2. Dogmatics as a Science
The German title of this section is Dogmatik als Wissenschaft –and it is worth noting that in German Dogmatik is singular (whereas “dogmatics” in English is plural, since “dogmatic” is an adjective, often not a very positive one) and Wissenschaft has a particular meaning in German that is different from the English “science,” although it can mean science. Franz K. Ringer has traced the evolution of Wissenschaft in the life of the “mandarin ideology” of the German intellectual class, especially university professors, and as a university professor, Barth’s work was made possible by the evolution and division of intellectual work presupposed in a university structure. A note might be in order for English-speaking readers.
Any organized body of information or knowledge can be eine Wissenschaft (indefinite article), but the formal ordering and collective activity of scholars in in obtaining, interpreting, and ordering information (loosely “knowledge”) is die Wissenschaft, with a definite article. Hence Wissenschaft as “learning” or “scholarship” rather than “science,” since the English word is so dominated by a sense that denotes the natural sciences. Hence: is sociology a science, social science, or pseudo-science? (as was alleged by a U.S. Representative not long ago). Hence the English term “social sciences” to determine a particular kind of looser definition of science, distinguished from the “hard sciences” (biology, chemistry, physics prominent among them) and distinguished even more definitely from “the humanities,” always a rather loose amalgam literature and the arts, with maybe some portions of narrative history thrown in. In German, however, any well-organized body of collective knowledge is “wissenschaftlich,” praise for sound scholarship and awareness of the past. (This comes from Franz K. Ringer’s The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (Harvard Univ. Press, 1969).
Geisteswissenschaft is a humanistic discipline, above all one informed historically. It invariably carried evocations of the principle of empathy and the wider ramifications of the Idealistic (Kantian or even Hegelian) language of Geist (spirit). In Göttingen Wissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft also carried a strong connotation of law, which was prominent in the university’s curriculum; by extension the “Göttingen School of History” as Geschichtswissenschaft formulated a proposed program of universal history. (Göttingen scholars were also involved in early terminologies of “scientific racism,” such as color-words [white, yellow, brown, black, red] and classifications of Biblical peoples as “Semitic,” “Hamitic” or “Jephitic.”) Barth’s first academic appointment was in Göttingen, 1921-1925, and later in Münster and Bonn, universities which were deeply influenced by the Göttingen model. When Barth protests (I/1/7, p. 285) again the “corruption of theology” brought about “by trying to understand and treat it as simply a branch of the humanities in general,” (“daß man sie als einen Zweig der allgemeinen Geisteswissenschaft verstehen und betreiben wollte“, KD 1/1/7 s. 302), he uses Geisteswissenschaft in particular, protesting against the steady pressure of the Kantian language of Geist. Just before this section (2), Barth denigrated the “cry for a worldview” relating “this intrinsically excellent Faith to knowledge” (I/1/295) (“der Schrei nach der Weltanschauung, nach der Beziehung dieses in sich vortrefflichen Glaubens zum Wissen” KD 1/1/7 s. 290). His denigration also repudiates Reinhold Seeberg’s synthesis of observations and value judgements that distinguishes human beings in the world (see Ringer, supra, p. 104-105).
In English the phrase “Dogmatics as a Science” is profoundly misleading without this understanding of the very different connotations and connections of German terminology. This section is one for which an understanding of German intellectual history, terminology, and language is helpful because the English translation can be, many years later, profoundly misleading.
Barth’s slightly defensiveness about whether theology “generally, and with it dogmatics” is really a Wissenschaft leaks through the opening of this second section of I/1/7. Describing theology (dogmatics) as a Wissenchaft, “does not raise the claim as one by whose recognition it will stand or fall” –whose recognition of which claim? (I/1/275) Plainly other German professors, intellectuals: the very mandarin class to which Barth belongs. Dismissing “an external tribunal” does not make the claim go away, however: “It understands and describes itself as a science (Wissenschaft) because it has no interest in de facto self-segregation from the other human efforts at knowledge that bear this name.” Is the point really self-segregation? or is it a denial of any other criterion as a strategy by which to forestall being thrown out of the scholarly community of Wissenschaftler? Theology in general has always had a certain nervousness about its status as a discipline since the Enlightenment attacks on religion in general, and because Barth wants to continue to teach in a university, he shares that nervousness to lesser degree than others, but despite his efforts, some of his anxiety is still there.
