This essay on Karl Barth and William James was written as one of doctoral comprehensive examinations. It goes, in my view, to the heart of a number of significant theological issues that define portions of the contemporary theological landscape. Among other things, this essay addresses such questions as to how God can be known, whether God does miracles in the past and present, issues of biblical hermeneutics, and more. Both Barth and James were great thinkers, and they lived their thoughts as well, and this essay can bring the reader into the heart of issues that concerned them both. The essay follows.
Abstract
Karl Barth was animated by a particular theological problem: how, after Kant, can one have knowledge of God? James's religious thought centered around the issue of salvation. This paper presents the evolution of Barth's thought as an attempt to solve the epistemological problem. Barth's solution is contrasted with James's idea of a saving God. Barth's thought is then analyzed by discussing his views on theological method, election, providence, evil, and time. Some strengths of Barth's theology, as well as some weaknesses, are reviewed in the light of James. The weaknesses can be overcome, without significantly modifying his method, by making use of some insights from James. The principal insight given in this paper is that Barth's solution to the epistemological problem implies a understanding similar to James's crass supernaturalism.
Karl Barth and William James
In a theologian as complex, prodigious, and multi-faceted as Karl Barth, it may be impossible to find a key to his theology. And although there may not be an Archimedean point by which to lift the whole of his theological program into view, I have found what seems to me to be a point of entry that reveals the heart of his theological enterprise and enables one to view it in its strengths and weaknesses. In short, Barth was confronted with a central theological problem, and once he had solved it, he extended its ramifications into every corner of theological history and biblical exegesis. Our point of entry into Barth's theology will be to view this fundamental problem, not only in terms of Barth, but to read Barth with William James in mind.
William James was aware of the problem, and since he came at it from a different angle, his solution is very helpful in shedding light on Barth's solution. The problem is as follows: Either God's revelation is given in such objects as the historical Jesus, the Church, and Scripture, in which case revelation becomes a relative and uncertain phenomenon subject to the uncertainties of all historical knowledge, or God is not an object among the world's objects, in which case theological statements either have no object such as God, or they may be taken as referring to objects within the world.
In Barth's opinion, virtually the whole of nineteenth century theology followed the latter course by referring theological statements to this-worldly phenomena. The alternatives posed here, either God's revelation within history, or God removed from history, have left out one alternative, namely, that God himself may become an object within history by first becoming its Subject and using events to reveal his objectivity. This is the course that Barth took, and James reached somewhat similar conclusions for different reasons. Since both arrived at a similar solution from different directions, it would be instructive to see if James can supplement, critique, or enrich Barth at this crucial point. I will present the results of such an inquiry in this paper.
William James was not a theologian, nor did he incline to any organized religion as such, but he was America's most outstanding student of religious experience, an astute psychologist, and a philosopher of weight. As a student of religious experience, his work provides a wealth of detailed observations, few hypotheses, and only a very few conclusions. In fact, one could legitimately say that he really reaches only one basic conclusion. This conclusion, his own particular over-belief, is that there is a finite God who, along with us, is seeking to bring this universe to a satisfactory conclusion. Furthermore, and here is where James felt he reached a significant conclusion that differed from the theological opinion of his time, he believed that God was an object among other objects and that he acted causally in the world to create new facts, such things as answered prayer, miracles, and actual differences in the particulars of life. He called this view "piecemeal" or "crass" supernaturalism."(1) It is James's notion of God as an object who acts in particulars that makes his work significant for Barth since, as we shall see, Barth was forced to reach a similar conclusion. James's idea of God acting in particulars differs from Barth's understanding of the matter, and it is this difference that enables one to read Barth critically with William James in mind. In order to clarify James's idea of God acting in particulars, I will briefly position this notion in the context of his thought as a whole and, from there, we will be in a position to go forward with Barth.
William James added a concluding postscript to the final lecture of his Varieties of Religious Experience in order to clarify the philosophical underpinning for the conclusions he had drawn from religious experience. His conclusions were modest; the various religious doctrines neutralize each other; and one is left with the conclusion "that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes.(2) This conclusion was a scientific conclusion, a hypothesis based on an investigation of the data of religious experience. Beyond that James was willing to venture his own over-belief. By that he meant beliefs that are consistent with the data, thought not logically implied by the data. James's over-belief was simple: There exists an unseen other dimension, a mystical or supernatural dimension, which is real because it produces real effects in the world. God is real because he produces real effects.(3) As a producer of real effects, God adds new facts to the world, so that religion is "not the mere illumination of facts already given."(4)
James calls his view "piecemeal" supernaturalism, and distinguishes it from refined supernaturalism. Piecemeal supernaturalism "went along with that older theology which today is supposed to reign only among uneducated people, or to be found among the few belated professors of the dualisms which Kant is thought to have displaced. It admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and the real world together by interpolating influences from the ideal region among the forces that causally determine the real world's details."(5) By contrast, refined supernaturalism, or as James sometimes calls it, transcendental idealism, denies that God has any particular effects in the world. It takes the facts of the world as they are given by physical science, and believes that both philosophy and religion are points of view for interpreting the facts. Although this view may paint an exalted view of the universe, it provides no solace for those to whom the facts mean misery, since the Absolute is limited to what is rather than what could be. James could not abide such a view, and I will now briefly indicate how his view of God acting in particulars is central to the whole of his thought.
James's notion of radical empiricism is one of the key concepts for understanding his philosophical thought as well as his scientific investigations. His pragmatic theory of truth, for example, is an application of his radical empiricism to the activity of knowing, and his pluralistic universe is the description of the universe as it is known empirically. Succinctly put, his empiricism is as follows. First, "the only things debatable among philosophers shall be things definable drawn from experience."(6) Secondly, "the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, that the things themselves."(7) The result of these two points is that "the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are them selves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."(8)
What sort of universe results from radical empiricism? James's universe is primarily pluralistic, though monistic in a very rudimentary sense. It is monistic only in the sense that every thing is composed of the same rudimentary "stuff." The pluralism results from the radical empiricism since the relations that are given in experience do not reveal a tightly-organized world, but a pluralistic one in which some things hold together in tight relations, while others may be scarcely related, or not related at all. In such a universe all objects must be experienced to be considered as existent, and further, their relations with their environment must be experienced if they are to exist as well. It follows from this that James will reject any view of God which infers the Absolute as a necessary being, necessary in order to maintain the world as the ground of its objects and their relationships. If God exists, then God must be an object, existing in space and time, and only real if he establishes concrete relations by effecting real changes which create new facts. God is an "each" just as other objects are "eaches." As a result, James is an enemy of all natural theology which seeks to infer the nature of the Absolute from the general course of things, rather than gaining knowledge of God as given by experiencing him as an object within the world.
James expended considerable philosophical effort in defending this position, by attempting to show that the facts of existence can be rendered intelligible on their own terms without the aid of an explanatory Absolute. In this sense James is a natural ally of Barth who also disavowed natural theology.
James's pragmatic theory of truth can be viewed as the application of his radical empiricism to the relations of knowing. Knowing is an intra-mundane process in which knower and known are connected through a set of events occurring in an external environment. The knower, the known, and the relations that connect them are given in experience. These connections are rarely precise, since much of what we know is inherited from the past, only provisionally tested, and in part created through the imaginative purposeful interest of the knower. What we know is a mass of facts, hopes, and fancies, loosely connected to the world in a variety of ways. Percepts, for example, anchor our knowledge quite concretely. They lie on the boundary of the inner and outer world, so that a percept is the thing in the mind, as well as the mind wrapped around the thing. For percepts, the relation of knowing is an identity. Other areas of our knowledge are less tightly connected, and form a mass of knowledge that evolves as time passes. In such a view there is no Truth, but only "truths," held more or less provisionally depending on the results of new experience. Truths are created with time. There is no a priori Truth, but uncertain truths. These truths can be held for a variety of reasons, not simply for their empirical fit with the "objective" world, but whether or not they enable one to establish satisfactory relations with the environment.
Theism is an ideal belief since it neither believes too little by restricting ultimate existence to the less than human, or too much, by hypothesizing an Absolute from the uncertainties of human existence.(9) A view less than theism, i.e. determinism or materialism, may account for physical facts, but it fails to meaningfully validate the use of all our active powers by giving us a world in which the heart and soul with find a meaningful response. There is more to life than pushing matter around. as if matter in motion were the ultimate. "Mere outward act, changes in the position of parts of matter (for they are nothing else), can they possibly be the culmination and consummation of our relations with the nature of things?"(10) On the other hand, various philosophies of the Absolute offer a God so removed from the flesh and blood of human affairs that they either rob the individual of meaningful action through the absolute, divine omnipotence, or repel the human heart through the remoteness of their "stagnant felicity." James could not abide a God who "neither acts nor suffers, nor loves nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats."(11) If there is a God, then it must be a human God, a God who is actively involved in this world and responsive to the particular needs of human beings. Such a God can only be known as everything else is known, as an object, doing particular things. Based on the data of religious experience, such a God answers prayer and performs miracles. This God is worthwhile and believable, because this God enables one to establish satisfactory relations with the cosmos by strengthening people biologically and psychologically through healing, and by contributing to the vision in which God, the gods, and human beings, struggle together to create a better universe.
It is clear that such a God cannot be omnipotent, since power is only experienced at particular points, and no one has ever experienced an object exercising all power at all points.(12) God then, is known in particulars, if he is known at all, and believed on the basis of a number of criteria, whether or not he fits the facts of experience, including religious experience, and whether or not he possesses physical, psychological, social, and cosmic relevance as he acts to create a more satisfactory universe. As of now, God's relations with the cosmos are not yet fully apparent. Therefore, it is a hypothesis beyond the data as to whether or not God will be effective in working with human beings to save the universe from falling into ruin and taking everything of value with it. Only the long run of experience can verify God's effectiveness. For the present, James chose to live with an uncertain faith, committing himself to the uncertain hope that in the end God would bring the universe to a blessed conclusion.
We now have James's solution to Barth's problem before us. God is not a transcendent Object, but exists in space and time as do other objects. Furthermore, God reveals himself in particulars, and such revelations, not Revelation, are uncertain, relative, and provisional. Faith is the taking up of that uncertainty. There is no unique historical religion, but the lot of them together sum to a few simple points after canceling themselves out on virtually the whole of their doctrinal details. The basic point is that God acts in particulars to save. For James, this is the religion of the common folk, and the one that will probably be borne out in the long run of experience. "This thoroughly 'pragmatic' view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave."(13) The question before us is this: To what extent does Barth agree with James's view of God acting in particulars, and in what respect does he advocate a God who saves by acting in particulars? We are now ready to begin our investigation of Barth's theology.
My first objective is to show that the problem posed in this paper as Barth's crucial issue, is indeed a crucial issue for Barth. This will be done by considering the three most important theological influences on the early Barth. Then each of these will be examined to see how they are critiqued by the mature Barth. In each case it will be shown that Barth's critique centered upon the issue of God as object.
We may take as our point of departure a statement that Barth made as he began his theological studies in Berlin. He had previously studied at the conservative University of Marburg, and it was at Berlin that he first encountered the mainstream of nineteenth century liberalism. He was persuaded by liberalism, and began to see the "possibility of understanding the Bible in terms of the history of religion began to dawn on me, and along with Kant, Schleiermacher took a clearer place in my thought than before."(14) Schleiermacher, Kant, and the history of religion school were the dominant influences shaping Barth's liberal theological training, as well as the chief influences of nineteenth century liberal thought. If the problem of God as object was Barth's fundamental theological problem, then we must investigate these three sources to discover if this issue is indeed at the heart of what eventually saw as the chief defect of nineteenth century liberalism. We begin with Barth's understanding of Kant.(15)
According to Barth, Kant established a peace treaty between philosophy and theology by dictating the conditions for valid knowledge of God. Theology submitted itself to Kant's peace treaty in two ways, by accepting Kant's premises straightway, or by modifying them without changing their substance. "Both these first possibilities have it in common that theology desires in principle to keep to the Kantian terms for peace, and to enter into negotiations, merely, with their dictator, whether it be upon the conditions he has laid down for their execution, or upon the actual terms for peace themselves. It is in pursuing these two lines of development that nineteenth-century theology is destined to be the direct continuation of the theology of the Enlightenment."(16) What were the peace terms Kant dictated to theology? And how, in Barth's opinion, is nineteenth century theology a continuation of the Enlightenment?
Barth characterized the eighteenth century Enlightenment as a time of unbounded confidence in the omnipotence of human powers, particularly the power of reason. In Kant, the eighteenth century reached maturity since it was Kant who first turned reason upon itself by assessing its character, capabilities, and limits. According to Kant, there are two forms of knowledge given to reason, empirical and rational knowledge. Empirical knowledge can be understood as the knowledge given by the sensible world. It requires two factors, intuition (immediate perception), and the categories of the understanding such as space, time, and causality. By means of the categories the phenomenal mass of perceptions is given its form, its temporal, spatial, and causal order. Without the categories, perception would be chaos and, without the intuitions of immediate perception, empirical knowing would be devoid of content. For Kant, existence can only be affirmed for objects given in intuitions. God, freedom, and immortality have no corresponding intuitions. Consequently they are not objects of empirical knowledge. Therefore, a knowledge of God's existence or non-existence is impossible "since for determining our ideas of the supersensible we have no material whatever, and we derive this latter from things in the world of sense, which is absolutely inadequate for such an Object."(17) By saying that existence can only be attributed to objects given in intuitions, Kant rejects the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Reason has exceeded its limits when it passes from the existence of the universe to the existence of God.
Pure rational knowledge, on the other hand, does not refer to what is given by the senses, but to that which transcends experience. It refers to what accompanies all empirical knowledge, the limiting or regulative ideas, pure beings of thought. "This pure rational knowledge which is necessary since it accompanies and directs all empirical knowledge- in substance Kant here simply follows the metaphysics of his time--is the knowledge of the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality."(18) Pure rational knowledge is regulative in the sense that its ideas are the necessary presuppositions of practical action in the world. In action, one is not only grasped by the objects of sense, objects in space and time, but also by the idea of God as the presupposition of the moral sense of duty, or by the idea of freedom as the presupposition that our moral existence is superior in its origins to its natural one. The proof of God is a moral one, something that can be believed as reasonable as it is given in our acknowledgment that we submit ourselves to a moral judge in moral decisions.
