Biblical hermeneutics and spiritual interpretation: the revelatory presence of God in Karl Barth's theology of scripture.

Abstract

Modern methods of historical-critical and literary interpretation have secularized biblical interpretation by treating scripture as a strictly human text that can be understood by discerning the meaning of its many human authors and redactors. In a similar way modern fundamentalist and patristic exegesis have also secularized biblical interpretation in that they assume that scripture itself is the Word of God, whose meaning is readily evident from the words on the page and no longer requires the gracious gift of God's action and presence to make its meaning manifest. This paper argues that Karl Barth's theology of scripture provides the resources to revitalize biblical interpretation because Barth takes seriously the full humanity of the Bible and the need for historical interpretation while understanding that any interpretation of scripture's transcendent subject matter requires the presence of God's Word and Spirit to make its meaning understood and applied in the Church and world today.

**************

In Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis: The Hermeneutical Principles of the Romerbrief Period (2004), Richard E. Burnett argues that Barth had already developed his hermeneutical principles well before the publication of the first edition of his famous commentary on Romans. After a careful scrutiny of six unpublished preface drafts to the Romerbrief,, Burnett was able to determine that; by as early as the summer of 1918, Barth had not only identified the shortcomings of the empathic tradition of hermeneutics since Schleiermacher but also rejected the universalizing, historicizing, and psychologizing tendencies of much subsequent biblical scholarship. Takings his cue from Hans George Gadamer's remark that Barth's Romerbrief represents a "hermeneutical manifesto" that challenged the reigning hegemony of empathic hermeneutics, Burnett argues that Barth's break with theological liberalism did not come from a new theological method or theory of interpretation, but simply from having come to terms with the inability of modern hermeneutical theory to understand the unique subject matter of scripture: God.

According to Burnett, Barth immediately recognized the danger of grounding an interpretation of scripture in the human capacity to empathize with another. For Barth, such a grounding would necessarily presuppose a universal core of humanity--"the assumption that each person contains a minimum of everybody else" (Burnett: 155, 187)--which would mean that all interpretation would ultimately boil down to a comparison with oneself. As Burnett shows, Barth considered such an approach especially disastrous in theology because human beings cannot empathize or identify with a subject matter that is "wholly other." Hence, for Barth the "wholesale anthropologization of theology" since Schleiermacher in which "man increasingly became the subject of theology and God his predicate," had, in reality, very little to do with God or with the witness of scripture and everything to do with a psychological point of contact between the reader and the author (Burnett: 39).

Barth develops his hermeneutical principles in greater detail in Church Dogmatics I.2 (1938). In this later reflection he goes beyond critiquing the empathic hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and the modern tradition of disinterested scholarly inquiry and historicism by offering a constructive theology of scripture with powerful spiritual resources for revitalizing contemporary theology and biblical studies. At the same time, Barth does not reject the insights and value of historical-critical methodologies. Although he has long been lambasted as a biblicist, anti-historicist, and polemical proponent of an outdated and irrelevant neo-orthodoxy (Dorrien: 6-10), his critical, dialectical retrieval of the Bible as a human witness to divine revelation ignores neither modern questions of historicity nor spiritual questions of divine inspiration. Indeed, one of Barth's most extraordinary contributions to biblical studies is his ability to maintain both readings of scripture simultaneously. Consider, for example, his open admission that scripture can be flawed by social, cultural, religious, and even theological perspectives.

   [T]he vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its capacity for error,
   also extends to its religious or theological content....[T]he
   biblical authors shared the outlook and spoke the language of
   their own day.... [A]t point after point we find them echoing
   contemporaries in time and space who did not share their
   experience and witness often resembling them so closely that it is
   impossible to distinguish between them. Not only part but all
   that they say is historically related and conditioned... [so that]
   many parts.., cannot be accepted as religious and theological
   literature [CD I.2,509].

Yet Barth also urges his readers not to set out deliberately to detect errors in scripture, but, rather, to replace a "hermeneutic of suspicion" with a "hermeneutic of trust" so that modern scholars learn to stand with (not against or above) the biblical testimony (Burnett: 125-26); to read scripture as a human testimony to God's action in history.

How, then, does Barth read scripture according to this radical dialectic of divine and human agency? How does he manage to navigate between the historical flaws of the biblical writers and their divine and infallible source without undermining the humanity of the biblical proclamation or proceeding as though he were privy to some sort of intellectual mastery of his divine subject matter? Most important for our present day, how does Barth understand the divine act of grace which testifies to itself in the witness of scripture so that today's Church can preach and teach the Word of God to a world desperate for spiritual and ecclesial renewal? For the Church is itself embroiled in this very challenge, torn as it currently is between secularism and fundamentalism, between Ebionitism and Docetism, as many prospective parishioners dabble in new age spiritualities or migrate to Pentecostal or other charismatic communities.

The answers to these questions bring us to the spiritual nature of Barth's way of reading scripture and doing theology. Despite the enormous influence Barth has had on contemporary theology, his contribution in the important areas of biblical hermeneutics and what is commonly called "spirituality" has yet to be fully realized or adequately implemented. Few biblical scholars engage in spiritual readings of scripture, and many who do seldom specialize in historical-critical and literary methodologies. Far more interested in understanding a text in itself and in terms of its human authors and redactors, most historical and literary studies neglect a key component of the scriptural witness, namely, that the Bible itself is chiefly interested in proclaiming the good news of God's salvific action in history (John 20:31) that takes place both through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation (2 Pet 1:20).

