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Barth, 1924: The Resurrection of the Dead
Here’s Barth on resurrected life in 1924 from his commentary of 1 Corinthians entitled Resurrection of the Dead. In his reading of Paul, Barth grounds the resurrection of the human being in the central reality and revelation of meaningful existence — the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ (even here Barth has yet to speak of resurrection largely in terms of salvation history, though he does use the term some). In III/2 (1948), Barth is clear that the end of life for the human creature is concretely the creature’s ending time. Humans live in the resurrection of Christ and come to themselves and the reality of their resurrected existence as the Spirit comes to them ever-again and ever-a-new. There is not a continued time, post-temporal, or afterlife life for the human creature in III/2. But in 1924, prior to III/2’s release, Barth is not as clear. In his exposition of 1 Cor 15, Barth expounds a notion of “re-predicated” corporeality. He grounds this “re-predication” of human corporeality (as a post-death reality?) in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, though this is by no means his primary emphasis. So Barth:
The corruptibility, dishonour, and weakness of man is, in fact, that of his corporeality. Death is the death of the body. If death be not only the end—but also the turning point, then the new life must consist in the repredication of [Jesus’] corporeality. To be sown and to rise again must be then applied to the body. The body is man, body in relation to a non-bodily, determined, indeed, by this non-bodily, but body. The change in relationship of the body to this non-bodily is just the resurrection. Not, therefore, some transition of man to a merely non-bodily existence. Of such Paul knows nothing whatever. The persisting subject is rather just the body… . This re-predication is the “resurrection of the dead,” (191-2).
With this, Barth eschews all views related to the immortality of the soul, or even the immortality of a body. Both are highly speculative and concerned with an ideal, not the recreation for authentic existence in Jesus’ resurrection. Furthermore, the re-predication of corporeal reality in the resurrection of Jesus and our contingent resurrection living-ness is not distinct from worldly existence. This radical affirmation of resurrected corporeality is a rejection of both escapism and materialism. But does he really confirm an “afterlife” of any sort, meaning a time after the body ceases to function and begins the process of decay? I’m not sure he cares to answer:Exactly as I am, shall I and will I be God’s. Not in passing: the immortality of the soul is placed in dispute by what Paul says here. Instead of the human soul, The Spirit of God appears in the resurrection. That which persists is not the soul (the latter is the predicate, which must give place to something else), but the body, even that, not as an immortal body, but in the transition from life in death to life. It is not that, however, which Paul wants to indicate here, but the positive aspect. Exactly in the place of that which makes me a man, the human soul, is set that which makes God, God, the Spirit of God, that is the complete sovereignty of God, this the Resurrection of the Dead. But exactly in this place! To wish to be to be God’s without the body is rebellion against God’s will, is secret denial of God, (201).
Barth’s time-eternity dialectic is not the only dialectic underscoring his reading of Paul. There is also his Adam-Christ dialectic, first majestically expounded in Romans and referenced here again (1 Cor 15.22). Barth is curtailing any illusions of grandeur we might have about ourselves in our present state affairs or projecting our human subjectivity of the now into the glory of a final “all and in all,” which necessarily excludes the dialectic that defines human existence now.He who recognizes himself in Adam and Christ no longer, in fact, asks: With what body shall we come again? as if it were a marvellous fairy-tale which he must “believe.” He knows that what is in question is this, his body (but the resurrection of this body), and gives God the honour in fear and trembling, but also in hope, (203).
[T]his man — that is to say, this body as such — without this last hope is definitely and entirely outside the Kingdom of God. Within this life of the body as such there exists no possibility of inheriting the Kingdom, to do which one must be the Son coming from heaven, the Lord from heaven (verses 47 et seq.), or one of his own (in the future resurrection).
If within this life — the life of the Adam-Christ dialectic — there is no possibility of inheriting the Kingdom, but there is a change in relationship between the body [time] and the non-bodily [eternity], what does it mean to hold for a “last hope” or “future resurrection?” What is the Kindgom? What relevance does it have for us now, in Barth’s logic at this point in time?
