Barth’s insistence on this point is all too often understood from one side only—from the side of his denial of any ‘independent existence’ to the holy person, which was expressed in his refusal to isolate ethical talk of good human action from dogmatic talk of the divine achievement of creation, reconciliation and redemption (the holy person ‘exists only in the course of the existence of the holy God and of the study of His speech and action’). But the point is also to be understood from the opposite
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