Yet, modern methods of biblical hermeneutics have appropriated secular methodologies that sacrifice spiritual interpretation. This has led not only to the secularization of biblical interpretation, but also to the increasing factionalization among scholars and clergy seeking competing hermeneutical theories to interpret the transcendent Word of God. As I argue in this article, Barth's approach provides the resources to revitalize biblical interpretation and to bring scholars together precisely because his approach does not come from a human theory of interpretation, but from the active presence of God's Word and Spirit in the "earthen vessels" of human interpretation (2 Cor 4:7). By focusing on the explicitly theological nature of biblical interpretation, I hope to show that Barth offers concrete, spiritual wisdom for an historically informed theological interpretation of scripture so that scholarly interpretation and pastoral application may benefit from insights that come, ultimately, from the intimate encounter with God in the life of the individual interpreter in the Church.

Prior to the modern era, the notion of the presence of God in scriptural interpretation had often played a profound role in the classical tradition. But according to Barth, the problem of the secularization of scripture is not unique to the modern era, in which scholars embrace the purely secular methodologies of the academy and eschew the kinds of spiritual and meditative practices that once animated biblical reflection. Even in the patristic period, Barth argues, the tendency to understand the Bible itself as the Word of God, dictated directly by God and not received as a human witness to revelation, undermined the genuine humanity of the biblical proclamation in order to find a secure foundation for the Word of God. The result of the patristic notion of "dictation," according to Barth, was a "naive secularization" and "a transmuting of the word of man which is real only in appearance" into the Word of God itself, so that "the whole mystery of the freedom of [God's] presence...was lost.., both in the mouths of the biblical witnesses and also in our ears and hearts" (I.2,518). The same may be said of much evangelical and fundamentalist interpretation today. If the Bible itself is the Word of God and human only in appearance, then biblical exegetes may proceed as if they already know what God has said and is saying and, hence, need not submit themselves to the actual presence of God through the Spirit.

For Barth, therefore, it is not only modern Ebionitism that robs scripture of its revelatory force, by concerning itself with a strictly human interpretation of a strictly human text in which the scholar gains a mastery of scripture by discerning the meaning of its many authors and redactors; but also the Docetism of modern fundamentalist and patristic exegesis, which assumes that the Word of God and its interpretation are always immediately available. In both cases, the Bible is not understood as a fully human witness to revelation whose interpretation depends upon the gracious mystery of God's actual presence. Barth's point is precisely that the Bible becomes the Word of God only when God, in God's freedom and love, becomes present to the human interpreter and makes use of the biblical testimony to make the Word heard and understood in the world today. The result of this bold insight, as I shall argue, is nothing less than a spiritual and transformative interpretation of scripture for the Christian life that recognizes its full humanity while deriving its central content from the active power and presence of God.

Roman Catholic Liberalism in Light of the Hermeneutical Problem of God

Many theologians and pastors unfamiliar with Barth's thought may have been dissuaded from visiting his theological works because of his reputation for polemics and rhetoric, or simply because of the massive length of the Church Dogmatics itself. Yet as Hans Frei has shown, Barth wrote lengthy and elaborate prose in order to reconstitute an ecclesial and biblical language that had long gone out of style in the era of secular modernity (Webster 2000: 50). Barth sought, not only to give theologians and pastors a humble example to speak boldly of God, but also to turn their theological gaze away from themselves and return it to what had always been the subject matter of Christian theology: God. As Barth frequently said, God is God, and theologians, exegetes, and preachers all have the daunting task of speaking about this most elusive subject matter. Hence, for Barth, the central hermeneutical problem of scripture has always been the problem of the knowledge of God, the answer to which cannot be resolved through hermeneutical theory or scholarly examination. Rather, for Barth and much of the pre-modern tradition, understanding of God's Word in scripture can come only from God's Word and Spirit, which is received in faith and obedience. Moreover, from Barth's perspective, most modern hermeneutical theories about scripture fail to understand that without God's gracious involvement, one's interpretation is inevitably going to be a projection of the interpreter's imagination, wishes, and aspirations that says more about the individual interpreter than about scripture's transcendent subject matter. Barth's entire theological program, it may be said, was to reorient human thoughts so that they receive their meaning from God's revelation in the Gospel and not interpret the Gospel according to human thoughts, feelings, or experiences. As Barth succinctly stated, "It is not the fight human thoughts about God which form the content of the Bible, but the right divine thoughts about men" (Barth 1978: 43).

It is important to realize that when Barth was a preacher, before he had entered the international stage of theology with the publication of his commentary on Romans, he had followed the tradition of his liberal predecessors by making references from the pulpit to his own personal experiences, political views, and the latest findings of historical scholarship. Yet he also observed that such appeals lacked the authority and confidence maintained by the more conservatively educated colleagues who had a host of authoritative doctrines and positions from which to preach to their congregations. In short, because Barth still wanted

to ground faith in the authority of his own experience of God, he believed that his own personal experience was above the Word of God, as if he had already mastered it, and hence was not in need of learning that message anew in ever changing historical situations (McCormack: 124-25).

Many Roman Catholic scholars today, particularly since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), are similarly claiming their experience as grounds for faith and revelation. For many, turning to personal experience as a source for theology and biblical interpretation has proved to be refreshing, to say the least, given the authoritarian ecclesial structure and doctrinaire theology of 19th and early 20th century neo-scholasticism. In rejecting any theology that even sounded authoritarian, many have been drawn toward the experiential approaches of transcendental Thomist theologians, such as Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, who offered a far more personal and less authoritarian alternative to talk about God on the basis of a general anthropology of human experience. Yet this is not to say that Barth and such theologians have nothing in common. Leland White has argued that Barth's turn away from the homo religiosus and Lonergan's turn to subjectivity share some important points of theological convergence. For example, both theologians operate within the sphere of the Church and recognize the fundamental role of God in the life of the theologian and his interpreter, whether this refers to Barth's understanding of God's revelatory activity or to Lonergan's notion of conversion (White: 323, 331,351).

