Karl Barth on Grace

This coming Sunday, I'll be preaching on Romans 6:12-23.  While doing some research, I pulled out my copy of Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans and found this wonderful passage:

“Grace is the power of obedience; it is theory and practice, conception and birth; it is the indicative which carries with it a categorical imperative; it is the call, the command, the order, which cannot be disobeyed.  Grace has the force of a downright conclusion; it is knowledge which requires no act of will to translate it into action, as though the will were a second factor side by side with knowledge.  Grace is knowledge of the will of God, and as such it is the willing of the will of God.  Grace is the power of the Resurrection: the knowledge that men are begotten of God, that it moves and rests in Him, and that it is beyond all concrete things, beyond the being and course of this world.  Inasmuch as men have discovered it, Grace is the existence begotten of God, the new man, created and redeemed by God, the man who is righteous before Him and in whom He is well pleased, the man in whom God again discovers Himself, as a father discovers himself in his child.  Of supreme importance, then, is the demand that I, the new man in the power of the resurrection and within the krisis of the transition from death to life, should by faith and under grace—will the will of God.  As the man under grace, I am in a position to hear and understand this demand, for existentially and assuredly I live from God and am what He desires.  By this demand, moreover, I am reminded of that primal Origin by which my existence is affirmed, and I perceive that I—and yet not I—am” (207–208).

Martin Luther on Evil

This morning, I'm working more on my lesson for youth group tonight.  We've been doing a series on Ezekiel, and to help me with preparing my lessons, I've been reading Robert Jenson's commentary on Ezekiel from the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series.  I enjoyed a paragraph I just read in which Jenson comments on how Christians should view evil (especially the comment about Luther):

"Augustine said that evil is the darkness where being has run out; the shadow that lies over our lives is the gloom that deepens as the light dims.  Karl Barth said that evil is what God eternally leaves behind him and that the shadow is the trace of his doing this.  But perhaps the shadow's sheerly negative reality is best acknowledged and exorcized by doing what Martin Luther famously did, throwing things at it" (115).

Canon and Creed

My review of Robert Jenson's new book, Canon and Creed, was just posted at the Englewood Review of Books (http://erb.kingdomnow.org/).  Here it is:

Canon and Creed is the second book in Westminster John Knox Press’ new series, Interpretation: Resources for Use of Scripture in the Church.  The series supplements Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.  Canon and Creed’s author, Robert Jenson, is a Lutheran theologian whom David Bentley Hart calls, “America’s perhaps most creative systematic theologian” (First Things Oct 2005, “The Lively God of Robert Jenson”).

In Canon and Creed, Jenson seeks to move beyond understandings within the church and the academy that “we can cling to Scripture or cling to church doctrine, or possibly to both in different contexts, but cannot cling to both with the same grasp” (2).  Instead, through the work, Jenson emphasizes the mutuality of canon and creed as “Spirit-given reminders of what sort of community the church must be if it is indeed to be the church” (2–3).

While some scholars might argue that a canon did not exist within the church until formal criteria for canonization developed in the fourth century, Jenson argues instead that there was a functional canon by the latter part of the second century.  He cites Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, written around AD 180, for support.  While some find such a canon vague, Jenson argues, “A canon with fuzzy edges . . . can be authoritative Scripture as well as one with absolutely set edges” (12).

Against Marcion, Jenson affirms that the Christian canon includes both the Old and New Testaments.  While some Christians have asked why Christians need the Old Testament, Jenson instead says, “The real question was and is this: ‘Can Israel’s Scripture accept this proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and this new movement within Israel?’” (20).  Jenson argues God answers this question by vindicating Jesus Christ in the resurrection.  The God who rescued the Israelites from slavery is the God who raises Jesus to life.  Jenson advocates a Christian reading of the Old Testament that avoids supersessionism and is rooted in the overarching narrative of Scripture.

In relation to the New Testament documents, Jenson notes that in addition to apostolicity, early Christians recognized their canonicity due to the fact that “they witnessed to the apostolic faith” within the regula fidei (“rule of faith”; 40).  Jenson thus notes that the relation between the canon and regula fidei is circular: the regula fidei comes from Scripture and Scripture is recognized as canonical due to its coherence with the regula fidei.

By “creed” within the volume, Jenson not only refers to the ecumenical creeds, but also to catechetical-baptismal confessions and the regula fidei in its various forms.  While Jenson advocates the importance of contemporary Christians studying Scripture in light of the creed, he does not support the creeds uncritically.  Jenson notes that no creed is a complete summary of the Christian faith.  Jenson critiques the creeds for their lack of references to the Old Testament (apart from naming God as creator) and to the life of Jesus in between his birth and death.  Jenson thus argues, “We have arrived again at a point to which . . . we will repeatedly come: the canon without the creed will not serve to protect the church against perversion of the gospel, and neither will the creed without the canon” (32).

Jenson then discusses dogma, which he says “reprises the original creedal development and participates in its authority” (63).  Dogma differs from creed, “For dogma responds to questions that did not arise in the second- or third-century church, and to which the regula fidei and the creeds may not supply obvious answers” (65).  We do, however, see the development of creed to dogma even within the Nicene Creed (AD 325), Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381), and within the Chalcedonian definition (AD 451), which sought to answer new questions raised within the church in the light of canon and creed.

Jenson also notes that in the second century, “the church received a trio of institutions to guard its identity through time: canon, creed, and episcopate” (71).  The bishops played an important role in maintaining the church’s teaching and served as delegates at the ecumenical councils.  While many Protestants from non-episcopal traditions may have difficulty with Jenson’s chapter on the episcopacy, he raises some important issues for consideration.

Rather than simply stating his case that contemporary exegetes should study the canon and creed together, Jenson gives examples of his approach in the last three chapters by exegeting Genesis 1:1–5 and Luke 1:26–38 in light of the creed and Mark 14:35–36 in light of dogma.

Throughout Canon and Creed, Jenson demonstrates that while the historical-critical method does have a place in the study of the Bible, the method is not an end in itself.  For example, Jenson criticizes some historical Jesus scholars for “mistaking a pile of scholarly reports for a person” (58).  Jenson thus follows after theologians like Karl Barth, who criticized some critical scholars for writing commentaries that discuss the meaning of various Greek words and phrases and archaeological finds.  Barth argues, however, that their work is “no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary” (Epistle to the Romans, 6).  Jenson argues that until the birth of modernity, “theology was not thought of as an enterprise distinct from biblical exegesis” (118).  Jenson thus advocates a way of reading of the Bible not simply for the academy, but one for the church, in which Christians in their reading of Scripture “seek to discern a ‘christological plain sense’” (82).

Jenson presents a balanced approach to the study of canon and creed which makes use of helpful sources both ancient and modern.  Canon and Creed is a work that would benefit preachers, teachers, and students interested in the formation of the canon, the ancient creeds, and their importance for the contemporary church.  Readers from the Stone-Campbell Movement and other free church traditions who are skeptical of creedal formulations should also consider reading D.H. Williams’ written volumes Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1999) and Evangelicals and Tradition (Baker Academic, 2005), as well as his edited volume The Free Church and The Early Church (Eerdmans, 2002).

Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, Part 6: Theological Method

I read the fifth chapter of Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, "Anthropology," by Henri A.G. Blocher, but to be honest, some of it was over my head and other parts of it I don't have an opinion on, so I don't feel comfortable commenting on it.  Instead, I'm going to make a few comments on the sixth chapter, "Christus Praesens: Barth's Radically Realist Christology and its Necessity for Theological Method."

First, Richardson notes that Barth breaks with propositional understandings of revelation.  You can in this critique of propositionalism see where Lindbeck gets at least part of his critique of cognitive-propositional understandings of religion.


Second, Barth is critical of natural theology.  Richardson notes, "The possibility of the knowledge of God is a naturalized, domesticated, generalized condition which Barth most emphatically rejects" (138).  In other words, Barth is critical of natural theology because when people center their theology upon "general" or "natural revelation," they tend to make God in their own image.  As I will note in a paper that I will turn into a blog series after I finish blogging through this book, Barth is a helpful figure to draw upon in critiquing American civil religion.

Third, while Barth's primary focus is not theological method, but dogmatics, his theological method still shines through.  According to Richardson, Barth's theological method stems from the understanding that when the church listens to the reading of scripture or preaching, they are listening to God speaking in the present.  (This does not mean Barth was unaware of the distance between the original audience and the contemporary church.  Barth instead understood, "The One who was for us 'then' is the One who is for us 'now'" [142].  "Barth's answer is a bridging of historical distance through the actuality of the living Jesus Christ whose resurrection, by the grace of God, provides the reality by which the theological speaks with the Church in confessing 'Jesus lives'--and continues, 'and I with him'" [144]). 

Fourth, in a point similar to the one above, Barth believed that the Spirit aids and illuminates the preacher, theologian, and church in their reading/listening to Scripture.  (As I mentioned in a previous post on this issue, Barth can thus be an extremely helpful figure for the Stone-Campbell Movement as we try and develop a theology of illumination for our context).  Richardson says that for Barth, "Thus, fellowship with the living God is a necessary condition for doing of Christian theology" (145).  Richardson also says of Barth's understanding, "The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary for the work of the theologian since by the activity of the Spirit the theologian is 'kept close to Jesus Christ in true and genuine faith,' and enlivened to speak and write as an expression of gratitude to God" (147).

While Barth's understanding is not politically correct, I find it most convincing.  While there are non-Christians who do historical studies that can help contemporary people better understand the biblical text and while there are non-Christians who can understand and write of what ancient peoples thought, Christian theology is "faith seeking understanding."  I hope in many ways that more theologians, like Hauerwas, will offer critiques of the modern university and focus Christian theology upon the context of the church.

Barth and Evangelical Theology: Part 5, Creation

The chapter in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology entitled “Creation” is by Oliver Crisp, who teaches at the University of Bristol.  Crisp correctly notes that the center of Barth’s theology is Christology, and thus that Barth’s “doctrine of creation is ‘christologized’” (77).  Crisp does not attempt to exhaustively summarize Barth’s doctrine of creation, but instead to interact with “some of the more controversial issues involved in his doctrine of creation proper in, CD, III/1” (78; CD is the abbreviation of Church Dogmatics).  Crisp focuses in particular on the relationship between Barth’s doctrine of creation and “that of the classical (Western) theological tradition, particularly, the Reformed strand of that tradition” (78), in an attempt to note the similarities and differences.  (Notice any similarities between Chung and Crisp?)

Crisp notes four areas of overlap that Barth and the Reformed tradition share in their doctrines of creation:

1. The whole of the Trinity is involved in creation.
2. Creation is a free act of God (see the previous post on Barth’s emphasis upon God as “the one who loves in freedom”).
3. Barth has a sort of supralapsarianism, though Crisp notes that his “is different from traditional construals in important respects” (80).  In particular, Barth “denies that the divine decrees fork at the point where God elects some human beings and reprobates the rest.  Instead, according to Barth, God elects and reprobates Christ, the Elect (and Reprobate) One, and derivatively elects al humanity ‘in’ Christ” (80–81).
4. Barth makes a close connection between “the divine act of creation, and the covenant of grace whereby God graciously ordains to elect Christ as the one through whom human redemption is brought about” (83).

Crisp then notes four areas in which Barth differs from the Reformed tradition:

1. Unlike the Reformed tradition, Barth is critical of natural theology.  Barth remains critical of natural theology because it often results in humans making God in their own image.  According to Barth, “We can only know what God is like where God breaks into our world in an event of revelation and makes himself known to us” (86).  Jesus Christ is the primary revelation in which God makes Godself known.
2. Barth denies “an apologetic purpose to the doctrine of creation” (88).  Barth, correctly, argues that Genesis 1–3 should not be read as a scientific textbook or an apologetic text, but instead as a dogmatic text.  Crisp, as an evangelical, has some problems with Barth’s views on the matter, but I’m with Barth on this one.
3. Crisp never says explicitly “third” in between what he explicitly lists as “second” and “fourth,” which is one of my biggest pet peeves when reading an essay/book.  I’ll just assume that the third difference is Barth’s hermeneutical differences with conservative evangelicals.
4. “Unlike classical theologians, Barth does not believe creation is a timeless act of an atemporal God, whose essence remains unaffected by the utterance of the divine fiat, and bringing into being of the created order” (90).  Barth instead believes the incarnation should control what one thinks of God’s creative act.  For Barth, however, God’s time is different than human time and God is eternal (by which Barth means, “He is simultaneously before time, above time, and after time” (CD, III/1, 67).  Barth’s account of God’s relation to time makes little sense to me, but neither does the classical view, because both views place God as simultaneously past, present, and future.  I do not deny, however, that God created time.

Crisp concludes that Barth’s emphasis upon God creating through Christ is consistent with Scripture at some points, but in others “goes beyond the biblical affirmation that Christ is the agent through whom and form whom all things are created” (93).  Crisp, however, notes that other figures, such as Colin Gunton, are more supportive of Barth’s project.

