As the 5 weeks lay between the race and I, I hope to continue to read as the pace I am running. If not, I plan to finish Barth as I recover from the intensity of the marathon.

One of the possible implications of Barth’s Christology is something I would call the ‘death of man.’ It seems to me (the inevitable disclaimer that I could be awfully wrong) that this passage and many others similar, render man dead. Dead, in the sense that, man is cancelled out as Christ becomes our representative in the drama of reconciliation between God and man.

On the surface this seems cruel, disempowering at best, but I believe this is ultimately liberating. Liberating because our lives do not need protecting, and our world has not been nor will be saved by us, we are simply caught up in redemption. Our ecclesial challenge after the death of man is to live into this time of grace, beyond any law or creed that passes a form of judgment and claims to protect our lives. We have simply died in Christ, so that we may live together in peace by the grace of God.

Particular in the sense that God is foremost God for Abraham’s seed, prior to being God for us all, before the ‘secret’ of Christ’s lordship over the powers and all the Earth is revealed to us in his resurrection. Limited in the sense that this God humbles himself, binds himself, and becomes responsible for this very small people as they are called to be a blessing for the Nations, the Nations also created by the Father.

Week 6, last week, was the most difficult week yet. It actually started on Sunday of Week 5 where I was scheduled to run 12 miles, which I did, but I ended up getting completely disoriented, effectively ruining my running rhythm. I like to run out in the country, traversing unpaved roads where the wind is cooler, the shade more plentiful, and the cars less likely to roll by. The challenge is stay on course. It was a 90+ degree day on top of it all. Yes, I did run the full 12 miles, but without the rhythm and confidence needed to have a ‘good’ run.

The experience seemed to have carried over into Week 6. For the first time, the excitement of training and the exhilaration of witnessing your body overcoming obstacles formerly seen as too difficult to overcome seemed to be clouded by the toll of running seriously for more than a month. I had reached a peak in Week 3, things were clicking and running a marathon seemed remote, but doable. Yet, after Week 5 and into Week 6, it seemed as if the next peak was too far off.

I kept running, sometimes very slowly. That seemed like the only thing I could do. I decided to take my first day off Thursday of Week 7. I was scheduled to run 4 miles, in the form of multiple 800’s. I remembered Mike’s advice to follow the regimen with utmost loyalty, but to not be stubborn. It was time to add an extra day of rest.

It was the right decision, and this weekend I have reaped the benefits. Yesterday, I was able to run my 7 miles thoroughly and fast. It was a strong and healthy run, aided, thank God, but cooler weather. Today, I was able to mow down 14 miles, running much faster than I had reasonably expected. Two weeks ago a 12 mile run felt awful, today a 14 mile run felt wonderful.

I believe a new peak has been reached on this journey. Sometimes you just know when you’ve crossed the border into new territory. Progress has been made and what lies ahead will bring new and more daunting challenges.

“A “rejected” man is one who isolates himself from God by resisting his election as it has taken place in Jesus Christ. God is for him; but he is against God. God is gracious to him; but he is ungrateful to God. God receives him; but he withdraws himself from God” (II/2, 449).

As we follow Barth up to this point the lines between the elect and the rejected become increasingly blurred. Here it seems undisputable that all men and women are elected. If a Barth scholar wants to dispute this, that’s fine. But on my reading, it seems quite logical that, for Barth, God is for us and with us, all the way down to the reality that we all are elected. In a sense, we decide whether we are the “rejected,” if we withdraw from the radiance of Christ, choosing not to respond in gratitude, refusing to share this joy in the world. But, yet, we who are “rejected” are not lost.

Obviously, a central theme in Barth, so far it seems, is that men and women have no significant role in their salvation. Simply put, we are saved by God in Christ. On one hand, this seems to downplay the role of discipleship. For an Anabaptist such as me this is problematic. On the other hand, I think there is something quite potent about a theology that remains hopeless for humanity playing any redemptive role in the creation of a truly new world. One way or the other, this is a guiding tension for me at this point in my Barth reading.

Peter Dula, my guide for reading Barth, has said that this footnote must be read thoroughly for it is one of the gems of the Church Dogmatics. Here we find Barth in the process of rewriting the doctrine of predestination. For Barth, Christ is the elect, elected for us, to be with us from the very beginning. Election is not primarily about individual souls that are saved, but about God in Christ. The footnote “The Elect and the Rejected” zeros in, so far in my reading, on Old Testament themes of election and rejection. Barth begins with Cain and Abel, moves to Ishmael and Isaac, proceeds to Jacob and Esau and Rachel and Leah – each representing the elect and rejected in their respective stories. Barth is at pains to reveal, in each of these stories that the rejected may not be left to the wilderness – “Yet we must observe that the second goat is also ‘placed before the Lord,’ that the treatment meted out to him and the tragic record of his unusability also form an integral part of the sign and testimony set up on the Day of Atonement. Cain is just as indispensable as Abel and Ishmael as Isaac” (II/2, 360).

