Transcript
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: We're pleased today to have Dr. Alasdair Heron with us. You know something of him, perhaps. He studied at Cambridge and at New College, Edinburgh, and the University of Tubingen. He has served as pastor in the Church of Scotland and was an assistant in systematic theology in Tubingen from 1971 to '73 and a research
lecturer in systematic theology in the Irish School of Ecumenics in Dublin from '73 to '74. He's been a lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Edinburgh from '74 to present and this year is going to be his visiting lecture in systematic theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of A Century of Protestant Theology the Holy Spirit and the most recent volume,
which is Table and Tradition. It's a comparison of Reformed and Roman Catholic doctrines of the Lord's Supper. And we're very glad to have you with us. Dr. Heron's topic today is Barth, Schleiermacher, and the Dogmatic Task.
HERON: Thank you very much for the welcome. I'm much enjoying my first ever visit to Princeton, a place that I've known about, of course, for a long, long time. Many of my best friends have been at Princeton. Some of my best students in Edinburgh came from Princeton. But somehow, until now I've never got round to getting here myself. And I find myself slightly intimidated by being under the portrait of
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, another gentleman of whom I've heard much and heard much, but whom I've never until now had the pleasure of meeting. He doesn't correspond at all to my picture of him. I think I had a vision of Warfield, Tom, as being much more like the portrait of the second professor here in your office. Miller. That was a little my vision of Warfield. I obviously did Warfield no kind of justice.
I was invited to come here. You did suggest a lecture on the subject of Barth would be appropriate because we are coming into the year next year when we celebrate the centenary of Barth's birth. And this letter came as a useful memory jogger to me because I had already failed to deliver on time a contribution to a festschrift which will be appearing next year and published by good friend, Dikran Hadidian, who is sitting there in the front.
So this enabled me to pursue with renewed earnestness the task of preparing the paper that I had promised for that festschrift, which was to be on Barth and Schleiermacher. And I now stand before you with the more or less complete manuscript. This, of course, poses a certain problem. I was passing the Christian Science office this morning in Nassau Street and I saw there little advertisement for the Christian
Science Monitor which said, if I remember rightly, "gives you more information in less time than any other paper you can buy." Now, of course, the difficulty with a paper that was in the first instance written to be read with the eye, rather than heard with the ear, is that it could also tend to do that to the consequent distress and pain of the entire company. I shall try to make the presentation of the material a little livelier than simply reading the manuscript, but there will be parts where I simply have got to read what I have in
black and white in front of me. I hope that you will bear with me and understand the problem. Let me begin by not telling you of but reminding you of two classic definitions of the task of dogmatics. The first, dogmatic theology is the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian church at a given time. Dogmatic theology is the science which systematizes
the doctrine prevalent in a Christian church at a given time. In case you haven't already got it, that is Schleiermacher's definition. The second is Barth. As a theological discipline, dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God. The scientific self-examination of
the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God. The relation between Barth and Schleiermacher has already been the subject of numerous studies so that the choice of this topic might appear redundant. That I did suggest it myself for the forthcoming festschrift and that I am proceeding not to inflate on your the results of that enterprise can, however, be justified.
Although there are many studies of the relations between Barth and Schleiermacher, they are both so dense and contain so much that it is always possible to look again and perhaps come up with something a little fresh. And the question has certainly got its own significance because of the acknowledged stature and the continuing influence of both Barth and Schleiermacher. And I would imagine certainly, at least in Princeton, one can still talk of the acknowledged stature and the continuing influence of both Barth and Schleiermacher.
The two definitions of the task of dogmatics with which I began have both come to acquire almost classical status and deservedly. And there are, indeed, worse questions for rising theologians to cut their teeth on than the questions of the similarities and the differences between those two definitions of the task of dogmatics. And similarities there are, as well as differences. And this brings me to a further reason for choosing the subject.
