My Monday morning blog post announcing my departure from Emergent drew far more attention than I ever expected! E-ver! Geesh, I’m just a 29 year old pastor/theology student from G-Rap who’s happened to blog for several years through my theological journey. This is one more iteration in that progression. Thanks to all those who gave encouragement and critique, questioned my motives and theological endeavor, and expressed solidarity. Your comments and interactions have given me much to think about and consider, comments I’m sure to carry with me over the course of the next several weeks.
I know I promised I would begin offering my bottled-up critiques, but I thought I should pause and clarify the obvious elephants: why? and how? Why did I leave? Why did I strap on the platform shoes and Christmas lights and strut myself down the blogosphere making my announcement. (How immature, right? How positively arrogant!) How did I come to the point in my theological/spiritual journey where I decided it was time to move beyond this conversation?
So, why? How?
First, I should clarify that I don’t want to cast aside my friendships and relationships in the conversation. In fact, Doug Pagitt and I had a great conversation yesterday about my change of heart where we reiterated our commitment to friendship, despite theological differences. My departure is much more theological than relational, so I hope similar relationships will still be preserved.
Now, in answer to the questions, here is some short context to my frustration and reasons for walking. Perhaps they will mirror some of your own. I know the comment section and my inbox is filled with similar stories, so I add this to the mix. On Friday I will begin explaining my theological frustration and perspective with some of the emerging church theology, beginning with interacting with Pagitt’s A Christianity Worth Believing through a 6 post series (Btw: I emailed him a copy beforehand of the original 30 page examination because I thought that would be fair.) Before then, here is some context:
As I explained a few days ago, I’ve been part of the emerging church conversation for half a decade but have grown increasingly uncomfortable and saddened by the theological trajectory of the project. Deeply saddened, actually. This isn’t disillusionment. This is a deep sadness and heartache over what is happening from the top ranks. And what is that? A departure (perhaps deliberate?) among the leaders of Emerging Church Inc. from the historic Rule of Faith and a fashioning together of a new, fresh version of Christianity built on “other forms” of Christianity that have been deemed foreign to that Rule.
That version questions God’s “clear and certain” self-disclosure/revelation;1 minimizes actual individual culpability in rebellion;2 ignores the deity of Christ; downright denies the exclusivity of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ;3 reduces the cross to simply an example of love;4 denies real judgment and universalizes salvation,5 among others.
It wasn’t always like this, though.
At the beginning, from what I remember back in 2005 when I entered the conversation it really was an exploration. Such sites as emergentvillage.org and opensourcetheology.net were catalysts for bursting and burning through the cobwebs and rickety structures of conservative evangelicalism. It tried to root itself in the more ancient, forgotten parts of our faith—like the Creeds—to moor itself while forging ahead with re-imagining the Church as centered around the teachings of Christ and the Kingdom He bore.
Theologically, it was a deconstructive tour de force with it’s crosshairs aimed squarely at conservative evangelicalism, and rightly so. Reconstructively (is that a word?) it helped construct a missional response to a real, genuine shift occurring within Western culture known as postmodernity. Most of the church was ill equipped to deal with the tectonic shifts our culture was undergoing, and Emergent helped navigate those shifts for church leaders as New Tribes Missions does for tribal missionaries. At the time I greatly appreciated and benefited from both, because it intersected with my own faith exploration.
Since late 2003, I had been ministering on Capitol Hill for a little known entity (The Center for Christian Statesmanship) of a more well known entity, Coral Ridge Ministries (run by an even more known entity, Dr. D. James Kennedy). During this season I became increasingly uncomfortable with the theology behind this thoroughly conservative evangelical ministry, especially their theology of the gospel. The gospel Story it told was rooted in Dr. Kennedy’s Evangelism Explosion, which started God’s Story of Rescue in the end and middle, at heaven/hell and sin. Jesus, we were told, came to inaugurate a cosmic transaction between me and Him in order to beam me outta here “some glad mornin’ when this life is o’r.”
