Blogging with Barth: CD 1.1 §6.3 "The Word of God and Experience" pp. 198-227

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a year-long detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §6 states: "The reality of the Word of God in all its three forms is grounded only in itself. So, too, the knowledge of it by men can consist only in its acknowledgment, and this acknowledgment can become real only through itself and can become intelligible only in terms of itself."

In subsection §6.3 ("The Word of God and Experience"), Barth tackles a potentially thorny issue. If, as was said last time, we have no innate ability to be a hearer of the Word of God, what do we do with human experience? Is there something of the word of God in us that is separate from the Word of God so that in some small way (in reference to ourselves) we can respond to God without a dependency upon Him?

Barth says no (an obvious answer if you have been following his argument so far in 1.1--at least it would seem so to me). But let's untangle this thing, shall we?

First, Barth defines 'experience' in the following way:

We have defined knowledge as the confirmation of human acquaintance with an object whereby its truth becomes a determination of the existence of the man who has the knowledge. This determination of the existence of the man who has the knowledge we call experience (198). 

Barth notes that this determination will not be a determination by the self.  He says there is no "place here for the view that this experience is a kind of co-operation between divine determining and human self-determining. Again, the undeniable fact that this experience takes place in an act of human self-determination does not mean that man in this self-determining accomplishes as it were a greater or lesser part of the whole and then leaves the rest to God’s determining" (199).

Barth goes on to suggest that there is no one point of focus of determination in the human being--for example, the will, intellect, subconscious, intuition, etc.--in other words, no special "province" in the mind of humans (as Schleiermacher termed it) among the possibilities of human existence in its determination by God's Word. It is instead a total determination made possible by the Word of God:

To summarise, human existence means human self-determination. If experience of God’s Word involves the determination of human existence and hence also of human self-determination by the Word of God, then by self-determination we are to understand the exercise of all the faculties in whose exercise man is man without basic emphasis upon and also without basic repudiation of any specific human possibility. In this context all such emphases and repudiations are to be resisted already on the score of method, since they are the results or presuppositions of a general philosophical anthropology by whose constructions, however right or wrong they may be in their own sphere, we cannot allow ourselves to be influenced here. From different angles the determination of human existence by God’s Word can be understood just as much as a determination of feeling, will, or intellect, and psychologically it may actually be more the one than the other in a given case. The decisive point materially, however, is that it is a determination of the whole self-determining man (204).

Barth then pushes a "step further" to explain what the experience of God's Word (i.e. the determination of the whole self-determining person by God's word) might consist. It consists of what Barth calls "acknowledgment"--a word he finds very suitable to explain nine different but related aspects which collectively comprise "acknowledgment" (pp. 205-208):