Many of the comparison of Barth and Schleiermacher, at least in the English-speaking world, tend to fall into one or the other of two categories. Either they set out to show that Barth got all the things right which Schleiermacher got wrong or they aim to support the view and, here I quote from your letter, Tom, that Barth neither properly understood nor adequately overcame the legacy of Schleiermacher. Both ways of seeing are inevitably covered by the hermeneutical
problem involved in translating and applying the work of either to what is in part a different cultural context. And I have become acutely aware of the different cultural context in the last four years in which I have been living and working in the University of Erlangen in Germany. To name only one obvious but, for many, surprising difference -- there is a widespread attitude in Britain and America that sees Karl Barth simply as what is called neo-orthodoxy and sees Karl Barth as
essentially a conservative theologian. As far as the mainstream of German systematic theology is concerned, and that mainstream is Lutheran, Karl Barth is still widely regarded in many quarters as a very dangerous radical. And I merely present you with this difference in perspective to make you aware of the cultural difference which I find myself currently trying to live with with resultant schizophrenic tendencies as a Scot, currently a German professor, and a visiting professor in
Pittsburgh or in North America. Sometimes at least it is an uprooted and a withered Barth or Schleiermacher who's brought under the microscope of Anglo-Saxon commentators for dissection and evaluation. Uprooted, that is, from their place in the broad stream of modern, Germanic, Protestant, specifically, indeed, Reformed theology. And in the process, both the similarities and the difference between Barth and Schleiermacher can become somewhat refracted. And to present a gross caricature,
Schleiermacher is sometimes seen simply as the godfather of theological relativism and religious pluralism, and Barth seen as the representative par excellence of a conservative theological reaction against the whole drift of modern culture, and, as such, usually, therefore, a bad thing. Now the two, Barth and Schleiermacher, have much more in common than such one-sided presentations suggests. And insofar as I have a thesis in this paper, it is that it really is in the end of the day only in the light
of the similarities and resemblances that the real nature and significance of the contrasts can properly be appreciated. So much, then for the prolegomena. One always has to begin with prolegomena if you're conditioned to think in German and teach theology in the German way, but that's the prolegomena over. So one-one and one-two is finished. We come now to the first of the three main sections of the paper. The first section is entitled, "Barth on Schleiermacher." Now Barth
himself was well aware of sharing common concerns with Schleiermacher. This awareness was in no way weakened by Barth's intensive criticism of Schleiermacher through more than 40 years. For Barth sensed not only that Schleiermacher was the figure whom he had to counter, he also sensed that Schleiermacher was the figure whom he must not only criticize, but also appreciate. Certainly Barth could say in his commentary on Romans 6:20 -- I'm quoting from the second edition of Barth's commentary on Romans, the
1922 edition -- he could say in his commentary on Romans 6:20 with characteristic vehemence, "The gospel of Christ is a shattering disturbance, an assault which brings everything into question. For this reason, nothing is so meaningless as the attempt to construct a religion out of the gospel and to set it as one human possibility in the midst of others. Since Schleiermacher, this attempt has been undertaken more consciously than ever before in Protestant
theology and it is the betrayal of Christ," which would seem to the advantage of being a pretty definite statement. Certainly, too, Barth could insist in his 1922 lecture, "Das Wort Gottes als Aufgabe der Theologie" -- I only had the German text in my study in Erlangen when I wrote this, but that being translated into English simply means, "The Word of God is the task of theology." Barth could insist there that the ancestral series to which he appealed, [Ranbeck?] through Kierkegaard to Luther and Calvin to Paul and Jeremiah, but not,
most emphatically not, to Schleiermacher, whom he said he could not regard as a good example of a theology to meet the present situation. And yet precisely for this reason, Barth devoted one of his early lecture courses in Gottingen in the winter semester of 1923 to '24 to none other than Schleiermacher, whom he treated in a highly original way, though in the same time, thoroughly critical. But not unsympathetic. The remarks with which the lecture manuscript ends are revealing.
I say lecture manuscript ends because it is not entirely clear whether Barth said this in the lecture. He seems to have added in this comment at a later stage, or part of it, at least. But what he says in the very end, and I'm quoting from Geoffrey Bromiley's translation in the Theology of Schleiermacher volume, "The higher one values Schleiermacher achievement in and for itself and the better one sees with what historical necessity it has to come and how well, how
only too well it fit in the whole spirit of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the more clearly one perceives how easy it is to say no in word, but how hard it is to say it in deed, namely, with a positive counter achievement. Schleiermacher undoubtedly did a good job. It is not enough to know that another job has to be done. What is needed is the ability to do it at least as well as he did his. This is the serious
and humbling concern with which I take leave of Schleiermacher. And if you agree with my assessment, I hope you will share this concern. There is no occasion for triumphant superiority at this tomb, but there is occasion for fear and trembling at the seriousness of the moment and in face of our own inadequacy." Or as Barth put it some years later in his History of Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, speaking of Schleiermacher, "We have to do with a hero the like of which is but seldom
bestowed upon theology. Anyone who has never noticed anything of the splendor this figure radiated and still does, I am almost tempted to say anyone who has never succumbed to that splendor, may honorably pass on to other and possibly better ways, but let him never raise so much as a finger against Schleiermacher. Anyone who has never loved here and is not in a position to love again, may not hate here either." The same tone of