Nonetheless, from Barth's perspective, the problem with all such anthropological methodologies is not only that they claim to explain, in universalist fashion, all of human experience (e.g., Lonergan's theory of cognition), but also that they are concerned, inevitably, to explain by way of Immanuel Kant how human beings can talk about a subject matter that "exceeds the grasp of human reason" (Aquinas' apt phrase repeated three times in the Summa Theologiae I.1.1). What Aquinas and Barth both realized, however, was that it is not human beings who can storm the gates of heaven to find a "natural knowledge" of God, but God who humbles himself in a human being to greet human beings on earth and lift them up to share in the glory of God's life. Indeed, the same may be said of biblical interpretation, insofar as human beings, as Barth insisted, have no innate capacity for interpreting the Word of God apart from efficacious or operative grace. With this, Aquinas and the whole premodern tradition would heartily agree: "The author of Holy Writ is God in whose power it is to signify his meaning" (ST I.1.10). Hence, as Barth realized in the preface drafts to the Romerbrief, at root the hermeneutical problem is the problem of the knowledge of God who, apart from grace, is shrouded in holy mystery. It is precisely for this reason that biblical hermeneutics depends fundamentally upon the power and presence of God's revelation to make the being of God known and understood; and this can be received only in the corresponding human act of faith and obedience to the revealed Word and his Holy Spirit.

The Role of Faith, Obedience, and God in Biblical Interpretation

We first see the implications of Barth's theology of scripture for the Christian life in the opening pages of Church Dogmatics (I.1) when he describes the attitude of biblical interpretation as one of faith and obedience. Since the task of theology, for Barth, is to inquire after the agreement of Church proclamation with scripture, theology ought always to begin with scripture, or, more precisely, with the attempt to be obedient to scripture. Yet, obedience, like faith itself, is not something that one can simply turn on at a moment of one's choosing; it too is an act of God which confronts human beings in their own freedom and history. According to Barth,

   faith ... is not a determination of human action which man can
   give to it at will or maintain at will once it is received....
   [I]t is the gracious address of God to man, the free personal
   presence of Jesus Christ in his activity. Hence ... at every step
   and with every statement [theology] presupposes the free grace
   of God....It always rests with God and not with us whether our
   hearing is real hearing and our obedience real obedience
   [I. 1, 18].

Since theology rests upon exegesis for Barth (I.2,462), exegesis itself must rest upon the power of God's continuing revelatory activity.

   If [our reading] is a witness of revelation, and if however tacit,
   there is a genuine and necessary obedience to it, then the witness
   itself and as such--as well as the revelation which it attests--is
   necessarily in the power of the revelation of the Word
   of God attested by it... [I.2,459, emphasis added].

Hence, for Barth, the obedient rendering of scripture is intimately bound up both with the interpreter's personal life of faith and the concrete action of God. As Barth many times has stated, the Word of God "forces itself upon us" (I.2,466), so that the perception of its truth "is always a matter of the divine election of grace" (I.I, 21). "It is only by revelation that revelation can be spoken in the Bible... and heard as the real substance of the Bible... [for] the biblical witness must itself be attested by what it attests" (I.2,469). Thus if the actual perception of scripture's revelatory force is possible only "as it gives itself to us" (I.1, 92), it would seem that the experience of revelation would sit at the very center of biblical reflection. Yet Barth is not at all interested in reading the Bible merely as a record of extraordinary experiences. Indeed, he denies that the actual perception of this witness has essentially anything to do with special experiences or illuminations (I.2, 458), even though he readily admits pneumatic "states" are ordinary and to be expected (I.2, 516, 537). Rather what fascinates Barth is that the biblical writers do not talk about themselves, nor do they suggest that their own experiences or interpretations are central to the proclamation. On the contrary, their words always point away from themselves and toward the living God of the covenant. The biblical writers, Barth argues,

   do not speak or write for their own sakes, nor for the sake of
   their deepest inner possession or need; they speak and write,
   as ordered, about that other.... They do not want to offer and
   commend themselves to the Church, and especially not their
   own particular experience of GOd and relationship to God, but
   through themselves [they point] to that other [I.1, 112].

Placing God and God's action at the very center of biblical interpretation is not only a bold maneuver in an age rife with secularism, but also stands, as we have seen, dramatically opposed to the empathic tradition of Schleiermacher whose quest was to understand an author even better than she understands herself. For Barth, who offers the first sustained response and critique of modern hermeneutics, the empathic tradition does theology and biblical interpretation a great disservice in that its concentration on anthropology and experience and actually leads people to turn to themselves, but not to God! While it may appear as an empathic attempt to understand another with love and understanding, for Barth, the anthropological approach of empathic hermeneutics actually lacks love and understanding because the reader is more interested in understanding the author's personality, history, or piety than in taking seriously the content of the message of the proclamation itself.

   My exposition cannot possibly consist in an interpretation of
   the speaker. Did he say something to me only to display himself?
   I should be guilty of a shameless violence against him, if
   the only result of my encounter with him were that I now knew
   him or knew him better than before. What lack of love! Did
   he not say anything to me at all? Did he not therefore desire I
   should see him not in abstracto but in his specific and concrete
   relationship to the thing described or intended in his word, that
   I should see him from the standpoint and in light of this thing?
   How much wrong is being continually perpetrated, how much
   intolerable obstruction of human relationships, how much isolation
   and impoverishment forced upon individuals has its only
   basis in the fact that we do not take seriously a claim which in
   itself is clear as the day, the claim which arises whenever one
   person addresses a word to another [I.2,465].

