Was ist christliche Erkenntnis?

I'm revisiting old essays and reworking them for the final form of my thesis. In the process I'm discovering Karl Barth in a new dimension. Childs is often said to be Barthian, and this is surely right. But I'm still not sure the implications of what that means have been fully worked out. Is there a treatment to date which expresses the canonical approach in terms of Barth's teaching of the Three Forms of the Word (neither Xun nor Driver mention it)? Unfortunately, I'm only going to be briefly touching on this myself as 50% of my thesis is enacting Childs' hermeneutic and not explaining its intellectual ancestry. Nevertheless, grasping the dogmatic underpinnings of the "canonical approach" (as Childs understood it) is key to implementing it exegetically. I'm grateful to Childs for having introduced me to Barth, whose writings make my heart race almost as much as those of Childs. I do wonder how much my love of Childs is in fact a love of Barth, where the one stops and the other continues. I don't know my Barth well enough to judge just yet.

Here's an awesome quote on the nature of Christian (Biblical) truth that embodies what it is that I love about Barth, and what it is that makes the canonical approach so rich:

Der Begriff des Wissens, der scientia, genügt nicht, umd das zu beschreiben, was christilche Erkenntnis ist. Wir müssen vielmehr zurückgehen auf das, was im Alten Testament die Weisheit genannat wird, was der Grieche sophia nannte und der Lateiner sapientia, um das Wissen der Theologie in seiner Fülle zu erfassen. Sapientia unterscheidet sich von dem engeren Begriff scientia, Weisheit unterscheidet sich von Wissennicht dadurch, daß sie nicht  auch Wissen in sich enthielte, aber darüber hinaus redet dieser Begriff von einem Wissen, das ein praktisches Wissen sit, das die ganze Existenz des Menschen umfaßt. Weißheit ist das Wissen, von dem wir faktisch, praktisch leben dürfen, ist die Empirie und ist die Theorie, welche darin gewaltig ist, daß sie sofort praktisch ist, daß sie das Wissen ist, welches unser Leben beherrscht, welches wirklich ein Licht auf unserem Pfad ist. Nicht ein Licht zum Bestaunen und Betrachten, nicht ein Licht um allerhand Feuerwerke damit anzuzünden - und wenn es auch die tiefsinnigsten philosophischen Spekulationen wären! - sonder das Licht auf unserem Weg, das über unserem Tun und über unserem Reden stehen darf, das Licht in unseren gesunden und in unseren kranken Tagen, in unserer Armut und in unserem Reichtum, das Licht, das nicht nur dann leuchtet, wenn wir Momente der Einsicht zu haben meinen, sonder das uns begleitet auch in unsere Torheit hinein, das nicht verlöscht, wenn alles verlöscht, wenn das Ziel unseres Lebens im Tode sichtbar wird. Von diesem Licht, von dieser Wahrheit leben, das heißt christliches Erkennen. Christliches Erkennen heißt in der Wahrheit Jesus Christi leben.

Karl Barth, Dogmatik im Umriss, in der Universität Bonn vorgelesen, 1946.

Quote of the day: Gunkel/Barth

Daß es sich im Alten Testament um eine bewegende Sache handeln möchte, fing mir erst in Berlin bei Gunkel aufzugehen (Nachwort 190f.; Busch, Leben 51; cited in Bächli, Das Alte Testament in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik von Karl Barth, 3.

What was it that Barth saw in Gunkel? I won't share my thoughts here, as my own answer constitutes part of my thesis (though see Bächli on pp. 324-325). I just wanted to share this quote as a witness to the fact that Barth, and Childs, never intended or wanted to escape the challenge of either the Enlightenment or historical-criticism. Their approaches go through it and thus result in a vision of Scripture and God which, as far as I am concerned at least, makes my heart burn. I worry that the contemporary growth in "theological exegesis" hasn't fully grasp the move made by Barth and then Childs on this score.

Otto Bächli's book is awesome (I'm surprised Childs' didn't cite it in his Biblical Theology). Incidentally, he was born in Switzerland in 1920 and there a section on him on this amazing website by the Swiss Reformed Church dedicated to the memories of Swiss pastors during the war. Here's the reason he got into Old Testament:

Wir hatten ein Bauernhaus mit vier Wohnungen, und in einer lebten Juden. Wir sprachen auch Jiddisch im Umgang mit jüdischen Kindern. Wohl aus diesen Erfahrungen heraus wurde später mein Hang zum Alten Testament und zum Hebräischen sehr stark.

Barth, Ps 24, and the unity of the Testaments

Christians believe that the Old Testament witnesses to  God-in-Jesus. Jesus himself made this clear to his disciples as he walked with them on the road to Emmaus, opening their eyes to the way the Law and the Prophets spoke of his suffering and resurrection. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if you enjoy thinking about this kind of thing), he didn’t leave behind a divinely inspired hermeneutical key which can infallibly illuminate the manner in which the Old Testament goes about doing this. We are left with a frustrating inner conviction but the impossibility of proving this conviction to the unbeliever. This reminds me of Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ demand for a sign, when he simply states that what he says is true because he is the one who says it. I can imagine how frustrating that must have been! Somehow the truth is “self-affirming.”

For my part, I do believe that the Old Testament witnesses to God-in-Jesus, and the church has consistently confessed the same (cf. the abundant allegorical interpretation for the vast majority of the church’s history, including throughout the Reformation). However, like many in the church, I also struggle to back up this claim with a philosophical or theological account of how this happens. To draw another analogy with responses to the historical Jesus, I find myself in the similar position of Jesus’ neighbours in Nazareth, who , when confronted with his claim that he is the initiator of the kingdom of God, responded with the question: “isn’t that Joseph’s son… ?” (note the title of a recent book whose contents would seem to affirm this surface recognition as the last word on the matter). The analogous Christian version that I hear again and again is: “is that the God of the New Testament?” The answer is “yes,” and if you can’t figure out why or how than you better take stock of the adequacy your own grasp of the gospel. I experience this challenge regularly.

This is not to say that there are not a host of helpful theses that each in their own way shed light on the phenomenon, allowing Christians to both deepen their own faith as well as present it to others. The recognition of mystery ought to function as an invitation to enter it, rather than as an excuse to just give up wrestling with the issue in the first place (cf. A. Louth, Discerning the Mystery).

One thesis that touches on this issue was made by Karl Barth, which I will now share in massively reduced form (primarily because I have only read this thesis in a paper about something else, namely  the influence of Barth on Miskotte). It’s about the continuity  and discontinuity between the Testaments:

Similarity	Disimilarity
Both Testaments see God as one who freely initiates relationship with human kind.	The OT has a variety of covenants and only an implicit Messianic hope. The NT has only one covenant and the Messiah is identified as Jesus of Nazareth.
Both Testaments recognize the mysterious hiddenness of God.	The OT sees this hiddenness in God’s judgement of the nations, including Israel. The NT sees this in God’s judgement of his Son. God’s judgement in the NT is, in some sense, final.
Both Testaments have an “already-not yet” eschatology (my phrase), as God is both one who is already experienced but also one who is coming.	The NT not only see’s Jesus as the One who is coming, it is waiting for the one who has already come [though I have to admit, I don’t see how this is any different from the OT perspective, for there God also already came … ].

The framework for these similarities/differences is Barth’s concept of the relationship between Divine Revelation and time. There are three “times,” the time of the expectation of revelation (Old Testmaent), the time of the fulfilment of revelation (Jesus’ history), and the age of remembering the fulfilment of revelation (New Testament). It’s important to note that the NT is not the fulfilment of the OT (contra Louth, cited above), Jesus is. The NT and OT both function to point to a single referent that stands outside of themselves. They do this in their own idiom and from their own perspective (hence the differences), but their referential object is the same (hence the similar structure and content).

As you may have noticed from my comments in square brackets, it seems to me as if Barth is not doing full justice to the OT (though feel free to correct me here). In short, he seems to overemphasises the NT’s “already” element in contrast to the OT’s “not yet.” Isn’t it the case that the OT already witnesses to a past fulfilment that provides the “ontological” ground for the possibility of the history that ensues? The example I’m thinking of is the opening strophe of Ps 24: “The earth is the LORD’s … for he has founded it upon the seas … .” Isn’t this past act as decisive in its grounding of God’s history with his people as Jesus’ resurrection from the dead? E. Otto talks of God’s acts here as  creating the “Möglichkeit” (possibility) for the obedience found in vv. 3-6: There can be such a thing as a righteous, obedient Jacob (v. 6), because God’s stabilization of the earth in the face of chaos guarantees the validity of such obedience. In a similar way, the New Testament talks of resurrection life in the Spirit creating a heart of flesh and the capacity to be obedient to the Torah.

So how do I interpret the relation of Ps 24:1-2 in relation to the NT? Jesus can’t have “fulfilled” it because Ps 24:1-2 is not pointing forward to a moment yet to be fulfilled, it is pointing back to something already established once and for all. As mentioned, the relation  seems to be of a structural nature. In fact, the analogy can be expanded to apply to Jesus’ entire mission, for just as in Ps 24 strophe 1 (vv. 1-2) is the precondition for strophe 2 (vv. 3-6), these two strophes are somehow “consummated” by strophes 3 and 4 (vv. 7-10; on my interpretation of the poetic structure, I should add). Similarly, Jesus was raised from the dead (strophe 1), has cleansed his people (strophe 2) and will return again to consummate his work (i.e. Advent; strophes 3-4). Except that even here our analogy runs into conceptual difficulties, for it is the case that  Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension are all contained in vv. 7-10: his death was a battle with death, his resurrection was his victory and his ascension was its consummation (i.e. Ascension not advent). So are vv. 7-10 about Christ’s return to earth as king or his ascension to heaven to be enthroned? In addition to this, where does this leave strophe 1 if the resurrection in is the final two strophes? The odd thing is that strophe 1 in fact has the same content as strophes 3-4, albeit on a “mythological” rather than “historical” plain! Strophe 1 is also a kind of battle, this time with the seas, and it is also a proclamation of victory, i.e. the establishment of a viable living space. So does Ps 24 taken on its own, regardless of its correlation to an external event in time (not in space: Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem!) contain its own odd witness to “ontological-unity-in-temporal-sequence”? Srophes 3 and 4 “consummate” strophe 1, even as the “recapitulate” its content. The “chronos” is different but not the “chairos.”

 The intermediate conclusion  all this mind bending has for me is that every time I try and relate Psalm 24 to the Gospels my temporal categories are consistently being confirmed (there is a genuine analogy) and subverted. It’s like a lover who tempts me with a kiss and a flash of her eye-lashes but teasingly disappears around the corner, leaving a trail of perfume to beckon me on (Song of Songs was always had a hermeneutical function for church and synagogue!).  I see the analogy, am breathless at the sheer scope of who Jesus is and what he has achieved, and yet still am left to struggle and see how the past and present within an Psalm’s “narrative world” is “fulfilled” by the Gospel’s presentation of past and present, a past and present that can be collapsed into one moment.

I mentioned above that the OT’s inevitable and consistent challenge to the Christian claim about its Christological content ought to primarily be a challenge to Christians, not to prove their faith to the sceptics but to deepen the content of their own faith, which is always far from perfect. I can’t claim to have a concrete answer to my issue with Ps 24 above (though I’m working on it!), but it has forced me to return to my own construal of the “gospel” and to see it with new eyes. Of particular relevance here is the concept of the relation between the “ontological” and “economic” Trinity, God in himself and God for us. McGlasson summarizes the relation as follows:

God’s sending of his Son for our salvation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are a replication in time of God’s eternal self-identity. God’s redemptive love for humanity is an expression of God’s free decision to draw us into a relationship with himself, which is based on the relationship of love that he himself is (McGlasson, Invitation, 198).

