2. The Possibility of Dogmatic Prolegomena
“How are dogmatic prolegomena possible as a preliminary understanding of the way of knowledge to be pursued?” (I/1/36)
Barth begins to join theological conflicts in this section even more pointedly.
According to the answer of modernist dogmatics: “tthat the Church and faith are to be understood as links in a greater nexus of being. Hence dogmatics is to be understood as a link in a greater nexus of scientific [wissenschaftliche] problems. . . . This nexus of problems, however, is that of an ontology.” (I/1/36) Thus the presupposition must be modernist philosophy, fundamentally Cartesian self-reflection. On this concept, dogmatics will be possible first because there is room for dogmatics in a general ontology, and second because the historical recollection of an actual event which faith proclaims is an event in such an ontic field –in other words, dogmatics fundamentally derives from philosophy. Barth regards this as “also as Christian” in the modern era, but cannot regard it “as Christian to the extent that it interprets the possibility of this reality as a human possibility, to the extent that it fails to recognise that this determination of human reality derives and is to be considered only from outside all human possibilities, i.e., from the acting God Himself.” (I/1/38) Instead of trying to explain its own history from itself, it does so from a general capacity or the general historicity of human existence.
On the other hand, in the Roman Catholic dogmatics which Barth knew, “dogmatics describes the place from which it ascertains its way of knowledge as the self-originating and self-grounded reality of divine revelation and the corresponding supernatural faith. Here, then, dogmatic prolegomena consist in the assertion that in the form of Holy Scripture, Church tradition, and the living teaching apostolate of the Church infallibly representing and interpreting both, there is to be found the objective principle of knowledge.” (I/1/40)
But neither of these conceptions operate “on the basis of Evangelical faith .” (I/1/41)
Barth draws lines: on the left (=Protestant modernism) “on the one hand by the rejection of an existential ontological possibility of the being of the Church and on the other hand by the rejection of the presupposition of a constantly available absorption of the being of the Church into a creaturely form, into a “There is.” (ibid.)
On the one side we have to say that the being of the Church is actus purus, i.e., a divine action which is self-originating and which is to be understood only in terms of itself and not therefore in terms of a prior anthropology. And on the other side we have also to say that the being of the Church is actus purus, but with the accent now on actus, i.e., a free action and not a constantly available connexion, grace being the event of personal address and not a transmitted material condition.
The path to dogmatic knowledge is “the place from which the way of dogmatic knowledge is to be seen and understood can be neither a prior anthropological possibility nor a subsequent ecclesiastical reality, but only the present moment of the speaking and hearing of Jesus Christ Himself, the divine creation of light in our hearts..” (ibid.) … “In the light of the fact that Jesus Christ is the being of the Church, the free personal decision may be expected concerning what is the proper content of Christian utterance and therefore concerning what should be the way to its knowledge, i.e., to the knowledge of dogma.”(I/1/42.) This is a prime example of Barth’s so-called “personalism.”
Thus Barth revives the “old-protestant” theology which began De scriptura sacra (on the Holy Scriptures). But in view of modernity and Roman Catholicism he extends the reflection on Scriptures to what grounds them –a beginning with reflection on the Word of God as grounding Scripture, and that will anticipate the “high” doctrines of the Trinity and essential portions of Christology. “We cannot pose the question of formal dogma without immediately entering at these central points upon material dogma. Indeed, what is thought to be formal dogma is itself highly material in fact” (I/1/44) –there is no question here of form without content, of the Revealer, the Revelation, and the Revealedness (to anticipate Barth’s later argument).
Barth thus sought to free dogmatics either from bondage to ontological philosophies of human reasoning, or from bondage to an ontological concept of grace (connected in his mind to the Roman Catholic theoretical investment in a philosophical analogia entis).
Practically, this would mean in an American secular university nearly the severing of theological discourse from any other academic discourse, in institutional terms. It is no wonder that most American theologians, trained to participate in wider academic discourse, sigh uncomfortably at a self-conception of their own field which would remove them from their chairs, quite literally. Barth’s critique however is far more than institutional: on the one hand this really flies in the face of Enlightenment presuppositions that Truth in principle is available to any inquiring mind. On the other hand, it flies in the face of traditional Roman Catholic dogmatics which insists that Truth is continuously guaranteed by the configuration of Scripture, Traditional, the living apostolate. NO says Barth, the path of knowledge trodden by dogmatics is open only to the mind enlightened “by the divine light created in our hearts,” but YES, we may tread that path to knowledge relying upon God’s promise to attend to God’s Word.
Rev. and page numbers corrected Oct. 2019