DUQUESNE STUDIES
Theological Series,
8
BULTMANN-BARTH
AND CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
HEINRICH FRIES
TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION
LEONARD SWIDLER
DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY PRESS PITTSBURGH, PA.
DUQUESNE STUDIES
Theological Series
Henry J. Koren, C.S.Sp., S.T.D., Editor
Volume One-Albert Dondeyne, FAITH AND THE WORLD. xi and 324 pages. Second impression. $5.00.
Volume Two-Peter Schoonenberg, S.J., GOD’S WORLD IN THE MAKING. ix and 207 pages. Second impression. $3.95.
Volume Three-Leonard J. Swidler, editor, SCRIPTURE IN ECUMENISM. vii and 197 pages. $4.95.
Volume Four-William H. van de Pol , ANGLICANISM IN ECUMENICAL PERSPECTIVE. v and 293 pages. $6.75.
Volume Five-John H. Walgrave, O.P., PERSON AND SOCIETY. 182 pages. $4.25.
Volume Six-Bertrand van Bilsen, O.F.M., THE CHANGING CHURCH. 433 pages. $7.95.
Volume Seven-John Heijke, C.S.Sp., AN ECUMENICAL LIGHT ON THE RENEWAL OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY LIFE. TAIZE. 212 pages. Second impression. $4.50.
Volume Eight-Heinrich Fries, BULTMANN-BARTH AND CATHOLIC THEOLOGY. Translated by Leonard Swidler. 182 pages. $4.50.
Nihil Obstat
Very Rev. Donald W. Kraus, Ph.D.
Imprimatur
* Most Rev.
Vincent M. Leonard, D.D.
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh
February 27, 1967
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-15784
© 1967 by Leonard Swidler
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
7
Preface
19
Foreword
25
I
The Things Held in Common
27
II
The Differences
54
III
The Theology of Demythologization
90
IV
Karl Barth and the Theology of the Demythologization
108
V
Karl Barth-Rudolf Bultmann and Catholic Theology
140
Conclusion
181
Introduction
Throughout the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth most Roman Catholic theology was forced by anxious and fearful authorities to retreat into the ghetto. The forces of rationalism, of the newly developed historical-critical method, the theory of evolution, the new discipline of psychology, and science in general were most often fought off from behind medieval and baroque intellectual barricades. Until recently Catholicism remained relatively untainted-and unstimulated-by these forces.
Protestantism, however, having no such all-encompassing defenses as did Rome, was very profoundly affected by these new forces. The most prominent result of this influence was the development of the so-called “liberal theology,” which applied reason and the new intellectual tools most vigorously to theological problems, and its parallel phenomenon in the area of scripture studies, the “higher criticism,” which dramatically pursued the quest for the historical Jesus.
But World War I precipitated a tremendous cultural crisis. Western man felt deceived and disillusioned with nineteenth-century optimism, with its cult of progress and scientism. The Great War was an unexpected disaster of the first magnitude. In the religious and theological sphere also the answers seemed too pat, too simple and “natural.” In this rebellion the way was led by the young Swiss Reformed scholar, Karl Barth. One of his fellow rebels who, however, did not really come into his own until the time of the second World War-was the German Lutheran theologian, Rudolf Bultmann. Both were trained in liberal theology, both acknowledged their debts to it, both reacted against it.
About the same time a similar ending of an era was taking place in scripture studies; in his book The Quest for the Historical Jesus Albert Schweitzer declared the search for the historical Jesus bankrupt. New Testament scholars began to realize that the gospels were not written with the intentions and manner of a historian or newspaper reporter who wished primarily to relate events as he or other eye-witnesses experienced them. It became apparent that the gospels were the preaching or proclamation (kerygma in Greek) by the apostolic church of the “good news’‘ of God’s action in Jesus Christ. The evangelists were not interested in giving a critical biography of Jesus or even a carefully accurate chronicle of Jesus’ public life.
It is in this area of New Testament studies that Bultmann has had his revolutionary influence. It is true that Bultmann’s research in the New Testament has led him to the kerygmatic quality of the gospels so strongly that the proclamation of the “good news” was almost loosed from its historical basis-he does state that Jesus did historically exist, but he pays so little attention to this aspect of the gospels that it de facto almost entirely disappears from sight in his writings. Therefore it is here that Catholic tradition, along with Karl Barth and others, while fully accepting and emphasizing the gospels as being primarily kerygma, has insisted that they are kerygma, a proclamation, of the person and work of Christ. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that the basic motivation behind Bultmann’s work is what should be the perennial concern of theology: the translation of the New Testament message into a language that will speak to contemporary man. Bultmann’s program for this translation contains two major elements. One is demythologization and the’ other is existential interpretation. (The name for the first element is not only barbaric, but is also misleading-by Bultmann’s own admission.)