Therefore, instead of beginning with the assumption of a common humanity or an intuition or experience of the other in one's experience of oneself, Barth insists that exegesis must begin with "the concrete relationship of the thing attested" in the biblical testimony itself: God's revelation in Jesus Christ. This, then, is Barth's "universal rule of interpretation," that "a text can be read and understood and expounded only with reference to and in the light of its theme" (I.2, 493). Although such a special hermeneutic may be applied to the interpretation of any text, for Barth the main theme, subject matter, and content of scripture is God and God's concrete relationship with the person of faith. Citing I Corinthians 2:6-16, Barth notes that what the individual receives is the knowledge of the "benefits of divine wisdom," the mind of Christ, which simply is not available those who live according to the flesh (psuchikos anthropos). Rather, such knowledge is available only for those to whom the Spirit has revealed it (pneumatikos), enabling them to live in the Spirit and to judge all things accordingly (anakrinei ta panta): "It is only spiritually" Barth insists, "i.e., on the basis of the same work of the Spirit, by which he can know and therefore speak about these benefits" (I.2, 515-16).

Eisegesis or Surrender? Barth's Challenge to the Biblical Interpreter

If Barth's first rule of biblical hermeneutics is to listen to the actual subject matter, theme, and content of the biblical proclamation (Burnett: 125), his second rule is to recognize that there is a constant temptation to avoid reading the text in this way, that is, of eisegesis--of reading one's own meaning into a text. Here, Barth's comments are especially apt for those inclined to charismatic or literalistic renderings of the divine Word. Always aware of the tendency to read scripture m a way that justifies oneself or sanctions a previously adopted position, Barth warns us that more often than not we shall mishear what the prophets and apostles have to say and, instead, hear only what we ourselves want them to say.

   Our supposed listening is in fact a strange mixture of hearing and
   our own speaking, and, in accordance with the usual rule, it is most
   likely that our own speaking will be the really decisive event...we
   will.., hear as we always do, as though we already know, and can
   partly tell ourselves what we are to hear [I.2,470].

To overcome what Barth calls the "sickness with which all exposition is almost incurably afflicted.., of an insolent and arbitrary reading in" (I.2,470), Barth's advice is "devastatingly simple" (Webster 2000: 66). We must learn to begin our reading of scripture with constant, critical self-awareness of our own "evil domination of the text" (I.2, 471) and be prepared to listen as if we did not know what God wants to say. Quite simply, there is no guarantee against eisegesis. The only guarantee is when God steps in and testifies through the revelation of Christ made known by the Holy Spirit which can only be accepted in faith. In short, Barth offers the simple, timeless wisdom of turning to and trusting in God rather than ourselves. If we are prepared to do this, Barth states, if we are genuinely prepared to listen to God and not project our own desires and needs to God, then, the interpretation of scripture may become a spiritual event in which we are drawn into an act of God's self-communication. Inevitably, this too has extraordinary anthropological implications for the life of faith and Christian experience.

   We have to know the mystery of the substance if we are really
   to meet it, if we are really to be open and ready, really to give
   ourselves to it, when we are told it, that it may really meet us as
   the substance. And when it is a matter of understanding, the
   knowledge of this mystery will create in us a peculiar fear and
   reserve which is not at all unusual to us. We will then know
   that in the face of this subject matter, there can be no question
   of our achieving, as we do in others, the confident approach
   which masters and subdues the matter. It is rather a question
   of our being gripped by the subject-matter--not gripped physically,
   not making an experience of it and the like, although
   (ironically) that can happen--but really gripped, so that it is
   only as those who are mastered by the subject-matter, who are
   subdued by it, that we can investigate the humanity of the word
   by which it is told us [I.2,470].

Hence, from Barth's perspective, the proper interpretation of scripture begins with the full and flawed human proclamation of scripture as it points to and is inspired by God. But everything depends on the fact that scriptural interpretation is not under human control; it is never something that can be accessed or assessed merely by means of scholarly interpretation or historical reconstruction.

   But whether or not this experience is the experience, this attitude
   the attitude, and these thoughts the thoughts of faith.., is
   decided spiritually, i.e., not by faith, but by the Word believed.
   Hence one cannot lay down conditions which, if observed,
   guarantee hearing of the Word. There is no method by which
   revelation can be made revelation that is actually received, no
   method of scriptural exegesis which is truly pneumatic .... There
   is nothing of this kind because God's Word is a mystery in the
   sense that it truly strikes us spiritually, i.e., in all
   circumstances only through the Holy Spirit, in all its indirectness
   only directly from God [I. 1, 183, emphasis added].

Hence, scriptural interpretation requires more than technical mastery of ancient languages, cultures, or traditions; it also requires that one develop certain "spiritual skills" of the interpreter (Webster 2000: 67), such as those that involve faith, prayer, and the act of constant listening to God as the necessary condition for the possibility of faithful and accurate interpretation.

In this sense, then, another essential hermeneutical principle is subordination and surrender to the Word of God. For Barth, "we can only ask about revelation when we surrender to the expectation and recollection" of this event (I.2,492). Focusing on God's action in Christ as the center of the biblical proclamation, Barth can therefore read the Old Testament as it points forward in anticipation to this event and the New Testament as it looks backwards in recollection. Yet hearing the Word of God in the present, positioned, as it were, between the dialectic of recollection and expectation does not become automatically necessary through the human work of subordination and surrender. Rather, interpretation becomes both necessary and free only as God brings the human interpreter into the light of God's presence itself, making theological exegesis a distinct and unique spiritual exercise.

Moreover, to subordinate oneself before God means to acknowledge that one does not begin one's exposition with the Word of God itself. Rather, one ought to begin reading scripture with the assumption that one always begins with flawed human ideas and images of God (I.2, 716). Thus, to avoid eisegesis, one must, as it were, empty oneself of preconceived ideas and prepare the way for God to enter "the inner chamber" of one's heart as Anselm once put it in his Proslogium. This should not mean that interpreters allow their own ideas to be supplanted by the biblical word as if their thoughts were unimportant (I.2, 718). Nor does it mean that interpretation is simply a passive act of waiting on God (Webster 2005: 65). On the contrary, Barth maintains that interpretation is the active response to God in prayer; it is the act of "persistence in waiting and knocking" (I.2, 533), of listening and re-listening to the human words that testify to God's Word as if one has not heard and will never hear the final word on the matter. If one is not prepared to do this continually, Barth suggests, if one is not prepared to admit the need for continual divine guidance, then one is simply repeating biblical or doctrinal formulations as a parrot mimics its master while dressing oneself up in the feathers of orthodoxy (I.2, 718). Furthermore, subordination cannot mean that one accepts absolutely everything that the biblical writers say on every subject. Instead, one is required only to surrender to the words of the prophets and apostles insofar as they point to God, and, in this way, one remains faithful to the Church by remaining faithful to God (I.2,475).

