EDITORIAL Since its foundation under the leadership of Father Walter Farrell, O.P., The Thomist has been edited and staffed by Dominican Friars as a service to the international intellectual community within the church and beyond. The journal's primary purpose has been to provide a forum for the publication of original work in philosophy and theology pursued in the spirit and tradition of Thomas Aquinas. The Thomist has been privileged to number among its authors over the years thinkers of great reputation and influence--like Maritain and Gilson, Chenu and Congar-as well as young scholars appearing in print for the first time in its pages. The publication of this October 1986 issue brings the 50th anniversary volume of The Thomist to completion. The Thomist celebrates this milestone by observing a significant anniversary which coincides with its own: the centenary of the birth of Karl Barth. The editors and staff take this occasion to reaffirm their commitment to the standing editorial policies which give The Thomist its particular character and quality. 496 EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS* C HRISTIANS ARE THOSE from whom it is not hidden that in the hisfory of Jesus Christ their own history has taken place. By a living word spoken and received in the power of the Holy Spirit, they know that tihe history of Jesus Christ ,is the decisive moment which establishes their existence as Christiians. In the midst of aH other people they ,are free to see themselves as among those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what he did. They are those whose lives he has entered precisely as the one who enacted a particular history, those by whom he is acknowledged, recognized and confessed 1as Lord. They are those whom he has given an active share in the history he enacted. Jesus Christ, his history, thus became and is the foundation of their Christian existence, his history and only his history. From him, his history, from knowledge of it, Christians arise, and to it they look back. It is the ground on whioh they stand. It is the air they b11eathe. It is the word ringing in their ears above and beyond all other words. It is the one light, incomparably bright, which illumines their way. What is the "new garment" Christians have put on-and must continually put on-in order to be Christians? Is it the "new humanity"? Yes, but any suggestion that they may have produced it themselves, or that the garment is new while the wearer is not, is explicitly ruled out when we read in Gal. 3.27 ,and Rom. 13: 14 that putting off the old humanity and putting on the new means putting on Christ. Who else but he is called the new or second Adam from heaven by whom the 1 *Translated by George Hunsinger from Horen und Handlen, lf'estschrift !Ur Ernst Wolf zum 60. Geburtstag, Ed. by Helmut Gollwitzer und Hellmut Traub (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1962), pp. 15-27. 497 498 KARL BARTH first and earthly Adam is taken off, superseded and oveTCOme (I Cor. 15: 47)? His blood is the blood of the Lamb by which, in a bold combination of images, the garments of the elect are made white (Rev. 7: 14, 19: 13). Only with reference to him, it hardly needs to be said, can ,anyone seriously be addressed as a man or woman of God (II Tim. 8: 17) . When the new humanity is described as the inner person, the one meant is plain when Christians are summoned to test themselves against the knowledge that Christ is in them (II Cor. 13: 5). Similarly, when reference is made to the believers' name as inscribed in the book of life, it is simplest ·and surest to think of christianoi (first ascribed to them in Antioch, according to Acts 11: 26), and thereby once again of the name of Jesus Christ himself. Only as his law (Gal. 6: 2) can the work of the law be written in their hearts and fulfilled as God requires. The ·spiritual person is distinguished from the merely physical by the fact that spiritual persons have the "mind of Christ" (nous christou, I Cor. 2: 16). By his circumcision (Col. 2: 11)--or ·as the context makes clear, by his death-the new hearts in which he dwells by faith (Eph. 8: 17) become and are centers for the living of new life. Matters are no different when the New Testament speaks of the new birth or regeneration by which alone a person is qualified but also assured of entering God's kingdom. The "privilege" (exousia) by which people become children of God does not fall down on them from heaven, nor can it be conferred by other people, nor can they simply aSiSume it on their own. It is rather given them by the one to whom even John the Baptist could only bea,r witness, by the one who came into the world as the true light, by the one who came to his own though they received him not. He gives it as freedom to believe in him, in his name. Thus it came to pass that people were "born of God" (John 1: 9-18). The christological turn, completely unexpected, in the conversation with Nicodemus points in this direction. At first being born "from EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 499 above" (anothen, Jn. 8: 8) is interpreted to mean being born "by the ·spirit" (ek pneumatos). Quite abruptly, however, the Son of Man's coming down from heaven (v. 18), and the cross as his exaltation on earth (compared to Moses's lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness), are described as the event, baffling to Nicodemus, whereby those who believe in him are to have eternal life. Thus, just as the first Adam became "a living being" (psyche zosa), so the second and last Adam became "a life-giving spirit" (pneuma zoopoioun) (I Cor. 15: 45) . Through his, Jesus Christ's, resurrection Christians were born again to a living hope (I Pet. 1: 8). That God was pleased to reveal his Son in him (en emoi) is the decisive assertion in Paul's own accounJt of his conversion (Gal. 1: 16). Convevsely, but to the same effect, anyone in Christ is a new creature (II Cor. : 17) . Through him the Spirit has been poured out on us by God as the " washing of regeneration and •11enewal" (Tit. 8: 5f.). Nor is there a different meaning to the other passages whioh 1speak of the new birth from God. To sum up, it is a. fair reading of the ma.terial to ·say that the nativity of Christ is the nativity of every Christian; the birthday of every Christian is Christmas Day. Finally, the matter oomes sharply into focus when we remember the pa;ssages where death is described as one's entry into life and thus as the foundation of Christian existence. Acthere is no sense in which one's cording to the New deaith as such, whether literal or figurative, conveys saving power to oneself. These passages have nothing to do with a mysticism of physical or spiritual dying, regardless of how often they may have been so construed. When the remarkable thing happens thait one loses one's life in order (only thus, but truly thus) to save it, then it takes place " for my sake and