Kant believed that his ideas had significance for establishing the relationship between philosophy and theology, as well as for specifying the use of reason within the theological enterprise. He made two basic claims: First, since religion makes use of reason, it must therefore be aware of the character and limits of reason. Second, religion is a phenomenon whose contents the philosopher may and must investigate to determine to what extent its contents belong to those religious ideas that can be determined by reason alone. What does the philosopher discover in investigating religion? The philosopher discovers that all historical religions contain an inner core which can be derived by reason alone, while its outer shell is given through the accidents of its historical origins. The inner core, the belief in God, is created by people in order to carry out the practical affairs of life. It is this God which reason finds in the inner circle of "revealed" religions. Whether or not there may exist a wider sphere of revealed religion, a positive and concrete reason illumined by revelation, to use Barth's words, is beyond the purview of the philosopher. Within the limits of philosophical responsibility there can be no positive revelation since there are no empirical criteria for a revelation of God. In order to recognize God one must already have an image of God within, the ideal image of God given by reason alone, as the presupposition of the practical life. Therefore, "It is an utterly impossible demand that man should grasp the Infinite One by means of the senses, distinguish him from sensory beings, and perceive him thereby."(19) Even if one were to have an utterly inexplicable experience, one that could only be explained as a miracle or supernatural invasion, still, since the experience was miraculous, it could not be comprehended by the understanding, and one could never know whether or not it referred to a real object or to a fantasy.(20) Therefore a positive and concrete revelation, one that actually gives knowledge of God as an object of thought, is impossible within the limits of reason alone since revelation implies something which cannot be the object of empirical knowledge. One of the consequences of this view is that "revealed" religions rest upon accidental historical facts and only have validity for those who live within their historical influence.
After Kant theology could go in three different directions. It could accept Kant, i.e. express religion within the limits of reason, modify his original premises, or go in a totally new direction. In Barth's words, "According to the place at which the source of the error is sought three possibilities arise, then as now, for the understanding of the theological relevance of Kant's teaching."(21) The first possibility, accept Kant's premises straightway, was adopted by Ritschl and by Barth's most influential teacher, Hermann. The second possibility, that of modifying Kant, was taken by Schleiermacher who accepted Kant's claim that God is not an object, yet eluded its consequences by basing religion upon feeling. Schleiermacher's theological program "became characteristic of the stamp of theology in the nineteenth century, and in particular, of the so-called conservative or positive theology, just as much as of the so-called liberal theology of this century."(22) Or, one could take a third approach and seek to establish theology on a basis independent of Kant. This is the approach taken by Barth, and since his theology departed from the fundamental principles of nineteenth century theology, it has been described as a Copernican revolution in theology.
We are now ready to make one of the important points of this paper. Barth's primary theological concern has been epistemological: how does God reveal Himself? In struggling with this issue he was brought face to face with Kant who argued that God could not reveal Himself objectively. Our point is that if God is never knowable in any objective sense, then he cannot act in particulars. If God were to have an impact at a particular point in space and time, then he would be here and not so much there, and now, and not then, i.e., he would be known under the categories of space and time, and therefore would be known in some objective sense. When James says that God acts in particulars he knows that he goes against Kant, and that is why he says that his piecemeal supernaturalism "is to be found only among the few belated professors of the dualisms which Kant is thought to have displaced."(23) It will subsequently be shown that Barth, in overcoming Kant, ended up with a position that includes James's notion of God acting in particulars.
The Christian religion is a historical religion, its biblical stories virtually never speak of a Kantian God, but a God who actually does things in the world at particular points. Therefore, nineteenth century theology, and biblical studies as well, insofar as they followed Kant, may either understand those concrete and particular statements that refer to God acting in particulars, and along with it a host of related particular doctrinal points, as mythical or outmoded expressions referring to an ideal core of religious truth, or they may refer biblical language and its dependent theological statements to phenomena within this world. The position of rejecting the particular in favor of an ideal core was taken by Barth's influential teacher Harnack, who "stripped away the whole structure of traditional doctrine and reduced the religion of a Christian to a handful of simple truths of which Jesus was the first expositor in word and life."(24) Schleiermacher developed the second alternative, the basis of religion was something given in the phenomenal world. In his view, theological statements did not refer to an objective revelation, but were descriptions referring to the feeling of absolute dependence. In Barth's opinion, Schleiermacher was the dominant force in nineteenth century theology, and certainly the dominant influence on Barth.
In terms of biblical scholarship, the history of religion school exerted an immediate and direct influence on Barth. They were noted for the scientific integrity of their scholarship. They were extremely skeptical about what could be known of the historical Jesus, and believed that the pure essence of the gospel needed to be detached from its outmoded conceptual expression.(25) Although the history of religion school was the immediate influence on Barth's understanding of Scripture, we may better appreciate Barth's assessment of nineteenth century biblical scholarship by passing directly to his understanding of D.F. Strauss. In Barth's opinion, Strauss was the first to expose the critical issues in New Testament study, both for theology and for biblical scholarship. Speaking of Strauss, Barth said that he "confronted theology with a series of questions which, just as with Feuerbach's questions, it has not, right down to the present day, perhaps, adequately declared itself."(26) In Barth's view, Schleiermacher and Strauss set the agenda for nineteenth century theology and biblical studies. We may advance by first considering Barth's thought in regard to Schleiermacher, followed by his response to Strauss.
It would be impossible to compress Barth's thought on Schleiermacher into a brief compass, since, more than any other theologian, Barth is in constant dialogue with Schleiermacher throughout the whole of his writings. In fact, Barth said of him that he is our "man of destiny,"(27) and that "Nobody can say today whether we have really overcome his influence, or whether we are still at heart children of his age, for all the protest against him, ..."(28) In spite of these disclaimers, Barth mounted a consistent attack on Schleiermacher, and we may begin with his most important criticisms.
We may advance by noting that Schleiermacher, in Barth's opinion, began as an apologist rather than as a theologian. As an apologist, he was "determined on no account to interpret Christianity in such a way that his interpreted statements can come into conflict with the methods and principles of the philosophy and the historical and scientific research of his time."(29) Philosophically, his theological starting point was Kant. This means that he will in no way allow God to become an object, not even an object of thought. Schleiermacher escaped the dilemma of meaningful language about God by having theological statements refer directly to the "feeling of utter dependence" and only indirectly to God. In Barth's words, "The consciousness of God thus remains 'shut up' in feeling, so that the expression of the idea 'God' cannot signify anything else but the expression of feeling concerning itself, the most immediate self-reflection."(30)
But this, in Barth's view, poses immediate problems for Christology. In regard to Christ, Schleiermacher began with the historical, human Jesus, and in that context, defined the "divinity" of Christ. Since the "divinity" could never become objective, open to human knowing, the divinity would have to be something transcendent, a timeless, original "revelation" beyond any concrete manifestation. "On the other hand, Schleiermacher's view allows and demands that we should at all events understand Christ as an objective quantity, and thus distinguish him from pious feeling as such; that we should not equate him with the timeless original revelation, but grant him historical individuality and think of him in this individuality as a temporal point of reference for pious feeling."(31) In other words, Schleiermacher accepted Christ as an object, and therefore he was "bound to renounce the idea of the Deity of Christ or, to put it differently, to understand the Deity of Christ as the incomparable climax and decisive stimulator within the composite life of humanity."(32) Consistent with this position, Schleiermacher went on to identify the Kingdom of God with the advance of civilization. One of the key reasons Barth turned away from Schleiermacher and liberal theology was that it failed to distinguish between the Kingdom of God and political and civil life. As a result, liberalism too easily complied with the State when it should have taken a prophetic stand.
A further consequence of God not being an object in Schleiermacher's thought is that it led to a weak doctrine of sin and grace. For Barth, and for the Reformation as well, sin denotes positive and concrete opposition to God. Schleiermacher was not able to include the notion of positive rebellion against God because such a doctrine involves treating God as the object of the particular human activity of sin. Therefore, for Schleiermacher, sin was the restricted awareness of the higher life and existed in antithesis to grace, both of them being states within human consciousness. In other words, grace was not an act of God with particular consequences within space and time. Rather, grace and sin both existed as polar opposites within consciousness. "Schleiermacher does not consider an oppositeless, absolute relationship with God, either in the negative or positive sense, as a possibility that need be taken seriously into account."(33) The result is that one is never seriously judged a sinner, and earnestly pardoned by God as well.
Furthermore, Barth had doubts as to whether or not it is possible within Schleiermacher's program to derive an adequate doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Barth sought to follow Reformation teaching by considering the Holy Spirit as the subjective reality of revelation. Revelation occurs within human experience, and the Holy Spirit makes possible what is humanly impossible. In terms of order, the Reformation began with the objective reality of the Word, and from there, being Trinitarian, went on to a doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Schleiermacher reversed the order, beginning with the subjective experience of piety, and making his second center the historical influence of the man Jesus.
Barth believes that it is legitimate to begin with subjective experience, provided one begins with a genuine doctrine of the Spirit. Does Schleiermacher present a genuine doctrine of the Spirit? Barth has serious doubts. In Barth's opinion the two foci of Schleiermacher's theology, Christian consciousness (corresponding to Spirit) and the historical effect of Jesus, are only relatively distinguished within consciousness, and thereby mediated by a higher principle which would be the self. "Anyone who is in a position to focus Christ and the Christian together, as a composite phenomenon, manifestly knows of a third thing above both, and will thus be capable of distinguishing between them in this manner, only relatively; and putting one before the other is bound to remain questionable in principle, even if he wished to do so and does in fact do so."(34) And, in fact, Barth believes that "The two foci of the ellipse draw relentlessly closer to one another,"(35) so that the "Word is not assured of its independence in respect to faith as should be the case if this theology of faith were a true theology of the Holy Spirit."(36) Barth continues by saying, "What Schleiermacher constructed by means of his theology of awareness by planting himself in the centre which for the Reformers had been a subsidiary centre, could be the pure theology of the Holy Spirit; the teaching of man brought face to face with God by God, of man granted grace by grace."(37) Nevertheless, by beginning with piousness, shut up within itself, it is unavoidable that Schleiermacher ultimately does not present "the outpouring of the Holy Spirit---that might in itself have been possible---but religious consciousness as such."(38) Therefore, both in his doctrine of Christ, and his understanding of Spirit, Schleiermacher, in Barth's opinion, makes a relationship with God a human possibility by identifying the Spirit with subjective piety while Christ becomes merely a this-worldy object mediated through history.
Finally, Barth objects to Schleiermacher's understanding of God's causal relations with the world. If Schleiermacher rejects any notion of God as object, then God's causal relations to the world are never particular, but rather, God becomes the eternal, omnipresent causal ground of all finite causality, and further, God's timeless omnicausality is completely and exhaustively presented in the totality of finite being.(39) Such a view, in Barth's opinion "leads inevitably to the fatal identification of God with the general power at work in the world."(40) If God becomes identified with the general power of the world, there will be no protection against attributing to the world or its powers the awe and trust which we owe to God. In other words, in Barth's opinion, it leads to idolatry. For James, a God of omnicausality is indistinguishable from no God at all, since there are no inner-mundane events which can distinguish an omnicausal God from a non-existent God. From the perspective of James, they are both "known as'' the same thing.
Our treatment of Strauss may be brief. Strauss's first life of Jesus (from which he retreated in a subsequent work) was based upon a strictly scientific study of the scriptural evidence. He allowed no premises of faith and required that biblical evidence be judged by the known physical, psychological, social, and historical laws that govern other events. Furthermore, he investigated the poetical character of the writings about Jesus, to discover to what extent they were based on Old Testament records mistakenly read into the life of Jesus by his biographers, as well as their dependence upon pagan saga and myth. He concluded that the New Testament record was not a historical report, and that virtually nothing was known about the historical Jesus. On the basis of his first life of Jesus, Barth believed that Strauss presented theology with a series of questions that it has failed to answer. I will now present these questions in my own words.(41) Isn't it the case that the Christ of historical research, even if presented with a fair degree of probability, is still a relative Christ, and therefore not the definitive Word of the one true God? Secondly, isn't it true that the New Testament records are not interested in presenting a comprehensible picture of an historical person like other persons, but rather, a super-human figure, a Messiah who rose from the dead, who proclaimed a coming Kingdom as God's Son, and expected to return in glory? Finally, assuming that historical research gives an historical Jesus, and assuming the previous point to be true, then Jesus with his assumed divine attributes must either be a noble spiritual fanatic, or he must be stripped of his super-human predicates, whittled down to size, and made no better than the bearer of the highest and best of human capabilities. Given that God did not act in particulars as the person of Jesus Christ, these are the alternatives: either no historical Jesus, a deluded Jesus, or at best, one stripped of his divine characteristics. The relevance of the biblical issues will be discussed more thoroughly in relation to a critique of Barth with James in mind.
These then are the basic issues that confronted Barth. The philosophical dependence upon Kant robbed Protestant theology of an Incarnation in which the divine became human, since that would give objective knowledge of God. Secondly, the relativity of historical research threatened to destroy the uniqueness of any historical revelation and thereby robbed Christianity of its founder or stripped him of his divine attributes.