The theology of the Story disturbed me, so did the methods methods we used to sell that Story and manner in which we did ministry in our context. You see, the mission context of Capitol Hill is thoroughly postmodern and young adult: at the time there were roughly 24,000 congressional staffers (an average age of 27) who were from the brightest liberal arts institutions this country has to offer. Missionally, we sucked because we were ill equipped to engage this young adult postmodern culture. Theologically, God’s beautiful, majestic Story of Rescue was reduced to 5 talking points and Jesus was reduced to a product sold like a vacuum cleaner or set of kitchen knives sans nifty accessories. After my first year in ministry I began to wonder: is THIS what I’ve committed myself too?
Then along came Emergent.
My story follows others, me thinks. Many others have endured similar frustrations before wandering into the oasis-village of Emergent, finding solace, healing, and inspiration from a band of sisters and brothers making a similar trek. There I found what I needed at the time and am thankful for what Emergent was during those years. I absolutely appreciated the theological deconstruction and missiological reconstruction this conversation provided.
Over the past year or so, however, it seems like the later (missiology) has faded and the former (theology) has shifted. I have been struck in recent months by this: now that we’ve gotten the missional response to postmodern culture down, many believe the time for theological construction has begun; we “get” postmodern ministry, now we need an alternative Christian faith built on an alternative Christian theology.
So began this new era of theological construction.
Four books crystalize for me this progressive theological construction effort: Peter Rollins‘, How (Not) to Speak of God
While I sound way more conspiratorial than I actually mean, the conversation absolutely has moved from simply talking to sketching, especially the last few years. While I am fully aware (thank you very much!) that the emerging church is bigger than three or five voices, we all know it is intimately bound-up with them. Furthermore, those closely associated with the emerging church are by-and-large ensconced in their theological reflection. If I am wrong, please point me to someone on the inside of the conversation who has offered a proper, pointed theological assessment of Peter or Doug or Samir or Brian. I realize I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure it has yet to been done.
Now it will be.
It’s not personal. It’s academic.
Rather than reacting out of hurt or pain or woundedness (as some have annoyingly suggested) I am trying to provide space for an academic “airing of ideas” for the sake of healthy discussion and disclosure. I’m not blaming all things emerging for the problems of the church. What I am trying to do is live out of the person I have become through the past three years of academic training: I have a deep concern and passion for God’s Story of Rescue and for people to experience the rescue that Story provides through Christ; for theologically rooting the Church in Her faith by properly understanding the Story History and the Spirit has given us and seeing those outside the Church rescued from rebellion and put back together again in Christ. .
That’s why I wrote my first book. That’s why I’m doing this. That’s why I’m moving beyond Emergent.
Now, perhaps I am immature and petulant for bidding “au revoir” and “goodbye.” Perhaps that’s a fair critique. I don’t exactly want to leave my friends who identify with this conversation or invalidate my friendships in order to critique it. Goodness no! I just don’t know what to do anymore with the sad, devastating theological constructs being packaged and sold to thirsty, hungry, unsuspecting souls who long for rescue and re-creation and re-connection to their Creator. I can no longer sit idly by while said leaders fein innocence and drape themselves in “I’m just a mild-mannered guy” excuses in an attempt to ignore legitimate critique of their other faith.
In short: I’m tired of people being hoodwinked by the “different” theology being pushed and the hoodwinkers getting a pass, especially from those inside. Their version of Christianity isn’t different. It is other. We’ve seen this before, and I think something should be done about it. I guess someone should do something about it, so I’m stepping to the podium.
You may disagree with and decry my method, even my critiques. I’m sure both are flawed. Please grant me one request: deal with the ideas. The Emerging Church is an idea; it pushes ideas. In fact, how about those of you who think I’m whack actually deal with the ideas by giving a reasoned, intellectual defense for the theology that is pushed by Emerging Church Inc.
