Begegnung mit Gnade

I recently, while waiting for Anja and Susi in the Staatsgalerie actually, spent over an hour on just a couple of paragraphs of Barth’s Dogmatik im Grundriss. Not because I could not understand it, but simply because my heart was caught up into delightful meditation and worship. I simply couldn’t move on.

Barth writes: “Faith speaks of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as Him who meets us, as the object of faith, and says of this God that He is one in Himself, has become single in Himself for us and has become single once more in the eternal decree [the German is pretty clumsy too], explicated in time, of His free, unowed, unconditional love for man, for all men, in the counsel of His grace ...”. The passage goes on to elaborate on the Word of God being the Word of Grace that meets us in Jesus Christ, in the true God and true Man, Immanuel.

So, nothing particularly new. Nothing new at all actually, but the words somehow moved me powerfully. Perhaps you know what I mean. Anyway, as I always like to ground my meditations in a scripture, I chose Titus 2:11, ‘For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all’, and Titus 3:4-5 ‘But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.’ - which seemed to fit nicely.

Anyway, enough of me and my extreme mystical holiness! I wish you all a good weekend.