The purpose of this paper is to explore Barth’s understanding of God’s being in act in order to posit its contribution to our Trinitarian understanding of the atonement. This paper is composed of two sections: the analysis of Barth’s understanding of God’s being in act and the contribution of Barth’s theology to our Trinitarian understanding of the atonement. In the first section, I present a brief historical background of Barth’s theology in order to engage his theology more in depth. I then analyze Barth’s understanding of God’s being in act. On the basis of this analysis, I argue how Barth’s theology helps us build a solid Trinitarian understanding of the atonement in three different aspects: ontologically, theologically and dialectically. …show more content…
Their ethical failure indicated that their exegetical and dogmatic presuppositions could not be in order. Thus, a whole world of exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which I had hitherto held to be essentially trustworthy, was shaken to the foundation, and with it, all the other writings of the German …show more content…
The knowledge of God’s being has been understood differently in Church history. In the East, on the one hand, the doctrine affirmed that God is unknown in his being or essence, but merely known through his energies. In other words, we do not know God in himself (essence) but we are able to know him through his activity (energies) towards the creation. Gregory Palamas, one of venerated Saints of Eastern Orthodox Church in the thirteenth century, contended that the divine essence “is unknown both to angels and to men, and will necessarily remain unknown, not only in this present age but in the age to come. But God’s energies fill all the world, and all who so desire may participate in them.” It is to say that we can merely know God existentially but not essentially. For Gregory, if we know God’s essence as he knows ours, we would become God in the literal sense. The doctrine of the West, on the other hand, affirmed that “we do not know God in himself, but from his effects.” God is not knowable in his essence because it infinitely surpasses our intelligible form. Hence we can only know God from his effects, “a form of something else which is like the thing known,” but they “fall short of the perfection of its divine cause.” In other words, we cannot fully comprehend the essence of God through the knowledge of such effects. For this reason, we are still incapable of