In contrast to this, I find evangelical evangelicals, evangelical mainline Protestants, and evangelical Roman Catholics. By 'evangelical,' I mean the classical sense of evangelical -- the gospel of Jesus Christ, handing down the faith given to us that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and was raised from the dead and appeared to the apostles according to the Scriptures. The "relevance" of the church's witness is not found in addressing the particularity of a local context, but in expressing what is true in God's revelation to us in Jesus Christ. The meaning of all humanity, all history, and all creation is found in Jesus as defined by the Chalcedonian rule of Jesus's full divinity and full humanity. Jesus as truly God reveals the true God to us; Jesus as true human also reveals true humanity to us.

I found it fascinating, then, to find John Webster explicate the full Christian humanism of Karl Barth grounded in the doctrine of the Incarnation. The basis of God's revelation to humanity is not some particular transcendental faculty in humanity, some condition to which God conforms. God's revelation is Jesus Christ. For Barth, "theology does not first work out the antecedent conditions under which a revelation from God might be possible, and only subsequently present Jesus Christ as the actual fulfillment of this possibility" (p. 63). Barth writes that 'God's revelation taking place is utterly simple, the simple reality of God' (I/2, p. 11). Jesus' name thus indicates that which in its divine objectivity is constitutive of all reality. All talk of God, creation, humanity, salvation and glory can in one sense be only a repetition or drawing out of this name" (Webster, p. 63).

This becomes worked out in Barth's understanding of humanity. Barth wants no part of a given anthropology, found in disciplines without reference to God. Our human nature is found revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Webster argues, "From the outset, the comprehensive scope of Barth's proposal is evident. In his anthropology, he is not simply talking of the being of the Christian or of the religious person, but of humanity as such, for 'a decision has been made concerning the being and nature of every man by the mere fact that with him and among all other men He too has become a man. No matter who or what or where he may be, he cannot alter the fact that this One is also man. And because this One is also man, every man in his place and time is changed' (III/2, p. 133). . . . Barth is not offering a general ontology of sociality or relationality, but making the very particular assertion that it is because Jesus Christ is Neighbour, Companion, Brother and Counterpart (cf. III/2, p. 134) that we are constituted as the beings that we are and knowable as such. . . . human being is unthinkable apart from the fact that 'man is with God because he is with Jesus' (III/2, p 136)" (Webster, pp. 100-101). Human nature bears transcendental worth, not from a transcendental value found in 'human rights' but objectively, eternally, personally in every human being because of God's revelation of humanity in Jesus Christ. In Jesus each and every human being is revealed as loved by God.

As I read this, I was struck by the structural parallel between Barth's explication of the Christian faith in its humanistic depth and John Paul II's Christological turn and its continuation in Benedict XVI. What struck me was the insistence for John Paul II that believers needed to interpret the Vatican II document "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" (Gaudium et Spes) through the Christological statement in paragraph 22. The Council wrote, "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of humanity take on light. For Adam, the first human, was a future of him who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals humans to humans ourselves and makes human's calling clear. . . . Such is the mystery of humans, and it is a great one, as seen by believers in the light of Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from his Gospel, they overwhelm us."

Whether both were exploring the grammatical implications of the Incarnation as witnessed to at Chalcedon, or whether there is a line of influence from Barth to the Vatican Council and then picked up by John Paul II (directly or through de Lubac or Balthasar or Ratzinger?), one finds the deepest continuation of Barth's concerns and thought in the post-Paul VIth papacy.

If this is so, it suggests the depths of God's call for the church to its Christ the Center in the late 20th and early 21st century. Previous distinctions pale in light of deeper divisions today that are forming within various fragmenting members of the body of Christ as they define themselves in the interest politics of contemporary liberalism rather than by their Center. One sees here the profound catholicity of Barth and the profound reform in post-Vatican II Catholicism for a witness in the deepest affirmation of the dignity and honor of each and every human person -- the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. This is the common witness towards life that we affirm and discover about ourselves as we engage in the personal works of mercy -- the life that we see revealed to us in Jesus Christ.