The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth

Richard Burnett

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780664225308
• eBook ISBN: 9781611643244
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Featuring essays from renowned scholars, this volume in the Westminster Handbooks to Christian Theology series provides an insightful and comprehensive overview of the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968). This volume offers concise descriptions of Barth's key terms and concepts, while also identifying the intricate connections within Barth's theological vocabulary. Masterfully compiled and edited, this volume features the largest team of Barth scholars ever gathered to interpret Barth's theology. The result is a splendid introduction to the most influential theologian of the modern era.

Contributors include Clifford B. Anderson, Michael Beintker, Eberhard Busch, Timothy Gorringe, Garrett Green, Kevin Hector, I. John Hesselink, George Hunsinger, J. Christine Janowski, Paul Dafydd Jones, Joseph L. Mangina, Bruce L. McCormack, Daniel L. Migliore, Paul D. Molnar, Adam Neder, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Gerhard Sauter, Katherine Sonderegger, John Webster, and many others.

Articles

Actualism “Actualism” is a term used to indicate one of the most significant characteristics of Barth’s mature theology. The term alludes primarily to the way in which Barth, following the witness of Scripture, conceives of God and Jesus Christ, and (derivatively) of human beings, as beings-in-action, existing in a covenant relationship in which the dialectical concepts of “history” and “event” are important. These conceptions have vital ramifications for Barth’s understandings of preaching, the Bible, and the church.

The basis of Barth’s actualism is found in his doctrine of God. Barth’s confession of the existence of God is based on revelation, the divine event in which God acts to reveal Godself to human beings. Revelation attests that God is a living God operative in the history of the covenant, in respect of whom words such as “event” and “act” cannot be avoided. Central to Barth’s understanding of revelation at this point is his view that “God is who He is in His works” (CD II/1:260). In other words, the Trinitarian activity of revelation involves God declaring who God really is: God’s being and action ad extra correspond to God’s being and action ad intra.

Barth happily calls upon the dynamic vocabulary of the theological tradition to describe God as a being-in-action: God is vita, actuositas, actus, even actus purissimus. This act is not general or abstract, however, but is shown in revelation to be concrete and particular: not just actus purus, then, but “actus purus et singularis” (II/1:263). First, it is God alone who exists absolutely in act, in a conscious, willed, and executed decision, and who is thus properly “event,” “act,” and “life”: “When we know God as event, act, and life, we have to admit that generally and apart from Him we do not know what that is” (II/1:264). Second, this act of the living God has a particular content, which is the free and gracious decision of God to be for humanity in Jesus Christ: “before [Jesus Christ] and above Him and beside Him and apart from Him there is no election, no beginning, no decree, no Word of God” (II/2:95).

This eternal election of Jesus Christ is an act of love that is free of compulsion or necessity: “In so far as God not only is love, but loves, in the act of love which determines His whole being God elects” (II/2:76). For Barth, Jesus Christ is the Subject and Object of this election. In the history that is thereby elected, “the Son of God becomes identical with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore unites human essence with His divine essence” (IV/2:107). This history entails the humiliation of God and the exaltation of humanity in the concrete existence of Jesus Christ, the God-human in divine-human unity, and represents the actualization of the eternal will and decree of God. Barth writes correspondingly that Jesus Christ is himself “actus purus, the actualisation of being in absolutely sovereign spontaneity” (IV/3.1:40). Jesus Christ is thus also a being-in-action, whose divine-human history demonstrates a perfect correspondence of person and work. In the one history of Jesus Christ, the divine essence reveals and gives while the human essence serves and attests and mediates, without confusion or distinction but in a perfect relationship of action. Indeed, Barth’s explicit “actualisation” of the doctrine of the hypostatic union leads him to write: “we have left no place for anything static at the broad center of the traditional doctrine of the person of Christ” (IV/2:106).

As Barth derives his theological anthropology directly from his Christology, he also construes human persons in general as beings-in-action. The history of each person has its determination in light of the history of Jesus Christ; and in correspondence with the being of Jesus Christ, each person “is active, engaged in movement” (III/2:195). As one is determined in this way by God, the question also arises of one’s self-determination (II/2:511). Actualism thus also becomes a crucial dimension of Barth’s construal of theological ethics, in which obedience to the divine command of grace can only take place as an event in the history of the covenant. There is also dissimilarity between Jesus Christ and humanity in general, of course: the being of the individual exists by grace alone and is not self-positing or self-determining; the presence of sin means that there is no perfect correspondence between the being of the individual and one’s actions; and the presence of grace means that the self-determination of the individual is ultimately subordinate to one’s divine determination. Nevertheless, for Barth, it is axiomatic that “To exist as a [hu]man means to act” (II/2:535).