1. (Cognition) "The word acknowledgment entails first the concept of knowledge. This must be so because the Word of God is primarily and predominantly speech, communication from person to person and reason to reason, spirit, a rational event, the Word of truth, because it is addressed to the human ratio, by which one is not to understand the intellect alone, yet at any rate the intellect also and not last of all."
2. (Knowledge) "But this word also expresses the fact that experience of God’s Word involves a relation of man as person to another person, naturally the person of God. We can also speak, of course, of the acknowledgment of facts, and we find this here too. But the kind of fact one acknowledges is not a fact of nature—one does not acknowledge a landslip or a rainbow or the like. The acknowledged fact is a fact created and presented by a person or persons. The determination of man’s existence by the Word of God is created thus; it is determination by God’s person. This is another reason why we call it acknowledgment."
3. (Acceptance) "Acknowledgment relates to a definite control (positive or negative) with respect to the one who acknowledges. It means not only subjection to a necessity, but adaptation to the meaningfulness of this necessity, approval of it, not just involvement in it but acceptance of it. Acknowledgment of God’s Word relates to the purposiveness of God’s Word, to its content as the Word of the Lord, the Word of man’s Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer. It must consist in the fact that man approves this Word (even if in a very specific sense) and accepts its content (even if in a very specific sense) as truth valid for him. Acknowledgment of God’s Word by man consists in avowal of and submission to the purposes of God declared in God’s Word, in affirmation (naturally in a very specific way) of the “God with us” that the Word of God has to tell its hearers."
4. (Encounter) "Acknowledgment of God’s Word must also mean, of course, respect for the fact that takes place in God’s Word. But this fact consists especially in its coming to us, in its contingent contemporaneity as revelation, Holy Scripture and Church proclamation. Illic et tunc [there and then] becomes hic et nunc [here and now]. Jesus Christ Himself lives in the message of His witnesses, lives in the proclamation of His Church on the basis of this message, strides forward as the Lord of grace and judgment to meet the existence of the hearer of the Word. Experience of God’s Word, then, must at least be also experience of His presence, and because this presence does not rest on man’s act of recollection but on God’s making Himself present in the life of man, it is acknowledgment of His presence."
5. (Obedience) "In the word acknowledgment, as we have already said, there lies the relation to a control, a necessity. We have to remember that the Word of God has power, power as word has power, the power of God’s truth, the power of His promise, claim, judgment and blessing which are its content, but power. Acknowledgment of the Word of God by man is naturally, then, approval of the Word of God by man, yet not approval on the basis of persuasion between equals, but the kind of approval that arises on the basis of obedience, of submission between those who are utterly unequal. To have experience of God’s Word is to yield to its supremacy. Whether it comes to us as Law or Gospel, as command or promise, it comes at any rate in such a way as to bend man, and indeed his conscience and will no less than his intellect and feeling. It does not break him; it really bends him, brings him into conformity with itself."
6. (Decision) "Acknowledgment certainly means decision too. The coming of God’s Word to man is the act of divine freedom and choice. It does not have to come to him. It comes according to God’s good-pleasure, and it is again God’s good-pleasure how it comes to him, whether for grace or judgment. In every case, then, experience of the Word of God is experience of the divine freedom and choice, and therefore it is itself decision, decision concerning man which is manifested as the characterising of man’s decision as a decision for faith or unbelief, for obedience or disobedience. In the first instance, then, the conformity to God’s Word to which we have just referred might mean either obedience or disobedience. Even in disobedience there is an acknowledgment of God’s Word, though against man’s will and to his perdition. Even in his disobedience man characterises himself as the man he is before God’s Word. Even disobedience is in its own way a confirmation or approval of God’s Word to the degree that it is disobedience against God’s Word and to the degree that even in disobedience man’s self determination is a fulfilment of his determination by the Word of God. The same may naturally be said of the decision for obedience. Just because experience of God’s Word is such decision, man can and must be summoned in the Church to ever new experience and therefore to decision."
7. (Acquiescence) "There also lies in the concept of acknowledgment the fact that the act denoted thereby means halting before an enigma, acquiescence in a situation which is not open but which is unexplained from the standpoint of him who does the acknowledging. In § 5 we spoke of the secularity of the Word of God, i.e., of the fact that it comes to us in a form which also means its concealment. Experience of God’s Word, then, must also consist in the fact that we receive it in this form and this concealment, in this twofold indirectness. Our very acceptance of the Word, which will be especially important later, will participate in this twofold indirectness. It, too, will have a secular form, the form of all kinds of human acts, and this form will be its concealment, its ambivalence. Apart from this ambivalence, which is deeply rooted in the very nature of the matter, there is no experience of God’s Word. It will always consist also in respect for, and acknowledgment of, the mystery of this Word."
8. (Movement) "Just because acknowledgment of the mystery of God in His Word is at issue, we must also stress the fact that the term acknowledgment denotes an act or movement on man’s part, a movement which only as it is made is the acknowledgment required, so that it cannot be resolved into an attitude. What prevents the latter in experience of God’s Word, and what makes this experience, where it is real, into a movement, is what we called in § 5 the one-sideness of the Word of God. We meant by this the fact that the total Word of God, whether veiled and unveiled, or unveiled and veiled, always encounters us, and that this is each time something specific for us, that it is one-sided for us, that now it encounters us in its veiling and now in its unveiling, that it is not manifest to us in the unity of the two, and yet that it always seeks to be heard by us as a complete Word of God. In view of this, acknowledgment of the Word of God necessarily means letting oneself be continually led, always making a step, always being in movement from the experience felt at one time or the thought grasped at one time to the opposite experience and thought, because hearing of God’s Word always consists in also hearing the one in the other and the other in the one. In this movement which cannot be arrested by any synthesis a man acknowledges the mystery of the Word of God and he has Christian experience."
9. (Response) "When acknowledgment takes place, there is a yielding of the man who acknowledges before the thing or person he acknowledges. He submits to the authority of the other. This is not in contradiction with the concept of self-determination but it does mean that the self-determination of man as such takes place at a specific point in a specific context. It has found its beginning and its basis in another higher determination. In the act of acknowledgment, the life of man, without ceasing to be the self-determining life of this man, has now its centre, its whence, the meaning of its attitude, and the criterion whether this attitude really has the corresponding meaning—it has all this outside itself, in the thing or person acknowledged. So far as it has all this, it has it from the thing or person acknowledged. Thus acknowledgment as an attitude is in every respect the act of this man and yet from the standpoint of the meaning of the attitude it is not at all his act but a determination that has come upon him from the thing or person acknowledged by him and compelling his acknowledgment. First there is the thing or person acknowledged, and then in virtue of it, and in the last resort deriving wholly from it, there is acknowledgment. We are confronted here by what we called in § 5 the spirituality of the Word of God, i.e., the grounding not only of its being spoken but also of its being really heard by man in the Word itself, the appropriation of God’s Word as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and therefore as the Word’s own act on man. Therewith we are also brought up against the frontier of what we can say about experience of God’s Word as such. The final thing to be said is that while the attitude of acknowledgment vis-à-vis God’s Word is really an attitude of man, an act of his self-determination, nevertheless it is the act of that self-determination of man whose meaning and basis, whose final seriousness and true content, whose truth and reality, cannot be ascribed to man himself but only to his determination by the Word of God. It is the act of pure acknowledgment, one might also say, the act in which acknowledgment consists in the fact that it merely seeks to be the answer to a “recognition”—at this frontier even the meaning of the word must change—which has come to man from beyond all his own acts or powers, of which he himself is not the subject, but in whose free truth and reality he must be acknowledged if he is to acknowledge its truth and reality."

