|
Karl Barth on Mary's Song
As a man He [Jesus Christ] exists analogously to the mode of existence of God. In what He thinks and wills and does, in His attitude, there is a correspondence, a parallel in the creaturely world, to the plan and purpose and work and attitude of God. . . .
It is of a piece with this that--almost to the point of prejudice--He ignored all those who are high and mighty and wealthy in the world in favour of the weak and meek and lowly. He did this even in the moral sphere, ignoring the just for sinners, and in the spiritual sphere, finally ignoring Israel for the Gentiles. It was to the latter group and not the former that He found Himself called. It was among the latter and not the former that He expected to find the eyes and ears that God had opened, and therefore the men of good-pleasure of Luke 2:14. It was in the latter and not the former that He saw his brethren. It was with the latter and not the former that His disciples were to range themselves according to His urgent counsel and command.
Throughout the New Testament the kingdom of God, the Gospel and the man Jesus have a remarkable affinity, which is no mere egalitarianism, to all those who are in the shadows as far as concerns what men estimate to be fortune and possession and success and even fellowship with God. Why is this the case? . . .
One reason is the distinctive solidarity of the man Jesus with the God who in the eyes of the world-and not merely the ordinary world, but the moral and spiritual as well-is also poor in this way, existing not only in fact and practice but even in theory, somewhere on the margin in its scale of values, at an unimportant level, as the mere content of a limiting concept. In fellowship and conformity with this God who is poor in the world the royal man Jesus is also poor, and fulfils this transvaluation of all values, acknowledging those who (without necessarily being better) are in different ways poor men as this world counts poverty. . . .
The saying of Mary in the Magnificat (Luke 1:51ff.) might well be set over the whole of this inversion: "He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted those of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away."
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, IV/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1958), pp. 166, 168-169, 171, emphasis added..
|