Bultmann points out that the man of the New Testament era was quite accustomed to myths. They were part of his everyday experience and he had no difficulty in accepting and understanding them. This, he says, is no longer true of modern man. He is used to a realistic, scientific language and so when he finds impossible things in biblical accounts he tends to reject the Bible as untrustworthy, or at least he does not grasp the religious truth the biblical account was attempting to communicate. Therefore, for the sake of evangelizing modern man, Bultmann has attempted to distill the truth out of the Bible and state it in modern language. The term demythologization indicates the elimination of mythological language, but it unfortunately does not transmit the other essential factor: the translation into the modern idiom.
To many Catholics, and conservative Christians in general, Bultmann’s demythologization will look just like a continuation of the old liberal theology, that is, an attempt to subject the Bible to searching criticism so as to give a rational, natural explanation for everything in it. This critique of Bultmann from the right, however, is superficial when it equates Bultmann and liberal theology. Liberal theology often looked upon Christianity as essentially an ethical code, and did its best to eliminate any “supernatural” aspect. It saw the Bible almost solely as human books which told us of the Christian way to live. But for Bultmann the Bible, the proclamation of the Gospel, the kerygma, is the means God uses to intervene directly in the life of man at every moment of history. Bultmann may not like the term “supernatural,” but the concept of God’s daily direct intervention in human history through the biblical kerygma can hardly be called “natural.” In fact, it is just Bultmann’s persistent refusal to “dekerygmatize” the Bible that has brought him strong criticism from the left, from those who would completely “humanize” the Gospel, from philosophers like Karl Jaspers. Bultmann’s demythologizing empties many Christian doctrines of their usual meaning (for example, all miracles evaporate under Bultmann’s scrutiny) and as a consequence, to an orthodox theologian he looks like the exponent of a liberal and philosophically oriented theology. But because he insists on a special and unique revelation by the saving act of God in Christ which is constantly transmitted through the instrumentality of the preaching of the Gospel, to the philosopher he looks “like just another orthodox theologian, whose orthodoxy may admittedly be veiled but is none the less rigid and illiberal. In spite of his claim to be free from myth and dogma, and in spite of his enthusiasm for the philosophy of existence, Bultmann in the philosopher’s eyes falls into the same condemnation as Barth and all the others.”1
It should be granted, however, that there is some validity to the accusation that Bultmann is just continuing the attitudes and work of nineteenth-century liberal theology. Bultmann’s understanding of the scientific view of the universe is the naive, uncritical view of nineteenth-century scientism. Whereas he is extremely probing in his analysis of the world view prevalent in the apostolic age, he accepts with complete faith the late nineteenth-century view of the world. One of his most perceptive and sympathetic interpreters refers to this as a “hang-over of liberal modernism.”2 Bultmann has decided ahead of time that modern man in the scientific age cannot believe in miracles and hence refuses even to consider the historical evidence available and then decide on the basis of that. This is most dramatically the case with the resurrection, which, on the basis of this theory, he assumes could not have been an objective event that once happened, but must be a myth.
The dismantling of the myths is only one part of Bultmann’s demythologization program, the negative part. (just how much mythological speaking can legitimately be eliminated from the New Testament is a highly controverted question.) On the positive side, Bultmann calls for a translation of the religious truths encased in the New Testament myths into a language understood by modern man. He feels that the philosophical view and categories developed by the “existentialist” thinker Martin Heidegger speak to contemporary Western Man. Moreover, he believes that Heidegger’s analysis of human existence, of Dasein, almost perfectly parallels the Bible’s understanding of man and hence provides a very effective instrument for plumbing the depths of God’s message to man.
Hence it would be useful briefly to survey a very few of the ways Bultmann applies Heidegger’s thinking to the New Testament.
Heidegger states that when man reflects upon his own individual human existence he experiences a self-disclosure of his being which shows him that he has a certain freedom and hence a certain responsibility for his own existence being what it is. (Human existence, Dasein, is different from all other existence, Sein, in that it is self-conscious, it is a subject, not an object. Therefore, it stands apart from the “world.”)
In the face of this disclosure man often flees from his authentic existence, which would entail knowingly accepting this freedom and responsibility; the mood of this fleeing Heidegger calls anxiety (Angst). Anxiety discloses to man that he is not at home (nicht zu Hause) in the world. Hence, some theologians3 argue that although Heidegger does not say so, his existential analytic of anxiety brings us to the threshold of religion. As alternative to an inauthentic existence of surrender to and losing oneself in the “world,” in becoming just another object in the world instead of standing apart and being a subject who knowingly grasps his freedom and responsibility, there is the recourse to the ground of being, the creator of man and the world.
