Category Archives: CD I/1

Church Dogmatics §2 Comments

Posted by on January 7, 2011 1 comment

§2.1 The Necessity of Dogmatic Prolegomena

Summary: Prolegomena is the introductory part of theology that seeks to understand its particular way of knowledge. Prolegomena, thus, is our attempt to speak about how we go about knowing in theology. Why do we need prolegomena? Well, first of all it isn’t something simply forced on us by modernity. Barth rejects the notion that somehow our present age is unique and different than all others that preceded it: “Knowledge of the revelation believed in the Church does not stand or fall with the general religious possibility that is made easier by the ancient view of things and more difficult by the modern” (p. 28). Moreover, this view (i.e. that the modern situation requires theology to offer a sort of justificatory prolegomena that explains how revelation is possible) is to be reject also on the grounds that revelation, as the church confesses it, has occured and it creates its own “point of contact in [hu]man[ity]” (p. 29). We cannot set about looking into the possibility of knowing divine revelation, we can only speak about its actuality. However, speaking in this way of course leaves open the possibility of heresy, that is a genuinely Christian deviations (or seeming deviation) from truth of revelation. This is a possibility that we can never foreclose, and which is in fact essential for the life of the church.

Money Quote: “In this conversation [between faith and heresy] the Church must wrestle with heresy in such  way that it may itself be the Church. And heresy must attack the Church because it is not sufficiently or truly the Church. . . . In true encounter with heresy faith is plunged into conflict with itself, because, so long and so far as it is not free of heresy, so long and so far as it must accept responsibility in relation to it, it cannot allow even the the voice of unbelief which it thinks it hears in heresy to cause it to treat as not at least also faith but simply as unbelief. It must understand it as a possibility of faith.” (p. 33)

§2.2 The Possibility of Dogmatic Prolegomena

Summary: Understanding prolegomena as the articulation of the way of knowledge that happens in theology means that there must be come place to start from which this exposition is intelligible and meaningful. Where is this place? Barth asks. Well, according to “modernist dogmatics” (i.e. Protestant liberalism), “the Church and faith are to be understood as links in a greater nexus of being” (p. 36). Thus, theology is understood on the basis of other human sciences (anthropology, metaphysics, etc.). Of course this proposition, as Barth notes, already has “a highly theological character” (p. 37) and involves the rejection of the church’s confession of revelation in Jesus Christ, as such Barth rejects it. On the other hand, Roman Catholicism has a different answer to this problem. The place from which theology can begin, on that view, is from the self-positing givenness of the Roman Church’s body of teaching through “Holy Scripture, Church tradition, and the living teaching apostlate of the Church infallibly representing and interpreting both” (p. 39). Barth rejects this option as well as in it “the action of God immediately disappears and is taken up into the action of the recipient of grace, that which is beyond all human possibilities changes at once into that which is enclosed within the reality of the Church, and the personal act of divine address becomes a constantly available relationship” (p. 40). Where does that leave us? Well, for “Evangelical dogmatics” it means that we don’t have a “place” in the world to start out from which it “can be known and said in advance, before actually embarking on dogmatics” what theology is and how it is possible. There is no general human or ecclesiastical possibility for specifying the correctness and possibility of theological knowledge. Rather this can only be an event, and event of God’s own speaking in Christ. Thus, “Only when and to the extent that such a Word of God is spoken by God Himself to the Church is there any right sense in speaking about God in the Church. Only when there is such a Word of God is there a criterion, namely, the Word itself, of the correctness of such speech and therefore of the correct criticism and correction of such speech, i.e., of dogmatics” (p. 42).

Money Quote: “The only possibility of dogmatics knowledge remaining to us on the basis of Evangelical faith is to be marked off 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.’ 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. On both sides we can only ask how it may be otherwise if the being of the Church is identical with Jesus Christ. If this is true, then 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.” (p. 41)

Church Dogmatics §1 Comments

Posted by on January 6, 2011 3 comments

This is cross-posted from our ongoing reading/discussion blog, Reading through Church Dogmatics. I figure I’ll post my summary sections here the day after I post them on the reading group blog so I can index them as we go and maybe it’ll end up being a helpful resource for people interested in the Church Dogmatics.

§1.1 The Church, Theology, Science

Summary: Theology, Barth argues, is the self-examination of the church regarding the content of what it claims about God. Theology, for Barth, is interrogatory, it subjects the church to self-examination in light of the God that the gospel proclaims. As such theology is primarily a self-critical discipline rather than an apologetic, or an attempt to synthesize other human disciplines into a scientific whole. In fact, for Barth, whatever relationship there might be between theology and other human sciences isn’t really that big of a deal. The point is that theology, fundamentally, is about subjecting ourselves to judgment on the basis of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Money Quote: “Theology does not in fact possess special keys to special doors. Nor does it control a basis of knowledge which might not find actualisation in other sciences. Nor does it know an object of enquiry necessarily concealed from other sciences. Only by failing to recognise the actualisation of revelation, the possibility of grace and therefore its own nature, could it possibly make any such claim.” (p. 5)

§1.2 Dogmatics as an Enquiry

Summary: First of all, since theology is a form of inquiry, that assumes that the truth about God can in fact be known by human beings. This assumption is made in the act of faith in Jesus Christ who “in His revelation gives Himself to faith” (p. 12) However, this means that Christian talk about God must constantly be tested by its conformity to Christ, an always ambiguous and uncertain enterprise. Ultimately it is “the freely acting God Himself and alone” who is “the truth of revelation” (p. 15-16). All our theological efforts can never be accorded the authority that ultimately belongs to the free and living Lord.

Money Quote: “Dogmatics is possible only as theologia crucis, 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. It is not possible as an effortless triumph or intermittent labour. It always takes place on the narrow way which leads from the enacted revelation to the promised revelation.” (p. 14)

§1.3 Dogmatics as an Act of Faith

Summary: Theology is an act of faith. It is undertaken by those who have been called together by Jesus Christ (the church). But faith itself is the “gracious address of God to [hu]man[ity], the free personal presence of Jesus Christ in his activity” (p. 18). As such dogmatics assumes not a human capacity or disposition, but rather depends wholly on the free, gracious, and present action of God in Christ. And thus the church cannot guarantee the possibility of doing dogmatics at all. It should set out to examine itself, interrogate itself, and strive for faithfulness, but it can only do so on the basis of hope, hope that God will be present, active, and will free us up in grace to speak rightly about the truth of the gospel. As such theological work must be understood finally as prayer (p. 23).

Money Quote: “Prayer can be the recognition that we accomplish nothing by our intentions, even though they be intentions to pray. Prayer can be the expression of our human willing of the will of God. Prayer can signify that for good or evil [hu]man[ity]justifies God and not himself. Prayer can be the human answer to the divine hearing already granted, the epitome of the true faith which we cannot assume of ourselves. We do not speak of true prayer if we say ‘must’ instead of ‘can.’” (p. 24)

Edited to add: Also, in the interest of directing conversation to the blog for the reading group, all of my own reflections/provocations will be included only in the original posts at the reading group blog. Over here we’ll just have the summaries and money quotes kept on file for indexing purposes down the road.

This happened

Posted by on February 2, 2010 14 comments

Whatever else we may want to say about him, or his theology, I cannot doubt that the God Barth wrestled with was the living God of the Gospel:

God was with us, with us His enemies, with us who were visited and smitten by His wrath. God was with us in all the reality and fulness with which He does what He does. He was with us as one of us. His Word became flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. His glory was seen here in the depths of our situation, and the full depths of our situation were disclosed for the first time when illumined then and there by the Lord’s glory, when in His Word He came down to the lowest parts of the earth (Eph 4:9), in order that there and in that way He might rob death of its power and bring life and immortality to light (2 Tim 1:10). This happened, as having happened conclusively, totally, and sufficiently. . . . This ‘God with us’ has happened. It has happened in human history and as a part of human history. Yet it has not happened as other parts of history usually happen. It does not need to be continued or completed. It does not point beyond itself or merely strive after a distant goal. It is incapable of any exegesis or even the slightest addition or subtraction. Its form cannot be changed. It has happened as a self-moved being in the stream of becoming. It has happened as completed event, fulfilled time, in the sea of the incomplete and changeable and self-changing.

~ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 115-16.

Proclamation and Theology

Posted by on May 21, 2009 Comments Off

Again from Barth:

Like the subject-matter of Christianity, Church proclamation must also remain free in the last resort, free to receive the command which it must always receive afresh from the free life of the subject matter of Christianity. Church proclamation and not dogmatics is immediate to God in the Church. Proclamation is essential, dogmatics is needed only for the sake of it. Dogmatics lives by it to the extent that it lives only in the Church. In proclamation, and in God, revelation and faith only to the degree that these are its objects, dogmatics is to seek its material. (CDI/1, 87)

The Constant Uneasiness of Theology

Posted by on May 21, 2009 6 comments

Barth’s ruminations on theological method are interesting on multiple levels, not the least of which is the way his thought bears on how we understand the relationship(s) between Christian theology and ideology (critique).

