Barth’s ”Göttingen Dogmatics” - §4: Man and His Question

The androcentric nature of Barth's language notwithstanding, in this section he addresses the human condition and the "contradiction" at the heart of our existence, as well as reflecting on how it can be that God encounters us in the midst of that contradiction as "the answer to our question" (Diktatsatz).

This is part 5 of a multi-part series. You can find the series index here. Click here for the blog post corresponding to this episode, and click here to access this content on YouTube.

I begin the audio recordings by reading Barth’s Diktatsatz, so I will begin reproducing that here as well. The bold is mine and indicates where I find emphasis:

God's revelation, which is the basis of Christian preaching, is the answer to our question how we can overcome the contradiction in our existence, which we have to view not as our destiny but as our responsible act, and which we know that we cannot overcome. But we know ourselves in this regard only as God makes himself known to us. We would not ask about God had God not already answered us. Because of this, we can neither evade the question about God nor settle it in any sense.

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