As I continue on with my linear read through of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics I have come across a small print section in CD III/3 §50, 30 wherein Barth is engaging with a doctrine of nothingness/sin. In this particular section he is commiserating with that Teutonic, Leibniz’s understanding on such matters. Without providing the necessary context I am simply going to drop some of my reflection on this following:
Leibniz’s anthropology, according to Barth’s reading, was highly monistic in regard to what it means to be human vis a vis God’s perfections. Indeed, a rather dreary prospect for the Eschaton. In the sense, that humanity by its necessary constitution must always live with the negation of privation within themselves in order to remain creaturely. But this would mean that a genuine participation or beatific vision in the eschatological life would never obtain. Because for Barth’s Leibniz, if such obtainment were to occur this would mean that humanity has crossed the Rubicon of divinity; viz., humanity would not just be like the Son, the eternal Logos, by grace, but by nature. So, true perfection, in Leibniz’s frame, always must remain out of reach insofar that what it means to be human for him, to be creaturely, is to always already have an in-built imperfection of the good as the primary component of what it means to be human.
Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled.