Our relation to God is ungodly. We suppose that we know what we are saying when we say “God.” We assign to him the highest place in our world: and in so doing we place him fundamentally on one line with ourselves and with things. . . . We press ourselves into proximity with him: and so, all unthinking, we make him nigh unto ourselves. We allow ourselves an ordinary communication with him, we permit ourselves to reckon with him as though this were not extraordinary behavior on our part. We dare to deck ourselves out as his companions, patrons, advisers, and commissioners. ...
Secretly we are the masters in this relationship. We are not concerned with God, but with our own requirements, to which God must adjust himself. . . . Our well-regulated, pleasurable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves. In “believing” on him, we justify, enjoy, and adore ourselves.Instead, Barth discovered in Romans “that the theme of the Bible . . . certainly could not be man’s religion and religious morality, nor his own sacred divinity. The Godness of God—that was the bedrock we came up against . . . God’s absolute unique existence, power and initiative, above all in his relationship to men.”
In short, he was toppling the liberal pillars of experience, ethics, and history, showing that, when it comes to knowing God, we bring absolutely nothing to the table. ...continue here.
-- Mark Galli
