Theology and Church. Karl Barth
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it is theology must learn to distinguish its dialectic from all philosophical forms of the dialectic between subject and object. All philosophy worthy of the name seeks in some way to reach a unitary understanding of the universe, and so to transcend the dialectic between realism and idealism. But whether it is realistically or idealistically slanted, whether it erects a synthesis from the side of being or from the side of the reason, it is fundamentally a movement from man toward God, and claims in the last analysis to be able to say an ultimate word or at least to aim at an ultimate word that transcends the antitheses and contradictions revealed within human existence. But theology as a thinking that takes its rise from a centre in God and not from a centre in man, comes from the very point (from God) which philosophy hopes to reach. There is thus an inescapable tension between the essential intention of theological thought and the essential intention of philosophical thought, for they move in opposite directions.
In so far as philosophy is engaged in unitary or synthetic thinking theology has no quarrel with it, but can only learn from it and cooperate with it. But if philosophy insists on going further, in identifying its synthesis with God, in claiming the conclusion of its argument to be the ultimate reality, in confounding its own word projected above the tensions of human existence with the Word of God, that is, in so far as philosophy turns itself into a theosophy, then theology cannot but do battle with it. Theology that is interpretation of the Word of God spoken to human existence cannot allow the place and authority of that Word to be usurped by a word of man that derives from his own reflection upon the problems of human existence. But may not the counter-questions theology poses to every philosophy that is tempted to become a theosophy help to keep philosophy pure, help it to become self-critical, and so to be genuine philosophy that is aware of the limits of human thinking, and will not ascribe to itself the ability to transcend itself?
Theology’s answer to the problems posed by philosophy is not only one derived from the essential form of theo-logical thinking as distinct from every ideo-logical thinking, but one that must be derived from the basic content of theological knowledge and one that reposes upon the actuality and truth of its own object, God in his revelation. In other words, the answer that theology must give is one that reposes upon God’s decision to give himself to man as the object of his knowledge and upon the content of that gift, for they establish the possibility and determine the reality of all theological thinking. Looked at from one aspect this is the epistemological significance of election—which stands for the fact that theology does not move in a direction of its own choosing, but only in the way God has chosen for it, and that therefore it has its necessity outside of itself, in God. This means that theology by its very nature must renounce any claim to possess truth in its own theological statements, for those theological statements are only truthful when they point away from themselves to the one Truth of God as their absolute prius and ground. Looked at from another aspect this is the epistemological significance of the Incarnation, for Jesus Christ himself is the Way and the Truth and the Life, and theological thinking is thinking grounded in the objectivity of the concrete act of God in him, and is thinking that is wholly determined by its object, God become man, the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth.
Nevertheless, while theology must be concerned with its own proper object, and only within the bounds imposed by that object take up the problems posed by philosophical realism and idealism, it must seek to articulate its knowledge within the same realm of thinking that is occupied by philosophy and every other science. Hence it cannot but make use of the forms of thought and speech which it finds in that realm. Its task will be to maintain throughout its own proper concern and not allow it to be subordinated to ways of thinking that are not appropriate to its proper object, and therefore it must shape the forms of thought and speech which it inherits into tools that will really serve its specifically theological purpose.
This is a problem of which Barth is acutely aware. On the one hand, it has led him to grasp more profoundly the objectivity of the Word and to move over from an idealist into a fundamentally realist theology, but on the other hand, it has helped Barth to find a way of articulating his realist understanding of the Word of God within the essentially dynamic and critico-idealist style of modernity, and yet in such a way that it breaks through the framework of every form of thinking in its determined obedience to follow the way that the Word of God has actually taken in Jesus Christ in revelation and reconciliation. His contribution to the history of theology must be measured by the success of his critique of the one-sidedly realist theology of the Middle Ages, and the one-sidedly idealist theology of modern Protestantism, and by the extent to which he has learned from both in articulating a constructive dogmatics that presses into the objective unity of all Christian theology and radically calls in question the deviations from that unity grounded in the divine self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
(b) The scientific problem
The discussion between theology and philosophy serves to drive theology back upon its proper object; otherwise it betrays itself and loses its own basic concern. But if it is driven back upon its object and learns to think out its problems strictly from within the limits and restrictions to thinking laid down by the nature of its object, and develops a rational method in accordance with the nature of its object, then is not theological activity methodologically more like that of an exact science than of philosophy? If that is so, then theology must clarify its own procedure over against the other sciences which operate within the same realm of human thinking as it does, especially where that thinking takes a strictly a posteriori form. Our concern here is not to trace out the relations between the doctrines of the Christian faith, as they are given constructive form in Barth’s theology, with the results of modern scientific research, but rather to consider the problem of scientific method as it is posed from the side of empirical science, and to discern how theology takes up that problem on its own ground and works it out in its own way in accordance with the requirements of its own object.
There can be no doubt that theology and natural science overlap in so far as the critical reflection of both takes place within space and time, and within the world of concrete objectivity in nature and history, and yet they differ both in regard to the source of their knowledge and the nature of their object. Theology, as we have seen, is essentially a thinking from a centre in God and not from a centre in man, nevertheless it is not thinking of some ‘God in himself’, but of a God who has revealed himself to man within the same sphere of actuality to which he belongs, and therefore within the world of concrete objectivities in nature and history accessible to man’s observation and reflection. That is the actuality which natural science investigates, but it observes it and reflects upon it as purely contingent existence that is to be known only in its phenomenology and not in its ontology. Natural science by its very nature confines itself to the investigation of phenomena. Theology operates within that same area, but it is concerned with the living God who reveals himself in the midst of phenomenal objectivity as the Creator and Lord of it all and as the ground of its being and reality. Theology is not concerned with the phenomena as such, but with the central relation of it all to God, and is a form of thinking that derives from God’s Word and follows the movement of God’s Word in its creative and redemptive operation—only incidentally, therefore, does it concern itself with the knowledge of phenomena as such, derived from empirical study alone. In the doctrine of man, for example, it is not concerned as theology with what medical science, with what physiology or chemistry, have to say about him, for it is concerned about the central relation of man to God which constitutes his reality as man, that is his being a child of God; but what it has to say here on the border of what empirical science discovers of ‘the phenomena of the human’, as Barth speaks of it, does illuminate the world of man within which alone empirical science is pursued. That does not mean that theology can offer any information of the kind that is assimilable to the knowledge acquired by natural science or that is therefore of any use to it in its empirical activity, although it may serve to remind man of the limits and boundaries of his existence and of his knowledge, and help him to restrict his reflections within the limits set by empirical approach to his object, that is, help him to retain strict objectivity as empirical science.
Because theology operates with the Word of God that has become flesh within the world of space and time, it must recognize that there is an aspect of its object that is open to empirical observation and reflection—and to that extent it must reckon on the justice