To write of God and of human beings in this actualistic way is to make profound ontological claims: Barth’s actualism is therefore not simply a formal description of one aspect of his theology, but carries with it profound material content. Indeed, the phrase “actualistic ontology” is found synonymously for “actualism” in much secondary literature; the major alternative would be a “substantialistic ontology” in which God and human beings would be construed as fixed and determinate quantities in a certain abstraction from their histories, acts, and relationships. In implicitly rejecting this view, Barth believes himself to be guided by the witness of divine revelation. Barth is aware that terms such as ontology and actualism are part of the vocabulary of secular philosophy; but he is consequently determined at every stage to ensure that “ontology will have its norm and law in [Jesus Christ], not vice versa” (IV/1:757). It is in such a sense that Barth happily speaks of a “strong actualism” in his theology (G-1964–1968, 90), while stoutly opposing any engagement in speculative metaphysics.

The ramifications of Barth’s actualism extend beyond these immediate corollaries into other theological loci, of which three deserve brief mention. First, Barth’s understanding of proclamation as the Word of God is dependent upon human words becoming the Word of God in the gracious event of divine revelation (I/1:94). Second, and similarly, Barth conceives Scripture to be the Word of God only as it becomes the Word of God through an event of the gracious activity of God (I/1:108). Finally, the being of the church, which is dependent on the work of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, is conceived explicitly as a being in action: “Its act is its being, its status is dynamic, its essence its existence” (IV/1:650). In each of these loci, ready evidence of Barth’s actualism is further apparent.

G. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth (1991); E. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, trans. J. Webster (2001); B. L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern (2008); P. T. Nimmo, Being in Action (2007).

PAUL NIMMO

Analogy Analogy is a way of thinking that is of utmost importance to Barth. It enables authentic human speech about God, but at the same time safeguards God’s mystery. The reality (Wirklichkeit) of the triune God is categorically different from human reality. This raises the question whether human words and concepts can ever approach the mystery of God, or, more pertinently, whether human words and concepts can serve adequately for any discussion of God at all. This question can be answered positively with the help of analogy. Although the reality of God is of necessity always to be distinguished from the reality of humans, and therefore also from the reality of human speech, words and concepts are able to express adequately the mystery of God under certain conditions, that is, at that moment when these words and concepts correspond (in an analogical way) with him, according to the stipulations of the analogia fidei.

Barth distinguishes between analogy as opposed to parity and disparity. Analogy means “similarity, i.e., a partial correspondence and agreement (and, therefore, one which limits both parity and disparity between two or more different entities)” (CD II/1:225). Barth particularly emphasizes the aspect of “similarity” (“partial correspondence and agreement” (227), “correspondence and comparableness” (III/3:102). One may venture to speak in theology about “similarity and therefore analogy” in the sense that “we find likeness and unlikeness between two quantities: a certain likeness which is compromised by a great unlikeness; or a certain unlikeness which is always relativized and qualified by a certain existent likeness” (102).

In the CD Barth uses analogy as a way of thinking in three fundamental fields of application. First, human speech about God and his relation to humans proceeds according to the rules of analogy, that is, according to the analogia fidei in the narrower sense, which, in classical terms, means the analogia attributionis. The fields of recognition and speech are mentioned in this context. The relationship of human words to God’s being is one of neither parity nor disparity. Barth does not orient himself to a general epistemology in the unfolding of these thoughts. He prefers to follow as closely as possible the event of revelation. The concept of disparity is unsuitable because God reveals himself in his revelation and consequently gives “veracity” to human words that describe him (II/1:233). By God’s grace they are “awakened” and “taken into service” (235). But the concept of parity is equally unsuitable. “That God also veils Himself in His revelation certainly excludes the concept of parity as a designation of the relationship between our words and God’s being” (235). This classical definition of “analogy,” which occupies a middle point between parity (univocity) and disparity (equivocity), is too formal and abstract. We are confronted with the revelation of the living God. The living God always encounters us in his revelation in “both His veiling and His unveiling” (236).

