Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Hobbledehoy and the most profound truth

24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:24-25

Here is an extract from Karl Barth's commentary on these verses:
If Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ.... All that is not hope is wooden, hobbledehoy, blunt-edged, and sharp-pointed, like the word `Reality'....
But to wait is the most profound truth of our normal, everyday life and work, quite apart from being Christians....
We ask nothing better or higher than the Cross, where God is manifested as God. We must, in fact, be servants who wait for the coming of their Lord.
K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edition, page 314-5.

Dictionaries define a "hobbledehoy" as an "awkward ungainly youth"! I am not sure what the original German word was that Barth used.

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