repentance. We shall, following Barth, direct ourselves to the church. We shall offer suggestions to the church, suggestions which counter its tendency to "stand on the side of the ruling classes." See the comments by James Bentley on Barth's use of Marx in Church Dogmatics, III:2. James Bentley, "Karl Barth as a Christian Socialist." Theology 76 (July 1973: 349-56.), p. 352-3. Especially see the excellent article by Shelly Baranowski in which she reviews Barth's political involvement and reaches the conclusion that the "conceptual priority of theology is the foundation upon which one understands the uniqueness of Barth's approach to politics. The primacy of theology is apparent in both Barth's use of socialism and in the intersection of Barth's background with his political environment." Shelly Baranowski, "The Primacy of Theology: Karl Barth and Socialism," Studies in Religion, 10, (1981, pp. 451-461), p. 454.
107. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:2, p. 328.
108. This is discussed by Barth in Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 203-436. For Barth's rejection of trichotomism, see Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 249; III:2, pp. 354-355. According to Charles West, Barth recognized that the church had done injustice to the bodily aspects of the Christian faith, and would be in no position to counter the Marxist criticism of religion until she had rectified this failing. In West's words: "So long as the Church does not revise her doctrine of man from the point of view of this eschatological hope; so long as she does not learn that God's promise is given to men in both body and soul, a total blessing and hope; so long as she hides in a body-soul dualism instead of confronting the world with the message of the kingdom of God, she will face the Communists helpless because of her own bad conscience." (Communism and the Theologians, [Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1958], pp. 214-5.) Part of our objective is to overcome this defect.
109. For this section see Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, pp. 249-276, and the excursus pp. 277-288.
110. Ibid., p. 277. 111. Ibid., p. 249. 112. Ibid., p. 255.
113. Ibid., pp. 267-268. 114. Ibid., p. 274. 115. Ibid.
116. Ibid., p. 276.
117. Ibid. The Christological basis of creation is also described by Barth as creation's justification, section 42 part 3, pp. 366-414. This justification consists of the fact that God took form in Jesus Christ to redeem creation, p. 385.
118. Ibid., p. 280. 119. Ibid., p. 278.
120. Ibid., pp. 256-7, 269-70, 281-4, for Barth's discussion of the tree of life.
121. Ibid., p. 257. 122. Ibid., p. 282.
123. Ibid., pp. 257-266, 269-70, 284-88, for Barth's discussion of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
124. Ibid., p. 287.
125. Ibid., pp. 257, 282-4, for Barth's comments on Adam's expulsion.
126. Since sin is a violation of the covenant, Barth locates his discussion of sin in the volume on reconciliation, Church Dogmatics, IV. He gives his reasons for doing so in IV:1, pp. 138-45, 359-413, IV:2, pp. 378-403, and IV:3, first half, pp. 368-434. Barth understands sin strictly in terms of covenant. Segundo understands sin from a social point of view, and also as a characteristic of the evolutionary advance. Sin, in his view, is the power of entropy, mass action, and simplicity. This occurs in the social realm, and it also occurs in a more attenuated form at lower levels, and this would include biological life. (For social aspects see, Evolution and Guilt, pp. 35-39; Grace and the Human Condition, pp. 37-39; Our Idea of God, p. 16; for lower level effects see, Evolution and Guilt, pp. 34, 107-110.) Therefore, the sin and chaos that affects economic life possesses a certain independence relative to human social life, with the result that economic misery may result not only from broken social relations, but also from the lack of sufficient technical expertise as given in the evolutionary advance. Segundo goes in that direction when he suggests that recent technical developments are steps to higher levels of economic life. (The Community Called Church, pp. 118-120; Our Idea of God, p. 44.) In the final chapter, we shall present an economic analysis. At that point we shall recognize that the developed countries have introduced a number of technical innovations into underdeveloped economies. Following Barth, we shall not, however, make these technical advancements a significant factor for understanding human economic progress or misery. From a Barthian perspective, creation is wholly good. There is nothing in creation which awaits further evolutionary developments in order to secure a sufficient economic life. Rather, economic deterioration is the result of sin, and even the technical difficulties of economic life, as witnessed by life outside Eden, have their basis in the broken covenant. Our key for understanding economic misery will be broken covenant relations among peoples. Segundo is a liberation theologian, and he clearly recognizes the importance of social life for economic affairs. (The Community Called Church, pp. 118-120.) Nevertheless, his emphasis allows us to seek some of the causes of economic suffering in nature, and not strictly in social relations. His view would give greater credence to technical solutions, rather than solutions requiring social transformation.
127. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, 267-8.
128. Ibid., p. 254. See also, Church Dogmatics, III:4, pp. 553-4.
129. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 278. 130. Ibid., p. 277.
131. In the context of discussing the triune character of God in contrast to the God of natural theology, Segundo indicates the pertinence of this discussion by asking whether "we glimpse in the products we buy the human countenance of the worker who produced them?" (Our Idea of God, p. 141.) We have made a similar correlation between Trinity and labor.
132. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 277.
133. This conclusion is obscured in Barth since he does not clearly indicate that Adam served God in his work, but rather, Barth observes that Adam's primary task is to serve the land. See Barth's initial discussion of v. 5 on p. 235 of Church Dogmatics, III:1, his discussion of the meaning of the word Adam on 244, his interpretation of v. 15 on pp. 250, 278. Normally, however, Barth never discusses the relation to nature apart from covenant relations. Consequently, Adam's work cannot be divorced from his relation to God as God's servant. Christologically, as the new Adam, this is seen in Barth's understanding of Jesus' ministry as one of service. The two primary moments in Jesus' reconciling work are entitled, "Jesus Christ, the Lord as Servant" and "Jesus Christ, the Servant as Lord."
134. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:3, pp. 517-60.
135. According to our study of Church Dogmatics, III:1, matters of economic relevance are central to Barth's doctrine of creation. In Church Dogmatics, III:2, Barth presents his anthropology, and he emphasizes the bodily aspect of human existence. In III:4, one of Barth's primary themes is life, and this includes the sustaining of its bodily aspects. The material on work occurs in the third section on life, and the purpose of work is to maintain bodily existence. This treatment is really the only major discussion of economic affairs within the Church Dogmatics. Therefore, bodily existence is a primary theme of Barth's doctrine of creation, and we are right in discussing the technical aspect of economic life in relation to creation.
136. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:4, pp. 516-527. In Bonino's view, "there seems to be in the Bible no relation of man to himself, to his neighbor, or even to God which is not mediated in terms of man's work." (Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, p. 109.) In our context, Bonino's observation is an expression of the fact that no mode exists without the others (1.6), so that every aspect of social relations appropriated to the Son requires an external basis in work appropriated to the Father.
137. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:4, p. 536. Barth presents five characteristics of work, the third being its social character, pp. 534-545. Marquardt's discussion of this section of the Church Dogmatics can be found on pp. 331-2.
138. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:4, pp. 541-3. 139. Ibid., p. 544.
140. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III:1, p. 290-1.
141. Ibid., p. 295. The creation stories are sagas not only in the sense that no one was there to observe God's creative acts, but, they are also sagas in that God's fresh acts are not the actualization of possibilities that creation itself already possessed, but wholly new events created by God.
142. Barth doesn't make these appropriations in quite this way.
143. The purpose of this proposition is to eliminate other economic considerations which frequently ally themselves with a cosmology--a mathematical or historical view of economic life. These theories may have a limited validity. Nevertheless, by (2.4), economic life is ultimately directed by Word and Spirit, and the Word is not subject to historical or mathematical laws.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
1986
An Egregious Theological Failure
Anglicanism and Justification - Introduction to Anglicanism
Barth - Reconciliation and Economic Life Chapter Three
Barth's Creation and Economic Life Chapter Two
Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity - Chapter One
Capitalism and Paganism--An Intimate Connection
Creation, Science, and the New World Order
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Anglicanism and the Prayer Book
Introduction to Anglicanism - Anglicanism and Justification
Introduction to the Theological Essays
John Jewel and the Roman Church
Karl Barth, the German Christians, and ECUSA - Introduction
Mathematics, Science, and the Love of God
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Some Reflections On Evil and the Existence of God
The Historical Jesus and the Spirit