admiration, fascination, and criticism runs through the numerous references to Schleiermacher in the Church Dogmatics, whereby it's worth noting that in the frequency of such references, Schleiermacher runs more or less neck and neck with Thomas Aquinas and the pair of them are surpassed only by the three real frontrunners in the dogmatics, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. If you don't believe me, you can go and check up in the index. I already did. I might also at this point
quote from what is published in English at the end of the Schleiermacher lecture volume as Barth's concluding, unscientific post script on Schleiermacher, where he reports on his own attitude to relation to Schleiermacher through half a century and more. He concludes a series of probing questions about Schleiermacher's theology and his own struggles with it with the reflection, "The only certain consolation remains for me is to rejoice that in the Kingdom of Heaven I will be able to discuss all these questions with Schleiermacher
extensively for, let us say, a few centuries." Certainly Barth's criticisms of Schleiermacher's achievement were utterly seriously meant. He regarded Schleiermacher as the apostle of anthropocentric neo-Protestantism, the counterpart of Ecclesiocentric Roman Catholicism and on both he declared war. Theology, for Barth, could not make it its business to speak of God by speaking of humanity, religion,
culture, or the Christian community in a raised voice. It must precisely as a human enterprise speak of God and from God. Its calling is to hear and witness to the Word of God, which evokes and addresses faith. It cannot properly, therefore, allows its agenda to be dictated to it from outside. If that outside is taken to be any kind of philosophical, metaphysical, sociological, psychological, or you name it, any otherwise scientific account of human existence in the world,
rather than the from without of the perennially new [inbraken?] revelation of God. Barth, therefore, viewed Schleiermacher as the genius who nevertheless represented an approach which reduced theology to anthropology and Barth aimed to set against that approach his own counter-achievement. Yet precisely as a counter-achievement, it was necessarily related to that to which it was opposed. Barth and Schleiermacher may indeed by poles apart, but the poles are in at least
some important sense those of an ellipse in which the second can best be appreciated in its tension-laden relation to the first. And that brings me now to the second part of the paper, which tries to point out some resemblances and parallels that one can see between Schleiermacher and Barth. The first thing that is striking is that both of them first became prominent as theological enfant terrible,
Schleiermacher with the Addresses on Religion to its Cultured Despisers in 1799 when he was minister in the Cherite in Berlin, and Barth with the first and even more, indeed, with the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans in 1919 and then 1922. Both works were widely regarded as subversive, indeed, downright dangerous, if not exactly for the same reasons. What made Schleiermacher suspect was
the pantheistic tendency of romantically colored view of the relation between the individual and what he called, "das universo," the universe. What seemed to be hard to take in Barth was his emphasis precisely on the opposition, the absolute qualitative difference between God and the world, God and humanity, eternity and time, eternity and history. Now at this level, the two, Barth and Schleiermacher, may seem to have nothing whatsoever in common
and what's more, this level is no mere superficial or trivial one. It's one in which the fundamental difference in approach between Barth and Schleiermacher becomes visible in (inaudible). But I think it would be a mistake simply to leave the matter there with this statement of contrast. Two considerations can help to show why I think there's more to be said. First of all, both of them could, on the negative side, utter very similar sounding criticisms of prevailing
and established conceptions of theology and of the Church. Schleiermacher remarks somewhere in the Addresses on Religion that the scriptures had become the mausoleum of the Spirit. Barth remarks in the Commentary on Romans that the crater around which the saints of God are expectantly sitting is long since burnt out. Both Schleiermacher and Bart reflects a sense of struggle with the question of the reality that
theology has to deal with and a sense of dissatisfaction with the given, established way of going after it. And this struggling leads both to try to break out of given patterns of theological arguments, reflection, and construction. Schleiermacher sought to place in the center the reality of what today might be called the existential dimension of human life in and as part of the cosmos. Barth sought to place in the center the reality of the transcendent Word of God.
And secondly, second reason, this common concern to search after reality would seem to be what Bultmann rightly saw when he observed in the review of the 1922 Romans that although Barth himself would dispute this way of putting it, his work could be seen as belonging to the same tradition as Schleiermacher's Addresses or Rudolf Otto's Das Heiliger. That is, with the modern attempts, so Bultmann describes it, to
demonstrate the distinct nature of the religious a priori. Now Barth himself came to treat this assessment of Bultmann's as proof of how deeply Bultmann himself had failed to understand Barth and his diagnosis was that Bultmann was himself so stuck in the mode of thinking stemming from Schleiermacher that he could only interpret Barth out of that tradition. Now, while this reaction of Barth's is understandable and in its own way, justifiable -- to talk about the religious a priori
doesn't really get at Barth's concern in the Commentary on Romans -- it should nevertheless not obscure the fact that behind and beyond the particular tradition-bound language that Bultmann uses to try and express the concern that he sees in Barth, there is a recognizably similar kind of lively questioning going on both in Schleiermacher and in Barth, even as the questions are posed in opposite directions. To say a little more about this, Schleiermacher's concern was to reawaken
a direct, living, vital, and immediate sense of religious reality, even among the cultured despisers of religion, by breaking away from the identification of the sphere of religion with those of metaphysics or ethics and by pointing to its own distinct character. The Enlightenment had already gravely weakened the bonds which earlier generations had sought to forge between Christian faith and metaphysical, physical, theological, or natural theology.
