Double Particularity

Karl Barth, Contextuality, and Asian American Theology

Daniel D. Lee

• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781506418520
• eBook ISBN: 9781506418537
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Double Particularity is a constructive proposal for theological methodology addressing the Asian American context using the theology of Karl Barth. It focuses primarily on employing Barth's theology to develop a methodology for engaging the Asian American context. This methodological focus means that it is an integrative and synthetic work, bringing seemingly disparate thoughts and concepts together. Here, the Asian American context serves as an important case study.

With the center of worldwide Christianity moving to the global South, and even as American Christianity becomes more reflective of immigrant populations, the theological need for a deeper engagement with context is more urgent than ever. Karl Barth, particularly his thought on election, Christology, and reconciliation, offers much wisdom and insight for the churches of the majority world and for these ethnic churches, even though he is often seen as just a figure in the Western historical tradition. Hence, this study is a contribution to the development of a connection between Barth and contextual theology, to the stimulation and enrichment of both.

3

Reconciliation: Dialectical Grammar for Cultural Engagement

In the last chapter, we presented the basis and the nature of theological contextuality drawing from Barth’s actualism. Thus, what we have done so far is to address the formal questions about contextuality as double particularity, with Jesus Christ on the one hand and our situation on the other. However, the material questions about how Christ encounters our culture and context have yet to be discussed.

These questions are multiple and complicated and cannot be dealt with in a monolithic or static fashion. The task of shedding light onto these matters is the burden of this present chapter. Building upon Barth’s thoughts on contextuality, we provide the structure—or more precisely, the grammar—for cultural engagement by exploring and extending Barth’s doctrines of election and reconciliation. These two doctrines are the ways in which divine incarnation impacts and envelops humanity and creation.

The flow of the argument is summarized thusly. Barth’s innovative doctrine of election with its christological, supralapsarian, and universal aspects allows a way for de jure participatio Christi (participation in Christ) of all humanity and entire creation. Of course, this does not lead to a static and abstract election of individuals disregarding faith, but its universalistic scope is evident and will be elaborated below.^[1]

The content of this participatio is expanded in the doctrine of reconciliation. In its dialectical triadic modes of justification, sanctification, and vocation, Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation unpacks the meaning of incarnation for humanity and creation, and it also further serves as the grammar for his dynamic and textured engagement with the context.

Especially, because of the specific complex nuances built into it, this doctrine of reconciliation includes various dimensions and facets of the ways Christ engages with culture or context. In Niebuhrian terms, Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation makes it possible for Christ against culture, Christ transformer of culture, and Christ of culture to be brought together within this grammar in an orderly, but a unity-in-distinction kind of way. This grammar can then guide our complex and nuanced contextual engagements.

Also, the ordered relationality between reconciliation and creation within Barth’s thought allows for this triadic rubric to be extended to Barth’s doctrine of creation. The point here is that using this rubric creates possibilities of creation to be freely and fully creaturely. The present chapter continues the presentation pattern of previous chapters: Moving from Barth to contextuality in general, and finally, to the Asian American situation.

First, we will begin our analysis by reviewing proposals of Robert Palma, Paul Metzger, and Jessica DeCou, which all seek to explain or extend Barth’s ideas of culture. Moving on to our proposal, we will build a foundation for engaging with culture based on Barth’s doctrine of election and the notion of participatio Christi, drawing significantly upon Bruce McCormack’s work. This idea of participation in Christ is connected to Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation with its dynamic and complex features. Lastly, using the triadic doctrine of reconciliation as the grammar for cultural engagement furthers the discussion and better accounts for Barth’s own dialectical dealings with culture.

Second, we connect and apply the dialectical and hermeneutical grammar that this doctrine provides to culture and context. In terms of contextuality, this approach helps to explain what God appears to be doing in his divine commandeering of culture. The result is that reconciliation as the inner structure of universal participation gives us a very dynamic and nimble approach to the interaction between theology and culture.

Last, the practical implication of this triadic grammar is demonstrated in the four dimensions of the Asian American Quadrilateral (AAQ)—namely, Asian heritage, migration experience, American culture, and racialization. A case study will demonstrate how the three modes of reconciliation guide the cultural engagement in each dimension.

Barth, Election, and Reconciliation

With his “Nein!” against Brunner, Karl Barth became infamous for his rejection of natural theology and point of contact, both considered crucial by others for the missionary and evangelistic calling of the church.^[2] Furthermore, with his rejection of Tillich’s theology of culture, Barth sealed his reputation as a cultural philistine among theologians in the eyes of many.^[3] However, there have been some perceptive readers of Barth, who recognized that his view of culture was more nuanced than what these well-known, but limited reviews told.^[4]

Brief Review of the Significant Literature

Before we proceed, it is helpful to see how the significant works of Palma, Metzger, and DeCou have tackled Barth’s dealings with culture.^[5] These three works represent the significant monograph treatments of this particular aspect of Barth’s theology.^[6] Our proposal of using Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation seeks to incorporate and extend the insights of these works.

All these authors believe that Barth’s view of culture cannot be reduced to simple “No,” an undifferentiated diastasis. They also acknowledge Barth’s multifaceted interaction with culture—that while sin and judgment are recognized, the goodness of the creation and even its witness toward God are present as well. In a sense, they are investigating how this complexity is internally coherent. What they all seek to do is to organize the inner rubric of Barth’s complex dealings with culture.

Robert Palma, along with the other two, makes explicit Barth’s implicit methodology regarding cultural engagement, as Barth did not have a theology of culture per se.^[7] Palma’s thesis is that “Barth not only dealt with culture in a multiplex fashion but that he also conceived of free culture as having a multiplex character.”^[8] Accordingly, Palma argues that Barth deals with culture on three different levels: a descriptive or dogmatic theology of culture, which sets for a theological understanding of culture as such, a critical or analytical theology of culture, which states the diastasis between God and culture, and a constructive or normative theology of culture, which is reflective of the mature Barth, who finds human freedom along with divine freedom in Jesus Christ.

Palma notes that for Barth, Jesus Christ in his humanity serves as not only the “paradigm of truly free culture,” he is also “the very source and basis of all free culture.”^[9] However, Palma does not unpack this christological claim. Rather, after stating “the major facets of his Christology will not be set forth but assumed, as they are by Barth himself,” Palma moves on to the various ways in which the disparate cultural elements reflect this christological paradigm.^[10] The crucial organizing core is simply “assumed,” leaving us in the dark as to how Barth is able to have such a multifaceted engagement with culture in Christ.

Precisely this “assumed” christological lacuna is what Metzger seeks to address with his incarnational proposal. Metzger believes that “an analogical connection” exists between Barth’s Chalcedonian Christology and “his pattern of engaging culture in view of Christ.”^[11] Drawing from the works of Hunsinger and McCormack, Metzger applies “‘correspondence and extension’ of Chalcedonian categories by Barth” to the Word of Christ and world of the culture.^[12] These categories, which organize the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ, are “without confusion or change,” “without separation or division,” and are “the asymmetrical ordering of the relation,” in which God retains precedence for the divine over the human.^[13]

The resulting practical implications for cultural engagement are “contra deification and secularization.” On the one hand, culture ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Particularity: Defining the Context
• Contextuality: The Logic of Contextual Engagement
• Reconciliation: Dialectical Grammar for Cultural Engagement
• Missionality: Asian American Ecclesiologies
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index