Yes, thats a direct challenge: Someone, anyone—Steve, Mike, Makeesha, Jonathan, Trip, or Julie, perhaps—please deal with the ideas by posting an 8-10 post theological series on both Doug and Brian’s book explaining why their theology is good and correct. I’ll even host it here, free of charge.
I myself am an ideas person. I’ve got plenty of them strewn about throughout novus•lumen, most having little to do with the emerging church and even less blasting it. The idea I am most passionate about, that is the impetus behind what I do as a pastor and theologian, is that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Messiah.
Lord. Messiah.
Both are ideas the New Testament is clear about. Unfortunately, evangelicalism all around seems incredibly confused about both, especially Emerging Church Inc.
Perhaps I can speak into the conversation (especially the Grand Rapids one) by pushing back against emerging church theology and help bring better definition to the contours of God’s Story of Rescue, for the sake of the Church. Perhaps I can follow in the footsteps of J. Greshem Machen, who wrote nearly 90 years prior: “The purpose of this book (blog) is not to decide the religious issue of the day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible.”
Perhaps.
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- Rollins, Speak of God, 46. [↩]
- Pagitt, Christianity, 165 [↩]
- Selmanovic, All About God, 9; 60-61 [↩]
- Pagitt, Christianity, 194-195 [↩]
- Pagitt, Christianity, 230-231 [↩]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s It’s Really All About God CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
CONCLUSION
Thanks to these emerging leaders, there is now growing confusion within the Church over both the extent to which we may know God and the manner in which He has revealed Himself. It is clear that Rollins understands God as hyper-transcendent and Wholly Other, believing He is far more hidden and concealed than Christianity acknowledges. For Rollins we can neither truly name God nor actually describe Him, because He is not really, genuinely revealed. Practically, this cashes out as what Rollins calls an “a/theistic Christianity.”
An a/theistic Christian can be said to operate with a discourse that makes claims about God while simultaneously acknowledging that these claims are provisional, uncertain, and insufficient; our questioning of God isn’t really questioning of God Himself but only a means of questioning our understanding of God. (98) By implication this would mean the revelation we have of God is not complete or real enough to understand, question, and know Him. This is why Rollins ultimately insists that speaking of God is really only speaking about our understanding of God, not God himself. (32)
Selmanovic, while acknowledging a real revelation of God that can be experienced by humans, believes that revelation is neither exclusively tied to Jesus Christ nor contained within Christianity. For Him, it’s really all about “God.” God is a vapid, generalized World-Spirit (This is the same language Fredrick Schleiermacher uses in his book, On Religion.) that is encased in all religions, rather than exclusively revealed through Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the Church, on the other. He is unsatisfied with the assertion that Christianity testifies to God’s Story of Rescue and that rescue is exclusively found in Jesus Christ. In fact, the grace of God to which the Holy Scriptures and Church has testified to for generations isn’t even unique to the Christ Event or Christianity. Instead, it is independent from both and common in the world’s histories, stories, and religions. God is present everywhere and in every person and the Christian faith cannot insist on an exclusive revelation in Jesus Christ or the Church. In the end, it is the kingdom of God that reveals God to the world, a thing that is trans-religious and separate from even Jesus Christ Himself. It is a revelation in-and-of-itself which is the gospel, a thing uncontrolled by Christianity and Jesus.
Upon surveying the writings of both Rollins and Selmanovic, one wonders why they are self-described Christians and committed to Christianity at all. If God doesn’t really speak, why posture one’s self as a listener? If God is not wholly and exclusively revealed in Jesus Christ, why commit one’s self to Him and His Story? In response to both religious thinkers, Barth asserts God does speak and He is revealed in Jesus Christ. For Barth, there is real, genuine knowledge of God because God has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity. This divine self-disclosure is in such away that humans can really, genuinely know Him. Barth declares that there is a readiness of God to be known, a knowledge that is “clear and certain.” While the knowledge that humans have is not through their own ingenuity and gumption, but through grace, God is so made up that He can be known by us.
