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Sin and Repentance
Barth does not speak of the covenant of works based on Genesis 2:16-17, but of the covenant of grace. Therefore his doctrine of sin must be treated differently than that of Reformed tradition.528 Because of his view on the covenant of grace the doctrine of sin is understood obscurely in Barth’s terms.529 And we cannot easily grasp the idea of sin which is a counterpart of repentance in Barth’s theology because his doctrine of sin is a reduction of sin as an ontological idea.
The genuine understanding of the idea of sin in the theology of Karl Barth is very important to the understanding of the doctrine of repentance that requires man to turn away from sin. Principally Barth attributes our incapacity to our finiteness rather than to our sinfulness530 so he defined sin not as a result of man’s evil works but as an inevitable character of creatures. According to his theology, sin does not require the responsibility of sinners, therefore repentance is not an essential element of the forgiveness of sins. And sin can be recognised only through analogia fidei that I am a sinner, the enemy of God, others and self.531 Since justification is the fulfillment of the covenant, man will never be reconciled to God without being pronounced free from guilt and without being justified.532 Reconciliation is a reaction of God against sin.533 Sin is the interchanging of God and man, that exalting of man to divinity or depressing of God to humanity, by which we seek to justify and fortify and establish ourselves.534 So to live in sin means that by an invisible necessity we cannot do otherwise than wilfully and consciously exalt ourselves to divinity and depress God to our own level and to our own side.535 Barth classifies sins into three large groups, namely pride, sloth and deception. These categories are connected with the threefold office of Christ. According to Barth, pride is man going his own way, following his own will, sloth is man choosing his lowliness and remaining in his own darkness, and finally deception is man closing his door to truth. At any rate Barth deduces ‘sin is pride’ from the meaning of vere Deus because God humbles Himself by becoming man. Sin in its first form is pride and for this Christ has His high priestly office:
When God condescends to man, when He makes Himself one with Him in order to be truly his God, man cannot fall way from the work of this mercy of God to him. But what Adam did, what Israel did… what even the Christian does when he forgets that he is a Christian, is the very thing which is forbidden by this first form of grace, the very thing which is made impossible, which is excluded, which is negated because it is itself a negation. It is the fall in the form of presumption, acting as though God had not humbled Himself to man….His high-priestly office.536 Sin in its second form is sloth and for this Christ has His kingly office: He wills and seeks us as we are, in our creatureliness, as men, that we may be raised to the status of children. That is why He humbled Himself. That is the meaning and force of His mercy… and against that sin in its second form is sloth….the doctrine of His kingly office.
And sin in its third form is deception and for this Christ has His prophetic office: When God Himself is the pledge that He has done all this, man cannot pretend that he knows better. When the truth speaks for itself, man’s knowing better is only falsehood, a lie. …we are incorrigible liars….the doctrine of prophetic office.538 Barth connected Trägheit (sloth) 539 especially with the repentance of man in the grace of God. Sloth is the refusal of God’s gift of freedom out of an indolent selfcontentment. The kingdom of God is the repentance and the counterpart of sin, and all sloth contradicts the kingdom of God, which is basically the reflection of the opportunity to live in communion with God.540 The breaking of the kingdom of the world is accomplished by the coming of the kingdom of God and through repentance. The kingdom of God means that God calls His saints in Jesus to make them His disciples541; thus sloth is the refusal of God’s calling. So, the call of Jesus will be along the lines of the encounter between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world.542 How can man know that he is a sinner? In Barth’s theology he can know it in Jesus Christ because “Jesus Christ is the representative of all humans before God” and when He died He showed that the whole human being is completely corrupt and becomes the man of sin.543 But Barth does not try to show that Jesus Christ is this mirror and the fact that it is presupposed in faith. He asks only how “Jesus is the mirror.”544 Sin may not be given an independent, self-originating and self-contained treatment, but has to be seen in the light of the atonement.545 There is no need of hamartiology and the doctrine of repentance of traditional understanding because Barth’s doctrine of sin is based on the Christocentric sphere only. Sin is not regarded as the breaking of covenant of works or lawlessness or disobedience of a specific command given to the first man546, but sin is ‘No’ where God says ‘Yes’547 and the self-surrender of the creature to “Nothingness.”548 And sin has “no positive part to play in God’s plan; it is the object of God’s uncompromising ‘No’.”549 Das Nichtige is a counterpart of God’s will and sometimes it is used for the expression of evil. For Barth das Nichtige is not a description of his categories of pride, sloth, and deception, but rather the senselessness, ridiculousness and worthlessness of sin. Therefore it is a “disqualification in contrast to the noble activity of God.”550 Barth defined das Nichtige as the opposition and resistance to God’s world-dominion, the stubborn element and alien aster.551 Das Nichtige exists simply as that which God does not will.552 Repentance and sanctification are obedience to God, but das Nichtige is rebellion and disobedience against God’s will. And das Nichtige can have value or attain validity “only insofar as universal revelation has not yet been finished, as the whole creation still waits for it and looks forward to it.”553 Evil is the incursion of das Nichtige into creation. Barth treats das Nichtige as powerful, dynamic, menacing, destructive factor. So das Nichtige is “the power of darkness that haunts our world,” 554 menace and cosmic menace. For that reason only God can break it and crash it.