the gospel's" (Mk. 8: 85). The primary meaning here is not that one dies as a martyr or undertakes some other form of self-sacrifice for Jesus :and his cause. Although the saying may include that as well, the decisive point is elsewhere. The saving loss of life, of one's own life, occurs for 500 KARL BARTH those who partake in the life-saving, life-giving loss of life of the One who is the origin, content ,and proclaimer of the gospel. It occurs for those who died in the death he suffered for them in their place, and who on that basis, again in community with him, ·are free to look and move forward to resurrection and life. According to Matt. 3: 15 Jesus spoke of his death as saving for many, for .all, when he explained the reason for commanding John the Baptist (aphes arti) to admit him along with all other people to the baptism of repentance in the Jordan: " For thus it is fitting (prepon estin) for us to fulfill all righteousness." In other words, and this is whait John the Baptist is to recognize by ·admitting him, Jesus must and will subject himself in full identification and solidarity with all others to what ha1s been announcerl in the preaching of the Baptist: divine judgment. Thereby he is to everything righteously demanded of all and thus the whole of God's righteous will. As attested by his letting himself be baptized with and like them, he thus takes up his messianic office. Indeed, the office he begins to exercise there he will bring to completion on the cross of Golgotha. In this office what will be and akeady is at stake is the justification, sanctification and vocation of this whole wretched people. Already, at this point, those baptized with and like him by John are passive participants in his death, not by virtue of their own bapbism, but by virtue of Jesus's letting himself be baptized with and like them, and by virtue of his thereby taking up and exercising his saving office on their behalf. How the events at Jordan and Golgotha are connected as beginning and end may be seen from the saying in Luke 12: 50. There Jesus's death as the goal of his office is described as a baptism: "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" That this baptism by death includes within itself his disciples and theh· dea1th may be seen in Mk. 10: 35-40. When the sons of Zebedee ask that in his future kingdom they may sit rut his right hand and his left, Jesus retorts with three points. Fiirst, he asserts: " You do not know what you are EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 501 asking." Then he queries whether they can drink the cup he drinks (implying that he already does so), or be baptized with the baptism with which he is baptized (agiain, the present their bold assumnce that they can, he tense). Finally, offers an unexpectedly positive reply: " The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized." The quesrtion about places of honor remains open; they are to go to those for whom they are prepared and appointed. But the disciples have received a clear answer to a question unasked ,and apparently unconsidered: how one enters into that glory at all. One enters not because Jesus' baptism by death is something in which one could possibly take part, but because one's participation in it aotually becomes an event. If in pa,g,sing-but really only in passinga reference to the martyrdom to be suffered by the disciples is also in view, the decisive reference of these prophecies is to the death of Jesus himself, in which they are appointed to take part. Jesus does not drink that cup for himself alone. Nor is he baptized with that baptism fo.r himself alone. It is for them iand in their stead that these things take place. And so in his death they also will die, and in that way gain entry into his glory (regardless of which places they occupy). Similarly, in the remaining statements of the New Testament, there is no sense in which one's being crucified or dying is regarded as redemptive in itself and as such. In itself one's death does not mean entry into God's kingdom, the grounding of one's Christian life, or hope for resurrection and eternal life. This holds true whether dea:th is taken in a literal or metaphorical sense. (Neither i1s there any sense in which one's birth is sa.vin itself and as such, not even when one regards it as one's spiritual, moi.ial or religious rebirth.) In itself and as such death is the wages of sin (Rom. 6: 23). It came into the world :through sin and so spread to all human beings (Rom. 5: 21) for as long as it can and may. Through sin one dies (Rom. 7: 10). Christian mysrticism through the ages, which has often, paganly enough, led to death mysticism, ought to have taken 502 KARL BARTH heed from such passages. In itself and as such our death is in no sense transition into life. Death (thana.tos) is the corruption (phtora) into which all inclinalbions (phtronema) of the flesh plunge us as iruto a ciabaraot. It is the evil fruit which, hav.ing been sown in th.re flesh, must be reaped (Gal. 6: 8; Rom. 8: 6) . But Christ died, acoording to so many New Testiament p111Ssages, precisely "for our sins" (I Cor. 15: S). He bore our sins on the tree (I Pet. 2: 24). He was and is the Lamb of God, who accepts, bears and takes away the sin of the world (Jn. 1: 29) . Thus in his death he took the place of all human beings-the place where they should have undergone the desperate death of sinners. He gave his life as a ransom for many slaves (Mk. 10: 45 par.) . He, the one without sin who was made to be sin, died just this desperate death, the accursed death of sinners on the cross (Gal. S: 18)-and he did it for us (I Thes. 5: 10). The death which comes to us as sinners is therefore something we neither can nor must undergo. Precisely the God-forsakenness of this death (Mk. 15: 84) is what we neither can nor must experience. For he has " tasted " it for us all (Heb. 2: 9). Since he died it in our place, we have it absolutely behind us. In his death we who deserved to die as he died are already put to death. With him Paul (Gal. 2: 19), once called Saul, is crucified-as is every one of us with the " old humanity " we all were and still are (palaios anthropos) (Rom. 6: 6), as are the two thieves, the unrepentant thief on the left no less than the repentant thief on the right (Mk. 15: 27) . We are all dead with him. As the sinners we were and still are, we are all finished off, disposed of, and present no more in him. "One has died; therefore all have died" (II Cor. 5: 14). How so? Because they have "appropriated" the crucifixion of Christ in the obedience of faith (R. Bultmann)? No doubt that also occurs as the necessary consequence of their dying with him, since they are to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5: 24; cf. Col. S: 5) . But their saving death, in which they become Christians who do this, is something which promises new life because it hap- EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 