Living Wittily

Karl Barth and a Qualified Kenosis?

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If then, God is in Christ,

if what the man Jesus does is God's own work,

this aspect of the self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ

as an act of obedience

cannot be alien to God.

But in this case we have to see here

the other and inner side of the divine nature of Christ

and therefore of the nature of the one true God –

that he himself is also able and free to render obedience.

Church Dogmatics, IV.1 Page 193

That is as succinct a summary as I know of the theological importance of kenosis as an interpretive category of Christology that derives ultimately from the intra-trinitarian life of God. "Kenosis articulates the act of love revealed in the Word made flesh." Kenosis is not so much an attribute of God as the quality that defines how the attributes of God are expressed in love towards all that is.

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2 responses to “Karl Barth and a Qualified Kenosis?”

  1. Chris E Green avatar
    Chris E Green

    Thanks for posting this!
    May I quibble with your final statement? You say, ‘Kenosis is not so much an attribute of God as the quality that defines how the attributes of God are expressed in love towards all that is’. But doesn’t that betray Barth’s claims?
    It seems to me, if by kenosis we mean the entire dependance on the Father through the Spirit, then we have to say kenosis does belong to God’s nature — indeed, that it is a description of the Son’s identity, in particular. The Son is the incarnate one who ’empties himself’ precisely because he eternally is the one who depends infinitely on the Father to make him himself, so to speak, through the Spirit’s power.

    Reply
  2. Chris E Green avatar
    Chris E Green

    Thanks for posting this!
    May I quibble with your final statement? You say, ‘Kenosis is not so much an attribute of God as the quality that defines how the attributes of God are expressed in love towards all that is’. But doesn’t that betray Barth’s claims?
    It seems to me, if by kenosis we mean the entire dependance on the Father through the Spirit, then we have to say kenosis does belong to God’s nature — indeed, that it is a description of the Son’s identity, in particular. The Son is the incarnate one who ’empties himself’ precisely because he eternally is the one who depends infinitely on the Father to make him himself, so to speak, through the Spirit’s power.

    Reply

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