Thus the basis of 'acknowledgment' is the "acknowledged being." I'm fairly certain I have understood Barth at this point. Check me in the reference above if I seem askew (it won't hurt my feelings). 

Further, 'acknowledgment' is not an extraordinary capability of a kind of elite class of people:

Does there take place in the reality of this experience a kind of divine emanation towards man, or, from man’s standpoint, a divine influxus* whose outcome is the possibility in question? Can one deduce from the possibility of the experience of God’s Word that there are men who have this possibility, perhaps in the same way as others have artistic possibilities as distinct from many of their fellow-men? Do these men exist in such a way that they can discover and recognise themselves as possessors of this possibility or be discovered and recognised as such by others (210)?

Barth is unequivocal on this point--nein! The experience of God's Word is a gift of God. And yet, there is some kind of transaction "...that in it God hands something over to man in the sense that it really passes out of God’s hand into the hands of man, or, from man’s standpoint, in such a way that man receives something from God in the sense that it is really put in his hands (212)." Nonetheless, it is the gift of God--and a miracle:

The possibility of knowledge of God’s Word lies in God’s Word and nowhere else. In the absolute sense its reality can only take place, and it can do so only as a miracle before the eyes of every man, secular and religious, Greek and Jew. “It is only an appearance that the rainbow stands on the earth, in reality it arches over the earth; true, it stoops down to the earth, yet it does not stand on our earth, but is only perceived from it. So it is with divine truth; this needs no human support, as the rainbow does not need the earth. True, it shines on man and he receives it; yet it is not dependent on man. It withdraws and man remains in darkness; it returns and man walks in light. But man is not its assistant; he cannot produce the light; similarly he cannot store it” (Eduard Böhl, Dogmatik, 1886, p. XXV). “Therefore when I die—but I die no more—and someone finds my skull, let this skull preach to him and say: I have no eyes, yet I behold Him; I have no brain nor understanding, yet I comprehend Him; I have no lips, yet I kiss Him; I have no tongue, yet I praise Him with all who call upon His name. I am a hard skull, yet I am quite softened and melted in His love; I lie outside here in the churchyard, yet I am within in Paradise. All suffering is forgotten. This His great love has done for us, since for us He bore His cross and went forth to Golgotha” (H. F. Kohlbrügge, Passionspredigten,3 1913, p. 173 f.). This is the voice of true Christian experience"(222-223).

