Karl Barth's theology at face value

dms1972 · Feb 24, 2019

As is probably known Karl Barth has had his critics (mainly within Fundamentalism)

Yet on the face of it there seem to be many passages in his writings that taken in a plain sense seem to accord with reformed and fundamentalist theology. I want to quote a couple of paragraphs from the beginning of his volume The Doctrine of God, to see if on the face of it this agrees with what a fundamentalist would hold to. I know why for instance Van Til has an issue with Barth's theology, but I want to see if one can read Barth words at face value and not be lead into error? After all not everyone picking up Barth, knows anything about him.

Here is how he opens his Doctrine of God.

Man before God

"In the Church of Jesus Christ men speak about God and men have to hear about God. About God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; about God's grace and truth; about God's thoughts and works; about God's promises, ordinances and commandments; about God's kingdom, and about the state and life of man in the sphere of His lordship. But always and in all circumstances about God Himself, who is the presupposition, meaning and power of everything that is to be said and heard in the Church, the Subject who absolutely, originally and finally moves, produces, establishes and realises in this matter. In dogmatics it is the doctrine of God which deals with this Subject as such. In the doctrine of God we have to learn what we are saying when we say "God". In the the doctrine of God we have to learn to say "God" in the correct sense. If we do not speak rightly of this Subject, how can we speak rightly of His predicates?

But in relation to this Subject, we are at once contronted with the problem of knowledge. All speaking and hearing in the Church of Jesus Christ entirely rests upon and is concerned with the fact that God is known in the Church of Jesus; that is to say, that this Subject is objectively present to the speakers and hearers, so that man in the Church really stands before God. If it were not so, if man did not really stand before God, if God were not the object of his perception, viewing and conception, and if he did not know God - whatever we understand by "know" - then he could not speak and hear about Him. Then everything declared and heard in the Church would have no Subject and it would be left in the air like an empty sound. Then the church, if it lives only by what is said and heard in it, would not be alive; or its life would be merely an apparent life, life in a dream-world with those subjectless images and concepts as phantasies of its imagination. But if the life of the Church is not just a semblance, the knowledge of God is realised in it. This is the presupposition which we have first of all to explain in the doctrine of God. We have to learn how far we can know God and therefore speak and hear about him."

I know these two opening paragraphs have not taken us into the nitty gritty of Barth's theology, but on the face of it does Barth say anything here at least that would be objectionable to most fundamentalists?

tdidymas · Feb 24, 2019

dms1972 said:
As is probably known Karl Barth has had his critics (mainly within Fundamentalism)

Yet on the face of it there seem to be many passages in his writings that taken in a plain sense seem to accord with reformed and fundamentalist theology. I want to quote a couple of paragraphs from the beginning of his volume The Doctrine of God, to see if on the face of it this agrees with what a fundamentalist would hold to. I know why for instance Van Til has an issue with Barth's theology, but I want to see if one can read Barth words at face value and not be lead into error? After all not everyone picking up Barth, knows anything about him.

Here is how he opens his Doctrine of God.

Man before God

"In the Church of Jesus Christ men speak about God and men have to hear about God. About God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; about God's grace and truth; about God's thoughts and works; about God's promises, ordinances and commandments; about God's kingdom, and about the state and life of man in the sphere of His lordship. But always and in all circumstances about God Himself, who is the presupposition, meaning and power of everything that is to be said and heard in the Church, the Subject who absolutely, originally and finally moves, produces, establishes and realises in this matter. In dogmatics it is the doctrine of God which deals with this Subject as such. In the doctrine of God we have to learn what we are saying when we say "God". In the the doctrine of God we have to learn to say "God" in the correct sense. If we do not speak rightly of this Subject, how can we speak rightly of His predicates?

But in relation to this Subject, we are at once contronted with the problem of knowledge. All speaking and hearing in the Church of Jesus Christ entirely rests upon and is concerned with the fact that God is known in the Church of Jesus; that is to say, that this Subject is objectively present to the speakers and hearers, so that man in the Church really stands before God. If it were not so, if man did not really stand before God, if God were not the object of his perception, viewing and conception, and if he did not know God - whatever we understand by "know" - then he could not speak and hear about Him. Then everything declared and heard in the Church would have no Subject and it would be left in the air like an empty sound. Then the church, if it lives only by what is said and heard in it, would not be alive; or its life would be merely an apparent life, life in a dream-world with those subjectless images and concepts as phantasies of its imagination. But if the life of the Church is not just a semblance, the knowledge of God is realised in it. This is the presupposition which we have first of all to explain in the doctrine of God. We have to learn how far we can know God and therefore speak and hear about him."