This is not the place to give a detailed account of why Barth was not content with the legacy of the nineteenth century. There were doubtless a number of factors. He was raised in a happy, disciplined, somewhat conservative, Christian home with pastors and professors on both sides of the family. Very early in life, at his confirmation at the age of sixteen, he decided to become a theologian in order to "reach a proper understanding of the creed in place of the rather hazy ideas that I had at the time."(42) He was a natural writer, having written a number of poems and plays by the age of twelve, and in his twenties, he was already beginning to write theologically. His earliest essays reveal how he was already "wrestling with major theological issues at the age of twenty-four, and how his thinking, already deeply rooted in the Schleiermacher-Hermann tradition, was groping out to reconcile the reality of a life-transforming revelation of God in Jesus Christ with the sober realities disclosed by the scientific investigation of the past."(43) In these early writings, he had already reached conclusions relevant to our discussion: "The 'history of religion' school had shown that supernatural factors such as revelation and miracle cannot be established historically, with the consequence that 'God disappeared out of history' (3) and both faith and dogmatics, insofar as they tried to base themselves on anything historical, lost their object."(44) Perhaps another significant factor was the death of his father. As he lay dying his final words were, "The main thing is not scholarship, nor learning, nor criticism, but to love the Lord Jesus. We need a living relationship with God and we must ask the Lord for that."(45) In a late essay, his address on the humanity of God given in 1956, Barth attributed his rejection of liberal theology to his discovery of the theme of the Bible, the compliance of the liberal theologians with the Kaiser's WWI war policy, as well as the reality of World War I itself which wrecked any optimistic equating of the Kingdom of Heaven with western civilization, and his encounter with the Blumhardts. When the liberal theologians endorsed the Kaiser's war policy, he felt utterly bereft, and "a whole world of exegesis, ethics, dogmatics and preaching, which I had hitherto held to be essentially trustworthy, was shaken to the foundations, and with it, all the writings of the German theologians."(46)
Positively, Barth encountered the Blumhardts. The Blumhardts, father and son, began a ministry of healing after an experience in which they had cast a demon out of a woman in the name of the Lord Jesus. This experience so affected them that they began to proclaim a message of the eschatological Kingdom of God in which God acted to overcome all deprivation, both personal and collective. Barth visited them, prayed with them, and began to realize that the Christian faith and the biblical message were concerned with God's action and revelation, and could not be identified with any aspect of human consciousness or culture. That the theme of the Bible is God's acts became the cornerstone of his new grasp of theology, and it was this theme and his expression of it that eventually led to his rejection of liberal theology. Nevertheless, it was to be some years before he was able to formulate his new insight in a satisfactory fashion, and I will now trace the high points of that evolution.
If, for liberal theology, God could not reveal Himself objectively, and, in default of an object, made theological statements descriptive of a human reality, then one initial path of rejection is to reject the idea that God can be identified in any way with this-worldly phenomena. That was Barth's first response and an early expression of his rebellion can be found, for example, in the 1916 essay "The Strange New World in the Bible." The theme of this essay is simple: the world of the Bible is not ethics, nor history as human actions, nor religious insights or piety. The strange new world of the Bible is God, God alone, the history of his acts, and his thoughts about us, rather than our thoughts about him.
Nevertheless, this forcefully written essay, reveals that Barth had scarcely traveled far in making any real theological sense out of the notion of "an act of God." For example, he doesn't want to identify God with the world, yet he doesn't want to give up the liberal idea that God is immanent in the world. Therefore he will say the following, "Who is God? The heavenly Father! But the heavenly Father even upon earth, and upon earth the heavenly Father. He will not allow life to be split into a 'here' and 'beyond' ... In Christ he caused his word to be made flesh. He has caused eternity to dawn in place of time, or rather upon time- for what sort of eternity were it which should begin 'afterwards."'(47)
Here we see that Barth is willing to relate two realms, God in heaven and his Word made flesh on earth. These statements sound as if they came from the Church Dogmatics. Nevertheless, Barth had not solved his fundamental problem. He was caught in transition between a liberal immanence while seeking a radical transcendence.
His next theological step, his commentary on Romans, reveals that this is the case, for there, he breaks away from any notion of immanence whatsoever. The work on Romans proceeded in two steps, the first edition of 1919, and the second in 1922 in which he eradicated virtually every trace of his former liberal theology. His first edition of his Epistle to the Romans did not solve the problem because in it he still held to the liberal notion of a saving history into which one entered by faith. In fact, the notion of a saving history dominated the first edition.(48) The Romans of 1922, the second edition, still holds the Kantian hypothesis; in fact, it was preceded by a deeper study of Kant. In it he ruthlessly rejects liberal theology, and therefore rejects any notion of an immanent saving history. But given that rejection, how is Barth to make any sense out of biblical language with its emphasis on God acting in particulars, especially if he still holds that the central message of the Bible is God's acts?
We may begin to answer that question by considering some of the influences that separated the first and second editions of his commentary on Romans. In the interval between 1919 and 1922, between the first and second editions of his Epistle to the Romans, Barth studied intensively in a number of areas.(49) First there was a deeper study of the text of Romans. Secondly, there was the man Overbeck, who contributed one of the crucial ideas relevant to the 1922 edition, the notion of Urgeschichte, or primal history. He also studied Kierkegaard, Plato, and Dostoyevsky. Finally, favorable reviews convinced him that he had not clearly stated his true position. The starting point of his 1922 exegesis of Romans is "limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the 'infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: 'God is in heaven and thou art on earth."'(50) The God of the second edition is utterly incomprehensible, beyond human description, and nothing on this earth ascends to him or gives knowledge of him. As it stands, this earth and all its inhabitants, are under the power of death, lost in chaos, and utterly without hope. Without God, and without being able to know God, this age, this world, is doomed. What do people do under these circumstances? People identify something in this world with God; that is the chief sin, the ultimate idolatry. "And so, in this world, which is our world, the true life is invisible, unknown, and impossible; and concrete and objective things, our this and that, thus and thus, here and there, become either divinized worldliness or worldly divinity.(51) Here in a nutshell is Barth's indictment of nineteenth century theology. It either divinized the world or made the divine worldly.
Nevertheless, what does Barth offer in its place? According to Barth, God has provided a solution. God exists in eternal time, in the Urgeschichte, a realm beyond this world. This eternal realm touched, or rather didn't touch, the world at one point, in the resurrection of Jesus. "In the resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is without touching it."(52) The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ are a Crisis (Kierkegaard). The Crisis represents the end of all human knowing and striving after God. The end of this aeon is given by the death of Christ, but since the resurrection only "touched and didn't touch," there is no real knowledge of God in this age, only the knowledge that all knowledge is idolatrous. All the "truths" given in Scripture are never really given in time, never experienced psychologically or physically, rather they belong to the eternal time, to the primal history. Adam's sin, sin itself, Abraham's call, the risen Christ and his righteousness, the new man created in Christ by the Spirit, and faith, are all trans-historical and never a part of this world. For example, here is what Barth has to say about the new man created by Christ: "The new man has no existence except non-existence. For everything which we can know and apprehend and see belongs to this world. No soul-and-sense experience can bridge the gulf by which the old is separated from the new. ..The light of Christ constitutes a new subject and forms a new predicate: we are--new men. But this constitution is indirect and dialectical: it comes into being only by faith. ... We must never therefore allow this dialectical presupposition to be hardened or petrified into and direct occurrence."(53) Since the biblical witnesses did experience the new life in any direct sense, there is no positive and concrete revelation. Rather, the biblical witnesses stood at the threshold of the eternal realm, and could therefore only describe it dialectically (Kierkegaard). Positively speaking, it is a void. "The assumption that Jesus is the Christ (i,4) is, in the strictest sense of the word, an assumption, void of any content that can be comprehended by us."(54) And what if this revelation has positive content? "Now whenever this occurs, the Gospel, so far from being removed from all rivalry, stands hard pressed in the midst of other religions and philosophies of this world".(55) Furthermore, revelation has no positive or or objective content since all historical knowledge, in fact this would include all knowledge, stands between Adam's fall and Christ's death, being considered as the beginning and the end of historical time. "Our historical knowledge is, however, bounded on the one side by the death of Adam, and on the other side by the death of Christ."(56) The resurrection is a barrier. Beyond that is the love of God, but we know nothing of it in any this-worldly positive way. In fact, we know virtually nothing, only that we came from "somewhere" and will go "somewhere" as well. "It sufficeth us to know that thence we came and thither we go."(57)
The 1922 commentary on Romans is a radical and drastic solution to Barth's basic problem. He has made a 180 degree turn from liberal theology, going from what he considered complete immanence to complete transcendence. In reading his commentary it is difficult to determine whether or not his solution was really absolute transcendence. For logically speaking, absolute transcendence transcends meaningful language and leaves one with the bare statement that nothing really should be said. Yet he continues to make statements, a veritable waterfall of them. His recourse to dialectical and paradoxical language, such statements that "the eternal touched and didn't touch," or that the new life "exists and doesn't exist," doesn't really solve the problem. For insofar as those statements refer to something, even if a non-empirical realm, they constitute positive knowledge. Furthermore, it is not entirely consistent for Barth to make Adam's non-historical fall an "event" that has empirical effects in this world, while the new life in Christ has no positive content. "In its concrete form sin is no more than the ever-widening appearance and expression and abounding (v. 20) in time of this Original Fall. It points to the Fall which lies beyond time."(58) If the non-historical fall can become manifest under the conditions of space and time, why not the new person in Christ, or any other aspect of the redeemed life? For Barth, the revelation of the new is only visible in the dissolution of the old. "When we reflect that the new world can be none other than the old world dissolved and overthrown by the victory of Christ, it becomes clear that, when the operation of the old world becomes visible in dissolution and overthrown, we are in fact confronted with the operation of the new world."(59)
As it stands isn't Barth's Romans docetic, where "docetic" is understood in the general sense that the divine cannot bind itself to an element of the temporal flux? Barth was certainly not satisfied with it, and as we shall see, was was forced to made major changes in his theological perspective before he arrived at his mature theological position. Specifically, he later came to see that his Epistle to the Romans failed to do justice to the incarnation. Speaking of his Romans, he says, "Then, in face of the prevailing historism and psychologism which had ceased to be aware at all of any revelation other than an inner mundane one within common time, the book had a definite antiseptic task and significance. Readers of it today will not fail to appreciate that in it Jn. 1:14 does not have justice done to it."(60)
On the strength of his Romans, Barth was offered the chair of Reformed Theology at Göttingen in 1921, and from there he went to Münster in 1925 as Professor of Dogmatics and New Testament Exegesis. During this period he made the transition to his mature theology that emerged with his second attempt to write a dogmatic theology in 1932.
Two factors were especially influential in enabling him to arrive at his mature position: his investigations into the Reformed tradition with its emphasis on Scripture, which formed the substance of his Dogmatics, and his reading of Anselm, which enabled him to solve the epistemological problem of how God is known. Just prior to the first volume of the Church Dogmatics, Barth published the results of his investigations into Anselm in a book entitled Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum. Of this book he once said, "I think that I wrote this with more loving care than any other of my books and that it has been the least read of all my books."(61) This book is very important for understanding Barth, and we will begin with some of its crucial ideas as an introduction to Barth's mature theology.
Anselm is, of course, famous for his ontological proof for the existence of God. Nevertheless, Anselm's proof, as understood by Barth, is not a proof given to autonomous reason, but rather is dependent from first to last upon God who cannot be known unless he acts to reveal his very Self. Furthermore, and here lies the crux of Barth's mature theology, when God does reveal Himself he makes possible what is otherwise an impossibility, i. e., there is no knowledge of God unless God acts in a person's particular circumstances to reveal Himself. That is, knowledge of God depends upon grace, and not upon an autonomous reason. In describing understanding of Anselm, I have used James' concept of particulars, God must act in a person's particular circumstances to make Himself known. Barth doesn't express it precisely that way. In his exposition of Anselm he uses the concept of grace, and grace is not so precisely defined as to be equivalent to James' notion of God acting in particulars. As we shall see in the Church Dogmatics, Barth's idea of grace, with certain qualifications, does imply James' notion of God acting in particulars.
Specifically, how does Barth understand Anselm, and what is the starting point for Anselm's proof? "The starting point for this exposition was not some available or accessible human conviction about God, but it was his Name proclaimed and believed."(62) What then was this Name proclaimed and believed? The Name of God is given through the proclamation of the Church, in the Church's Credo, its Scripture, and documents of faith. The Credo is proclaimed as God's revelation, and by grace a believer is enabled to know God through the acceptance of the Credo in faith. The Credo, then, received by grace, is the basis for faith's knowledge of God. On the basis of the Credo, Anselm arrived at a Name of God which served as the starting point of his proof. This Name, "something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived" is the Name of God in the sense that it is a prohibition "not to imagine anything greater that God on pain of the consequence that the conception of 'God' alongside such a greater than he would immediately cease to be a conception of the true God, that is the God revealed and believed."(63) For Barth, the starting point of Anselm's proof is a statement that the God of the Christian faith is one that is only revealed and known in faith, as opposed to being known, even in part, through autonomous reason. Furthermore, and this is crucial to Barth's understanding of Anselm, when God reveals Himself, it is from the human side, an impossibility. It only occurs in prayer, through the grace of God who chooses to reveal Himself. When God reveals Himself, he may be received in faith, but faith is only possible if God reveals Himself and enables faith to respond. Therefore, knowledge of God is dependent on a prior act of God, so that faith for Anselm "does not come about without something new encountering us and happening to us from the outside. ... The seed to be received is the 'Word of God' that is preached and heard; and that it comes to us and that we have the rectitudo volendi to receive it, is grace."(64)
The Word, when received, is the Credo, and this forms the basis for the knowledge of God. But God is not only unavailable to a general human reason, he is not available to thought even upon the basis of the Credo. Anselm "interprets the plight of man in his failure to know God, a plight which even the believer shares, as being due to the fact that he is involved in the remoteness of God from a humanity that is sinful by inheritance. This remoteness is clearly an objective remoteness of God himself-- God is absent, he dwells in light unapproachable."(65) Therefore, Anselm prays not only to understand the Credo, the Scriptures, but further, he prays in the hope that by means of his study of Scripture God would reveal his very Self as an object to Anselm's understanding. "Everything depends not only on the fact that God grants him the grace to think correctly about him, but also on the fact that God himself comes within his system as the object of his thinking, that he 'shows' himself to the thinker and in so doing modifies intelligere esse in re."(66) God must reveal Himself as object, but for Anselm God is not an object like other objects, and here lies the crucial difference with James whose God or gods are finite and in time. God, for Anselm, is alone "true and real, unique and in a category all his own and known only to himself."(67) Although God is ineffable, he gives Himself to faith as certain, in that knowledge of him is made possible by his revealing Himself as object. Theological statements issue from faith seeking understanding, as the rational mind seeks to express theologically the certain reality given in faith. How then does theology proceed?