The Church can neither question its proclamation absolutely nor correct it absolutely. It can only exert itself to see how far it is questioned and how far it ought to be corrected. On its human work it can only do again a human work of criticising and correcting. And because this is so, it will be far from thinking that it either wants or is able to rid itself of the attack on its proclamation, the uneasiness which God Himself has prepared for it. (CD I/1, 75-76)

Here Barth makes a supremely important point about the nature of theological thinking: its irreducible contingency. Theology is not and never can be absolute, rather it is a contingent human work. As such it cannot expect to arrive at absolute, necessary, indubitably certitude. Rather the church should not want to escape from its situation of contingency, because it is in this state of constant uneasiness before God that we learn obedience, and that we learn to live in the sort of patience that attunes us to receive God’s own liberating address.

Thus, the church’s theological task, vis a vis ideology is never done. We can never hope to extricate ourselves from ideology, from the need to have our conceptual formulations critiqued and reconstituted. We can inhabit this place of uneasiness, however, precisely, and only because of God’s active faithfulness in Christ who meets us in our contingency and speaks his liberating word of reconciliation and redemption. Only by virtue of God’s own invasive, redeeming, and transfiguring action do we have the hope of passing, in Nate Kerr’s term, from ideology to doxology.

Serious Theology

Posted by on May 21, 2009 1 comment

Barth certainly can always boast of his energy. Even in the most technical sections of the Church Dogmatics (and CD I/1 is almost certainly that) there is nothing but pure energeticness when it comes to the material of theology: the proclamation of the gospel:

Again, how disastrously the Church must misunderstand itself if it can imagine that theological reflection is a matter for quiet situations and periods that invite contemplation, a kind of peace-time luxury for which we are not only permitted but even commanded to find no time should things become really serious and exciting! As though there could be any more urgent task for a Church under assault from without than that of consolidating itself within, which means doing theological work! As though the venture of proclamation did not mean that the Church permanently finds itself in an emergency! As though theology could be done properly without reference to this constant emergency! Let there be no mistake, Because of these distorted ideas about theology, and dogmatics in particular, there arises and persists in the life of the Church a lasing and growing deficit for which we cannot expect those particularly active in this function to supply the needed balance. The whole Church must seriously want a serious theology if it is to have a serious theology. (CD I/1, 76-77)

Barth on Preaching and the Sacraments

Posted by on May 18, 2009 14 comments

In distinguishing Evangelical dogmatics from liberal Protestantism on the one hand, and Roman Catholicism on the other, Barth spends a great deal of time focusing on the issue of proclamation and the role in plays in the life of the  church. Here seems to be one of the central points at which Barth’s ecclesiology differs from and challenges Catholic ecclesiology and, more generally, any supremely sacramental ecclesiology.

In speaking of (and commending) the Reformers’ break with Rome, Barth argues that

Proclamation of the basis of the promise which has been laid once for all, and therefore proclamation in the form of symbolic action [the sacrament], had to be and to remain essential for them [the Reformers]. But this proclamation presupposes that the other [preaching], namely, repetition of the biblical promise, is taking place. The former must exist for the sake of the latter, and therefore the sacrament for the sake of preaching, not vice versa. (CD1/1, p. 70)

This seems to be one of the key issues for understanding Barth’s ecclesiology in contrast to Roman Catholicism and other strongly eucharistic traditions. For Barth the nature of grace as God’s “unfathomably free act” (p. 68) requires us to find the church’s “center” not in any act which the church possesses or hands on as if “there flows forth from Jesus Christ a steady and unbroken stream or influence of divine-human being on His people” (p. 68). Any such unbroken continuity between God’s free grace and the being of the church is to be rejected in Barth’s thought. There can be no embracing the idea of the sacrament as a “causare, continere el conferre gratiam” (causing, containing, and conferring grace, p. 69) in that the relationship between divine grace and human response cannot be one of cause and effect, but of “the Word and faith.”

