ABSTRACT
This chapter then brings the preceding insights to a climax by demonstrating that, in fact, there is precisely such an analogy of theological, ecclesial and worldly realities in the background to Barth’s most extensive description of beauty: his account of God’s glory in Church Dogmatics §31.3. For Barth, glory is the final attribute or ‘perfection’ of God, which, coupled with His eternity, expresses not only His freedom but His love. God’s glory is His right, ability and act to not simply keep His perfect divine being and all-sufficiency to Himself but to manifest or share it with others, along with the recognition and worship of Him, which this inevitably awakens in them. During the course of his account, Barth successively ascribes this basic act of ‘glorifying’ God to five parties: the eternal and incarnate Son of God, the human Jesus Christ, the Church and the world extra muros ecclesiae. It is neither completely different in each case, because it always involves attesting God, nor is it completely identical, since in God it takes the form of a self-glorification, while for creatures, it entails glorifying another. Barth must therefore assume there is an analogical relationship between them. Since the five parties who carry out this act are really just three subjects, then it is moreover another analogy of theological, ecclesial and worldly realities. It can be described in sum as an analogia gloriae. More concretely, it envisages that the Father and Son share their glory through the Holy Spirit and the Son of God glorifies the Father throughout eternity. On this basis, the Son of God repeatedly manifests His glory, His perfect divine being and all-sufficiency, through the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth in history as well. When He does, the Holy Spirit unites sinfully impotent humans to the prototypical creaturely glorification of God by Jesus Christ and thereby enables them to know and obey His revealed splendour so that their whole being becomes its image. And during these moments, they can also recognise that the world around them glorifies God as well.