As Barth implies above, the NT is not the fulfilment of the OT, it points to it’s fulfilment. This means that drawing structural analogies between the OT and the NT can only take us so far. They point us in the right direction, as the content of the NT is the same as the OT. But the reality itself is greater than what is at most the partial testimony of both Testaments (cf. Childs, Biblical Theology). Hence the necessity of higher level dogmatic theology in order to grasp what is really going on in Scripture. The practice of theology, after all, originally consisted in nothing other than meditation upon the mystery of the ontological trinity. I think I ought to learn to do the same.  


[For a post on Moberly's interpretation of the Emmaus story, go here; see also my post Reading in a Revised Frame of Reference].

Continuity in Childs' exegesis

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm starting a new thread looking at the ways in which Brevard Childs read the Bible. The content of these posts will be pretty simple: I'm simply going to be posting extracts from his two major commentaries: Exodus and Isaiah, juxtaposed in relation to each other and in relation to what I consider to be certain central themes in his work. One could argue at this point that these two commentaries stem from totally different points in Childs career and thus cannot be simply juxtaposed. Almost like a bracket, the Exodus commentary was written at a time before Childs had devloped the concept of a "canonical approach," whereas the Isaiah commentary was published at the end of his career, at a time when the very term "canonical approach" had begun to become problematic for him (due to its misinterpretation by others - do I now belong to that crowd? That's for you to judge).

That a development in thought occurred is clear. My task is nevertheless to highlight the continuity across Childs' career, and I will juxtapose his exegesis from both commentaries in relation to specific issues.

If I were to define this continuity in terms of a phrase, I guess I would say it is his Barthian stance vis-à-vis the Bible, namely, that the text is a "witness" to a reality outside of itself. This “genre category” (because it functions as a description of the nature of the text itself) provided Childs with the impetus in his later career for re-considering allegory as a legitimate mode of appropriating the Bible theologically. Already in a colloquium on Barth in 1969 Childs notes how

Barth wants to go through the text, to the reality, that the text becomes a transparency, that the walls that separate the reader are dissolved, and one then begins to confront the reality itself.”¹

This was his point of difference with Hans Frei, who was also present at the colloquium. In contrast to pure narrative referentiality, Childs believes

One has to keep in mind that the early church, in the controversy with Judaism, took a quite different move. Where the Jews were saying, read the text! read the text!, the Christians said, there's something behind the text. It's what the text points to, namely: Jesus Christ. And there was a dialectic between the reality and the text.”²

In a later re-working of the same presentation, Childs notes with admiration how Barth's exbegesis was compatible “with the whole Christian tradition,” that there is a certain “family resemblance.”³

This final term became a key phrase in his look at the history of Christian interpretation of Isaiah.

We will see how this works itself out exegetically in the posts to come.

1Childs, “Karl Barth,” 34.

2Childs, “Karl Barth,” 56.

3Childs, “Karl Barth: The Preacher's Exegete,” unpublished lecture at Yale, 1969 (Thanks to Daniel Driver for providing me with a copy of this paper. He himself received a copy from Christopher Seitz). Childs' last publication before his death, Struggle, makes this phrase and reality programmatic.

Barth on the Christological centre of the Old and New Testaments

Josh Lim of Reformed Blogging has posted the following quote by Barth which I find very helpful for understanding Childs' own approach to Biblical theology (especially the last bit, which I print in bold). It affirms, once again, Childs' strong Barthian outlook.

As regards handling of Old Testament texts, we maintain that for us the Old Testament is valid only in relation to the New. If the church has declared itself to be the lawful successor of the synagogue, this means that the Old Testament is witness to Christ, before Christ but not without Christ. Each sentence in the Old Testament must be seen in this context. Historical exegesis can and must be done, but at the same time we have to ask whether this exegesis does justice to the context in which the Old and New Testaments stand. Even in a sermon on Judges 6:3 it is possible both insist on the literal sense and also to set one’s sights on Christ. As a wholly Jewish book, the Old Testament is a pointer to Christ. As regards the justification of allegory, we have again to refer to the relation between the Old Testament and the New. In the Old Testament the natural sense is the issue. Preaching must bring out what the Old Testament passage actually says, but in a way that affirms the basic premise on which the church adopted the Old Testament. This does not mean that we will give the passage a second sense — just as we are not to oppose historical and Christian exposition to one another. Instead, we will see that this passage in its immanence points beyond itself. It is a signpost that gives us direction. The Old Testament points forwards, the New Testament points backward, and both point to Christ.[*]

A "signpost that gives us a direction," what a helpful way of thinking of the relation between the literal and spiritual senses.

For a statement by Childs that repeats this: "As a wholly Jewish book, the Old Testament is a pointer to Christ" - go to my post The Task of Jewish/Christian exegesis.

For a quote by Francis Watson on this issue go here.

[*] Karl Barth, Homiletics Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Donald E. Daniels (Louisville, KY: WJK, 1991) 80-81.

What does Barth mean by the "faktische Verheißung der Existenz Jesu"?

I'm interested in both translation possibilities and a conceptual clarification. The phrase comes from Barth's KD III §41 p. 68 (I don't own an English translation). Here's the quote:

Das Haupt der Gemeinde ... kann ja das alttestamentliche Zeugnis an sich und als solches noch nicht bezeichnen und mit Namen nennen. Es muß sich begnügen, seine Existenz faktisch zu verheißen und mit dieser Verheißung zum Gehorsam und zur Hoffnung aufzurufen.

