Karl Barth and the Future of Evangelical Theology

Christian T. Collins Winn, John L. Drury, Collins Winn, Drury

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781608996827
  9781498221955
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876784
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The theology of Karl Barth has been a productive dialogue partner for evangelical theology. For too long, however, the dialogue has been dominated by questions of orthodoxy. The present volume seeks to contribute to the conversation through a creative reconfiguration of both partners in the conversation, neither of whom can be rightly understood as preservers of Protestant Orthodoxy. Rather, American evangelicalism is identified with the revivalist forms of Protestantism that arose in the post-Reformation era, while Barth is revisited as a theologian attuned both to divine and human agency. In the ensuing conversation questions of orthodoxy are not eliminated, but subordinated to a concern for the life of God and God's people. This volume brings together seasoned Barth scholars, evangelical theologians, and some younger voices, united by a common desire to rethink both Karl Barth and evangelical theology. By offering an alternative to the dominant constraints, the book opens up new avenues for fruitful conversation on Barth and the future of evangelical theology.

Part I

Reframing the Conversation

1

Karl Barth and Evangelicalism

The Varieties of a Sibling Rivalry1

Donald W. Dayton

In recent years, we have seen a flexing of the muscles of what both insiders and outsiders have come to call “Evangelicalism.” This current of American religious life is no new phenomenon; what is new is that a culture that apparently thought it had moved beyond taking “Evangelicalism” seriously is being forced to reevaluate that easy dismissal. What is true on the cultural level is also reflected in intellectual circles—and in the discipline of theology.

This is perhaps especially true among students of the theology of Karl Barth, where a special affinity between “Evangelicals” and Barth has, for example, recently swelled the ranks of the Karl Barth Society with newcomers from a variety of “Evangelical” traditions. And the literature on this relationship has so grown that we now have a survey of the discussion, whose title I have appropriated for this article: Karl Barth and Evangelicalism, by Gregory C. Bolich.

But you will notice that I have quickly added to this title my own subtitle, “the varieties of sibling rivalry,” to suggest that we are dealing with a matter of greater complexity than we (or Bolich) may at first imagine. Something of the difficulty of the path ahead of us in this essay may be suggested by the diversity of “evangelical” opinion about Barth. Reformed theologian Cornelius van Til, on the one hand, has consistently polemicized against Barth in such works as Christianity and Barthianism, with an emphasis on the implied dichotomy. In an essay titled “Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?” he judged that of all the heresies that have evoked the great creeds as refutation, “no heresy that appeared at any of these was so deeply and ultimately destructive of the gospel as is the theology of Barth.”2 We could survey other such statements—like that of dispensationalist Charles Ryrie who finds “Barthianism” to be a “theological hoax”3 because it attempts to be both critical and Orthodox. But on the other end of the spectrum we find other evaluations that could hardly be in starker contrast to the judgment of van Til. Donald Bloesch, for example, has insisted that “Karl Barth is himself an evangelical theologian”4—though with some qualifications. Between these two extremes may be ranged the variety of “evangelical” judgments on Barth.

But how do we get such diverse readings of Barth from “evangelicals”? From one angle this diversity should be no surprise. Barth has suffered much from his interpreters in all camps. He has often been interpreted from caricature or on the basis of fragmentary readings. Barth is, of course, not without fault in this process. The range of his writings makes the task of adequate interpretation a lifetime task. The dialectical and multifaceted character of his thought means that one is always in danger of reading and extrapolating from one of several facets. And the changes in Barth’s thought—especially from the earlier dialectical period to the later Christocentric orientation in which his Christology and the doctrine of incarnation overcome earlier themes—have always provided problems for interpreters. “Evangelical” interpreters have, not surprisingly, shared all these problems.

But there are within the nature of what we call “Evangelicalism” itself issues and problems that complicate our discussion. The most profound of these is the “slipperiness” of the term evangelical. In the language of W.B. Gallie, it is an “essentially contested concept”5—one whose fundamental meaning is at debate. My own efforts to bring clarity to this issue have centered in the development of a typology of the meanings that the term evangelical may convey.6 I would argue that there have been three primary periods in the history of Protestantism that have provided content to the word evangelical. Uses of the word may generally be shown to gravitate toward one or another of these periods or modes of using the word. Let me indicate these meanings:

(1) Many users of the word evangelical have in mind primarily the Reformation and its themes, particularly the great solas (sola fide, sola gratia, sola Christe, sola Scriptura) that convey the Reformation call to grace and the centrality of “justification by faith.” Usually correlated with these themes are an Augustinian/Reformed anthropology, a doctrine of election, and a predominantly forensic view of atonement and salvation. These themes are generally common to the figures of the magisterial Reformation, though we have articulated them in a pattern that may be tipped more toward Lutheranism than Calvinism. But this is in part to reflect the German usage where the word evangelisch roughly means “Protestant” but particularly Lutheran.

(2) In the Anglo-Saxon world, the word evangelical is more likely to gather its connotations from the “evangelical revival” and the “great awakenings.” In this period, Protestant themes were pushed in new directions and into new configurations. There is an intensification of the soteriological orientation of the Reformation in the turn to a piety of “conversion” that involves a shift of emphasis from “justification” to “regeneration” and often indirectly to sanctification. This orientation flowered in missions, evangelism and the rise of benevolent societies to address every kind of human ill. Nineteenth-century revivalism emerged from these currents and accentuated the low-church, moralistic and ethical tendencies to be found in this form of Evangelicalism. It is important to notice that the preservation of “Orthodoxy” is not the major motif of this form of Evangelicalism. From the rise of Pietism on, it includes an element of protest against Orthodoxy in favor of spiritual vitality. The emphasis has been on conversion. The enemy is “nominal Christianity” on the right as much as rationalism and deism on the left. This form of Evangelicalism became the dominant form of religion in America for much of the nineteenth century. In Europe it was much more marginal and would have been known in German as Pietismus or in its more recent forms as NeuPietismus, or as the Erweckungsbewegung.

(3) Especially since the Civil War and particularly in the United States, there has been a growing split in American Protestantism that culminated in the twentieth-century fundamentalist/modernist controversy. Since World War II, a more intellectually articulate and socially and culturally engaged wing of the fundamentalist party has also appropriated the label “evangelical.” It is this use of the word evangelical that has become the dominant one in our own time. The word in this context refers to a mixed coalition of a variety of theological and ecclesiastical traditions that have found common cause against the rise of “modernity” and the erosion of older forms of Orthodoxy under the impact of biblical criticism, the rise of Darwinianism, and, perhaps even more...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Part 1: Reframing the Conversation
• Part 2: Reconceiving Christian Experience and Practice
• Part 3: Renewing Christian Doctrine
• Contributors