Though apprehending revelation does not happen through our own power and command, it does happen and has happened. Barth makes clear that ultimately Jesus Christ is the point at which the world truly knows God. While others may suggest God is best defined by Jesus Christ, Barth insists He is only defined by Jesus. God is utterly and wholly revealed in Jesus Christ; to know Jesus is to know God. In fact, the only way to know God in intimate relationship is through the grace found in and through Jesus Christ. Barth maintains that God’s grace is only and intimately connected to Christ, rather than other sources and other religious faiths. Finally, Barth warns of the danger of selecting competing centers of revelation apart from Jesus Christ, like the kingdom of God.
In His Church Dogmatics volume on The Doctrine of God, Barth makes clear, “Theology guides the language of the Church, so far as it concretely reminds her that in all circumstances it is fallible human work, which in the matter of relevance or irrelevance lies in the balance, and must obedience to grace, if it is to be well done.” (CD I,1:2) Here Barth acknowledges the difficult task of “theologizing,” of speaking of God and His acts. While that speech is fallible and vacillates between relevance or irrelevance, requiring a healthy dose of grace along the way, it needs to happen nonetheless. Every generation needs to cherish, protect, and contend for the Rule of Faith given by our Lord once to the Church. If not, there is a real danger of precipitating into darkness and confusion. It is clear from the writings of these two theologians and thinkers that a shift is occurring within the Church regarding an important piece of that Rule, revelation.
Though historic Christian orthodoxy has consistently held to the real, genuine knowability of God and that knowledge being fully and exclusively revealed (outside of creation) in Jesus Christ, there are some who insist otherwise. There is a growing number who shove God so far into the clouds that nothing can be concretely said of Him. Others still, and perhaps more dangerously so, find God outside Jesus Christ, insisting God is in every person, every community, every religion. God and His grace is no longer exclusively revealed in Jesus Christ, but possessed by other faiths, too. It is worth ending with Barth’s warning as a reminder for these and other theologians: “Any deviation, any attempt to evade Jesus Christ in favour of another supposed revelation of God, or any denial of the fulness of God’s presence in Him, will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.” (CD II,1:319) May this not be the end of these or others who claim Jesus Christ as Lord.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, vol I, 1: The Doctrine of the Word of God. Translated by G.T. Thomson. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1955.
________. Church Dogmatics, vol II, 1: The Doctrine of God. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by T.H.L Parker, W.B. Johnson, Harold Knight, and J.L.M. Haire. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957.
Erdman, Chris. “Digging Up the Past: Karl Barth (the Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church,” Pages 236-243 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
Jones, Tony. “Introduction: Friendship, Faith, and Going Somewhere Together.” Pages 11-15 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
Rollins, Pete. How (Not) To Speak of God. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006.
Selmanovic, Samir. “The Sweet Problem of Inclusivism.” Pages 11-15 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
________. It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Popularity: 4% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s How (Not) To Speak of God. CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
“GOD SPEAKS”
In How (Not) to Speak of God, Rollins operates from the assumption that, “That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.” (xii) Though we are called to continually speak of God, we cannot really ever speak of or actually describe Him. Throughout this rhetorical tour de force, Rollins attempts to re-understand the traditional understanding of the nature of God’s self-disclosure along such fault lines.
As Rollins explains, traditionally Christianity has been understood to rest upon the idea that God has communicated to humanity through revelation, a concept that has been known as “that which reveals,” is the opposite of concealment, and God has graciously disclosed to us something about himself. In other words, in the past revelation meant God has actually revealed, de-concealed, and graciously disclosed Himself to the world. In fact, Rollins suggests it is thought that “Christianity…has privileged access to the mind of God,” an access which is contained and controlled by Christianity alone. (7) Rollins believes otherwise.
