The Shape of Theological Humanism
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text. Instead, he accepted the idolatry of every theology and religion, saying, “Only God himself can speak of God.” God’s word is always a “No” to human words that purport to speak of God. When the congregation gathers to hear God’s word, what the theologian can do is to recognize that he or
she cannot speak for God, while holding open the possibility that human words might nonetheless, impossibly, be heard and received as God’s own word. The theologian keeps theological questions alive, while giving God the glory for overturning God’s own “No” to theology in the event of hearing
God speak.shared by many postmodern forms of thought. In saying “No” to theology and religion, in negating their pretensions to say anything about God, dia-Dialectical theology has a problem in this so-called solution. It is one
lectical theology says “No” to itself. To be consistent, Barth must deny that even his own denial of a non-idolatrous theology can instantiate a non-idolatrous theology. He does not provide a criterion for determining whether or not God speaks in distinction from human words. His claim that to hear
God speak is an “impossible possibility” must issue from some basis, which he never makes clear. That basis can only be a new biblical personalism, in which God as heavenly deity, now pictured as “wholly other” to any human image or idea, nonetheless chooses to speak and to be heard. Barth’s biblical
personalism is evident in his preserving the language of the Bible as the one place where God might be heard in God’s own voice.of God on human existence.Following Barth, theology grounded in the metaphorical cluster of God (^22) It asserts the claim
as heavenly deity tends to retreat into God sanctifies some religious phenomenon, such as the Bible, the commu-nity, church practice, etc. Neo-tribalism is the result, even when churchly theology embraces postmodern theories in order to avoid the critical churchly theology in which the hand of
demands of modernity.God as Light of the World
A second metaphorical cluster in Western Christian theology has been important: God as light of the world. This cluster focuses on the meta-physical forms of theology, which prospered in the Roman Catholic Church, and, whether in Catholic or in purely philosophical forms, became
known as “natural theology.” The metaphor of God as light of the world captures the immediate, religious openness to a universal religious symbol of divine light.