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Barth meets Austin and Searle
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that we look at Scripture not only as the speech-acts of its human authors,
but as the speech-act(s) of God. Let us look at the classical Evangelical and
Barthian views of Scripture from this perspective.
7
Classical evangelicalism has traditionally affirmed that God has
revealed Himself by His deeds and His actions and that the Bible is the
inspired record and interpretation of those deeds and actions and is thus
itself revelation, the locus and deposit of previous revelation. This
revelation provides limited but adequate truth about God, truth that can be
put into statements, thought, discussed, and proclaimed. Evangelicals have
often emphasized this truth-content of revelation by calling it
"propositional" revelation. Barth, on the other hand, affirms that revelation
occurs when God "encounters" a person. God "encountered" the characters
and writers of Scripture. The Scripture is their human witness to this
encounter, a human witness that God uses to encounter the reader today--
when and where God wills to do so.
When analyzed by speech-act theory, the Evangelical view of
Scriptures locates revelation--both in its earlier form and as recorded in
Scripture--in the illocutionary act(s) of God. Revelation is not located in
the mere decontextualized words and sentences of the Biblical text
[locutionary act(s)], nor in the response to that text [perlocutionary act(s)],
but in what God intends to accomplish by that text. In the Biblical text God
has asserted things to be true, commanded, promised, told us how He views
things, and invited us to change. He has revealed knowledge about
Himself--His nature and His will for humanity. This revelation of God
through His illocutionary act(s) invites a perlocutionary response of love and
obedience resulting in fellowship and communion with God.
Barth, on the other hand, locates revelation in the perlocutionary
response of the Biblical characters, writers, or readers. Revelation is not the
truth content of the Bible, for the Bible is human response to encounter with
God. Rather, revelation is that encounter, and, from the point of view of the
recipient, occurs only in the response to that encounter.
Think about a simple love-letter: "Dearest Charlene, I love you.
James." Suppose Charlene takes the expression "I love you" only as a
locutionary act. She knows the meaning of each word and of the sentence,
and yet does not grasp the fact that her beloved is asserting something about
himself and inviting a response from her. The words mean no more or less
to her than if she had seen them written in graffiti on a wall or read them in a
novel. Suppose, on the other hand, that she only thinks of the response the
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See {Barth 1975; Barth 1956}
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