503 pened the other way around. For while they were still enemies (Rom. 5: 10) , thus at a time when there can be no talk about their obedience of faith, it was Jesus Christ who "appropriated" and took them up into his death! Their saving death took place not here and now, but most truly there and then, when they too were baptized in and with Jesus's baptism by death, when he "was lifted up from the earth " (" he said this to show by what death he was to die ") and drew all human beings to himself (Jn. Hl: 32ff.). More precisely, it took place here and now by virtue of taking place there and then. The origin and beginning of the Christian life is thus to be found in the history of Jesus Christ. In his history occurs the divine transformation whereby the impossible becomes not only possible but actual. The impossible happens in the move'.. ment "from faith to faith" (ek pisteos eis pistin). It happens from the depth and power of God's faithfulness to the corresponding faithfulness of human beings (Rom. 1: 17) . The witness of the New Testament in this regard is too definite for there to be any evasion of this statement, too unequivocal to make possible its demythologization or reinterpretation. Many human and undertakings may have other origins and beginnings, but the Christian life, faithfulness to God as one's free act and deportment, begins with what actually took place in the days of Augustus and Tiberius, on the way from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross of Golgotha, according to the measure of what is possible with God (para theou) (Mk. 10: 22 par.) . By originating and being grounded in the history of Jesus Christ, the change whereby one becomes a Christian is characterized, in contrast to all other remarkable changes, natural or supernatural, as a divine occurrence. Any description of the Christian life as having some other ground would only be describing a tree cut off at the root. Whatever might be said about it, it could not be said to have its own life, for that can only be had in unity with the root. Similarly, one's own life as a Christian is possible 504 KARL BARTH and actual only in unity with its origin in Jesus Christ. We speak of its mystery when we say that it originates in his history, that it derives from the divine change which took place in him there and then. Nothing to be said in explanation of this statement can dispel the mystery. No explanation can make it anything but larger. Explanation can consist only in confirming it and making it more precise. Let us turn immediately to the point where the statement seems to confront us with a riddle, so that we are understandably tempted either to evade it or to get around it by reinterpretation. Certainly it cannot be stressed too strongly that a person faithful to God cannot possibly be produced out of one who is not unless a change comes ove1· that person's life. Nor may this change be the awakening of one's natural capacities, nor one's being gifted with supernatural powers, nor one's being placed by God under another light and judgment whereby one can stand before God. It must rather be an inner change whereby one becomes a different person so that one freely, from within, and by one's own resolve, thinks, acts and conducts oneself differently than before. Does, then, the New Testament's unavoidable and unequivocal statement-namely, that the divine change which occurred in the history of Jesus is the origin and beginning of the Christian life-finally lead us to the highly unsatisfactory view that this change does not affect human beings themselves (who, after all, are not Jesus Christ and whose history is not his history)? Does it mean that while the change might apply to human beings in some way it does not really touch them, that it must remain external and alien to them, that it simply is not and could not become their own change from disobedience to obedience? What took place extra nos is not only an event distant in time and space. It is also completely different from all our possibilities and actualities: the event of Jesus Christ's obedience, of his birth, self-proclamation and crucifixion, of his entire being and work as the true Son of God and Son of Man. What has he to do with me, this other who was born in Bethlehem EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 505 and who died on Golgotha there and then? What has the freedom of his life as the true Son of God and Son of Man to do with the liberation I need to be God's child, with my liberation to authentic humanity corresponding to the will of this Father? And what have I to do with him? How can it be that I so grow out of him as my root that he becomes one with me and I with him? How can it be that in unity with him I begin to live my life as a " Christian " life, as the life of a human being faithful to God? How can what he was and did extra nos come to be an event in nobis? And if it does not become an event in nobis, how by virtue of his existence and history can or am I to be faithful to Godchanged from an enemy to a friend, from a victim of death to a recipient of life, to a member of God's kingdom, a Christian? That is the question we must undoubtedly pose and just as undoubtedly answer. Any solution may be assumed to be artificial which dissolves the contrast between Christ and the one who becomes a Christian. An artificial solution would the contrast which stands in the midst of their unity. For what is at stake in the grounding of the Christian life is an event between God and a human being, an event of genuine intercourse between two different partners. Any solution which obscures or denies this difference would falsify the matter before us. A solution would therefore be artificial, on the one hand, if it could really be described in mal,am partem as " christomonist." Here the in nobis, the liberation of human beings themselves, would simply be a secondary extension, a mere reflection, of the act of liberation accomplished in the history of Jesus Christ, and thus extra nos. As the only truly acting and effective subject, Jesus Christ would be fundamentally alone. The faithfulness of human beings distinguished from him could not, then, be a response to the word of God's faithfulness spoken in his history. It would not be their own free act. It would be an aspect or appearance of the divine act accomplished in Jesus Christ. It would not be an act of human, 506 KARL BARTH grateful obedience, which, though awakened and empowered by divine grace, is really humanly performed. It would simply be a passive human participation in that which God alone did in Jesus Christ. It would be strictly a divine action, not a human action evoked by and responsive to God. The invitation or summons: "Be reconciled to God" (II Cor. 5: 20) would be rendered superfluous and untenable from the very outset, for humanity's reconciliation with God would have been effected omnipotently in Jesus Christ. The summons would then be pointless and the act it calls for completely useless. How human activity could arise in correspondence to divine activity, the ethical problem of how Christian life originates, would thus be solved by rendering it irrelevant. All anthropology and soteriology would be swallowed up in Christology. But the New Testament witnesses, even in their most far-reaching sayings, did not think and speak like this, not even Paul in Gal. 2: 19f. They do not invite us to adopt such a "subjectivism from above." No one who wants to remain true to their teaching will think and speak in this way, not even under the compulsion of a valid " christocentric " intention. Authentic " christocentricity " will strictly forbid one to do so. An " anthropomonist " solution, on the other hand, would also be artificial. Here salvation history would only truly and properly take place in nobis. Its subject would be none other than the human self. Jesus Christ and what took place in his history extra nos would be regarded as merely predicate and instrument, cipher and symbol, of what takes place in nobis. It would now be oneself who alone held center-stage while one transformed oneself into a Christian. As such the change in oneself, one's awakening, one's inner compulsion, one's decision for faith, hope and love would now be the truly divine change. In bringing about this change the history of Jesus Christ would perhaps serve as stimulus, instruction and aid, and perhaps (but only perhaps) indispensably so. But the prime moving cause, the secret, of one's salvation history EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 507 would be simply oneself. It would be one's own act of passing from unfaithfulness to faithfulness, one's free decision of obedience. Decision of obedience? Could it seriously be called that? A concrete other, who acts toward one with power, and who speaks to one in the word of promise as the beginning and end of one's change, would seem to be lacking. Hence the change would not really have the character of corresponding to the action of another. It would not really be a response to this word, an act of gratitude. And so here too the ethical problem of how the Christian life originates would be rendered irrelevant, but this time from the other side. For in relation to God one would now be one's own reconciler, teacher and master. Christology would be swallowed up in a self-sufficient anthropology and soteriology. It hardly needs to be said that the New Testament witnesses, even when they appeal most strongly to humanity, never think and speak in this way, not even in their most urgent ca.lls for repentance, decision, faith, patience and love. Once again, therefore, remaining true to their teaching means not being seduced by this monism, which in contrast to the first might be called " subjectivism from below." Common to these obvious but distorted solutions is that they both approach the subject matter from the outside, and that is why they are both artificial. The both operate with an alien concept of unity. They do not allow the subject matter to be interpreted on its own terms, for they both conjure away the mystery which confronts us in it. But if the mystery is conjured away by being imprisoned in one of the two monistic formulas (perhaps even alternating between them both), then the subject matter has been falsified and drops from sight. No matter how successful the imprisonment, one is really talking about something else. And that is the very thing which here must not be allowed to happen. Only if the riddle is first accepted can one perceive how the matter interprets itself, how the riddle solves itself from within. If we follow the singular movement of New Testament 508 KARL BARTH thought, then on the one side we must establish that basically the riddle is posed quite simply by the mystery of God's faithfulness. For God's faithfulness is the mystery whereby One deals with all, the mystery whereby One affirms, rectifies, saves, gladdens and thereby summons to faithfulness each and every human being. In this faithfulness God shows that God is our God. For in faithfulness God intervenes in an act of self-giving to prosecute our cause before God, making a good cause out of our bad one. In this faithful work of God, the divine call is sounded forth; and whoever is free to hear and follow it, far from being irritated or offended, can only worship and praise. Everything unfolds of its own accord. The history of Jesus Christ is different from all other histories. In its particularity, singularity and uniqueness, it cannot be compared or interchanged with any other. Different from all other histories, it demands the singular thinking of the New Testament witnesses (which must be accepted if it is to be understood) . As the history of salvation intended for all human beings, addressed to them and bestowed upon them by God's free grace, it is from the very first a particular history with a universal orientation and goal. As such it is not sterile but fertile, determining every human life anew. Occurring extra nos it is at the same time effective in nobis, instituting a new being for every person. It did not take place extra nos for its own sake but rather pro nobis: qui propter nos homines et salutem nostram descendit de coelis. This pro nobis or propter nos is to be taken quite literally. As the true Son of God and so as the true Son of Man, Jesus Christ was not only faithful to the faithful God, but by being faithful to God as his Father, according to God's righteous will, he was also true to us as his brothers and sisters. He was faithful to us by himself being given and by giving himself to fulfill in his person the covenant between God and humanity, by being faithful to God in our place, the place of those who had been unfaithful to God. By being in our place then and there what only he could be, he was also in our here and now, in the weakness, EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 509 godlessness, and enmity, in the heart, the personal center, of every human being's existence. But if he acts extra nos pro nobis and to that extent in nobis, that necessarily implies that he creates in the history of every human being, despite all their unfaithfulness, the beginning of a new history, their history as human beings become faithful to God. All this occurs because it is God who takes in hand the cause of every human being in Jesus Christ. Human being8 do not make this new beginning for themselves. They do not of themselves make themselves into another. They do not transform themselves as unfaithful people into people faithful to God. But on the way from Bethlehem to Golgotha which Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and so the true Son of Man, trod also for them, the new beginning of their lives was posited and established as people faithful to God. Because of this, their new