Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis: Neither Modern Romantic or Post-Modern PDF

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SOUTHWESTERN ASSEMBLIES OF GOD UNIVERSITY Twentieth-Century Theology SSC 5613-530 Professor: Bruce Rosdahl, Ph.D. Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis: Neither Modern Romantic or Post-Modern Timothy J. Corum [email protected] 603-217-7552 Spring 18 9 April 2018
 !2 Table of Contents Intro...

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SOUTHWESTERN ASSEMBLIES OF GOD UNIVERSITY

Twentieth-Century Theology SSC 5613-530

Professor: Bruce Rosdahl, Ph.D.

Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis: Neither Modern Romantic or Post-Modern

Timothy J. Corum [email protected] 603-217-7552 Spring 18 9 April 2018


!2 Table of Contents

Introduction

3

Barth’s Break, Neo-Liberalism, and Post-Modernism

4

die Sache, eine Schracke

6

Barth Use of Historical Criticism

8

Einfühlung

14

Role of the Holy Spirit

17

Role of Community

19

Conclusion

21

Bibliography

22 


!3 Introduction

In 1919 Karl Barth published his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Römerbrief) and launched a theological revolution. Barth reacted against the optimism of modern Romanticism as exemplified by Schleiermacher and typified in his contemporaries. The main difference Barth’s approach represented, according to his critics, was a new hermeneutical method.1 Thus most of the criticism he received regarding his Römerbrief had to do with his method. His former teacher Harnack would call him a “fanatical subjectivist.” 2 At the heart of his break with liberalism, regarding his method, was its objectivity. What Barth had done was move the object of his theological method from the historical person and religious thoughts of Paul to the actual subject matter of the Bible. Barth also rejected, what he regarded as the overly subjective, practice of the empathetic tradition. He instead sought to find in the text of the Bible an encounter with the object of the biblical author’s witness. By being a theologian that broke away from modernism Barth has been thought of a precursor to post-liberal and post-modern theologians. But due to Barth critical-realism 3 and claim of an objective truth that can be experienced in the subject matter of the Bible makes his method mostly incompatible with the

1! . See Burnett’s summer of the reactions to Römerbrief in Richard E. Burnett, Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis: The Hermeneutical Principles of the Römerbrief Period (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 13–23. Gadamer went so far as to call the first edition of Römerbrief a “virtual hermeneutical manifesto.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 581. 2! . James M. Robinson ed. "The Debate on the Critical Historical Method: Correspondence Between Adolf von Harnack and Karl Barth," in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, trans. Keith R. Crim (Richmond, VA: John Know Press, 1968), 165–187. 3! . Critical-realism here is used in a very general sense; Barth’s view of God’s ontology shapes his theological epistemology. His ontology of God is rooted in the Reformed insistence on God’s transcendence.

!4 ideas found in post-modernism.4 Barth’s objective approach to theological exegesis, as he articulated it, marked a fundamental break with Romanticism. Although being critical of modernism Barth’s critical-realism makes his notions of revelation incompatible with postmodern ideas of interpretation.

Barth’s Break, Neo-Liberalism, and Post-Modernism

McCormack argues that Barth’s break with liberalism and subsequent theological revolution came about as the result of “a single material insight”5 and not primarily as the result of a shift in theological method. He demonstrated that contrary to von Balthasar’s thesis of understanding Barth’s development consisting of two breaks or turning points. 6 It is more consistent to see Barth as breaking with liberalism and embracing dialectic theology. This happened in the summer of 1915, although there was many sifts in his theological thinking, it was fundamentally dialectic and never replaced with analogy, as von Balthasar’s suggested. Barth’s theology remained dialectic from the first edition of the Römerbrief through the Church Dogmatics. For purposes of this study, a general consistency in Barth approach to theological

4! . Elements of post-modernism relevant to this study of Barth’s theological exegesis include an incredulity towards meta-narratives and objective truth and, more particularly, tendencies in literary criticism such as an unimportance of the author and relying on a post-structural close reading of texts. Burnett gives the example of the scholar Mary Kathleen who would describe Barth this way. Burnett, 5. Mary Kathleen Cunningham, What is Theological Exegesis? Interpretation and Use of Scripture in Barth’s Doctrine of Election (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1995), 14. See also Graham Ward, “Barth, Modernity, and Postmodernity,” in John Webster, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 274–295. 5! . Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), viii. 6! . As presented in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Drury (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971). Balthasar took the approach that Barth was more of philosopher who did theology, McCormack has shown that Barth is indeed a theologian first and last. McCormack, Critically, 20.