The real reasons for persisting with describing Dogmatik (or theology in general) as a Wissenschaft is, typically for Barth, internal (but in this case with a clear sensitivity to external pressures):
- “It has to tread a defined path of knowledge, a path defined by this particular problem;” and
- “It has to submit to itself, i.e., everyone who has a share in it, an account regarding this path of knowledge.” (ibid.)
Dogmatics persists as a Wissenschaft, not because it can prove itself externally “before the forum of a general concept of” Wissenschaft, but because of its orientation “to the question of dogma which is raised by the existence of the Church.” (ibid.) . This, Barth believes, allows Theologie and Dogmatik to maintain status as a Wissenschaft –and also allows Barth to maintain his status as a University professor.
Barth gives much of the rest of this section over to his distinction between “regular” dogmatics (schulmäßige Dogmatik, KD I/1/292=CD I/1/276) and irreguläre or irregular: “in which there is no primary thought of the task of the school and there is thus no primary concern for the completeness.” (I/1/277). The difference boils down to planned “guidance to independent dogmatic work, and not just the imparting of the specific results of the work of a specific teacher. (I/1/276). In his note Barth cites the turn from regular to irregular dogmatics as “decline” especially seen in the works of Ritschl and Troeltsch, and once again Barth’s defensiveness as a practitioner of schulmäßige Dogmatik leaks through the text. “Would that we had even reached the point where we again regarded regular dogmatics as at least an admonitory ideal worth striving for!” (I/1/277).
Irony: Barth’s lifetime saw the work of several distinguished “regular” dogmaticians, such as Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Baltasar, and Emil Brunner. Barth’s “regular dogmatics” (close to, but not identical with what in American English is sometimes called “systematic theology”) was regarded as an ideal, and a minimum admonitory, in his time –only Barth did not or would not have liked his colleagues’ work. It remains to be seen whether any truly systematic theology will ever be done in the 21st century, or whether the charism of the theologian has moved elsewhere. Barth assigns some blame for this deterioration to Anabaptist spiritualism, which thought that this serious intellectual task could be dispensed with for reasons of “spiritual authenticity” — the descendants of which live on in the current, crudely debased versions of American evangelicalism.
In irregular dogmatics, there is no primary thought (motivation) for “the task of the school,” and for completeness. The “free discussion” (unbound by scholastic requirements) “must be pursued by the Church outside the theological school and apart from its special task.” (I/1/277) . Barth admits that this free-style discussion always existed, and will have “its own necessity and possibility” –its own internal consistency or logic. “It will, and will mean to be, a fragment, and evaluated as such.” Early church theologians were all of this type, as was Luther –his great contrast with Melancthon or Calvin (though I believe that a great deal of more recent work on Reformation writers such as Bucer and Bullinger would tend to place all of them, one way or another, in the “irregular” camp). Barth hastens to add that both regular and irregular dogmatics can be wissenschaftlich, scholarly or non-scholarly, and neither has a monopoly on the insights into Church proclamation that dogmatics is called to render.
Barth places his bets carefully but firmly: “what is to be attempted here is regular dogmatics” (I/1/278) Barth believes that in his time “an orderly school dogmatics might be healthier than a further plethora of irregularities in which [Protestantism] has always been so rich,” even though regular dogmatics must begin in the “aphorisms” of irregular dogmatics. “Nothing that can claim to be truly of the Church need shrink from the sober light of “scholasticism.” (I/1/279) Barth concludes, “Fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet. The true prophet will be ready to submit his message to this test too.”
Irony: within fifteen years practically all of German-language scholarship about nearly every subject faced a “year zero” (Jahre null) in the great reckoning: how could National Socialism have happened? How could the disaster have come about?
