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whether a special revelation would be intelligible were I not
previously convinced that a being existed who might thus be
revealed.
(6)Brunner’s point, on the other hand, is that a rational
knowledge of God leaves me alone with my truth, since it is a
conclusion which I make myself. But how does personal encounter
help here---I am still alone, but worse than that, I am
desolate---for I cannot communicate my knowledge, or make
any inference about it, without self-contradiction? As soon as I
think God, He is gone! And if I fail [[Page 144]] to think Him,
how do I know that He was ever there? On such grounds I am
more than alone with truth: I am alone without it; for truth is a
characteristic of propositions or judgments. And by hypothesis
no judgment or inference about God can give me a knowledge
of God in the final analysis.
Furthermore, how can Brunner consistently hold that the
theistic proofs lead us toward God? If the knowledge of God
simply cannot be had by thought, how can thought lead me toward
it? If this were possible, I might eventually arrive thus at
the knowledge of God and be in the embarrassing predicament
of having refuted my own original theory.
(7)If the initiative for the knowledge of God is totally divine,
if man has no power to enable him to achieve such knowledge,
how can the revelation be received when it comes? It can fall
on a man like mud on a stone, but neither stone nor such a man
will be any the worse or better for wear. To have something
revealed implies at least a receptive rational nature---so that
man does have some part, else his position as a recipient of divine
revelation will be unintelligible.
Nor will an appeal to the ministry of the Holy Spirit solve
this problem. For if men are really stones, as Barth seems to
suggest, if they are actually devoid of a capacity for the knowledge
of God, why does not the Holy Sprit make His revelation
to stones in the first place? The very fact that I am not a stone