Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Sin

So here is something I’ve been thinking about. Ho w is it that we know our sin, i.e., that we know ourselves to be sinners? If we have some sort of connection between the knowledge of the law and the knowledge of God, as the Reformers seemed to have, we might get into trouble. Karl Barth tries to explain away this connection between knowledge of the law and knowledge of God in Calvin and Luther in KD IV/1 (§60.1), ultimately coming to the conclusion that we have an idea of our sin as sin only after the encounter with Christ which reveals God as God; prior to this our universal sense of sin is one which measures sin against other human actions in their imperfection. 

This sounds attractive at first, but I think it might be too strong. Barth’s main desire here is essentially to work out the idea that the function law as a curb inhibits the function of the law as a mirror, until God-side action is taken to give us a good look in the mirror. The problem is that the passages about the law being written in the heart are tied to the idea of a universal guilt – no one has an excuse. Now, I’m not at all holding the position that an unknowing transgression is somehow not a transgression, but I think that an account which preserved knowing transgression, even on a most rudimentary level, would be preferable.

I think this sort of account was present in the reformers. Calvin set up a logical situation in which knowledge of the law paralleled knowledge of God – This is even called, in certain areas of study of Reformed theology, the use of a rhetorical proof of God’s existence. Luther set the two as equal as well (WA 39 II, 323, 367), but made the specific comment that one doesn’t understand the entirety of one’s sin. This is because Luther wanted to run all knowledge of God through knowledge of Christ (a thought shared with Melanchthon and Calvin), such that even general revelation reveals Christ, when only partially. The Gospel and the Law are, in one sense, the same message. 

So it would seem, on this picture, that we recognize our sin as sin, and at the same time recognize our limits of recognition in recognizing our sin as sin. This preserves a lot more of the traditional ideas about natural knowledge of God and the law being written on the heart; what this account needs is a good story about why this partial knowledge is insufficient do to more than demonstrate our need in order not to fall prey to an accusation of inappropriate natural theology.

 (Side note: this position can also be read in a manner more palatable to Barth’s interpretation; one has to still assert a core “protoknoweldge” of God but can assert the factual result that human sinfulness results in a rationalizing of sin against human standards, so that awareness of sin as sin is only post-God-action.)

So we’ve moved the question: if we are willing to accept that one can have some sort of accurate knowledge about God without knowing God as God, then this is what the law gives us (as well as what many “apologetic” attempts might give us). The question is now twofold, firstly, “what good does it do us?” and secondly, “does it make sense to talk about knowledge of God in this manner?”

Each of those deserves at least one post of their own…