This miracle is faith.

When the Word of God is present to us, this means that we are turned away from ourselves and towards the Word of God, that we are orientated to it. To stand in faith means to be called to new faith. The presence of the Word and standing in faith mean, then, having the Word and faith before one and expecting them, being directed anew to the free actualisation of the grace experienced, clinging anew to the promise, looking anew for the event in which the possibility of knowledge of God’s Word comes into view for us (225).

Karl Barth on the Idolatry of God’s Wrath

Many thanks to W. Travis McMaken for pointing out this small but significant thought from Der Römerbrief (bold is mine, CAPS are Barth's)

We are exhorted in the Epistle to the Romans to a particular line of conduct, not in order that we may adopt the point of view of God, but that we might bear it in mind, consider it from all sides, and then live within its gravity. To judge involves the capacity to assign guilt and to envelop an action in wrath. God has this capacity and exercises it continuously. But, as the capacity of God, it is invisibly one with His forgiveness and with the manifestation of His righteousness. Our action in judging possesses, however, nothing of this double-sidedness. We do not possess the divine freedom of rejecting AND electing. When we permit ourselves to judge others, we are caught up in condemnation: the result is that we merely succeed in erecting the wrath of God as an idol. . . . When God rejects and hardens there is hope and promise. . . . How different it is when men, putting themselves in God’s place, put stumblingblocks in the way of other men. They seek only to harden, and not to liberate; only to bind, and not to loose; only to kill, and not to make alive. . . . Here once again the supreme right is the supreme wrong, if we suppose that right is OUR right.

Kickstarter Project: Research for "A Fantastic Affair: Karl Barth in America 1962"

Please consider helping fund the following Kickstarter project by Jessica DeCou:

“A Fantastic Affair”: Karl Barth in America, 1962 (a.k.a. “KBUSA” – under advance contract with Fortress Press, ISBN: 978-1-4514-6553-2) provides the first detailed chronicle of Barth’s sole visit to the U.S. in 1962. Barth arrived at a tumultuous moment in American history and found himself embroiled in some of the nation’s fiercest conflicts: touring prisons and inner city neighborhoods and meeting with communist groups, State and Defense Department staff, civil rights activists, business leaders, and White House officials – just to name a few. The book, therefore, will not only shed light on Barth’s later life and work, but also provide a snapshot of American culture in the early ‘60s – from the highest levels of government to the tourist cultures built along with and alongside the developing Interstate Highway System; from Seminary campuses to high security prisons; from Napa Valley to East Harlem.  

Of course, completing this project requires extensive travel to various institutions around the country where relevant archives are housed. Research funding in the humanities can be difficult to come by these days, but I will not let that stop me!!  I’m turning to Kickstarter in the hope that, with your help, my research can continue unabated in order to meet my publication deadline (Summer 2014). 

More details here. 

Blogging with Barth: CD 1.1 §5.4-6.2 "The Nature of the Word of God" pp. 162-198

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a year-long detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §5 states: "The Word of God in all its three forms is God’s speech to man. For this reason it occurs, applies and works in God’s act on man. But as such it occurs in God’s way which differs from all other occurrence, i.e., in the mystery of God."