But the alternative which the Enlightenment had offered, most notably in the work of Immanuel Kant, was to Schleiermacher's mind inadequate as an alternative. Kant had removed religion and theology from the sphere of pure reason, of the knowable, and relocated them in that of practical reason, of ethics, with its three-fold postulate of God, the immortality of the soul, and the reality of the freedom of the will, the three things which at the end of the Critique of Pure Reason
Kant finds you cannot prove by simple speculative reason or by reflection on the nature of knowing. In the sphere of practical reason, however, they are necessary postulates. And therefore, God, immortality, reality of the freedom of the will are all practically necessary in view of the character of the categorical imperative experienced by every moral being. Now Kant understood himself to be restricting the realm of knowledge in order to make room for faith, but the faith which resulted, lying in the
field delimited by the three famous questions of Kant -- what can I know, what must I do, and for what may I hope -- was for Schleiermacher as unsatisfying as the former path of speculative metaphysics which he believed Kant had locked up once and for all. Both the old speculative metaphysical approach and the moral ethical approach of Kant lacked the immediacy which Schleiermacher felt must belong to what is authentically religious. So he came to insist in the second of the
Addresses that the authentic interest of religion has to do neither with knowing nor with doing, neither with knowledge nor with action, neither with metaphysics nor with ethics, but the directly accessible fields of unschon -- which one can translate as contemplation or intuition; it covers both -- and gefühl, which one can translate as feeling, although one should be aware here that Schleiermacher does not mean by this simply emotions, but rather a direct sense of having to do with that which
one contemplates. In other words, Schleiermacher seeks to anchor the religious field, as it were -- to relate the religious field to a capacity for apprehension and response which is given in and with the human condition, a capacity which he was later to define as the pious self-consciousness or the consciousness of absolute dependence. In this way, Schleiermacher sought in the Addresses to point to the fact of our human existence, the gift of self-consciousness,
the experience of being in and of the world as a primary datum for theological reflection and the primary reference of theological language. Now in this regard, the Addresses were epoch-breaking and epoch-making and they laid the foundation for Schleiermacher's later attempt to reconstruct the entire substance of Christian dogmatics with reference to that base, the pious self-consciousness, das fromme Selbstbewusstsein. Now Barth's approach in the early 1920s
represented an equally radical break with established patterns of thought, particularly those of what he came to call Kultur Protestantismus, Cultural Protestantism, the form of Protestant theology which had so identified itself with contemporary culture and contemporary civilization that it was no longer capable of protesting against the reduction of theology to history and the misuse of Christian ideals to sub-serve political and military ambitions. Now of particular
significance here, historically speaking for Barth, was what he called the (German), the dark day in August 1914 when a group of 93, I think, German intellectuals, among them many of Barth's own former teachers, issued a manifesto support for the war aims of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Now in Barth's eyes -- Barth, of course, was Swiss, not German. He was also socialist, rather than conservative, was known in his years in Safenwil
at times as the Red Pastor, a point that is not always remembered because he [grounded?] trade unions and this kind of thing. In Barth's eyes, this stand taken by these German intellectuals in August 1914 destroyed at a stroke the credibility not only of their politics, but of their underlying theology. God had become for them at the end of the day when it really -- when the chips were really down, God was for them a cipher or a function of what has more recently come to be called civil religion.
And I would observe in passing that it's by no means only the 93 German intellectuals in August 1914 who've played that particular card. It is alive and well and living in a number of places. A direct line can be drawn from this moment of profound disillusionment to Barth's subsequent criticism of religion as idolatry, the glorification of human cultural self-affirmation over against the living God to which that God can and does address a shattering nein.
So Barth's Romans drew on the pathetic tradition of the Old Testament, the apocalyptic [warning?] of judgment upon the powers of this world and the gospel of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and brought them to bear with a fresh, blazing urgency upon the claims and pretensions of a cultural Christianity grown old and faded. Now how far was the criticism of Barth's directed against Schleiermacher himself? Only in a very differentiated way.
Barth remained to the end of his days convinced that Schleiermacher would not have been capable of signing the August 1914 manifesto. But he insisted at the same time that the entire theology which had unmasked itself in that manifesto was grounded, determined, and influenced decisively by Schleiermacher. The essential difference between Barth and Schleiermacher here is therefore not to be found by identifying Schleiermacher as a cultural Protestant, but rather, in their respective understandings of religion.
The contract is most forcefully expressed by Barth in this exegesis of Roman 7:14-25, very fine passage in the Commentary on Romans, under the heading, "The Reality of Religion." Here, he can also quote against Schleiermacher the final verse of the poem which Schleiermacher's friend, Friedrich Schlegel -- with whom he lived in Berlin at the time that he wrote the Addresses -- the poem which Schlegel had written as his own commentary on the Addresses. Now this is a
fairly long quote, but it's one of these quotations that you really can't shorten and instead of listening to me, listen to Barth. The romantic psychologists merely present religion as that human capacity by which, quote, all human occurrences are thought of as divine actions, end of quote. He may define it as, quote, the solemn music which accompanies all human experience, end of quote, brackets, Schleiermacher.