!5 exegesis will be assumed. Furthermore, the focus here will be on the material in Barth’s early days after is break with liberalism.7 Barth’s criticism of modern liberal Romantic ideas about theology has led some to see him as a precursor to post-liberal theology and even post-modernism. Kantian rationalism left Christianity impoverished and it was Schleiermacher who sought to rescue it from being reduced to discussions of ethics.8 It was Schleirmacher’s Romanticism that Barth critiqued; in the Reformers, Luther and Calvin, Barth found a better way to reconcile Kant with Christianity.9 Barth’s criticism of liberalism makes him a sympathetic figure of post-liberal theologians like Lindbeck and Hauerwas; although with many variations they take issue that liberalism for its theological focus was on something other than the text, and defined the Christian narrative in terms of extra-biblical categories.10 Some have sought to elucidate post-modern ideas in Barth. Ward argues that concepts of post-modernism can be found in Barth like post-humanism, nihilism, and non-realism.11 And it can be said that Barth rejects foundationalism in his critic of the Cartesian Cogito.12 In spite of possibility of finding some elements of post-modernism in Barth the fundamental way his

7! . E.g., prefaces to the first and second edition of Römerbrief and the Göttingen lectures and the later works, e.g., Church Dogmatics, for further clarity. 8! . Roger E. Olson, Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013),130–147. 9! . Barth would embrace neo-Kantian notions of actualism, which he took to not only be epistemologically descriptive, but also ontologically, relevant to his views on revelation. William J. Brennan III. “Karl Barth Among the Postliberals" (masters thesis, Asbury Theological Seminary, 2012), 58–61; Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 12. ! . See Brennan, 57–78. 10 ! . Graham Ward, “Barth, Modernity, and Postmodernity,” in Webster, 274–295. 11 ! . Robert G. Greer, Mapping Postmodernism: A Survey of Christian Options (Downers Grove,IL: IVP, 12 2003), 98–104.

!6 theology is antithetical to post-modernism is that he argues in favor of ontological referents, Christianity for Barth is anchored in reality. Unlike post-modernists Barth theology is not essentially rooted in culture and history, it is other-worldly and acultural. 13 Barth can be said to be a critical-realist regarding his theological epistemology. For Barth, the ontology of the controlling object, the Word of God, determines the method of epistemology, i.e., self-revelation in its own freedom. Barth’s ideas of revelation and absolute truth that is God’s self is not copasetic with the main tenants of post-modernism. 14 Barth stands in a unique place in the early twentieth century in that he represents a kind of third-way regarding the liberal–fundamentalist debate. Barth was a critic of liberalism but by no means did he embrace fundamentalism. He felt that liberals had reduced the Bible to a “paper tiger,” and the fundamentalist have made it a “paper pope.”15 At the heart of Barth’s theological exegesis was a change in the object. For the liberals, the object of hermeneutics was the historical person of the author and the history of their religious thoughts. For the fundamentalist, the object of biblical study was the very words of the Bible. Barth saw as the object of theological inquiry the self-revelation of God, which for Barth was the Word of God. Thus, the object of Barth’s theological exegesis was the subject matter of the Bible because there within one could encounter the revelation of God’s self.

! . Greer, 104. 13 ! . Kevin Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide A 14 unified Response (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 37–39, 90n112. ! . D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge eds. Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Rand Rapids, MI: 15 Baker, 1986), 294. See Barth comments on Biblicism CD I/2, 525.

