mgpcpastor's blog

There seems to be a growing fascination with the theology of Karl Barth among evangelical and reformed theologians.
If a monkey placed before a typewriter for an infinite period of time would eventually make the consecutive keystrokes to produce the works of Shakespeare (or some other author: “It was the best of times, it was the “blurst” of times’? You stupid monkey!”) it does no injustice to an extremely committed and gifted human to point out that if he spends a lifetime writing about the Bible he’ll probably write many things that are true.
Barth worked as a scholar of the Scriptures. Given the volume of his output there are bound to be statements of his that accurately reflect what the Scriptures teach.
But it is important to recognise that any thing of value from Barth comes in spite of his attitude to Scripture, not because of it.

The following is from Ray Ortlund’s blog:

“The vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its capacity for error, also extends to its religious or theological content.”

“There are obvious and overlapping contradictions, e.g., between the Law and the prophets, between John and the Synoptists, between Paul and James.”

“The prophets and apostles as such, even in their office, even in their function as witnesses, even in the act of writing down their witnesses, were real, historical men as we are, and therefore sinful in their action, and capable and actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word.”

“Yet the presence of the Word of God itself, the real and present speaking and hearing of it, is not identical with the existence of the book as such.”

“If, therefore, we are serious about the fact that this miracle is an event, we cannot regard the presence of God’s Word in the Bible as an attribute inhering once for all in this book as such and what we see before us of books and chapters and verses.”

Karl Barth, quoted in G. K. Beale, The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism (Wheaton, 2008), pages 282-283.