Against such representations, however, religion is always on its guard. Religion, when it attacks vigorously, when it is fraught with disturbance, when it is non-esthetic, non-rhetorical, non-pious, when it is the religion of the 39th Psalm, of Job, and of Luther, and Kierkegaard, when it is the religion of Paul, bitterly protests against every attempt to make of its grim earnestness some trivial and harmless thing. Religion is aware that it is in no wise
the crown and fulfillment of true humanity. It knows itself, rather, to be a questionable, disturbing, dangerous thing. Religion, so far from being the place where the healthy harmony of human life is lauded, is instead the place where it appears diseased, discordant, and disrupted. Religion is not the show ground upon which human culture safely rests. It is the place where civilization and its partner, barbarism, are rendered fundamentally questionable. Nor does the frank judgment of honest men
of the world disagree with the opinion of religion about itself and yet -- now comes the Schlegel quotation, "The curtain is raised. The music must cease. The temple is gone and far in the distance appeareth the terrible form of the sphinx," whereby Hoskin's attempt to put Schlegel's German into good and poetic English is successful, but he does change the meaning. The point of the sphinx, the German, is (German).
It's the enigmatic character of the sphinx that Schlegel has in mind there, not that the sphinx is frightening, which Hoskins has taken from Barth's characterization of religion, but that in the end of the day after all the drama of Schleiermacher's presentation, you find yourself as it were facing the stage, the curtain goes up, the music stops, the tempo of the old religion is gone, but behind it, the equivalent of (German), very simply, the sphinx, with the old knowing but not telling
smile on its face. That was Schlegel's point. He also is reported to have said to Schleiermacher, directly, "(German)." Thy God has a lean and hungry look. So Barth picks this up and says Schlegel is right about the true character of religion. And then carrying on, Barth sort of -- final comments in this quotation, "Religion must beware lest it's toned down in any degree the unconverted man's judgment.
Conflict and distress, sin and death, the devil and hell make up the reality of religion. Religion possesses no solution for the problem of life. Rather, it makes a bad problem a wholly insoluble enigma. Religion is neither a thing to be enjoyed nor a thing to be celebrated. It must be borne as a yoke which cannot be removed." Now this passage displays vividly how much more somber
than Schleiermacher's is the early Barth's diagnosis of religion, of civilization, of culture, and of Christian, or, indeed, human existence. This is, of course, in part on Barth's part a response to the challenges he felt to be confronting faith and proclamation in the crisis of the First World War. In part it is his reaction against and a preliminary settling with the tradition represented by Schleiermacher. In part, it is a
recovery of authentic biblical and, indeed, reformation insights into the height and depth of sin and grace, insights which Schleiermacher undoubtedly tended to level down and flatten out. But Schleiermacher is not, I think, thereby disposed of, neither for Barth nor for us. Both can open our eyes to realities with which our theology must have to do. On the one hand, the gift and mystery of human existence as having to do with the reality of God. On the other hand, the reality of the Word
of God as a word of judgment and of mercy upon that existence. In this sense, I want to argue that the early impulses of both Schleiermacher and Barth remain valid, even if I would want to add further that Barth's must be seen as cutting deeper and driving further than Schleiermacher's. Now there are further similarities that can be seen as well in the way that the later work of Barth and Schleiermacher developed. Some would characterize these by saying that both became more conservative following their first
radical beginnings and this usually, then, be said in a tone of some regret. But conservative is a slippery concept, whether we use it theologically or politically. Merely visualize to yourselves Barth, Schleiermacher, and Ronald Reagan in the same room and ask which one doesn't belong. It would be more precise, I think, to say that both worked out from their starting points to include an gather in in
an essentially consistent development, a wider and deeper appreciation for and appropriation of the fruits of earlier Christian theology. Both went on to become, in the strict and proper sense of the word, ecclesiastical theologians, conscious of the responsibility of their work for the life and witness of the wider Christian community. And once called to chairs of theology, Schleiermacher first in [Yane?], if memory serves me right, then in Berlin, Barth first of
all in Gottingen, then Munster, then Bonn, then last of all, Basel, they found themselves confronted with other tasks and responsibilities than those of relatively independent free-wheeling thinkers doing the outrider bit on the edge of the community. In particular, they were faced with a question which some of us regularly find as existential, the question of how are we to teach theological students and what are we to teach them. And this question can, I assure you, have the most sobering effect on
even the most effervescent, free-wheeling thinkers if they really face it. Not all do. Now both Schleiermacher and Barth repeatedly felt the force of that question with great intensity and they struggled with the question of what they were to teach and they struggled with how to get down to the hard work of teaching and its necessary accompaniment, intensive study and reflection. And neither of them found this task as easy or regarded it as one that could be completed in a brief period and then regarded as finished.
