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The Theological Understanding Of God 's Life

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In the previous section, I have argued that Barth’s understanding of God’s being in act helps us preserve the ontological integrity of the triune God in the incarnation. In this section, I will delve into the theological understanding of Christ’s death with respect to the Trinitarian atonement. First, I elaborate how Barth understands the death of Christ in terms of God’s being in act. I then argue how his understanding enriches our theological understanding of the Trinitarian atonement. The ontological chasm in the Trinity also causes a problem in interpreting the death of Jesus Christ. Since it is considered that the humanity of the Son does not touch God’s own proper being, God in eternity also does not “feel the assault of pain by definition.” If this is the case, what incarnate Jesus Christ has experienced in time remains his human experience ad extra. As a natural consequence, the second person of the Trinity suffered and died only as man or in the flesh. In other words, all Jesus has done in time strictly remains an economic phenomenon. The question is, is there disconnection between the person of the Son and the locus of his suffering? Barth’s answer would be negative. He denies such separation and posits a different perspective, derived from his understanding of God’s being in act. He writes, “The reality of God in His revelation cannot be bracketed by an 'only, ' as though somewhere behind His revelation there stood another reality of God; the

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