Barth and Revelation
January 27th, 2009
A friend of mine, Ben Platz, emailed me a selection from Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian. He asked if I would perhaps share my thoughts on Barth’s argument, and I said that I would, though I fairly warned him that I would probably do so through this medium. So, since I will be making reference to the selection that Ben has sent to me, I will begin by quoting it at some length:
“There is no a priori human knowledge of God; there is no absolute theology. There is only, there can be only, a relative theology: relative to God’s revelation. God precedes and man follows. This act of following, this service, these are human thinking concerning the knowledge of God. Consequently in theology it will positively be necessary to refuse to accept any philosophical theory as a norm of theology. There is only one norm and it is: God who speaks! Not that we should not philosophize at all. We may—a little. There is choice irony on God’s part which tells us: Since you have philosophy in you, well, then, have it and do your best with it. On the condition, however, that when you have to make a decision between your philosophy and some requirement of the faith, you always make sure that the subject precedes and human thought follows. On the condition that your philosophy does not keep you from ‘following’.”
Now, my experience with Barth is not extensive. I have read only Dogmatics in Outline, which is a series of lectures on the Apostle’s Creed that Barth delivered at the University of Basel in 1946, and I only came to read that much in order to give myself some further context after reading Graham Ward’s Barth, Derrida, and the Language of Theology. It is entirely possible, therefore, that I may misrepresent Barth in some serious ways, so I will say now that the following remarks should not be taken as applying to Barth’s work generally, but only to the isolated section I have just quoted.
With that proviso, I agree with Barth in his insistence that any theology can be a theology, not of God as such, but only of God as revealed. Theology never says anything about God. It can only hope to say something about how humanity experiences the revelation of God, a revelation that it can never instigate, regulate, or even comprehend.
I agree also with Barth’s conclusion that the impossibility of an absolute theology means that theology can never find its norm in philosophy, though I would perhaps go even further here, arguing for the complete unrecognizability of theology and philosophy one to the other. I would suggest that any truly theological thought, any theological thought that avoids the temptation to proceed absolutely, is a thought that will not even be recognizable to philosophy, and that, in the same way, any philosophical thought will not be recognizable to theology. Any theology that employs the logic and the procedures of philosophy, any theology that remains recognizable to philosophy, is not a theology at all, however useful it may be. It is only a mode of philosophy.
This means that almost everything that has traditionally been considered to be theology, including what I am writing here, including what I quoted from Barth, is in fact merely philosophy, something that has fallen, and must always fall, by necessity, into an absolutism. There is no formal theology that can escape this. Every attempt to write, to speak, to show a theology of the experienced revelation of God can only appear as an absolute theology, no matter how deeply it strives to deconstruct this absolutism. The only theology that escapes this necessity, perhaps, if only for a moment, is the almost inarticulate cry, the uncontrollable response to God’s revelation that comes forth as a gasp of pain or pleasure, as a single word of exclamation, as an ecstatic affirmation, as a groan that words cannot express, as a gift that is treasured up and pondered in the heart.
Not only would I push Barth further in this regard, but I would seriously destabilize his notion of revelation. As I have argued before, I do not think that the revelation of God is recognizable as such in human terms. Instead, I would say that any recognition of this revelation is itself a gift that is merely received, a gift that can never be guaranteed for what it is, a gift that can never be articulated without doing a violence to what was given. For me, therefore, the tension is not between philosophy and the clear requirements of a faith that has been revealed, but between all of the theologies that never rise above philosophies and the gift, tentative, unsecured, that comes from elsewhere and reveals something in me. It is not between philosophy and theology, but between all the supposed theologies and the gift that can be the only theology precisely because it lies beyond any theology.
As I said, I may be misrepresenting Barth’s larger philosophy here, and what I remember of Ward’s book on Barth and Derrida gives me some grounds for believing that this is the case, but I will leave Ben to supply any necessary corrections.
2 Responses to “Barth and Revelation”
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From Word to Word by Jeremy Luke Hill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Greetings!
Luke, I`ve appreciated your comments and insights over the years. This occasion is no different. Much of what we`ve discussed over these years that I refer to has been on the topic of language. For this reason it does not surprise me in the least to see that many of your comments surround the nature of theological language and how this language is inappropriate for speaking about God. I think Barth would be proud! In much of what you said, I find you to be in line with him. This makes me proud!