You get your lectures together in the first two or three years and then you can dine out for the next 40 years on the results. Neither Barth nor Schleiermacher had that kind of approach at all. Schleiermacher, for example, labored for over 20 years from the first publication to improve and re-improve his Brief Outline of the Study of Theology. And he issued his The Christian Faith in two editions, the second 10 years after the first and extensively reworked and radically restructured. Barth, apart from other things, embarked on the project of a Christian
Dogmatics in 1927, only to abandon it after volume one had already been published and make a fresh start on the Church Dogmatics, the task which largely occupied the last 40 years of his life. And when one wants to get a personal testimonial even earlier to how Barth struggled with the question of how he was to teach at all, there's a quite lively little autobiographical note in the introduction to (inaudible) Reformed Dogmatics, where Barth talks of how he sat in Gottingen in his study, having
had a real fight with the faculty, which apart from Barth was largely Lutheran, about whether he could actually offer Christian dogmatics instead of having to call it Reformed dogmatics. But anyway, he had at last got permission to offer dogmatics, which up until then had been the jealously guarded preserve of the Orthodox. And then having won this battle, of course, he then faced the consequences of his foolhardiness. He had to try and work out how you do teach dogmatics. And at this point, (inaudible) came across his desk, he says, like manna from Heaven.
For all the critical engagement that he then felt to be necessary with the tradition of Reformed Orthodoxy, but nevertheless at least he felt he could see some way to do theology in a serious, objective, disciplined, scientific fashion and from there his movement into dogmatics took off. But apart from these resemblances of an external kind in the work of Barth and representative, there is one common factor that stands out. That is, the seriousness and the consistency with which both worked,
alongside all their many other tasks, at producing a comprehensive treatment of the main themes of Christian dogmatics. Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre and Barth's Kirchliche Dogmatik. And the originality of the powers and the insights they both brought to the task and the distinctive character and inner coherence of the resultant works. And I'd like here just to underline three points or to outline three points in which I see, with all the differences, interesting structural similarities between Barth and Schleiermacher. First,
as I've already indicated above, they both came to modify and deepen, not to depart from, but to qualify and deepen their earlier radical insights by drawing in and reworking materials from the earlier history of Christian theology and they went about this task with great seriousness. In Schleiermacher's case, for example, this is illustrated by the way that he seeks for a typology restatement of the pattern of the natural heresies in Christianity, which he describes as the Docetic, the Nazarean, the Manichean, and the Palagian.
or the way in which he works with the antithesis between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant forms of the Western church or the way in which he develops his thoroughgoing analysis of the feeling of absolute dependence in terms of sin and grace as determining the larger part of the Christian faith, the [work?] the Christian faith or the way in which he develops an entirely new understanding of salvation in terms of the God-consciousness realized in Jesus of Nazareth and communicated by Him to all who believe.
In all this, Schleiermacher's not simply throwing out new ideas. He's trying to rework the traditional. Barth went further still in that he not only included in the Church Dogmatics extensive consideration of Patristic and medieval theology and the teaching of the Reformers, but also unlike Schleiermacher, two detailed accounts of the era of Protestant Orthodoxy, as well, of course, as of Schleiermacher and his nineteenth- and twentieth-century successors. So it's first of all, this really serious hard work in terms of the history of Christian
thought. Secondly, neither Schleiermacher nor Barth, however, equated the hard study necessary for theological inquiry, teaching, and proclamation with mere historical research. Their concern was rather with the present task and responsibility of theological work. What is to be said and communicated here and now? What is the abiding substance of the faith? How much a [sea?] of patterns and thought be corrected and modified in order to address the
challenges of the contemporary age? And neither intended the answer to these questions to issue a simple accommodation or adaptation of the faith to the questions and concerns of contemporary culture as such. Both were concerned, rather, to speak of the things of the faith in a way which would address that culture. Schleiermacher sought to awaken in his hearers an awareness of the immediate presence of God, a presence achieved and fulfilled in Jesus
Christ and emanating from Him as, quote, the union of the divine essence with human nature in the form of the common spirit which animates the corporate life of believers. Barth came, by contrast, to speak of the transcendent power of the Word of God in Jesus Christ, which, in later years, he identified more and more specifically as the humanity of God, as the true ground, object, and goal of Christian theology. Now in this sense, both Schleiermacher and Barth identified the essential substance of
of the faith Christologically and at the same time as contemporary. Certainly, there remains here one major difference and one which always led Barth to doubt whether Schleiermacher's Christological emphasis was, in fact, consistent with the broad pattern of his theology. For Schleiermacher's Christology was essentially historically located and his understanding of salvation as horizontally mediated God-consciousness fitted into the same perspective. So Barth has problems with this kind of Christology.
