The “real man”
April 27, 2011 § 2 Comments
Just wanted to share a gem from Karl Barth’s Chuch Dogmatics on the nature of “real man.” It provides us with a wonderful directionality in our quest for true identity. This is Barth’s christocentricity at its best.
“Real man lives with God as His covenant-partner. For God has created him to participate in the history in which God is at work with him and he with God; to be His partner in this common history of the covenant. He created him as His covenant-partner. Thus real man does not live a godless life – without God. A godless explanation of man, which overlooks the fact that he belongs to God, is from the very outset one which cannot explain real man, man himself. Indeed, it cannot even speak of him. It gropes past him into the void. It grasps only the sin in which he breaks the covenant with God and denies and obscures his true reality. Nor can it really explain or speak of his sin. For to do so it would obviously have to see him first in the light of the fact that he belongs to God, in his determination by the God who created him, and in the grace against which he sins. Real man does not act godlessly, but in the history of the covenant in which he is God’s partner by God’s election and calling. He thanks God for His grace by knowing Him as God, by obeying Him, by calling on Him as God, by enjoying freedom from Him and to Him.”
-Karl Barth, CD III.2, 203.
I agree with you. His theology is an endless source of such insights.
Thanks for your comment.
This is exactly why I like Karl Barth. Identity was the topic of my worldview paper, and I wish I could have used this quote.