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Theology and Church
By Karl Barth
358 pp. New York, Harper &Row, 1962. $6.00.

The essays collected together in this volume fall between the years 1920 and 1927 in the development of Barth's theology and they belong to the period of his Göttingen and Münster professoriates. They are of great importance for a proper understanding of his criticism of neo Protestant and of Roman Catholic theology and for a grasp of his own dialectical theology which affirms that even as God is the object of our

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faith He remains the living Lord before whom all theology is theologia viatorum, (pp. 298 f.).

He had already published the first edition of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and the second edition appeared in 1921. Even in the edition of 1919 we find him sounding themes which recur in Theology and Church: the insistence on the freedom of God in His very compassion, the proclamation of his universal lordship, and the reality of His righteousness manifest in Jesus Christ. The second edition of 1921 provides an even clearer declaration of God's freedom as the basis for the irreversible relation of God to man and the judgment of God upon the whole human situation, shattering all immanent continuity between man and God. But even in the dialectical and polemical expressions found in the essays under review there are important suggestions concerning themes in Barth's Christology and ecclesiology which have a fuller positive elucidation in his mature theology. And above all, we find Barth stressing throughout this volume the uniqueness of God in His power of being and His sole efficacy in His gracious condescension (p. 265). That Barth by this very emphasis means to hold out hope for the restoration and fulfillment of man as creature is made clear in "Church and Culture" (pp. 343 f.).

The essays in this volume may be divided into three groups: (1) the challenge posed to Barth by the skeptical and critical judgments of Overbeck and Feuerbach in chapters I and VII respectively; (2) the examination and criticism of theological liberalism as represented by Schleiermacher (chapters IV, V, and VI) and Herrmann (chapter VIII); (3) consideration of questions regarding the Church, ministry, and sacraments in chapters II, III, IX, X, XI, and XII. A more positive doctrine of the Church than that of the Romans is evident here, and the locus for theology as a subject-matter developed in the context of the Church which hears the Word of God is already emerging.

(1)Both Overbeck (pp. 55 ff.) and Feuerbach (pp. 217 ff.) provide a trenchant critique of Christianity as a religion whose historical and psychological evaluations are the basis for understanding revelation (pp. 58 f.). Overbeck denies the validity of the claim of the Christian religion to a privileged position within the course of history and culture. "The nature of modern Christianity . . . is . . . denatured, because in it the tension of contradiction is transformed into a normal relationship which must result in the corruption of both parts-humanity and Christianity" (p. 65). Overbeck, in his refusal to immanentize the "other world" poses a form of eschatological question to modern theology which cannot believe in the Parousia (p. 64). As comments in his Romans make clear, Barth discerned an affinity between the way in which Overbeck faced the

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issue of eschatology and death and his own theological assertions about the Lordship of God beyond the bounds of life and death. (See The Epistle to the Romans, transl. E. C. Hoskyns, 1933, p. 100.) In Feuerbach Barth sees "a general attack on the methodology of the theology of Schleiermacher and of post-Schleiermacher theology. It is the question of whether and how far religion, revelation, the relation between God and man, can be made understandable as a predicate of man" (p. 227). Feuerbach has drawn the honest conclusion implicit in the presuppositions of nineteenth century theology: If one can indicate the identity of all the predicates of the human and the divine subject, then the object of religion is nothing except the essence of man (p. 223). The vigorous polemic against human religion as containing the criterion for under standing divine revelation is continued by Barth in Church Dogmatics 1. 2: Neo-Protestantism means "religionism," a determination of the significance of God for man on the basis of a prior determination of human capacity and need (C.D. 1/2, p. 292 f.).

(2)During the whole period represented by the essays in this volume Barth is struggling to come to grips with the theology of Schleiermacher, as evidenced in the three studies in chapters IV, V and VI. The latter, "The Word in Theology from Schleiermacher to Ritschl," is somewhat cursory and fragmentary at points; and the references to such figures as Menken, Beck, Strauss, Dorner, and even Ritschl are best filled out with the aid of the more complete studies in Die protestantische Theologie in 19 Jahrhundert. Despite his identification with the general movement of Ritschlian liberalism in his earliest theological period, Barth has never manifested an interest in or real sympathy for Ritschl as he has for Schleiermacher. Barth takes seriously Schleiermacher's strictures against reading his theology as if it were methodologically dependent on his philosophy. Dogmatics is "historicoempirical" in character (p. 162). Schleiermacher is principally concerned with the modification of the religious consciousness; and Barth reminds us of the second letter to Lücke in which Schleiermacher declared that he considered the possibility of dropping the two subsidiary forms of dogmatic propositions, since the latter two really express nothing not already contained in those of the first type. Barth asks whether Jesus Christ as given to faith can finally be, for Schleiermacher, anything other than an effective symbol of that unity between God and man which takes place in the self-consciousness of man himself. This is the question raised in one of the most penetrating essays in this volume, "Schleiermacher's 'Celebration of Christmas' " (pp. 136 ff.). Particularly in the speeches of Leonard and Edward Schleiermacher emphasizes the significance of Christmas as the regenerating affection of joy crystallized in the consciousness of the participants in

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the festivity, a joy which may be celebrated as real, even though our historical knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth may be tenuous (pp. 149 f.). Schleiermacher is pre-eminently the theologian of peace and joy. The historical element in his Christology is "a foreign body." He granted only secondary importance to the place of Christ's suffering and death and had no clear understanding of the eschatological features of the Gospels. It is the "yearning for synthesis, for balance, for harmony, which found its theological fulfillment in the system of Schleiermacher" (p. 328).

