I suppose my title needs a bit of explaination. It is taken from St Augustine, St Thomas and others, meaning ‘faith seeking understanding’. What I love about that formulation of theological method, if you like, is that it drives us to think of understanding not as something which we gain so that we can have faith but rather that in light of faith we may come to understaind all things. It is only in a posture of faith that we may know anything. And so this blog is reflections upon the way in which all things look different in light of faith. So we understand in light of faith and as such we are totally dependant upon God as the revealer to show himself and as it were ‘commandeer’ our language and fill it with new meaning.
Jungel is helpfull here:
The question is then: what capability does language possess? Barth always presupposes here that it is a question concerning the language ‘shaped in form and content by the creaturely nature of the world and so conditioned by the limitations of humanity: the language in which man as he is, as sinful and corrupt man, wrestles with the world as it encounters him and as he sees and tries to understand it’. (CD I/I 339) Is this language capable of grasping revelation? the fact that revelation is spoken about in this language, and indeed appropriately spoken about, cannot be disputed… interpretation of revelation by language is an event in which language is ‘commandeered’ by revelation, that the interpretation of revelation is thus an act of daring which is ‘demanded of language from outside it.’
Lets hope some of my language here will be comandeered by God to say something meaningful.
Scott Kirkland
