Ecclesial Mediation in Karl Barth

John Yocum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754633228
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351942010
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Karl Barth is widely considered the greatest theologian of the Twentieth Century, exerting a major influence in almost every area of theological thought in both Reformation and Roman Catholic traditions. Ecclesial Mediation in Karl Barth deals with one of the most important and controversial themes in Barth's theology, the relation between divine and human action. John Yocum argues that Barth's late rejection of the concept of sacrament, explicated in the final volume of his Church Dogmatics, is not only at odds with his account of the nature and importance of sacraments presented earlier in the Church Dogmatics but subverts important elements of his theology as a whole especially the mediation of divine grace in preaching and the Bible. Bringing Barth into fruitful dialogue with Yves Congar, Yocum contends that the notion of sacrament is crucial to an account of the divine-human relation that respects the character of both agents.

Chapter 1
‘The Doctrine of the Word of God’: The Sacramental Area of the Church

This chapter will examine Barth’s treatment of Church proclamation in the first volume of the Church Dogmatics. In this volume it is clear that Barth leaves room for, indeed assumes, a communion of human and divine action in the work of revelation. The two components of this action are by no means symmetrical; the divine action is not dependent on the human action for its efficacy or possibility, while the human action is entirely dependent on the divine action, over which it holds no sway, in order to become meaningful and effective as an instrument of revelation. Nonetheless, God has bound the Church to a form of proclamation, in preaching and sacrament, which, undertaken in obedience and faith, may become an instrument of divine revelatory action. There is thus an instrumental relation between the human act and the divine act. The relation is not grounded in a property inherent in the human action in and of itself, but exists because God has promised to make use of such particular actions, which He has commanded the Church to perform and to which He has bound the Church.

The first volume of the Church Dogmatics is Barth’s prolegomena, significantly entitled ‘The Doctrine of the Word of God’. Barth wishes to commit himself from the outset to what he sees as the necessary point of departure for a genuinely theological enquiry. Rather than beginning the dogmatic task with general observations on the nature of the human enquirer, and on the conditions, derived from those observations, which must be met in order for revelation to occur, Barth is intent on beginning with the fact of the occurrence of revelation itself, and deriving doctrines from that event. He explicitly chooses to start from the point at which neo-Protestant dogmatics had generally deemed it necessary to stop: ‘The most important but also the most relevant and beautiful problems in dogmatics begin at the very point where the fable of “unprofitable scholasticism” and the slogan about “the Greek thinking of the Fathers” persuade us that we ought to stop’ (I/1, xiv). By abandoning the Trinity and the Virgin Birth (both of which Barth takes up as important themes in this volume), modern Protestantism had also jettisoned reflection on the divine mystery as revealed in Jesus Christ, and fallen prey to ideologies and mythical fancies (I/1, xiv).

Years later, Barth recalled the importance of the insight he had gained in the five years leading up to the Church Dogmatics, which, by his own account, forced him to abandon the earlier and unfinished Christliche Dogmatik:

The positive factor in the new development was this: in these years I had to learn that Christian doctrine, if it is to merit its name, and if it is to build up the Christian Church in the world as it needs to be built up, has to be exclusively and consistently the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the living Word of God spoken to us men. If I look back from this point on my earlier stages, I can now ask myself why I did not learn this and give expression to it much sooner. How slow man is, especially when the most important things are at stake! […] My new task was to rethink everything that I had said before and to put it quite differently once again, as a theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. […] I have discovered that by concentrating on this point I can say everything far more clearly, unambiguously and simply, in accordance with the Church’s belief, and yet far more freely, openly and comprehensively, than I could ever have said it before.¹

Several elements in this description of Barth’s theological principles are important for understanding the overall shape of the Church Dogmatics. Above all Barth insists that the starting-point for dogmatics is reflection on the object of its enquiry, which is Jesus Christ. Dogmatics does not begin with formal considerations dictated by the nature of the enquiring subject, but with the object of its enquiry. Barth differs here from the tradition of the Kantian Erkenntnislehre in that he demurs from developing an epistemology in abstraction from an actual field of knowledge. The field of knowledge with which dogmatics is concerned is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Barth sees three elements of this particular science as determinative of its enquiries. First, dogmatics is necessarily and by nature an act of faith, a response to the revelation of God, which is the act of God upon which faith depends. Second, dogmatics is bound to the sphere of the Church, because the Church is where revelation has occurred and is acknowledged. Third, dogmatics is the means by which the Church tests itself by the revelation of God given it in Jesus Christ:

Dogmatics is a part of the work of human knowledge. But this part of the work of human knowledge stands under a particularly decisive condition. Like all work of human knowledge, it naturally demands the intellectual faculties of attentiveness and concentration, of understanding and appraisal [Urteilen]. […] Over and above this, however, it demands Christian faith, which does not simply come of itself, even with the deepest and purest surrender to this task. Dogmatics is a function of the Christian Church. The Church tests itself by essaying it. To the Church is given the promise of the criterion of Christian faith, namely the revelation of God. […] But there is no possibility of dogmatics at all outside the Church. To be in the Church, however, is to be called with others by Jesus Christ. To act in the Church is to act in obedience to this call. The obedience to the call of Christ is faith. […] Faith is the determination of human action by the being of the Church and therefore by Jesus Christ, the gracious address of God to man. In faith, and only in faith, human action is related to the being of the Church, to the action of God in revelation and reconciliation. (I/1, 17)

Dogmatics demands Christian faith as its decisive condition. Barth has stood the tradition of nineteenth-century Protestant theology on its head; instead of enquiring into the conditions which revelation must meet in order to occur, Barth maintains that acknowledgement of revelation, which is the criterion of Christian faith, is necessary for the enquiry itself (I/1, 17). Credo ut intelligam. Methodologically, this means that Barth begins with the reality of revelation, and from that standpoint infers what conditions this reality does fulfil. Faith is the determination (Bestim-mung), or shaping, of the human action which is dogmatics, by Jesus Christ, in Whom God addresses humanity with his grace. Barth’s principle here rests upon a premise of fact: God has acted in revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ, calling together a community of those who hear and obey the call of God in Him. Barth is able to say, baldly, that without faith the entire enterprise of dogmatics ‘would be irrelevant and meaningless’ (I/1, 17), because apart from the acknowledgement of this fact, dogmatics has no object; it is a field of enquiry with nothing to investigate.

A further distinction of dogmatics is that, while it is a scientific discipline, it is not a free science; it is bound to the sphere of the Church. There is no dogmatics at all outside the sphere of the Church, because the Church is where those called by Jesus Christ are (I/1, 17). Again, Barth’s principle rests upon a factual premise: the Church is where the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is acknowledged in faith; it is, therefore, the community of those among whom the decisive condition for this science is met.

Finally, dogmatics, for Barth, is the Church’s necessary self-examination by the criterion of its own being, which is Jesus Christ. The address of God to humanity is not only indicative, but imperatival.² The Church stands under a responsibility to act in accord with the revelation and reconciliation accomplished by God in Jesus Christ. The Church Dogmatics is, in part, a massive and detailed elaboration of the act of God in Jesus Christ, and the specific determination of human action by that unique divine action.

Barth calls the primary action which dogmatics tests ‘Church proclamation’, which takes the form of preaching and sacraments.³ Ethics is also ‘an integral part of dogmatics’ (I/1, xvi), because ‘only the doer of the Word is its real hearer’ (I/1, 792), and because, ‘the theme of the Word is human existence, human life and volition and action’ (I/1, 793). In other words, the Word addressed to human beings is a life-forming and action-eliciting Word: ‘Where it is believed and acknowledged in the Holy Spirit, the revelation of God creates men who do not exist without seeking God in Jesus Christ, and who cannot cease to testify that He has found them’ (I/2, 362). This two-fold characterization of the ‘doer of the Word’ corresponds to the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbour. The substance of the testimony of one whom ‘He has found’, which Barth refers to here, is love of neighbour (I/2, 440–50). So, while ethical action is not a component of Church proclamation, strictly speaking, it does function analogously, as a sign, which witnesses to the word of proclamation. Preaching and sacraments as proclamation are, therefore, a form of the Word that elicits the love of neighbour, which in turn witnesses to the Word. In love of neighbour, ‘I only declare to the other that in relation to him I believe in Jesus Christ’ (I/2, 441).

Church Proclamation: Obedience and Expectation on the Basis of Promise in Church Dogmatics §3–7

Theology for Barth is a function of the Church; its role is to serve the Church’s confession of God, both in word and in action. The Church’s action is itself ‘theology’, a confession of, and so a kind of speech about God, as is clear from Barth’s treatment of the love of neighbour as a ‘declaration’ of belief in Jesus Christ. The Church is responsible for its speech and action, and so theology is, further, a critical task, in which the Church examines and revises its speech about God (I/1, 3).

Barth is an eminently ‘churchly’ theologian, deeply concerned with the form of life that corresponds to the reality of God’s being revealed in Jesus Christ. This is clear in the principles of dogmatics, which he articulates in Church Dogmatics I. It is also apparent from crucial events in Barth’s biography: the first, difficult experience of pastoral work in Safenwil; his deep involvement in religious socialism during those years of pastoral work; his disillusionment with the German liberal theologians who supported the First World War; his heavy involvement in the ‘German Church Struggle’. For Barth, then, preaching, sacraments, exegesis and dogmatics, do not belong in a separate realm of ‘religious’ life and thought, sealed off from the realm of ‘secular’ life and thought, but are the form in which the Word is proclaimed that shapes the whole of life, in thought and action. Failure to recognize this will give rise to all kinds of misreadings of the Church Dogmatics that do not sufficiently take into account Barth’s practical orientation: scrutinizing the life and action of the Church against the Word attested in the Bible, read in light of the Church’s history of reflection upon it.