Properly conceived, the hermeneutical principles of subordination and surrender have nothing to do with the kind of biblical or ecclesial authoritarianism that so often is associated with Barth's name. As we have seen, these principles have everything to do with the concrete action and presence of God in individual, ecclesial exegesis. Barth writes:

   [T]he individual in the Church certainly cannot and ought not
   to accept it as Holy Scripture just because the Church does.
   He can and should himself be obedient only to Holy Scripture
   as it reveals itself to him and in that way forces itself upon him,
   as it compels him to accept it [I.2,479].

Yet the individual, for Barth, always belongs to the Church and must therefore recognize the Church's rightful authority and superiority over that individual (I.2, 588). Barth does not simply reject a biblical authoritarianism, however, only to replace it with an ecclesial version of the same. Just as the individual claims no power or authority apart from the Church and the Word, and receives authority through humility and submission to the Word, so too does the Church receive its mediate, relative, and formal authority from God in its own acts of subordination and surrender. This means that the Church must avoid "trying to speak out as though it were infallible and final.., by surrendering itself to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit" (I.2, 586). The Church ought therefore to avoid any "direct appeal to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in support of its words and attitudes and decisions" (I.2, 586), acting as though it had full command over the Word and thus is not in need of ongoing assistance. For Barth, such appeals not only vitiate the divine freedom and sovereignty but also place an unbearable burden to speak in the place of Christ. Hence, while Barth might sound like a biblical or ecclesial authoritarian who, as Paul Tillich once quipped, "throws the truth like stones at the heads of people" (Webster 2000: 14), his theology ought not to be simply characterized by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's infamous phrase: "like it or lump it" (Bonhoeffer: 286). Despite Barth's wellknown reputation for rhetoric and polemics, his theology of scripture actually belies any human authoritarianism by arguing that understanding, interpretation, and authority in the Church always require an attitude of subordination, humility, and obedience to God, which is made possible only insofar as God is "actually present and gracious" (I.2, 586, 587) to the individual in the Church.

Most importantly, to subordinate oneself before God in the Church, as an inferior before a superior, involves the constant effort to remove oneself from the interpretive process, to focus neither on human needs nor on the desire for authority but only on God's Word in the Bible itself. According to Barth, if we are truly prepared to let go of our own needs and place ourselves at the mercy of God, then we shall hear the Word of God "more strongly and gloriously the less we interfere with our clumsy and insolent attempts to attain to it" (I.2, 503). Thus we must not start with human needs (which always opens the door to eisegesis), but cultivate a life of humble and ceaseless prayer and submission, of actively listening to God to specify what those needs really are. While it might seem as though God's involvement in interpretation would be proportional to the human ability to "let go," for Barth, human preparatory work and the intensity of faith and prayers never condition God nor guarantee the hearing of the divine Word. If this were the case, then the freedom of God's speech would be limited and conditioned by creatures, which would inevitably sacrifice the divine freedom at the heart of biblical interpretation and place salvation and exegesis in the hopeless hands of sinful human beings.

Finally, even academic theology must recognize the fundamentally spiritual nature of biblical exegesis. As Barth never tires of repeating, "the choice of dogmatic method can be made only with the intention of placing human thinking and speaking on the path of total surrender to the controlling power of its object" (I.2,867). "Essentially," he insists, "the dogmatician [and therefore the exegete] can do only what the preacher does: in obedience he must dare to say what he has heard, and to give out what he has received" (I.2, 853). Theology grounded in biblical exegesis, therefore, "consists in this openness to receive new truth.., in unceasing and ready vigilance to see that the object is able to speak for itself" (I.2,867). Situating theology in God's dynamic involvement in the personal and intellectual life of faith, so that theology and exegesis never degenerate into a "dead orthodoxy," Barth steadfastly maintains that

   [even] the quality of dogmatic work depends decisively on its
   not consisting, for example, merely in a series of conceptual
   manipulations, but on its being penetrated down to its last and
   apparently least important details by an unceasing supplication for
   the Holy Spirit... which no technique or toil can compel, but
   for which we can only pray [I.2,776, e.g., III.3, 147-48].

The Event of Divine Revelation in the Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture

One of the most important resources that one finds in Barth's theology of scripture consists in his powerful descriptions of the being and action of God in itself and for others: the immanent and economic Trinity, and not simply God in human experience. Not content to leave biblical interpretation to the secular methodologies of the academy or the vagaries of imaginative individual experiences, Barth relies on faith to locate biblical exegesis in the event of God's being itself. Yet here, as elsewhere, Barth's grounding of theology in the event of God's Word and Spirit as the single conditio sine qua non for spiritual interpretation, has profound anthropological implications for the spiritual life of faith in biblical interpretation.

As Barth explains, "To say the 'Word of God' is to say the work of God. It is not to contemplate a state or a fact but to watch an event" (I.2, 527). This event is the being and activity of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Since the interpretation of scripture derives its knowledge from this event in the mystery of the miracle of grace, all interpretation, if it is to reflect its transcendent subject matter, must be bound up with God's Word and Spirit.

What this means both for the Christian life and for biblical interpretation is nothing other than a life of total dependence upon God. This is its center, which is beyond all striving and grasping. All we can do in our interpretation is to turn to God with openness, praying that God invites us into the inner circle of God's Triune being and reality. In recollection of the pure presence of God in Jesus Christ, and with the expectation for God's future action, we can only will "to let the new thing happen to us which if we hear it, will become event in our life and in the life of the whole world" (I.2,527-28).