The Word of God for Barth is at the centre of his writing. Simply put, the Word of God comes to us, as revelation, in 3 ways: the written Word, the proclaimed Word, and revealed Word (the Spirit). In each case, the one points to the other two. Just as God revealed Himself as a Tri-unity, so does the Word come to us Tri-unily. For example (I just preached this so its fresh!), when I stand at the pulpit (or talk over coffee, or even shovel my neighbor`s sidewalk), when the Word is being proclaimed through my words and actions, it is pointing to and being consistent with what has been written and what the Spirit has revealed since the beginning of time. Likewise, when we are reading the written Word, it is pointing us to what has been proclaimed and what the Spirit has revealed. Finally, when we hear, sense, feel, whatever, the Spirit revealing Himself to us, he is affirming and pointing to what has been written and what has been proclaimed.
This said, it is very possible, and even too common, to hear someone proclaim something other than God’s Word; or to read the written Word (which may be Scripture or perhaps other things, like testimonies, commentaries, etc), but fail to read it as such; or we can hear ’something’ and pass it off as ‘God told me’ (when He didn’t, which I actually find is becoming the new cancer of our Evangelical churches?). It is possible for these events to take place and for God to be found no where in or near them. For Barth, I believe, the key to receiving revelation in the Will and Word of God (where else is it found?) is to be open to hearing it as such in these three forms, which will be confirmed by others who do the same.
Now, about theological language (because, after all, you did bring it up!).
There has been a lot of controversy in this area of the church over the centuries. More contemporary and within the scope which we find ourselves (again, near the perimeters of, but still within the Evangelical camp, I believe), has been the notion and strong push to approach and take the Bible literally, as it would be a grave mistake to follow our mainline brothers and sisters and say that it is merely metaphorical.
Might I, based on my reading of Barth, suggest that our wording be “analogical”. I was just in Chicago at the American Academy of Religion meetings (on the eve of the American election–great to have you, President Obama!) and we discussed how God’s revelation for us, as articulated best by Barth, is given in analogies, meaning that because our inability to know things of God, apart from His self-revealing, God choses to speak to us about Himself using analogies that we understand. For example, the Spirit has revealed to the Church that Jesus is God`s Son. He, the Spirit, has also revealed that we, Christians, become sons of God. Is Jesus “a Son” like I am to my dad? Yes and no. Am I to understand that I, because I`m a Christian, am a son of God in the same way that Jesus is God`s Son? Yes and no. The term, son, means something to us and as God reveals something about Himself to us, using this term, it reveals something about Him because we`re familiar with it. The analogy, though, requires the Spirit to interpret it as while we know something, rationally, of a son, we don`t know exactly what God means when He reveals this. The Spirit, throughout eternity, continuously reveals this to the Church in ways that He sees fit (meaning that there is the possibility of many applications of the analogy). The Bible for me, viz-a-viz Barth, is a historical document (to be taken literally as such) interspersed with God’s revealing of Himself via analogy. It is, however, difficult to decipher what is what, for example, Noah’s ark; did God flood the whole world, as we know it, all 360 degrees, actually, or is this an analogy? Something happened, we can be sure, as Noah was a living person as we are, but did it happen in the ways in which my own church has chosen to promote it? Maybe. This we can’t be sure. The Spirit must convict in this as we open ourselves up to His leading. In the end, something is literal and some of it is analogy. We rely on the Spirit to sort this out for us; that’s the only choice we have!
Good comments and insights on this! Thoughts?
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Ben,
I agree that there is much to recommend analogical approaches to biblical interpretation, but I would say that this approach fetishes the text as much as a literal approach does and as much as a metaphorical approach does also, however much its proponents might deny it. The insistence on this approach also passes over those places where the text might mean literally or metaphorically or in countless other ways. Any one of these approaches, particularly when it as advocated at the exclusion of others, can only be productive of an idolatry of the text, of a bibliolatry.
As opposed to this idolatrous attitude to the text that makes every interpretive mode into a worship of the text, I would suggest that the conscientious reader must be willing to maintain an iconic relation to the text that makes every interpretive mode into a worship of the one who may choose to appear through the text, quite apart from the interpretive strategies I might employ. This attitude toward the text refuses to let its gaze stop at the text at all, but always seeks to look through the text, not to envisage the text itself, and not even to envisage the one who is to be worshipped, since these would be both merely species of idolatry, but to envisage the gaze of the one who envisages me.
The text, then, as icon, becomes merely the place where my gaze might cross the gaze of the one whose gaze is perfect. I do not control this crossing, not by any hermeneutical technique, not by any interpretive strategy, but any of these modes may open the opportunity for this encounter. Thus, by approaching the text iconically, I can make myself open, not only to the literal, metaphorical, or analogical meanings that might appear, but also to the meanings that might appear allusively, connotatively, anagogically, erotically, ecstatically, and in countless other ways. In each case, this interpretive mode will reveal neither the text itself nor the object worship about which the text tries to speak. It will only make a space in which my desiring gaze might find itself envisaged beyond anything that it could itself accomplish or guarantee.