Karl Barth on the Gospel

image, with excellent caption, from here.

There is often disagreement over what the heart of the Gospel is. This, I think, is linked to the wonderful but so easily misunderstood pronouncement that "God is Love". This is of course true, and deep, and beautiful, but we must dig a little deeper to discover who that God is and what God's love is like.

In reading (again) a little bit (oxymoronic!) of Barth for my Dissertation, I was struck by what he says about the Gospel. In Church Dogmatics III.1, section 41. Creation and Covenant, of the Gospel of God, Barth writes the following:

"His Gospel, then, is not the general truth that He is the gracious Father, but the specific and concrete truth that in His own Son He has taken our place in order to put right by His death and resurrection the wrong that we have done"

I think this is a brilliant summary of the Gospel, in terms of its cosmic, powerful, re-creating core. The Gospel is not a 'general truth' as Barth puts it, but something 'specific and concrete', bound up in Jesus and his death and resurrection.

To be honest, I don't share this quote for any particular reason, it just resonated with me and so I park it here for your encouragement/pondering/reflection.