Heidegger does have an answer to the question of what is man’s authentic existence in the face of the disclosure of anxiety. For Heidegger the answer is to be found in death, for in looking into his own being man sees that one of his possibilities is death. In fact, it is a possibility he cannot interminably avoid. Instead of fleeing this possibility of death, man should face it and even accept it as his preeminent possibility so that it overrides all other concerns. “He is to live in the anticipation of his own death. To anticipate death, we are told, means neither to commit suicide nor to brood over death, but to make death the unifying factor in my existence, to relate all my possibilities to this one capital possibility. In other words, it is to see and accept the nothingness of my existence.”4 This acceptance of course will deliver man from concern with all illusory transitory things; it deflates the inflated value worldly things have in the life of the man who attempts to drown out his anxiety by flinging himself into the, “world” of things. But it also devaluates all existence-including human existence. It is a doctrine of heroic despair.
While being able to agree with Heidegger in the analysis of man’s anxiety and the inauthenticity of fleeing into earthly illusions, the Christian will not be able to accept his alternative of wide-eyed despair. The Christian further believes that God speaks and shows himself to man in Christ so that there is set before man a possibility of authentic existence which not only avoids the illusions of worldly existence, but even “death is swallowed up in victory” (I Cor. 15:54).
Another theologically important concept analyzed by Heidegger is “fallenness.” Fallenness is a basic possibility of inauthentic existence for man, according to Heidegger. It has two aspects: the falling into the world of things, being content to be concerned only with objects; the falling into collectivism, whereby the individual man becomes part of the grey, depersonalized mass-he “follows the crowd,” he need not think or decide for himself. Heidegger says that fallen man is fallen away from himself; he has lost the ability to be his authentic self, which is now lost and scattered in the “world” of things and the mass.
We must, however, avoid thinking that Heidegger is giving some sort of ethico-religious picture of the general state of man, as is found in Christian tradition. He is merely stating that in analyzing the ontological structure of man’s existence he sees that fallenness is a possibility for man; he makes no statement about the de facto condition of man in this regard.5 But, the possible relationship between Heidegger’s thinking here and the theological concept of fallenness is apparent: Heidegger shows philosophically that such a state of fallenness is possible for man, and Christian theology claims that it is his actual status when he is without grace.
Bultmann very explicitly works out his theological understanding of the biblical notion of fallenness with the help of Heidegger’s philosophical analysis. “Evil is a falling away of man from himself, a mistaken orientation of himself away from his authentic being. But this is at the same time sin, rebellion against God, who as Creator gave to man his being. To attain or to lose his authentic being is equivalent on man’s part to recognizing or denying God as his creator. To deny the Creator means, however, to turn to the creation. Man lives for and from the world. Man is thus fallen away from the authentic being that God has given him into the world, in concern with which he seeks to Eve by his own power without God. This is the essence of sin.”6
But grace gives man the possibility of attaining his true being. For Bultmann the work of God in Christ, that is, the grace of God given through Christ, is man’s only way to authenticity, to salvation. Critics on the right should not forget this vital element they have in common with Bultmann. (Karl Barth, for example, does not forget it.) Bultmann therefore says that through the grace of Jesus Christ “salvation is nothing else than the fulfillment of man’s authentic intention to life, to his true self, which had been perverted by sin.”7
Many criticisms can be and have been leveled against the way Bultmann has used Heidegger’s thought in the existential interpretation aspect of his demythologization program. Karl Barth, among others, has very carefully reduced his critique to print. It would be helpful briefly to review a few such criticisms.
At times Bultmann writes as if all Christian doctrines spoke only about the possibilities of human existence, as if theology were limited to anthropology. But as a student of Heidegger he should, and does, know that man as a being which not only exists but also has some understanding of his own being can illuminate that self-understanding only in the light of an understanding of being as a whole. As a Christian theologian Bultmann realizes that Christian doctrine has a double function: the describing of a way of fife, an authentic existence for man, and the illuminating of the mystery of Being “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). But Bultmann is often obscure about the second function. His existential interpretation of the Bible must at least be supplemented by an ontological interpretation.
Bultmann has also been charged with posing a falsely opposed set of alternatives: essence or existence, report or kerygma, objectivity or subjectivity, in itself or for me. One might argue that Bultmann’s posing of either-or, and “not this-but rather” is not an authentic opposition. As professor Fries states, “For the poles on which Bultmann builds his dualism do not exclude each other, but rather mutually limit each other; they live from each other and mutually call each other forth. Where an exclusiveness in the strict sense is posited and carried through, then that very thing which Bultmann and his existential theology is and has been concerned with is called into question and made impossible, namely, existence. One is tempted in this connection to paraphrase a scriptural statement: Whoever wishes to gain his existence will lose it.”