In subsection §5.4 ("The Speech of God as the Word of God"), Barth begins by noting that the Word of God remains always the mystery of God, lest we should think we are in some way (when speaking the speech of God) becoming master to its servant:

Only God conceives of Himself, even in His Word. Our concept of God and His Word can only be an indication of the limits of our conceiving, an indication which must not be allowed to condense into a negative proof. This cannot be our concern even now when we must give added sharpness to the decisive point that the Word of God is God’s Word. We can sharpen this here only by remembering again and explicitly our own limits, only by making it even clearer to ourselves that we cannot utter even a wretched syllable about the how of God’s Word unless the Word of God is spoken to us as God’s Word, which means spoken to us in such a way that all we think and say about its how has its substance not in itself but outside itself in the Word of God, so that what we think and say about this how can never become the secret system of a what. It is for this reason and in this sense that we finally speak of the Word of God as the mystery of God (164).

The uniqueness or "mystery" of God's word (here Barth is not using 'mystery' in a New Testament sense) can be seen in three primary ways:

1. The speech of God is and remains the mystery of God supremely in its secularity. "When God speaks to man, this event never demarcates itself from other events in such a way that it might not be interpreted at once as part of these other events (165)." In other words, the speech of God bears the veil of humanity.
2. The speech of God is and remains the mystery of God in its onesidedness. "I have in mind here the relation of veiling and unveiling occasioned by the secularity of the Word. That God’s Word is onesided means that when spoken to us and received by us it does not meet us partly veiled and partly unveiled, but either veiled or unveiled, yet without being different in itself, without being spoken and received any the less truly either way (174)." 
3. The speech of God is and remains the mystery of God in its spirituality. "With this statement, which must form the conclusion to our exposition of the nature of God’s Word, we expressly allude for the first time to the concept of the Holy Spirit. To say Holy Spirit in preaching or theology is always to say a final word. For when we do this, then whether we are aware of it or not, and it is best to be aware of it, we are always speaking of the event in which God’s Word is not only revealed to man but also believed by him. We are always speaking of the way in which the Word of God is so said to this or that man that he must hear it, or of the way in which this or that man is so open and ready for the Word of God that he can hear it" (181-182). How is it that we might hear human speech as God's Word? Only by the power of the Holy Spirit!

One might summarize this section with this from Barth, which I think is marvelous:

Is it clear to our generation in life as well as thought that the serious element in serious theological work is grounded in the fact that its object is never in any circumstances at our command, at the command of even the profoundest biblical or Reformation vision or knowledge, at the command of even the most delicate and careful construction? Absolutely any theological possibility can as such be pure threshing of straw and waste of energy, pure comedy and tragedy, pure deception and self-deception (163).

Yes!

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §6 states: "The reality of the Word of God in all its three forms is grounded only in itself. So, too, the knowledge of it by men can consist only in its acknowledgment, and this acknowledgment can become real only through itself and can become intelligible only in terms of itself."

In subsection §6.1 ("The Question of the Knowability of the Word of God"), Barth summarizes where we've been and where we now need to go:

In § 3 we found in the concept of the Word of God the mandated content of Church proclamation and hence also the criterion of dogmatics as the scientific testing of Church proclamation. In § 4 we noted the three forms, namely, proclamation, Scripture and revelation, in which the entity denoted by the concept is actual. Finally in § 5, with these three forms in view, we asked concerning the nature of this entity and we learned to know it as three distinct but not different determinations, the speech of God, the act of God and the mystery of God. Before we now go on to give a provisional definition of the concept of dogmatics on the basis of these findings, we must first give an explicit answer to the question as to the knowability of the Word of God (187).

So, how is it that (given Barth's emphasis on the mystery of the speech of God) we can even know the Word of God when it comes to us? In other words, how can we know the Word of God?

Barth says that last sentence is not really the question we need to ask. It's not how can we know the Word of God? It is how do people know the Word of God?

In subsection §6.2 ("The Word of God and Man"), in terms of the how, Barth notes that God's Word is first and foremost the Word of God addressed to human beings.

Preaching and sacrament are addressed to men. The word of the prophets and apostles is addressed to men. The revelation of God Himself in Jesus Christ is addressed to men. The Word of God whose three forms we have again denoted herewith is addressed to men. If it is addressed to men, it obviously seeks to be known and therefore heard by them, yet not only known and heard, but known in the sense already generally established. Mediated by their acquaintance with it, it seeks to confirm itself as a reality to them. It is addressed to them in order that they may let it be spoken to them and that they may no longer be what they are without it, but with it (191).

