Theology and Church. Karl Barth
Читать онлайн книгу.
the immediate expectation of the Parousia in the world, which stands behind Christianity (p. 291). From his words we catch a note of Jeremiah, however sternly it may be suppressed; under all the repression there is a sense of compulsion to act and to participate, which is not of this world. But we can be content with the sober statement that he was the guard of the boundary between here and there (the original), and not a mere observer.
The nature of ‘modern’ Christianity (it has always been determined to be ‘modern’) is therefore denatured, because in it the tension of contradiction is transformed into a normal relationship which must result in the corruption of both parts—humanity and Christianity (p. 68). Christianity has become such a problematical entity because it has lost the ‘force of the offensive thrust’ which it once wielded against the world, and therefore has also lost its victory over the world (pp. 65–6). But it has kept its impossible claim to advise man and direct him beyond himself. That claim, which has lost all validity since it is removed from the super-historical era with its unique possibilities, can only act as the wisdom which brings death (pp. 69, 279).
True Christianity and the world, since the loss of the immediate bond created by the expectation of the Parousia, can no longer understand each other nor be mutually understood. There is nothing which true Christianity rejects more firmly than a history in the world. Such Christianity never even thought of ‘the effect of Jesus on history’. His was the Spirit—and by that term Christianity meant something quite different (p. 68).
But nothing lies farther from the mind of the present day than belief in an imminent end of the world. The Christianity of today ‘has so little room left for the whole conception of the Return of Christ that it cannot even conceive it historically as belonging to the original Christianity; at the most it may admit its presence as a negligible factor (quantité négligeable)’ (p. 68). ‘A modern hat! Very good. That can conform to the fashion; but modern Christianity? Is not that quite different?… We who so judge are content with this truth; but the modern world around us is not and it speaks of modern and historical Christianity as realities to be taken seriously’ (p. 245). Historical Christianity (‘the religious community which developed into the Christian church out of the gospel as its pre-historic embryo’ p. 63) is in itself a contradiction.
‘Has Christianity brought a new era? Is the Christian form of dating, anno domini, based on actuality? Certainly not; for originally Christianity spoke of a new age only under a presupposition which has not been met, namely that the existing world was to perish and make room for a new world. For a moment that was a genuine expectation, and it has re-emerged now and again as such; but it has never become the historically established fact which alone could offer a real basis for a complete new calendar supposed to conform to facts. It is the world which has asserted itself—not the Christian expectation for the world; and therefore the alleged “Christian era” in it has always remained a figment of the imagination’ (p. 72). ‘The Christianity of all periods has always shown itself incapable of giving a universal message to the human world. It has helped only individuals and it has helped in no other way. In the community at all times a mediocre Christianity rules’ (p. 268).
‘A façade can lack an interior … on the other hand it is unendurable that an interior should present a false façade; and that is the case with present-day Christianity. But you cannot summon its interior as a witness against its exterior as though it could be found without it. And anyhow, no one has to listen to it.… Those representatives of Christianity who currently appeal to its “inner life” are its worst traitors’ (p. 71). For ‘the innermost and the real need of Christianity at the present time is the practice of it in life (Praxis). What Christianity lacks most in order to be able to assert itself in the world is evidence of its practical applicability in life’ (p. 274). ‘But our life is obviously not ruled by Christianity. In view of that, it is of little interest to proclaim how far it may rule the thoughts which are presented in writing. Modern Christianity itself performs only a grave-digger’s job, as by the sweat of its brow it widens the gulf between theory and practice.
‘Christian dogmas are polished carefully and fitted to modern thought. But the process merely erases the last traces which true Christianity still has left in life. What is accomplished serves wholly for the greater glory of the modern (ad majorem gloriam moderni) and to the detriment of Christianity (ad detrimentum Christianismi)’ (p. 67).
‘It is no wonder that the modern world so thirsts for orthodoxy and has so little use for Pietism, or that a dogmatic system like Ritschl’s won such a following while Rothe’s suffered so tragic a shipwreck.… The modern world is ready to do everything to make it possible to remain within the illusion of Christianity; and for that purpose, as it is easy to see, orthodoxy is more usable than Pietism’ (p. 274). ‘In modern life, Christianity is thirsting for life and in so far for Pietism. In modern Christianity, the modernity thirsts for orthodoxy since it has already drunk its fill of life; and so in modern Christianity, Christianity gets nothing to drink. For its thirst is of a wholly different nature from that of modernity.… Can this tragicomedy really have a prospect of playing before the world much longer?’ (p. 275).
And so it is that ‘the most significant fact about Christianity is its powerlessness, the fact that it cannot rule the world’ (p. 279). Think of its relation to Socialism (pp. 26–8). Or consider how shaky a bulwark it has shown itself against the danger of nationalism (p. 257). Look at the air of solemnity which Ritschleanism habitually wears when it handles in a cursory way the concept of vocation (pp. 278, 288). Consider (and in dealing with this evidence Overbeck for his part puts on a certain ‘solemn’ attentiveness) the religion of Bismarck (pp. 148–59), which provides the most magnificent example of the way the world pleases itself and wins the applause of the representatives of religion. Therefore Bismarck is the best-known advocate of the indispensability of religion for all earthly effectiveness. He had religion simply in order to keep his hands free for secular work. For the enigma which religion wills to solve, he had no time. All he wanted was something to free him from anxiety. His religion was erected on the basis of his self-esteem. Moreover, it was something which he had reduced to the size of a personal plaything and which he could lay aside at any time.
But the fact that he could play with it and occasionally had a Christian notion was sufficient in the eyes of the modern advocates of Christianity to make him a Christian, even a model Christian. He could even be hung in the gallery of ‘the classics of our religion’ next to Jesus, Francis, and Luther—to amplify with a more recent illustration. Thus Christianity has now been handed over to every holder of power. So cheap is today’s canonization in the Christian heaven. But none the less, it is this Bismarck who has done more for the historical existence of modern theology that Ritschl and Harnack. And what can be expected for this Christianity except ‘a gentle fading away’?
Again we are reminded of the attack on Christianity which the men of Möttlingen and Bad Boll once made from the same central standpoint, the expectation of the Second Coming; of their inquiry concerning the real power of the Kingdom of God, and the overcoming of religious subjectivity. But the friends of historico-psychological realism and the alleged Overbeck specialists in Basel need not be troubled. Against the greater keenness of observation and thought on the side of Overbeck is to be set the greater love, the enthusiasm and the joy in witnessing on the side of Blumhardt.
Yet Overbeck also was not without the holy fire, and Blumhardt was not without knowledge. In its essential nature—and that alone is important—the attack made is the same here and there. And with this double attack, theology has not yet really grappled.
IV
Overbeck’s third protest is directed against theology specifically, against the theology which today in Germany and Switzerland (and where not?) presides over the pulpit and the professor’s desk, the theology of a positive or liberal shade. One and all, those in authority today are ‘modern’.
I confess that I am not wholly of one mind about this attack, about which I feel strongly. I feel a glow of approval hard to restrain for the strong polemical food which is there offered. And yet there is the other feeling that it would have been better for the sake of the essential point to have held back some of these priceless apothegms on