Also, the problem of general bodily resurrection, of the “re-predication” of human corporeality as a post-death possibility remains. In a 2003 issue of the IJST, Katherine Grieb seems to suggest that Barth was at least indicating some kind of teleology — a general bodily resurrection of the dead. One article over, David Fergusson indicates just the opposite. In fact, Fergusson thinks Barth completely neglected the the issue of teleology and the general resurrection of the dead and was mistaken in doing so.
I’m not too sure what to make of it, however. It seems Barth’s comments on 1 Cor 15 could be read both ways, though, given the history, it would seem to me that Fergusson’s take is probably closer to the truth. -
Barth, Election, and James Cone
Earlier this semester, I wrote a very short paper on the Barth’s doctrine of election as a possible resource for liberation theologies. In the past, liberation theologians (namely, James Cone) have spent the majority of their energies mining Barth’s 1921 Romans and early doctrine of revelation in CD I.1 for resources. While in A Black Liberation of Theology Cone does mention that the lived history of Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, he thinks of this primarily in a revelatory framework without any explicit reference to or implicit concern for the Barth’s doctrine of election. We could stretch out Cone’s chapter on christology (which looks somewhat like Barth’s, but makes only one reference to Barth) to meet up with his earlier and lengthier discussion of revelation (which is clearly Barthian), thereby constructing some sort of connection to Barth’s doctrine of election. However, this would be working the text over a little too much. Instead, it seems to me, Cone’s take on God as creator holds the most connection to Barth’s doctrine of election. Here’s what he says about God’s relating to the creature:
“Though white theologians have emphasized that God as creator is a statement about the divine-human relationship they have not pointed out the political implications of this theological truth for blacks. God as creator has not been related to the oppressed in society. If creation “involves bringing into existence of something that did not exist before” (Kaufmann), then to say God is creator means that my being finds its source in God. I am black because God is black! God as creator is the ground of my blackness (being), the point of reference meaning and purpose in the universe.
“If God, not whitneness, is the ground of my being, then God is the only source of reference regarding how I should behave in the world. Complete obedience is owed only to God, and every alien loyalty must be rejected. Therefore, as a black person living in a white world that defines human existence according to white inhumanity, I cannot relax and pretend that all is well with black humanity. Rather it is incumbent upon me by the freedom granted by the creator to deny whiteness and affirm blackness as the essence of God.” (BTL, 80).
Notice that God’s relating to human beings is what grounds and actually gives human beings existence. Any existence outside of God’s relating to humans in the way that God establishes is not freedom or authentic existence but death and movement toward non-being. For Cone, this means that existing as a being created by God in relation to God (blackness) is the grounds for rejecting all other forms of existence whether such forms are chosen, unintentionally accepted, or forced upon a human being (whiteness). Cone does recapitulate these theological sentiments in the Christology of A Black Theology of Liberation. However, Jesus Christ is not spoken of as the grounding reality of human being as the One who elects the existence of creation as is so in Barth’s doctrine of election. To be sure Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the blackness of God’s being (129), but the relationship between the manifestation of God’s being in Jesus Christ and the creation of humanity specifically in the blackness of Jesus Christ is not wholly apparent in Cone’s theological vision. Perhaps this might be a point of connection — a point of rapproachment between Barthian Reformed theologians and liberation theologians in the tradition of Cone. Perhaps it might also be a call to arms and repentance to Barthian theologians who often all too flippantly pass over or dismiss Cone’s criticisms of Barthian school theology. -
