"Jesus Is Victor!"

The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth

Collins Winn

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878290
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

IN THIS INNOVATIVE WORK, Christian T. Collins Winn examines the role played by the Pietist pastors Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) and Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919) in the development of Karl Barth's theology. The disparate theological themes and dynamics of the two Blumhardts were crystallized in their eschatology, and Collins Winn argues that as early as 1916 Barth had appropriated this Blumhardtian eschatological deposit in ways fundamental to his own theological development. Against the grain of current Barth scholarship, this book establishes how the theology of the Blumhardts, though critically reconstructed, was not merely an episodic influence on Barth's work. Instead, the Blumhardts had a complex and enduring impact on Barth, such that their imprint can be detected even in the mature theology of his Church Dogmatics. In treading new ground into Barth's theological formation, Jesus Is Victor! represents an important contribution to the field of Barth studies.

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The Understanding of the Blumhardt Influence in Barth Studies

Preliminary Remarks

The inclusion of an entire chapter on the various interpretations of the Blumhardt influence on Barth should immediately alert one to the possible complexity of the problem at hand. As we noted in the Introduction, it is widely accepted that the Blumhardts were influential on Barth. The depth of their significance and importance for Barth’s theology, however, has not been fully understood nor has it been explored to any great effect in Barth studies. This lacuna is revealed in large measure in what follows. At the same time, the explication of many commentators, however limited, can give some guidance about a direction of inquiry as much because of what they don’t say as what they do. This is especially the case with two of our commentators. Thus, our engagement with these sources is not meant to be entirely negative, but will also provide some positive orientation for our own exploration of the Blumhardts’ influence on Barth.

In what follows we will take as our guiding conviction the fact that the Blumhardts were indeed significant theological interlocutors for Barth throughout his theological development. This conviction, which our later chapters will show is no mere assertion, will guide our analysis of the various interpreters. It assumes that the whole of Barth’s theology has been affected in one way or another by the Blumhardts. Because of this presupposition, we will be drawing across a wide spectrum of secondary sources. For the purpose of coherence, therefore, we will assume that these secondary sources fit loosely into three different categories with the understanding that these categories are relatively fluid and are being constructed in an ad hoc manner. These categories are: 1) historical/developmental studies; 2) studies of particular doctrinal loci and the interconnection of doctrine and ethics; and 3) Barth’s relationship to socialism. To these we now turn.

Interpretations focusing on the Historical and Theological Development of Barth’s Thought

Barth’s break with Liberalism, coupled with the modern preoccupation with theological method, has led to a focus on Barth’s theological development with the express purpose of understanding how he freed himself from the most dominant and influential theological tradition of the nineteenth century. Thus, some of the most influential studies of Barth have attempted to map the changes in his theology, particularly those that resulted in his break with Liberalism. This interest has also been accompanied by searching investigation into how Barth moved from his theological position as developed in the first Römerbrief to his later mature theology as found in the Church Dogmatics. These questions focus not only on content and substance, but also style and methodology. It is with the most well known of these historical and developmental studies that we will be dealing here.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Some of the oldest and most well known interpretations of Barth’s theology take almost no account of the Blumhardts’ influence on Barth. This is certainly the case with Hans Urs von Balthasar’s famous The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation. Von Balthasar’s work, originally published in 1951, was well received (even by Barth) and has been very influential, even down to the present day.1 Though von Balthasar does not include a discussion of the Blumhardts, it is still worthwhile to include him if for no other reason than the dominance his interpretation has exerted over Barth studies. This influence has in part been due to the fact that von Balthasar argued for the ecumenical relevance of Barth’s theology and that he explicitly sought to engage Barth from a sympathetic, though not uncritical, Roman Catholic position.2 This ecumenical agenda helped to shape von Balthasar’s own exposition of Barth and led him to focus almost exclusively on Barth’s theological methodology in an attempt to show the near rapprochement between Barth and Catholicism.3 Von Balthasar’s belief was that Barth’s theological methodology (shaped, according to von Balthasar, in large measure by his study of Anselm in 1930–1931),4 was pushing his theology much closer to Catholic formulations, thereby holding within it the promise of a possible theological reconciliation between the two western traditions of Protestantism and Catholicism. Though von Balthasar’s aim was admirable and fruitful,5 it did not necessarily lead to a proper exposition of Barth’s theology, for it focused too much on questions that were more in the background for Barth—i.e., those related to methodology.6 In von Balthasar’s exposition of the specific content of his theology, Barth is portrayed as concerned primarily with working out the methodological implications of his “turn to analogy,” which von Balthasar argues occurred in the 1930’s. Barth’s Christocentrism is read as a vehicle for developing his more basic commitment to the analogical relationship that supposedly exists between God and man. This would seem to be a reversal of Barth’s own approach, which was to place methodological questions in the service of the specific theological content that was being discussed at any one time.7 Thus, Barth’s methodology was far more ad hoc than von Balthasar’s thesis allows.

Our concern here, however, is with the role of the Blumhardts in Barth’s theology, and it should come as no surprise that von Balthasar does not mention these figures. When von Balthasar does turn to consider the influences that helped shape his theology, the central figures are those associated with German Idealism (i.e., Kant, Hegel, and Fichte) as well as Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. There are a number of probable factors that would lead von Balthasar to this interpretation of Barth’s theological origins. The first has to do with the peculiarities of von Balthasar’s own Catholic context. As a Catholic theologian, von Balthasar would have undoubtedly been schooled under the assumption that theology needs philosophical presuppositions for its own constructive work. Thus, an investigation into the philosophy most likely to have affected Barth—German Idealism (especially neo-Kantianism)—would have been a matter of course. Second, and closely related, is the simple fact that von Balthasar’s preoccupation with Barth’s theological method would have naturally required an investigation into the philosophical sources that contributed to it. Finally, von Balthasar was probably unfamiliar with many of the lesser-known figures that Barth wrestled with, especially in his early development. Thus, not only is there no mention of the Blumhardts, but J. T. Beck, Johann Bengel, Friedrich Oetinger, J. C. K. von Hofmann, G. L. Mencken, and Kohlbrügge are all ignored in favor of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard (with scant reference also to Feuerbach and Overbeck). Again, this lack of knowledge is probably due to the overly philosophical thrust of von Balthasar’s interpretation.

The influence of von Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth’s work may in fact account for much of the lack of understanding of the Blumhardts role in shaping Barth’s theology. Because he chose to focus on questions of philosophical influence, his interpretive scheme lacked the categories to give an account of how Barth was related to some of the more radical elements of the nineteenth century, among whom we must include the Blumhardts. This will not be the case in many of our other interpreters.

G. C. Berkouwer

Our next interpreter, G. C. Berkouwer, also received attention, and praise, from Barth for the “goodwill and Christian aequitas”8 found in his 1956 monograph, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. Berkouwer’s work is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it also constitutes an attempt to read the whole of Barth’s theology in the light of a central theological or methodological principle, namely “the triumph of grace.” This is sharpened when we realize that the principle Berkouwer discerns in Barth comes very close to the impulse Barth received from the Blumhardts in their slogan “Jesus is Victor.” Barth himself noted this fact in his rebuttal to Berkouwer’s interpretation in Church Dogmatics IV/3.1: “He has well seen my initial and constant concern to display the superiority of God and His saving will and Word and work over the ruinous defensiveness and rejection, over the power of chaos, which meets Him on the part of the creature.”9 Barth’s critique of Berkouwer, and that which ultimately divides them, is that they are focusing on two different realities. For Barth, and this is decisive, the emphasis is on the person, “Jesus Christ,” so much so that he is “not dealing with a Christ-principle, but with Jesus Christ Himself as attested by Holy Scripture.”10 Whereas for Berkouwer, the emphasis appears to be on the principle of “grace” as determined in “the eternal counsel of God.”11 Despite this difference, which in the end is decisive, there is agreement that Barth is primarily concerned, “that from the very first, at every point, and therefore in this question too, we should take with unconditional seriousness the fact that ‘Jesus is Victor’.”12 Thus, Berkou...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Understanding of the Blumhardt Influence in Barth Studies
• Chapter 2: The Life and Thought of Johann Christoph Blumhardt
• Chapter 3: Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt and the Healing of the Body Politic
• Chapter 4: The Significance of the Blumhardts’ Lives and Thought for Barth’s Early Theological Development
• Chapter 5: The Significance of the Blumhardts for Barth’s Dogmatic Theology
• Conclusion
• Bibliography