beginning in the history of Jesus Christ, they themselves can and may live a new Christian life here and now, a life corresponding to the transformation of their hearts and their persons which took place there and then. That is the self-explication of the subject matter as rendered by the New Testament witnesses, whose way of thinking, concentrated on Jesus Christ, is admittedly singular. It should be clear that if we follow them, there can be no question of anthropomonism or what we have called " subjectivism from below." The grounding of the Christian life occurs not in that human beings step into the place of ,Jesus Christ as their own liberators, but in that Jesus Christ steps into the place of human beings in order at that very point to liberate them. The self-explication of the subject matter, in which the riddle solves itself from within, needs to be pursued from the other side, however, in order to give more amplitude to the mystery. Just as the matter explicates itself from above to below, so also does it do so from below to above. And so the New Testament witnesses to this self-explication also present it with reference to the Christian life. By stepping into the place of human beings, doing in their place what they fail to do, and 510 KARL BARTH being faithful to God at the very point of their unfaithfulness, Jesus Christ liberates, or through him God liberates, humanity, making human beings free to become faithful from their side. But what does that mean for us others who are not Jesus Christ if a history taking place extra nos also took place pro nobis? What does it mean if precisely this pro nobis is effective and entails that by taking place there and then as the history of this One, it also becomes an event here and now, in nobis, in the life of many? It evidently means-as the actualization of the fullness of divine possibility-that the God who acts in that history, while not finding and confirming an immediate relation between us and God, nonetheless creates and makes possible such a relation-a relation we ourselves could not create and make possible, but which once established we cannot escape. By intervening for us in Jesus Christ, God is present to us-not from afar, hut in greatest intimacy, confronting us now in our own existence, thinking and sensibility. Since the one who acts in the history of Jesus Christ is the righteous, merciful and as sucl1 omnipotent God, what thereby happens is this: in nobis, in our heart, in the very center of our existence, a contradiction is lodged against our unfaithfuJness. It is a contradiction that we cannot dodge, but have to validate. In confronting it we cannot cling to our unfaithfulness, for through it our unfaithfulness is not only forbidden, but canceled and rendered impossible. Because Jesus Christ intervenes pro nobis and thus in nobis, unfaithfulness to God has been rendered a basically impossible possibility. It is a possibility disallowed and thus no longer to he realized, a possibility with which we have no longer to reckon, one we recognize as eliminated and taken away by the omnipotent contradiction God lodges within us. What then? One and only one thing remains to us, to will and to do that which is positively prefigured in the deed of the true Son of God and Son of Man acting pro nobis and in nobis, namely, to become faithful to God! That is our liberation through the divine change which occurs in the history of Jesus Christ. This change insti- EXTRA NOS-PRO NOBIS-IN NOBIS 511 tuted by God is truly our liberation as human beings. It comes upon us completely from the outside, completely from God's side-but as our liberation. As in general so here in particular, God's omnicausality must not be construed as God's soJe causality. The divine change by virtue of which one becomes a Christian is an event of genuine intercourse between God and human beings. As certainly as it originates in God's initiative, so just as certainly human beings are not bypassed in it. Rather, they are taken seriously as independent creatures of God. They are not overrun and overpowered, but placed on their own feet. They are not infantilized, but addressed and treated as adults. The history of Jesus Christ does not blot out the history of our own lives as human beings. By virtue of his history, the history of our lives is made new while still remaining ours. The faithfulness to which we are summoned is not an emanation of God's faithfulness. It is really our own faithfulness, decision and act. It would not be ours had we not been liberated to it. But we are liberated to it as our own deed, as our response to the Word of God spoken to us in the history of Jesus Christ. Therefore, just as in this matter there can be no "subjectivism from below," so also there can be no "subjectivism from above." Just as there can be no anthropomonism, so also can there really be no christomomsm. KARL BARTH THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH FOR CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY TI E CENTENNIAL OBSERVATION of Karl Barth's rth provides a happy opportunity to reassess the sigficance of the Swiss theologian's work. Such a reappraisal is needed, because American theologians since the 1960s have tended to dismiss Barth as a once influential figure in a now discredited theological movement called " neoorthodoxy ." 1 Setting aside the oddity of a classification which lumps together such diverse thinkers as Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Tillich, and the Niebuhrs, this easy dismissal hardly does justice to the man who produced the most wide-ranging theological work of the twentieth century, the Church Dogmatics. In this essay I will assess Barth's importance for contemporary theology by first viewing his thought in the context of the disputes surrounding the promulgation of the Barmen Declaration. Through an analysis of the criticisms directed against Barth by his conservative German Lutheran opponents of the 1930s, I will seek to show the ecumenical significance of Barth's work for theology in the 1980s. My introductory comments will focus on the Protestant tradition, because the theological and political disputes of those years were carried on in isolation from the Roman Catholic community. 2 1 Both Protestant and Catholic theologians have tended to group Barth with the "neo-orthodox" movement. See, for example, Langdon Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind (Indianapolis. Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 73-106: and David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury Publishing House, 1978), pp. 27-31. Tracy treats Barth and the other "neo-orthodox" theologians simply as "critical moments " in the history of modern liberalism. 2 The definitive work on the church in Nazi Germany is Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das dritte Reich, (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1977). Only the 512 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 518 The issues raised in that Reformed-Lutheran squabble in those early years of the Third Reich have, however, a continuing significance for contemporary Christian theologians from the full spectrum of confessional traditions. The Barmen Synod of May, 1984, and its famous declaration were primarily the result of the efforts of Reformed theologians. Karl Barth's essay "Theologische Existenz Heute!" launched the confessional protest movement against state interference in church affairs.3 While Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor, founded the " Pastors' Emergency League," the impetus for a confessional synod was provided by those free Reformed churches which first met in Barmen in January, 1984, and issued a statement of theological confession and protest authored by Karl Barth. 4 The subsequent confessional synod met on May 29-81 at the Reformed Church of BarmenGemarke, and Barth, of course, authored the document we now know as the Barmen Declaration. Though Lutheran theologians and pastors were involved in the preparations for the Barmen synod, their direct contributions were rather limited. In fact, Barth reported that he wrote a first draft of the theological declaration while his two Lutheran colleagues, Thomas Breit and Hans Asmussen, took three hour long naps! With some glee Barth described the occasion. " The Lutheran first volume, which deals with the period 1914-1933, of this projected two volume work has been completed. The best studies in English of the churches' encounter with Nazism are J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches Under Hitler, 1933-1945, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968) and Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979). For works which focus primarily on Roman Catholicism's situation in the Third Reich, see Gordon Zahn, German Catholios and Hitler's Wars (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1962) and Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw & Hill, 1964). s Theologische l!Jwistenz H eute, 1 ( 1933). English translation: Theological l!Jwistence Today, trans. by R. Birch Hoyle (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933). 4 Karl Barth, "Erklarung iiber das rechte Verstandnis der reformatorischen Bekenntnisse in der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche der Gegenwart," Theologische l!Jwistenz Heute, 7 (1943), pp. 9-15. 514 RONALD THIELMANN Church slept and the Reformed Church kept awake ... I revised the text of the six statements fortified by strong coffee and one or two Brazilian cigars." 5 Though Barth's account of Lutheran inaction was somewhat exaggerated, there can be no doubt that Barmen's chief critics were conservative Lutheran theologians. Lutheran opposition to the Declaration surfaced even before the Synod met. Hermann Sasse, one of the members of the Reich Council of Brethren which organized the Barmen Synod, refused to endorse the Declaration, because he believed that Lutheran and Reformed churches possessed insufficient doctrinal unity to issue a joint confession. Paul Althaus and Werner Elert, Professors of Systematic Theology on the influential Lutheran faculty at Erlangen, were among the leading theological critics of the Declaration and were responsible for the creation of the Lutheran Council, a mediating " third front " in the German Church Struggle, which drained valuable Lutheran support away from the Confessing Church. 6 The Lutheran objections to Barth and Barmen were pri5 Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, by John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 245. There is some controversy about whether this event occurred precisely as Barth described it. It certainly could not have occurred on May 16, because that afternoon Barth took the 3 : 11 train from Frankfurt back to Bonn. Most likely the famous "Lutheran siesta" took place on May 15. Helmut Traub recalls that Asmussen was overcome with an "acute migraine" and retired to his room after Mittagessen and that Breit received an urgent long-distance telephone call which occupied his time after the mid-day meal. Barth used that time to draft an initial version of the Barmen theses. Thus the event does not reflect quite so badly on the Lutheran participants as Barth's gleeful telling of the tale would imply. For a thorough reconstruction of the events of these days see Martin Rohkramer, "Die Synode von Barmen in ihren zeitgeschictlichen Zusammenhangen," Bekennende Kirohe wagen, edited by Jiirgen l\foltmann, (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1984), pp. 34-41. analysis of the events which led to the creation of the 6 A thorough Lutheran Council has yet to be done. The best current account is that of Gerhard Niemoeller, Die erste Bekenntnissynode der Deutsohen Evangelisohen Kirahe zu Barmen, Band 1, Gesohiahte, Kritik, und Bedeutung der 8ynode and ihrer thoologisahen Erkliirung, ( GOttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959)' pp. 188-229. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 515 marily theological and focussed on the Declaration's apparent rejection of the revelatory content of God's law. The wellknown first article of the Declaration affirms Jesus Christ," the one Word of God," to be the sole source of God's revelation. 7 To German Lutheran ears that sounded like a familiar sixteenth century heresy. Werner Elert's assessment of that teaching is characteristically blunt. "That the Barmen Confession is a point-blank, provocative repetition of the antinomian false teaching of the Reformation will be immediately clear to anyone who stands not on the ground of Barmen but on that of the Lutheran Confessions . . . This explicit antinomian heresy ... is not a peripheral lapse of the Barmen Confession. It reveals far more the sense and intention of the entire Confession. This teaching is fundamental also for the entire ecclesiastical and church-political position of the Barmen Synod." 8 Those are serious charges, "fightin' words" one might say, and they raise issues which are worthy of serious theological discussion and debate. But Elert issues this challenge in June of 1984, a full seventeen months after Hitler assumed the Chancellorship, nine months after the German Christian, Ludwig Muller, was elected Reich Bishop, just eight months after Reinhold Krause's scurrilous anti-semitic Sports Palace address, and a scant three months after the promulgation of the first of the Nuremburg laws. One might well ask whether this was the time to be raising questions about fine points of theological doctrine. And that is precisely what Elert's fellow Lutheran, Hans Asmussen, asked in a scathing response written just weeks after Elert's original attack on the Declaration. " Excuse me, Herr Professor, for bringing to your attention the latest news. For the last year thousands of pastors have had their existence as Christian preachers threatened, thou1 Die Bekenntnisse und grundsaetzlichen Aeusserungen zur Kirchenfrage, gesammelt und eingeleitet von Karl Dietrich Schmidt, Band II ( Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1935), p. 93. s Allgemeine lDvangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 61 (June 29, 1934), p. 603. 