Monday, 13 July 2015

Dogmatics in Outline,
Karl Barth, SCM, 2012, page 66

A post-graduate research colleague at Trinity brought this quote to my attention (hat tip: Jo Pestell) and although I will probably not buy the book, I have requested it from the library.

In 1946 Karl Barth gave a series of lectures in post-WWII Germany following the general theme of the Apostles' Creed. Apparently, he spoke without notes for all the sessions, which were transcribed by hand. In one the sessions, he said:

If as Christians we thought that Church and Synagogue no longer affected one another, everthing would be lost. And where this separation between the community and the Jewish nation has been made complete, it is the Christian community which has suffered. The whole reality of the revelation of God is then secretly denied and as an inevitable result philosophy and ideology take the upper hand, and Christianity of a Greek or a German or some other freely chosen kind is invented.

After telling the story of Frederick the Great asking his personal physician for proof of the existence of G-d and receiving the answer, "Your Majesty, the Jews!", Barth continues:

In the person of the Jew there stands a witness beofre our eyes, the witness of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and in that way with us all. Even one who does not understand Holy Scripture can see this reminder.

Monday, 13 July 2015
Comment -

This quote draws from the same stream of thinking as the book "An Appeal to Heaven" by Dutch Sheets. Sheets' book has nothing directly to do with Israel but he takes the principle of what he terms the "synergy of the ages" and applies it to praying for America. His excellent application of the synergy principle down through the generations should also be applied on the grandest scale of all - the church repenting of the theology that separated church from our roots and coming back into alignment with our apostolic forefathers and Yeshua's People.

Posted By Timothy Butlin 08:22am