   [I]t is a matter of the event or the events of the presence of the
   Word of God in our own present: not the experience of its presence,
   but its actual presence--the presence upon which God
   decides, which we cannot create or anticipate, but the presence,
   which as the inconceivable, free presence of God Himself decides
   our past and future, defining our recollection as thankfulness
   and our expectation as hope [I.2,533].

Rejecting any Kantian anthropological preconditions for the possibility of understanding God, Barth simply denies that the actual perception of revelation as such is a possibility of human existence. Statements about the event of God's being and activity, therefore, are analytic statements (I.2, 22) and not synthetic, which would reduce God to a predicate of human experience and give human beings the responsibility of knowing God without God. Thus, for Barth, there is no "natural" knowledge of God which could be accessed simply by turning to individual experience or subjectivity (White: 83). Yet, as Barth contends, this is not to say that human beings have no experience of God or grace. It is only to say that the experience of God as such is possible only through God, not through human beings. Indeed, far from emphasizing the absence of God, for Barth, the experience of God is always a miraculous "experience of His presence" to which one can respond only by "letting oneself be continually led" in ever new and exciting directions (I.1, 206, 207).

Instead, however, of seeing in this rejection of the human ability to know God a denial of the creature before the Creator, Barth finds in it the greatest hope and liberation precisely because understanding does not rest on human shoulders. Hence, the biblical exegete must assign faith, obedience, and prayer a much more important role than is usually found in academic biblical interpretation. Indeed, for Barth, the individual who prays to God with humble hope and gentle confidence can not only "expect and experience an answer in so far as he believes and obeys and prays.., but.., will be amazed at the fullness of the divine answer in which he participates" (III.3, 288).

   As to when, where, and how the Bible shows itself to us in this
   event as the Word of God, we do not decide, but the Word of
   God Himself decides .... We can and should expect this act
   afresh. We can and should cling to the written word, as Jesus
   commanded .... We can and should search the Scriptures asking
   about this witness. We can and should therefore pray that
   this witness may be made to us. But it does not lie--and this
   is why prayer must have the last word--in our power but only
   in God's, that this event should take place and therefore this
   witness of Scripture be made to us [I.2,530-31 ].

How liberating this is for Barth! Indeed, how liberating it is for us to know that the proper form of biblical interpretation does not consist in technical mastery but in humble surrender and prayer for illumination, such that one might join St. Anselm's proclamation, at the climax of his argument for God's existence: "I thank thee, gracious Lord, I thank thee; because what I formerly believed by thy bounty, I now so understand by thine illumination" (Proslogium IV). Precisely through this submission and prayer do we find our greatest liberation, for we learn to trust more in God's gracious presence than in our own exegetical prowess or theoretical expertise. In this sense, then, human life with the Holy Spirit entails "an ultimate and most profound irresponsibility" (I.2,274) insofar as everything depends on God, even human obedience, and for this we can only be grateful.

While many might find in this a dangerous shirking of academic and ecclesial responsibility to bring the Bible to bear on our various communities, one must recall that Barth was writing to scholars and pastors whose institutions were overrun with the modernization. Further, he was not writing to charismatic Bible groups or to fundamentalists whose "enthusiastic rapture" overcame the distance between the reader and God and overlooked the "offense" of the Gospel itself (I.2, 512). Nor was Barth advocating the "free exegesis" of modern liberalism (I.l, 106). Rather he was committed to clearing an open space for a free Word of God, so that intellectual and ecclesial readers learn to trust the uncontrollable presence of God, a presence which alone liberates us from the sinful domination of the text that is so very evident in both fundamentalist Docetism and liberal Ebionitism.

Implicit in Barth's hermeneutic of surrender and subordination is an urging to readers that they be content in their weakness, humility, and lowliness, for they must trust that the most "indestructible strength" (I.2, 537) is not within the realm of human possibility but belongs to God alone. In this Barth stands firm with St. Paul in acknowledging that the mystery of faith is both a "complete enslavement and ... a complete liberation" (III.3, 247). As Barth tells us, with God and the work of the Holy Spirit, we become "free from worry about [ourselves] ... free from worry about others ... and free from worry about the whole development of human affairs in the Church and world" (I.2, 275). The implications for biblical exegesis, historical criticism, and the life of faith are thus both radical and liberating indeed, for they not only accept the full humanity of the biblical testimony, but also trust in the presence of God in our own interpretation of the revealed Word. Yet, precisely because God makes use of human witness and interpretation, the biblical exegete is liberated from having to discern the essential from the inessential in scripture, so that the faithful and accurate interpretation is and remains a gift from the spiritual presence of the Word of God in our fallible and faithful human efforts. As Barth concludes:

   We are therefore absolved from trying to force this event to
   happen .... It is the man who is faithful in seeking, asking and
   praying, who knows that the faithfulness of God and not his own
   faithfulness derides. But we are completely absolved from
   differentiating in the Bible between the divine and the human, the
   content and the form, the spirit and the letter....And we may
   differentiate between them as we do in the understanding of a
   human word. But the event in which the word of man proves itself
   the Word of God is one which we cannot bring about .... We
   are absolved from differentiating the Word of God in the Bible
   from other contents, infallible portions and expressions from
   erroneous ones, the infallible from the fallible, and from
   imagining that by means of such discoveries we can create for
   ourselves encounters with the genuine Word of God in the Bible
   [I.2, 531].