I know these two opening paragraphs have not taken us into the nitty gritty of Barth's theology, but on the face of it does Barth say anything here at least that would be objectionable to most fundamentalists?

I don't see anything in these paragraphs, although I am not a fundamentalist. I might not know what criticism a fundamentalist might have with it. But I am curious what a fundamentalist would say about this or anything that Barth wrote. I would be interested in what specifics Van Til or anyone else might have objection over. It might help to get some quotes on specific objections they have.
TD

FireDragon76 · Feb 24, 2019

Van Til thought Barth was insufficiently orthodox. Barth was willing to engage with liberal scholarship, something that is a no-no among Fundamentalists.

tdidymas · Feb 24, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
Van Til thought Barth was insufficiently orthodox. Barth was willing to engage with liberal scholarship, something that is a no-no among Fundamentalists.

I don't get it. Do fundamentalists "not even eat" with a liberal, thus not able to influence them through dialog? Are they isolationist? Just curious, as this issue seems more of application than theology.
TD

FireDragon76 · Feb 24, 2019

tdidymas said:
I don't get it. Do fundamentalists "not even eat" with a liberal, thus not able to influence them through dialog? Are they isolationist? Just curious, as this issue seems more of application than theology.
TD

Fundamentalists do not view liberals as being real Christians.

dms1972 · Feb 24, 2019

tdidymas said:
I don't see anything in these paragraphs, although I am not a fundamentalist. I might not know what criticism a fundamentalist might have with it. But I am curious what a fundamentalist would say about this or anything that Barth wrote. I would be interested in what specifics Van Til or anyone else might have objection over. It might help to get some quotes on specific objections they have.
TD

I wanted people to read Barth first without knowing what Van Til, or Schaeffer have said about Him, because their thoughts at least with me tend to colour my reading. But I felt by making the effort to just read Barth at face value I could not find anything in these opening paragraphs at least to fault (the devil may be in the theological detail however.)

I am wondering when one reads "God", "Jesus Christ" etc. in Barth does one not, or cannot the reader bring their own understanding of God and Jesus to what Barth is saying? It seemed to me like Barth was saying God is there, the same as what Schaeffer would affirm. I am just trying at the moment to read through Barth with virgin eyes as it were.

I'll try and summarise Schaeffer's critique from Colin Duriez's biography of him.

Schaeffer's critique is general to The New Theology (which includes Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Brunner), though there were certainly differences and disagreements between those theologians.

Schaeffer's criticism is that Neo-orthodoxy is that it is not a return to the theology of the Reformation, but a step further away. Its like Barth is using orthodox language but not really saying anything different than the existentialists. For Schaeffer it all turns on Barth view of Scripture, and his rejection of Inerrancy, and his view of Truth. It seems that for Barth scripture is full of errors, but we listen in faith and a word from God comes through. This says Schaeffer along with some other things Barth has said indicate he has a divided concept of truth. For instance when Schaeffer and a few other theologians visited Barth (the one time they met). They asked him a few questions to ascertain how he viewed things. One was "The distance between two points on earth is a straight line. Is this also the case in heaven, or only on earth?" Barth answered "I don't know. Perhaps yes, perhaps no." They also asked him "You seem to being saying in your writing that God created the world in the first century A.D. Did you mean that? Or did we misunderstand?" To which Barth answered "Certainly. God created the world in Christ in the first century A.D." Schaeffer took this to mean that theologically this world - the world examined by science and recorded by history - did not matter for Barth. There was a watertight dichotomy between matters of faith and the world of science and history. After the meeting Schaeffer and another theologian published quite negative papers on Barth, and this basically closed the door to any further discussion with Barth as letters between Barth and Schaeffer reveal.

Schaeffer believes Scripture is inerrant for he says it make no sense for God to set His revelation in history and yet give us a revelation in scripture which the history is wrong. Therefore in Scripture there is a unified field of knowledge. Scripture is a verbalised, propositional revelation of content, that can be considered by the whole man. He say Barth escapes from the logic of his position by a irrational leap of faith to an upper story.

