According to Barth, Stephen, there are three forms of the Word of God - Jesus Christ primarily, at second hand the Bible, and at third hand Church proclamation.

I thank God that I have read the Bible forward and backward over the course of many years. In fact I have several shelves of commentaries on the various books of the Bible. But with a few exceptions - the Zohar for instance or Barth's commentary on Romans - they are all written from the historical/critical point of view.

Barth certainly had an in-depth knowledge of Augustine and Thomas and held the same view of the Logos that they held.

I would rather not advocate Barth to anyone. The problem for me, and for Hans Kung (who was one of Barth's few Catholic students), and one you mentioned earlier, is that Barth has an extremely negative view of natural theology. He had good reasons for this view. He thought , for instance, that it was the natural theology of the Protestant and Catholic Churches that allowed both of them to come to terms with Hitler.

But the natural theology of neither Church derived from Hegel. The natural theology of the Protestant Church derived mainly from Schleiermacher. One wonders, if Hegelian theology had been picked up and continued as a living, vital theology after Hegel's death, if this theology would have been less tempted by national socialism.

From the little I know about Hegel and from reading Paul's many quotes, I am wondering if Barth's rejection of natural theology could be addressed from the point of view of Hegelian theology.

That I am modern and secular certainly isn't a stance on my part. I was born that way. And so was almost everyone else that I know. So on the one hand I feel like the world needs Hegel's theology. But on the other hand I can't imagine that the world would ever care less about such a thing.

If Hegel, by the way, knew as much about Hindu philosophy as Schopenhauer then, as far as I'm concerned, he would know a great deal about it - perhaps even more than the Hindus themselves.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Cowley
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:27 AM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Barth's critique of Hegel


Re the following:

John,

I'm afraid you've probably picked the wrong person to advocate Barth to!
You are wrong in saying that Barth is not referring to the Bible when he
speaks of Revelation. He is explicitly including it, as he makes clear in
the Word of God volumes of Church Dogmatics, though you are right that
Christ is the primary reference. Hence the stress on 'hearing' the Word of
God (i.e. the message of scripture spoken to us). Of course he also rejects
the rationalist interpretation of 'logos' (the 'word' of the prologue of the
4th Gospel) as indicating reason, in line with his overall strategy of
insulating religion from philosophical criticism. Here Hegel obviously
takes a quite different line, being saturated with the spirit of Greek
philosophy.

As for your 'modern' stance, the truth and importance of an argument
obviously are independent of its age, and novelty is a poor guide to truth
or quality in philosophy (how are we to take 'postmodern' literature for
example). In fact, as you may know, we have discussed Hindu philosophy on
this group, though Hegel's ideas on the subject are underdeveloped, due to
the lack of texts available to him in the early 1800s. I agree with a
'modern' stance though, if this implies treating religion as something
living. As for 'secular', I can only guess what you are implying by the
term. I would not take it as a given that Hegel interpreters would accept
it as an inevitable stance from which to interpret Hegel.

All the best
Stephen


----- Original Message -----
From: JOHN BARDIS
>
> You are quite persistent, by the way, concerning the Bible. When Barth
speaks of revelation he isn't referring to the Bible. For Barth - and for
Christian theologians in general, and even for the Church in general - God's
revelation is Jesus Christ. The Bible is the prophetic and apostolic witness
to God's revelation.
>
> I mean that I am modern and secular. Antique arguments about the Trinity
and revelation and the Bible and Jesus Christ are quite foreign to my
nature. We could just as well be talking about Hindu philosophy.
>
> John


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