What Is The Bible Good For According To Barth?

b. What is the Bible good for according to Barth? Do you agree?
In his essay, “The Word of God and the Word of Man,” Karl Barth suggests that the Bible functions best not as a means to respond to human questioning, nor as a prescription for morality, but as a place in which God generously reveals something of Himself and His world. That said, Barth readily admits that scripture can easily act as a mirror which divulges the ideology, psychology, culture, and doctrinal peculiarities of the reader. In other words, Barth believes that the Bible can give “every era answers to which they deserve” and that readers will “find in it what we seek and no more” (32 ). Moreover, he critiques the idea that the primary function of the Bible is to act
as a historical document. He explains that it is impossible to relegate the actions of an eternal God into the cause and effect paradigm of historical inquiry. For Barth, one cannot address the “Why?” of divine action and human response without a firsthand encounter with a God who is the “decisive cause” (37). Additionally, an ever-present deity does not fit in a box labeled “past”. the Bible fails to simply function as a prescription for moral behavior because according to Barth at “certain crucial points the Bible amazes us by its remarkable indifference to our conception of good and evil” (38).
Instead, for Barth, Scripture functions best as a conduit for a direct encounter with God and His kingdom.
However, the Bible will not “work” as a means of divine revelation without prep work. Readers must first abandon the compulsion to treat scripture as a utilitarian instrument and attempt to wrestle hard, coherent answers about history or dogma from the text. Instead, we should “reach for a question that is much too large for us” (32) and be willing to go “ far beyond ourselves” (33) because only then can the Bible function most gloriously to instruct us “not how we should talk to God but what he says to us. Not how we should find our way to him but how he has found his way to us” (43). Put another way, when one seeks faithfully, puts away a need to compartmentalize the mystery of God, and welcomes bewilderment one is transported to the world of God and realizes that “contents of the Bible are God”
(46).
As a person heavily influenced by Christian mysticism, I readily agree with Barth that God seeks direct communication with his people through scripture.
Likewise, as someone informed by Polkinghorne’s work on a kenotic God who self-restricts His power to allow for human freedom and a genuine, reciprocal relationship, it makes sense to me that God might restrict his mystery to the rational structure of language to make Himself accessible to us. Finally, I strongly agree with the implicit suggestion that the Bible functions to point us to a larger reality beyond itself. I do not believe that the Bible best works as a prescription for orthodox positions. That said, though Barth is silent on whether or not the Bible is the sole means for one to experience a direct encounter with God, the exalting language he employs suggests the primacy of text for a mystical experience. As a result, while Barth and I agree on the way in which the Bible functions to make us aware of a God who is bigger than any divisive human constructions, we depart on the issue of whether the Bible functions as the sole or best means of divine self-revelation. In other words, I believe that Barth and I agree on what the “Bible is good for” but not necessarily who it is good for. I believe God communicates to people in whichever language they speak, and not all people speak the language of the Bible. Instead, it is my opinion that God’s presence reveals itself in all forms of religious scripture as well as
in nature, live-giving relationships with loved ones, meditation etc.