!7 die Sache, eine Schracke

The central idea of Barth’s theological epistemology is that knowledge of God cannot be acquired by any human effort of reason. It is only by God’s decision to actively reveal himself in his freedom that God can be known. Barth’s theology will not tolerate any method that violates the freedom of God or compromise God’s wholly otherness. The means by which God reveals himself is the Word of God,16 which Barth explains as having three forms: the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Scripture, and proclamation. Revelation is God breaking into the human world in the incarnation which the prophets and apostles bear witness as recorded in the Bible. The church participates in that witness by proclaiming the Word of God (preaching, writing theology, and living as Christians in the world).17 For Barth, the Bible is the human words of the prophets and apostles that witness to the Word of God. This distinction between the Word and the Bible as human words is foundational to Barth’s interpretative approach. He always is careful not to collapse this distinction. For Barth, it is by the words of Scripture that one encounters the subject matter or content (die Sache) of the Bible. Here one beholds that which biblical author bear witness to, the Word of God. This Sache is the object of Barth’s theological exegesis; at the same time, Barth turns the subject-object distinction around. For God is the “object” of the Bible only to the extent he is the “subject” who acts by giving himself to us as object. Barth calls this Sache an inner dialectic which he explains as, “The relationship of this God to this man, the relationship of this man to this God, is the

CD I/1.

! . The doctrine of the Word of God makes up most of the massive prolegomena to his Church Dogmatics. 16 ! . See "On The Word of God in its Threefold Form,"CD I/1, 88–124. 17

!8 theme of the Bible and the sum of philosophy in one. The philosophers call this crisis of human knowing the source. At this crossroads, the Bible sees Jesus Christ.”18 All theology, for Barth, is a result of this encounter with the Word of God through the Sache of the Bible. Watson observes that Barth’s theology is from, “first to last biblical theology... from beginning to end, Barth’s Church Dogmatics is nothing other than a sustained meditation on the texts of Holy Scripture.”19 Barth summarizes his understanding of the Sache in an essay shortly after his break with liberalism.

The content of the Bible is not at all formed by the right human thoughts about God but by the right divine thought about men. The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God but he says to us; not how we find our way to him, but how he has sought and found the way to us; not the right relation in which we must place ourselves to him, but the covenant which he has made with all who are Abraham’s children by faith and which he has sealed once and for all in Jesus Christ. It is this which is within the Bible. The Word of God is within the Bible.20

Barth used the metaphor of a “barrier” (eine Schracke) in his Göttingen lectures to help explain some of the problems with the hermeneutical methods of his contemporaries. The Schracke has to do with the fact that when one reads the Bible as God’s Word, what is being read are merely human words. “His Own Word comes to me only in this broken form. ...This is eine Schracke that confronts us. We believe we find it in the fact that the Word comes to us only in words, in human words. We must halt at this barrier and acknowledge it.” 21 The problem for Barth here is that all the hermeneutical methods, criticisms, and human speculation can only ever ! . Barth, Rom II, xiii. 18 ! . Francis Watson, "The Bible," in Webster, 57. 19 ! . Karl Barth, "Die neue Welt in der Bibel," in Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (Munich: Chr Kaiser 20 Verlang, 1924), 28. Translation from Burnett, 68. ! . Barth, Göttingen, 230–231. 21

!9 deal with the human words and can never breach the Schracke to behold the Word. Barth’s objection of the historical critics was that did not halt at the Schracke, but presumed to pass right through it.

Barth Use of Historical Criticism

The accusations of subjectivism leveled against Barth by the critics of his first edition of his Römerbrief where in regard to what was a supposed rejection of the historical-critical method. Wernle wrote, “If Barth had not so contemptuously ignored the historical background of Romans he would not have gone so thoroughly wrong.” 22 Wilhelm Loew commented on Barth supposed disregard for historical-criticism claiming his approach offered, “intensive experience without any feeling of distance.”23 And Jülicher stated that Barth’s errors were due to being “a sworn enemy of the historical-criticism.”24 For Jülicher, the contrast between scientific (historical-critical) exegesis and practical (pneumatic and edifying) exegesis as mutually exclusive and he view Barth as being in the later. As McCormack points out Jülicher’s view was characteristic Barth contemporaries who saw a claim to understand Paul with the necessary historical work (as was assumed of Barth) as unscientific and leading to enthusiasm, subjectivism, and relativism.25 Consistent across the responses to the publication of Barth’s ! . Paul Wernle, "Der Römerbrief in neuer Beleuchtung," Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz 34 22 (1919), 167. Quoted from Burnett, 17. ! . Wilhelm Loew, "Noch einmal Barths Römerbrief," Die Christliche Welt 34 (1920), 586. Translation 23 form Burnett, 19. ! . Adolf Jüicher, "Ein Moderner Paulusausleger," Die Christliche Welt 34 (1920), 90; Quoted from 24 Burnett, 17. ! . Bruce L. McCormack, "Historical-criticism and Dogmatic Interest in Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis 25 of the New Testament," Lutheran Quarterly 5, no. 2 (Sum 1991): 212, accessed March 20, 2018. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost.

