1. The Problem of Religion in Theology (extended note, part 1)
As I noted previously the question about the evaluation of “religion” in light of the revelation of God is very important to the long-term viability of this reading project. I will devote several extended blog entries to it. This is the first of four blog entries that concern the extended notes that comprises a largest portion of first section of the first heading in §17, “The Problem of Religion in Theology.” This note occupies pages 283-291 of the “classic” T&T Clark Edition. Unfortunately, the smaller font of the printed edition is not reproduced in the online Digital Karl Barth Library.
Typically Barth’s inset notes (smaller font) usually fulfill one or several purposes:
- to render a more personal or “editorial” opinion that he didn’t wish to express in the main text;
- to indicate sources for a particular assertion or reminder (such as the note crediting Edvard Lehmann, I/1/282), with quotations in a classical or vernacular language;
- to puzzle out seeming contradictions among writers whom he frequently references (especially “old” Protestant theologians, particularly those of the 17th and 18th centuries who are less well known than the Reformers), and not infrequently
- to respond to (and sometimes lambast) his critics.
- In CD I/1 Barth also will amend views he published in an earlier, discontinued Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik.
The present note under discussion does all of those things, and more. Unlike many notes, Barth begins by sharpening the point from his main text, essentially repeating and clarifying his points further. This suggests that in many respects this extended note could actually stand on its own were it published in an academic journal such as his (and Gogarten’s) Zwischen den Zeiten, 1922-1933.
The first section of the note (I/2/283-284) sharpens his points in a specifically Christian and Protestant (or Evangelical-Reformed) direction. By following Edvard Lehmann’s history-of-religions line of reasoning in the previous main text as from a human side as the hiddenness of revelation in the truly human, “as a member of a series” (religions; I/2/282), other members of which can have quite different contents, Barth notes “the impression that we are dealing with human religion is no less strong and certain when the Church feels bound to speak about the divine revelation.” (I/2/283) In a riposte to Lehmann, Barth notes that “it is no accident” that expositions of the general phenomenology of religions (the history-of-religions school) “take their most striking examples . . . from the Bible (and the history of the Christian Church), as though we had here –in the phrase of A. v. Harnack–a ‘compendium of the history of religion.'”(ibid.; Barth does not indicate the source of Harnack’s phrase.)
Barth’s reference to Harnack introduces the his real objection: a thorough critique of those who see “religion” as the over-arching conceptual category under which Christian divine revelation is to be understood. Harnack’s signing of the infamous Manifesto of the Ninety-Three (Manifest der 93 or Aufruf an die Kulturwelt) became Barth’s defining grounds for rejecting the liberal theology in which he had been trained. Whenever Barth invokes Harnack, one can be sure that Barth’s characteristic Nein! is soon to follow –he never really overcame his disappointment with his teachers –but equally will Barth also supply a softer Ja! as a corrective (as he will, much further below).
Harnack’s claim enmeshes the Christian religion even more closely in the development of religions; if Christianity is in some sense a compendium, it will include all the other elements as well. The logical outcome is the claim of (the historically prior) David Friedrich Strauss: “Because the fruit is not before us, separated as ripe fruits usually are, from the twig and stalk which bore them, it is supposed not to have grown on a tree, but to have fallen direct from heaven. What a childish idea!”(I/2/283) Barth accepts Strauss’ critique: if God’s revelation as revelation is affirmed (not denied), “we cannot avoid the fact that it can also be regarded from a standpoint from which is may in certain circumstances be denied as God’s revelation.”(ibid.) Consequently “it can and must also be regarded as ‘Christianity,'” therefore as religion, and as human reality. Barth’s burden is to show what exactly he means by “also.” (My italics)
Barth first wishes to clarify this question and delineate the basic elements of the alternatives which might answer it. The fact that God’s revelation has also to be regarded as a religion among other religions forces the question “whether theology and the Church and faith are able and willing to take themselves, or their basis, seriously. For there is an extremely good chance that they will take themselves and their basis less than seriously.” (ibid.) This is basically a particular and sharply pointed instance of the human problem of encounter with God, and “therefore, a chance to fall into temptation.”
Yielding to the temptation (not to take seriously God’s revelation as faith and the Church) means abandoning the theme and object (claim as revelation of God), “to become hollow and empty, mere shadows of themselves.”(ibid.) Not yielding to temptation means for theology and the Church to keep to their proper task and strengthen, protect, and extend their profession. We have no choice but to affirm God’s revelation as also human religion, because to deny the human aspect of revelation would be to deny revelation as such.
But how is this also to be understood? Does “what we think we know” about the nature and incidence of religion (e.g., Edvard Lehmann) come to serve as a baseline, a norm by which “to explain” (note choice of verb) the revelation of God? (I/2/284) Or does the affirmation of God’s revelation as also human religion mean that the baseline becomes what we are told by God’s revelation, “to interpret the Christian religion and all other religions?” (ibid.)
Barth sets us (characteristically) a set of alternatives:
- is religion the problem of theology, or only one problem in theology?
- Is the Church a [sic] “religious brotherhood,” or a state “in which even religion is ‘sublimated’ in the most comprehensive sense of the word?”
- is faith a form of human piety, or is it a form of the judgment and grace of God, “which is naturally and most concretely connected with human piety in all its forms? (I/2/284)
Barth concedes,
We are touching upon one of the most difficult historical puzzles when we assert that in the manifestations of modern Protestantism in the 19th and 20th centuries . . . the great characteristic decisions have all gone on the side of the first alternatives. . . . In [theology’s] great representatives and outstanding tendencies . . it has discerned and declared . . . not the religion of revelation but the revelation of religion.(ibid.)
This points towards one of the grand aims of Barth’s theology, that is a corrective to theological liberalism and its tendency towards cultural accommodation that at times becomes all too shallow (compare some of the language byMartin Luther King, Jr.). As a historian, I smile at Barth’s concession that this is one of “the most difficult historical puzzles” and I will have much more to say about this at the conclusion of the blog entries on this Barth’s extended note. Difficult indeed! Barth nevertheless sincerely wishes to correct the Evangelical and Reformed faith which he believes has gone seriously off the tracks.
Having framed how he will approach this question –how to understand the also (God’s revelation is also an aspect of the human activity of religion), Barth will now undertake an extended review of the theological development he deplores (how the religion of revelation became the revelation of religion). This is an example of historical theology, not of the history of Christianity per se –Barth’s point is to find a thread of developing thought as a resource for (or in this case against) the theological argument he wants to engage in this chapter of CD. I will turn (in the next blog entry) to characterize and summarize his review of past theologians before evaluating his argument in this extended note.
Rev. and page numbers corrected, April 2020