Thus, at the heart of Barth’s claim here is an insistence that the church does not possess or cause grace through its own actions, even the sacraments. Rather the church’s “center” must be the proclamation of the Gospel through which God, thought the Holy Spirit brings people to faith in the event of hearing the Word. As such Barth’s ecclesiology (at least here) is strongly informed by a theology of the missio dei. The church exists by virtue of its being the passive recipient of God’s missional entrance into the world in Christ, which the church then proclaims as an act of obedience. What Barth offers is a missional ecclesiology centered on the ek-centric movement of God’s Word which the church hears and proclaims to the world rather than a sacramental eccesiology centered on the church’s mediation of grace to itself.

Barth on Heresy

Posted by on May 12, 2009 Comments Off

In §2 of Cd I/1 Barth has a number of interesting reflections on the nature of heresy and its relationship to faith:

By heresy we understand a form of Christian faith which we cannot deny to be a form of Christian faith from the formal standpoint, i.e., in so far as it, too, relates to Jesus Christ, to His Church, to baptism, Holy Scripture and the common Christian creeds, but in respect of which we cannot really understand what we are about when we recognise it as such, since we can understand its content, its interpretation of these common presuppositions only as a contradiction of faith. (p. 32)

So heresy is paradoxical for Barth. On the one hand it can only be understood as something recognizably Christian. On the other hand understanding it as Christians presents one with a contradiction in terms of the essence of Christianity. Further to this:

Because of its paradoxical nature, heresy is for faith an important factor. Or, as we might say, unbelief in the form of heresy is for faith and important factor—which is not the case when it is present as pure unbelief. Because in heresy it is present as a form of faith, it must be taken seriously at this point and there can and must be serious conflict between faith and heresy. (p. 32)

Heresy is important for faith, not because it is complete unbelief, but precisely because it is a form of faith with which we have to reckon.

In true encounter with heresy faith is plunged into conflict with itself, because, so long and so far as it is not free of heresy, so long and so far as heresy affects it, so long and so far as it must accept responsibility in relation to it, it cannot allow even the voice of unbelief which it thinks it hears in heresy to cause it to treat it as not at least also faith but simply as unbelief. It must understand it as a possibility of faith [Italics added]. To be sure, it will see it as a profoundly incomprehensible one, which can be regarded only as a possibility of disruption and destruction of faith, as a possibility against which it must be on guard. Yet it must still understand it as a possibility of faith, and therefore and to this extent—hence the need for powerful defense—as its own possibility, a possibility within and not without the Church, hard though it may be to think of it as such. This is the reason why this conflict is a serious conflict. (p. 33)

This is also the reason why I often find it more important to criticize other forms of Christian faith and practice than the secular godless liberals of the world. Paganism can never be as important to Christian faith as heresy.

Anyone think Rowan Williams’s take on heresy and orthodoxy might have been influenced by these passages from Barth? There seems to be more than a few similarities to his arguments in Arius here.

Dogmatics as Persistence

Posted by on May 11, 2009 Comments Off

More from the early sections of CD I/1 on the nature of dogmatics according to Barth:

“Dogmatics as an enquiry presupposes that they true content of Christian talk about God must be known by men. Christian speech must be tested by its conformity to Christ. This conformity is never clear and unambiguous. To the finally and adequately given divine answer there corresponds a human question which can maintain its faithfulness only in unwearied and honest persistence. There corresponds even at the highest point of attainment the open: ‘Not that I had already attained.’ Dogmatics receives even the standard by which it measures in an act of human appropriation. Hence it has to be enquiry. It knows the light which is intrinsically perfect and reveals everything in a flash. Yet it knows it only in the prism of this act, which, however radically or existentially it may be understood, is still a human act, which in itself is no kind of surety for the correctness of the appropriation in question, which is by nature fallible and therefore stands in need of criticism, of correction, of critical amendment and repetition.” (p. 13-14)

Where God May Speak

Posted by on May 11, 2009 3 comments

And for the first quote from my brand new, and freaking awesome Barth set, I give you a quote from CD I/1 that, contrary to many of the “invention of the antichrist”-type caricatures of Barth, exhibits his quite robust theology of creation, culture, and revelation:

“If the question [of] what God can do forces theology to be humble, the question [of] what is commanded forces it to concrete obedience. God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does. . . . God make speak to us through a pagan or an atheist, and thus give us to understand that the boundary between the Church and the secular world can still take at any time a different course from that which we think we discern.” (CD I/1, 55)

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