Mastodawn

Matt Frost Nov 13, 2022

I now have my own copy of the translation of Barth's Gespräche for 1959-62, the library wound up with an extra and my librarians like me, and I've been taking it along on Sunday mornings to my wife's internship site.

It's very interesting reading the objections he faces in this era, especially on the question of sin. He says there's basically no other dogmatics that takes it as seriously or treats it so extensively, but because he refuses to threaten with damnation, they don't understand.

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Matt Frost Nov 13, 2022

But Barth has said we are already lost, already miserable, already false and in damnation, and that's a stronger position than "be careful or you might be!"

The thing his opponents want to use to threaten is already totally actual, even though technically impossible, and the question of its finality is the thing Barth refuses.

He does the same with the carrot, as with the stick: our salvation is is the opposite, impossible on our terms and already actual in God's.

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Matt Frost

Which is to say that for Barth the situation is neither carrot nor stick, the idea of using damnation as stick and salvation as carrot is an abuse of the reality of grace and a deep underselling of the reality of sin.