The Faith of the Church. Karl Barth
is what binds them together.•• Aside from being well-known, the preeminence of the Apostles’ Creed as the most universally accepted statement of the Christian faith in all ages suggests that what Calvin and Barth individually say about it, and what Barth says about Calvin’s commentary upon it, needs careful consideration. This volume may therefore serve many readers as the most readily available introduction to the thought of Karl Barth, and to the Reformation’s rediscovery both of the gospel and of the “Catholic” faith enshrined in the Creed.
Barth’s theology is in fact contained in the liminal statements of Calvin’s catechism. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a similarity between the inner structure of Barth’s thought and that of Calvin, for both are related to the Creed. As a matter of fact, it would be wrong to expect less than this, since Barth’s systematic theology, like the Creed, consists chiefly in Christological concentration. For this reason, the first article of the Creed (on God as Creator) and the third (on the Holy Spirit and the Church) as well as the second (on the Son) are all interpreted in the sense of God’s work of reconciliation, of which the Christ-event (i.e. the love of God for man) constitutes the cornerstone. On this point, Barth finds himself in agreement with Calvin, who “clearly indicates the origin of our knowledge of God’s love. Note well: it is not a question of a general and abstract and philosophical knowledge, not a question of a treatise on the love of God in nature or on love in general; all this, all these abstract ideas are a piece of paper, a great noise, only ideas. The Gospel, on the contrary, tells us about realities. The task of theological reflection and of preaching does not begin at all with abstract ideas, but with the reality of God’s action. The love of God is not an abstract quality of God’s; it is an act: God takes to heart our misery. In Jesus Christ, he declares his mercy unto us and puts this mercy to work, and there is no mercy towards us outside Jesus Christ.”
To be sure, it is not our intention to suggest only how wonderful a coincidence there is in this case between the Reformer’s and Barth’s views. Actually, more than once Barth will have to part company; for example, on the issue of predestination and the resurrection of the flesh. But what is more interesting is the way in which certain doctrines, under Barth’s analysis of Calvin’s statements, yield a fresher meaning, sometimes fully daring, sometimes vigorously paradoxical. The reader has but to be referred to the passage where Barth interprets the doctrine of the ascension as implying the ultimate refutation of all dictatorships, or where his understanding of the virgin birth or the empty tomb is both in strict conformity with orthodoxy and—we must admit—wholly unorthodox.
Doubtless some readers may need help in understanding what they will find in this volume. In a brief introduction only a few points can, in any case, be selected for comment. Three points in particular seem to the translator to require further discussion; and they are chosen because they will help to show the originality of Barth’s thought by setting this volume in a larger framework and, generally, in relation to his unique contribution to systematic theology as a whole. These points are: (1) theology as corrective and world-facing and, by implication, man-honoring; (2) theology and ethics; and (3) Barth’s unorthodox orthodoxy, as, for example, in his treatment of the virgin birth. All three have been greatly misunderstood—the first two due mainly to the inability of English-speaking theologians to perceive the true nature of Barth’s enterprise, and their consequent precipitous rejection of it; the third, due more to Barth’s own statement.
A theology of the Word, according to the tradition of the Reformation, is always essentially a corrective theology. Like a teacher, it attempts to inform and transform by confronting the student, not by indoctrinating him. Only thus can the teaching of the Church become an event that stands witness to the grace of God, instead of a rigid instrument of propaganda. The task of the theologian is constantly to awaken the Church to this responsibility which alone is hers. And this does not always mean maintaining the tradition or a specific doctrine, however hallowed they may be. It means also criticism, that is to say, correction. For this reason some twenty years ago, reviewing in The Christian Century the development of his thinking, Barth could write: “My new task was to take all that has been said before and to think it through once more and freshly and to articulate it anew as a theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. I cannot pass over in silence the fact that in working at this task—I should like to call it a Christological concentration—I have been led to a critical (in a better sense of the word) discussion of church tradition, and as well of the Reformers, and especially of Calvin.”• Of such an aim, this book offers the reader a concise and vivid realization.
However, it is from the standpoint of the Church that Barth conceives and conducts his theological task of correction, as is evidenced by the fact that he altered the title of his (nearly completed) magnum opus from Christliche (Christian) to Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics). But for him the Church is the world-facing reality which is brought about by the Word of God proclaimed and heard. She is not a world-denying sphere of hygienic righteousness. Only as a theologian of the Word, therefore, is Barth a theologian of the Church, that is, a man who took his “glorious liberty” seriously when he declared that he had been impelled to become “simultaneously very much more churchly and very much more worldly.”
It is time to dispel the erroneous conception that Barth has no use for the things of this world and that like Tertullian he finds nothing in common between Athens and Jerusalem. Similarly, we must resist the widespread opinion, based on misinterpreted and extrapolated utterances from his earlier theological writings, that the lapidary formula “God is all, man is nothing” gives the real measure of his thinking. To be sure, these misreadings were further strengthened by Barth’s categorical rejection of general revelation (i.e. his rejection of the idea that God apart from Jesus Christ reveals himself also in nature and this, therefore, implies innate in man a “point of contact” or natural reciprocity between him and God). Strange as it may seem, in Barth’s view, any attempt to establish a degree of similitude or resemblance between the Creator and the creature amounts to an implicit attitude of contempt for the creature. In preserving the radical otherness between God and man, Barth’s intention indeed is to assert and preserve the inalienable condition of freedom and necessity which properly is man’s. And in hinging his interpretation of this otherness on the Christ-event, he is led to the biblical conclusion that in Christ this otherness stands revealed as only one side of the coin, the other side being the fundamental mutuality between the Creator and the creature. Which means that God is not God without man; and were man nothing, God would not be all.
Thus there is, in Barth’s theology, a point of contact between God and man. It is Jesus Christ. And there is also a point of contact between Athens and Jerusalem. Again, it is Jesus Christ. As Barth himself puts it, when the pagan, or, if you will, natural man hears about Jesus Christ it is of his own Lord that he hears.
All this goes to show that the “Christological concentration” which has governed Barth’s theological method has led him, far from irrational fideism or anthropological pessimism, to the constant theme of God’s own consistency with himself, i.e. with his intention and purpose as Creator, and to the theme that here and now the life-abundant is a possibility. “We must—even if it seems ‘dangerous’—affirm that the glory of God and the glory of man, although different, actually coincide. There is no other glory of God (this is a free decision of his will) than that which comes about in man’s existence. And there is no other glory of man than that which he may and can have in glorifying God. Likewise God’s beatitude coincides with man’s happiness. Man’s happiness is to make God’s beatitude appear in his life, and God’s beatitude consists in giving himself to man in the form of human happiness.” The virtue of this “Christological concentration” is to show also that the ecclesiastical frame of reference of his Dogmatics, instead of calling for withdrawal from the world, actually constitutes a potent antidote to all forms of monasticism, asceticism, pietism, or perfectionism.
If any proof should be required in support of these assertions, it is to be found in the significance Barth attaches to the fact that, contrary to the traditional methods of dogmatics, he does not begin with general and epistemological considerations about the existence of a supreme being and a general knowledge of God. Right off, Barth begins with the reality of God which precedes and founds