Tom Waits, Green Grass, and a Good Death
“Green Grass” by Tom Waits
Lay you head where
My heart used to be
Hold the earth above me
Lay down in the green grass
Remember when you loved me
Come closer don’t be shy
Stand beneath a rainy sky
The moon is over the rise
Think of me as a train goes by
Clear the thistles and brambles
Whistle didn’t he ramble
Now there’s a bubble of me
And its floating in thee
Stand in the shade of me
Things are now made of me
The weather vane will say
It smells like rain today
God took the stars and he
Tossed ‘em can’t tell
The birds from the blossoms
You’ll never be free of me
He’ll make a tree from me
Don’t say good bye to me
Describe the sky to me
And if the sky falls mark
My words - we’ll catch mocking birds
Lay your head where
My heart used to be
Hold the earth above me
Lay down in the green grass
Remember when you loved me
Robert Jenson has called Barth’s take on death as the natural ending time of life “one of the most interesting places in Barth’s theology” (Alpha and Omega, 119). This might well be the case. And yet, based on lectures I’ve heard on Karl Barth, the books (or lack thereof) written on Barth’s anthropology, and the great lacuna in Princeton’s Center for Barth Studies on Barth’s theology of death, I cannot say that this “interesting topic” has garnered the attention it deserves. There are a number of reasons Barth’s theology of death often goes unmentioned. (1) Socio-Theological Location and Ecumenism: If you are talking with a number of conservative to moderate Evangelicals or Catholics the last thing you might want to do is bring up Barth’s ending time. (2) Death in Barth’s Anthropology: As is commonly noted, researchers and theologians simply do not find Barth’s doctrine of creation as compelling or relevant as his doctrines of God, election, reconciliation, and so on and so forth. Some of my friends say it is boring and tedious (though I am not sure how the most in-depth study of angelology since Aquinas can be a languid affair). Perhaps Barth’s theology of human time is simply lost in the wash of his much maligned theology of creation. (3) Barth and Modernity: Neo-Orthodox interpretations of Barth focused largely on his doctrine of revelation. Paleo-orthodox interpretations of Barth’s theology focus largely on the same in conjunction with particular elements of his christology and doctrine of God. Barth’s take on death doesn’t comport with the orthodox view of death, so why mention it? Perhaps Barth’s thoughts on death show just how modern he, in fact, was. This goes along rather nicely with possibility (1). (4) Unfinished Business: Barth never got around to pt.5 of the Church Dogmatics where teleology might have been given a treatment. So, some hold open the possibility that Barth would have made a “Moltmannian-esque” turn, by-passing the immortality of the soul idea for the Resurrection hope, or something like that. Whatever the case, I think its quite appropriate to die before writing a theology of redemption or teleology. The world simply is not ready for a full-blown teleology. It would have no use for it. Much more can be said with the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ as yesterday, today, and forever in and into today. And finally, (5) Etiquette and Anguish: It simply isn’t tasteful to talk about death or loss for an extended amount of time or with an extended amount of detail. You either seem to be teeming with teen angst or pontificating in the throws of a pseudo-philosophic Weltschmerz. In the end, however, this isn’t the most likely reason for the relative silence on the issue. What theologian do you know who would balk at the idea of taking on a distasteful topic? Just the opposite! Of course, it is not a likely reason, and it most certainly isn’t a legitimate reason either.
