2. Dogmatics as an Enquiry
Barth defines dogmatics as “the self-examination of the Christian Church in respect of the content of its distinctive talk about God.” (I/1/11) He notes that he will continue this discussion in §7, The Word of God, Dogma, and Dogmatics.
Barth begins one of his characteristic circular movements, because this sub-section 2 involves several essentially self-referential concepts. He recognizes this immediately: by designating the distinctive content of the Church’s language about God as the object of human inquiry, he must presuppose that (1) the capacity of human thinking to inquire about the proper content of the Church’s language about God; (2) the need of this language to serve as the target (my expression) or object of human inquiry, and (3) the necessity and possibility of such a Wissenschaft or disciplined inquiry.
Barth’s discussion follows this three-part outline insofar as none of these presuppositions is obvious (!)
The capacity of human thinking to inquire about the proper content of the Church’s language about God raises the question of such language’s conformity with Jesus Christ, which is the proper content of its language. Barth first raises here his important concept of the analogia fidei –the analogy of faith– that the human movement of knowing, from intuitive grasp to clarity in conceptual formation tested and passed by dogmatics– is second to the divine movement, the event proceeding from God. Both movements are made one in faith, but are also to be distinguished in faith “emphatically.” (I/1/12). This analogia fidei comes to play a major role in Barth’s thinking as an alternative to Roman Catholic analogia entis, an analogy of being arguing an essential similarity between Creator and creation that can be investigated by the language of ontology or metaphysics.
On the contrary, according to Barth, “The intractability of faith and its object guarantees that divine certainty cannot become human security. But it is this intractable faith and its intractable object which make possible the certain divine knowledge which is at issue in dogmatics..” (I/1/12-13) One wishes this statement were engraved upon the door posts of every theological school, especially those that hold a so-called “high” view of Scripture. Intractability ‘Intractable’ here seems close to its original metaphor: the horse that pulls out of the harness, difficult to keep under control.
That such language can serve as the object of human inquiry assures then that “Dogmatics is possible only as theologia crucis [theology of the cross], in the act of obedience which is certain in faith, but which for this very reason is humble, always being thrown back to the beginning and having to make a fresh start.” (I/1/14) Here Barth departs clearly from Roman Catholic tendency to posit dogmas: dogmatics is the discipline of dogma, but only in a subordinate sense the discipline of dogmas, combined, repeated, and transcribed as “truths of revelation.” (I/1/15)
(I/1/16)
The being of the Church is Jesus Christ, and therefore an indissolubly divine-human person, the action of God towards man in distinction from which human appropriation as attested in the dogmas believed by the Church may be very worthy and respectable but can hardly be called infallible . . .
Barth here cuts against every theological certainty: both Roman Catholic, Old Protestant, and –though he did not intend it– contemporary conservative-evangelical Protestant. But not from a “liberal” position of the difficulty of religious apprehension –rather from the sheer volatile independence of the Divine Other.
As the Church accepts from Scripture, and with divine authority from Scripture alone, the attestation of its own being as the measure of its utterance, it finds itself challenged to know itself, and therefore even and precisely in face of this foundation of all Christian utterance to ask, with all the seriousness of one who does not yet know, what Christian utterance can and should say to-day.
(I/1/16)
rev. and page numbers corrected Oct. 2019