516 RONALD THIELMANN sands of congregations have had their existence as Christian communities threatened. We find ourselves in a raging sea after a shipwreck. A sea-worthy ship is near by, ready to rescue the shipwrecked. Believe me, those who have been shipwrecked will not jump into the water again, because an engineer on the land has shown that in his opinion our ship's mast is slightly askew." 9 Asmussen then turns his ire directly on that dry and secure theological engineer for his failure ever to criticize the Deutsche Christen. " Violence, injustice, and false teaching were never sufficient grounds earlier for him to declare war on the other side. He won't even address us theologically. Otherwise he would have at least taken the trouble to read the Barmen Declaration properly. He wants war! Then let him have it! If God has allowed the confessing front to be formed without him, so also God will preserve it against him." 10 By the end of 1938, however, the confessing front had been effectively eliminated as a force for nonconformism in the Reich. Hemmed in by legislative strictures devised by the Nazis and torn by internal strife, the Confessing Church so disintegrated that its leadership offered no word of protest following the horrible events of Kristallnacht in November of 1938. The reasons for the ultimate collapse of the confessing church are many, and scholars of the Church Struggle have not yet reached consensus on this matter. But some factors have been clearly identified. Eberhard Bethge has shown that by 1938 resistance to the Nazis was possible only in the form of active disobedience against the government, and few in the Confessing Church were willing to engage in such activity. When war was finally declared Martin Niemoeller was among the first to volunteer for active service, and many Confessing Church 9 Gerhard Niemoeller, Die erste Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evange· lischen Kirche zu Barmen, Band I (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959)' p. 151. 10 Ibid., p. 150. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 517 pastors foilowed his lead. Bethge writes that of the hundreds of young confessing pastors with whom he has spoken there was not one " who had not accepted the draft card as the longsought opportunity to prove his inner national conviction and to sacrifice himself for the nation as a soldier." 11 German patriotism and nationalism ran deep, even among those who most courageously resisted the theological and church-political threat of the Deutsche Christen. It may be that no amount of solidarity within the Confessing Church could have withstood the enormous pressures presented by the outbreak of the war. But the fact remains that very few Lutheran theologians and clergy were forced to make the momentous choice which Niemoeller and others had to face. The vast majority of Lutherans had by 1936 accepted the authority of the state-run Ministry for Church Affairs and participated freely in the new national German Evangelical Church. There can be no doubt that the early Lutheran opposition to Barmen seriously weakened the ability of the Confessing Church to serve as a force for nonconformism in German society from 1934-1938. Why were theologians like Althaus, Elert, Gogarten, Sasse and others so unwilling to participate in the confessional movement? Again the reasons are complex and not yet fully obvious even to the most insightful of Church Struggle scholars. Some, like Arthur Cochrane, have ventured opinions. In his influential book The Church's Confession Under Hitler Cochrane writes that " Many Lutherans were jealous of the prominent part being played by Reformed Churchmen, and Karl Barth was especially obnoxious to them ... Depressing to record is the fact that at a time when the ' house was on fire,' when the very existence of the evangelical Church was at stake, many Lutherans were intent upon preserving institutional Luther11 Eberhard Bethge, "Troubled Self-Interpretation and Uncertain Reception in the Church Struggle," The German Ohurch Struggle and the Holocaust, ed. by Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), p. 177. 518 RONALD THIELMANN anism." 12 Such charges, though often repeated, hardly do justice to the theological seriousness of Barmen's Lutheran opponents. Their theological objections to Barmen's Barthian Christocentrism were authentic and cannot be dismissed as mere camouflage for positions which were essentially political or church-political in nature. On the other hand, the widespread support for Hitler among German Lutherans and their virulent opposition to the Confessing Church is deeply distressing. The full story of the Lutheran position in the early years of the Church Struggle has yet to be told. It is not my intention to tell that story in this essay, though I hope my comments might illuminate a part of it. My primary task is a different one, viz., to assess the contemporary significance of the theology of Karl Barth. I have begun with this extended historical introduction, however, because theologians in America have hardly been more supportive of Barth's theology than their German predecessors. While there have been pockets of support for Barth's theology within American Christianity, most theologians have shared the widespread American view that Barth's opposition to natural theology, his rejection of any systematic connection between theology and philosophy, and his single-minded attention to the doctrine of revelation rendered his theology passe for the American cultural situation. Langdon Gilkey speaks for the majority of mainstream theologians in the following analysis of Barth's thought. [Barth's] theology presupposed a stark and real separation between the Church and the world, between belief and unbelief, between the Word of God and the secular . . . But the actual situation was by no means characterized by any such clear and distinct separation: the world was within the Church, belief was saturated by secular doubt, and no one, either in pew or pulpit, was sure a divine Word had been heard at all or a divine presence manifested. In such a situation, the theology that was unable to relate itself to ordinary experience was bound to falter-and it did . . . The 12 Arthur Cochrane, The Olvurch's Oonfession Under Hitler Westminster Press, 1962), p. 197. (Philadelphia: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 519 present unreality and so seeming impossibility of theological language about God stems fundamentally ... from this [Barthian] split between our existence in the secular