Church proclamation – the Word of God in the form of preaching and sacrament addressed to human beings with the expectation and claim to be heard in faith – is the material of Barth’s dogmatic investigation. Because such proclamation is a human word, albeit a human word spoken with the claim and expectation that it should be heard in faith, it is measured against the Word of God, the content of the Word that it seeks to proclaim (I/1, 47). Barth likens the relationship between the Word of God and human speech to the relationship between the word of a king and the proclamation of a herald or – with delimitations intended to exclude the Roman Catholic concept of magisterial office – the role of a vicar (I/1, 95ff.).

There are, then, two important elements to the concept of Church proclamation as the material of dogmatics: its form, and its content. According to Barth, the form of proclamation that the Church is commissioned to perform is strictly tied to preaching and sacraments. Not all the Church’s talk about God is proclamation (I/1, 49). The Church’s social work, its education of youth, theology itself, are not Church proclamation (I/1, 49–51). Barth allows that any of these might, in particular instances, under the sovereign authority of God, become proclamation; that is, God may speak through them (I/1, 53): ‘God may speak through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming bush, or a dead dog’ (I/1, 55). Barth maintains a distinction, however, between what God is free to use as proclamation and what the Church is commanded to pass on as proclamation (I/1, 55). Proclamation as that which is enjoined upon the Church consists precisely in preaching and sacrament (I/1, 58):

This proclamation is preaching, i.e., the attempt by someone called thereto in the Church, in the form of an exposition [Erkla¨rung] of some portion of the biblical witness to revelation, to express in his own words and to make intelligible [versta¨ndlich] to the men of his own generation the promise of the revelation, reconciliation and vocation of God as they are to be expected here and now. (I/1, 56)

Preaching – proclamation in word – must be complemented by an action, proclamation in the form of sacrament:

This proclamation is sacrament, i.e., the symbolical act which is carried through in the Church as directed by the biblical witness of revelation in accompaniment and confirmation of preaching and which is designed as such to attest the event of divine revelation, reconciliation and vocation which does not merely fulfil but underlines the promise. (I/1, 56)

For Barth, sacraments are symbolical, and they are symbolical acts. They point beyond themselves. Sacramental action is not independent, but is a confirmation of preaching, an attestation of the Word of God as an event. As acts, sacraments underline the fact of revelation, reconciliation and calling as an event which fulfils the promise that preaching declares. Their function requires action, because the fulfilment of the divine promise is action. As preaching is a representative word, so sacrament is a representative action, demanded and controlled by the biblical witness. Preaching is a human exercise, in which the words of the preacher represent the Word of God. Preaching is the proclamation of a promise in ‘the darkness of the human word’ that serves God’s own Word (I/1, 60). By the power of the Holy Spirit, these ‘words of human thought and expression on the lips of the preacher’ become the event of the real promise given to the Church (I/1, 60). The sacrament, too, is ‘no more than preaching to the degree that it, too, can only announce, i.e., announce the future revelation, reconciliation and calling, and thus be a repetition of the promise, a means of grace’ (I/1, 60). In its very form, however, it testifies to the basis of the promise: ‘It represents the character of the promise as event and grace in contrast to all man’s work on the level of human occurrence. To represent this basis of the promise it must not consist in further words; it has to be action.’ (I/1, 60)

Both preaching and sacraments, as Barth portrays them, consist in an ‘event’, in which God acts in conjunction with the human action: ‘What in either case is more than representation, service and symbol, is the event, whose subject is not the Church, but God Himself’ (I/1, 61). In so far as they are human actions, sacraments, like preaching, are ‘no more than human talk about God’ (I/1, 61). Yet, they are human talk about God carried out in obedience to a divine commission and with an end beyond themselves. As such, like preaching and in concert with it, sacraments are performed with an expectation that God Himself will make use of them. Barth quotes the Heidelberg Catechism as an ‘unusually clear and exhaustive definition’ of sacraments:

What are the sacraments? – They are visible, sacred signs and seals appointed by God, so that through the use of the same He may the better give us to understand the promise of the Gospel, and seal the same, namely, that for the sake of the one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross he graciously grants us remission of sins and eternal life. (I/1, 56)⁴

Barth distinguishes between expectation and presumption. The Church’s proclamation is not effective in and of itself, but requires the action of God to make it the occasion of the address of the Word of God to human beings. In that sense, proclamation is repetition, not fulfilment of the divine promise. This understanding is based on an important element in the whole structure of the relation between God and humanity, between divine and human action in the biblical witness as Barth construes it. Initiative always rests with God. What the preacher speaks is a repetition of what he...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The Doctrine of the Word of God’: The Sacramental Area of the Church
• 2 The Doctrine of God: Knowledge of God, Election and Covenant as Foundational Themes
• 3 History, Concursus, Prayer and the Role of Angels
• 4 Ecclesial Mediation in Church Dogmatics IV/1–3
• 5 The Baptism Fragment
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index