Faktisch can mean different things: "factual," "actual," "objective," "literal," "virtual," "effective," "de facto," "in practice." It seems here that Barth is talking about the reality of Jesus Christ as something that transcends the particular and partial presentations of him as we find them in the various strands of the New Testament. He's bigger than the New Testament and can be witnessed to adequately enough by the Old Testament too (if only in a different "idiom"). As such, Barth could be talking about the Old Testament's witness to the reality of Jesus as such. The problem is that here the word faktisch is an adverb modifying the verb (he doesn't say "faktische Existenz"). It would seem that he is talking about a quality of promise, rather than a quality of existence. The promise itself is "faktisch." Or maybe I'm just being too pernickety. Perhaps translating with a kind of adverbial phrase could make faktisch apply to Existenz after all. One possibility would be: "It must be content with promising his existence in terms of its substance [rather then literally identifying Him]."

Incidentally, it would seem that this (apparently) "Barthian" emphasis on the adequacy of the Old Testament as a direct witness of Jesus is not shared by all Christian theologians. In his "Translator's Introduction" to the work of another Barthian, Heiko Miskotte (When the Gods are Silent), J. W. Doberstein makes the following criticism:

It is not a primary function of a translator to criticize a book which he has translated. I cannot conceal the fact, however, that I do not share one of its basic points of view, namely, its completely Barthian orientation. Though the author is certainly right in insisting that the Testaments must not be isolated from each other, he, following Barth, sees no real redemptive progress from the Old to the New Testament, but rather tends to regard them as two concentric circles which revolve around an identical centre. There would seem to be no qualitative difference between the Testaments, only a difference in manner of presentation. This results in the typically Barthian confusion of Law and Gospel. (1967, p. x)

I have to say, this is one of the things I really like about Barth (and it is picked up with vigour by Brevard Childs; cf. his Biblical Theology; cf. also Seitz, Word Without End). Could someone explain what Doberstein means by Barth's "confusion of Law and Gospel"?

Update: Howard of Sans Contexte has kindly supplied the following quote by Barth in the comments:

"...There are still far too many things which I cannot understand in the counter-thesis, advanced with varying degrees of sharpness and consistency by these authors, that the Gospel and the Law differ and are even antithetical in significance and function.

I do not understand (1) with what biblical or inherent right, on the basis of what conception of God, His work and His revelation, and above all in the light of what Christology, they can speak, not of one intrinsically true and clear Word of God, but of two Words in which He speaks alternately and in different ways to man according to some unknown rule."

Barth's "canonical theory"

I have already posted a quote by Martin Buber which shows strong affinities to Childs' "canonical theory," followed by another quote by the Protestant scholar Jörg Jeremias. Today I add a quote by Karl Barth. It is a response to the question of the legitimacy of the churchly practice of "theology," given that the Bible itself seems to nowhere have a fully developed form of reflective theology. The Dutch Reformed scholar Frans Breukelman frames the issue as follows:

Nirgends ... sehen wir es geschehen ... , daß die biblischen Zeugen ... , ... außer ... was sie uns ... direkt zu sagen haben, .... nun auch noch einmal um der Deutlichkeit willen so etwas wie ein Stück "Theologie" als Erläuterung eigens dazugeben, wie etwa[]: "Seht, das sind nun unsere Motive und Argumente gewesen, es so zu sagen, wie wir es taten, die und die Absicht haben wir dabei gehabt, als wir uns mit der Formgebung unserer Texte beschäftigten, dies und das war es, was wir vor allem möglichst kräftig agen wollte[n], um damit zugleich gegen bestimmte Mißverständnisse und Abweichungen und Irrtümer möglichst effektive anzugehen (1986: 18).

My first thought was "wait a minute ... Canonical process?" I was thus relieved to hear him later say:

Und doch haben wir es in dem sermo de Deo des biblischen Zeugnisses mit "Theologie" zu tun. Bei der Exegese biblischer Texte spüren wir nämlich von Mal zu Mal, daß der Formgebung dieser Texte mit einer großen Mannigfaltigkeit von Tendenzen theologische Reflexion zugrunde liegt (p. 20).

He backs this up with a the following great quote from Barth:

Die Sache [nämlich theología] war der neutestamentlichen Gemeinde sehr wohl bekannt ... als die Frage nach der Gestaltung des christlichen Denkens, Redens, Handelns und Lebens im Licht seines Ursprungs, Gegenstands und Inhalts. Nicht nur die paulinischen und johanneischen, sondern alle Schriten des NTs sind offenkundig auch Dokumente mannigfaltiger, in diesem Sinn 'theologisher' Besinnung und Arbeit, die ihre Autoren damit auch ihren Lesern zugemutet haben. In den Tatsachenberichten wie in den Lehren der Apostel und der Evangelisten steckt ein nicht zu unterschätzendes Maß solcher Reflexion: sie haben sich - das bezeugen die erhaltenen Texte auf der ganzen Linie - die Frage nach dem Sinn und Recht ihres Sprechens, gemessen and dem ihnen vorgegebenen Objekt, gestellt, haben sie, Jeder in seiner Weise (immer im Blick auf die sie umgebende Gemeinde und in Auseinandersetzung mit allerlei besserer oder schlechterer Theologie, die auch in deren Mitte getrieben wurde) beantwortet, und, wie im besonderen die Pastoralbreife zeigen, auch an ihre Nachfolger weitergegeben ... ." (KD IV/3, pp. 1008; cited in Breukelman, p. 35).

Bibliography: F.-W. Breukelman, Umschreibung des Begriffs einer "Biblischen Theologie" (orig. niederl. 1980): Texte und Kontext Nr. 31/32 (1986) 13-39.

P.S. I haven't read this yet, but here is a fascinating-looking article on Breukelman, who really comes very close to Childs's canonical approach in the essay above, which includes anecdotes about a debate he had with Eberhard Jüngel in the presence of Karl Barth on the role of the Old Testament in the Church. If I've glanced through the article correctly, it looks as if Barth was with Breukelman.

Barth's Dogmatics, searchable and for free, online!

Jim West, via Stephen Cook, links to an amazing online resource: Karl Barth's entire Church Dogmatics, in English, searchable and for free on the Internet!

Is there anything else that can brighten up your day more than that?

Update:

OK, something else brightened up my day today. On this post, John Hobbins said this:

The most vital form of biblical criticism has always been Sachkritik, that is, straightforward engagement, disagreement not excluded, with the substance of a biblical text.

The word Sachkritik and its emphasis on substance has become so central to me over the past couple of years, yet, apart from Childs, I've not come accross anyone who uses it. So thank you John: you also made may day!

Von Rad was a Barthian

And this, curtesy of W.H. Schmidt, proves it (I think; there is now an English summary beneath):

"Im Grunde sucht G.v.Rad in vierfacher Hinsicht als Zusammenhang zu verstehen, was historisch-kritschem Denken auseinanderzufallen droht:

1) "Was Israel selbst von jahwe direkt ausgesagt hat", also das Glaubens-Zeugnis oder Bekenntnis Israels, und die (überlieferungs- bzw.redaktionsgeschichtlich gewonnene) Intention der Text in ihrer Situation. "Der Theologe muß sich vor allem unmittelbar mit den Zeugnissen beschäftigen, also ... nach der jeweiligen kerygmatischen Intention fragen" (I4, 118).

2) Die Geschichte - G.v.Rad kann sagen: die "Geschichtstatsachen", "Fakten" (118) - und die alttestamentliche Deutung der Geschichte aus dem Glauben.

3) Die Offenbarung Gottes - "Der wesentlichste Gegenstand einer Theologie des AT ... das lebendige Wort Jahwes, wie es an Israel ... je und je ergangen ist" (125); "Was Israel selbst als den eigentlichen Gegenstand seines Glaubens angesehen hat, nämlich die Offendbarung Jahwes" (127) - und Israels Glaube, der bekenntnishafte Bericht von Gottes Wirken.

4) Gottes Taten und Gottes Wort, "die Offenbarung Jahwes in der Geschichte in Worten und Taten" (127; vg. II4, 381ff).

Von diesem Ansatz aus gelingt es G.v. Rad, statt Einzelaussagen aus verschiedenen Zusammenhängen zu einem Gedankenkomplex zusammzustellen, in einem hohem Maße, Theologie als Exegese zu betreiben und umgekehrt die Exegese in die Theologie einzubeziehen, die Texte selbst zu Wort kommen zu lassen und dabei Feinheiten theologischer Differenzierungen in den einzelnen Literaturwerken aufzunehmen.

[...here Schmidt critiques the limitations of von Rad's emphasis on "history"...]

Ausdrücklich möchte G.v.Rad mehr und anderes bieten als eine geschichtliche Darstellung der alttestamentlichen Religion oder eine "Geschichte des Jahweglaubens" - so nur der einleitende I. Hauptteil. Da Israel in seinen Geschichtszeugnissen "nicht auf seinen Glauben, sondern auf Jahwe hingewiesen" hat (I4, 124), der Glaube also nicht "Gegenstand", vielmehr nur "Träger, Mund" des Bekenntnisses war, wird eigentlich "die Offenbarung Jahwes in der Geschichte in Worten und Taten" (127) zu Gegestand einer Theologie des Alten Testaments." [*]

No wonder Childs loved him so much!

Update: I was asked in the comments to briefly summarize this in English. Here it is:

In short, von Rad tries to hold 4 things together that historical-criticism threatens to separate.:

1) The confessional witness of the text and the historically particular intentionality of the text. The Bible, in its particularity, is kerygmatic.

2) The interelation between the facts of history and their interpretation (I'm not too sure what Schmidt was saying here).

3) God himself as the living object of the Bible's witness and the human witness to this.

4) God's deeds and his word.

Schmidt goes on to say that by holding these things together von Rad was able to practice "theology as exegesis" as well as bring exegesis into theology without overlooking the nuances of the particular texts. The text in bold reads:

Because Israel, in its historical witnesses, did not refer to its own faith but rather to Jahwe himself, in other words, because faith was not the "object," rather the "bearer, mouth" of its witness, the revelation of Jahwe in history in words and deeds becomes the object of a theology of the Old Testament.

[*] Werner H. Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube (Neukirchner Verlag, 2004), 18-19.

Questions for Barth on the unity of Scripture

I'm currenty re-reading my notes on Hermann Diem's excellent Dogmatics, which is less a treatment of the doctrines of the church as an analysis of the nature of dogmatic theology itself. I'm particularly interested in his treatment of Barth's approach to scripture, as I'm convinced this played a foundational role in the development of Childs' so-called Canonical Approach (he references the book in a footnote at a critical juncture in his article "Interpretation in Faith" [1964], available on ATLA).

Diem rhetorically poses Barth the following five questions (pp. 98-100) on the nature of the unity of Scripture, along with how he surmises Barth would have answered:

Q 1) But in what does this unity consist?

Barth would have to reply that it consists in the fact that all these texts bear witness to the one Christ, though he would certainly not disagree that they do so in different ways.

Q 2) Does this unity consist only in the words and acts of Jesus Himself, or also in the witness of the NT authors?

In light of Barth's assumptions, the answer would be that the illuminating unity of the witness to Christ must be presupposed despite the obvious diversity of the witnesses, but that it cannot be demonstrated by the method of historical comparison, since, on the contrary, this alleged unity alone makes possible and checks the comparison.