Crisp is also cautious about Barth’s critique of natural theology.  I have mixed feelings on the matter.  I do think in some ways that Barth over states his case, but in other ways think his overstatement is needed.  (When I finish blogging through Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, I was to do some work on a paper I wrote a few years ago on Barth’s critique of natural theology and turn it into a short blog series.)  Crisp offers up Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga as an alternative to Barth and a way of better utilizing Calvin for a contemporary natural theology.

Crisp, while he has disagreements with Barth, helpfully notes that Barth is still a theologian worth interacting with and worth learning a from.  I greatly enjoyed reading Crisp’s chapter.

Barth and Evangelical Theology: Part 4, God and Election

After getting bogged down on my thesis, blogging about Hauerwas’ Hannah’s Child, and taking a slight break, I am finally returning to Barth and Evangelical Theology. The chapter I will comment on is called “A Bold Innovator: Barth on God and Election,” by the editor of the volume, Sung Wook Chung, a Korean theologian educated at Harvard and Oxford who teaches at Denver Seminary.

I was slightly surprised that the editor of Barth and Evangelical Theology was the figure so far in the volume with the most opposition to Barth’s theology. He says in the introduction to the chapter, “I am not in agreement with [postconservative theologians] that Barth’s theology is the hope for the future of evangelical theology. Rather, I am convinced that conservative evangelical theology should take issues with many points of Barth’s theology” (60).

While acknowledging that Barth believed in the Reformation principles of sola scriptura, sola gratia, a christocentric emphasis, and what Chung calls “theologianhood of all believers,” Chung argues that Barth was an “innovator” when it comes to the doctrine of God. First, Chung critiques Barth’s “actualism,” by which means Barth’s argument that “God is who He is in the act of His revelation” (63). Chung sites Princeton theologian George Hunsinger, who argues Barth “thinks primarily in terms of events and relationships rather than monadic or self-contained substances” (64). Chung opposes Barth’s emphasis upon God’s action rather than substance, thus arguing it is against scripture and thus anti-evangelical. Scripture however, often focuses more on how God acts to redeem Israel, in Christ, etc., and spends much less time discussing God’s substance. Chung seems unaware that Barth argued the economic Trinity (how God acts in relation to his creation in salvation history) is the immanent Trinity (the interior life of God).

Second, Chung critiques Barth’s view of God “as the one who loves in freedom” (65). Chung believes that one should begin not with “God is love” but instead with “God is spirit” or “God is good.” Because Barth places the emphasis upon God’s free love and free loving actions, Chung believes Barth argues “love is God,” which is unfounded (66). Chung argues that “one who loves in freedom can be evil,” but Barth obviously believes God is not evil and that God’s love is good and different from human love. Chung thus seems to define an evangelical view of God with a stream of Reformed thought that emphasizes God as spirit and God’s attributes of goodness, truthfulness, and holiness above love.

Third, Chung critiques what he calls Barth’s “metaphysics of relationship,” primarily because Barth “hated speculation” and “never defined God from a perspective of substantialist metaphysics.” Again, Chung seems unaware that for Barth, the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity. Chung even argues, quite inaccurately, that “Barth’s relational ontology is a quite innovative pattern of thought that has no precedent in the history of Christian theology” (70). Then he says, “Of course, we may say that the three Cappadocian Fathers were an exception” (70). So, Chung shows a dislike of social views of the Trinity, which are present within Eastern Orthodoxy and recent western theologians like Colin Gunton, Stanley Grenz, Jurgen Moltmann, etc. So once again, Chung appears to only take seriously certain forms of Reformed theology.

Fourth, Chung critiques Barth’s doctrine of election, which centers upon Christ as “the direct object of divine election” (72) and the “Subject of election” (74). Thus, “In [Jesus], all human beings are directed indirectly” (72). Barth, while opposed to holding to universalism as dogma, held to it as an “article of hope,” much like some contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians (73). Chung is correct that few in church history discussed this view as the primary form of election, it does have support from some passages in Scripture and various figures in tradition. Chung thus correctly argues that Barth holds together both Calvinistic and Arminian tendencies.