Like this

THE NON-RATIONAL and NON LOGICAL
A crisis first-order experience. Faith as an optimistic leap without
verification or communicable content.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RATIONAL AND LOGICAL
The Scripture full of mistakes - pessimism

Schaeffer doesn't agree with this split, or rather he doesn't agree with it as a watertight dichotomy, he doesn't think faith and rationality should be so separated. I don't think he'd disagree entirely with a differentiation of faith and rationality. For him there are good and sufficient reasons for believing.

The view that scriptures are full of mistakes he says comes from theologians following contemporary philosophy and embracing the idea of a closed universe of cause and effect.

"Neo-orthodoxy leaped to what I call the 'upper story' in order to try and find something which would give hope and meaning in life. The 'lower story' is the position to which their presuppositions would have rationally and logically lead them."

"Karl Barth was the doorway in theology into the line of despair. He continued to hold to the day of his death the higher (negative) critical theories which the liberals held and yet, by a leap, sought to bypass the two rational alternatives - a return to the historical view of scripture, or an acceptance of pessimism"

"Thus, though their position rests on a 'liberal' view of Scripture, yet in the new theology the real issue is now not their view of Scripture but their divided view of truth."

dms1972 · Feb 24, 2019

tdidymas said:
I don't get it. Do fundamentalists "not even eat" with a liberal, thus not able to influence them through dialog? Are they isolationist? Just curious, as this issue seems more of application than theology.
TD

I think most have a separationist mindset as far as ministry is concerned. Francis Schaeffer and some others wanted to talk to Barth about his thought, they thought he was coming more and more to the Christian position, but were concerned about the "weakness of his concerning history".

Buswell and Schaeffer meet Barth

Though they would have liked to continue the dialog, they also wrote negative papers about Barth's theology, and unfortunately when Barth read the papers written about him after the first meeting, he said "what's the point in continuing the conversation? You are only coming to talk to me in the manner of a detective-inspector. Why and to what purpose do you want to have further conversation? The heretic has been burnt and buried for good!"

Following that Schaeffer moved away from his fundamentalism, went back to agnosticism for a time till he re-thought the whole matter of whether the Bible is truth.

dms1972 · Feb 24, 2019

From the Editor's Preface of the first volume of Barth's Doctrine of God:

"In the first chapter Barth insists that our knowledge of God is grounded in the action of God, in which He objectifies Himself to us, and meets us on our own plane as a Subject calling for a corresponding action on our part in the obedience of faith. Barth draws a valuable distinction here between God's primary objectivity which is never abstracted from His own self-giving, and God's secondary objectivity in the sign-world used by His self-revelation to man. He speaks of this as "a sacramental objectivity." The real basis and essence of this sacramental reality of His revelation is to be found in the human nature of Jesus Christ."

"In this part of the work we have a searching and profound examination of the main theses of Natural and Roman Theology, in respect of the distinction between the possibility and the actuality of our knowledge of God, which involves an underlying cleavage between God's being and His action. The repudiation of this cleavage in God is fundamental to the whole of Barth's theology. If this is a critical it is also a sympathetic examination in which Barth takes trouble to understand the persistent vitality of Natural Theology. It is, he holds the theology of the natural man, and springs out of his attempt to assure his own place in ultimate reality, and is therefore his only trust in life and death. Since only the positive content of our knowledge of God in Christ gives us real ground for calling natural knowledge of God in question, we have no right to deprive the natural man of his only trust in life and death before he attains the true knowledge of God in Jesus Christ."

dms1972 · Feb 24, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
Van Til thought Barth was insufficiently orthodox. Barth was willing to engage with liberal scholarship, something that is a no-no among Fundamentalists.

Van Til to my knowledge never suggested Barth did not have faith, or that he wasn't a christian, he did however see his theology as the worst heresy to appear. Both Van Til and Schaeffer thought Barth was further away from orthodoxy than were the older liberal theologians

tdidymas · Feb 25, 2019

dms1972 said:
I wanted people to read Barth first without knowing what Van Til, or Schaeffer have said about Him, because their thoughts at least with me tend to colour my reading. But I felt by making the effort to just read Barth at face value I could not find anything in these opening paragraphs at least to fault (the devil may be in the theological detail however.)

I am wondering when one reads "God", "Jesus Christ" etc. in Barth does one not, or cannot the reader bring their own understanding of God and Jesus to what Barth is saying? It seemed to me like Barth was saying God is there, the same as what Schaeffer would affirm. I am just trying at the moment to read through Barth with virgin eyes as it were.

