The Resurrection in Karl Barth

R. Dale Dawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351882910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Karl Barth repeatedly spoke of the centrality and unparalleled significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for his theological understanding, yet a clear grasp of its nature and scope in Barth continues to find little expression in scholarly literature. This book seeks to draw out the theological substance and systematic implications of Barth's thinking on this theme. Barth's mature understanding of the resurrection concentrates upon the transition from the objective achievement of reconciliation culminating in the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ to its subjective appropriation in the life of the believer, all within a thoroughly christological context. The resurrection may be described as the way of the crucified Lord to others, and is, for Barth, the essential and efficient link between christology proper and the extension of Christ's saving work to others.

Chapter One
The Eclipse of the Resurrection

It has long been suggested by commentators that the doctrine of the resurrection held a formative place in Barth’s theological understanding. According to T.F. Torrance, Barth spoke of ‘the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the starting and controlling point of all his biblical and theological thought.’¹ Torrance claims, ‘it was ... an essential element in [Barth’s] teaching that our understanding of divine revelation should begin with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, for it is from that revealing centre that the whole evangelical account of Jesus Christ is to be understood.’² Furthermore, ‘[the resurrection] constituted the absolutely decisive event in space and time on which he took his stand and from which he took his bearings.’³ With ‘the risen Christ’ asserts David Ford, we face ‘the fundamental challenge of Barth’s theology.’⁴ Likewise, Eberhard Jüngel asserts that the ‘transitional concepts’ of the doctrine of reconciliation, which deal with the matter of the resurrection, are ‘determinative for the Christology’ and they ‘open the way to soteriology’ in as much as they denote the establishment of an ontological link between the man Jesus and all other men.⁵ For Barth, ‘true knowledge of God and Christ is rooted in the power of the resurrection and results from being drawn into the eschatological presence of God by the power of the Spirit,’ avers Ingolf Dalfert.⁶ Similarly John Thompson, following Berthold Klappert, joins the chorus in identifying ‘the cross and resurrection’ as ‘the centre from which Barth starts out to view the whole.’⁷ Again, ‘The resurrection is supremely important and central to Barth’s whole Church Dogmatics.’⁸

Despite such a general appreciation of the significance of the doctrine in Barth’s overall theological understanding, strikingly little attempt has been made to understand its radical systematic significance. Few interpreters have taken at face value Barth’s assertions regarding the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for his thinking. While the dominant primers routinely indicate the great significance of the doctrine, little is done to unpack its nature and shape or to explicate its place and function in the context of Barth’s overall theological contribution. This is particularly true with respect to Barth’s early commentary on Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, The Resurrection of the Dead, to which only a handful of interpreters refer. Likewise the important developments of the resurrection material in CD IV/2 and IV/3, remaining largely unknown, have not to date received satisfactory explication. Greater though still inadequate attention has been given to the portions of Barth’s writings concerned with the question of the resurrection as an historical event, and hence with the question of the relation of historical science to the object of theology. In this regard commentators generally concentrate upon the earlier writings, the masterful handling of the question in his debate with Bultmann in CD III/2 §47.1, and to a limited degree in CD IV/1. However, the themes of the later material are crucial for an appropriate appreciation of the pregnant insights of the earlier material. Given the magnitude of the importance of the theme for Barth and the lack of attention given it by many interpreters, the need for clarification concerning the centrality and meaning of Barth’s comprehension of the resurrection becomes obvious.

The problem is compounded by the fact that much of the scholarly inquiry into this theme appears to be guided by interests quite foreign to it. Often the line of questioning is limited to historical or hermeneutical issues, which are simply inadequate to the scope and depth of Barth’s depiction. As a result Barth is often wrongly classified as a proponent of some form of Heilsgeschichte, or as an historical skeptic in the vein of Rudolf Bultmann, from whom Barth clearly distinguished himself. Alternately, some locate Barth among those whose concern it is to address the philosophical problem of existential relevance, or of the separation of subject and object, or of the general theological problem of the infinite qualitative difference of divinity and humanity. Few if any grant sufficient attention to Barth’s understanding of the fundamental problem of the gospel – that the same Jesus Christ who has acted definitively as representative and saviour of all men and women is risen and present.

