#291. Karl har ordet…

"According to Holy Scripture God’s revelation is a ground which has no higher or deeper ground above or below it but is an absolute ground in itself, and therefore for man a court from which there can be no possible appeal to a higher court. Its reality and its truth do not rest on a superior reality and truth. They do not have to be actualised or validated as reality from this or any other point. They are not to be compared with any such nor judged and understood as reality and truth by reference to such. On the contrary, God’s revelation has its reality and truth wholly and in every respect—both ontically ans noetically—within itself. Only if one denies it can one ascribe to it another higher or deeper ground or try to understand and accept or reject it from the standpoint of this higher or deeper ground. Obviously even the acceptance of revelation from the standpoint of this different and supposedly higher ground, e.g., an acceptance of revelation in which man first sets his own conscience over it as judge, can only entail the denial of revelation.

Revelation is not made real and true by anything else, whether in itself or for us. Both in itself and for us it is real and true through itself. This differentiates it even from the witness which the prophets and apostles and the witness which the expositors and preachers of Scripture bear to it, at any rate to the extent that this witness is considered per se. If we can also say that the witness both in itself and for us is grounded through itself, this is in virtue of the fact that this witness does not merely seek to relate itself to revelation but does actually relate itself to it, because revelation has become an event in it. This can happen. And it must happen if Scripture and proclamation are to be God’s Word. They must become it. Revelation does not have to become it. The fulness of the original self-existent being of God’s Word reposes and lives in it."

• Barth, Karl, 2009: Church Dogmatics; I.1 The Doctrine of the Word of God. New York: T&T Clark. (Utg på tyska av Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1932-1938.) KD S 305.