I'll try and summarise Schaeffer's critique from Colin Duriez's biography of him.

Schaeffer's critique is general to The New Theology (which includes Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Brunner), though there were certainly differences and disagreements between those theologians.

Schaefer's criticism is that Neo-orthodoxy is that it is not a return to the theology of the Reformation, but a step further away. Its like Barth is using orthodox language but not really saying anything different than the existentialists. For Schaeffer it all turns on Barth view of Scripture, and his rejection of Inerrancy, and his view of Truth. It seems that for Barth scripture is full of errors, but we listen in faith and a word from God comes through. This says Schaeffer along with some other things Barth has said indicate he has a divided concept of truth. For instance when Schaeffer and a few other theologians visited Barth (the one time they met). They asked him a few questions to ascertain how he viewed things. One was "The distance between two points on earth is a straight line. Is this also the case in heaven, or only on earth?" Barth answered "I don't know. Perhaps yes, perhaps no." They also asked him "You seem to being saying in your writing that God created the world in the first century A.D. Did you mean that? Or did we misunderstand?" To which Barth answered "Certainly. God created the world in Christ in the first century A.D." Schaeffer took this to mean that theologically this world - the world examined by science and recorded by history - did not matter for Barth. There was a watertight dichotomy between matters of faith and the world of science and history. After the meeting Schaeffer and another theologian published quite negative papers on Barth, and this basically closed the door to any further discussion with Barth as letters between Barth and Schaeffer reveal.

Schaeffer believes Scripture is inerrant for he says it make no sense for God to give us a revelation in which the history is wrong. Therefore in Scripture there is a unified field of knowledge. Scripture is a verbalised, propositional revelation of content, that can be considered by the whole man. He say Barth escapes from the logic of his position by a irrational leap of faith to an upper story.

Like this

THE NON-RATIONAL and NON LOGICAL
A crisis first-order experience. Faith as an optimistic leap without
verification or communicable content.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RATIONAL AND LOGICAL
The Scripture full of mistakes - pessimism

"Neo-orthodoxy leaped to what I call the 'upper story' in order to try and find something which would give hope and meaning in life. The 'lower story' is the position to which their presuppositions would have rationally and logically lead them."

"Karl Barth was the doorway in theology into the line of despair. He continued to hold to the day of his death the higher (negative) critical theories which the liberals held and yet, by a leap, sought to bypass the two rational alternatives - a return to the historical view of scripture, or an acceptance of pessimism"

"Thus, though their position rests on a 'liberal' view of Scripture, yet in the new theology the real issue is now not their view of Scripture but their divided view of truth."

Well, this begs a question for me. I might not understand all that's being said here, as that understanding might need knowledge of background, history and writings of the authors. But I would like to focus on the "divided view of truth" idea, since it sounds somewhat of my own view. I don't know the full meaning of what Schaeffer meant by that phrase, I'm just going on what I see above.

Let me point out that my view is not necessarily the same as Barth's in that table above. I don't go with scripture being full of mistakes in major things like historical narratives and doctrinal statements. I understand that mistakes can be made by writers that are minor and humanly, that don't affect the true vision of God and events, and we can trust the scripture to be true. The mistakes I am talking about are scribal errors and mistakes of certain details like which crow of the [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] was heard before Peter realized his error - such things are so miniscule as not to affect the understanding of truth. Such are items that stick only in the craw of unbelievers.

However, I do believe in divided truth in this manner: there is natural truth that can be understood and believed with natural logic and reasoning, but there is also spiritual truth that cannot be understood with natural logic and reasoning, and requires a personal revelation from God as a supernatural event. This is how I read 1 Cor. 2:12-16, Rom. 8:7-9, and other places. That personal revelation (or illumination, if you will) appears to the unbeliever (or unlearned) as a "leap of faith" into trusting in what is unknown and unknowable, thus "Faith as an optimistic leap without verification or communicable content." This is also a description of my personal experience in that regard.

So, the question it begs for me is: do fundamentalists teach that the gospel can be understood by natural logic and reasoning alone, without any personal supernatural revelation from God as a separate action from knowledge of the text of scripture? I know that some people do believe this, as I have had conversations with them.
TD

dms1972 · Feb 26, 2019

tdidymas said:
Well, this begs a question for me. I might not understand all that's being said here, as that understanding might need knowledge of background, history and writings of the authors. But I would like to focus on the "divided view of truth" idea, since it sounds somewhat of my own view. I don't know the full meaning of what Schaeffer meant by that phrase, I'm just going on what I see above.

