Disobedience and the trombone

     "A child who obediently follows the father’s will, which is directly opposite to the child’s wish; yes, the child is far from doubting his father’s love, but there is not much trumpet blowing and ingratiation about how affectionate the father is.—And, on the other hand, the child who knows full well that in reality he is the one who gets his way and that the father’s will is not effected, yes, then there is trumpet blowing and trombones and shouting and ingratiating talk about how affectionate a father he has."
     "So, too, with us hum. beings in relation to God."

     Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks 9 (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2017), 97 (96-97, 101).  "In his journals (1849), Kierkegaard is scathing about organ music in church accompanied by trombones (Basuner).  Here, he is clearly referring to negatively to the practice of having hymns at the major festivals accompanied by a trombone or trumpet in the gallery as well as by an organ" (Julia Watkin, Historical dictionary of Kierkegaard's philosophy, Historical dictionaries of religions, philosophies, and movements 33 (Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow, 2001), sv Art, p. 17).  Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter returns 60 hits on Basun*, so this would be far from the only passage of interest.

"the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world"

     Update, 13 August 2019:  I now think this (below) very likely to be an obviously accurate report, given the posthumously published fragments of CD IV/4, i.e. §78 as reproduced in The Christian life:  Church dogmatics IV,4:  Lecture fragments, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1981) =Das christliche Leben:  Die kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4, Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Vorlesungen 1959-1961 (Zürich:  Theologischer Verlag, 1976).  The title of this section (governed by the command to call upon or invoke God), is "Revolt against Disorder" ("Der Aufstand gegen die Unordung"), and there are, not surprisingly, references to (the Lord's) prayer scattered throughout.  Cf. Donald K. McKim, "Karl Barth on the Lord's Prayer," in Karl Barth, Prayer:  50th anniversary edition (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 114-134, which, returning hits on "disorder" (though not "uprising"), was the work that directed me to this passage.  Meanwhile, Kait Dugan, of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, indicated to me in a note date 26 August 2019 that §78, of the (fragmentary) CD IV/4, is the closest that the CBS has come to this as well.
     That said, the phrase "Hände falten" (at least) is missing, and, indeed, occurs no more than eight times in the whole of the Digital Karl Barth Library, none of them closely relevant.


"The older Karl Barth used to say that 'to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world'."

     Jan Milič Lochman, "Towards an ecumenical account of hope," The ecumenical review 31, no. 1 (January 1979): 18 (13-30) = Mid-stream 18, no. 1 (January 1979): 30 (24-34).  Cf. Jan Milič Lochman, "The Lord's Prayer in our time: praying and drumming," The Princeton Seminary bulletin n.s. 13 (1992) Suppl.: 18-19 (5-19), and in The Lord's Prayer: perspectives for reclaiming Christian prayer, ed. Daniel L. Migliore (Eerdmans, 1993), 18-19:

"There is another saying of Karl Barth in my grateful memory.  In his later years we heard from him again and again:  'To fold one’s hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.'"

In German:  Jan Milič Lochman, "Beten und trommeln:  Das Gebet in einer säkularisierten Zeit," in Basileia:  Festschrift für Eduard Buess, ed. Hans Dürr and Christoph Ramstein (Basel:  Edition Mitenand, 1993), 249 (233-251):

Ein anderes Wort Karl Barths habe ich dankbar in Erinnerung:  In seinem alter hörten wir ihn immer wider sagen:  'Hände falten in Gebet ist der Anfang des Aufstandes gegen die Unordnung diser Welt.'

And then again in 2002, Jan Milič Lochman, "Theology and cultural contexts," in Theology between east and west:  a radical heritage:  essays in honor of Jan Milič Lochman (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2002), 15 (5-20):

"I often recall words I heard Karl Barth speak when I was his student:  'Hands folded in prayer are the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.''"

Lochman, who appears to be the primary source of the saying, began teaching in Basel the year Barth died, and undoubtedly knew and interacted with him before that, as the reference to his having been a student makes clear.

Musimbi Kanyoro says her "former professor in undergraduate studies", Micere Mugo, used to attribute this ("to clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world") to Karl Barth.  See "The shape of God to come and the future of humanity," Concilium 2004/5 =A different world is possible, ed. Luiz Carlos Susin, Jon Sobrino, and Felix Wilfred (London:  SCM Press, 2004):  53 (53-61), which appeared first in that same issue in German.