Conclusion: The Critical Need for Spiritual Interpretation in Contemporary Hermeneutics

What I have attempted to underline in the foregoing pages is the spiritual nature of Barth's biblical and dogmatic theology. Yet it is not a "spirituality" that is grounded in human thought, feeling, experience, or the imagination as one so commonly finds today (Johnson: 165-80). Neither is it a spirituality that grounds the understanding of God in a general human openness to the transcendent, nor rests in the debatable arguments of historical reconstruction or literary theory. It is simply a theology of the spiritual life of faith, prayer, and obedience which endeavors only to hear God, even as it knows that it most likely hears its own voice, wishes, and aspirations and is all too eager to give them divine authority. Yet, for Barth, somewhere in the midst of this dialectical juxtaposition of self-denial and divine affirmation, the miracle actually happens according to God's good pleasure: we hear the voice of God in Jesus Christ by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, not only in the recollection of the past or in the expectation of the future, but here and now, the Word of God becomes for us an event in which God draws us into God's time, the time of Jesus Christ and his the resurrection from the dead. Yet, paradoxically, when this miracle does happen, we are not remotely interested in it as an extraordinary experience in our lives. Indeed, Barth, along with many of the great saints of the Church, would agree that to such an event we can make no special claim, for it happens to us only by drawing us away from ourselves and pointing and binding us to God. As Barth would say, "How could it be otherwise?" for if we have heard the Word of God uttered among us without any special claim for ourselves, we have heard it only because God has claimed us as God's own and drawn us into God's inner Trinitarian life.

With this in mind, let us now briefly consider a more contemporary, alternative perspective from which to appreciate the significance of Barth's contribution to biblical hermeneutics.

Sandra Schneiders, in The Revelatory Text (1999), offers a theory of biblical hermeneutics that is, in many ways, exemplary in her attempt to draw together a number of current ideas in contemporary hermeneutics for a transformative feminist biblical spirituality today. Like Barth, Schneiders laments the increasing secularization of many biblical studies, even as she recognizes the legitimate role of secular methodologies. Because she grounds her theory of biblical hermeneutics in human experience rather than in grace, however, one doubts whether she can develop a biblical hermeneutic for spiritual interpretation of scripture's transcendent subject matter.

Unlike many modern scholars, Schneiders proposes to treat the New Testament by beginning, not with methodological considerations, but with the "object" of the proclamation itself (Schneiders: 24). Following the tradition of Gadamer and Ricoeur, both of whom privilege truth over method, she seeks an epistemological and ontological reading of scripture that culminates in spiritual transformation. In keeping with this tradition, she rejects the traditional starting point of talking about the being of God itself or of divine-human operations as a means to interpreting scripture, and begins instead with a phenomenological analysis of human experience (Schneiders: 49). Yet precisely in this methodological preference, her recovery begins to falter because she privileges human experience over the truth of God's being and action, thus placing her discussion at a distance from the fount of revelation itself.

This problem becomes even more evident in her discussion of revelation and inspiration. Here, revelation is understood as "co-extensive with human experience" (Schneiders: 45), and is not restricted to the Bible as such. Preferring to talk about "symbolic revelation" instead of revelation itself, arguing that all revelation is filtered through particular historical realities, Schneiders asserts that revelation is universally available throughout creation, a claim that she attempts to justify by citing a number of passages from the Old Testament. Yet she fails to note that the Old Testament redactors themselves understood the creation-centered wisdom theology according to the revelatory norm of Torah, not according to individual experience. Moreover, in the New Testament, revelation and inspiration are not described as being constantly available to all persons. This is why Jesus Christ is said to be "the Word made flesh," the wisdom from above, who is not revealed through flesh and blood (Matt 16:19). Thus, revelation, as localized in the person and work of Christ, is not, apart from grace, constantly available. However, since Schneiders begins with her own experience of faith and revelation and not with revelation as experienced in faith, she claims the Bible is not a particular instance of a special revelation but a special instance of a universal revelation, co-extensive with humanity as such:

   To affirm that this book is divinely inspired is to profess to
   have experienced it as uniquely disclosive of the divine, which
   grounds the affirmation that it is influenced by God in some
   special way.... We recognize it as inspired (divinely disclosed)
   because we experience it as revelatory [Schneiders: 50, 51-emphasis
   added].

In her reversal of revelation and experience, Schneiders epitomizes exactly what Karl Barth was vying against, namely, the practice of reducing to the Bible to a general revelation that can be known and understood through a general hermeneutical theory. Although Schneiders insists that her aim is to save the Bible from the overly secular tendencies of contemporary biblical thought, her approach fails to provide a viable alternative because she neither recognizes the special nature of biblical revelation nor provides a theological account of the freedom and sovereignty of grace. On the contrary, Schneiders understands faith as a "possible but non-necessary perception.., of divine self-disclosure.., a personal engagement characterized by humility, gratitude, reverence, and all those other qualities that define the properly religious attitude of the human being before God" (Schneiders: 49). Although Barth would certainly praise the doxological and transformative objectives of her work, he would insist, nonetheless, that an anthropological understanding of the text would place the onus of interpretation on human beings alone, who thereby would be responsible for discerning its divine truth.

Moreover, since Schneiders begins with her own experience of faith and revelation without mention of efficacious divine agency, what guarantee can she offer that she has not construed her interpretation according to her own self-experience and feminist ideological preferences? This seems not only to open wide the doors to the risk of eisegesis but also to provide little incentive to begin with critical self-examination and ideological critique or to turn to God's continuing revelatory activity to ground her interpretation. Finally, and most importantly, although she acknowledges the task of biblical hermeneutics is to account for how scriptural texts become revelatory, she offers no explanation for how the biblical exegete can understand a transcendent subject matter or be enabled to enter the world of the text for ontological and epistemological transformation. To do so, in Barth's view, would require an ontology of God as well as a more prominent role for faith and prayer, two such qualities no biblical spirituality can afford to be without.