Theology begins with the Credo, revealed to the believer as a revelation of God, and from it draws out its inferences by giving substance to its underlying rationality. This rationality exists because the believer and the whole of creation were created through the Word and thereby participate in the image or rationality of God. This image and rationality is not automatically visible in creation, but must be bestowed anew through grace. It follows that theology needs no outside justification since it is given by grace and cannot be justified on other grounds independently of God's act. Given this background for understanding Anselm's proof, how, in Barth's opinion, did the proof proceed? Barth's presentation of Anselm's proof is somewhat long, but the essence of it can be summarized.
As previously mentioned, the proof starts with the Word of God. That Word is the formula -- "something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived." This formula was given to Anselm through prayer as he meditated upon the Credo seeking to understand its underlying rationality. As God gives the formula, he gives his very Self as well, so that for the believer, God exists within thought since God's Self comes to the believer as God reveals his name. Here Anselm is willing to concede the possibility that the formula for God, as a formula, may exist in the mind without that implying that God exists in the mind. But this is not a possibility for the believer when God reveals Himself. For the believer, recognizing that God is "nothing greater can conceived," and given that it is conceivable that God exist in the mind, then God must exist in the mind given the truth of the name. Further, given the name, "something beyond which exist outside the mind," it follows that the believer recognizes that God has revealed Himself to exist outside the mind as well, and further, to be the basis of all that exists since a God who is the basis of all things is greater than one which simply exists in the mind. Here is the nub of the proof as interpreted by Barth. It hinges on God revealing his Name within the particular circumstances of the believer, and his Self as well. The rest follows.
After the proof Anselm gave praise to God, who, in spite of the humanly impossible, "gave himself as the object of his knowledge and God illumined him that he might know him as object."(68) Barth ends his book on Anselm with these words: "That Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God has repeatedly been called the 'Ontological' Proof of God, that commentators have refused to see that it is in a different book altogether from the well-known teaching of Descartes and Leibnitz, that anyone could seriously think that it is even remotely affected by what Kant put forward against these doctrines--all that is so much nonsense on which no more words ought to be wasted."(69)
We are now in a position to state Barth's solution to the major theological problem that lay before him. Briefly put, theological statements refer to a God who is not identical to any element within the human psyche, or within history or civilization, nor are they vacuous in their reference, but rather they refer to God who reveals Himself as an object within human experience. God reveals Himself as an object within the world because he by nature is objective as the Triune God. "As the Triune God, God is first and foremost objective to Himself. When therefore, in consequence of being objective to Himself in His own sphere, He may become objective to us in the creaturely sphere, it does not mean any renunciation of His divine nature. He does become Objective."(70) God revealed Himself above all in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is both God and man, God in that God became an object for human knowing in Jesus Christ, and man, in that Jesus was fully man. Barth's notion of the Incarnation involves God becoming an object, and it is here that he seeks to overcome his objections to Schleiermacher who disavowed God becoming objective. For Barth, Jesus Christ is the central and normative revelation, and as a consequence, Barth will attempt to base all theological doctrines on what can be known of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, since God shows his very Self, the knowledge of him is certain and sure, that he exists, that he requires fear, love, and obedience, and that he is mysterious. This certain knowledge is the knowledge of faith. "The acknowledgment of the fact that revelation has taken place is faith, and the knowledge with which the revelation that has taken place begins is the knowledge of faith."(71) Nevertheless, the knowledge of faith, although clear and certain, is limited because God does not show Himself directly, but rather indirectly and mediately by means of created objects, Jesus Christ being God's unique revelation. Finally, although God reveals Himself objectively in Jesus Christ, his revelation is not accessible to the unaided intellect but requires a prior act of God in which God acts in the experience of the believer to create knowledge of Himself. The action of God in the believer is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit works in the particular with concrete acts of grace. Knowledge of God is never a general inference from the nature of things, nor is it given by a prior human choice which understands a specific event as revelatory, nor can it be conceived as an event within the general course of the world's regularities, but rather a concrete particular act of God which has the particular effect of revealing Who God is.
It is Barth's doctrine of the Spirit as the subjective reality of revelation that brings Barth close to James's notion of God acting in particulars. Barth did not intend to arrive at James's conclusion. His objective was to preserve the integrity of revelation by basing it on a prior divine act rather than a fallible human one. "Because we do not in any sense begin with ourselves, with our own capacity for faith and knowledge, we are secured against having to end with ourselves, i.e., with our own incapacity."(72) It is Barth's contention that a theology from below, one that seeks to base itself on either reason or experience, will fail. In the end, its conclusions will be subject to its premises, that is, revelation as a human function.
A major difference between James and Barth in their understanding of God as object is that Barth's primary motive is to solve his epistemological problem of the knowledge of God, whereas James' motive is to present a God who saves by acting in particular circumstances.(73) This is not to say that Barth doesn't affirm a saving God; he does, but I think it fair to say that Barth's chief effort has been to protect the integrity of revelation. Succinctly put, Barth solved his problem by affirming a strong doctrine of the Incarnation which allowed God to reveal Himself as an object within the phenomenal world, and secondly, a doctrine of the Spirit that entailed God acting in particulars, specifically, particular events in which God is known.
At this point I have asserted that Barth's notion of the Spirit, or his notion of receiving the Word of God, implies a notion of God acting in particulars. I will establish this point a little more concretely by considering Barth's notion of the Word of God. This will be followed by a discussion of Barth's theological method, and from there a look of some of Barth's ideas on time, election, providence, and evil. The paper will conclude with a consideration of how Barth could be strengthened and critiqued by contributions from James.
That Barth's notion of the Word of God implies, with some qualification, James's notion of God acting in particulars will be demonstrated by first showing that, for Barth, the Word of God as a divine decision, act, or event, is absolutely free and never subject to any constraints beyond the character of his mercy. And secondly, this divine act, as a prior decision of God, has tangible, concrete, and specific effects in the world. Further, these effects, from the point of view of faith, cannot be viewed as given by the general laws governing worldly events, or determined by human capabilities.
Barth begins his massive Church Dogmatics by asserting that the Church faces the problem of heresy and that the roots of the problem can be seen in an inadequate understanding of revelation. Barth, therefore, devotes his opening volume to a consideration of the Word of God as God's revelation. Specifically, the Word of God is a concrete particular event. This event is first and foremost an act of God, and secondarily it can be viewed as an experience in which God reveals concrete positive knowledge of Himself. As an act of God it is totally unlike all other activities; it cannot be comprehended in any fashion, except as lying within the free purposes of God to act and speak in a particular fashion. "The Word of God is not reality in the way in which reality can be predicted of an experiencable state of affairs, provided it is suited to our sense-perceptions and our understanding. Nor yet in the way in which reality belongs to the so-called laws of Nature, which are also the laws of the spiritual world in a special modification. Nor in the way in which, so far as there are such, the axioms of mathematics and physics have reality. Nor in the way in which it is real that I am I and not thou, and thou art thou and not I, or that yesterday is not today and will never be tomorrow. ... In a word, not reality in the way in which the totality of what we otherwise call reality is real."(74) This statement is the negative of what Barth also says positively, namely, that God is absolutely free and that his acts are subject to no law other than the mercy he has revealed in Jesus Christ. Or, Barth would say that the Word of God transcends "all human causation, and so devoid of all human basis, merely occurring as a fact and requiring to be acknowledged."(75) It follows from this that the Word of God is not objective in the usual sense of the word. "It is not something objective. It is the objective, because it is the subjective, namely, God's subjective. God's Word means, God speaking. Certainly God's Word is not the formal possibility of divine speech, but its fulfilled reality. It always has a perfectly definite, objective content. God always utters a concretissimum. But this divine concretissimum can as such never be anticipated or repeated."(76) As the Word has definite content, its worldly form corresponds to the form of life of its listeners. That is, it always has a two-fold character, a divine prior act, and subsequently its physical form in this world which makes it comprehensible to human understanding. It is through the physical form, as events in the phenomenal world, that God speaks and reveals Himself. This two-fold character corresponds to the divine and human character of Jesus Christ as both God and man. And when the Word is spoken, God uses physical words or events to determine the listener. "Man exists not abstractly but concretely, i.e. in experiences, in determinations of his existence by objects, by something external to himself. ... If knowledge of the Word of God can become possible for men, that must mean that they can have experience of the Word of God, they can be what they are, as determined by the Word of God."(77)
Furthermore, the determination of the listener by the Word of God, cannot, from the human side, be believed or understood as a merely human determination, so that what occurs is intelligible as a human act, or as part of an intelligible series of phenomenon in this world. God in his grace determines those who hear him, and although the hearer responds to grace, the human response is in no way prior, or equal, but subordinate to God's grace. God enables his Word to be received. The reception of his Word is not a human possibility, nor is there any prior point of contact between the divine and human. That point is created by God's grace. In other words, Barth rejects a two-language solution in which an event is understood on its divine side as a act of God, and on the human, as an event intelligible within the known or possibly known course of world events. Speaking of the experiences of hearing the Word of God he says, "But as hearing the Word of God they cannot be the object of so-called 'explanations' within this realm, i.e. as hearing the Word of God they cannot be justified, delimited, and so domesticated in this realm alongside of and over against what otherwise belongs to this realm."(78) The business of theology is to describe the positive content of revelation which is a revelation of God's very Self. As it stands, the two-language solution is a description of piety, it describes how the religious person views the world's events as acts of God. For Barth, theology is not a description of piety, but truly and positively statements concerning God and what God has revealed. Scripture is full of stories in which God speaks in concrete particular events which have actual determining effects in the world. To believe otherwise is to leave both theology and faith and enter into other domains, such as perhaps a phenomenology of religion in which religion is seen as a characteristically human phenomenon in that human beings ascribe religious significance to mundane events. The two language solution is neither a faith-statement nor a theological statement. Since God's Word begins with a prior decision of God, and since it has phenomenal effects in the world by concretely determining the believer, effects that cannot for faith be described on the human side as the inevitable workings of the world, it follows that Barth adopts a notion that has similarities to James's crass supernaturalism.(79)
We have seen that Barth's conception of the Word of God involves a notion of God acting in particulars that is akin to James's belief. How do they differ? The major difference between them, among other things, is that James's God is a power subject to the categories of space and time and therefore an object akin to other objects. God may inhabit stretches of being different from ours, similar, in James's view, to our inhabiting stretches of complexity not available to animals with their rudimentary consciousness. Even so, James's God is evolving in time, and developmentally somewhat continuous with our visible universe. James hypothesizes that the unconscious is the window through which the spiritual world makes itself felt in our world. Barth, on the other hand, will not allow God to be an object which can be categorized in any way as other objects.(80) In this he follows Anselm. Unlike other objects God is not available for knowledge apart from his willingness to reveal Himself. He is totally hidden beyond space and time and reveals Himself by first being the Lord of all other objects and using them to make himself known. God is first Subject, and then in his freedom reveals himself as an object for human knowledge. It is this radical otherness of God as object that makes it impossible for God to be known apart from a free disclosure of Himself. For James, however, God is more readily available since he exists in both space and time. This concludes our discussion of Barth in relation to James's crass supernaturalism. This discussion will become more significant when I discuss Barth critically by use of James.
The context of Barth's theological method is the Church, and its primary basis is Scripture. God has called the Church to preach the gospel, and has promised to use the fallible method of preaching and sacrament to reveal Himself. Although God has promised to speak through the fallible means of human proclamation, it is still the Church's responsibility to test the conformity of its speech against the Church's Credo. Barth is a Reformed theologian, and first and foremost Scripture is the basis of all knowledge of God; it is the Credo. Subsequent to Scripture, theology should test proclamation against the creedal statements of the faith, previous theological expositions, and finally the state of one's knowledge at a given time. Theology in no way replaces proclamation, but is the servant of proclamation by providing guidance, testing, and instruction as to the form of God's Word as revealed in Scripture. In this context Barth envisions the Word of God as having a three-fold form: preaching, Scripture, and the revealed Word. The revealed Word is the Word of God in itself, the Son of the Father, the Word, which reveals itself in preaching and Scripture. The latter are never the revealed Word, but reveal the revealed Word, God Himself, when God chooses to use them to speak. Since God reveals Himself in concrete and particular events, a theologian cannot have a prior system, but must begin in prayer, seeking the concrete Word of God in interpreting Scripture in light of the needs of proclamation. Nor can a theologian be restricted to the formal demands of science, such as consistency, comprehensiveness, or testability. Nor may theology claim freedom from contradiction since it may very well be the case that a free act of God may require holding two statements that are formally contradictory.(81) In this connection Barth speaks of the one-sidedness of the Word of God. Since the Word is always concrete, addressed to a concrete particular circumstance, God may very well say one thing in one circumstance and its opposite in another.(82) This does not mean that God is irrational, but it does mean that his purposes are not subject to the criteria of human rationality, but rather, are governed by his own merciful purposes. Yet theology can be considered a science in that it follows after a definite object of knowledge, has its own path of knowing, and is accountable for that path.(83) Nor can the criterion of conformity with Scripture be considered an independent criterion, but given in grace as event. Nor should theology bind itself to any one particular philosophy. Certainly theology takes place in the context of its era, but the Word of God cannot be tied to anyone formulation. Philosophy starts with existence in general, it cannot be expected to account for the realities of the "'new existence' of biblical man by a pure extension of thinking."(84) If a particular concept is useful, use it, if not, a theologian should not be tied to it. In the main, Barth really doesn't say much about his theological method since he wants to leave room for the work of the Spirit. A reading of his works reveals, however, that in discussing a particular theological issue, he normally reviews the Scriptural evidence followed by a treatment of the matter by previous theologians, as well as its status in contemporary discussion. Negatively, he will often attempt to show that a particular treatment has been inadequate because it began with general philosophical considerations or has based itself on human experience apart from God's act. In light of these deliberations, he will take the position which seems to him to be most faithful to Scripture. Finally, as there are no external criteria for theology, the validity of the theological enterprise depends ultimately upon God's promise to be faithful to human endeavor, and theological effort then becomes a matter of obedience, to love God with all one's mind, heart, and soul.
