beauty. (t)ruth. god.

Lately I have been thinking about how important language is to the theological task, and how through the continuation of words like sin, holiness, judgement, redemption, gospel, and other terms we can begin to gain insight into how God is active in the world. One in important question is what we mean by gospel, I thought this quote from Karl Barth was worth sharing:

The gospel is constituted by the mighty acts of God in history for the liberation of the cosmos. It is not a set of rickety arguments about the divine order; it is not the expression of some sublime religious experience brought mysteriously to verbal form; it is not a romantic report about awareness of God in nature; it is not a speculative, philosophical theory about the nature of ultimate reality; it is not a set of pious or moral maxims designed to straighten out the world; it is not a legalistic lament about the meanness of human nature; it is not a sentimental journey down memory lane into ancient history. It is the unique narrative of what God has done to inaugurate God’s kingdom in Jesus of Nazareth, crucified outside of Jerusalem, risen from the dead, seated at the right hand of God, and now reigning eternally with the Father, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, in the church and the in the world. Where this is not announced, it will not be known.