According to Rollins, this idea of revelation came after Christianity (falsely) embraced the Age of Reason, believing that “God was open to our understanding insomuch as God was revealed to us through the scripture.” (9) For these Enlightenment Christians, it was simple: God gave us a document (the Holy Scriptures) and the ability to understand and explore that document (the mind), thus providing access to God’s full, real Self (revelation). For Rollins, however, this notion of theistic accessibility is nothing short of “conceptual idolatry.” He insists the idea of any system of thought which the individual or community takes to be a visible rendering of God—in this case an intellectual rendering—is neither God nor of God, but is instead an anthropocentric construct, an idol. (12) Rollins insists that Western theology has reduced God to conceptual idols by the very exercise of naming God. Instead Rollins suggests God is not only unnameable, He is omninameable, he cannot be revealed through human words, and at the site of revelation, even when we think we can see God revealed to us, “we can only speak of God’s otherness and distance; Revelation has concealment built into its very heart.” (13, 14, 15, 16)
Rollins believes that Christianity has far too much confidence in a full divine self-disclosure, too much confidence in an actual complete revelation at God’s own behest, resulting in an overly defined, imbued “God” term. “If we fail to recognize that the term ‘God’ always falls short of that towards which the word is supposed to point, we will end up bowing down before our own conceptual creations forged from the raw materials of our self-image, rather than bowing before the one who stands over and above that creation.” (19) Christianity, especially the Western variety, has and is bowing before self-made revelatory “blocks of wood” in the form of theological constructs.
These constructs never really point to God Himself, however, because God blinds us with too much information about Himself. We must realize that our understanding of God comes as a result of One who overflows and blinds our understanding; God’s incoming blinds our intellect, saturates our understanding with a blinding presence, and gives us far too much information, resulting in an intellectual “short-circuiting” by the excess of presence. (22, 24) Ironically, while God blinds us with His presence, he agrees with Gregory of Nyssa that the more we move toward God we journey into divine darkness. While religious knowledge begins as an experience of entering into the light, the deeper we go the more darkness we find in that light; God is beyond the reach of all thinking. (27) In short, “Christianity testifies to the impossibility of grasping God because of the hyper-presence of God.” Barth would suggest otherwise, however.
For Barth, there is real, genuine knowledge of God because God has chosen to really, genuinely disclose Himself to us. Through His own purpose and volition, God made the decision to encounter man. “God encounters man in such a way that man can know Him. He encounters him in such a way that in this encounter He still remains God, but also raises man up to be a real, genuine knower of Himself.” (CD II,1:32) Rather than being hyper-hidden and overly concealed, God sets Himself before man in such away that he can really and genuinely speak of and describe Him. In other words, God is “graspable” by the very fact He has placed Himself before man to be grasped. In fact, though Barth does acknowledge a hiddenness and mystery to even His revelation, God has made Himself “clear and certain to us,” seeing to it that He not only does not remain to us hidden, but that we already have this knowledge from God Himself. (CD II,1:39) We can really and genuinely know God because He has chosen to show Himself to us in such a way that He can be considered and conceived by us. (CD II,1:10) What we must understand, however, is that this knowledge is not from us, but from God.
This knowledge of which we speak “cannot at any moment or in any respect try to understand itself other than as the knowledge made possible, realized and ordered by God alone.” (CD II,1:41) In part, this is the point Rollins attempts to make: the source of our desire (God) is set as an object that we reflect upon in order to grasp it, hold it. (1-2) In an effort to maintain God’s “otherness” and “beyondness,” Rollins ultimately makes God unreachable and unknowable. Furthermore, he argues that even when we describe God and claim a knowledge of Him, that claim and knowledge isn’t really even God Himself, but our understanding of God. (98) As Barth insists, however, “there is a readiness of God to be known as He actually is known in the fulfillment in which the knowledge of God is a fact.” (emphasis mine) (CD II,1:65)
Rather than being hyper-hidden and our God-talk other than God Himself, God can be known because God wants to be known and what we say of God, by His grace, is really God. As Barth continues, “‘God is knowable’ means God can be known—He can be known of and by Himself; in His essence, as it is turned to us in His activity, He is so constituted that He can be known by us.” (CD II,1:65) God has in fact set Himself before man in such away that we can confidently say “God can be known.”