Throughout the chapter, I found that Chung could not see outside of his lens of conservative Reformed evangelical theology in viewing Barth, who was a Reformed theologian of a different mold. One point I will seed to Chung is that Barth at times speaks of the Trinity in modalistic language, which is upsetting, but in other contexts he does not. It appears Barth, like Nicholas Lash, uses quasi-modalistic language to maintain an emphasis upon the oneness of God. As a person who is from a Arminian background and appreciates aspects of Eastern Christianity, Barth’s doctrines of God and election are less upsetting to me than to someone like Chung. I was pretty surprised that in a volume of essays that are supposed to constructively and appreciatively interact with Barth’s theology from an evangelical perspective that Chung’s essay was so critical.

Barth and Evangelical Theology: Part 3, “A Person of the Book?”

Kevin Vanhoozer, formerly of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School but now at Wheaton College, follows up Fackre’s discussion on Barth’s views of Revelation with a chapter entitled “A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation.” As Vanhoozer notes, evangelicals have traditionally been bothered by Barth’s distinction between the Word of God (Jesus) and the words of men (the Bible).[1]

As examples of this skepticism, Vanhoozer summarizes the critiques of Barth by two major figures in early (post-fundamentalist) evangelicalism, Cornelius Van Til and Carl F.H. Henry, who both were concerned that Barth’s “neo-orthodoxy[2] was a modernist wolf in evangelical sheep’s clothing, an uneasy yoking of biblical insights and a non-biblical philosophical framework” (27–28).

Vanhoozer then deals with a second group of evangelicals in the 1970s, such as Bernard Ramm and Donald Bloesch (who wrote the forward to Barth and Evangelical Theology), who argued “that Barth had raised valid points about the dangers of ‘biblicism’ and refused to read him aas an indentured servant to existentialist philosophy” (33). Barth appreciated Barth’s desire to interpret the Bible “in the light of what it claims to be,” rather than by forcing a foreign framework upon it (35). Bloesch appreciated Barth for meeting “the challenge of higher criticism by showing that it needs to be ‘supplemented and fulfilled by theological criticism, which is carried on only by faith seeking understanding’” (35).

Barth deals with some of these issues in the preface to the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans. Barth here says: “I have nothing whatever to say against historical criticism. I recognize it, and once more state quite definitively that it is both necessary and justified. My complaint is that recent commentators confine themselves to an interpretation of the text which seems to me to be no commentary at all, but merely the first step toward a commentary. Recent commentaries contain no more than a reconstruction of the text, a rendering of the Greek words and phrases by their precise equivalents, a number of additional notes in which archaeological and philological material is gathered together, and a more or less plausible arrangement of the subject matter in such a manner that it may be made historically and psychologically intelligible from the standpoint of pure pragmatism” (6). Barth does want to follow critics in their “preliminary work.” Barth then says, “When, however, I examine their attempts at genuine understanding and interpretation, I am again and again surprised how little they even claim for their work. By genuine understanding and interpretation I mean that creative energy which Luther exercised with intuitive certainty in his exegesis; which underlies the systematic interpretation of Calvin . . . ” (7).

I find myself in great agreement with Barth on these matters. I do have great appreciation for the historical-gramatical method (in which I was trained in college) and the historical-critical method (in which I have been trained in seminary), but at the same time, I have some criticisms of these methods. For example, John Collins, in his The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age, defines historical criticism as “a loose umbrella that covers a range of methods” which “have in common . . . a general agreement that texts should be interpreted in their historical contexts, in light of the literary and cultural conventions of their time” (4). I totally agree with Collins here, but then he says, “historical critics usually assume a hierarchy of meanings and regard the historical context as basic or primary” (4). Here is where I disagree with him: the Bible is not first and foremost a text for historical critics, but the text of the church![3]

Collins also argues that historical criticism brings people together. “It has created an arena where people with different faith commitments can work together and have meaningful conversations. The historical focus has been a way of getting distance from the text, of respecting its otherness. The neutrality and objectivity at which the discipline has aimed has allowed Jews and Christians to work together and has allowed feminists to make their case in ways that initially unsympathetic scholars have found compelling” (10). Now, let me preface my following comments by saying I am not against conversation—I think it’s important. I read scholars from which I differ in opinion and seek to learn from them. At the same time, of course people can work together when they distance themselves from the biblical text and try and look at it “objectively” (whatever that means). When something doesn’t mean anything to your life (or you seek to compartmentalize your life to the extent that something doesn’t mean anything in certain contexts) it’s easy to give yourself over fully to historical criticism. I question, however, how helpful it is for us to distance ourselves from the biblical text or that we can truly stand above the biblical text as “objective observers” (again, whatever that means). That’s why I enjoy Barth’s exegesis, which is done within the context of the church as faith seeking understanding.