"The Principles of Dogmatics according to Wilhelm Herrmann" (pp. 238 ff.) gives us Barth's keen appraisals of his highly esteemed teacher of his early days. Barth sets forth clearly Hermann's polemic against all conceptions of faith as assent to truths mediated by others. In this vein Barth interprets Herrmann's criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, of Protestant orthodoxy, and of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. "Herrmann's whole system is oriented . . . to the genesis of Christianity in the individual" (p. 261). It is the independence of religion for which Hermann contends, even to the point of a certain disseverance of religion from all philosophy and science. Such expressions of faith as do emerge in the confession of the individual are genuine, but they can never be formulated as concepts normative for the Christian community. Nowhere more clearly than in the essay on Herrmann does Barth contend for the sovereignty of the divine Word which cannot be subordinated to any historic-psychological criteria. Herrmann's psycho logical and pragmatic reliance on the experienced power of the inner life of Jesus is an attempt to raise a stagnant pool to the height of three thousand meters "by means of a hand pump" (p. 265). There is such a flight from historical evidences that we are left wondering how the present significance of Jesus' inner life is connected with the earthly ministry of Jesus as pictured in the Gospels. The problem arises because of Herrmann's tendency to reject any genuine religious import in past "outer" events of history. (On this point see also Barth's comment on the person and work of Christ in Schleiermacher, p. 189.) Barth's interpretation of Herrmann's theology helps elucidate his controversy with Bultmann in so far as he finds in the latter a continuation of that line which stems from Schleiermacher and from Herrmann and which is concerned with the individual's grasp of revelation as a present reality in the inner life.

(3)In chapter IX, "The Concept of the Church," chapter X, "Church and Theology," and chapter XI, "Roman Catholicism: a Question to the Protestant Church," Barth discusses the nature of theology as an activity of the Church and clarifies the Reformed doctrine of the Church over against that of Rome. At the same time he insists that Protestants must allow themselves to be questioned by Rome as to their "right to seek and

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to find the one Christian Church in the Protestant Church of the last four hundred years" (p. 310) and must not cease to be scandalized by the " great and painful enigma of the divided Church, division precisely where there should be no division" (p. 273). The Reformation was a protest not against but for the Church as that place in the midst of humanity where God's Word speaks and is received. But while the Church Is the Body of Christ, it functions in the "ambiguity of the fleshly human world" (p. 293). More recently Barth has reaffirmed this point in his criticism of the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (C.D. IV/1, p. 659). Thus Barth opposes the conception of the Church as the extension or prolongation of the Incarnation (p. 294. See also C.D. IV/3 Second Half, p. 729). The doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ is not to be construed in "naturalistic fashion" in terms of growth only, but must be thought out in terms of the covenant-union between Christ and His Church in which the former remains always the Lord to whose judgment and promise the Church is always subject. Barth shows how Roman Catholic Mariological teaching affects its ecclesiology: As Mary " co-operates" in man's redemption as an intercessory power so does the Church in the mediation of grace (p. 330). The conception of merit leads all too directly to an identification between the mind of Christ and the historical and juridical organization of the Church (p. 281, pp. 325 f.).

"The Concept of the Church" makes clear that Barth subjects all questions concerning the institutional continuity of the Church in history to the critical power of the lordship of Christ (p. 281). While Barth admits that historical succession in the ordering of the ministry may serve as a sign of the apostolicity and catholicity of the Church, he argues that it can neither secure nor guarantee the binding of the Church to Christ. His later writings continue to show that for him the precise form of the Church's ministry is a relative one. The New Testament itself discloses variety in this respect, and we cannot treat one form as the norm "valid once and for all, always and in every place" (C.D. IV/3 Second Half, p. 860). Furthermore, in "The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Reformed Creed," it is the gathering of the concrete congregation under Jesus Christ that is stressed; and ecclesiastical order is affirmed to have its life in the congregation (p. 122, p. 126). Barth continues to minimize the spelling out of a single precise institutional link between individual Christian communities (C.D. IV/1, p. 673 f.).

"Luther's Doctrine of the Eucharist: Its Basis and Purpose" in chapter II is one of the most theologically erudite in the volume. Barth elucidates the relationship between Luther's conception of the Word of God as free gift to faith and his theory of the Real Presence in the sacramental elements. Luther's overemphasis on the bread as the glorified body of

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the ascended Christ was the basis of the communication idiomatum, a doctrine which Reformed theology criticized. By this doctrine the Lutherans compromised the irreversibility of the relationship between God and man. In the Christology of Church Dogmatics IV/2 Barth has subjected this Lutheran teaching to even more extensive examination and has rejected the notion of the "divinization" of Christ's human nature as an appropriate category (C.D. IV/2, p. 81 f.; Theology and Church, p. 108). And this is a part of Barth's answer to that tradition in German theology which, guarding itself against the "Calvinist corrective," became uncertain as to whether the relationship of God to man was really in principle irreversible.

Louise Pettibone Smith is to be commended for ably rendering in English translation what is, at points, difficult German. This volume is made all the more useful by the excellent introduction by T. F. Torrance who appraises Barth's theological development and discusses extensively the distinctive character of theology as a subject-matter in relation to natural science and philosophy.

Daniel L. Deegan
Reed College
Portland, Oregon