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The HostageAuthor(s): William SlaughterSource: The North American Review, Vol. 254, No. 1 (Spring, 1969), p. 32Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116919 .

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WILLIAM SLAUGHTER

THE HOSTAGE

So I know that the only real prisons are internal.

-Tim,othy Leary

So I have kept him there, these many years, inside of me-though I know he would like to have gotten out a long time ago,

would like never to have been there at all.

Are there any questions? It's quite simple really. I've explained it to you before.

I'll explain it to you again. It was a long time ago-many years, in fact.

There were two of us then. We had just met. This is how it happened. I was walking one day (the place is not important) when all of a sudden, he said: here I am.

Yes, I said. But where have you been? And why was I not expecting you? I have come just now, he said, from the back of your head,

which is why you were not expecting me.

It was then we came upon you, walking. We said: will you go with us-wherever

it is we are going? The place is not

important, you said. We went on, walking.

For awhile, we got along fine-although in time, you came not to believe in him.

You said: I just know he wants to kill me, and nothing you can say will change my mind.

So I said nothing, and I put him back where he came from (my mind). Whether it was betrayal or sacrifice, who can say? I only know that I have kept him there,

These many years, inside of me-because of a promise I made to you. I said: I love you so much-if you want me to, I will. (Place is important, after all.)

that we make our gods in our own image. If all human ideals are ultimately questionable, is not God most ques tionable of all? There is no evidence for his existence, no pragmatic proof of his utility, no psychological health in dependence on him, no social health in waiting on him for aid in our problems.

Barth confronts these difficulties in a way which appears to begin by making them worse: a doctrine of revelation. We can speak of God because he has spoken to us, through the preaching of the church, dependent as it is (or ought to be) on the testimony of Scripture,

which tells of Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of God in person.

Before this appeal to revelation is dismissed as arbi trary, we should look at its specifics. There do exist com

munities of Christians, who have, in some sense, heard and believed the Christian message. Behind them lies a

mundane but remarkable succession of people who have heard and believed before them. This human, historical thread of belief leads to the New Testament writings and events. They, for their part, speak directly of God, of resurrection, of a contrast of this age and the next, this

world and "eternal life," the Roman authorities and the

"Kingdom of God." Barth's procedure is to let these people speak, in their own idiom, and to seek the object of their speaking. When they speak of "Spirit," of "resur rection," of "God," he refuses to jump in and edit their

work. He denies that he knows better than they did what they should have said. The fact of faith, the fact of tradition, the fact of scripture, and the idiom in which they express themselves, are given data from which the theologian must proceed.

Barth's doctrine of revelation thus simply refuses to accept the burden of proof that God exists or can be known. Like a physicist who carries on his work regard less of whether philosophers can make sense of it, Barth takes for granted that the knowledge of God has occurred in faith, in the congregation, in the tradition, and will occur again. The knowledge of God is not an issue for theology; it is a premise, an axiom, from which theology begins. The doctrine of revelation is an exposition of how the knowledge of God occurs and what it involves, not an investigation of whether it is possible. Its thesis is that God is known when, in the context of the Christian community and heritage, Jesus Christ is spoken of and

men hear and believe and are liberated. It is possible

32 The North American Review

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