Enough about the why, though. I think Jenson is right. Barth’s ending time is fascinating and disconcerting, hopeful and, at times in the real grip of things, hopeless. What I find fascinating about Barth’s theology of ending time is the distinction he makes between death and life’s end. To think of life’s end as altogether negative or to fear it as death is, for Barth, a dispensation of unbelief; it is a lack of faith in the goodness of God who has conquered the reality of death thereby affirming the time (beginning and ending) that God has given to us proper to our creaturely-being. It is also a demonstration that we aren’t living in the reality of Christ’s resurrection in the now. As Barth puts it, “Man is what he is as this divinely willed and posited totality. … Creatureliness can be regarded as humiliating only where the creature is thought to be in partial or total opposition to God (CD III.1, 243). There is an explicitly Christological orientation to all of this, no doubt. In the death of Christ, God opens up a proper place for the “ars moriendi” by primarily opening up the place for proper life in Christ. The end of life can be imagined as death only only when it loses sight of reconciliation that God has established in the once-for-all death of Christ. It is the exchange of death for life in Christ that gives a good place to life’s end. In Christ’s death for life, the reality for all beginning and ending time for all created beings leads neither to resignation to the nothingness that is sin or to indifference to sin and suffering that accompanies a naive other-worldy Utopianism. In fact, both reactions are sin due to the fact that they do not keep the person Jesus Christ as their object and goal. Instead, for Barth, the affirmation that God is with us in the present, putting to death death and bringing us to life makes for the affirmation of a good life’s end.There is one problem with a certain reading of Barth’s Christologically centered vision of ending time, however. As with most things, I think the interrelation between the already and the not yet in Barth’s theology seems difficult when the emphasis is tilted overwhelmingly in the direction of the objective reality of reconciliation in Christ. If this is to be the case, it has to be worked out with some eye to “future history,” like Moltmann tries to do. If not, “present sufferings” can be treated as an illusion. As Wait’s “Green Grass” suggests, we cannot deny that there are still those left behind with memories. The living still return home to the “nothingness” left behind with the passing of loved one. And, passing in this world still happens because of living toward death, despite what objective reality in Christ is or might be. To put it crudely as Tom Waits surely would, people still become fertilizer for the trees where birds live, eat, and shit, making fertilizer of their own. So, while the world might be “living toward nothingness,” this nothingness has empirically verifiable consequences. The completed reality of reconciliation in the death and resurrection of Christ is hard to stomach when the horrors of life seem to point in any direction but reconciliation with God. This problem will always have to be addressed and worked against if we are to make the distinction between death and life’s end and live (and die) in the distinction. A good way to fight the problem of imbalance in an inaugurated eschatology might be, as Moltmann suggests, by looking forward to the promise of full reconciliation in Christ as a promise. The promissio that is the resurrection then becomes driving force behind the missio in its passion for God’s coming today and tomorrow and the next day. A proper balance between the already and the not yet that maintains the christological focus by emphasizing the power of Christ’s Spirit in mission might just be a ground for the happy distinction between death and life’s end.
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Jeopardize your Theology not God’s Activity
I’m sitting here writing a paper on Barth’s doctrines of election and reconciliation, drinking coffee, and listening to OtR/Linford’s piano music. It’s a good time for sharing one of my favorite quotes from the Church Dogmatics.
“It is in full unity with Himself that [God] is also — and especially and above all — in Christ, that He becomes a creature, man, flesh, that He enters into our being in contradiction, that He takes upon Himself its consequences. If we think that this is impossible it is because our concept of God is too narrow, too arbitrary, too human — far too human. Who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn where God has revealed himself and His nature, the essence of the divine. And if He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as the God who does this, it is not for us to be wiser than He and to say that it is in contradiction with the divine essence. We have to be ready to be taught by Him that we have been too small and perverted in our thinking about Him within the framework of a false idea of God. It is not for us to speak of a contradiction and rift in the being of God, but to learn to correct our notions of the being of God, to reconstitute them in light of the fact that He does this. We may believe that God can and must only be absolute in contrast to all that is relative, exalted in contrast to all that is lowly, active in contrast to all suffering, inviolable in contrast to all temptation, transcendent in contrast to all immanence, and therefore divine in contrast to everything human, in short that He can and must be only “Wholly Other.” But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ. We cannot make them the standard by which to measure what God can or cannot do, or the basis of the judgment that in doing this He brings Himself into self-contradiction. By doing this God proves to us that He can do it, that to it is within His nature. And He shows Himself to be more great and rich and sovereign than we had ever imagined. And our ideas of His nature must be guided by this, and not vice versa.” — CD VI.1; 186 -
Church-as-polis OR Church-as-mission
“[In thinking of the church as polis] there is the danger of intensifying the Christian community’s concern for its own interior identity overagainst [sic] the world. This danger is especially present where the theme of the church as a counter-model to the larger society is emphasized. For in order to remain structurally ‘counter’ to the world, yet still ‘model’ itself to the world, the Christian community is forced to engender or to idenify the world on its own homologous terms, as a ‘cultivated outsider’ (to use Wannenwetsch’s phrase). More problematically still, this concentricity requires such intense focus upon the ‘internal activities’ of the church that its engagement with the world cannot help but be conceived in a subsidiary and conjunctive way, As Yoder puts it, each of the five key practices that he identifies as constitutive of the church-as-polis ‘concerns both the internal activities of the gathered Christian congregation and the ways the church interaces with the world.’ It is this ‘and’ that I find problematic, for what this ‘and’ suggests, and Romand Coles has put it, is that ‘there is a people called and gathered prior to encountering others.’ But is this not to construe encounter with ‘the world’ as somehow less constitutive of the people of God than the church’s own internal and primordial identity as a counter-polis?”