Barth moves to the rites described in Lev. 14 and 16 to further illumine this suggestion. Lev. 14 describes a healing rite wherein 2 birds are gathered, one is slain, and the other is dipped into the blood that is to be sprinkled on the exiled leper 7 times, but is eventually released, therefore made free. “Thanks to the fact that the first bird has yielded its life and blood for the purification of the second bird, the latter is actually pure, and freedom may and must be given it – and when the healed leper is sprinkled with the same blood, he is told that he is now removed from the realm of divine wrath…” (II/2, 360). It is clear what is going on here. “The one has necessarily to die in order that they other may live” (II/2, 361).

Barth: “The purpose, and the only purpose, in the death of the one bird, the separation and reservation of the one man, is that the other may live. But how comforting it is for all who are separated and reserved that, according to Lev. 14, it is to the second bird, which has no part in the accomplishment of the decisive action, and which is unusable in the sense of Lev. 16, that the benefit of the sacrifice of the first and usable bird accrues. That which was done to the first turns to the advantage of the second. Dipped in the blood of the first bird and therefore itself unhurt, partaking in the salvation accomplished by its death, it is transferred to freedom as a confirmatory sign that the purification of the leper has been achieved and his new life in the congregation has begun. The former is clearly used for the benefit of the unusable. The recipient of the fruit of election is obviously the non-elect” (II/2, 361).

The concept of usability is here critical in Barth’s exegesis. The elect are used for the healing of the rejected. In Lev. 14, the second bird has no usability, but is rendered grace by the sacrifice of first, usable, bird. The second bird is the rejected, but flies away a free and liberated bird. Tracing back to the figures of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau and Rachel and Leah, Barth finds this pattern at work. In sum, Barth writes, “Always in these stories the one figure represents only the elect of God, used by Him, and the other only the rejected of God, not used by Him. But then there are of course, the intersections, in virtue of which the relationship seems suddenly to be reversed, and suddenly in spite of everything God reveals Himself to the rejected and unused. This shows how inherently fluid are the testimonies of these stories, so that we are prohibited from too hastily identifying the elect with certain persons, or too hastily identifying the rejected with other persons in the stories. But all the same, even in this fluidity, they are always stories of two figures, and speak with just the same emphasis as the present passages of what is always completely different divine treatment of these characters” (II/2, 363).

I’ve been able to maintain loyalty to the Hal’s running regimen. Yesterday, I ran 11 miles, my longest run yet. I was blessed with another day on the cooler side for my weekly long run. A slight drizzle provided the near ideal level of natural refreshment during the middle miles. So far, physically, things are firing. I have been fortunate to experience little to no muscle or joint pain. I attribute this to the diversity of distances Hal suggests in his regimen. It seems to provide the body the perfect variety of distances so as to keep it from collapsing while maintaining a consistent rigor.

I also think having a fairly potent garden assists the training process mightily as well. Zucchini’s and tomatoes, especially, are proving to be a wonderful snack and dinner accessory.

I’m hoping to post on Barth tomorrow. I’m much more excited about II/2, which features heavily Barth’s re-writing of the traditional doctrine of predestination.

Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburb’s and the self-entitled first album from the Broken Bell’s have been great running partners of late.

Perhaps, and hopefully, these are the growing pains one experiences when they begin a relationship with a thinker and their respective texts. This experience is just as much about learning how to read (May we ever know how to read?) as it is about theology.

I’m inclined to say I’m over my head, but where else do you start? When can someone really be ready to read someone like Barth?

Nevertheless, I am determined to push forward. It is my experience thus far that despite his immense difficulty, depth, and long-windedness, Barth is incredibly gracious to his readers. I enjoy reading Barth. He always seems to deliver. How can you not enjoy a theologian so dynamic and dedicated to scriptural exegesis? This isn’t John Milbank.

Barth wraps up II/2 by alluding to beauty. This isn’t beauty as Plato would have it. Barth writes, “The beauty of Jesus Christ is not just any beauty. It is the beauty of God. Or, more concretely, it is the beauty of what God is and does in Him” (II/2, 665). The idea of beauty for Athens means, as Barth puts it, a “flowering of humanity portraying and enjoying itself” (II/2, 665). But, as Christ is the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty, God-in-Christ becomes for us the final word on beauty. It is a beauty that compels us towards it, arousing in us joy in the work of Christ. We are brought to worship this particular God, not ourselves with our corresponding fetishes. Finally, it is this compulsion that the beauty of divine being stirs up within us that leads us desire the eschaton, God’s justice for the world.