world . . . on the one hand, and a theological language, on the other, that has had no essential touch with that world.13 These objections to Barth's theology appear to be vastly different from those conservative, and somewhat parochial, criticisms of Barmen's German Lutheran detractors. And yet, I want to suggest, they share one crucial characteristic. Both sets of criticisms reflect the predominant intellectual and political sentiments of their respective sub-cultures. Althaus and Elert represent that broad cultural tradition of post-Reformation Germany: confessionally Lutheran, politically conservative and monarchial, socially aristocratic. These are the people who found themselves displaced and alienated from the political democracy and cultural freedom of Weimar culture. Writing in 1927 Althaus bemoaned the decadence of the German nation. Germany appears everywhere to be painfully degenerate. Our Volk has lost itself ... Lost itself to civilization, lost to foreign ways ... splintering into the mass instead of membership in the Volk body, a ' society ' of unbound individuals instead of organic community, uprootedness and homelessness . . . disinheritedness instead of life in the traditions of our fathers ... the takeover by foreign influences of our literature, theater, art, fashions, and celebrations, of party ways and of public life, our abandonment to Volkless money powers.14 As the antidote to these poisonous modern ways the confessional Lutherans urged to reaffirmation of the God-given unity between the spirit of Lutheranism and that of the German Volk. " The peculiar form that Christianity has taken on in its evangelical aspect," wrote Emanuel Hirsch, " derives from the 13 Langdon Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1969), pp. 102-103. 14 Paul Althaus, Evangelium und Leben: Gesammelte Vortrage ( Giitersloh: Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1927), p. 115. Quoted in James Zabel, Nazism and the Pastors (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1976), p. 85. 520 RONALD THIELMANN meeting of German humanity with the Gospel." 15 " The present historical hour " was so crucial because it represented the flowering of that implicit eternal covenant between Lutheranism and the Germanic heritage (Deutschtum) . Lutheranism was, Althaus argued, the peculiar German form of religion. " The way that Germans conceive of the reality of God and the form of Jesus Christ ... corresponds in its depths to the Germanic type and makes the German and the Biblical ... so kindred to each other." 16 Though Althaus later withdrew his support from such Volkish sentiments, he remained wedded to these cultural and political notions at least through 1935. Contemporary American critics of Barth are also wedded to particular cultural and political conventions of our society. In no way do I want to suggest that the liberal intellectual and political traditions of our culture pose the same kind of dangers as the Volkish ideology of nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. In many ways Barth's liberal American critics stand on the opposite end of the political spectrum from their German Lutheran counterparts. They would undoubtedly have felt at home in that Weimar culture so alien to the Volkish theologians. Nothing could be more repugnant to these contemporary theologians than the assertion of an eternal covenant between the Christian gospel and a particular national or cultural group. They have embraced that spirit of free inquiry born of the Enlightenment which Volkish thinkers so feared. Indeed, they most often criticize Barth for his apparent arbitrary and inconsistent use of the tools of critical inquiry. Barth's argument concerning the historicity of the resurrection is, Van Harvey asserts, " either arbitrary or a sacrifice of the intellect ... He makes historical assertions on the basis of faith which he then claims no historian has the right to assess. He claims that the bodily resurrection is a guarantee that it was Jesus who appeared to the disciples and 15 Emanuel Hirsch, Deutsohes Volkstum und evangelisoher Glaube (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934), p. 5. Quoted in Zabel, p. 51. 10 .Althaus, op. cit., p. 97. Quoted in Zabel, p. 63. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 521 yet insists that no historian can, in the nature of the case, assess this claim ... Barth, in effect, claims all the advantage of history but will assume none of its risks." 17 And yet for all their distance from the conservative Germans of the 30s, Barth's contemporary detractors assert their own form of an "eternal covenant." Langdon Gilkey, Van Harvey, Gordon Kaufman, Schubert Ogden, David Tracy all submit to some version of that creed first and most powerfully articulated by Friedrich Schleiermacher. " Shall the tangle of history," Schleiermacher asked, "so unravel that Christianity becomes identified with barbarism and science with unbelief? . . . Unless the Reformation from which our church first emerged endeavors to establish an eternal covenant between the living Christian faith and completely free, independent scientific inquiry, so that faith does not hinder science and science does not exclude faith, it fails to meet adequately the needs of our time." 18 One of the most distinctive aspects of Barth's theology is his adamant refusal to subscribe to either form of the eternal covenant. And that refusal has earned him the ire of both his German and American critics. To claims that the Volkish revolution represented the consummation of the divine covenant between Lutheranism and Germanic culture Barth replied simply, "I continue to do theology, and only theology, as if nothing had happened." 19 To claims that the Christian faith must be eternally yoked with free scientific inquiry Barth responded with characteristic irony, "Christianity need not accompany barbarism nor scholarship unbelief. Natural science and biblical criticism can come ... The little ship of the church in which we are all voyaging is protected against overturning. No war will be declared and no one will be shut out. 17 Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp. 157-158. 18 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre, trans. by James Duke and Francis Fiorenza (Ann Arbor: Scholars Press, 1981 ) , pp. 61, 64. 10 Theologisohe E11Jistenz Heute, 1 ( 1933), p. 3. ET: Theological E11Jistenoe Today, trans. by R. Birch Hoyle (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933), p. 9. RONALD THIELMANN Is not all this very remarkable? There are only two mourners, the Bible and the Reformation." 20 I want to argue that Barth's rejection of the notion of any eternal covenant between the Christian faith and science, culture, politics, or philosophy ought not be the basis for a critique of his theology but is in fact the key to an appreciation of Barth's contemporary significance. In repudiating the etem