Barth’s faith in “regular dogmatics” is an important witness, but would not end up ruling his day. With the exception of Pannenberg, one is pressed to find any German-language “regular dogmatics” since 1945 that was not begun well before that date (e.g., Rahner, von Balthasar, and Barth himself).
Whether any Dogmatik as critique of Church proclamation is regular or irregular, Barth demands three tasks or criteria:
1: “It must devote itself to the problem of Church proclamation as such and not to problems of thought which might arise in proximity to certain concepts in Church proclamation but which have nothing to do with proclamation itself.” (I/1/280) However, “Dogmatics is preparation for Church proclamation.” (ibid.) Dogmatics is not particularly suited to become Church proclamation itself. The loftier regular dogmatics become, the more exposed they are “to the danger of being unscientific in the form of the ever-threatening transition to pure gnosis.” (I/1/281)
2: “Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.” Wissenschaftlich Dogmatik is neither purely historical nor purely philosophical nor pure phenomenological as a close examination of a current event of faith. “Dogmatics becomes unscientific when it becomes complacent” (better in German: Dogmatik wird unwissenschaftlich, wenn sie bequem wird. [KD I/1/298] Dogmatics in this view must put itself outside of Church proclamation and drive it to logical conclusions as a test: historically informed, possibly philosophically informed, but working its internal criterion of the correspondence of Church proclamation with the Biblical witness. Decisively:
3. “Scientific dogmatics—and now we come to the decisive point— enquires into the agreement of Church proclamation with the revelation which is attested in Holy Scripture. This is what we called the meaning and point of dogma in the first sub-section.” (I/1/283) Both uncritical laziness and gnostic intellectualism can lead dogmatic inquiry astray: “Dogmatic work stands or falls by whether the standard by which Church proclamation is measured is the revelation attested in Holy Scripture and not a philosophical, ethical, psychological or political theory.” (ibid.) Background knowledge in philosophy, science, the arts, humanities –all are important to the theologian, who must speak in the dialect of her or his time. The only element in education that makes a dogmatician “consists in indemonstrable and unassuming attention to the sign of Holy Scripture around which the Church gathers and continually becomes the Church. By this attention, and by nothing else, the theologian becomes a theologian.” (I/1/283-284)
On this basis Barth protests against regarding theology as simply one of the “humanities.”
The time has come to lodge a protest in the name of purity and propriety against the corruption of theology which has now been in full swing so long and which has been brought about by trying to understand and treat it simply as a branch of the humanities in general. (I/1/285)
The German is clearer:
Man darf gegen die nun so lange im Schwang gewesene Korruption der Theologie, herbeigeführt dadurch, daß man sie als einen Zweig der allgemeinen Geisteswissenschaft verstehen und betreiben wollte, auch einmal im Namen der Reinlichkeit und des Anstandes protestieren! (KD I/1/302)
Barth sees theology and dogmatic theology in particular as standing with a voice quite apart from “humanities” (a very inexact translation of Geiteswissenschaften) because of dogmatics’ unique and focused attention on the witness of the Scriptures. “Dogmatic work which truly sets itself under the criterion of Holy Scripture is finally and properly a matter of calling whose presence and continuation are outside human influence in just the same way as is the call to real proclamation of the Word of God.” (I/1/286) . This means that Barth is resolutely and unequivocally set against both Roman Catholic and Protestant Modernist dogmatics: only Scripture can determine the boundary between the proper work of dogmatics and the pursuit of truth in intellectual terms. That boundary cannot be traced in a general way a priori: it is a matter of Divine decision. Barth counsels humility and patience when appraising whether any dogmatics is truly faithful to the revelation of God attested in Holy Scripture: we may put questions very sharply, but real judgements are always elusive. “[I]t must also be seen and said that the sword of God’s real judgment does hang over our heads— over our own heads as well as those of our heretical partners in the controversy—when we take up and pursue this work.” (I/1/287) What finally counts is whether dogmatics is scriptural, and that judgement is not solely ours to make.
Rev. and page numbers verified, April 2020