Q3) But when the historical comparison leads to such different conclusions, how can this dogmatically assumed unity act concretely as a norm?

Barth can't extricate himself from this by saying it's just a matter of the “how” and not the “what”. Barth equates the question of historical truth with that of the true meaning and continuity of the Biblical texts, in connexion with which he is thinking primarily of each individual author. Thus even as regards the comparison of the texts it must be true that historical truth is also theological truth, and conversely. He would say, and in fact would have to say, that historical study, if well done, cannot challenge this supposed unity.

Q 4) But then, what about the studies that contradict this?

We do not know what Barth would say to this, and so will endeavour to think out the question further for ourselves.

It cannot be Barth's opinion that such normative authority would simply flow from a concordance of Biblical texts, since this could only mean a levelling out of their concrete individuality, on the elucidation of which through Biblical theology Barth places such emphasis. But if Barth avoids this method, must he not have some other norm by which he appraises the values of individual Scriptural texts? But this attempt to find a canon within the canon he also rejects, even if it were derived from the canon itself—as for example, the doctrine of justification—because this would mean fettering the facultas semetipsi interpretandi of Scripture. Nor could he consider as such a possible norm the preaching of the historical Jesus, since this is accessible to us only in Scripture, which we must not seek to get behind.

Q 5) But in this circular argument—which states that dogmatics must test present day preaching as regards its accordance (a) with the word of Scripture, and (b) with revelation, which is apprehensible only in Scripture—how can we find a norm for dogmatics?

Barth repudiates critically ordering and interpreting in detail the Biblical texts from a systematic viewpoint derived from the Bible itself.

In his Church Dogmatics, Barth discusses these issues. Here he attempts to distinguish his definition of the Word of God as the formal principle of dogmatics from a material Biblicism, and says: "Dogmatic affirmations must have a Biblical attitude." By this he means "the mode of thinking characteristic of Prophets and Apostles. It is the attitude not of observers, reporters or philosophers, but of witnesses, of men who, whatever they say, originate from the reality of the Word of the Lord, as of something absolutely given, and speak with the impetuous power of a torrent rushing down the mountainside” (Die christliche Dogmatik, 1927: vol I.I, 435). Here we are faced by "a form of thought, to think in which the dogmatist must learn to practice, as anything else is learnt. But, what is more, a form of thought which does not appear in other connexions, and in which we cannot learn to think except in the school of witnessing Apostles and Prophets" (ibid. 437). The Biblical attitude is something "to which we can grow accustomed only by the exegesis of Scripture itself, just as a new-born child accustoms itself to breathe and drink" (438). But this Biblical attitude as the determining factor in dogmatics cannot spell a material Biblicism:

"At its climax, where exegesis must pass into original thought, a dogmatics which limits itself to being merely a Biblical exegesis, inevitably becomes the pious word of the man of today, to qualify which is, however, its very business. All too often, material Biblicism has in fact made an arbitrary 'Sic volo, sic jubeo,' the first and last word of the dogmatist who adheres strictly to the Biblical text, and has caused historical, psychological and speculative thought to reign unhindered as though dogmatics were non-Biblical; and dogmatics, qua critical discipline, has thus neglected its very task. It should not be forgotten that whereas material Biblicism is quite a modern phenomenon, only too closely related to the psychology of religion, the Biblicism of Reformed dogmatics, for example Calvin's, is clearly distinguished from mere exegesis, and in distinction from preaching and exegesis invites us to a Scriptural attitude of thought which is formal Biblicism" (439).

I have to confess, these are tough ideas for me to get my head around. Oh, and if any Latin expert could translate facultas semetipsi interpretandi and sic volo, sic jubeo I'd be grateful!

Todestag Karl Barths

Danke an Jim West, für die Hinweisung. Jim weist uns auf einen Artikel von dem Sonntagsblatt Bayern hin. Hier sind meine zwei lieblingszitate: Karl Barth seufzte:

»Im Grunde ist meine ganze Theologie eine Theo­logie für Pfarrer.«

An einer anderen Stelle, heißt es, dass er Folgendes gefragt wurde:

»Herr Professor, werden wir droben unsere Lieben wiedersehen?«

Seine Antwort:

»Ja, aber die anderen auch.«

For a decent tribute along with another great Barth quote, this time admonishing us to listen to the Church Fathers, check out David Guretzki's comments at Theommetry.

Divine revelation: text or reality?

Is the Bible itself God's revelation, or does it just point to God's revelation? If it is just a pointer, and not the reality itself, then is it dispensable? But what if it is the only medium adequate to the subject matter it is trying to broker? What if there is no other way to make revelation known? What if Scripture as text has been elected by God himself to play a central role in his unfolding plan of salvation? Would there be any justification in calling the Bible itself God's revelation? Is there a more accurate terminology to keep the different nuances in check?

This doesn't seem to be a recent "Protestant" issue, as the early church itself used a similar term in an ambiguous way: the "rule of faith/truth" (regula fidei/veritatis). Here's B. Hägglund's summary:

The regula fulfils the function of being a fundamentum of the doctrinal tradition through the mediation (Vermittlung) of the holy scripture. We can perceive the reality of the revelation, the facts of salvation history only through the witness of the prophets and the apostles, through the writings of the Old and New Testaments. This witness must be interpreted and expounded again and again, but also recapitulated (zusammengefasst) and literally reproduced. In the process, however, the regula itself, the truth to which the scripture witnesses, maintains its position as an unchanging foundation. It is not a coincidence that the Greek word for rule, κανων, became more and more a fixed designation for the holy scripture. The original witness is not only “canonical” because it is endowed with the authority of the prophets and apostles, but also because it is a bearer (Träger) of the revelation, a mediator of the reality of salvation." (My translation; for the full context go here).

