1. The Problem of Dogmatics (part 2)
Barth has maintained steadily that the Bible’s role in and over against the Church cannot be proven, because by offering such a proof the Church or the theologian would seek to control and define the Bible. The result would be to show the Bible as the property of the Church, an element of it, and that the Church’s voice would consistently supersede or limit the biblical witness. “The fact is again the significance that the Bible actually has in the Church irrespective of all theories about its significance.” (I/1/260)
The importance of Barth’s vision of Scripture in the church sometimes seems obscured by his language. Despite Roman Catholicism’s and Protestant Modernism’s respective attempts to control it, “there remained at least the possibility of resistance by the free Bible which perhaps cannot be wholly taken captive by any interpretation.” This insight is key: the Bible cannot be exhausted and summarized in any interpretation — any interpretation of the Scriptural word will be inconclusive, insufficient, and ultimately inadequate to the fullness of God’s Word through Scripture. In David Tracy’s words, the Bible invariably holds an “excess of meaning” beyond interpretation (see his The Analogical Imagination, 1981, page 100). Even when the Bible has seemed to be most assimilated to the life of the Church, there never was an “utter failure to call to awareness from time to time at least the relative distance between it and ourselves” (ibid.) –although t the ideology of the fundamentalist “court theologians” in the USA right now seems a likely candidate for a failing attempt to take the Bible totally captive. Nevertheless, it will persist.
This freedom is merely a “sign,” but a crucial sign. It may be overlooked, but it remains a possibility that the authority of the Pope (Catholicism’s teaching office) or the professor will not be exhaustive and absolute. This sign, whether or not understood, as a sign cannot be refuted. It does not answer the question, “is the Bible God’s Word over the Church and to the Church?” but the sign raises the possibility of the response of faith.
It might happen that in the Bible whose voice still sounds in the Church man hears the Word of God, that he really hears the Word which cannot be held captive or bracketed by the Church, which cannot be integrated into the Church’s own reality, which cannot by any interpretation be translated into a word of man, the Word which encounters the Church, with which the Church cannot sing a duet, but which it has simply to listen to as a full and unique solo. (I/1/261)
Barth’s musical metaphor leads straight to Barth’s particular understanding of the Word of God as event: “We can only relate to this event in so far as it is the content of the promise given to the Church.”(ibid.) As the event truly takes place in God’s sight, the Church will be the Church of Jesus Christ as the Bible is truly heard as God’s Word: in God’s time and grace, and not in the Church’s control. Recalling §5, “The Word of God is the speech, the act, the mystery of God. It is not a demonstrable substance immanent in the Church and present within it apart from the event of its being spoken and heard. Thus the Church is not constantly or continuously the Church of Jesus Christ.” Thus the Church is most truly event as well as the Word of God is event spoken to it, creating and re-creating it as truly the Church. “Therefore the sign that is set up in the Church, the Bible speaking and being heard in some way, is a genuine sign, no less but also no more.” If such speech-act and obedient faith were seen as fulfillment that has already happened, and illuminates the present, then such “faith” would dissolve the sign of God’s word to be a “datum” or data-point, and once again the Bible would be under the control of the Church. “This datum with faith, or faith with this datum, would then constitute the proof of the Bible as God’s Word. But by being adduced this proof would contradict what it is meant to prove.” (ibid.)
Barth’s first central insight: “The Word of God over the Church and to the Church will permit of no proof, not even and least of all this proof from the faith present in the Church.” (I/1/261-262) Least of all the faith present in the Church –whatever that faith might be, it would involve a theologia gloriae that would falsify the claim. There is no proof: there is reference to the supreme and free Bible in the event of faith, “to God’s Word being spoken and heard,” an event that is not on our hands since it is by its nature God’s decision, and we cannot anticipate its outcome.
Whether the Bible will speak to us as God’s Word, whether we will hear it, whether we will believe it as God’s Word—we and those with whom we speak—is something we can neither appropriate to ourselves nor give to them. We cannot, then, presuppose it as something that has happened.(I/1/262)
Neither can we point to this event directly, as “if we ourselves tried to come forward in the posture of Grünewald’s John as witnesses to this event.”(ibid.) We cannot speak as prophets or apostles, that “we beheld His glory.” That to which we point (the Bible) is thus itself a pointer (to the event of faith). “We relate to the event of faith by relating to this sign.” (I/1/263) Whereas the apostles and Evangelists could say, “we have believed and have known,” we cannot say this in the same way of ourselves: those events are not before our eyes, “but it is before our eyes and ears that they said of themselves and thereby to have spoken, not just a human word, but God’s Word in human words.” (ibid.) We are summoned to pay attention to this sign as we live in the sphere of the Church, as an act of recollection. No preaching, development, enrichment, or “hyping” can “bring us even a single step nearer to the reality to which it points.”(ibid.) Our interpretation cannot make “any other claim that that of drawing attention to the sign that has been set up as such.” All that may or may not take place escapes our view and grasp.