Of equally great concern is the slim account given of the radical systematic significance of the doctrine of the resurrection in Barth’s thought. Few acknowledge, let alone expound, the pivotal importance of Barth’s understanding of the resurrection as the decisive link between christology and soteriology. Consequently, little effort is made to explore the relevance of the resurrection for Barth’s conception of the relation of Jesus Christ to others. No one, it would appear, attempts to develop at length Barth’s doctrine of the resurrection as the turning of the crucified Lord to others. Barth’s appreciation of the radical severity of the death of human creaturely existence in the death of Jesus Christ and of the astonishing reality of the effective transition of reconciled being and action from Jesus Christ to others in his resurrection is often treated as an odd and inessential digression in Barth’s otherwise tight and integrated exposition. The significance which Barth clearly sees in the resurrection for the possibility of other genuine human being and action vis-à-vis the all-determining reality of the history of Jesus Christ is often overlooked, and, hence, allows for the perpetuation of the understanding that Barth’s christology has erred on the side of christomonism. Another theological stone left largely unturned has to do with the influence of the resurrection upon Barth’s understanding of the incarnation, yet our crucial understanding of the coherence of the divine and human in Jesus Christ comes only as an implication of resurrection revelation. As much can be said also of the import of the resurrection for Barth’s development of the doctrine of revelation. Little is written on the importance of the resurrection in Barth’s construal of revelation, yet for Barth, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the primordial form of revelation, in which God reveals himself and in so doing reveals the identity of Jesus Christ, the identity and function of the Holy Spirit, the inner being of the immanent Trinity, as well as the reality and achievement of reconciliation on the cross. Again, it must be noted that the systematic significance of the doctrine of the resurrection for Barth’s eschatology has yet to be developed in detail. Barth’s construal of the resurrection as the first and proper form of the parousia is of immense importance and must not be overlooked. Still further, the relationship of the resurrection reality to the prophetic ministry of Jesus Christ, while a theme of great weight, has gone relatively unnoticed. These shortcomings and others in earlier depictions of Barth’s theology of the resurrection can be addressed only in a thorough-going exposition of the rich resurrection materials Barth has supplied us.

A large number of analyses come up short by dwelling upon the historical question, often falsely construing Barth’s inversion of the order of the historical enterprise and the resurrection of Jesus as an aspect of his historical skepticism.⁹ For Barth the resurrection of Jesus is not a datum of the sort to be analyzed and understood, as other data, by means of historical critical science. While a real event within the nexus of space and time the resurrection is also the event of the creation of new time and space. Such an event can only be described as an act of God; that is, an otherwise impossible event. The event of the resurrection of Jesus is that of the creation of the conditions of the possibility for all other events, and as such it cannot be accounted for in terms considered appropriate for all other events. This is not the expression of an historical skeptic, but of one who is convinced of the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular, history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.

Among those who see Barth’s view of the resurrection as an expression of historical skepticism is Peter Carnley.¹⁰ It is his view that the basic historical presuppositions of Barth (and Bultmann) are in error. That is, according to Carnley, the permanent insecurity of all historiographical judgments of the life of the historical Jesus is logically erroneous. And thus the strictures of Barth, which, according to Carnley, suggest that the results of the critical-historical procedures cannot be dogmatically significant, are also erroneous. Carnley understands Barth’s development of the resurrection as ‘essentially a supra-historical occurrence of eternity which only impinges on history where it is glimpsed in faith by time-bound, historically conditioned people.’¹¹ Carnley believes that the emphasis of Barth is theologically sterile and unproductive. That is not to say that he sees no redeeming features in Barth’s work – he applauds Barth’s conception of the resurrection as a revelatory and salvific event – but he gives little attention to Barth’s development of these crucial notions. Not only has Carnley overlooked the important differences between Barth and Bultmann, but also he has permitted the historical skepticism of Bultmann to so inform his understanding of Barth that the significant advance Barth has made to this very question has been almost entirely ignored.

Another, more engaging, critique of Barth along these lines is that of Richard R. Niebuhr, who offers an insightful exposition of Barth’s view. Niebuhr praises Barth’s ‘realism’ and agrees with his criticism of modern theology for its destruction of ‘the natural side of biblical revelation.’ He likewise concurs that ‘Literary and historical criticism have in fact tended to empty body, flesh, death and resurrection of their meaning and so purge revelation of all realism.’¹² He demonstrates keen insight in making the claim that the ‘univocal relationship between revelation-history and general history, on the one hand, and between Jesus Christ and all other historical agents, on the other, is the determinative ...