Perhaps one of the better attempts to formulate this tension is Karl Barth's theory of "the three time's of the Word" (or das Wort Gottes in seiner dreifachen Gestalt). Here's Diem's summary of the three forms of God's revelation:

(1) the present preaching of the Church as related to the word of Scripture and referred to it as a norm; (2) the witness of Apostles and Prophets as contained in the canon of Scripture to the Word of God; and (3) the Word of God itself as revelation. (Diem, Dogmatics, pp. 57-58).

How else can we formulate the relation between each stage? It should be pointed out that for Barth, God is the speaking subject in each phase and his revelation has the character of an active force, one that convicts our consciences and shows us that we can also be part of God's story.

Related posts: Mishna as revelation, My take on "verbal revelation"

Update: Check out Glen's helpful comments in the comments section on a Trinitarian ontology.

Barth's son wrote an Old Testament introduction/theology

How bizarre. This should be exquisitely interesting to me as a major thesis of mine is that Childs' canonical approach cannot be understood without a theology of something like Karl Barth's "three times of the word" (Das Wort Gottes in seiner dreifachen Gestalt).

Interestingly, the book was originally written in Indonesian, where Christoph Barth was working as a missionary. It is apparently still the standard work there and reflects the concerns of this struggling minority.

According to reviews, it bears many similarities to von Rad's Old Testament Theology. I wonder what his father would have thought? I'm reminded of one of Brevard Childs' anecdotes about visiting a lecture by von Rad where Karl Barth was sat near to him:

There was always a sort of tension, even in those years, between those studying the Bible and Barth. I remember one incident in 1952 when Gerhard von Rad gave a lecture in Basel on the "Typological Exegesis of the Old Testament". I happened to be sitting rather near to Barth, and I was interested in his reaction. For me von Rad's lecture was simply glorious, crystal clear and exciting. When he finished, Barth turned around in a half sleepy way to the person next to him and said: "I don't quite get it". This seemed to me an appalling response, and I felt like saying, "Herr Prof., let me explain it all to you". Fortunately, I restrained the impulse. Yet in the years that have passed, and the more I have studied von Rad's lecture, the more I began to understand why Barth found problems, and why it wasn't as clear as I once had thought" (lecture at Yale, 1969).

You can read large portions of the book on Google Books.

This is the right interpretative context!

I've stolen the first quote from Jason Goroncy of P e r ∙ C r u c e m ∙ a d ∙ L u c e m:

When I am faced by such a document as the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, I embark on its interpretation on the assumption that he is confronted with the same unmistakable and unmeasurable significance of that relation [with the figure of Jesus Christ] as I myself am confronted with, and that it is this situation which moulds his thought and its expression. [*]

This echoes Brevard Childs' approach to Biblical Theology:

A major thesis of this book is that much of this modern critical rejection of dogmatic theology has been misplaced and that only when one is able to relate the various biblical witnesses to their subject matter, or substance, can one begin to comprehend the nature of the Bible's coherence.[**]

[*]– Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. E.C. Hoskyns. 2 ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 10.

[**] Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology, 551.

Is the Pope Barthian?

In response to my post on Barth and inerrancy, L.T. of The Epicatholic Fold provided a link to a recent meditation by Pope Benedict XVI on the Word of God. Check out the following excerpts and tell me he's not Barthian:

[T]he Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. ... Therefore, we must change our concept of realism.

...

All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is thought to create the meeting place between God and His creature, a place where the history of love between God and His creature can develop. ... In this sense, the history of salvation, Covenant, precedes creation. ... One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the Covenant is the true cause of the cosmos. We reach the roots of being by reaching the mystery of Christ, His living word that is the aim of all creation.

...

We are always searching for the Word of God. It is not merely present in us. Just reading it does not mean necessarily that we have truly understood the Word of God. The danger is that we only see the human words and do not find the true actor within, the Holy Spirit. We cannot find the Word in the words. ... This is a great danger as well in our reading of the Scriptures: we stop at the human words, words form the past, history of the past, and we do not discover the present in the past, the Holy Spirit who speaks to us today with the words from the past.

...

Therefore, exegesis, the true reading of the Holy Scripture, is not only a literary phenomenon, not only reading a text. It is the movement of my existence. It is moving towards the Word of God in the human words. Only by conforming to the Mystery of God, to the Lord who is the Word, can we enter within the Word, can we truly find the Word of God in human words. Let us pray to the Lord that He may help us to look for the word, not only with our intellect but also with our entire existence.

...

The Word of God is like a stairway that we can go up and, with Christ, even descend into the depths of His love. It is a stairway to reach the Word in the words.

I'm no expert, but this all sounds very Barthian to me. What interests me most, however, beyond its intellectual genealogy, is how it works in practice. How does one do this kind of exegesis? What are the conditions for "climbing the stairway to God"? Is there a method? Or is it all a matter of mystical experience? What is the right context? Does one reconstruct the Sitz im Leben of Ps 18 and then find analogies, does one read it in its latest literary context, does one read it alone or as part of the liturgy of the hours? How do you get to its "substance" and when do you know you have arrived?

These will be questions that will continue to bug me for a while, no doubt.

Barth on Biblical inerrancy

I'm still trying to fully grasp what this means:

To the bold postulate, that if [the word of the prophets and apostles] is to be the Word of God they must be inerrant in every word, we oppose the even bolder assertion, that according to the Scriptural witness about man, which applies to them too, they can be at fault in any word, and have been at fault in every word, and yet according to the same Scriptural witness, being justified and sanctified by grace alone, they have still spoken the Word of God in their fallible and erring human word. It is the fact that in the Bible we can take part in this real miracle, the miracle of the grace of God to sinners, and not in the idle miracle of human words which were not really human worlds at all, which is the foundation of the dignity and authority of the Bible.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, 529-530; cited in Stephen Chapman, “Reclaiming Interpretation for the Bible,” 199.

