Discussion about Karl Barth's thought

[dms1972]

This forum has been suggested to me as a place to discuss Karl Barth, and other modern 'neo-orthodox' theologians. I am really looking for a bit of help from anyone more familiar with Barth than I am currently, concerning some of the criticisms of his thought.

The first is with regard to his views on scripture, its fairly clear to me he was not an inerrantist, but its also been said by Francis Schaeffer that Barth held all his life that the Scriptures contain errors. Schaeffer says Barth towards the end of his life began to speak of an historical resurrection of Christ, but its not enough for Schaeffer that Barth affirmed a historical resurrection, because Barth still held the Bible contained historical and scientific errors. I know Barth started out studying under liberal university theologians, but then he broke with Theological Liberalism and became a critic. I would have thought he would have also broken with the higher-critical theories? Can anyone shed light on this and whethers Barth's view of scripture remained the same through his life? For Van Til, and Schaeffer, anything Barth said in his early works he must still continue to hold until the end (unless he writes a repudiation of his early views) -even though its clear Barth is a thinker whose mind was always on the move.

Interestingly CS Lewis wasn't a strict inerrantist either, but he doesn't come in for criticism from Schaeffer etc., perhaps because he suggested the possibility that seeming errors may be resolved.

 

[hedrick]

Barth was very negative about liberalism, but he probably didn't mean quite what current US Christians mean by liberalism. He meant the liberal tradition going back to the 19th Cent. He believed that German liberal Christianity had been incapable of standing up to Hitler. This is partly a historical peculiarity. In the US, the liberal tradition, going back at least to Rauschenbusch, has taken very seriously the prophetic role of the Church, and has been the most effective in speaking Biblical truth to power. On the other hand, Rauschenbusch isn't Schliermacher, and American liberal Christianity may differ from WW II German liberal Christianity in critical ways.

First, I think a number of Barthians today will admit that his attacks were unfair. Second, to my knowledge he never abandoned his use of critical scholarship.

I'm not a Barth expert. I've read parts of CD, including a digest, and some of the actual parts. However he is generally considered to be one of the main supporters of the current mainline idea that the Bible is witness to revelation but not itself the revelation.

Looking back at the relevant section from my digest of the CD, Barth is very clear that God revealed himself through historical processes. We can't get to God in the abstract, nor through tradition, but only through that concrete historical revelation. He recognizes both that Scripture is a human product, reflecting its culture and the concerns of the people who wrote it, but also that God raised it up as the normative witness.

I see in his comments echoes of Reformed themes: Calvin saw a parallel between Scripture and the Incarnation, that Scripture is wholly a human product and wholly God's way of speaking to us. Also the standard Reformation concept that Scripture becomes the Word of God when the Holy Spirit speaks through it to us.

The editor of the selections summarizes it as follows:
"By the Gospel, i.e., the glad tidings of the enacted revelation of God, men are brought into the presence of this revelation. The messenger to whom this message is committed is the Church. The basic and therefore the normative form of the witness with which the Church is charged is the Bible. This is a human witness historically conditioned, vet by the concentration of its gaze on revelation it is also the standard or Canon for all further witness. The true understanding of the relationship between the `Word of God and the word of man is a main theme in all Christian theology and therefore in the Church Dogmatics. The historico-critical investigation of the Bible as pursued for the last two centuries is affirmed by Barth as a legitimate consequence of its humanity and does not contradict its recognition as the Canon."

KARL BARTH. Church Dogmatics: A Selection With Introduction by Helmut Gollwitzer

 

[Anto9us]

Interestingly CS Lewis wasn't a strict inerrantist either, but he doesn't come in for criticism from Schaeffer

I have read virtually ALL of Schaeffer, most of C S Lewis, but none of Barth.

Once someone was saying to Schaeffer - "It's too bad you and C S Lewis never got to have a discussion" and Schaeffer responded "It would have been interesting -- I think he finally would have come around"

 

[dms1972]

That's intriquing Anto9us , although anecdotal. Can you provide any further info?

Its certainly the case that they differ in apologetic method. Lewis views on scripture were nuanced, but yes he wasn't a card carrying inerrantist, nevertheless he didn't shrink from regarding all the difficult sayings of Christ, (including those on hell) and the miraclous in the Gospels as authentic, from my reading of him. Modern errantists such as Bultmann tend to excise as much of the supernatural as they can.

If you have read Pilgrim's Regress (not one of Lewis's easiest books) Lewis later said in a letter if he had put Barth in it he would have put him with the three pale men Mr Neo-angular, Mr Neo-classical and Mr Humanist, in his allegory. They are all the sons of Old Mr Enlightenment.

 

[Anto9us]

didn't read Pilgrim's Redress, I did read The Great Divorce...
Sorry I can provide no further info on Schaeffer commenting about a discussion with Lewis, I don't even remember if I read it or heard it on a tape - just cannot remember.