— Nathan R. Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of the Christian Mission (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), p.171.
Some might claim that the rejection of “church-as-polis” ecclesial model for the acceptance of the “church-as-mission” model sets up a false dichotomy, but Kerr’s rejection of the church-as-polis steers clear of this false dichotomy because of what he often *rather inelegantly* calls an inappropriate ontologization of the church. In short, when the church is conceived of as an ulterior state or alternative political body, the first step is an inward turn for the calculation of resources and regularization. This sets up a counter culture and results in a competive notion of selfhood and body over against the political bodies of the world. Then, after a “game plan” (doctrine, apologetics, mission tactics, etc.) is established and the “natural resources” (i,e. Holy Spirit, liturgy, sacraments, etc.) are contained and stockpiled a move outward — a mission movement — becomes conceivable. As a result, the competitive notion of church as a kingdom seperate from and alien to the world bleeds over into the church’s missionary activity and results in a need for inculturation along with and as part of mission.
But what’s more, I want to argue, is that all of this assumes an unhealthy “containment” and control over the Spirit by the church. The dialectic of church-for-the-world and the church-as-the-world is winnowed down when the activity of the Spirit can be catalogued into absolute ethical ideals, thick ceremonial dispensations that are uncompromising in form, and improper models of “progressive sanctification.” All that remains is the church-for-the-world — a church with relative authority over the Spirit and thus relative autonomy from God. In fact, absolute ethical ideals and thick ceremonial dispensations are in large part endebted to some improper form of progressive sanctification. Thinking of the church-as-polis lends itself to a model of progressive sanctification that understands progress in the church’s (and individual Christian’s) life and relationship to God as the incurring the benefit of relative autonomy from God *now* by pointing to relative authority *given* by God in the past life and forms of the Church culture. This results in greater and greater levels of control over the work and voice of Spirit rather than greater and greater guidance by the Spirit in light of the overwhelming ”contingencies and pluralities” of every given world situation (as Kerr might say).Containment and control over the Spirit results when the church lays hold of the Spirit to form stability, generally with foundationalistic assumptions. In doing so, the church turns inward to solidify indentity, hinging on the idea that the church has the Spirit, to which its members must conform. But this conforming is really an indoctrination into a cultural phenomenon; an eye to development and new command by and from the Spirit is a secondary rather than a constutive move, if it is a move at all. As a result, and in keeping with Kerr, what it means to be a practicing Christian is regulated first before mission, or (at best)mission becomes a component of what it means to exist as a christian in the church-city. In short, when we go a step further in this logic Kerr is pursuing and look at the status of the Spirit in the church-as-polis and church-as-mission models, the claim that one must choose between the two is clearly acknowledged as anything but a false dichotomy. At the very least a formative choice must be made between two due to the fact that they present opposing understandings of (1) The ‘ontology’ of the Spirit in its work and (2) The ‘ontology’ of the church and individual christian as a part of the work of the Spirit.One last note: What the church-as-polis model does for ethics is quite similiar. Once again, through a particular way of relating to the Spirit, it is assumed that the church as the “body of Christ” can maintain relative levels of autonomoy in the now by relying on the ethical ideals composed under the guidance of the Spirit in the past. The Spirit recapitulates a past command verbatim. This, I would argue, is not only a form of quenching the Spirit by relying on a previously composed “historical form” of the church and its work, but also petrifies the command of the Spirit in the past enabling us to”control” it in the present. -
Announcing the 2011 Barth Conference!