Repentance, Christ and the Holy Spirit
When one understands the doctrine of repentance in the doctrine of salvation, one more clearly recognises the importance and value of the doctrine of repentance. Salvation is the fulfillment of a covenant, an eternal covenant, according to which God purposes to bring the human race into reconciled relation with him, and “reconciliation between God and the human creation that he loves in Christ.”582 The basis of the Church is the correlation between repentance and the Church that rests on the incarnation of the Christ who summons us to repentance.583 According to CD 4/1- 3, salvation is achieved “by the self-same historical happening characterized as, respectively, a divine act, a human act and a divine-human act.”584 Therefore salvation is the work of Christ alone. For this reason, repentance is inevitably connected to reconciliation through faith in Christ.
Participatio Christi is also at the heart of Barth’s doctrine of sanctification. In Calvin’s Commentaries,585 Calvin tried to connect repentance and sanctification with only Christ himself but that not of man. Christ washes away our sins by his blood, and reconciles us with God by the sacrifice of his death. Christ makes us “alive” unto righteousness. But Barth criticises Calvin’s concept of participatio Christi because he thinks that it is lacking to have objectivity in salvation. It shows that Calvin wants to treat both sanctification and repentance in the objective sphere, and Barth emphasises the objectivity of salvation in Christ only.
In Calvin’s concept of participatio Christi there is lacking that which we have described as the objective presupposition of the participation of the saints in the sanctity of Jesus Christ, the sanctification which has come to man a priori in Him, which is absolutely sure to the saints, and which gives to their existence teleological meaning among men…This means that Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification does not have the foundation which is finally needed to carry it.
Barth’s criticism of Calvin is not proper. It is true that Calvin emphasises human responsibility more than Barth, but the starting point and initiative of sanctification are only God and Jesus Christ.
And man’s sinful action is disturbed by Jesus’ action. By the disturbance of Jesus Christ we are separated from the world. This is the end of our calling, where the Church of Jesus is made up of saints (εκκλησια) and this is man’s sanctification. By this disturbance man is set at the side of God and “may be the witnesses of the Holy One.”
Like other Reformed theologians, Barth has as the most important keys in his doctrine of repentance that Christ has died for man and that the Holy Spirit has been given to man. This is renewal and is the chief element of salvation.588 And God makes the regenerated sinners who are his children and who are sought and found by God in Christ and through Holy Spirit repent.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1. THE DOCTRINE OF REPENTANCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN CALVIN
1. 1. THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
1. 2. THE ROLES OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
1. 3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF REPENTANCE AND SANCTIFICATION
SUMMARY
CHAPTER 2. THE DOCTRINE OF REPENTANCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF KARL BARTH
2. 1. THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
2. 2. THE ROLES OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
2. 3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF REPENTANCE AND SANCTIFICATION IN SOTERIOLOGY
SUMMARY
CHAPTER 3. THE DOCTRINE OF REPENTANCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF G.C. BERKOUWER
3. 1. THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
3. 2. THE ROLES OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
3. 3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF REPENTANCE AND SANCTIFICATION
SUMMARY
PART TWO
CHAPTER 4. THE DOCTRINE OF PENANCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
4. 1. THE NECESSITY OF PENANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
4. 2. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PENANCE IN THE SACRAMENT
4. 3. THE ROLES OF PENANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
SUMMARY
PART THREE
CHAPTER 5. THE DOCTRINE OF REPENTANCE IN THE THEOLOGY OF HYUNG-NONG PARK
5. 1. THE HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF HYUNG-NONG PARK
5. 2. THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
5. 3. THE ROLES OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
5. 4. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF REPENTANCE IN SOTERIOLOGY
SUMMARY
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SUMMARY