Barth's view of time, the time of revelation, and of history, is important for it is here that he seeks to address the issues raised by Strauss and a critical study of the Bible. Barth's starting point is that the revelation in Jesus Christ is not to be discovered within a general notion of time. Speaking of the attempt to found faith upon history he says, "There has been a failure to see that if revelation is revelation, we cannot speak of it as though it can discovered, dug up, worked out as the deeper ground and content of human history."(85) If one wants to begin with a general understanding of history and go from there to a saving history, or redemptive or qualified history, supposedly consisting of special redemptive acts of God, then one is free to ask why these particular events are held to be important for faith. One cannot begin outside of faith with a general history, but must begin with faith, with a view that when God reveals Himself, and that for faith is the prior act, he uses the forms of this world. "To put it quite concretely, the statement 'God reveals Himself' must signify that the fulfilled time is the time of the years 1-30. But that must not signify that the time of the years 1-30 becomes fulfilled time. It must signify that revelation becomes history, but not that history becomes revelation."(86) The point here is that, for faith, God is prior, the prior act of revelation creates the time of revelation, the time of Jesus Christ, who is God's revelation. Therefore the history of Jesus Christ is revelatory because it began as revelatory, revealed in Scripture as God's time of revelation, and not because history in general is considered to be revelatory. In Barth's view, the unique character of this time is evidenced by its being set off from ordinary general and fallen time by the miracle of the virgin birth and the resurrection, which, in his opinion, is an event of pure creation as in the creation of the universe ex nihilo.(87) In speaking of this history, Barth says that "If we were to abstract from God, and to look only to the created world and the possibilities and realities effective within it, we should have to say that the history of Jesus Christ comes from nowhere and has no basis."(88) "What is posited in it, the history of Jesus Christ, is not a further creaturely reality which is therefore distinct from God. It is a reality which in its creatureliness, its humanity and therefore its distinction from God is also united with Him, so that it is not merely human and creaturely but divine-human and divine-creaturely."(89) By virtue of the resurrection, the history of Jesus Christ, the spatial/temporal events of his life, were taken up into eternity.(90) There it exists for all time so that the there and then of Jesus Christ may, when God speaks through his Son, become here and now. That is, the history of Jesus Christ lives on, in Scripture, proclamation, and sacraments, as God uses these instruments to reveal Himself in the Son afresh. "It must also be said that as the One who has lived once He lives and will live. To avoid misunderstanding, we add that He does not merely do so spiritually but physically, in the very spatio-temporal form of His then history."(91)This history, a finite number of years, exists in God and is to be distinguished from all other histories, whether it be the time of expectation, the time of the Old Testament, or the time of the apostles, or the time of the believer (and here Barth distinguishes himself from Bultmann).(92) All these other times are fallen time, belonging to the old aeon, though coordinated to the history of Jesus Christ. God reveals Himself in these times, but he does so through the fulfilled time of Jesus Christ. It is significant that Barth's presentation here is unintelligible unless there is a notion that God's relations with different elements of the world are varied, peculiar, and particular. It is not just that the time of Jesus Christ is distinguished because it is held so by the believer, but rather, it is first distinguished by God who acts uniquely in that particular time. In this way Barth avoids the first question posed by Strauss, the assertion that faith based on a historical Christ is a relative faith. Rather Barth begins not with history, but with God's revelatory act, and this prior act is accepted in faith, and is believed with the certainty peculiar to faith, and subsequently faith understands that God's act takes history as a predicate and not conversely. That history is a predicate is given in the moment of proclamation, for in proclamation God gives Himself as object through the history of Jesus Christ, so that this history is given to the certainty of faith as well. In this way Barth avoids Strauss's first objection, that the Christ of historical research is as relative as all other historical results.(93)
The doctrine of election stands at the center of the evangelical aspect of Barth's theology. In his words it is the "sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man the One who loves in freedom. It is grounded in the knowledge of Jesus Christ because He is both the electing God and the elected man in One."(94) Furthermore, Barth gives his doctrine of election precedence over all other individual tenets of the Christian faith; it comes first as the eternal beginning of God's ways with humanity, and is prior to his doctrines of creation and providence. "As far as I know, no previous dogmatician has adopted such a course."(95) He justifies his innovation by positively affirming that Jesus Christ is God's revelation, and that all theological doctrines must be understood in the light of Jesus Christ. At this point he appeals to Scripture to argue that both in the Old Testament as the time of expectation, and in the New, the theme of election is central to understanding God's dealing with the world. Negatively, he argues that the doctrines of providence and creation are inevitably inadequate if not grounded in election wherein the mercy of God is seen in its purest light. For example, he maintains that the Reformation never clearly worked out a connection between Christ and providence, so that with the passage of time God's providential governance of the world was understood in terms of abstract doctrines of divine rule. These abstract doctrines could not withstand the horrors of history. "The hour had to come, and has now come, when belief in history and its immanent demons could replace faith in God's providence, and the word 'providence' could become a favorite one on the lips of Adolf Hitler. It was the older, genuine orthodoxy which first opened the sluices to this flood."(96) In my opinion, Barth's doctrine of election, even from the pragmatic view, is one of his strongest doctrines. James has no doctrine of election, and any unprejudiced view of the facts of religious experience cannot reveal that God has elected to show mercy to every person as Barth believes. In light of religious experience, or experience in general, some seemed blessed and other damned to lives of misery. Barth objects to Calvin who based his doctrine of election on his opinion of how many had received salvation. In Calvin's view only about twenty percent of the population evidenced the "right" behavior and were considered saved.(97) Barth's view of election is based on his exegesis of Scripture, "In Jesus Christ God in His free grace determines Himself for sinful man and sinful man for Himself. He therefore takes upon Himself the rejection of man with all its consequences, and elects man to participation to His own glory."98. God has elected all to fellowship with him, and instead of condemning some to glory and others to punishment, has elected to suffer the results of human sin in the crucifixion, and by virtue of the resurrection, has brought in Jesus Christ all people into his Presence. The doctrine of election is not a "Yes" and "No" but a pure "Yes." As such it is God's first decision with respect to the human race, and for Barth, the cornerstone of his theology. It is an open offer to all. Barth is unwilling to concede the possibility that some must be damned. He will leave open the possibility that some will reject God's offer, since Barth notes that Scripture does not teach universalism. But to focus on the human possibility of rejection, is to focus on the human reality, while the prime point of reference here is God's act of suffering and mercy in Jesus Christ as a call to everyone. To believe that God has called all, and to stay with that, is to found one's destiny in God's mercy rather than one's good works or privileged status. This, for Barth, is the heart of the gospel, and one of his most significant theological contributions. In order of presentation, Barth's doctrine of providence follows his doctrine of creation which, in turn, follows the doctrine of election. Before speaking of providence, however, it would be good to say a few words about his doctrine of creation.
Barth believes that God created the world ex nihilo and that the world had a specific beginning in time. When God created the world ex nihilo, he granted its parts varying degrees of autonomy, but the whole was created open and available to his merciful care as revealed in Jesus Christ. In God's providential care of the world, in both its general course and smallest detail, it must be noted that God is not only an omnicausal ground, and here he agrees with Schleiermacher, but also that God has peculiar and different relations with the various elements within the world.(99) Two of the manifold ways God relates to the world are by acting directly with or without the mediation of created objects. In creation, God acted alone, and in continued acts of grace, he acts directly as in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the call of the prophets, the virgin birth, resurrection, miracle upon miracle, and the sanctification of the bread and wine for communion.(100) But in preservation, he rules freely yet indirectly, directing creaturely activity in every detail while making use of and accompanying other creaturely activities. As God rules, the causal nexus is open and available to his power. Barth will not allow any view which binds the free power of God. Specifically, he will not allow that God is governed by physical laws, or that he is mediated to the world through a world soul, or bound by ideal moral laws, economic or political regularities, or even the laws of logic.(101) This is not to say that he is a God of caprice, but rather he governs through his own wisdom and rationality to reveal his love as known in Jesus Christ. In this sense miracles are not exceptions to laws of nature, although they may very well be incomprehensible in terms of our knowledge. They do, however, reveal the rule of God, as do all events in varying ways.(102) There are no autonomous laws, but rather both regularity and irregularity may witness to God's care. In all events, even ones bearing evil, one is ultimately concerned with God. The purpose of God's providential care has been revealed in the history of Jesus Christ, as well as the subordinate but coordinated histories of expectation and recollection, the times of the Old and New Testaments. God's purpose for all people is to be found in the thin line of the biblical history which traces out the meaning and work of God in all history. "That world history in its totality is the history in which God executes His will of grace must be taken to mean that in its totality it belongs to this special history; that its lines can have no starting point or goal than the one divine will of grace; that they must converge on this one thin line and finally run in its direction. This is the theme of the doctrine of providence."(103) The direction of this line is fellowship with God, the reconciliation of all creatures with God and with each other. I will conclude this discussion of providence with some comments on Barth's understanding of the relation between human and divine freedom.
According to Barth, God created all things with their limited and appointed powers and degrees of freedom. This freedom is real and significant, the world is not an emanation from God. On the other hand, God rules absolutely, but his power is not the abstract concept of infinite power. God, conceived abstractly as infinite power, would, in Barth's opinion, be an idol. Rather, the biblical God limits himself, not because he is limited by exterior constraints, but rather, he acts consistently with his nature, and his nature is not coercive, but respective of human freedom. These statements, however, do not solve the technical problem of divine and human freedom. The Bible "does not offer any solution at all to the technical problem raised. If we read the Bible with a desire to find any such solution, we shall find that it has nothing to say. But it offers us something far greater and better, the fact of a relationship between the Creator and His creatures, between His freedom and their freedom, which is still clear and positive in spite of this factual existence of this problem."(104)
One of James's critiques of traditional theism, and this critique can be found for example in the first chapter of his A Pluralistic Universe, is that it so exalts the power of God as to destroy human significance. James's solution was to suggest a limited God who affects and is affected by the world. But did James, by his own lights, have to provide a philosophically consistent position? Certainly Barth's solution to this problem doesn't satisfy a need for philosophical consistency. It leaves the problem unsolved. But James, by his own philosophical reckonings, did not have to solve the problem of human and divine power by the expedient of consistency. It is one of the basic themes of A Pluralistic Universe that the reality of particulars overflows consistent description, and to insist on consistency is to mutilate the facts. That is, James begins with particulars, given facts and realities, as does Barth, and holds that language can only describes these realities in "patches," and these patchwork descriptions need not be consistent. From a Jamesian point of view, Barth is justified in beginning with the particular, the concrete relation between God and humanity that is attested in Scripture, rather than mutilating the perceived givenness of human and divine freedom by recourse to a consistent explanation. These considerations can be applied as well to Barth's approach to the matter of theodicy which we will now consider as part of Barth's understanding of evil.
According to Barth the true nature of evil, which he calls Das Nichtige, translated "nothingness," is only revealed in Jesus Christ.(105) There the reality of evil was revealed as a direct assault upon God. Barth rejects any notion that God transcends the reality of evil, or is unaffected by its destructive reality. "He Himself has assumed the burden and trouble of confrontation with nothingness. He would rather be unblest with His creature than be the blessed God of an unblest creature. He would rather let Himself by injured and humiliated in making the assault and repulse of nothingness His own concern than leave His creature alone in his affliction."(106)
Several consequences follow from this view. First, alternate views, in Barth's opinion, define evil primarily in terms of its relationship to aspects of the world. For example, he critiques Schleiermacher who sees evil as a dialectical opposite to grace within the consciousness of the believer, or Heidegger who views evil as a moment in being itself, or Leibnitz, who considers it as the minimal and necessary condition to insure that the world is distinct from God. None of the positions are Christian, since by giving evil an explanation in the general scheme of things they give it a necessary legitimacy. There is no ultimate explanation for evil in a theoretical sense. It has no legitimacy, but from first to last is opposed and rejected by God. "But it is a piece of the nature of evil that if we could explain how it may have reality it would not be evil."(107) Secondly, since evil is that which God rejects, the possibilities he passed over, evil must exist in its own curious fashion. It is not created by God as are other realities, it is in no sense from God Himself, therefore it is a third thing. It has no ordinary existence and because God has certified in the resurrection that he has conquered it, Barth calls it nothingness. But it is not nothing in the sense of the absence of something; it is a power to be reckoned with. Against this power human beings are totally helpless; apart from the power of God, evil would destroy the universe as it seeks to destroy all that God creates and affirms. Furthermore, there is a real hell, a real devil and his legions, and real death.(108) The term "real" in this context means that it is an assault on creation and God, and something that must be taken into consideration. It has effects. Furthermore, Barth doesn't locate the ultimate source of evil in human sin. Certainly human sin is involved in evil. Evil was revealed as opposition to God in that human beings were involved in the crucifixion, but Barth won't explain sin solely in terms of human action. There is no final explanation. Barth will not accept James's solution to the theodicy problem by limiting the power of God and attributing evil to forces beyond God's control. As in the issue of divine and human freedom, Barth sees no technical solution, but calls attention to the biblical witness that God has suffered with humanity and because of humanity, and further, and this is the most important point, God has utterly and irrevocably conquered evil. It was conquered in Jesus Christ, in his life, and in his resurrection. Its present power is an interim moment under the overriding reign of God, a moment that will surely pass away when the conquest of sin and death given in the resurrection will be visible for all to see. Nor has God given the present age over to irreparable ruin, but throughout the present time, in numerous ways, God daily and incessantly defeats evil and redeems people to fellowship with Himself and with each other.