Now back to Vanhoozer, who then deals with what he calls the “third wave” of evangelicals, those who interact with Barth through “Yale school” postliberals like Hans Frei and George Lindbeck. Frei and Lindbeck emphasize (like Fackre) the canon as “realistic narrative.” Lindbeck also coins the term “intratextuality,” by which he means “redescribing reality within the framework of the biblical narrative rather than translating Scripture into extrascriptural categories” (38; see also Yale Ph.D Stanely Hauerwas’ critique of translation. Brad Kallenberg has a nice treatment of Hauerwas’ critique of translation in Ethics as Grammar). Some other “third wave” evangelicals (I assume Vanhoozer places himself in this category, but he doesn’t come out and say it) returned to Church Dogmatics to study Barth.

Barth says of the Bible, “The Word of God is God himself in Holy Scripture” (39). This stems from his concept that “only God can make God known” (39). This connects with Fackre’s discussion in my last post of Barth’s emphasis upon the freedom of God to reveal himself.

Vanhoozer distinguishes evangelical understandings of the Bible from Barth’s by saying, “For evangelicals, the Word of God is an object—the deposit of revealed truth in Scripture. By contrast, for Barth the Word of God is a subject whose speaking in and through Jesus Christ creates both the canon and the church” (39). The Word for Barth is thus a witness to the revelation of God in history (and for Barth, the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity). This is important, for Barth does not see the Bible as an object to stand over and observe as a detached reader, but as a subject that reveals God as a living and active witness. As Vanhoozer later says, “Biblical interpretation is essentially the attempt to hear and obey the subject matter of Scripture, not to observe and master it” (46). Barth thus spends little time discussion hermeneutical theory, but shows his theories through exegesis of Scripture.

Barth, however, as I noted in my last post, rejected the evangelical doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. He does not do so because he denies the possibility of divine communication, but rather Barth “affirms that that God has spoken in Scripture and will speak again, he refuses to presume upon God’s speaking” (41). Scripture does not speak on its own, but as the Spirit works “in and through [Scripture]” (42). Scripture thus functions authoritatively as God works and speaks through a text written by humans who “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12). Vanhoozer, as an advocate of inerrancy, however, tries to make Barth fit an evangelical mold by saying Barth “is apparently free to treat the Bible, for all intents and purposes, as inerrant testimony to God’s self-revelation” (44), a questionable argument to say the least.

I do, however, whole-heartedly agree with Vanhoozer that “Evangelicals do Barth a disservice when, in analyzing his view of Scripture, they treat only his statements about the Bible and its indirect relation to the Word of God. To neglect Barth’s actual use and interpretation of the Bible is to fail to examine an enormous amount of evidence that casts his more theoretical (and rhetorical) statements in a markedly different light” (44). Evangelicals would then “do well to consider not only Barth’s theory but also his exegetical practice” (45).

Vanhoozer argues that the current context gives evangelicals a chance to reconsider Barth’s views on Scripture by holding up the examples of Bruce McCormack and Francis Watson.

Vanhoozer closes the chapter by arguing that philosophies of language, such as those by J.L. Austin, who emphasize speech-acts, can help evangelicals come to terms with the various apparent contradictions between Barth’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty and evangelicals emphasis upon “a fixed and authoritative propositional revelation” (55). While I applaud Vanhoozer’s use of speech-act philosophy, I have mixed feelings about Vanhoozer’s discussion of propositional communication.

While I don’t agree with Vanhoozer on every point (just as I didn’t when I read his Drama of Doctrine), I applaud his survey of evangelical responses to Barth and his willingness to interact with it constructively. Just like Fackre’s chapter, Vanhoozer’s discussion of Barth’s concept of divine illumination can serve as a great help to members of the Stone-Campbell Movement. In my next post, I will interact with Sung Wook Chung’s chapter, “A Bold Innovator: Barth on God and Election.”

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[1] I am aware of the problems with the use of the word “men” for humanity. I’m using it in reference to Barth’s work because his translator, the recently deceased Geoffrey Bromiley, uses men in the English version of Church Dogmatics.

[2] The term “neo-orthodoxy” was not Barth’s invention, but something applied by both fans and detractors to his thought.

[3] Collins does, thankfully, acknowledge ancient ways of reading Scripture, saying, “To understand the ancient context of a text requires some sympathetic analogy between ancient and modern situations” (5–6).

