One particular statement caught my attention:
...why can't you American Presbyterians do the same and recognize that the literalness of Genesis 1-3 is a secondary matter to faith and order?One finds it hard to know where to start a response to this question.
At root, it seems to imply that faith (and therefore order, which must logically depend upon it) can somehow exist apart from content. By content I don't mean the form of words in Genesis 1, where God presents himself as creator by delineating his creative deeds, but content as actual creative events; because I think that the point of scripture is that actuals underly the words, and the words do not float in a Barthian 'theosphere' above our real concrete world.
God's actions are real and concrete: the whole tenor of scripture is riven with this: it is about actuals, not virtuals, suggestions, allusions or sheer imagination. Therefore faith comes as a result of understanding the implications of the actuals for us; to suggest otherwise is to send faith on the path to wishful thinking.
BTW, I didn't see the rancour in Phillip's blog that Bird finds; however I do agree with his concluding remark.
Sometime after I posted this, I found myself browsing an article by Lawrence Wood "History and Hermeneutics: A Pannenbergian Perspective". (the link is to an index, the article is in v.16 n.1 1981) Of some interest, not that I'd agree with aspects of it, but its crit of Barthian influences is right, IMO.
