There is a story-presumably true-about the late Karl Barth, theologian without equal. The story says that once, after he had finished one of his famous and always well-attended, public lectures, Barth was surrounded by a crowd of admirers, all of them wanting to ask just one more question. Dr. Barth, who was skilled in making graceful exits, was making his when a very insistent woman in the group more or less demanded that he at least answer her question.
“All right,” he said. “What is your question?”
“Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Was there, or was there not, a snake in the Garden of Eden?”
Without batting an eye, Barth replied, “Madam, whether or not there was a snake in the Garden of Eden is not what matters. What matters is what the snake said.”
— — — — —
I had never heard that delicious story until I read it in Pete Rollins’ ground-breaking, new book, The Fidelity of Betrayal about which there will undoubtedly be a great deal more commentary later both on this blog and many others. It is a gripping and stellar piece of emergent theology that deserves the serious attention of every Western Christian. But what interests me today is not so much the sum total of Rollins’s argument, but rather the Barth story itself. The Barth story is the best example of Biblical actualism I have ever heard of as having come out of the 20th century.
What Barth is saying to the woman and to us is exactly what Jesus said. “…the Scripture can not be denied;” [I,49] or “Is not this the reason that you are wrong, because you do not know either the scriptures or the power of God?” [I,65] The Word of God is not reducible, either literally or metaphorically, to the words that convey it. The Word of God is God among us.
I began this day’s blog with a story, and I shall end it with another. Once was the time when every Christian child was supposed to have a “favorite” Bible verse. Most of us in my generation, once we had passed our eighth or ninth birthday, just rolled our eyes in mock disgust and rattled off something without a great deal of thought. By the time most of us were adolescents, we unswervingly stuck with “Jesus wept” as the answer of choice, even as we resented the perceived humiliation of being asked such a childish question. But the habit stuck, and we grew up to become adults who still ponder from time to time about just what exactly is our favorite verse of Scripture. [Such sustained and life-long pondering was, of course, the whole point in the first place, though none of us grasped that at the time.]
My “favorite” has changed over the years. I lost “Jesus wept” by my sophomore year of college, although interestingly enough, it came back to serve another turn or two as I matured and discovered what real weeping means and where it comes from. But the verse selections also changed from time to time in accord with my own understanding of what “favorite” means when applied to a fragment of Scripture.
In adolescence, obviously “favorite” spoke to attitude and self-assertion, just as in adulthood it has spoken to consolation or insightfulness. Sometimes, I have carried a verse for long periods of time in the prime spot because of its sheer beauty and poignancy…”Have I been so long a time with you, Philip, and still you do not know me?” [IV,47] Sometimes, I have valued most the mysteriousness of it all. “In the beginning was the Word….and it dwelt among us.”
But now, as the poet said, I am old, and my excitement grows almost daily and exponentially. As a result, were you to ask me, I would say, as quickly as Barth answered his questioner, that my favorite is the 36th of the Sayings of Public Instruction:
“Before Abraham was, I am.”
To touch that one is to touch the glory, which is to say that to touch that one is in truth to touch the actual.
Phyllis Tickle
