Discussion about Karl Barth's thought

Does anyone think Modern physics, has entered in the realm of supernature but in fact not realised it, because of its methodological naturalism, it is subsuming what may be supernatural at times as natural phenomenon? For instance could gravity be said to be supernatural in any sense?

hedrick said:

After some of the comments above, I reviewed my understanding of Barth’s description of God. Again, I’m not that familiar with him, because the more I look the less I like him. I used selections from the CD and some secondary literature.

Barth is strongly opposed to natural theology. We can’t know anything about God in himself. He is completely unknowable. We can only know him in Christ. But what I find weird in this is that he seems to be looking at Christ as an abstract object, not what he actually was, which was (among other things) a teacher. In fact Jesus talked a fair amount about God. Admittedly his talk of Father is to some extent metaphorical, because we don’t know God fully. But still, based on Jesus’ teachings and the OT, we can know at least something about God. In Romans Paul seems to suggest that non-Christians can know something of God through understanding the world, an idea that is impossible for Barth.

I find Barth’s disinterest in historical Jesus work disquieting. In the 1000 volumes of the CD there’s room for plenty of stuff, and so there’s lots of exegesis there. But still, when I read it, I mostly come away with the impression of philosophical rambling. When I do theology I start with the best understanding I can get of what Jesus and the prophets said. (Like many liberals, I find Paul's understanding helpful at times, but not as near the core of my theology.) This is in fact the core of mainline theology, which I think is the current incarnation of traditional liberal theology. (I include in mainline theology a lot of liberal Catholics and evangelicals.) Barth talks in glowing terms about Jesus, but doesn’t actually seem to use him as the primary source of his theology.

Barth faulted liberal theology because it didn’t resist Hitler. This is important, because we have a similar crisis of self-understanding in the US and Europe today. I don’t know what early 20th Cent German liberal theology was like. Maybe it had problems. But today, it’s liberal theology (and also a few evangelicals with similar emphasis), with the emphasis on the teachings of Jesus and the prophets that are most resisting the anti-Christian tendencies of current politics. The people most susceptible to them seem to be those who, like Barth, see Jesus as something to be worshipped, but aren’t as dedicated to reforming theology based on his actual teachings.

Click to expand...

Yes Hedrick, I do think Barth waxes too philosophical at times. Which is funny because I came across a quote from Barth which goes like this : "The great temptation and danger consists in this, that the theologian will actually become what he seems to be - a philosopher." Theology has rarely of course kept its powder dry - Augustine and the platonists, Aquinas and Aristotle, Luther and the nominalists, Liberals and Kant. I think though philosophy influences don't always totally disqualify a theology, some philosophical influences may nullify the Word.


Yes, both St. Paul and the Psalmist indicate a knowledge of God through creation. Paul indicates this leaving men without excuse. Luther I think would say on its own this turns into idolatry, worship of creation.

There is the very interesting account which I think I might have mentioned before on the forums of Incan leader Pachakuti, who received dreams in which Viracocha (the Creator) is said to have spoken to him. And Pachakuti began to question the credentials of Inti (the sun god) from observing things like the sun's rays being obscured by a cloud, and that the sun always took the same path through the sky, not doing anything new.

I am much more sure what Calvin is saying in his theology, than Barth is in his. I came across a very good treatment of Calvin, called Calvin's Theology of Word and Sacrament, which has been helpful.

ubicaritas said:

Lewis in many ways is an odd combination of the modern and the ancient and doesn't fit into any theology easily, other than being typically Anglican.

His views on the resurrection of the body are unusual for some American evangelicals, but typical for many broad-church Anglicans of the time. He and Tolkein were "frenemies", of course, and Lewis scoffed at the Catholic prohibition on cremation (and in turn, Tolkein regularly expressed contempt towards Anglicanism). His wife was cremated at a time when cremation in the Church of England was exceptionally rare. But Lewis had no problems with it theologically since he thought the human body's condition after death was of no particular importance in the resurrection (he rationalized that this must be so since molecules in our bodies had been parts of dinosaurs and emperors).

And he regarded the resurrection of the dead as more of a metaphor, his own beliefs were really closer to Greek philosophers in many ways. He seemed to believe in the next world we would have an existence where the relationship between mind and body would be entirely different (for instance, he imagined taking a friend on a stroll through his memories of a past place within his own mind).

What Lewis really saw in Christianity was a springboard for the imagination into a more platonic understanding of reality, during a time when this was highly counter-cultural, being steeped in positivism and materialism. So he is really just an apologist for a relatively traditional religious way of life as much as a specifically Christian way of life, since ultimately I believed he saw many religious traditions as teaching similar themes (something he really does emphasize in some of his works).

Click to expand...

Oh Lewis drew widely on philosophy, but on the whole he wasn't writing as a theologian. I think the opposite - Lewis saw in Platonism a springboard, or at least a philosophy that could be useful in articulating Christian truth. His platonism was only the means to an end. I could be wrong, its hard to tell a Christian Platonist, from a platonic Christian, but I think for Lewis its the first.