A delightful new blog

Not only so because of the eloquence of its language, but also because of the task it sets itself: to read through Barth's Church Dogmatics, five pages a day, in five years. Here's what the author of Zoommatics has to say about himself:

Karl Barth was a bit of a legend. As far as theology goes, he was a savage. But I love him all the more because outside of his printed theology he served in the role of theologian; he had a sense of humour about himself and his job, he had the integrity and courage to stand up to the German government when it was the responsibility of all Christians to do it (a responsibility that sadly too few took up), he had healthy interests outside of the field (most charmingly in his passionate love of Mozart’s music) and to top it all off, he was friends with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What more could you ask for? Eh?

Still, he wrote 12000 words a day. So catching up on all the thoughts he had to share is quite a project and dealing with his titannic and masterful Church Dogmatics was something I always wanted to do. Over the next five years I hope to do it and use this here little blog as a kind of sketchpad to keep track of the odd note or excellent tidbit that must be saved and stored and promulgated for the betterment of all humanity!

So that is what this is, Zoomtard’s reading of Barth’s Church Dogmatics. Zoommatics, if you will.

I, too, hope one day to read through what looks like an utter masterpiece (the CD, I mean, not the blog), but seeing as I read like a snail I may well have to make do with Zoomtard's witty and amusing summaries of whatever has caught his attention this week.

[Hat tip: Faith and Theology]

Barth's exegesis

This is just beautiful. The following are Childs' comments on Barth, made at a colloquium on the subject at Yale in 1969:

"Now there are many criticisms of Barth's use of Scriptures ... . Usually the criticism is made ... that Barth does not take historical criticism seriously. ...

... it seems to me that that does not at all get at the heart of the problem. It's not that Barth does not know it, but somehow Barth judges it inadequate to the type of work that he's doing. He's called it prolegomena. Barth allows you to read the text from different contexts. It seems to me that he is always interested in different ways of studying it. But he continues to insist that ultimately the context from which theology has to be done is the context of Scripture—Old and New Testament—in the Canonical context.

And for this reason he is always opposed to the easy combinations of first starting with neutrality and then moving over into some kind of confessional position. ...

... Stendahl feels that in a sense Barth doesn't do close exegetical work. His commentary on Romans could just as well have been written on Galatians. You never would have known the difference. And there is a certain sense in which this is true.

And yet it seems to me it's the fact that Barth wants to go through the text, to the reality, that the text becomes a transparency, that the walls that separate the Apostle from the reader are dissolved, and one then begins to confront the reality itself—and for Barth there can be no antiquarian interest. And that means Barth has the tendency always to move down, to move through, and talk about the transparency. Very soon one is wrestling with the realities of Grace, and Judgement, and Nature and Grace—all the rest of these things—and that remains a problem. It seems to me this may be somewhat of an overstatement, but it is true that the kind of work he does is of such a different genre that for one who has been trained in the traditional critical way, it does seem that wherever Barth starts, he ends up in these massive theological statements and most of us have trouble following him.

Barth and Bultmann on Romans: Who's the better exegete?

In commemoration of Rudolf Bultmann's birthday, the question was posed on the Bibical Studies List as to who was a better exegete: Bultmann or his life-long antagonist Karl Barth?

The following responses represent a typical understanding of Barth's exegesis:

Barth was a horrible exegete. His Romans commentary is Paul Lite. 99% Barth, 1% Paul. Barth was a theologian much more than an exegete.

One thing about Bultmann is that he was very honest, ... . He clearly makes distinctions between what he believes as a "modern" reader of Scripture, and what the writer of the text believed. With Barth, you get his ideas and theology, and these can be brilliant, but there is often a disconnect with the text if you are looking for anything resembling exegesis.

Here's my response:

My minor point:

if theology is based on false exegesis, then how can it be brilliant?

My main point:

I'm not sure the difference between Bultmann's exegesis and Barth's is a matter of honesty or dogmatic overlay. What is at stake are two fundamentally different ways of conceiving the nature of the text and the discipline of exegesis.

Childs compares Barth's and Bultmann's exegesis of Romans 5.12ff in his chapter on “Humanity: Old and New” in his Biblical Theology (p.588ff) and concluded that whereas “Bultmann follows the usual norms of historical critical exegesis,” Barth “is not only focussing on the verbal sense of Paul's original argument,” he is seeking “to pursue Paul's witness beyond the text itself to reflect theologically on the substance (res) which called forth the witness.” (589). Though Bultmann's exegesis has the strength of staying close to the literary structure of Paul's argument, Barth went beyond what Paul was saying to the issue itself: “the substance of true humanity revealed in Jesus Christ.” Barth was fully aware of the contrast that Bultmann pointed out, but unlike Bultmann, Barth wasn't content to stay at the “literal sense” (my term). His exegesis was an exercise in Biblical Theology, which may explain why Bultmann didn't understand what Barth was doing exegetically.

To repeat: the issue has less to do with honesty or capability and more do with a conception of the nature of the text and the function of exegesis.

I should add that I think Bultmann's use of the word Sache (see my recent post on Bultmann here) parallels Childs' use of the word res. It's the goal of exegesis, except that for Bultmann the text's true subject matter was authentic existence, whereas for Childs and Barth it is God in Jesus Christ.

I have also recently posted on the relation between Bultmann, exegesis, and ideology.

What does Barth mean when he says that the criterion of truth is the "essential being of the church"?

Somehow this conceptuality just doesn't go into my head. How does that work? Isn't the regula veritatis (the rule of truth) the criterion of truth (as I argued in my summary of an article by B. Hägglund on the subject, especially in my post The rule of faith as the reality behind doctrine, tradition, and scripture)? Any elucidations would be appreciated.