But how is this? Do human beings have some innate ability to determine and decipher the speech of God? To hear the Word of God when it is issued?

Shall we say unreservedly that the question of the possibility of the knowledge of God’s Word is a question of anthropology? Shall we ask what man generally and as such, in addition to all else he can do, can or cannot do in this regard? Is there a general truth about man which can be made generally perceptible and which includes within it man’s ability to know the Word of God? We must put this question because an almost invincible development in the history of Protestant theology since the Reformation has led to an impressive affirmative answer to this question in the whole wing of the Church that we have called Modernist (191).

Barth says no. Nope, this is a kind of Cartesian theology which we must reject:

The Modernist view from which we must demarcate ourselves here goes back to the Renaissance and especially to the Renaissance philosopher Descartes with his proof of God from human self-certainty (195).

Nope, the ability to be a hearer of the Word is an ability given by the Word of God itself:

The fact of God’s Word does not receive its dignity and validity in any respect or even to the slightest degree from a presupposition that we bring to it. Its truth for us, like its truth in itself, is grounded absolutely in itself. The procedure in theology, then, is to establish self-certainty on the certainty of God, to measure it by the certainty of God, and thus to begin with the certainty of God without waiting for the validating of this beginning by self-certainty. When that beginning is made, but only when it is made, it is then, but only subsequently, incidentally and relatively validated by the necessary self-certainty. In other words, in the real knowledge of God’s Word, in which alone that beginning is made, there also lies the event that it is possible, that that beginning can be made. Again, we do not base this rejection of the Cartesian way on a better philosophy. It is not our concern here whether there is such a philosophy. In relation to this object, the object of theology, we are content to say that one must affirm the possibility of its knowledge by men in this way and no other. Men can know the Word of God because and in so far as God wills that they know it, because and in so far as there is over against God’s will only the impotence of disobedience, and because and in so far as there is a revelation of God’s will in His Word in which the impotence of disobedience is set aside (196).

Book Review: "In the Shadow of Karl Barth: Charlotte von Kirschbaum" by Renate Köbler

In the Shadow of Karl Barth: Charlotte von Kirschbaum By Renate Köbler. Translated by Keith Crim. Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989. 156 pages.

Renate Köbler's stated goal in this book is to liberate the German theologian and very capable assistant of Karl Barth from the shadows. With the dearth of biographical information out there about von Kirschbaum, Köbler's contribution seems very valuable to me and I think she does a commendable job. Admittedly the book is not overly generous on details of von Kirschbaum's life so those looking for a 1000-page volume overflowing with information might be a little disappointed. That being said, if you want to understand a little better how she influenced Barth this is a good place to start (and let's admit it--there aren't THAT many places to start).

For those that are not aware, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was for forty years one of Barth's closest companions and co-workers. That she had a significant impact on the Church Dogmatics and that history should remember her isn't disputed. Of course, to what degree she was a counterpart and "suitable companion" for Barth's great work is unknown. Even Barth suggests he could not have done the work he did without her (he said so many times)---so at the very least that must be taken into account. In the book, Köbler suggests that much of the material in the excurses of the Church Dogmatics is attributable to her work, mostly because of her help as secretary and archivist, not to mention the significant role she played as Barth's intellectual partner. This point is not backed up assiduously in the book, but the suggestion is strongly present. At the very least we are being encouraged by the book to appreciate the larger role played by von Kirschbaum, which is one of the work's strengths.

I appreciated the inclusion of two essays by Charlotte: the "Address for the Movement 'Free Germany'" of 1945 and "The Role of Women in the Proclamation of the Word" of 1951. It is nice to hear her own voice and the inclusion of these essays has whet my appetite to read more of her work. There's not a lot of it out there, but to follow-up on the reading of this book, I'll likely read (at a later point) The Question of Woman: The Collected Writings of Charlotte Von Kirschbaum and Charlotte Von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology.

Blogging with Barth: 1.1 §5.1-5.3 "The Nature of the Word of God" pp. 125-162

Check here for previous posts in the "Blogging with Barth" series or check here for a year-long detailed reading schedule for the Church Dogmatics with links to the respective posts I've written to accompany each day's reading.