But Lewis was writing in his apologetics about the new man in Christ, not a call to traditional values. He used the cardinal virtues in his call to attempt the good life - only to show that one will eventually fail in it and move unto faith in a higher sense, of trusting in Christ, this went beyond the first sort of faith he described, which meant once having come to see the Christian doctrines to be true continuing to hold onto them as true. Don't misunderstand Lewis, he was an apostle to skeptics, he like Paul became like a greek at times but only to reach those with a greek outlook. His book The Abolition of Man, isn't like his other apologetic works, its a defence of the doctrine of objective value, not Christianity.

Lewis most certainly did believe in the resurrection of the dead, what he took issue with was that people thought it merely was proof of the survival of the soul after death, and he saw the Resurrection as much deeper in meaning and significance. It didn't refer to just the five minutes around Jesus leaving the tomb.

Yes he did speak of perhaps taking someone for a walk through fields in his memory, but if you read his book The Great Divorce, there is an image of heaven there as far more substantive and real than earth, and why would he call our earthly life, life in the shadowlands?

ubicaritas said:

I think you are largely in the right direction in your counterpoint to Bultmann. But I still don't see it necessarily as endorsing the kind of orthodoxy that pervades in evangelical religion in America in the past. I think it points more towards somebody like Pr. Nadia Bolz-Weber's attitude, that at some point liberal theology just isn't all that aesthetically fulfilling. As she puts it, when you are sitting on a hospital floor playing with two kids who are now orphaned because their mom died in a car accident, mainline critical theology you learn in seminary often rings more than a bit hollow.

Click to expand...

On this Lewis makes the same point although not regarding aesthetics, but pastorally, in a talk he was asked give to theology students, published as Fernseed and Elephants. He asked if one is faced with a difficult pastoral case, how do you re-assure them pastorally if you don't actually believe or only believe in some Pickwickian sense?

ubicaritas said:

I can relate to that story, at one time in my life I was on some serious psych meds before I got philosophically educated, found a good Jungian therapist and got sorted out. I've also watched as a diagnosis I have, chronic intestinal dysbiosis, has worked its way from the fringes of medicine (literally the alternative medicine crowd), to mainstream status. Medicine can revise its views but often those revisions come from outside the mainstream.

People like Szasz are not breaking with modernity so much as transcending it. They are not going back and saying we got it wrong all along, that mental illness is in fact demonic possession. In some ways, the perspective is much more postmodern, recognizing that mental illness is culturally constructed is the sort of approach that many continental philosophers would take.

Click to expand...

Szazs is very misunderstood he acknowledges distress, and problems in living, and perhaps a few disorders that are genuine mental disorders. I don't think he against people getting psychological help but he is against psychiatry as an arm of the State. In the UK however what happened in the 80s under Margaret Thatcher was that the mental health services were neglected, its known that she thought teenage depression was just a lack of drive, effort and will - and people with mental health issues ended up quite often in the hands of the police. The same happened to me sadly, and it was horrendous, an excursion into hell like nothing I want to ever experience again - I had not even harmed anyone. All sorts of misbehaviour was falsely insinuated and I only could reply when allowed. It is incredible how little understanding some people can have - some unable to think outside of logical positivism, or politicians their neo-liberalism - they are not fit to be in any job with the vulnerable. I was working hard in a low-paid job when my difficulties began to get worse, I have cycled five miles (like Maggie thatcher said "get on your bike") to work for fifteen hours work a week and £45 then to take rent for a single room out of that.

Even though Freud was badly wrong, he did move the psychological profession away from its crude ideas towards understanding, and empathy (which was viewed as unscientific at the time). But Freud isn't understood half the time anyway - there are people who are 'lay-Freudians' and they don't have a clue. I have met these in the workplace occasionally. In German the term psychoanalysis has a whole different emphasis than in English, Freud's meaning was somewhat lost in translation - he was speaking of the psyche/soul not merely of mental mechanics. He actually believed some degree of repression in sexual matters was important for civilisation, he didn't advocate unbridled sexual freedom, as some people think, nevertheless he was incorrect in seeing sexuality at the root of most people's problems. He was troubled by the direction some people took his theories in his lifetime and began to counter the misunderstanding - a degree of repression was a normal part of development, and necessary for entry into society. The other misunderstanding is that psychoanalysis is about analysing others, when in fact it was designed first for helping analysts themselves to reach self-understanding via a training analysis.

Not saying going back to Freud would do any good, even if misunderstood there was much wrong with his ideas. There is no point going back to his theories just pointing out how one aspect of his theories became distorted.

I am glad you have that balanced view of him.

My difficulty was that because I was struggling emotionally and spiritually, philosophical flights often provided an escape, but in those philosophical flights I got badly lost, then I could not explain what was wrong for to me I was trying to explain postmodernism to those trying to help to their bewilderment and I knew the psychologists operated out of a modern paradigm, so I tended to be suspicious if someone said they could help because I thought they'll put me back in a Cartesian mindset, and I have been struggling to get out of that net. I cope a bit better, but things have never been quite the same after what happened, still on meds. I can't describe what its like feeling the only people I can turn to for help but I don't trust (with good grounds intellectually at times for not trusting them) the way they are assessing me, its a nightmare. I still need help psychologically and struggle to know who to approach.