THOMAS AQUINAS AND KARL BARTH:AN UNOFFICIAL PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC DIALOGUEBe sure to check out the 2011 Karl Barth Conference this summer,June 19-22, at Princeton Theological Seminary.The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Barth Studies at PTS and the Thomistic Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, and in cooperation with the Karl Barth Society of North America. Speakers include John Bowlin, Robert Jenson, Keith Johnson, Guy Mansini (OSB), Amy Marga, Bruce McCormack, Richard Schenk (OP), and Thomas Joseph White (OP).If you can come, come. You don’t want to miss this! -
In Anticipation …
… of the first day of the Karl Barth course:
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”The condition under which alone Christology is possible takes visible form in the main picture on the altar at Isenheim by M. Grünewald. Its subject is the incarnation. There are three things to be seen in the picture, and it is difficult to say where the observer should begin. In the background upon the heights of heaven, beyond the earth’s highest mountains, surrounded by innumerable angels, there is God the Father in His glory. In the foreground to the left there is the sanctuary of the old covenant. It also is filled with and surrounded by angels, but inexorably separated from the background by an immensely high, gloomy partition. But towards the right a curtain is drawn back, affording a view. And at this point, at the head of the whole world of Advent looking to see the Messiah, stands Mary as the recipient of grace, the representative of the rest in adoration before what she sees happening on the right side. Over there, but quite lonely, the child Jesus lies in His mother’s arms, surrounded with unmistakable signs reminding us that He is a child of earth like all the rest. Only the little child, not the mother, sees what is to be seen there, the Father. He alone, the Father, sees right into the eyes of this child. On the same side as the first Mary appears the Church, facing at a distance. It has open accesss on this side, it adores, it magnifies and praises, therefore it sees what is indeed the glory of the only-begotten of His Father, full of grace and truth. But it sees only indirectly. What it sees directly is only the little child in His humanity; it sees the Father only in the light that falls upon the Son, and the Son only in the light from the Father. This is the way, in fact, that the Church believes in and recognises God in Christ. It cannot run over to the right side, where the glory of God can be seen directly. It can only look out of the darkness in the direction in which a human being is to be seen in a light, the source of which it cannot see itself. Because of this light streaming down from above, it worships before this human being as before God Himself, although to all visual appearance He is literally nothing but a human being. John the Baptist too, in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, can only point — and here everything is bolder and more abrupt, because here all indication of the revelation of God is lacking — point to a wretched, crucified, dead man. This is the place of Christology. It faces the mystery. It does not stand within the mystery. It can and must adore with Mary and point with the Baptist. It cannot and must not do more than this. But it can and must do this.” — CD I/2: 125. -
Barth and the Dangerous Business of God-talk
“In dogmatics,” Barth claims, “the Church has to measure its talk about God by the standard of its own being, i.e., of divine revelation. Its talk about God, however, is that of the intrinsically godless reason of man which is inimical to belief” (CD I/1; 28). Here Barth draws out parameters for doing dogmatic theology in distinction from E. Brunner’s eristic theology, a theology he treats as a symptomic expression of the general trend of dogmatic theology after Descartes. He also seems to suggest that theology is the great, irrevocable Catch-22 of the Christian life.