We have now finished with selected aspects of Barth's theology. Our next task should be easier, to consider Barth in the light of James, to assess his strengths and weaknesses, and question whether Barth's theology could be strengthened or enriched by insights of James, and whether these suggested improvements can be carried out within the limits of Barth's method. First, I will contrast Barth's and James's method. Then, by means of this contrast, I will show that Barth's attempt to do theology from above, based upon the Word of God as an event received in faith, is one of his greatest strengths, even when viewed in terms of James's pragmatic criteria. Secondly, I will indicate some ways in which James's philosophy is highly serviceable as philosophical background for Barth's theology by providing it with a simple and appropriate perspective. Finally, I will point out two weaknesses in Barth that can be overcome by using insights of James: Barth's inordinate use of abstract language in spite of his professed devotion to the particular and concrete, and his ambiguous consideration of the historical Jesus in connection with the apologetic weakness of his theology. None of these suggested improvements will involve a major change in Barth's theological method, but rather, work toward its completion.
James's methodological approach to religion combined a number of factors. First we may say that he was scientific--whatever conclusions he drew for religion had to be compatible with the facts of religion, and especially its primary source, religious experience. The scientific approach to religion is apparent throughout the Varieties. He collects data, assesses and evaluates it, organizes it, and draws tentative conclusions. A second, and equally important consideration for religious beliefs is that they must correspond to the whole person. By this James meant that the empirical evidence is usually not sufficient to found living beliefs that vitally motivate the soul, and ultimately, insofar as one can assess, work to the improvement of the universe. Therefore, he is willing to run beyond the evidence, though remaining consistent with it, in order to found beliefs that motivate the will, satisfy the mind, invigorate the body, improve society, and establish a satisfactory universe. These are James's two primary criteria for religious belief, and his method is the attempt to satisfy those two criteria by assessing the evidence and formulating beliefs in terms of human needs. Therefore he is willing to make the statement, one that would be anathema to Barth, that "The deity to whom the prophets, seers, and devotees who founded the particular cult bore witness was worth something to them personally. They could use him."(109) And when a deity was no longer useful, he was "erelong neglected and forgotten."(110) Given James's method, how does he differ from Barth? Since we have already investigated Barth's method, we may draw attention to some of James's beliefs in contrast to Barth and evaluate, from my point of view, the relative strength of their religious ideas.
From a pragmatic point of view, seen its ability to satisfy the human heart, or to provide courage in the face of any catastrophe, Barth's doctrine of an omnipotent God who seeks to save all people is significantly more effective than James's notion of a helpful, evolving God. James, of course, did not affirm an omnipotent God. An omnipotent God does not satisfy his two basic criteria for religious beliefs. He feared that belief in an omnipotent Absolute would undermine the vital springs of human activity by robbing people of their sense of meaningful action. An omnipotent God usurps all power to Himself and leaves humanity as passive spectators. Empirically, the only entities which exist are found within environments where they are mutually determined and therefore not omnipotent. James, on the basis of human need, preferred to believe in a compassionate God or gods who worked with humanity to save the world. James did not base his belief that God is good, and that he working meaningfully with us, solely on the basis of the evidence. He is as aware as anyone that the evidence is ambiguous; the universe displays the demonic as well as the divine, massive suffering and sometimes joy. The existence of evil does not imply an evil God, and further, if God good, then, for James, he isn't omnipotent. Human beings need a merciful God, and believing in one helps the universe along, and "who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?"(111) In my opinion, however, Barth presents a more reliant God. Perhaps it is only personal preference, and James would honor that, but it seems stronger to me to have received a revelation in which God reveals himself as an omnipotent and merciful God who grants a meaningful sphere of action to human beings. A general assessment of the world situation does not reveal a loving God who seeks to save. In Barth's opinion, those who start with a human opinion are doomed to end with it. For Barth the uncertainty of human beliefs, and James considers all beliefs as provisional and uncertain, can only be conquered by the certainty of faith which is sure of its object though uncertain of its theological expression.(112) James was doubtless put off by the religion of his day. He felt it had been invaded by the remote abstractions of philosophy rather than adhering to the straight and narrow of vital religion. But even in terms of James's own philosophical vision, there is room for Barth's omnipotent God who heals and suffers with humanity. James could not help but approve when Barth speaks of the crowds of people in Jesus' time who knew the suffering of Christ as the presence of God, and who received his grace in healing of their broken bodies and disturbed minds. Speaking of these people, Barth says they have "no further need to study demonology, or to set up an independent doctrine De peccato, or to work out a theodicy."(113) God has made himself known to them, and made himself known as one who calls them to obedience as their Lord, and ultimately saves them from all calamity. From James's point of view, abstract proofs of God or resolutions of theodicy are irrelevant to the overwhelming needs of humanity. The only real proof is in concrete events, acts of mercy. But a finite God cannot ultimately guarantee salvation, and most people instinctively recognize this. It is difficult for me to see how a finite God is going to last in what James calls the long run of experience. Pragmatically speaking, Barth's views on election, theodicy, and providence, are the stronger views, and represent a significant attempt on Barth's part to overcome the possible weaknesses of a theology from below.
Having said this, however, James's thought is unusually serviceable as a philosophical background for Barth's theology. This can be seen by noticing that the most important ideas in James's philosophical vision are important elements in Barth's thought as well. Furthermore, if Barth's readers were to be acquainted with James, they would find themselves in a convenient position to understand a number of Barthian ideas in ways that are simpler and more comprehensive than their expression in Barth. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that Barth wants to avoid being bound by philosophy, and there are significant ways in which James is not compatible with Barth.
First of all, James is not a systematic philosopher in the sense that he presents a logically detailed philosophical system. Rather, he presents a few simple ideas which generate a basic vision while allowing considerable flexibility in the detailed articulation of that vision. This is ideal for Barth who doesn't need a detailed system, particularly one that advances a philosophical knowledge of God or specifies God's relations with the world. Barth wants to leave this knowledge to a concrete consideration of what has been revealed, and revealed in the particular and never by inference from the general conditions of life. Similarly, James provides a philosophical vision that begins with the specific and concrete.
The cornerstone of James's philosophy is his radical empiricism. Essentially, it claims that the only meaningful discourse must concern objects given in experience and these objects must be considered in terms drawn from experience. A key idea is that the relations of things themselves are given in experience, and one does not need to postulate either objects or relations unless their existence has some relevance for differences in the world's details. Such an approach has the advantage that it neither affirms or denies in advance that anything can either exist or not exist, but awaits the verdict of the evidence. These ideas are helpful in terms of Barth. Barth doesn't seek to prove anything, or even demonstrate that something is a priori rational. Rather, he claims that knowledge of God is given in the Word of God which is first God's act, and secondly, by the power of the Spirit, it is a concrete event within the experience of the believer. Barth, like James, holds to the a posteriori and the concrete, pointing to the events themselves. Furthermore, the whole of who God is, his inner relations, and his relations to the world, are, as in James, matters of experience as well. These relations are not subject to any extra-experiential constraints; God reveals Himself in a variety of relations, so that Barth's language about God is awash with ideas expressing the entire gamut of possible relations, from the totally fulfilled history of Jesus Christ to sin as that mysterious reality which God passes over and rejects. Nor, as we have seen, does Barth feel compelled to harmonize the variety of relationships, just as James doesn't feel that descriptions of the world must be consistent in order to do justice to the given facts.
I think James could be helpful to Barth in arriving at a more adequate anthropological understanding. James, partially in light of his physiological and psychological studies, was able to understand a human being as involved in a web of relations, or routes of interactions, that stretch out into the world, interconnecting with the body and mind, and able to connect the whole person with the most intimate aspects of reality. Although James was primarily a pluralist, his attempt to solve the mind-body problem finally led him to accept a sort of rudimentary monism. In this view all aspects of the world are composed of the same "stuff." With respect to God, the world is plastic. When God releases energy into the universe it transforms the rudimentary stuff out of which everything is created and is experienced as effects in the mental, emotional, and physical dimensions of existence. When Barth speaks of the history of Jesus Christ, of sacrament, or of God becoming present in experience, one can visualize James's notion of routes of relations that relate disparate aspects of the universe into an on-going process composed of thoughts, moods, physical actions, external events, remote processes, and so forth. Furthermore, since both James and Barth believe that God acts in particulars, the process and event of knowing God, seen as a web of relations and objects in relations, can be transformed by the direct action of God, so that one who hears the Word of God hears it through God transforming the mental, physical, and spiritual, structure of the world at a particular point. This transformation establishes new routes of connections that terminate in new entities and reveal old entities in a different light. The transformation of the world, seen as God's action in the world, is the work of the Holy Spirit. James's rudimentary monism becomes relevant since Barth wants to adopt a view of the Word of God which affirms God's access to every dimension of existence. As the object of God's action, there are no special points where God may or may not make impact, all is open to the Spirit. "In determining the anthropological spot at which experience of the Word of God becomes possible, we are not obliged to single out one or another among the various ways in which man can be self-determined, as if it and it alone were the chosen vessel of this experience. We have the will, we have conscience, we have feelings specially fixed as such distinct spots, and entire theological systems reared on this or that preference."(114) What we have then is a loosely strung together universe in which various connections are establish by God who acts creatively throughout the whole of it, and particularly within human beings, to establish connections through the hearing of the Word, connections which serve as the medium so that God can show his very Self. This is more fitting with a biblical picture which understands the Word of God as a power which transforms existence. Barth notes that Scripture views the Word of God in such naturalistic terms as "life, light, fire, spring, steam, and storm, or outbreaks, shocks, overpowering events, and experiences."(115) Having James in mind is helpful in understanding the presence of the Word of God as events transforming the world. Barth's chief concern, however, is to affirm the content of what God says in the encounter. The Word of God is always a concrete address spoken to a particular person at a particular time, with a meaning that is specific for that time. The Word of God is never static, but given in the moment, nor can it be possessed. God may or or may not speak. When God is silent, there is no Word of God. Such a view is consistent with James's process universe where nothing is ever static, nor are relations eternally and irrevocably fixed, but flux occurs as contrasted through the relative degree of constancy that does actually exist. For James, the Word of God would have to be a relation like any other relation, it exists only when experienced in the particular.
In certain respects, James's pragmatic theory of truth is compatible with Barth's understanding of how God is known. Both James and Barth were avowed enemies of natural theology, and both had to derive an alternate understanding of how any truth about God is known. James pragmatic theory of truth fits in with his radical empiricism and his view of the universe. All human truths are created through a process of relations in which those ideas and beliefs that are held to be true are connected in various ways with the world, the past, oneself, in such a fashion that one verifies them through their connective routes. Truth then is created through the interactions of human beings with their environments. Unless the connective routes that end in God are experienced, God hasn't revealed Himself. James's pragmatic theory of truth was criticized since it was thought to make no sense out of what were called "ejective realities." By this it was meant invisible realities, such as other minds, or electrons, or possibly God. These things are never directly observed in experience, so how could they be the terminus of routes of occasions? James's point is not so much whether something is invisible, but whether it makes any particular difference in the world of facts. From this point of view, all knowledge of God must involve routes that terminate in experiences that indicate the divine. James noted that some people "possess the object of their belief, not in the form of mere conceptions which their intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi-sensible realties directly apprehended."(116) These ideas certainly have an affinity with Barth. Although Barth doesn't want to delimit God by placing him within time as does James, he will insist that God is only known through events within the world in which God reveals his very Self by using the world as a medium of revelation. The event of revelation must terminate in some experience in which God "appears." This is similar to James. They differ in the degree of autonomy they will attribute to the human knowledge of God. James's God is not so remote, although he inhabits stretches of existence somewhat distinct from ours, much as the mental life of a human transcends that of an animal. Still God is in time, and accessible to human knowing much like other realities. In fact, James conjectures that God is known through the window of the unconscious. Barth will have none of that. For Barth, God is an object like none other. Nor will he lend as much weight as does James to human satisfaction in determining our knowledge of God. Of course, for Barth, God is ultimately satisfying, but that satisfaction is known and determined by God. The authority of revelation is based on God's act, known in faith, and not whether someone can justify a particular belief by showing how it satisfies human needs or longings. Aside from these basic differences, James's pragmatic theory of truth sheds light on Barth's understanding of the knowledge of God, and enables it to be viewed in more process terms. One notion, that can be seen in Pannenberg, for instance, is that knowledge is intelligible in the context of past knowledge (understood by Pannenberg as the history of traditions), and this understanding would help a reader of Barth to see revelation in more contextual and evolutionary terms. For Barth, God is only known by God, and James would agree that God must be active in the process. Summarizing, these are some of the ways I visualize James contributing to Barth -- a clearer picture of a universe in which knowing begins with the concrete and particular, and in which God acts in the world both in general and particular.
James and Barth arrived at their notions of particularity from different directions. James's basic issue was the question of salvation. How can I find salvation when my world and I are going to pieces. This question, as an urgent question concerning one's immediate sanity or health, was not Barth's primary question. Barth began with the epistemological question. A basic point of this paper is that Barth's epistemological particularity implies a God who acts in particulars and can therefore save concretely as well. We must now turn to some of the ways James can shed critical light on Barth's theology.