!10 Römerbrief was the notion that he had read to much of himself and his contemporary world into the text. In 1923 Harnack published an open letter entitled, “Fifteen Questions to Those Among the Theologians Who Are Contemptuous of Scientific Theology” in Die Christliche Welt which referred to Barth as a “fanatical subjectivist.”26 Burnett summarizes those early reviews of the Römerbrief by concluding that “Barth’s commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans actually said more about Barth than it did about Paul.”27 The question then arises, does Barth’s hermeneutic represent an abandonment of the historical-critical method and is he advocating a subjective method of interpretation? In the various versions of the preface to Romans commentary Barth anticipates and response to his critics regarding the historical-critical method. In the preface to the second edition of Römerbrief Barth proclaims, “I am no ‘declared enemy of historical-criticism.’” 28 In the preface to the first edition of Römerbrief Barth states, “The historical-critical method of biblical research has its place; it points to a preparation for understanding that is never superfluous.”29 Furthermore, in the second edition preface, he would label the historical-critical method as, “the first primitive attempt” at understanding the meaning of the text. Barth goes on to define what he is referring to,

Establishing of ‘what is there’ by means of translation and paraphrasing the Greek words and phrases in the corresponding modern language by means of philological, archaeological exposition of the results so achieved, and by means of a more or less

! . Robinson, Debate, 165–187. 26 ! . Burnett, 18. 27 ! . Barth, Rom II, x. 28 ! . Barth, Rom I, v. Draft V of the preface was corrected from "...it [the historical-critical method] compels 29 one to preliminary work which cannot be ignored at any point." Translation form Burnett, 291.

!11 plausible ordering of the individual elements according to historical and psychological pragmatism.30

In the drafts of the prefaces to Römerbrief Barth affirms the importance of the historical-critical method yet points out that those who have employed it have gone beyond what it can produce, and even bringing presuppositions into the use of historical criticism. It is at the point the historical critics go beyond preliminary assessments of the text to suggesting meaning that Barth says the “dissension begins.”31 While Barth says he will, “follow the historians attentively and thankfully as long as they are occupied with that primitive attempt at explanation.” 32 Not long after the publication of Römerbrief in his Göttingen lectures33 Barth would offer a more substantive description of his view of the constructive role of historical criticism, shedding light on what he meant by a “primitive attempt at explanation.” He claimed that the purpose of historical criticism is to build “a picture,” (ein Bild) that represented the historical situation of the text.34 The building of the Bild, for Barth, is a vital initial stage of interpretation. He goes on to explain that the Bild is subjective in that it is constructed in the mind of the interpreter. Barth points out that the problem with the modern historical critics is that they tended to identify or confuse their Bild with the actual subject matter of the Bible. The result of this confusion would then lead to limiting of the freedom of the Bible. Barth also observes that the Bild is not only necessary but is inevitable, i.e., with or without historical criticism a Bild is ! . Barth, Rom II, x. 30 ! . Ibid. Barth names Jülicher and Lietzmann as exemplars of historical critics and as examples of those 31 who erroneously make presumptions of the text with there method. ! . Ibid. 32 ! . Karl Barth, Unterrricht in der christlichen Religion, 1924, I ed. Hannelotte Reiffen (Zürich: 33 Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1985), 313. ! . Ibid. 34

!12 constructed in the minds of readers. The value of rigorous historical criticism is that its aim is to build the highest quality Bild. Barth claims, “The degree of skill and method and competence will vary, as will also the apparatus used. ...There is a wide gap between the refined research of a Harnack or Holl and the simple investigation of an old peasant sitting down with a Luther Bible.”35 The relationship between Barth and modern historical criticism can be seen in the relationship of Barth to the work of Schleiermacher, “the father of modern hermeneutics as a general study.”36 Barth was very much a disciple of Schleiermacher prior to his break with liberalism. Barth wrote regarding his thoughts toward Schleiermacher’s work during the ...