Barth, by contrast, sought after a more transcendental point of reference, albeit one which is also at the same time historically anchored, not in Jesus God-consciousness, but in the interaction of eternity and time in His historical person and work. In his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection as the center and scope of that history of God with humanity which lies behind and before and around the whole round of human history. And it's not at all hard to see that at this decisive point, Barth is, in fact, more the heir of
Hegel than of Schleiermacher, as is nicely pointed out by George Henry in his recent article, "The Transcendental Method in the Theology of Karl Barth," in the Scottish Journal of Theology. Now it's key here to see that Barth's theological reflection goes further and cuts deeper than Schleiermacher's had done. But for all that, it was concerned to a significant degree to answer the same kind of questions, albeit to answer them differently. With Schleiermacher's example before
him, Barth could see that awareness of the transcendent reality of God amounts to more than the feeling of absolute dependence and cannot adequately be expressed in purely historical or anthropological categories. And therefore, too, that Christology cannot be adequately expressed in these categories, but must break them open. Thirdly, in different ways both Schleiermacher's Christian Faith and Barth's Church Dogmatics witness to the rare capacity of both to present the main themes
of the faith in an integrated way. Not without cause of the wider regard, it is the finest statement in the tradition of Reformed dogmatics since Calvin's Institute. Not only do they integrate, they also illuminate each element by setting it in the light of the whole and so by seeking to draw out the internal connections between the different loci instead of merely listing them one after another like so many pearls on a string, which is the more normal method of classical dogmatic presentation.
You just list the different doctrines or the different points. The aim of such an integrated presentation is not merely formal elegance or abstract systematization, but in the properly scientific sense of the word, objective understanding, understanding which seeks to follow the dynamics of the reality being explored and spoken of. Now the shape such an attempt at understanding will take does, of course, depend fundamentally on underlying convictions as to the nature and form of
accessibility of that reality. And here the differences between Barth and Schleiermacher are, I think, too apparent to need underlining yet again because in the end of the day, for Schleiermacher, what is immediate is the pious self-consciousness and therefore dogmatics is the function of that. Whereas for Barth, the object is the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But at the same time, it may, I think, be doubted whether contemporary Protestant theology in search for orientation can really appreciate what is actually going
on in the Church Dogmatics if it hasn't already paused to learn from what is going on in the Christian Faith. Proper appreciation of what Schleiermacher takes to be the object of the inquiry and of the appropriate systematic analysis of its components can at any rate make it easier for us to understand the different characterizations both of method and object which we find in Barth. Now with this thought in mind, let me now come to my third and last section where I want to pick up again the question of the task of dogmatics and the two definitions
with which we began. We quoted Schleiermacher at the start of this presentation defining dogmatic theology as the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian church at a given time. This definition constituted the first proposition of the first edition of The Christian Faith. The reconstruction of the introductory sections in the second edition led to its appearing there less prominently as Article 19 or Proposition
19. Its specific force can, I think, best be understood in the light of Schleiermacher's overall account of the theological disciplines in his Brief Outline of the Study of Theology. There, Schleiermacher distinguishes three broad fields with which the theological disciplines and therefore also the training of theologians should be concerned. First of all, philosophical theology. In other words, essentially the basic ideas, which he subdivides
into two areas, apologetics and polemics. So this is the theology on the borderlines. Secondly, then there is historical theology. And Schleiermacher divides historical theology again further into three areas: exegetical theology, historical theology in the narrower sense of church history, and then historical knowledge of the present situation of Christianity. And
this last, historical knowledge of the present situation of Christianity, is further subdivided into two, dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical statistics. The third section of the brief outline is then practical theology, which deals with ministry and government in the Church. Now this means that within this perspective, dogmatic theology has as its special task the establishing of the contemporary doctrine of the
theologian's particular confessional tradition. It forms, on the one hand, the conclusion to the work of historical theology and on the other, the basis for practical application in the life, worship, and administration of the church. It's thus both an historical discipline and an ecclesiastical one, in both sense with a direct contemporary relevance. Now in Schleiermacher's case and situation, this meant that the task of dogmatics
was to gather up and state the contemporary doctrine of the mixed Lutheran and Reformed tradition in the Prussian Church union. But the same formal pattern could also be applied to other ecclesiastical or denominational contexts or, indeed, to the present day attempts to construct a new ecumenical theology which will relativize and overcome existing confessional differences in a fresh synthesis capable of practical application in a more comprehensive church union. And you want a one word slogan for that
, it is a four letter word, lima. There, too, dogmatics can usually come to be looked upon as an essentially historical and ecclesiastical discipline concerned to gather up and integrate traditional elements of doctrine in a fresh emphasis capable of practical, in this case, church-uniting, application. Now, the definition as such is, I think, by no means a bad one. But it patently contains within itself the seeds of a dangerous one-sidedness,
of a kind of historical horizontalism which sees and treats the forms and expressions of the faith itself in purely historical terms and is exposed to the risk of relative absolutization of this or that tradition or combination of traditions as if the responsibility of dogmatic theology were merely to these traditions and to the practical demands of the present day. Schleiermacher's own presentation of the substance of dogmatics was indeed preserved from surrender to mere traditionalism and pragmatism by