First of all, I must point out that, unlike James, Barth has virtually no accounts of God doing anything in contemporary history. One could reply that it isn't the place of theology to present such material. Theology is an abstract science. It operates at several removes from the data. Its place is to test ideas, determine their relationships, and provide an over-arching conceptual structure. This is certainly true, but is that its sole responsibility for Barth? Neither Barth nor James hold that knowledge of things is to be gained by presenting an abstract structure alone, but knowledge is gained through the particular and in the concrete. Therefore, in Barth, one finds numerous excursions in fine print where he begins with the particular and concrete data of Scripture; and in James, one finds pulsating accounts of contemporary religious experience. But Barth scarcely presents any material from contemporary experience. Should he do so? Barth was, to some degree, leery of pietism, and he might argue that such accounts detract from the Word of God by first focusing on the human reality rather than the divine reality of God. From his point of view, the Credo is the source of theology, and not contemporary experience. But the Credo is not simply the basis for theology, it is the basis for contemporary experience as well. From a Barthian perspective, if one observes that prayer is answered, that the politically oppressed are liberated, and that people are healed, this does not prove that God does these things, or even that God is merciful. But contemporary acts of God need never claim to be revelatory. They are simply examples of acts of God that have already been believed as revelatory because they exist within the Credo. It can be doubted that any event is an act of God. But if the Credo is accepted in faith as God's revelation, it substantiates and validates those contemporary events that are consistent with those acts of God revealed in the Credo. The Credo judges the present, not vice-versa, but without contemporary events, the present escapes close scrutiny, and the Credo remains safely in the air. An exception to these ideas would be Barth's political ideas. These have a more concrete and living character than do some of his theological writings. He took stands and criticized contemporary political events in light of the gospel so that his view of things make concrete sense. This is all to the good. But in other areas, areas vital to people's on-going day-to-day existence, he is abstract and vague. He will say for example that God answers prayer, or that God liberates the believer from the ocean of undirected possibilities, or that God delivers one from bondage to things, but since he scarcely gives any examples, the entire discussion has a rather abstract and spectral air. I would suggest a two-fold approach. The two-fold approach would be to present the biblical revelation as the norm, as God's revelation, and then in a subservient position, present other events as expressions of the character of God as known in Scripture. In this way God's revelation takes on a much more concrete and personal form and arouses the hope that God can do something in the present. Such an approach would not require a modification in Barth's method, but rather its fulfillment. If Barth believes it important to include concrete revelatory and saving events from Scripture within the Church Dogmatics, as examples of the objective Word of God in Scripture, then contemporary accounts of religious experience must be included as examples of the subjective reality of the Spirit who reveals the saving Word anew in the present circumstances.
This idea can also be considered from the point of view of her hermeneutics. In his preface to the second edition of his commentary on Romans, Barth defends his method of exegesis. His point is that he ponders and prays so that the "The conversation between the original record and the reader moves round the subject-matter, until a distinction between yesterday and today becomes impossible."(117) When the distinction between past and present breaks down, the result is an organic interrelated set of materials drawn both from past and present, in which both reflect the activity of God in analogous ways. Exegesis doesn't simply report Paul's thought in isolation, but Paul as relevant for today, and in relation to the same God who acts today. This means that biblical exegesis must report past and present acts of God in their relatedness.118. We must now press on to the question of the historical Jesus.
The primary source for understanding Barth's view of the historical Jesus is in IV:2 of the Church Dogmatics in the section entitled "The Royal Man." He begins by saying that the gospels do not present a biography of Jesus in the ordinary sense. Rather, they present the uncommon and extraordinary characteristics of Jesus' life and work.(119) Barth believes that Jesus was a person who made an extraordinary impact on his contemporaries by exercising authority in word in deed, by teaching and living a revolutionary ethic, by calling people to follow him, and by healing the sick and casting out demons. As a whole, the history of Jesus chronicles the coming of an extraordinary reality to earth, a reality that cannot be described as an antithesis or depth within ordinary reality. Even the miracles of Jesus, and this would separate Barth from James, cannot be understood as supernatural acts within the dimensions of this world, but are the coming of something utterly beyond this present aeon. Furthermore, the history of Jesus Christ reveals that God is compassionate, that he suffers and rejoices with his creatures, and that he is determined to assure their salvation. This picture is consistent with the picture of a universe in which God's Word has real effects in the world since the words and deeds of Jesus transform the minds, bodies, and actions of his listeners and followers. According to Barth, Strauss confronted both theology and biblical studies with the fact that Scripture is not primarily interested in presenting a mundane Jesus, but rather a super-human figure who cannot be visualized within the limits of known human characteristics. This was Strauss's second question. Barth's response to Strauss is to claim that the biblical version is essentially correct. Although Jesus in and of himself was human, his actions and words revealed the purposes of God who is not bound by ordinary mortal limitations. Barth rejects Strauss's assumption that Jesus must conform to the known historical, psychological, and physical laws. At this point Barth has a natural ally in James. James's crass supernaturalism had a scientific base, it was founded on the data of religious experience. He believed that there was evidence for a God who acted under the categories of space and time. According to James, it would be unscientific to assume or to postulate entities that are not observable under the categories of space and time. From that perspective, it was not scientific for nineteenth century biblical scholarship to presuppose a God who did not act in particulars, since such a God can have no scientific relevance. Or, if one assumes that God can have no scientific relevance, then it is not scientific to assume in advance that there are no invisible spiritual powers whose temporal and spatial effects are described in the biblical narrative. But Barth doesn't really need James's help at this point. He begins with a God of freedom who cannot be constrained by hermeneutical presuppositions or "scientific" laws of any kind. Therefore Barth is free to interpret the biblical picture in a more or less factual manner. Consequently, Barth has two presuppositions for interpreting Scripture.(120) The first presupposition is the ordinary presupposition of most biblical exegetes, that "biblical theology must conscientiously employ all known and available means, all the rules and criteria that are applicable to grammar, linguistics, and style, as well as all the knowledge gathered in the comparative study of the history of the world, of culture, and of literature."(121) The second presupposition is the more interesting, that the texts "according to the intention of their authors and according to their actual character, require that they be read and explained as attestation and proclamation of a divine action and speech which have reportedly or really taken place in the midst of general history."(122) The second presupposition claims that there are no facts hidden behind the message as it stands, that the message claims divine events, and they consequently require no consistent demythologizing.(123) Here Barth is similar to James in that James says religion is not just a way of viewing facts, but actually claims that God creates new facts that are not given in the general course of events. But James would go on to ask Barth, given that the events occurred, how is that relevant, or what is their cash value or pragmatic worth?
We may begin by calling to mind that Barth believes God fully revealed Himself only once, in the history of Jesus Christ. Since that time, in word and sacrament, and in countless ways, God uses Jesus' history to continue acting in the world. It would follow that one could expect God to act in the present, through the historical Jesus, as he acted in the original history of Jesus Christ. Is this the case for Barth? The one concrete example given by Barth of God doing something, aside from the usual abstract descriptions, is the example of an exorcism carried out by the elder Blumhardt and recounted in the section entitled "Jesus is Victor" of IV:3 part one. In light of this event, Barth observes, "That Jesus conquers was not stated nor known, and certainly not 'settled' in this way among the contemporaries of Blumhardt, whether extra or intra muros ecclesiae, whether in the world of Goethe or that of Hegel, whether in official circles, pietistic groups or theology, whether by the Rationalists, Supranaturalists and Pietists of the 18th century or the Romantics, Speculatives, Biblicists, or theologians of the Awakening of the 19th century."(124) It was the failure of theology to hold to the possibility given in the biblical witness of Jesus as a savior in concrete deeds that led James to emphasize a God of concrete healing experiences, and to contrast this God with the God of theology. In his opinion the essence of religion is its experience: "If you ask what these experiences are, they are conversations with the unseen, voices and visions, responses to prayer, changes of heart, deliverances from fear, inflowings of help, assurances of support, whenever certain persons set their own internal attitude in certain appropriate ways. The power comes and goes and is lost, and they can be found only in a certain definite direction, just as if it were a concrete material thing."(125) Of these experiences he says, "That the God of systematic theology should exist or not exist is a matter of small practical moment. At most it means that you may continue uttering certain abstract words and that you must stop using others. But if the God of these particular experiences be false, it is an awful thing for you, if you are one of those whose lives are stayed on such experiences. The theistic controversy, trivial enough if we take it merely academically and theologically, is of tremendous significance if we test it by its results for actual life."(126) In light of the Blumhardt example, it would seem that Barth has responded to James's critique of theology. But Barth is ambiguous on this matter.(127) For example, he makes the following statement: "According to Acts prophecy and miracles were at first still active among His disciples. But obviously they were only a reflection of the manifestation of Christ Himself, a reflection which was bound to cease."(127) But aside from ambiguity, the greatest weakness in affirming the relevance of the historical Jesus in the present is the preponderance of abstract description and the previously mentioned lack of concrete examples. Were there sufficient examples, and were they to correspond to the biblical events, the supernatural predicates of the historical Jesus could become recognizable as contemporary possibilities and therefore more credible historically.
Although our knowledge of events in the present influences our assessment of the veracity of past events, present events never do more than add or subtract degrees of probability. Since the Christian faith is dependent on more or less probable historical events, how can faith, as it is for Barth, be certain? There is a finite probability that Jesus may be shown never to have existed. Some events, such as the virgin birth or the resurrection, supposedly happened only once. If unique, how can they be understood as more or less probable on the basis of our general knowledge of what may or may not occur? Within the gospels, there is historical evidence for the virgin birth and the resurrection, but like all historical evidence, it is not absolutely compelling. Nevertheless, however one begins to believe, especially in regard to over-beliefs that are the foundation for other more accessible beliefs, one must begin with faith. This faith, is not, however, completely blind, for miraculous deeds done in the name of Jesus would lead the heart toward believing that Jesus rose again and that his birth had its unique origin in God.
In regard to repeatable events, rather than unique events, it makes sense to me to consider biblical events as possibilities, historical possibilities, which become easier to believe if they occur in the present as in the past. The biblical events should not be rejected outright as impossible without researching contemporary experience as did James, and even then, if there is no confirmation, one may still keep an open mind as to their possibility, especially if they are events which have redemptive power. Furthermore, the certainty of faith could be considered as being of another genus than historical certainty, so that certain faith may depend upon uncertain historical events.
There is another possibility. Perhaps it has been revealed to faith that certain events are historical, even without absolutely compelling evidence, and that God acts in these particular events in a peculiar way. Such events might be believed as an over-belief, not totally without evidence, but in part because believing them brings life if not eternal life, something that James would surely affirm. The wording of the Nicene creed, for example, that God created the heavens and the earth, and that his Son was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, and rose again, are statements of faith, and faith that concrete events occurred. These events are the backbone of the Christian faith and affirm a God who acts in particulars. They are also over-beliefs from the point of view of James, but beliefs worth having. Therefore, the other events, which may not lie so closely to the heart of the faith are in principle possible, since they involve nothing any more extraordinary than the ones affirmed in faith. The less central events, repeatable events such as specific miracles, can be considered as possibilities, integrally connected with the central events affirmed in faith. Their reality becomes apparent when they are experienced in the present, while their historical probability outside of faith can be an issue decided as James might have decided it, on the basis of historical corroboration seen in the light of experience. But, for faith, the biblical events are not to be explained away. If they do not seem at present meaningful or possible, one awaits their meaning by refusing to submit them to our experience, but submitting our experience to them. This means that events, whether it be the healing of a child, or the political deliverance of the oppressed, are to be sought in prayer, and when they occur, are not to be explained on the basis of doctrines of historical or psychological causality. Scripturally, these sorts of events have been revealed as characteristic of God. It is the business of faith to hold to a God that acts in this fashion. In Barth's opinion, extraneous explanations detract from the worship of God and fail to give him honor. In sum, Barth could strengthen his theology by being particular in his doctrine of the Spirit, just as he is particular in discussing the Word, and further, James's idea of over-beliefs, taken in the risk of faith yet not completely blind, is a viable option in light of the relativity of certain vital forms of historical knowledge.
Would these suggestions from James require a modification of Barth's method? They would not, as long as one placed the biblical revelation prior to the actualizations of the Spirit in our time between the times. Furthermore, one could even start out from below, with experience, as long as one held an adequate doctrine of the Spirit. In Barth's words: "Again, a genuine, proper theology could be built up from such a starting point. Theology could remain true to its own theme while it went with the times and thus completed this reversal. What Schleiermacher constructed by means of his theology of awareness by planting himself in the centre which for the Reformers had been a subsidiary centre, could be the pure theology of the Holy Spirit; the teaching of man brought face to face with God by God, of man granted grace by grace. If it was this, then as a theology it was just as much justified as the theology which was oriented in the opposite direction, the theocentric, Reformed theology."(129) Here Barth makes the comment that a theology from below would be more in accord with the times. Barth has been criticized for the apologetic weakness of his theology. I think a theology from below, incorporating the suggestions that have been made in this paper, would go in the direction of overcoming the apologetic difficulty.
Finally, Barth's theology can be strongly contrasted with that of Bultmann. According to Bultmann, it is mythological to believe that God intervenes in the causal nexus of the world. The modern world-view, shaped by modern science, holds to a closed causal system. To believe that God acts in particulars in the sense of James's crass supernaturalism is to equate God with a natural force or object. For Bultmann, God is transcendent, beyond space and time, and cannot be described as if he were a natural force or object. Such descriptions belong to a pre-scientific mythical mentality. "It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent this-worldly objectivity. Myths give objectivity to that which is unworldly."(130) According to Bultmann, mythical descriptions of God are unacceptable to modern scientific thought, and could only be accepted by a sacrifice of intellectual integrity. But does the premise that God acts in particulars imply that God is a particular like any other particular? We have seen that James is much more willing to conceive of God as a natural force that is Barth. But I cannot see how the conclusion follows logically from the premise. Barth's "Wholly Other" God is unlike other objects. If Barth's analysis of Schleiermacher and nineteenth century theology is to be taken seriously, one must question whether or not it is possible to build a theology devoid of God having peculiar relations to the world. Barth has this to say of Bultmann: "What is the purpose of the alleged mythological elements if not to demonstrate that we are not left alone in this human, worldly, this worldly, objective existence of ours, that our faith does not depend on some unknown distant deity, some supra-cosmic transcendent, non-objective reality? On the contrary, are they not meant to show that he who was crucified and rose again at a particular time and place is our divine Lord and human brother whom we are privileged to know as one who is both near and far ...(131) Barth goes on to add that "much as I am loath to charge Bultmann with heresy, I cannot deny that his demythologized New Testament looks suspiciously like docetism."(132) In light of Barth and James, the notion of a God who cannot act in particulars is equivalent to believing in a powerless God. Such a God may have determined the universe as a whole, or all its details equally, but it cannot save in particular, or change the world's internal workings. This is not the biblical God. Theology, in my opinion, cannot be worked out on this basis. Sooner or later, it must face the question of who or what determines the world's details, and at that point it must decide whether or not it believes that the concrete and particular biblical statements really refer to God rather than another particular reality.