But this OP is about Barth -- so what would be a good first book by Barth for me to read?

 

[dms1972]

Thanks Hedrick for your balanced and informed reply. I had a couple of times typed up some further thoughts to add to the discussion but I have lost them twice in a row now.

I was going to say Barth needs to be understood in the context of the theological position he is emerging from and with regard to the issues he was addressing in German theology.

Donald Bloesch I believe wrote that in Barth one finds a reaffirmation to Hebriac themes.

The dialectic aspect of Barth's theology is the tension between God's hiddenness and His revelation - but this from what I can gather Barth doesn't seek to resolve by reason in a some kind of synthesis, rather he hopes God will break into the dialectic.

At a time when lecturers and students in German universities were expected to begin their classes with "Heil Hitler", Barth instead would lead his students in a prayer, or a hymn. The man certainly has admirable personal qualities, even if his theology was off on a tangent in places.

 

[ubicaritas]

Barth was very negative about liberalism, but he probably didn't mean quite what current US Christians mean by liberalism. He meant the liberal tradition going back to the 19th Cent. He believed that German liberal Christianity had been incapable of standing up to Hitler. This is partly a historical peculiarity. In the US, the liberal tradition, going back at least to Rauschenbusch, has taken very seriously the prophetic role of the Church, and has been the most effective in speaking Biblical truth to power. On the other hand, Rauschenbusch isn't Schliermacher, and American liberal Christianity may differ from WW II German liberal Christianity in critical ways.

First, I think a number of Barthians today will admit that his attacks were unfair. Second, to my knowledge he never abandoned his use of critical scholarship.

I'm not a Barth expert. I've read parts of CD, including a digest, and some of the actual parts. However he is generally considered to be one of the main supporters of the current mainline idea that the Bible is witness to revelation but not itself the revelation.

Looking back at the relevant section from my digest of the CD, Barth is very clear that God revealed himself through historical processes. We can't get to God in the abstract, nor through tradition, but only through that concrete historical revelation. He recognizes both that Scripture is a human product, reflecting its culture and the concerns of the people who wrote it, but also that God raised it up as the normative witness.

I see in his comments echoes of Reformed themes: Calvin saw a parallel between Scripture and the Incarnation, that Scripture is wholly a human product and wholly God's way of speaking to us. Also the standard Reformation concept that Scripture becomes the Word of God when the Holy Spirit speaks through it to us.

The editor of the selections summarizes it as follows:
"By the Gospel, i.e., the glad tidings of the enacted revelation of God, men are brought into the presence of this revelation. The messenger to whom this message is committed is the Church. The basic and therefore the normative form of the witness with which the Church is charged is the Bible. This is a human witness historically conditioned, vet by the concentration of its gaze on revelation it is also the standard or Canon for all further witness. The true understanding of the relationship between the `Word of God and the word of man is a main theme in all Christian theology and therefore in the Church Dogmatics. The historico-critical investigation of the Bible as pursued for the last two centuries is affirmed by Barth as a legitimate consequence of its humanity and does not contradict its recognition as the Canon."

KARL BARTH. Church Dogmatics: A Selection With Introduction by Helmut Gollwitzer

Hedrick, even before Hitler, neo-orthodox theologians had become dissatisfied with theological liberalism. The rise of National Socialism just intensified their critique of the predominant status-quo in Christian theology.

I would classify Bonhoeffer as also being broadly neo-orthodox in his views on the Scriptures, though he was coming from a more Lutheran perspective in the rest of his theology. He disagreed with Barth on several points and the disagreements mostly came down to Lutheran vs. Reformed emphases.

If any events instigated neo-orthodoxy, it was probably the increasing popularity of existentialism, followed by WWI and the distrust in liberalism and modernity in general that followed. WWII only intensified this distrust in Europe, and would lead even more people to critique theological liberalism after the war, though the theology would head in sometimes even more radical directions (Death of God theology, Liberation theology and post-Christian theology, etc., which actually grows out from Bonhoeffer's last works).

European liberals tended to focus on something like the social gospel as well, with more of a Christ-of-Culture emphasis (the notion that Christianity was simply the fulfillment of culture), and in both continents liberal Christian theology was highly compatible with nationalism.

 

[dms1972]

didn't read Pilgrim's Redress, I did read The Great Divorce...
Sorry I can provide no further info on Schaeffer commenting about a discussion with Lewis, I don't even remember if I read it or heard it on a tape - just cannot remember.

But this OP is about Barth -- so what would be a good first book by Barth for me to read?

There is his Dogmatics in Outline, which is fairly short and is Barth's commentary on the Apostle's Creed. Be aware he does throw curveballs here and there.