In contrast to Schneiders, Barth offers the resources for a spiritual interpretation of scripture precisely because human beings enjoy no capacity to understand its transcendent subject matter apart from God's gracious presence. Critics of course are likely to charge that if the decisive element is the actual presence of God, then there is no scholarly way of evaluating one particular interpretation in relation to another (Kelsey: 49); moreover, that all interpretations are inevitably established in personal experience, feeling, and consciousness (Ruether: 12). Thus there would be no way a community of faith could find common ground on which to assess the claims of a spiritual hermeneutic. But all such charges fail to acknowledge that, ultimately, human beings cannot access and evaluate spiritual revelation that is wholly other through their intellectual or exegetical efforts alone, and that a truly transformative interpretation can come only from being mastered by the subject matter itself. While it may indeed prove difficult to evaluate conflicting interpretations of scripture, Barth's point is not to offer concrete ways to "pin down" one reading of scripture over another, but to disabuse us of the modern preoccupation with achieving a final meaning of the text, which quickly becomes an idol, so that we might learn to cultivate the proper spiritual and exegetical skills to learn from God what God's Word and Spirit are saying in the revelation attested in scripture.

As demonstrated throughout this essay, everything depends on faith that God actually determines the content of the human witness and interpretation in their own words. Hence, in response to scholars who might protest the seemingly otherworldly and impractical nature of such an approach, Barth would counter that the very nature of such questions demonstrates the prideful character of the human attempt to control the subject matter on the terms of individual or communal experience. This apparent "weakness" in Barth's thought is, of course, his greatest strength and it is neither other-worldly nor impractical. Indeed, Barth's approach not only has the most concrete implications for the life of faith precisely because it does not rest on scholarly or theological technique, which would only amount to academic works-righteousness, but also on the gracious and free election of God which enters our otherwise feeble attempts to make God's own meaning heard, understood, and applied in the world today.

Though foolish in the eyes of the world (1 Cor 2), Barth's simple, practical wisdom for biblical interpretation and the Christian life establishes theological exegesis on the historical and continuing revelation of God's Word and Spirit and encourages interpreters to nurture a life of ceaseless prayer and humble surrender so that they may speak and write with the power and authority that God alone can provide. At the heart of Barth's theology, and what is lacking most in the secular anthropological approaches of much modern theology and hermeneutical theory, is the presence of God, which alone overcomes human weakness and heals the divisions and factions tearing the Church and world apart. This is not to say that Barth has all the answers to the many problems faced by scholars, pastors, and exegetes today, but only that his theological approach to scripture points to and trusts in God as the source and norm for the answers to those problems. Indeed, those who heed well this wisdom may soon discover for themselves the freedom, liberation, and strength that are most fully transformative in and of human weakness when they come from revelation itself, the Word made flesh who is present in our midst.

My hope in this article has been to show that Karl Barth offers a model for the theological interpretation of scripture for the Christian life that recognizes both the limitations of spiritually exclusionary, historical-critical and literary readings of scripture, and the dangers inherent in spiritual interpretations that are simplistic or naive. Most importantly (and least congruent with modern hermeneutical theory), Barth's theological interpretation of scripture underlines the enormous potential of reading scripture as a human witness to the Word of God, a witness that faithfully confesses that the proper interpretation of scripture is attained only as a gift of God or not at all. Barth's comment on Anselm's argument for the existence of God is thus applicable, as well, in his spiritual approach to biblical hermeneutics.

   What is at stake here is not just the right way to seek God, but
   in addition God's presence, on which the whole grace of Christian
   knowledge primarily depends .... Everything depends not
   only on the fact that God grants him the grace to think correctly
   about him, but also on the fact that God himself comes
   within his system as the object of his thinking, that he 'shows'
   himself to the thinker and in so doing modifies 'correct' thinking
   [about God] [Barth 1960: 38-39].

Works Cited

Anselm of Canterbury. 1993. St. Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S.N. Deane. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.

Barth, K. 1978. The Word of God and the Word of Man. trans. D. Horton. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith. 1975. Church Dogmatics I. 1, trans. G.W. Bromiley. Edinburgh, UK: T & T Clark. 1956. Church Dogmatics 1.2, trans. G. T. Thompsen & H. Knight. Edinburgh, UK: T & T Clark. 1960. Church Dogmatics III.3, trans. G. W. Bromily & R. J. Ehrlich. Edinburgh, UK: T & T Clark. 1960. Anselm: Fides Quarens Intellectum: Anselm's Proof for the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, trans. I.W. Robertson. Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Publishers.

Bonhoeffer, D, 1971. Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. E. Bethge. New York, NY: Colliers.

Burnett, R. E. 2004. Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis: The Hermeneutical Principles of the Romerbrief Period. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Dorrien, G. 2000. Theology without Weapons: The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Johnson, L. T. 1998. "Imagining the World Scripture Imagines" Modern Theology 14:2.

Kelsey, D. H. 1999. Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International.

McCormack, B. 1995. Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Ruether, R. R. 1983. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.

Schneiders, S. M. 1999. The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, 2nd edition. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.

Thomas Aquinas. 1948. Summa Theologica, translated by the Fathers of the Dominican Province. New York, NY: Benzinger Bros.

Webster, J. 2005. "On the Clarity of Holy Scripture" in Confessing God. Edinburgh, UK: T & T Clark. 2000. Barth. New York, NY: Continuum.

White, L.J. 1974. "Act in Theology: A Dramatist Inquiry into Method in Karl Barth and Bernard Lonergan." Duke University Dissertation.

Michael T. Dempsey received his Ph.D. from the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, and his M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Theology at St. John's University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, New York 11439-0001. E-mail: [e-mail]. He is presently working on Thomas Aquinas' theology of providence in light of his biblical commentaries and the mendicant context of the 13th century and plans to edit a book on Karl Barth's theology of Trinity and Election in contemporary theology. The author wishes to thank Drs. David Demson, Randall Heskett, and Joan Kahn for their helpful comments on previous versions of this essay.