The Leitsatz (thesis statement) for §5 states: "The Word of God in all its three forms is God’s speech to man. For this reason it occurs, applies and works in God’s act on man. But as such it occurs in God’s way which differs from all other occurrence, i.e., in the mystery of God."

In subsection §5.1 ("The Question of the Nature of the Word of God"), Barth has some 'splainin' to do. Two gentlemen, Gogarten and Siegfried, have raised some objections to Barth's earlier project, the Christian Dogmatics, a project which Barth abandoned to work on his new project, the Church Dogmatics (cf. F. Gogarten, “Karl Barths Dogmatik,” Theol. Rundschau, 1929, p. 70 f.; T. Siegfried, Das Wort und die Existenz, I, 1930, p. 35 f., 250 f.). And at the entrance to a section on the nature of the Word, Barth has chosen to address their objections. Essentially he wants to distance himself from the notion that there is a human way to account for the Word of God. So he does so in a 6-page stretch of small print excursus. Barth suggests that the criticism of his work are based on misunderstandings and he wants to address them broadly in this new project by adding a new section, "The Nature of the Word of God." In the small print, his essential point and critical rebuttal is this: 

If there is one thing the Word of God certainly is not, it is not a predicate of man, even of the man who receives it, and therefore not of the man who speaks, hears and knows it in the sphere of the Church (127).

Thus, Barth sets out in the next three subsections to talk about the three forms in which God's Word is spoken to us--The Word of God as 1) the speech of God, 2) as God's act, 3) as the Mystery of God.  

In subsection §5.2 ("The Word of God as the Speech of God"), Barth states simply, "God's Word mean that God speaks" (132). He then asks, what does it imply for the concept of the Word of God if the Word of God means originally and irrevocably that God speaks? 

1. First, it means that speech is primarily spiritual (and also a physical and natural event): "The Word of God is primarily spiritual and then, in this form, in this spirituality, for the sake of it and without prejudice to it, it is also a physical and natural event. This particularly is what is meant when in accordance with the three forms in which we hear this Word we call it the speech of God. Speech, including God’s speech, is the form in which reason communicates with reason and person with person. To be sure it is the divine reason communicating with the human reason and the divine person with the human person. The utter inconceivability of this event is obvious. But reason with reason, person with person, is primarily analogous to what happens in the spiritual realm of creation, not the natural and physical realm. The Word of God—and at this point we should not evade a term so much tabooed to-day—is a rational and not an irrational event" (135).
2. Second, it means that the speech is personal: "God’s Word is not a thing to be described nor a term to be defined. It is neither a matter nor an idea. It is not “a truth,” not even the very highest truth. It is the truth as it is God’s speaking person, Dei loquentis persona. It is not an objective reality. It is the objective reality, in that it is also subjective, the subjective that is God. God’s Word means the speaking God. Certainly God’s Word is not just the formal possibility of divine speech. It is the fulfilled reality. It always has a very specific objective content. God always speaks a concretissimum [something utterly concrete]. But this divine concretissimum cannot as such be either anticipated or repeated. What God speaks is never known or true anywhere in abstraction from God Himself. It is known and true in and through the fact that He Himself says it, that He is present in person in and with what is said by Him" (136-137). Of course, the most personal aspect of God's Word is that God's Son is God's Word!
3. Third, it means that this speech has a purpose: It is a Word that is directed to us and applies to us. "What God said and what God will say is always quite different from what we can and must say to ourselves and others about its content. Not only the word of preaching heard as God’s Word but even the word of Scripture through which God speaks to us becomes in fact quite different when it passes from God’s lips to our ears and our lips. It becomes the Word of God recollected and expected by us in faith, and the Word which was spoken and will be spoken again by God stands over against it afresh in strict sovereignty. But even in this strict sovereignty in which its true content remains inconceivable to us, it retains its purposiveness, it is the Word that comes to us, that is aimed at us, and as such it is a definite Word determined not by us but by God Himself as the One who aims it at us" (141).