Ashley Cocksworth quotes this at the top of p. 114 of her book Karl Barth on prayer, T&T Clark studies in systematic theology 26 (Bloomsbury, 2015), but then says in footnote 144, "Regrettably, I have yet to find the source of this oft-cited remark."  To me it would be odd if Lochman and other students of Barth "heard [(did any other late students of Barth hear?) this] from him again and again", and yet it never made it into any of Barth's published work.  And so far I have searched the Digital Karl Barth Library in vain, in both English and German.  German versions of this online, like Lochman's German and English versions (above), understandably vary somewhat:

'Hände falten im Gebet ist der Anfang des Aufstandes gegen die Unordnung der Welt!' 

Barth erklärt dies so:  'Mit dem Falten unserer Hände zum Gebet beginnt unser Aufstand gegen das Unrecht in dieser Welt.'

(By the way, I scanned the whole of Karl Barth, Prayer and preaching, translated for the American edition of 1953 by Sara F. Terrien and then revised for this British edition by B. E. Hooke (London:  SCM Press Ltd, 1964, from the French (La prière) of 1953, itself rooted in shorthand transcriptions of the seminars Barth delivered in Neuchâtel between 1947 and 1949 that were first edited by "André Perret under the supervision of A. Roulin"), and then enabled text recognition.  Nowhere in that book do the words "uprising" and "disorder" appear, let alone on p. 22, as cited by, for example, Andre van Oudtshoorn at International journal of practical theology 16, no. 2 (2012):  298, though "prayer" appears (of course) 240 times.)

"he wears our nature, refashioning it to his own life."

"He bore our nature and thus fashioned it in conformity with his life."

πεφόρηκε δὲ τὴν ἡμετέραν φύσιν, πρὸς τὴν ἰδίαν αὐτὴν ἀναπλάττων ζωήν.

And he wears our nature [(having put it on)], remolding it to his own life.

     Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, bk. 10 at Jn 14:20, trans. Maxwell & Elowsky, ACT (Intervarsity Press, 2015), 188.  The translation in the header comes from Keating via Aaron Riches (Ecce homo:  on the divine unity of Christ (Eerdmans, 2016), 50).  Greek from the three-volume Pusey edition of 1872, p. 486.

"the deceitful dream of a golden age"

"Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?"

     Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist no. 6, The [New York] independent journal; or, the General advertiser, 14 November 1787.

"a Christology without a full Marian account fails to be incarnational in any meaningful way"

"the Jesus-Mary relation is so integral to the incarnational fact, and therefore to a coherent Christocentrism, that a Christology without a full Marian account fails to be incarnational in any meaningful way and is reduced to mere abstraction."

     Aaron Riches, Ecce homo:  on the divine unity of Christ (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2016), 17.  This "full Marian account" would have to begin with the claim that she is Theotokos and presumably extend (though I haven't yet got that far) to an orthodox form of the doctrine of "co-redemption" (the "Coda" on Chardon (17)).

The more of God, the more of me

"if Jesus is the true human, the irreducible difference of the human being in relation to God is perfected in direct (as opposed to inverse) relation to the perfection of the unio of his humanity with the divine Logos.  In Christ, the relation of divinity and humanity must be, in the first place, and basically, non-contrastive and non-competitive. . . .

". . . only the confession of the 'one Lord Jesus Christ' maximally preserves the integrity and difference of verus homo before verus Deus. . . . [B]eginning from an abstract idea of what his humanity might be apart from that unio, Christian theology fails before it even begins."

     Aaron Riches, Ecce homo:  on the divine unity of Christ (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2016), 7-8.  7n12:  "the deeper and more perfect the union, the more each is realized in its distinct integrity.  Union [with true God!] differentiates."

"the body of him who is the heavenly bread, and the blood of him who is the sacred vine"

"What you receive is the body of him who is the heavenly bread, and the blood of him who is the sacred vine; for when he offered his disciples the consecrated bread and wine, he said: This is my body, this is my blood. We have put our trust in him. I urge you to have faith in him; truth can never deceive."

"quod accipis, corpus est illius panis coelestis, et sanguis est illius sacrae vitis.  Nam cum panem consecratum et vinum discipulis suis porrigeret, sic ait:  Hoc est corpus meum:  hic est sanguis meus.  Credamus, quaeso, cui credidimus.  Nescit mendacium veritas."

     St. Gaudentius, Bishop of Bresica, Sermo 2 De Exodi lectione secundus, as trans. in the Liturgy of the hours.  CSEL 60; PL 20, col. 859A.