The Threefold Forms of the Word of God: Karl Barth’s Shortcomings and Critical Revisions in Recent Barthian Theology

The Threefold Forms of the Word of God: Karl Barth's Shortcomings and Critical Revisions in Recent Barthian Theology

TSENG Shao Kai

This paper examines the shortcomings of Karl Barth's doctrine of Scripture in his formulation of the “threefold forms of the Word of God” and explores recent Barthian revisions to Barth's model. Barth borrowed this concept from the classical Reformed notion of the “triplex Logos,” yet he replaced the traditional verbum Dei essentiale or Logos hypostatikos with the “Word of God revealed.” Barth's emphasis is thereby shifted to the narrative dimension of the verbum Dei scriptum whilst downplaying its propositional dimension. This opened an avenue to deconstructionist exegesis and inspired the so-called “postmodern” school of Barthianism. Barth himself would not have accepted this hermeneutic, and postliberal theologians like Hans Frei and George Lindbeck began to draw upon the organic connections between Barth's notions of the Word written and the Word proclaimed to provide doctrinal-propositional norms for biblical interpretation. More recently, the postliberal Barthian theologian George Hunsinger, inspired by Frei and Lindbeck, further proposed the theory of “ecclesiastical hermeneutics,” using Barth's notion of the “Word of God proclaimed” to supplement the shortcomings in Barth's understanding of Scripture. Hunsinger's ecclesiological hermeneutics is distinctively Protestant in that it presupposes a mutually reinforcing relationship between the formation of the biblical canon and the Church's creedal orthodoxy, treating the Word proclaimed as norma normata and the written Word as the norma normans et non normata.