Bibliography
Works by Karl Barth
Anselm: Fides quaerens intellectum. Translated by Louise Smith. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.
Church Dogmatics. Vol. I. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Vol I :1 (second edition). Vol. II. The Doctrine of God. Vol. III. The Doctrine of Creation. Vol. IV. The Doctrine of Reconciliation. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1936-69.
Credo. Translated by J. Strathearn McNab. New York: Hodder and Scribner, 1936.
Die Protestantische Theologies im 19 Jahrhundert. Ihre Geschichte und Vorgeschichte. Evangelischer Verlag, 1947.
The Epistle to the Romans. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskns. London: Oxford University Press, 1935.
Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Translated by Grover Foley. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963.
The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Translated by J. L. Haire and Ian Henderson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1949.
From Rousseau to Ritschl, translated by Brian Cozens. London: Camelot Press, LTD., 1959.
"Rudolf Bultmann-- An Attempt to Understand Him," in Kerygma and Myth, Vol. II, edited by Hans-Werner Bartsch, translated by Reginald Fuller. London: SPCK, 1962.
The Word of God and the Word of Man. Translated by Douglas Horton. U.S.A.: Pilgrim Press, 1935.
Works by William James
A Pluralistic Universe. New York: New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909.
Collected Essays and Reviews. New York: Russell and Russell, 1969.
Essays in Radical Empiricism, ed. Ralph Barton Perry. New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1912.
Memories and Studies, ed., Henry James, Jr. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911.
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908.
Some Problems in Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy, ed. Henry James, Jr. New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1909.
The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: The New American Library of World Literature, inc., 1958.
The Will to believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1898.
Works by Other Authors
Bultmann, Rudolf. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1958.
Busch, Everhard. Karl Barth, translated by John Bowden, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, Gottingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967.
Smart, James. The Divided Mind of Modern Theology: Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, 1908-1933. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967.
Endnotes
1. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1958), p. 392.
2. Ibid., p. 388.
3. Ibid., p. 389.
4. Ibid., p. 392.
5. Ibid.
6. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York), p. ix.
7. Ibid., p. x
8. Ibid., p. xii.
9. James, The will to Believe (Cambridge, 1898), pp. 111-144.
10 Ibid., p. 138.
11. James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York, 1909), pp. 47-48.
12. For James, a God exercising all power at all points is experientially indistinguishable from God working at no points since both conceptions entail the same experiential consequences.
13. James Varieties, pp. 390-1.
14. Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth (Philadelphia, 1975), p. 40.
15. Much of this material can be found in Barth's book on nineteenth-century theology, From Rousseau to Ritschl (London, 1959).
16. Ibid, p. 190.
17. Ibid., p. 159.
18. Ibid., p. 157.
19. Ibid., p. 167.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., pp. 189-90.
22. Ibid., p. 190.
23. James, Varieties, p. 392.
24. James D. Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern theology: Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, 1908-33(Philadelphia, 1967), p. 32.
25. Ibid., P. 43.
26. Barth, From Rousseau to Ritschl, p. 386.
27. Ibid., p. 307.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., p. 326.
30. Ibid., p. 348.
31. Ibid., p.349.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 353. I have modified the translation given in the text from Rousseau to Ritschl. In that text the word translated here as "oppositeless" is there a translated "objectless." The original German word is gegensatzloses, whose initial meanings are contrastless, or oppositeless. The lack of being opposite in this case refers to sin and grace not being opposite to each other. The word "objectless" would belie my understanding of Barth.
34. Ibid., p. 347.
35. Ibid., p. 352.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., p. 341.
38. Ibid., p. 344.
39. Baarth, Church Dogmatics, II:1, p. 529.
40. Ibid., p. 531.
41. Barth, From Rousseau to Ritschl, p. 386ff.
42. Busch, op. cit., p. 31.
43. Smart, op. cit., p. 47.
44. Ibid., pp. 47-8.
45. Busch, op. cit., p. 68.
46. Ibid., p. 81.
47. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (U.S.A., 1928), p. 48-9.
48. Smart, op. cit., p. 109.
49. Barth's account of the chief influences that led to his second edition can be found in the preface to the second edition. See The Epistle to the Romans (London, 1933), pp. 3ff.
50. Ibid., p. 10.
51. Ibid., p. 169.
52. Ibid., p. 30.
53.Ibid., pp. 163-4.
54. Ibid., p. 36.
55. Ibid., p. 37. Here we probably see the real motive for the 1922 Romans. Barth wanted to remove revelation from the acids of historical criticism, as well as the relativity of its position vis-a-vis other religions and philosophies. Pannenberg makes the comment that the motive for the 1922 Romans was extra-theological as Barth's real concern was to escape historical criticism since it left no room for saving events. See Grundfragen systematischer Theologie (Gottingen, 1967), p. 22.
56. Ibid., p. 171.
57. Ibid., p. 329.
58. Ibid., p. 168.
59. Ibid., p. 166.
60. Barth, , I:2, p. 50.
61. Busch, op. cit., p. 206.
62. Barth, Anselm: fides quarens intellectum (London, 1960), p. 122.
63. Ibid., p. 103.
64. Ibid., p. 19.
65. Ibid., p. 38.
66. Ibid., p. 39.
67. Ibid., p. 29.
68. Ibid., p. 171.
69. Ibid.
70. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II:1, p. 49-50.
71. Ibid., p. 40.
72. Ibid., II:1, p. 43.
73. Biographically speaking, Barth and James present a contrast between what James would call the sick and healthy minded souls. Barth was more vigorous, both physically and emotionally, and in the exhaustive power of his intellect. James, on the other hand, suffered from physical ailments all his life, and was subject to emotional depression and neuralgia. He experienced a conversion as a young man, after a long bout of depression, in which he came to affirm his own gospel that human beings have worth and value in the larger scheme of things. Until then, he never held a job, and was frequently preoccupied by his own weaknesses and indecisiveness. Barth once remarked that "he was astounded at the pietistic narrowness of these artists. Evidently they are mostly preoccupied with the problems of their private existence." See Busch, op. cit., p. 125.
74. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I:1, p. 179.
75. Ibid., p. 101.
76. Ibid., p. 155.
77. Ibid., p. 226.
78. Ibid., pp. 211-12.
79. This leaves open the question as to whether not a particular event, such as a miracle, for example, may or not be comprehensible in terms of the world's intelligibility. To argue that something is incomprehensible, and therefore an act of God, is invalid from Barth's point of view since it bases the validity of God's acts on a prior human judgments as to whether something is miraculous. Rather, God has positively revealed in Scripture that his actions are particular, and whether something is explicable or not explicable is not the issue, but rather, the praise and worship of God for acting in particular circumstances.
80. The material on God revealing Himself as object can be found in the opening pages of Volume II:1 of the Church Dogmatics.
81. Ibid., I:1 p. 8.82.
Ibid., p.205-7. Here Barth gives scriptural examples of the one-sidedness of the Word, and argues that it follows from the nature of God, "ever invisible, ever beyond experience, ever unthinkable" (p. 206-7). 83.
Ibid., p. 7. 84.
Ibid., p. 42. 85.
Ibid., 1:2, p. 58.86.
Ibid. 87.
In affirming the virgin birth, Barth distinguishes the form, or miraculous sign, which is the miraculous birth, from the content of the sign, which affirms that Jesus Christ is not only man, but God as well. But Barth will not divide the sign from the content, for only by preserving the sign is the Church able to "respect the miracle of the Virgin Birth," and by respecting the miracle it is able to preserve the knowledge of the Incarnation as "the mystery and therefore summons to reverence and worship. ..it preserves the very knowledge of the Incarnation." See Barth's (New York, 1962), p. 69. The miracle of the virgin birth and the resurrection give the form of God's Word; it is always a miracle, continuous with creation but not given by it.Credo88.
Barth, , IV:3,1, p. 225.Church Dogmatics89.
Ibid., p. 226.90.
Ibid., I:2. p. 52. 91.
Ibid. IV:3,1, p. 224.92.
See Ibid., IV:1, p. 767. This implies that there is no continuing revelation, but only continuations of the revelation that occurred only once in a finite interval. 93.
God the Son is given in proclamation, the message of the Incarnation which specifies a unique history distinguished from other histories. I cannot see how this formulation avoids the problem of the historical Jesus. Is historical knowledge given in revelation to faith? Or is it determined through historical studies and given provisionally as are theological statements? 94.
Barth, II:2, p. 3.Church Dogmatics, 95.
Ibid., p. 76.96.
Ibid., III:3, p. 33. 97.
Ibid., pp. 40-41.98.
Ibid., p. 94.99.
It may seem paradoxical to hold to both omnicausality and peculiar relations. If God is acting in a particular place and time, then in some sense he is more "there" and at that "time" then he is "elsewhere.? But omnicausality views God as being equally present at all times and all places as the ground of all. Barth is, as in all cases, trying to be faithful to Scripture which portrays God as the absolute power over all things while exercising a wide range of possible relations with various elements within the world. One way to look at this is to consider omnicausality, by appropriation, to God the Father, and God's particular relations, by appropriation, to God the Son. 100.
Barth, , III:3, p. 64. Church Dogmatics
101. Ibid., p. 160.
102. For Barth, the resurrection is totally inexplicable byany known conceptuality. In his opinion, it was creation the coming into being of one who had previously not existed. Whether this is the case or not, it is certainly inexplicable in terms of antecedent patterns. ex nihilo, 103.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, 111:3 p. 36.
104. Ibid., p. 189. 105.
The word is difficult to translate. The meaning can be seen by the content Barth gives the term. Das Nichtige106.
Barth, , III:3 p. 358.Church Dogmatics 107.
Ibid., IV:3, first half, p. 177. 108.
Ibid., III:3, p. 310.109.
James, , p. 258. The Varieties of Religious Experience110.
Ibid. 111.
Ibid., p. 391. 112.
According to Barth we live in the time between the first and second coming of Jesus Christ. Until the "final day" when all will see Jesus Christ as he really is, all faith or belief exists together with disbelief and lack of faith. Nevertheless, insofar as faith exists as faith, i.e., having its basis in the event of God's grace, it is certain of its object, God. 113.
Barth, , IV:2, p. 245. Church Dogmatics 114.
Ibid., I:1, p. 230. 115.
Ibid., p. 154. 116.
James, , p. 65.Varieties 117.
Barth, , p. 7. The Epistle to the Romans118.
If it is the case that the primary subject of Scripture is God and his actions, and if these actions are not available to human inspection in the present as are other facts, then God is only available when he chooses to reveal Himself in specific events. This implies that there is no a priori humanly available horizon of meaning for biblical exegesis. Scripture is not meaningful because past and present lie within a common historical horizon, or a common intellectual or spiritual capacity, or because past and present are the expression of an over-arching structure that is open to inspection. The common universe of meaning between past and present is God and his active presence, and this meaning cannot be known apart from God's action in the present. This is why Barth will insist that Bultmann's adoption of Heidegger's existential categories violates the work of the Holy Spirit. God may not interact with the exegete and his environment to reveal Himself in specific philosophical categories.119.
Barth, , IV:2, p. 165. Church Dogmatics120.
See , pp. 176-7. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction 121.
Ibid., p. 176. 122.
Ibid. 123.
Barth doesn't believe that it is, for example, necessary to believe all the miracles in the Bible. But, in the main, they took place, along with the substance of the events recorded as the history of Jesus. Barth will even go further that this. He claims that unless one reads Scripture in terms of its divine acts, it will not even be possible to rightly interpret the human history as well. In his Gifford lectures he makes this comment: "To recognize this twofold history in the Bible as what it is, one must participate in it oneself, and to do so would be to have faith awakened by revelation itself. Without that, the scientific study of the Bible will certainly miss the divine content of this testimony. But in that case can it rightly clarify even its human form? What can it see if it fails to see this twofold history? It is to be feared that the scientific study of the Bible practiced by superstition, error or unbelief will perform its task poorly in its own sphere also. How can it see the form when it does not see the content? We may take it as true that these human documents on their human side also can only be rightly interpreted in the Church." See (London, 1949), p. 67.The Knowledge of God and the Service of God 124.
Barth, , IV:3, part one, p. 111. Church Dogmatics125.
James, , p. 428.Collected Essays and Reviews126.
Ibid., p. 429. 127.
Barth points out that the Blumhardt example can be "realistically explained in the sense of ancient and modern mythology," or in "terms of modern psychotherapy, or depth psychology." It can also be "estimated spiritually on the assumption that the two former explanations are also possible and even justifiable in their own way." (See p. 170 of IV:3, part one.) He also evaluates the Blumhardt event in terms of its beneficent effects, the help given to the girl and the zeal it imparted to the Christian community. None of these explanations seem consistent with a Barthian approach in which faith evaluates events in the light of their conformity to Scripture. 128.
Barth, , I:2, p. 226 Church Dogmatics129.
Barth, , p. 341. From Rousseau to Ritschl130.
Rudolf Bultmann, (New York, 1958), p. 19.Jesus Christ and Mythology 131.
Hans-Werner Bartsch, ed. Volume II (London, 1962), p. 110.Kerygma and Myth,132.
Ibid., p. 111.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
Berkeley, California, 1982
An Egregious Theological Failure
Anglicanism and Justification - Introduction to Anglicanism
Barth - Reconciliation and Economic Life Chapter Three
Barth's Creation and Economic Life Chapter Two
Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity - Chapter One
Capitalism and Paganism--An Intimate Connection
Creation, Science, and the New World Order
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Anglicanism and the Prayer Book
Introduction to Anglicanism - Anglicanism and Justification
Introduction to the Theological Essays
John Jewel and the Roman Church
Karl Barth, the German Christians, and ECUSA - Introduction
Mathematics, Science, and the Love of God
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Some Reflections On Evil and the Existence of God
The Historical Jesus and the Spirit
