As Best I Could

On his eightieth birthday, Karl Barth was presented with a festschrift entitled Service in Christ. The contributors read as a veritable "who's who" of theological discourse at the time of its presentation. Some of these included Torrance, Cranfield, Lampe, Bromiley, Herzog, and Ramsey. The leitmotif which provides the cohesion to this work is the Greek idea of diakoni,a or "service," the word from which the Christian church derives its office of deacon.

In his acceptance speech, Barth said this, a fitting reflection at the end of a sometimes brilliant and sometimes controversial, but always insightful career:

“If I have done anything in this life of mine, I have done it as a relative of the donkey that went its way carrying an important burden. The disciples had to say to its owner: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ And so it seems to have pleased God to have used me at this time, just as I was, in spite of all the things, the disagreeable things, that quite rightly are and will be said about me. Thus I was used. I just happened to be on the spot. A theology somewhat different from the current theology was apparently needed in our time, and I was permitted to be the donkey that carried this better theology for part of the way, or tried to carry it as best I could.”

On the front end of my ministry with years worth of studying, preaching, and writing (all God willing!), I would hope to learn an old trick from that old dog: humility in dealing with a sovereign God. Theological language is not equivocal; we can properly use "God-talk" with trust that it must somehow meaningfully relate to the reality of who He is in Himself. But neither is this language univocal, binding God to signs and things. There is a certain amount of trust that goes into any talk about divine realities. This trust must be followed by humility, hot on its heels in fact. With the mystery of the language and substance of faith before me, I would do well to heed the words of the late Herr Doctor Barth. I hope to be able to say, "I tried to carry it as best I could."