I took comments from a few previous posts in order to ask a few clarifying questions and make a few remarks for each.

But this latter approach is to give up on general culture and to freeze religion

When you speak of general culture, what exactly are you referring to?  Are you speaking of the dominant pop culture, because there seems to be culture within culture within culture.  It also seems impossible to escape.  If God spoke and acted at any given time, I would supose that he would be smart enough to speak in language understandable to the specific people he spoke to.  In order to us to understand what was comunicated to a people situated sometime in the past, it would seem inevitable that we would have to understand that peoples culture and time period to better understand the message.  I’m not exactly sure how this ties in with Barth saying God speaks outside of culture, or even what that means?

reason itself always brings its own ‘faith’ presuppositions to bear in the things it investigates; it’s never neutral.

What are "faith presuppositions"?  I know what presuppositions are, but do not know how the word faith is being used.  It is such a tricky word and morphs into so many different things.  We need to be really careful how we use this word and define our terms.  Presuppositions can be reasoned and thought through before tentative acceptance.  When you speak of reason, what are you referring to?  I see reason as a way to catagorize and analyze using the laws of logic.  Tools are neutral, but people typically are not.  I think we need to strive for this as much as possible.  Doing theology/philosophy collaboratively is one way to check ourselves and protect ourselves from sloppy or errant thinking.

societies and cultures have been changed through the power of Spirit acting on text that God speaks from outside culture.

This seems to be Christian lingo that has little or no practical value.  Every believer claims to powered by this Spirit acting on the text, yet there is no consenus about these texts meaning.   We have endless Bible commentaires with a endless variations of interpretation and 34,000 Christian denominations!  What’s the use of claiming the Divine Spirit upon ones own take on it if it is not ultimately authoritative?

In that sense, Barth was bringing a healthy and necessary challenge to the culturally conditioned methods of bible interpretation in his time - which were limiting its understanding to the realm of scholars, academics and archaeologists.

As far as Bible interpreations goes, we would be much better off if we listened more to scholars, academics and archaeologists than those unfamiliar with the origional languages, manners, customs, geography, history and the rest of those things which academics study.  These people spend their lives studying specialized time periods and we are only hurting ourselves by ignoring them or spending the majority of our reading time on people who think they know what they are talking about but really don’t because they’ve never put in the time, energy, sweet and hard work it is to do and be the real thing.

reason is fallen and that natural reason’s instinct is always to create idols

Again, what does this mean?  Are we not able to do mathmatics and science accurately?  If we are, then can we not be highly accurate when it comes to the probability of historical events and making tentataive conclusions based on the information we have? 

Belief leads to genuine understanding.

This seems to be absent of meaning.  Pleae clarify what this amounts to.  I may believe that I a semi-truck going 70mph would bounce off my chest like superman, but would this be genuine undestanding?   

I don’t think there is historical evidence for the resurrection. The resurrection is a faith first event. There are no primary sources for it, and it is not open to examination via any historiography. If you take texts of the resurrection, they are clearly mythic in structure and give a theological message for the early church community in each case, and each resurrection text justifies either authority or a liturgical practice or a cosmology of faith. For all that the resurrection is about faith, when the man Jesus died he died as anyone else does, and no cells and genes there were revived.

This could be and probably should be a seperate post as this is the rock bottom issue for Christians, or at least it should be.  If we don’t have historical precident to think that Jesus really rose from the dead, we are really off the mark.  Paul said that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain, we are still in our sins etc… This is the cornerstone and if removed would have huge consequences.  I think this issue deserves better treatment than given above.  I recently watched a debate between Richard Carrier and Mike Liconis which showed that the issue is more complicated and difficult than an outright dismissal.  There are difficult questions for both positions to answer.  This may be a faith first event for most, but not all.  There have been people who after studying the evidence, became convinced that Jesus was the human Messiah of Israel, as he claimed to be.  I look forward to our continued discussion.