First with regard to Brunner and theological motions of the time. For Barth, theology that first seeks a ground of continuity with the reigning cultural/philosophical paradigm of a give time or locale must be extremely weary of its undertaking lest it ground theology in presuppositions alien to the knowledge of self and God given in revelation. Fundamentally, this is a problem of ontology: “This nexus of problems… is that of an ontology, and since Descartes this necessarily means that of a comprehensively explicated self-understanding of human existence which may also at a specific point become the pre-understanding of an existence in the Church or in faith, and therefore the pre-understanding and criterion of theological knowledge” (36). How then is one to proceed with dogmatic theology? Well, of course, for Barth at this point, one is to follow after revelation in the context of the church with a self-critical eye, always moving with skepticism of the church’s theological produce. This is because theology is always something intrinsically other than revelation itself. Thus, in ruling out “a prior anthropological possibility,” Barth also wants to rule out its ‘churchly’ corrollary, “a subsequent ecclesiastical reality” (41). Revelation as a person (Jesus Christ) is always something that stands in distinction from the church’s talk about that person. And, even as “Jesus Christ is the being of the Church,” it must accept that its theological activity is not the event of revelation: “[Evangelical Dogmatic Theology] realises that all its knowledge, even its knowledge of the correctness of its knowledge can only be an event and connot therefore be guaranteed as correct apart from or above this event” (42).Now for my question: Can dogmatic theology, even evangelical dogmatic theology (as Barth defines it) really shake free from the tethers of ‘ecclesiastical reality’ and thus a ‘prior anthropological possibility’ given that revelation is an event and God-talk is merely human attestation/ toexplanation of that event? It would seem that even whispering about the event of revelation is the construction of an ‘eccelsiastical reality’ of some sort? And, if it is, following Barth’s equation (ecclesiastical reality= prior anthropology), are we not doomed to arrive right back at anthropology in doing theology? Guidance from the well-versed please.
(Aside: The more I read Barth, the more I understand Calvin and vice versa. Along with that, I think Adam Neder is right on the money. “The longer one reflects on [themes in the Church Dogmatics] the more one realizes how deeply traditional and daringly innovative, deceptively simple and surprisingly counterintuitive Barth’s view of participation in Christ is” (Participation in Christ, 92). The same, no doubt, has to go for Barth’s doctrine of revelation as well.) -
Barth and Shallow Ecumenism
At work this afternoon, I was doing the usual run through of Band 1 of the Bibliographie Karl Barth when I stumbled upon this fascinating little letter written by Barth in 1928 to an editor of an ecumenically concerned, quarterly magazine the “Student World.” The editor had requested Barth write an article on the theme “The Christ of Faith.” Here is Barth’s response.
Muenster i. W. 12th March 1928.
Dear Mr. Miller,
You have been good enough to ask me to contribute to the July number of your magazine the “Student World.” I wish to express my thanks for this mark of confidence, but I must ask you to forgive me in I find it impossible to comply with your request. I should not wish to criticise anyone who hopes for valuable results from the arrangement of such a species of international orchestral concert, in which the most varied Christian points of view would play their part, nor would I criticise those who might find pleasure in taking part in it. I know that such undertakings are much in use to-day in Christian and other circles, and would willingly believe that the intentions of those who promote them are earnest and serious. But those who favour these modern methods will understand, if they are in earnest, the anxiety felt by others lest such undertakings should give rise to the impression, or strengthen it where it already exists :
I. That the unity of Christians in Christ is something actual, which can be visibly represented by adding together as many and as different Christian standpoints possible.
2. That Christian truth consists in the sum total or in a cross section of all the various Christian ideas and opinions.
3. That Christian knowledge is arrived at by means of a selection or mutual completion as between these various Christian points of view.
I consider such an impression disasterous, and should not wish to serve it by giving my name and the expression of my opinions to the collection which you are planning. If what you say is true, that my views have been accepted in certain places in your Movements, then all those who know what my real position is could only feel astonishment at seeing me appear in such company. My contribution cannot consist in this case in writing 3,000 words, but in not writing a single one; that is the only thing that I can honestly tell you.
I beg that you will not regard it as arrogance, if I refuse to comply with your invitation, but that you will believe that I personally would willingly do so, if only I could see the whole objective situation differently. If you should find it difficult to understand my point of view, I am sure that Doctor Adolf Keller, who, I see, is one of your contributors, would explain my position to you and assure you that there is no ill-will in me.