Barth and Evangelical Theology: Part 2, “Revelation”

Barth is often referred to, as Fackre points out, as the “theologian of revelation.” His views on revelation, however, are the views which evangelicals, like Carl Henry, tend to find the most controversial.

Fackre, however, critically defends Barth’s views on revelation from what he calls an “evangelical narrative” perspective, “one that follows Scripture’s journey of the triune God from Genesis to Revelation—creation, fall, the universal covenant with Noah, the particular covenant with Israel, the incarnation and atonement of Jesus Christ, the birth of the church, the coming of salvation, the consummation of the purposes of God in the resurrection, the return of Christ, final judgment and everlasting life” (1–2; see Fackre’s The Christian Story for more on his narrative perspective).

While evangelicals tend to focus on a static view of revelation (the written Bible as revelation already written “once for all”), Barth has a “dynamic” understanding of revelation and the Word (by which he means not only the Bible, but primarily the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, and the word preached in the community of faith). So, Barth argues that the Bible becomes the Word of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. This has trouble evangelicals who want to argue the Bible is the word of God whether it’s being read in faith by the power of the Holy Spirit or not.

Fackre argues, however, that Barth does not deemphasize the acts of God in the Bible. Barth instead deals with both the “objectivity” of revelation with a christocentric emphasis on the Incarnation, death, resurrection, etc., of Jesus, as well as the “subjectivity” of revelation (the reception of the Word by the church), while still critiquing “liberal” subjectivism and those who appropriate his concept of the Bible becoming the Word of God in existentialist terms.[1] While Barth has a christocentric emphasis upon God’s revelation, Christ’s work cannot, as Fackre notes, “be separated from the entire sweep of the drama of God’s deeds” (4).

Barth emphasizes the Bible’s becoming the Word of God to protect the freedom of God to reveal himself not just to the inspired writers of Scripture, but to the church in every age. Barth thus maintains the “living and activeness” (my term) of the Bible, rather than the text as “dead word.” Barth holds this view alongside a strong criticism of natural theology (see his discussion with Emil Brunner concerning natural theology as an example). While Barth emphasizes the otherness of God, he does not believe God gives humanity a false portrait of Godself. As Fackre says, “What God does in the missions of the economic Trinity is who God is in the immanent Trinity” (5).

Barth later softens his rejection of natural theology some, but still believes any other “little light” must be tested in the light of Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture. Note that Barth places the person first rather than the text, thus avoiding a position of bibliolatry. As Fackre says, “Scripture must not be confused with the incarnate Word” (10). Barth thus argues that “all human attestations to the Word of the Prophet of God are broken human witnesses to truth” (12). Thus Barth is in agreement with the apostle Paul who though writing “inspired Scripture,” says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (NRSV). This viewpoint allows Barth to critique modern conservative insistence upon verbal inspiration and inerrancy of hypothetical autographs and instead emphasize God’s sovereign work through the Scriptures to reveal Godself to the church.

Barth, as evidenced by his emphasis upon the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit and title Church Dogmatics for his multi-volume magnum opus, also emphasizes “the role of the church and its tradition in his theology” (11). Thus, Barth does not advocate individualistic readings of Scripture, an emphasis deeply needed in American churches. This emphasis on the interpretive community and the illuminating work of the Spirit is particularly needed in the Stone-Campbell Movement.[2]

Jesus Christ is for Barth the center of the Christian story. As Fackre says, “‘Revelation’ is Jesus Christ and brooks no contendors” (13). Fackre also notes, “[Barth’s] earlier language was sometimes interpreted as a fusion of this historical event with the moment of its reception, the ever-new ‘becoming’ of the Word of God. But his later writing seeks to avoid misunderstandings that bind the Word to the appropriation process” (13).

Fackre, however, also notes some problems he sees with Barth’s views on revelation. One I whole-heartedly agree with is Fackre’s critique of Barth’s dismissal of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Fackre also critiques Barth for at times neglects the “once for all” inspiration of the biblical text, which leads evangelicals to question whether Barth sees the Bible as authoritative. As Fackre helpfully points out in a rebuttal of this position, “Karl Barth’s practice is better than his theory, for his extensive and intensive exegesis of Scripture suggests a deeper and more sustained warrant for biblical authority” (21).

