Karl Barth on revelation 2

Barth 2

So there is no excuse God has shown in his creation that he is… breaking through the resurrection also… Let Barth speak for himself.

His Romans commentary and his Large Dogmatic theology

vv. 19-21. Because that which may be known of God is

manifest to them; for God manifested it unto them. For

the invisible things of him since the creation of the world

are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that

are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; so

that they are without excuse: because that, in spite of

knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave

thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their

senseless heart was darkened.

 

That which may be known of God is manifest unto them.

 

The truth concerning the limiting and dissolving of men by the unknown God, which breaks forth in the resurrection, is a known truth: this is the tragic factor in the story of the passion of the truth. When our limitation is apprehended, and when He is perceived who, in bounding us, is also the dissolution of our limitation, the most primitive as well as the most highly developed forms of human self-consciousness become repeatedly involved in a ‘despairing humiliation’, in the ‘irony of intelligence’ (H. Cohen). We know that God is He whom we do not know, and that our ignorance is precisely the problem and the source of our knowledge.