"...we cannot venture..."

A leap forward in the current trend of posting on vol I.2. The quote below is relevant to a current debate within American evangelical circles. How much of the current discussion on hell is inspired - consciously or otherwise - by Barth? It is interesting that Barth's re-definition of the doctrine of election must also re-define consequent or subsequent doctrines of the last things. I've heard at least one major theological figure teach that the (Protestant) church should follow Barth's open mind as illustrated below. I do not agree with this, preferring to stick with the line suggested by people like Paul Helm in his blog post here.

Here is the quote from Barth's monumental vol II.2. The 'it' that Barth writes about in the first sentence quoted is "the (in itself) closed circle of the election of Jesus Christ and His community":

"...If we are to respect the freedom of divine grace, we cannot venture the statement that it must and will finally be coincident with the world of man as such (as in the doctrine of the so-called apokatastasis.) No such right or necessity can legitimately be deduced. Just as the gracious God does not need to elect or call any single man, so He does not need to elect or call all mankind. His election and calling do not give rise to any historical metaphysics, but only to the necessity of attesting them on the ground that they have taken place in Jesus Christ and His community. But, again, in grateful recognition of the grace of the divine freedom we cannot venture the opposite statement that there cannot and will not be this final opening up and enlargement of the circle of election and calling. Neither as the election of Jesus Christ, the election of His community, nor the election of the individual do we know the divine election of grace as anything other than a decision of His loving-kindness. We would be developing an opposing historical metaphysics if we were to try to attribute any limits - and therefore an end of these frontier-crossings - to the loving-kindness of God." CD vol II.2, p.417,418

Church

God Himself and God alone turns man into a recipient of His revelation - but he does so in a definite area, and this area, if we may now combine the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the area of the Church. ... That the world contains such a place created and indicated by God is declared to be true and not untrue by the development of the universal Church from the national community of Israel. This truth cannot be ignored. Put pointedly and to be taken cum grano salis, there exist over against Jesus Christ, not in the first instance believers, and then, composed of them, the Church; but first of all the Church and then, through it and in it, believers. While God is as little bound to the Church as to the Synagogue, the recipients of His revelation are. They are what they are because the Church is what it is, and because they are in the Church, not apart from the Church and not outside the Church. And when we say "Church", we do not mean merely the inward and invisible coherence of those who God in Christ calls His own, but also the outward and visible coherence of those who have heard in time, and have confessed to their hearing, that in Christ they are God's. The reception of revelation occurs within, not without, this twofold coherence. CD vol. I.2, pp.210,211

Object and theatre of the acts of God

That the Word was made "flesh" means first and generally that He became man, true and real man, participating in the same human essence and existence, the same human nature and form, the same historicity that we have. God's revelation to us takes place in such a way that everything ascribable to man, his creaturely existence as an individually unique unity of body and soul in the time between birth and death, can now be predicated of God's eternal Son as well. According to the witness of the Evangelists and the apostles everything miraculous aout His being as a man derives its meaning and force from the fact that it concerns the true man Jesus Christ as a man like ourselves. This is true especially of the Easter story, the evangelium quadraginta dierum, as the supreme event of revelation. It is true of the sign of His birth of the Virgin at the beginning, and the sign of the empty tomb at the end of His historical existence. It is true of the signs and wonders already manifested between this beginning and end, which proclaim the Kingdom of God in its relation to the event of Easter. What in fact makes revelation revelation and miracle miracle is that the Word of God did actually become a real man and that therefore the life of this real man was the object and theatre of the acts of God, the light of revelation entering the world. CD vol I.2, p.147

Comment on Augustine's vision at Ostia

Interesting...

Form and content

Every statement in the New Testament originates in the fact that the Word was made flesh. God's covenant with man, the covenant which God made with Abraham, with Moses and David, finds its reality solely, but completely and finally, in the fact that God was made man, in order that as man He might do what man as such never does, what even Israel never did, appropriate God's grace and fulfil God's law. This is what God did Himself as man in Jesus Christ. For that very reason in Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God is at hand, as nigh as it can get while time has not yet become eternity. So the New Testament declares. It declares nothing else, it declares, broadly speaking, nothing more than the Old Testament. But it declares it in a different way, because it is looking back at the fulfilment. The form now has content which corresponds to it exactly. The question has now achieved its precise answer. CD I.2, p. 104.

Scripture and Method

On the contrary, if theology is really to correspond to the witness of Holy Scripture, they must give theology its essential forms and they must also determine its methods, for without these it could not be theology. CD 1.2, 5.

Interpretation or illustration?

The finders of the vestigia trinitatis had no wish to postulate a second and different root of the doctrine of the Trinity side by side with revelation. Far less did they wish to represent this second root as the only true one or to deny the revelation of the trinitarian God. But their action is deeply overshadowed by the question whether this is not precisely what they did. We are plainly dealing with that non-obligatory, uncommissioned and dangerous possibility whenever theological language, as here, thinks it must not just be the interpretation of revelation but also its illustration. Interpretation means saying the same thing in other words. Illustration means saying the same thing in other words. Where the line is to be drawn between the two cannot be stated generally. But there is a line, for revelation will submit only to interpretation and not to illustration. If we illustrate it we set a second thing alongside it and focus our attention on this. We no longer trust revelation in respect of its self-evidential force. CD I.1, p344,345