In the end, Fackre argues that Barth’s views on revelation helpfully point us to the center of God’s revelation (the Incarnation of Jesus Christ) and balances out an evangelical emphasis upon the inspiration of Scripture with an emphasis upon God’s sovereignty and the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination. Also, “Barth’s caution that no principles of our own making should obstruct attention to that one Word, as attested by Scripture, must be applied to his own doctrine of revelation” (25).

In my next post, I will comment on Kevin Vanhoozer’s chapter “A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation,” which will continue much of Fackre’s discussion.

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[1] I wish Barth had used different terms rather than “objective” and “subjective.” While some figures like John Franke helpfully see Barth as an important figure in the critique of modernism and turn to postmodernity, Barth still holds on to the modern dichotomization of objectivity/subjectivity.

[2] When I attended the Stone-Campbell Journal Conference in 2006, John Castelein was asked by William Baker in a Q&A session with the key note speakers what he thought was most needed theologically in the SCM, and Castelein responded by saying there is a great need for an understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination.

Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology, Part 1: Forward and Preface

So far, I have had trouble figuring out things to blog about. I'm noticed that in some of the blogs I read (such as Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed and Richard Beck's Experimental Theology), the bloggers blog their way through books. So, I decided to give it a whirl. For this experiment, I decided to blog through Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences (from now on KBET), edited by Sung Wook Chung, a Korean theologian who teaches at Denver Seminary. Chung compiled essays from a number of reputable evangelical theologians with diverse perspectives, such as Pentecostal scholar Frank Macchia, Dutch Reformed scholar John Bolt, postconservative scholar John Franke, and narrative theologian Gabriel Fackre. Since its release in 2006, I have been interested in reading the book, but due to lack of extra time, I have yet to have a chance.

For those of you unfamiliar with Barth (1886-1968; pronounced "Bart"), he is widely considered to be one of the most important, if not the most important theologian of the twentieth century. Barth was Swiss and studied and taught in both Switzerland and Germany. While originally educated in theological liberalism, Barth reacted against this background while preaching at a church in Safenwil during World War I. Throughout his career, Barth wrote numerous works, such as his The Epistle to the Romans and his multi-volume work Church Dogmatics. Barth was also largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen Declaration, which critiqued the Nazis and their influence on the German church, shortly before Barth was kicked out of Germany by the Nazis in 1935.

While Barth reacted against liberalism, his theology has largely been seen as suspect by evangelicals who did not believe he went far enough in his critiques. Evangelicals often question his understanding of the inspiration of Scripture and revelation. Others evangelicals were bothered by Barth's mixed attitude toward pietism, which Donald Bloesch in the forward to KBET calls, "the seedbed of modern evangelicalsm" (xv).

In the forward, Bloesch argues that some contemporary evangelicals have come to appreciate Barth's theology as "a viable alternative to fundamentalism on the right and liberalism on the left" (xv). Despite this interest by some (including the contributors to KBET), various evangelicals, such as Francis Schaeffer, have seen Barth as "an adversary to true faith" (xv). These critiques have come due to his alleged universalism, accusations of "objectivism" (which Bloesch defines as "locating salvation completely outside of human striving and experience"), and his supposed overemphasis upon the person of Christ and neglect of the Holy Spirit (xvi).

Bloesch in particular critiques "Barth's questioning of the sacraments as means of grace" (xvi), something I wholeheartedly agree with. I see this as one of the, if not the most, troubling aspects of Barth's theology.

Bloesch, however, says there are various areas in which he learned from Barth's theology, such as "his emphasis on the gospel before the law, divine revelation over human reason, dogmatics before apologetics and theology over ideology" (xvi). Bloesch also praises Barth for his critique of the anthropocentric theology prevalent in the neo-Protestantism of his day, his ability to balance respect for Scripture with an critical appreciation for historical criticism, and his emphasis upon the mission of the church (xvii).

Chung notes in the preface that scholars not just in Europe and North America, but also in the pacific rim have recently developed a stronger interest in Barth. These thinkers see his theology as "more consistent with the historic evangelical faith than evangelicals have ever thought" (xix). Throughout KBET, various evangelical scholars who share this appreciation for Barth. Chung says the book "aims to be a balanced attempt to appraise Karl Barth's theology from a consensual evangelical perspective" (xx).

As a fan of Barth and an outsider to evangelicalism (but in a tradition that shared much with evangelicalism), I look forward to the preceding chapters. My next post will discuss Gabriel Fackre's chapter, "Revelation."