Theology and Church. Karl Barth
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wholly different comments.
Bernoulli will be able to say in his own justification that he was forced to practise restraint in dealing with such a mass of material. But I recall what Overbeck himself said (pp. 3 f.) about the inaccuracy, in fact the impossibility, of all writing of contemporary history. I think of the emphatic words: ‘Men are not called to give final judgement on one another’ (p. 250). Now if what we read (pp. 159–80) under the heading ‘Albrecht Ritschl as Head of a School of Theology’, for example, or (pp. 198–241) under the heading ‘Adolf Harnack, a Lexicon’ is not a ‘final judgement’, then I have no idea what would deserve the name. Diana of the Ephesians will be overthrown only from within and below. Arguments ad hominem such as these, in which the other side still has the advantage of us, offer to our psychological age such easy opportunities for counterattack that any instruction which can be so turned aside will never penetrate. After this observation on tactics, we can now turn to the matter itself.
What is theology? ‘The Satan of religion’ (p. 12), ‘Christianity become worldly-wise’ (p. 124), Overbeck answers. It is ‘the attempt to impose Christianity on the world under the explicitly hallowed garb of modern culture, by concealing, even by denying its basically ascetic character’ (p. 125). It is ‘a desperate wrestling match, fought on behalf of religion against certain primary truths which show us too ruthlessly the final problems of our existence, the difficulties and the limitations under which men live’ (p. 13). Its typical representative is the Abbé in the French salon of the eighteenth century (pp. 125, 198). Its fiercest opponent is Blaise Pascal, who had no fear of using caricature, ‘the knight of truth, who undertook the impossible’ (pp. 126–34). Accordingly its nature is Jesuitry, the classic witness to the dire state of the church (p. 122).
The worst error of the Jesuits was not that they questioned morality, the most questionable of all the assumptions which exist among men. It was rather that they sublimated and refined and accommodated Christianity—an enterprise in which Protestant Jesuitry in the form of modern theology has far surpassed the Catholic (pp. 123–5). By this activity, the theologians have become ‘the most outstanding traitors to their cause’ (p. 236).
‘Do the modern theologians think that they can put us off much longer with their absurd delusion that Christianity’s best defence to insure its continued existence is its unlimited capacity for change?’ (p. 138). ‘Moses, Christ, Paul, and Luther are still given a place by these modern theologians as a part of their understanding of world history, but only as a kind of ornamentation which is recommended for display in public exhibitions. So far even modern theologians remain orthodox. But at the bottom of their hearts, they are the best of “believers in new things” and their master is Bismarck’ (p. 155).
‘Basically they have little to do with Christianity, but just for that reason they have a particular itch to start something with it’ (p. 278). ‘The Zeus on the Olympus of their priestly company they call “the present”. Their gaze is directed unwaveringly to the modern man’ (p. 218). ‘Theologians are never simply Christians, never men whose relation to Christianity is simple and unambiguous’ (p. 273). They expect indeed ‘to put God daily into their bag’ (p. 268). They allow themselves ‘to play [with God and the human soul] like children with their dolls, and they have the same assurance of ownership and the right of disposal’. They live in the naïve confidence that ‘men may do all things with God and in his name’; that ‘with God man finds himself in complete adjustment with the world; with him, man succeeds best’ (p. 267).
But the very existence of these servants of Christianity has as its prerequisite the existence of a world beside and outside of Christianity. ‘They are, under the most favourable conditions, middlemen between Christianity and this world; and therefore no one really trusts their counsel.… There always remains the sense that they are middlemen—a kind of men against whom there is a well-founded prejudice. And then besides, Christianity itself rejects middlemen. It recognizes no world beside itself, for it is absolute in its claims.’ And so theologians must undergo the painful experience of finding that the service they intend to offer is accepted with the most polite thanks, ‘but with no overlooking of the basic defect that those who offer the service come themselves from the same corner of merely relative evaluation of Christianity in which men in general commonly stand and out of which they would gladly be rescued. And when it is realized that this service is done for us by someone who merely shares with us our common need, it understandably elicits a very faint acknowledgement.…’ The theologians might be called ‘the Figaros of Christianity. In any case, these modern representatives of theology are the most available and usable, but also the most unreliable of its factotums. And as such, all honourable Pietists consider them, in the bottom of their hearts’ (pp. 273–4).
Their position is equally doubtful when considered from the standpoint of culture. ‘The Philistines of culture are men who are enthusiastic advocates of culture but have no aptitude for it; men who would like to be cultured but who apply themselves only half-heartedly and “part-time”, only for the sake of appearing as its representatives. Therefore theologians are the born Philistines of culture in all ages—not just at the present time. They always drag along with them the Christianity into which they were born or which was taught them and it weighs down all their cultural aspirations. Their culture therefore is culture with a bad conscience’ (pp. 270–1). We need only read over the descriptions of the Pharisees in Zündel’s book on Jesus to be convinced of the parallel here.
How radically Overbeck questions the possibility of the theology dominant today (and for him that meant questioning its Christian-ness) and with what earnestness he renounced it, will have become plain from the preceding excerpts. (I have for my part ‘practised restraint’ here.) Theology still owes the answer to the inquiry made to it in 1873.
In conclusion we naturally ask whether Overbeck believed a different, a better theology to be possible. His editor’s answer will be roundly ‘No’; and he can support his verdict by the fact that Overbeck himself, at least so far as it concerned him personally, repudiated this possibility. ‘I have no intention of reforming theology. I admit its nullity in and of itself and I am not merely attacking its temporary decay and its present basis’ (p. 291). An end to Christianity! (Finis christianismi!) rings his prophetic imprecation—still more an end to theology!
But the man who spoke so profoundly of death must somehow have combined with this finis a fruitful, living concept originating in the beginning. On the other side from the direct final question must be an answer; on the other side from the nothingness a new beginning; beyond the desert into which we are led must be a promised land. At least the fact about which his watching contemporaries talked so much and for which (at least in this book) neither Overbeck nor his editor is able to give a credible explanation—the banal fact that Overbeck himself was never anything but a theologian, cannot be without significance, in spite of his resolute repudiation. To call Overbeck, in his own despite, ‘a theologian learned in the ways of the kingdom of heaven and in the ways of earth’, as one of his secular colleagues said beside his grave, ought to be from the historico-psychologial viewpoint at least a portent; and from the point of view of reality it is perhaps not such a bad portent. The last can still sometimes be first. A theologian who is determined not to be a theologian might perhaps—if the impossible is to become possible—be a very good theologian.
Overbeck himself wrote, a few lines after his repudiation: ‘Theology, like everything else which exists, will be or has been good for something. Why not, for example, for establishing the limits of humanity, for our final, radical rescue from all demonic superstition and from all transcendental other-worldliness?’ (p. 292.) Now this comment, when examined word by word, makes an important assertion concerning matters which are fundamental and are not yet decided. (In considering it, we might even be permitted to overlook the has been.)
There are a few more statements which escaped the author almost against his will and which deal with at least the possibility of a theology of greater insight and more caution. They should not be omitted in this connexion. ‘Religious problems must eventually be based in a wholly new area [in contrast to the antagonism between Catholicism and Protestantism] at the expense of what has until now been called religion’ (p. 270). ‘Theology cannot be re-established