With kind regards,
Yours very sincerely,
KARL BARTH. -
God’s Divinity in-cludes God’s humanity
Originally written as a talk for South German Radio, “The Humanity of God” was delieverd as a lecture by Barth on September 26, 1957 to a number of Swiss pastors in Aarau. Busch notes that, with regards to Barth’s theology, there is nothing novel about this essay in particular other than the fact that it was written for a popular audience and widely disseminated. (Busch, KB, 424) Yet, as a succint recapitulation of the foundational elements of Barth’s later doctrine of God, “The Humanity of God” proves to be a good touchstone for, and entry way into, the later CD. There are a number of fascinating elements to this lecture: Barth’s reflection on the flight of his “theological arrow,” the foray into his 1919 theological work and near condemnation of it, the brief remarks on universalism, his strange comments on ecclesiology at the close of the address… The list could go on. But, the most important and fascinating element, of course, is given in the title. The question is still a glaring one, however. What exactly does Barth mean by this humanity of God… or as Barth might wish to turn the phrase, God’s humanity? Well, here are a number of points I believe he is trying to get across as far as theology proper is concerned.
I. God’s self-revelation is not an abstraction that greets us as something ”Wholly Other” to remain “Wholly Other.” Revelation is not merely God making known God’s presence as something entirely different than us. God is not unkownable as, even in the act of revelation, a ”Wholly Other” God would be.
“We viewed this ‘wholly other’ in isolation, abstracted and absolutized, and set it over against man, this miserable wretch - not to say boxed his ears with it - in such fashion that it continually showed greater similarity to the deity of the God of the philosophers than to the deity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Humanity of God, WJK, 45).
II. God’s self revelation is not merely found in Jesus Christ. God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ. As the Word made flesh, Jesus is the Son of God as Word and flesh. God’s choosing humanity in Christ is God’s choosing God’s being for Godself. This is a free decision of God, and as a free decision, a willed action of superabundant grace. As such, God’s self-revelation in the incarnation actually demonstrates that humanity is proper to God’s being.
“Who God is and what He is in His deity He proves and reveals not in a vacuum as a divine being-for-Himself, but precisely and authentically in the fact that He exists, speaks, and acts as the partner of man, though of course the absolutely superior partner. He who does that is the living God. And the freedom in which He does that is His deity…. It is precisely God’s deity which, rightly understood, includes his humanity.” (HG, 45).
III. The being of God, then, is one that God constitutes. Moreover, God is self-constituted as a being-in-relationship with creation. Indeed, God is with humanity, and by way of self-determinination, in no wise God without humanity. The humanity of Christ is not simply a veil behind which divinity is concealed. It is part and parcel of the divine being. God’s divinity including God’s humanity means our salvation.
Speaking of Jesus, Barth says, “it would be the false deity of a false God if in His deity His humanity did not also immediately encounter us. Such false deities are by Jesus Christ once and for all made a laughingstock. In him the fact is once for all established that God does not exist without man.” ( HG, 50)
IV. Considered in this light, kenosis is proper to the very being of God. It is not a laying aside of any part of divinity, but the place where full divinity is found. God does not change in the Word assuming flesh, suffering, and dying. Nor is the very essence of God simply “preserved” in the Incarnation by some metaphysical wrangling. The very essence of God happens, better, is constituted by the Incarnation, the suffering, the dying, and the rising of Jesus Christ.
“God’s high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for love. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God’s capacity to bend downwards, to attach Himself to another and this other to Himself, to be together with him…. It is rather His freedom to be in and for Himself but also with and for us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself, to be wholly exalted but also completely humble, not only almighty but also almight mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only judge but also Himself the judged, not only man’s eternal king but also his brother in time. And all that without the slightest forfeiting His deity! All that, the highest proof and proclamation of His deity! He who does and manifestly can do all that, He and no other is the living God.” (HG, 49)
A litmus space for percolating the theological