In subsection §5.3 ("The Speech of God as the Act of God"), Barth demonstrates that God's speech is God's act: "The man who has heard God speak and might still ask about the related act is simply showing that he has not really heard God speak" (143; cf. Psalm 33:9). When God’s Word comes to the prophets of the Old Testament, this is denoted by the verb hayah (happen), cf. Jeremiah 1. Barth states:

The distinction between word and act is that mere word is the mere self-expression of a person, while act is the resultant relative alteration in the world around. Mere word is passive, act is an active participation in history. But this kind of distinction does not apply to the Word of God. As mere Word it is act. As mere Word it is the divine person, the person of the Lord of history, whose self-expression is as such an alteration, and indeed an absolute alteration of the world, whose passio [passive experience] in history is as such actio [action]. What God does when He speaks, in exactly the same way as what He says, cannot, of course, be generally defined either by way of anticipation or by that of reproduction. We can refer only to the concretissima [utter concreteness] of the acts which are attested in the Bible and which are also to be expected from God in the future (144).

As an act, Barth contends that God's Word makes history not only once but continuously in a process he calls contingent contemporaneity.

What is meant by this is as follows. The time of the direct, original speech of God Himself in His revelation, the time of Jesus Christ (which was also and already that of Abraham according to Jn. 8:56), the time of that which the prophets and apostles heard so that they could bear witness to it—that is one time. But the time of this witness, the time of prophecy and the apostolate, the time of Peter on whom Christ builds His Church, the time of the rise of the Canon as a concrete counterpart in which the Church receives its norm for all times—this is another time (145).

In other words, the efficacy of the Word of God is not limited to a single time.

Additionally, the Word of God has the power to rule:

God’s speech is His action in relation to those to whom He speaks. But His action is divine. It is the action of the Lord. It is thus His ruling action. When and where Jesus Christ becomes contemporaneous through Scripture and proclamation, when and where the “God with us” is said to us by God Himself, we come under a lordship (149).

As a ruling power, God's Word accomplishes change in bringing about a "new man,"

It is the transposing of man into the wholly new state of one who has accepted and appropriated the promise, so that irrespective of his attitude to it he no longer lives without this promise but with it. The claim of the Word of God is not as such a wish or command which remains outside the hearer without impinging on his existence. It is the claiming and commandeering of man. Whatever may be his attitude to God’s claim, man as a hearer of His Word now finds himself in the sphere of the divine claim; he is claimed by God (152).

Barth goes on the suggest that power of the Word of God to rule extends not only to the individual but to the human cosmos in general (154). The Word of God will effect what it says whether in individual men and women, in the Church, or in the whole world.

Finally, the Word of God is decision, not just an event. Barth states,

The fact that the Word of God is the act of God means ... that it is decision. This is what distinguishes an act from a mere event. Considered in itself a mere event is an occurrence subject to some higher necessity. It is occasioned by a cause. Beside it all the other events in whose nexus it occurs help to condition it. It is a cause because it is caused and as other things cause and are caused along with it. This is true of events in nature and also of those in the individual and corporate life of man. It is a mere hypothesis to call an event a deed, a decision, an act of free choice. At all events this predicate is not intrinsic to the concept of event. This must be remembered when the concept of the Word of God is connected with that of history. No doubt this must be done. According to all that we have said about the contingent contemporaneity of the Word of God and its power of rule, the Word of God is also historical, temporal event. But if it were only event, its character as act or decision would be as hypothetical as is the case with all the other things we usually allege to be such. The Word of God is not to be understood as history first and then and as such as decision too. It is to be understood primarily and basically as decision and then and as such as history too (156).

The fact that the Word of God is the act of God and is thus a choice that takes place, a decision that is made, a freedom that is exercised, has the following concrete implications:

• The fact that the Word of God is the act of God and is thus a choice that takes place, a decision that is made, a freedom that is exercised, has the following concrete implications; 
• Because the Word of God, unlike created realities, is not universally present and ascertainable, and cannot possibly be universally present and ascertainable, therefore, as decision, it always implies choice in relation to man. 
• As divine decision the Word of God works on and in a decision of the man to whom it is spoken.