If you want a good secondary source on Barth, look for a copy of The Divided Mind of Modern Theology (James D. Smart) which is a very good study and covers Barth's early theological development in considerable detail.

 

[dms1972]

Can Barth be said to be a supernaturalist? Although the discussion is about Barth, I need to bring CS Lewis in here by way of comparision. Lewis states he never questioned a passage of scripture because it contained the supernatural, in other words miraculous events. He didn't operate on naturalist assumptions about the possibility of miracles. What can we say of Barth in this regard?

 

[ubicaritas]

Can Barth be said to be a supernaturalist? Although the discussion is about Barth, I need to bring CS Lewis in here by way of comparision. Lewis states he never questioned a passage of scripture because it contained the supernatural, in other words miraculous events. He didn't operate on naturalist assumptions about the possibility of miracles. What can we say of Barth in this regard?

Those categories start becoming less and less useful when interacting with mainline theologians.

Neo-orthodox theologians accept miracles as things the Church confesses and believes, but they do not argue for or against the historicity of miraculous events necessarily. It's not their difference with liberalism primarily. That's why Bonhoeffer seems ambiguous at times about things like the virgin birth for instance, and on this point fundamentalist Christians criticize him when they become familiar with his works (Metaxas, for instance ,is not one of those since his research is of the most superficial variety, he wants to see Bonhoeffer only as a martyr for his brand of evangelical Christianity, fighting a culture war against Nazism).

My pastor says that if you had a video camera outside the open tomb watching the resurrection, it might not necessarily have recorded anything. Likewise, the Ascension was not necessarily Jesus' space shot, as Carl Sagan suggested. We accept things like the resurrection based on their theological significance more than their historical validity, without necessarily denying it altogether.

The Bible really presents us as a living Word where we can encounter God in the present. Revelation is not primarily a past event and the Bible is not simply a relic full of Fortean and unexplainable events. How and what exactly is meant by Jesus walking on water, for instance, is less important, in comparison, than the kind of experience that the apostles and early Christian community had encountering Jesus. An experience that expanded their notion of God and opened the boundaries of human possibility.

What Neo-orthodox were really reacting to is the notion that Christianity is really best emptied of theological significance and merely becomes a vehicle for political or social projects (which is what happened in the German church prior to WWII, under the influence of liberalism). On that point, they sound much more conservative/fundamentalist. But when it comes to warring with modern understandings of science and the world, they are far more conciliatory.

 

[dms1972]

Further to the subject of Barth's view of Bible, Donald Bloesch, has written: "Barth can be criticized for not clarifying his position on biblical inerrancy. He did not wish to affirm that the teaching of the Bible can be in error; yet when he acknowledged errors in the realm of theology and religion as well as science and history, he opened the door to this view. His intention, however, was to admit that the prophets and apostles because they are human are susceptible to error even in matters of faith and morals. Conservative critics pose this question to Barth: Are not the biblical authors kept free from actual error by the Holy Spirit? Barth affirmed the divine infalliablity and human fallibility of the Bible. But did he see the unity of the two sides? Can the finite hold and bear the infinite, or does it merely witness to the infinite? Barth seemed to hold to the older Reformed notion on finitum non capax infiniti (the finite is not capable of receiving the infinite)." Donald Bloesch: Christian Foundations - Holy Scripture

 

[dms1972]

Those categories start becoming less and less useful when interacting with mainline theologians.

Neo-orthodox theologians accept miracles as things the Church confesses and believes, but they do not argue for or against the historicity of miraculous events necessarily. It's not their difference with liberalism primarily. That's why Bonhoeffer seems ambiguous at times about things like the virgin birth for instance, and on this point fundamentalist Christians criticize him when they become familiar with his works (Metaxas, for instance ,is not one of those since his research is of the most superficial variety, he wants to see Bonhoeffer only as a martyr for his brand of evangelical Christianity, fighting a culture war against Nazism).

My pastor says that if you had a video camera outside the open tomb watching the resurrection, it might not necessarily have recorded anything. Likewise, the Ascension was not necessarily Jesus' space shot, as Carl Sagan suggested. We accept things like the resurrection based on their theological significance more than their historical validity, without necessarily denying it altogether.

The Bible really presents us as a living Word where we can encounter God in the present. Revelation is not primarily a past event and the Bible is not simply a relic full of Fortean and unexplainable events. How and what exactly is meant by Jesus walking on water, for instance, is less important, in comparison, than the kind of experience that the apostles and early Christian community had encountering Jesus. An experience that expanded their notion of God and opened the boundaries of human possibility.

What Neo-orthodox were really reacting to is the notion that Christianity is really best emptied of theological significance and merely becomes a vehicle for political or social projects (which is what happened in the German church prior to WWII, under the influence of liberalism). On that point, they sound much more conservative/fundamentalist. But when it comes to warring with modern understandings of science and the world, they are far more conciliatory.