Second, the relationships within the inner Trinitarian being of God, his revelation in the man Jesus, and the existence of human beings in their interrelationship with God and with one another, are arranged in an analogical way. These respective relationships are neither in a relation of identity nor in a relation of difference toward the I-Thou relationship in the triunity of God, but rather in a relation of correspondence. Since the characteristic feature in view is the comparable relationship between “I and Thou,” Barth uses the concept of analogia relationis, which, in classical terms, means the analogia proportionalitatis. The relationship in the inner being of God between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the “source of every I and Thou” (III/2:218). This relationship is repeated and copied in God’s eternal covenant with humanity, as it is revealed in the humanity of Jesus in our age (cf. 218–19). The man Jesus repeats is his being for humans the inner being, the essence (Wesen), of God himself, thereby making his being true for God. In this way the analogia relationis allows for the only adequate understanding of Jesus’ humanity. Between the humanity of Jesus that belongs to the created world (the relationship of God to the reality that differs from him) and the inner sphere of the reality of God (the relationship of God to himself), there is correspondence and similarity, but no identity (cf. 219; IV/1:126–27, 203–4; IV/2:43–44). With the analogia relationis, Barth relates the differing levels of Trinitarian theology, Christology, anthropology, and ethical propositions in such a way that their respective mutual relationships, as well as their categorical differences, are guaranteed. To cite an example: “The relationship between the summoning I in God’s being and the summoned divine Thou is reflected both in the relationship of God to the man whom He has created, and also in the relationship between the I and the Thou, between male and female, in human existence itself” (III/1:196).

Third, divine action and human action must be clearly distinguished. Nevertheless, certain analogies arise between divine action and human action when humans try to respond to God’s turning toward us with corresponding acts of love. One finds such analogies, for instance, in the description of Christian discipleship (cf. IV/1:634ff.) or in love (cf. IV/2:776–79, 785–86) or in characterizing the nature of the church (cf. IV/3.2:728–29). Barth’s ethics are also determined by the formation of such analogies. He characterizes the correspondence between divine work and human works as an analogia operationis (III/3:102). According to Barth, while there is between the work of God and that of the creature “no identity … there is a similarity, a correspondence, a comparableness, an analogy” (III/3:102). Furthermore, the highly valued idea of Gleichnis (which cannot be translated adequately in its comprehensive sense, but is similar to “likeness,” “resemblance,” or “parable”) appears quite often in contexts like these (cf. III/3:49–50; IV/3.1:110–65). Due to its structure, the analogia operationis is concerned with the application of the analogia relationis or proportionalitatis because particular relationships are also always portrayed here.

Barth orients the structure of analogy to the mystery of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, which has to be comprehended as the original image of parity and disparity. The parity between the Father and the eternal Son corresponds with the disparity between the Father and the man Jesus: on the one hand “unity of essence,” on the other hand “complete disparity between the two aspects” (III/2:219). An analogy exists between the relationship of Father-Son (unity) and the relationship of Father-man Jesus (disparity), which is constituted by the incarnation of the Son. The inner being of God adopts “this form ad extra in the humanity of Jesus, and in this form, for all the disparity of sphere and object, remains true to itself and therefore reflects itself” (220). It does this, however, per analogiam relationis, because “repetition” and “reflection” signify neither identity with nor difference from the divine and the human being of the Son. For Barth, therefore, the humanity of Jesus as it relates to the divine being concerns the prototype of the formation of analogy, “the true and original correspondence and similarity” (219).

The essence of Barth’s use of analogy discloses itself in the contemplation of the incarnation of God. It is not deduced from a metaphysical principle, which seeks to safeguard the center between the thought categories of “logic” and “dialectic” with the help of “analogy.” This was the approach of Erich Przywara in his work Analogia entis (1932), through which he specifically sought to respond to questions initiated by Barth with his dialectical theology of the 1920s. Przywara founded his use of analogy on the logical law of contradiction, upon which the three steps of Logic, Dialectic, and (in the center of both) Analogic consequently follow. With this approach to analogy, Przywara wanted to express formal ontological structures, not only of the relationship between Creator and creation, but also of the created world itself. Faithful to his metaphysical approach, he saw analogy as a general principle of metaphysics as such. Barth rejected his expansion of the concept of analogy to a grammar of being because of his suspicion that, in so doing, the cause of theology was subordinated to an already evident philosophical principle. This explains his sharp rejection of analogia entis “as the invention of Antichrist” (I/I:xiii). For Barth, analogy should be based from the outset on the foundation of a theology of revelation—in a certain sense, as the grammar of God’s persistent care for humanity, which itself is founded in the inner relations of his triune being. Analogy as a way of thinking is justified and required by the fact that God, in the words of human speech and in the Word incarnate (John 1:14), comes in the being of a man, which is of necessity to be distinguished from God’s being. The God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ is the foundation and standard of analogy. For this reason Barth speaks emphatically about an analogia fidei.

Barth’s desire to maintain the difference and, at the same time, the relationship between the Creator and the creature is admittedly in accord with Przywara’s intentions. Barth’s cr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Introduction
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• List of Articles
• Articles
• Bibliography