While human efforts at accurately and exhaustively describing God are fraught with inconsistencies, fragility, and incompleteness because man is fallen and sinful, “God makes Himself known and offers Himself to us, so that we can in fact love Him as the one who exists for us…and He creates in us the possibility—the willingness and readiness—to know Him; so that, seen from our side also, there is no reason why this should not actually happen.” (CD II,1:33) Real, genuine knowledge of God can “actually happen” because we have a revelation from Him that comes to us in a manner that is intelligible, accessible, and clear.
This revelation is clear, accessible, and intelligible not because we ourselves are capable of thinking our way to God through our own ingenuity and gumption, though. Barth makes it clear that, “it is by the grace of God and only by the grace of God that it comes about that God is knowable to us…He gives Himself to us to be known, which establishes our knowledge of Him. God’s revelation is not at our power and command, but happens as a movement ‘from God.’” (CD II,1:28) Barth also makes it incredibly clear that this ultimate movement of God to reveal Himself to humanity was through Jesus Christ, an assertion that is as questioned as our ability to even know God.
Popularity: 5% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.”
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
In 2007, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones co-edited a book called An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. At the time, Tony Jones was the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, a national coordinating organization for the progressive Evangelical “conversation” known as the emerging church. Likewise, Doug Pagitt was one of the founding members of Emergent and editor of the newly-minted Emersion line of books from Baker Publishing Group out of which this title was published. The book was a collection of “voices” within the broader conversation “attempting to sing a song together” (whether or not the harmonies matched) in order to provide context for and explain what exactly was being sung within the emerging church.
One such voice was Chris Erdman who wrote a piece on the venerable theologian Karl Barth.
In this conversation Barth is known as a so-called “Friend of Emergent” who supports the key questions and answers percolating within the Emerging conversation. In his article, “Digging Up the Past: Karl Barth (the Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church,” Erdman attempts to establish that Barth is Emergent’s friend and theological ally. Erdman likes Barth because he insisted that “the theological enterprise must never be the sole realm of academic theologians” and because he believed “the theological imperative was never finished.” (238) Similarly, leaders in the emerging church call on the Church as it currently exists to wrench theological work from the hands of the elite and put it firmly into the hands of the people, in order to ensure theological inquiry and development is “never static, never dull, never fixed, always open.” (239) As Erdman insists, “We now, like Barth then, are dissatisfied with the established and entrenched theology that has produced our present crisis. We seek another way; we want to ‘begin all over again,’ to work in a state of ‘constant emergency.’” (240)
The only problem is that the theological work and “other way” born out of that dissatisfaction would be questioned and disputed by Barth himself, rather than supported.
Though the emerging church may find companionship in Barth’s own theological journey, he is much more a foe in the produce of that journey than friend. Upon surveying the theological fruit birthed from two influential emerging church thinkers—Peter Rollins (How (Not) To Speak of God) and Samir Selmanovic (It’s Really All About God)—and digging into the particulars of Barth’s own theology, these posts will reveal how he is an adversary to the emerging church in the key theological discourse on the doctrine of revelation. Rollins understands the revelation of God in two key ways: 1) the hiddenness and hyper-transcendence of God, resulting in a thickly veiled God who isn’t truly knowable; and 2) our inability to say anything directly of God Himself, resulting in speech that never speaks of God but merely our understanding of God. While Selmanovic does believes God is revealed and known to humanity, that revelation and knowledge is not is contained within the “Christian religion.” Consequently, God is trans-religious and is revealed entirely outside the person of Jesus Christ. Barth will counter both theologians by insisting the revelation of God is “clear and certain” and is exclusively in the person of Jesus Christ.
While Barth insists that theology is “nothing but human ‘language about God,’” there is still something to say. And because the theological discipline of dogmatics is the servant of Church proclamation, that “something” should be proclaimed well and in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, for the glory of God and good of the world. In the end, Barth will reveal how what Rollins and Selmanovic are saying is neither in one accord with the Scriptures nor part of the historic Christian faith.
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