his concern at the same time to do justice to the reality of the pious self-consciousness as the touchstone and test of the validity of dogmatic utterances. But it may with justice be doubted, I think, whether that is enough. What is still missing is the vital dimension to which Barth calls attention, that dogmatic theology is concerned with the word of God in its bearing both upon individual faith and upon the teaching and practice of the church. That is to say, there is for Barth a
necessary and unavoidable critical element in the work of dogmatics. It has to bring the given tradition, teaching, and practice of the Church ever and again under confrontation with the message of the gospel and to seek to re-express that tradition, teaching and practice afresh under the impact of that confrontation. Dogmatics in this sense remains an historical and an ecclesiastical discipline in Schleiermacher's sense, but it is a new critical edge, indeed, an entirely new dimension and
function in the sense of openness to radical self-criticism in the light of the Word of God. And from this comes Barth's reworked definition with which we began. As a theological discipline, dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God. That [intenerate?] is the translation by Geoffrey Bromiley in the second translation of one -- Church Dogmatics [1.1?]. The version rendered in the original translation
by G. T. Thompson is slightly different, at least in language. As a theological discipline, dogmatics is the scientific test to which the Christian Church puts herself regarding the language about God which is peculiar to her. Now the most recent translation by Bromiley is by and large more literal and in that sense more correct. But Thompson's version, which speaks of the scientific test to which the Christian church puts herself, is, I think, a better rendering into English of Barth's
(German) than Bromiley's self-examination of the Christian church. Self-examination in today's English invites comparison with navel-gazing and nothing could be farther from Barth's meaning. And just precisely because it's so easy to have basic misunderstandings on this sort of point, I think it's probably important that the translation be aware of that. What Barth means is a critical putting of oneself to the test. Nor
indeed is either the translation, "the distinctive talk about God," nor Thompson's, "the language about God which is peculiar to her," entirely satisfactory as a translation of what Barth means by (German). His meaning can perhaps better be drawn out with the help of a paraphrase rather than a literal translation. And I would offer you this: Dogmatics is the theological disciplines whose particular task is the continuing, conscientious, objective, and self-critical
testing by the Christian Church of the content of her witness to God as expressed in the words and actions of the Church and its members. Now what Barth means by this is unfolded in length in the first and seventh sections of the Church Dogmatics. In a nutshell, his argument is that the task of dogmatics lies in bringing the contemporary speech and action of the Church in its intention to witness and respond to the revelation of God before the criterion of the Word of God Himself. That word is real,
concrete, and actual in Jesus Christ, to whom the Bible witnesses, but precisely as such it can never be identified simply with the witness or the tradition of the church. These always fall short and therefore necessarily in need constantly of critical correction and reorientation in a constant critical dialog and confrontation with the Word Himself. Out of this dialectical self-criticism, understood as a continuing, ongoing process, the witness and
proclamation of the Church is constantly renewed and revived. It lives always and everywhere out of the power of the word, whom it can never contain or encapsulate or represent or embody, but only constantly hear and witness to. Under the conditions of this earthly life, therefore, theology is and always will be, fallible and antepenultimate. Neither biblical conservatism nor confessional rectitude can themselves guarantee evangelical truth,
no more than ecclesiastical traditionalism or pious-pragmatism or even the best and highest dogmatic theology or the most subtle and sensitive analysis of the human condition. All these are, in the end, of value only as they are continually drawn into subjection to Jesus Christ as the one Word of God who we have to hear and obey in life and in death, as the Theological Declaration of Barmen puts it. And the fundamental thing that I'm trying to get at there is that the one Word of God is never in our pockets and
we'd better be clear about that before we start trying to theologize about it. It is indeed precisely this sense of being bound to that one Word which has been spoke, is spoken, and will be spoken that could enable Barth in the last series of lectures that he gave here in Princeton just over 20 years ago, which were then republished as his Evangelical Theology in 1963 -- in the first chapter there, he describes evangelical theology as a modest, free, critical, and happy science. And that has always seemed to me one of the best ways of trying to
summarize Barth's understanding of what the theologian is doing. His task is modest because it is a human task, dealing with divine reality. It is free because it is free from subordination to anything but that with which it has to deal. It does not have to be dictated to by anybody else, anywhere else, no matter where they're coming from. It is critical because it is self-critical, where precisely therein lies its liberating character. And it is happy because in the end of the day, theology has to do with the grace of God and Jesus Christ. But where
Schleiermacher was inclined in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement to search for an eternally permanent self-identical essence of the Christian faith which existed in, with, and under all of the variable historical forms of the Christian religion and was definable in the end of the day in terms of the pious self-consciousness, Barth relocated the essence in Jesus Christ Himself as the word of mercy and judgment, judgment and mercy, spoken once for all -- over all humanity and therefore as the
word which is always new, always immediate, always challenging, always calling, always commissioning. The difference can be expressed by saying that Schleiermacher sought to be an advocate of Christianity; Barth of Jesus Christ. But it would, I think, be truer to say that Barth aimed to direct us more radically and directly to what Schleiermacher also sensed and sought after, but pointed to only indirectly. I thank you for your attention. This has gone on a little longer than I intended. But I hope
that you were able to cope with the difficulty of having a largely written text read to you and would be glad to clarify or answer any questions that may arise. I'll try to answer any questions that may arise.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much, Dr. Heron. We do have some --