“We can say no more than this: that the Bible can answer for itself in this matter. Just as we cannot say unequivocally, directly, and generally “that it does answer for itself, so we cannot say, nor can anyone say, that it cannot answer for itself. We say that it can, and in so doing we refer to the event of faith in which the decision is made that the Bible must speak and the Church must hear.” (I/1/264) Against Roman Catholicism and Protestant Modernism, there is warrant for saying pointedly: no special illumination, Holy Spirit, conscience, or any of the rest of it. But in so doing, in saying that the Bible can and may answer for itself, “seeing we face the task of dogmatics, we decide of course, to accept the Bible as the absolute authority set up over against Church proclamation.”(I/1/265)
Such dogmatics cannot be in the Roman Catholic sense, as the development of truths of revelation immanent in the Church, nor as a Protestant “doctrine of faith.”
“[D]ogmatics as the question of the Word of God in Church proclamation must be the critical question as to the agreement of Church proclamation, not with a norm of human truth or human value (the first possibility in our dilemma), nor with a standard of divine truth already known and proclaimed by the Church (the second possibility), but with the revelation attested in Holy Scripture. (ibid.)
Barth then refers to §4 (The Word of God in its Threefold Form):
[T]he task of dogmatics is to deal with the problem of the equation of the Word of God and the word of man in its form as Church proclamation with a view to the confirmation of this equation, and it does this by measuring Church proclamation as man’s word by the second form of the Word of God, i.e., Holy Scripture, in so far as this itself is in turn witness to its third and original form, revelation.
Dogma is “the agreement of Church proclamation with the revelation attested in Holy Scripture.” “Dogmatics enquires into this agreement and therefore into dogma.” When dogmatics inquires into such agreement, the dogma that the Church has defined is not insignificant, but ultimately it limits revealed truth, the Word of God (as event). “The Word of God is above dogma as the heavens are above the earth.” (I/1/266)
Barth’s personalism, his sense of the Word of God as an event, and his refusal to engage in philosophy comes together powerfully in the balance of this first section of §7. The gulf between the words of the Apostles, “who have believed and known,” and our own words comes sharply into focus: our words stand under the sign of the Bible set up for us in the Church: our words are an act of recollection. “Nothing in itself is changed” when we engage in recollection “except that the world of our spiritual images is increased by another image. Notitia has taken place; we have formed an opinio historica.”(I/1/263)
What may or may not take place over and above this indicating and being indicated, this recollection and notitia, the speech or silence of the Bible, the talking of the prophets and apostles hic et nunc and the readiness of the men of to-day to be talked to, the confirmation of the claim that this is God’s Word, the decision taken, the event or non-event of faith—all this escapes our own view and grasp and that of every [person]. (I/1/263-264).
The Bible’s absolute validity as the Word of God –not its relative validity of the word of inspired humans– as the authentic and supreme criterion of Church proclamation and of dogmatics, is in a sense irresponsible: “we have not in any sense or in any way to answer for it that the Bible is really God’s Word.”(I/1/264) The very desire to answer denies the argument; the Bible will have to answer for itself, and does. “If it is asked with what right we say this, we answer: By no right that we have and claim for ourselves, but by the right that proves itself to be such in the event of faith when it occurs.” (ibid.) This seems as arbitrary as claiming to know why “we got out of bed to-day with the right foot first rather than the left.” No prophecy, apostolate, special grace, Lutheran insight, or any other reason can be advanced why the Bible is absolutely God’s Word. There is no validating proof in light of the Biblical sign.
“[D]ogmatics cannot be ‘dogmatics’ in the sense of the Roman Catholic Church, i.e., the development of the truths of revelation immanent in the Church, nor the “doctrine of faith” in the sense of Protestant Modernism, i.e., the exposition of the faith of the men united in the Church. . . . . [D]ogmatics as the question of the Word of God in Church proclamation must be the critical question as to the agreement of Church proclamation, not with a norm of human truth or human value (the first possibility in our dilemma), nor with a standard of divine truth already known and proclaimed by the Church (the second possibility), but with the revelation attested in Holy Scripture.”(I/1/265)
If the Word of God is identified with dogma, as the development of the truths of revelation immanent in the Church, or as a “doctrine of faith,” then the Church is left speaking to itself in splendid isolation –and can the last fifty years of Protestant and Catholic Churches in the North Atlantic world be seen as other than a vindication of Barth’s point? “The dogma which dogmatics investigates cannot, then, be the veritas ab Ecclesia definita. The veritas ab Ecclesia definita is itself the question of dogma. It can and should guide dogmatics. But it cannot seek to be the dogma which is the goal of dogmatics.” (I/1/267)
Barth is not finished, however, with correcting Roman Catholic dogmatics. “Our second point must be that while the dogma which dogmatics investigates is not the truth of revelation, it aims at the truth of revelation.” Dogma is an “epistome” (condensation) of dogmatics in the sense that it aims at the truth, but is not itself the truth of revelation. Any such claim that dogmatics presents the truth of revelation is suspect.
