1. The Problem of Religion in Theology (extended note, part 2)
Barth’s extended note requires several blog entries; the previous blog entry explicated Barth’s fundamental argument that liberal Protestant theology moved from proclaiming the religion of revelation to presenting the revelation of religion. Religion came to be regarded as the problem of theology rather than a problem of theology, and faith came to be regarded as a form of human piety rather than as a form of the judgment and grace of God.
Barth will now go on to show how this happened historically since “we are touching upon one of the most difficult historical puzzles.” (I/2/284) The following pages are a dazzling display of erudition, of pursuit of a concept of religion from Thomas Aquinas on down.
First Barth presents, however, “a text for what follows,” rather like a preacher announcing his text –and this simple quotation seems to be simply rhetorical but actually hides an explosive theme: the results of liberal theology’s decline as seen in its powerlessness to counter the German Christians who were poised to take over the German Protestant churches even as Barth is writing this note. The quotation is from the now-obscure author Paul de Lagarde (Deutsche Schriften):
The word religion is introduced in the most decided opposition to the word faith so prevalent in the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic Churches, and it presupposes the Deistic criticism of the universally Christian concept of revelation. Do we still want to assert that we are in the sphere of the Reformation?
Lagarde’s thought seems simply to agree with Barth, as a sort of stylistic ornament, although the inclusion of the Catholic Church is jarring, insofar as previously Barth has made clear that the Roman Catholic understanding of faith differs fundamentally from the Evangelical and Reformed confessions. Whats going on?
Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891) was a German orientalist and Biblical scholar particularly remembered for his work with the Septuagint, the Didascalia, and the Targums. Like many intense 19th century scholars he was also something of a crank, and followed a conservative Prussian line as Prussia king unified the German states into a German nation under a Kaiser. His later writings portrayed an idealized German national Christianity purged of Semitic elements, and a Germany purged of Jews. His thinking “laid the foundations for aspects of the National Socialist ideology, in particular that of Alfred Rosenberg,” according to the Wikipedia article. (See also this German History Documents and Images entry.)
In other words, the “text” Barth offers (like a preacher) is in fact from a source which directly contributed to the line of thinking that Barth will expose, later in this chapter, as a fundamental corruption of evangelical and reformed Christianity.
To be fair, Barth took de Lagarde’s phrases out of context. Discussing the concept “religion,” de Lagarde ascribed it to the monks, and in turn the Huguenots inherited and used the expression “messieurs de la religion.” But it only belongs to “the real language use of the German Volk” since 1750, since it was imported from the Deistic controversies in England, in particular from Lord Cherbury. Then follows the passage that Barth quotes –but Barth’s context is very different, liberal Protestantism’s turn towards defining religion as a human activity and conceptualizing revelation as a feature of human experience and expression. (This leaves aside entirely de Lagarde’s questionable history of the term religio –overly tendentious, to say the least, and not particularly well argued from sources.)
Did Barth simply make a mistake here? This (Ockhamist) economical explanation is too simple for the context of his writing in the early 1930s. Barth had to have known that de Lagarde was an intellectual progenitor of Alfred Rosenburg, the National Socialist apologist and ideologue, and language descended from de Lagarde was filling the German linguistic space.
I believe that, contrary to any mistake, Barth knew precisely what he was doing –and it is a foreshadowing or a hint of the final outcome of his argument, his Nein! to theology as the “revelation of religion.” This Nein! is aimed not just at liberal Protestant theologians, but at the German Christians, whom the liberal Protestant theologians (descendants of von Harnack, see previous entry) were unable to judge or stop. Barth saw the logical outcome of the “revelation of religion” was the German Christian party, which sought to honor the Führer as an authority in the church. “We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God’s revelation.” –the Barmen Confession of 1934 (Theologische Erklärung zur gegenwärtigen Lage der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche), section 4. “We reject the false doctrine that, apart from this ministry, the Church could, and could have permission to, give itself or allow itself to be given special leaders [Führer] vested with ruling authority.” (Wir verwerfen die falsche Lehre, als könne und dürfe sich die Kirche abseits von diesem Dienst besondere, mit Herrschaftsbefugnissen ausgestattete Führer geben und geben lassen.)
The text “for what follows” which the preacher Barth sets for us, his readers (as a congregation) seems to categorize what follows, but is in fact monitory. Barth is setting his text as a prophet, a word of judgment against the story that follows. (And that story continues in the next blog entry.)
Here is a video of Barth commenting on the Erklarung (This is a clip from the documentary film JA und NEIN, Karl Barth zum Gedächtnis (1967), directed by Heinz Knorr, Calwer Verlag.)
Rev. and page numbers verified, April 2020