Thankyou for your comments:

With regard to your pastors comments about the video camera outside the tomb, I agree we accept these on their theological significance, but what is that significance? Would the video have recorded the two guards fainting and falling over? Would it have recorded the moving of the stone?

 

[ubicaritas]

Thankyou for your comments:

With regard to your pastors comments about the video camera outside the tomb, I agree we accept these on their theological significance, but what is that significance? Would the video have recorded the two guards fainting and falling over? Would it have recorded the moving of the stone?

Considering mainline Protestants take historical criticism seriously, not necessarily.

People in the ancient world did not necessarily record things "as they actually happened", like we would expect today. They had an unusual understanding of history - especially Jews who frequently engaged in what is called midrash, which is adding to stories to emphasize a point. The guards fainting could simply be midrash to emphasize the reality of Jesus resurrection (just as Matthew contains other midrashic elements).

If you have seen the movie Noah, the film is a good example of the Jewish midrashic tradition. It's an amplification of a story to add depth to it.

Likewise, the detail of the stone rolling away is not about Jesus walking out of the tomb necessarily, but us seeing into it, to see it is empty and that Jesus is not there anymore.

The theological significance of the story of Jesus resurrection is that Christians experience Jesus as a real, living presence. We do not simply regard him as a wise teacher that lived a long time ago and then unfortunately died. In our church we experience him principally through hearing the Gospel and in our sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper).

 

[dms1972]

The fact that midrash exists doesn't tell us whether this is midrash. The reasons for calling the angel of the tomb and fainting of the guards midrash, might be because someone doesn't accept the supernatural, and their assumptions are naturalistic. What is their reason for calling something midrash?

Matthew was a tax collector, not a scribe, or a rabbi.

 

[ubicaritas]

The fact that midrash exists doesn't tell us whether this is midrash. The reasons for calling the angel of the tomb and fainting of the guards midrash, might be because someone doesn't accept the supernatural, and their assumptions are naturalistic.

But if Matthew contains other examples of midrash, the weight of evidence seems to be towards the guards at the tomb being midrashic (especially because they are not mentioned in other Gospel accounts). It's not down to simple prejudice against the supernatural. Mainline Christians may be skeptical of traditionalism, but they are not atheists.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Considering mainline Protestants take historical criticism seriously, not necessarily.

People in the ancient world did not necessarily record things "as they actually happened", like we would expect today. They had an unusual understanding of history - especially Jews who frequently engaged in what is called midrash, which is adding to stories to emphasize a point. The guards fainting could simply be midrash to emphasize the reality of Jesus resurrection (just as Matthew contains other midrashic elements).

If you have seen the movie Noah, the film is a good example of the Jewish midrashic tradition. It's an amplification of a story to add depth to it.

Likewise, the detail of the stone rolling away is not about Jesus walking out of the tomb necessarily, but us seeing into it, to see it is empty and that Jesus is not there anymore.

The theological significance of the story of Jesus resurrection is that Christians experience Jesus as a real, living presence. We do not simply regard him as a wise teacher that lived a long time ago and then unfortunately died. In our church we experience him principally through hearing the Gospel and in our sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper).

......that's going to depend on which 'movie version' of Noah you're speaking about. Because if we're talking about the one with Russell Crowe......................it simply sucked big time, and I'd have real difficulty in seeing it as a form of 'midrash'!

 

[ubicaritas]

......that's going to depend on which 'movie version' of Noah you're speaking about. Because if we're talking about the one with Russell Crowe......................it simply sucked big time, and I'd have real difficulty in seeing it as a form of 'midrash'!

I guess I disagree and give it a thumbs up. Sunday School was never that awesome. I guess I'm a sucker for lots of CGI water, big giant rock monsters, and references to Jewish mysticism.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I guess I disagree and give it a thumbs up. Sunday School was never that awesome. I guess I'm a sucker for lots of CGI water, big giant rock monsters, and references to Jewish mysticism.

When you put it THAT way, I suppose I could give it at least a star or two ... out of five.

 

[dms1972]

But if Matthew contains other examples of midrash, the weight of evidence seems to be towards the guards at the tomb being midrashic (especially because they are not mentioned in other Gospel accounts). It's not down to simple prejudice against the supernatural. Mainline Christians may be skeptical of traditionalism, but they are not atheists.

I am not saying they are all atheists, but when it comes to scholarship they are influenced by the intellectual climate in the universities, and they sometimes capitulate to naturalism in their studies, sometimes to get a hearing from the "cultured despisers" of the Gospel.

 

[dms1972]

So I understand better what you mean, give me an example of something thought to be midrash other than the guards at the tomb in Matthew's Gospel.