Let me point out that my view is not necessarily the same as Barth's in that table above. I don't go with scripture being full of mistakes in major things like historical narratives and doctrinal statements. I understand that mistakes can be made by writers that are minor and humanly, that don't affect the true vision of God and events, and we can trust the scripture to be true. The mistakes I am talking about are scribal errors and mistakes of certain details like which crow of the [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] was heard before Peter realized his error - such things are so miniscule as not to affect the understanding of truth. Such are items that stick only in the craw of unbelievers.

However, I do believe in divided truth in this manner: there is natural truth that can be understood and believed with natural logic and reasoning, but there is also spiritual truth that cannot be understood with natural logic and reasoning, and requires a personal revelation from God as a supernatural event. This is how I read 1 Cor. 2:12-16, Rom. 8:7-9, and other places. That personal revelation (or illumination, if you will) appears to the unbeliever (or unlearned) as a "leap of faith" into trusting in what is unknown and unknowable, thus "Faith as an optimistic leap without verification or communicable content." This is also a description of my personal experience in that regard.

TD

Thanks for your comments, I am still reading on the issues (currently about GC Berkouwer versus BB Warfield - though I have actually I think been over this ground years ago, but have forgotten a lot of it.) I probably have somewhat divided view of truth myself.

I amended my earlier post #6 a little bit to give more explanation.

There are varieties of opinion within fundamentalism is what I am finding. They don't all believe for instance that God dictated the Bible word by word. BB Warfield didn't believe that. Another difference within fundamentalism is that some hold to Inerrancy as the first principle of theology, others (BB Warfield) hold to it as a necessary inference from the Bible.

There was someone in my reading described the "errors" in scripture as

'flecks of sandstone in an edifice that is essentially marble.'

tdidymas said:
So, the question it begs for me is: do fundamentalists teach that the gospel can be understood by natural logic and reasoning alone, without any personal supernatural revelation from God as a separate action from knowledge of the text of scripture? I know that some people do believe this, as I have had conversations with them.

As you say there are some who do teach that.

Donald Bloesch says they acknowledge the need for an empowering work by Holy Spirit, but not an enlightening work.

I think they believe a convicting work by the Holy Spirit is needed, and an empowering work.

With regard to Barth what I coming across a lot is other writers saying Barth thought this, or Barth thought that, and I am trying to find out whether this is so, or if they have misunderstood him. He is not simple writer. His thought is highly nuanced, and I feel at times he has insights I would not find anywhere else.

dms1972 · Feb 26, 2019

tdidymas said:
However, I do believe in divided truth in this manner: there is natural truth that can be understood and believed with natural logic and reasoning, but there is also spiritual truth that cannot be understood with natural logic and reasoning, and requires a personal revelation from God as a supernatural event. This is how I read 1 Cor. 2:12-16, Rom. 8:7-9, and other places. That personal revelation (or illumination, if you will) appears to the unbeliever (or unlearned) as a "leap of faith" into trusting in what is unknown and unknowable, thus "Faith as an optimistic leap without verification or communicable content." This is also a description of my personal experience in that regard.

I think there is are significant differences within what is called the Neo-Orthodox school (although for Schaeffer, Van Til the new theology is all of a piece). On the basis of what I know at the minute Barth seems far closer to what christians historically have believed, than either Emil Brunner, or Rudolph Bultmann. I really think Bultmann diverged far more seriously from orthodoxy than Barth. Barth seems to be a supernaturalist. He defended the Virgin Birth narratives in an intellectual climate in which they were widely disbelieved. I haven't however read everything of Barth (as it runs to about 9000 pages!) :swoon:

dms1972 · Feb 26, 2019

tdidymas said:
So, the question it begs for me is: do fundamentalists teach that the gospel can be understood by natural logic and reasoning alone, without any personal supernatural revelation from God as a separate action from knowledge of the text of scripture? I know that some people do believe this, as I have had conversations with them.

AW Tozer, who I think was within the fundamentalist stream, was also a critical of the view that "if you learn the text, you have the truth"

"The mind can grasp the shell but only the Spirit of God can lay hold of the internal essence...We have forgotten that the essence of spiritual truth cannot come to the one who knows the external shell of truth unless there is first a miraculous operation of the Spirit within the heart."

Karl Barth's theology at face value

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