To know dogma and to have dogma is to know and have the Word of God itself in a specific and specifically demonstrable form and manifestation of Church proclamation, for dogma is Church proclamation that is really in agreement with the Word of God. But a theology claiming to know and have dogma would be a theologia gloriae, which the dogmatics of the Church ought not to seek to be. (I/1/268)
Dogmatics sits on the sharpest of all frontiers:
What it is faced with is always actual Church proclamation in the whole humanity of its form and manifestation on the one hand and on the other hand the sign set up in the Church, the promise and command of the Bible. And the task it is set is to ask about the Word of God in the proclamation of the Church and therefore to ask about dogma, the necessary orientation of Church proclamation to the Bible as the Word of God. (ibid.)
The real results of dogmatic inquiry can only be new questions, not new answers. If such questioning ceased, “if the agreement of specific Church proclamation with the Word of God and therefore the Word of God itself in this specific Church proclamation could be demonstrated, then dogmatics would be at an end along with the ecclesia militans, and the kingdom of God would have dawned (1/1/269) Anything else is an erroneous illusion. In this way, dogma itself is a variety of “eschatological concept.”
Third and finally, the development of the human word “dogma” in the sense of demonstrable doctrinal proposition, rather than as a command (as Ceasar Augustus’ dogma (δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου) that the world should be on the tax rolls) is a symptom of a false development of very early origin. Dogma as doctrinal proposition can be a neutral truth, and one may or may not accept it, but it does not require decision (though in some Roman Catholic theology it may be considered as compelling assent). Roman Catholic dogmatics as theory qua theory “means that the theory, contemplation of the veritas revelata, has its goal and end in itself.” (I/1/270) . But this is an abstraction from the Person of Him who reveals truth: and this abstraction is suspect and more than suspect, in Barth’s view.
The grammar or Sprachspiel of command, however, is entirely different. “A command is what it is only in the act of the one who gives it and the one who obeys or disobeys it. One cannot give oneself a command in the way the Church gives itself Church dogmas. Nor can one have the truth of doctrine that can be received by a command in the way the Church has the truth of its dogmas.” Thus Barth must withdraw “from Roman Catholic soil.” (I/1/272) This seems quaintly territorial until one recalls that Barth’s German linguistic space was becoming saturated with claims of “blood and soil” in the 1930s.
Dogma as command does not bridge the gulf between God’s revealed Word and church proclamation, however.
To the extent that Church dogma is command—and in our view it should be pointed out that on the basis of the Old and New Testaments it would have been more natural to introduce the word into the Church’s vocabulary chiefly in this sense—it is a human command, a command of sinners even if of sinners assembled in the Church, and as such a command which is surrounded and permeated by all the ambiguity and frailty and corruption of human commanding. Heaven is as high above Church dogma regarded as command as it is above Church dogma regarded as proposition, and we are not thinking of putting the Church in possession of God’s Word by the detour of this second, or rather this first, meaning of the word. (I/1/273)
What is true must be measured by obedience to what is known of God’s will. “His Word goes out to the Church of assembled sinners as the Word of the Lord whose knowledge must be worked out in the form of acknowledgment. In logical if not temporal priority it must first be believed and only then and in that way can it be known as truth. Credo ut intelligam.” (ibid.) Thus we come full circle back to St. Anselm.
If we knew a form of Church proclamation perfectly co-extensive with the will of God, in which God’s command was to be fulfilled, if we knew perfect truth with all other truth, then we would be at the end of all things: the Eschaton. The point of dogmatics is not a student’s concordance with the knowledge of the teacher, but “the question of a servant who has to ask whether his actions agree with his master’s intentions and who undoubtedly in so doing will also learn something that he did not know before.” (I/1/274) The dogma (as command) into which Church Dogmatics inquires is a concept of relation between God’s demand and the human decision corresponding to God’s command. “What is under debate in dogmatics is the Church’s fundamental relation of obedience to its Lord in respect of its proclamation.”(I/1/274) Whether humans acknowledge God’s Word is the unavoidable point: “The Church stands or falls with the object of dogmatic enquiry. Hence it has to undertake this enquiry. It cannot pursue dogmatics or not pursue it.” Any other dogmatics is a meaningless and tedious pursuit. “We pursue dogmatics because, constrained by the fact of the Bible, we cannot shake off the question of the obedience of Church proclamation. The question of its obedience includes that of its truth. But the question of its truth can be put only as the question of its obedience. As the question of its obedience it is the question of dogma.” (I/1/274-275).
Rev. and page numbers verified, April 2020
