God against God

Bobby Grow comments:

A doctrine of salvation that pits God’s justice against God’s love and mercy — what Karl Barth called a theology of "God against God" — is bad theology. This posits a rift in God's being and preaches a God that is inauthentic to the "good news" of Holy Scripture. This is not to deny that wrath and judgment are vital aspects of Christian soteriology. But we have to make sure that (in Barth’s words, again) we are not proclaiming that the No of God is the first word or the last word to men and women.

This is really at the heart of what I read as many Lutheran critiques of Barth. Many Lutherans seem to see in Barth a denial that we are always in relationship to God, even before the preached word. This is a relationship with what Forde calls the God-not-preached, or the hidden God. The God-not-preached is the same loving Creator God, but his primary word to a sinful world is "No". The God-preached however is the God of the Gospel who says "Yes" to us.

I'm not 100% convinced by either Barth or Forde but it is KEY that the God-not-preached, is NOT the God we should be preaching. On this both Barth and Forde agree, although Forde recognises the importance of acknowledging the experience of the God-not-preached.

But experientially, I do appreciate what Forde (and other Lutherans in the same line) has to say, even if it causes me more headaches:

From Luther's perspective, the question about whether we in our Angechtungen wrestle with God, and do not solely experience God as gracious, is quite plausible. Believers and non-believers deal with this hidden God in their various life experiences, precisely in their attempts to master the world and their fate. It is the role of the gospel to turn us to the "preached God," who through Jesus Christ as sacramentum gives us assurance with regard to God's disposition toward us. The person of faith holds this "hidden God" accountable to the promise, even appealing to God against God!

(p. 40, Mark C. Mattes, The role of justification in contemporary theology)

This post is a bit of a 'first thoughts' post. It is really a marker for future discussion. If I ever get time to read some proper theology again, I would like it to be Barth and Lutherans on just this topic.