Another, and perhaps in some ways the most serious, accusation made against Bultmann is that his theology is far too individualistic, that it does not adequately provide for community in the life of man, for the Church in the life of the Christian. In this regard he exhibits another “hang-over” from the nineteenth-century and proves himself a too uncritical disciple of the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger emphasized the depersonalizing force of mass society-and rightly so. He counters it in his philosophy with the notion of man as a being-in-the-world and also always as a being-with-others. Thus he wrote in his magnum opus of the 1920's Sein und Zeit. Heidegger himself retired to the Black Forest to escape mass society, but he left undeveloped his concept of man as an authentic being-with-others. It was into this vacuum of authentic community created by industrialization that the totalitarianism of communism, Nazism, etc. moved, as well as less violent, but no less destructive of authentic community, forms of societal patterns as exemplified by Babbitt, the “booboisie,” the organization man, etc. To be an authentic being-with-others, man must be a being-for-others, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer. But this is normally possible for man only in an authentic community-which is something more than a clump of atomized individuals. Heidegger did not adequately provide for this; the post-romantic nineteenth century did not adequately provide for it; neither does Bultmann.
Despite these and other criticisms that must be raised against the work of Bultmann, we must constantly keep in mind that the basic motivation behind Bultmann’s work is the same one that should be behind all Christian theology: the translation of the New Testament message into a language that will speak to contemporary man.
One must sadly note at this point that while Protestant theology-particularly in Europe-has been going through several periods of enormous stimulation, Catholic theology, until very recently, has had very little contact with the Protestant theological giants. Between the wars Barth revolutionized Protestant theology, while after World War II Bultmann became the dominant Protestant influence. Then the talk was of “Bultmannian tendencies.” For the past ten years the talk has been of “post-Bultmannian tendencies,” that is, the “new quest” for the historical Jesus. This new quest began about 1953 when a number of Bultmann’s former students, who were by then university professors-Kaesemann, Fuchs, Bornkamm, Conzelmann and Ebeling-set off on a “new quest” for the Jesus of History.8 They insisted that despite all the qualifications the kerygmatic character of the gospels put on the material found therein, there are passages which must be recognized as significantly authentic. They have, consequently, followed out this line of research for the last dozen years-with Bultmann himself taking a vigorous part in the debate. Fortunately in recent years European Catholic scholars have begun to deal seriously with Barth and other Protestant theologians, and even more recently have started to look into the work of Bultmann.
Since the magna carta encyclical Divino afflante spiritu in 1943 the Catholic Church has developed a number of first-rate scripture scholars, who of course are completely aware of the latest post-Bultmannian tendencies and are also making their own influence felt.9 Still it is true that for very large numbers of Catholic theologians, the great majority of priests and most educated Catholic layman, the name of Barth means very little, and the name and work of Bultmann even less. This, of course, is even much more acutely true in America than in Europe.
It was in an attempt to begin and then widen the Catholic dialogue with Bultmann that Professor Heinrich Fries wrote this book ten years ago. In it he entered the then already existing dialogue between Barth and Bultmann about the major points of Bultmann’s program. The similarities and dissimilarities of the work of both Barth and Bultmann are carefully presented, as is also an illuminating description of Bultmann’s major concepts. Barth’s critique of Bultmann, as well as that of other critics of Bultmann, is then analyzed. In a final chapter Professor Fries presents his own Catholic evaluation of Bultmann’s theology.
For those who know little about Bultmann this book will serve as an excellent introduction and provide a variety of evaluations and criticisms. Because of this latter aspect the work will also be of importance to those scholars, Protestant and Catholic, who are already familiar with Bultmann.
July 23, 1966
Leonard Swidler
Preface
When the book Bultmann-Barth and Catholic Theology appeared ten years ago, in 1955, I asked my publisher to speed up the printing as much as possible because there was a danger that the book would come out too late. At that time it appeared that the high-point of the discussion on the theology of Bultmann had already been passed. We know how quickly in our day not only men-regardless how significant and influential they are-but also intellectual movements and currents, even theological impulses, can be forgotten and no longer studied. In the case of Bultmann this fear was unfounded. The theology of Bultmann and the discussion of its principles, presentation of questions and methods have to this very day remained vital-even, and especially in Germany. It can be said that they dominate the theological situation of the hour, especially within Protestant theology, not less, but rather more than ten years ago. This is true despite the unmistakably growing influence of the theology of Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. To this must be added the fact that the waves of this theology extend far beyond the borders of Germany and reveal further its stimulating and disturbing power.
The two enduring theological motives of Bultmann-the so-called demythologization and the existential interpretation of the Bible-have been developed and extended still further in these past ten years by Bultmann himself and by a series of his pupils or by theologians who look to him as their theological master. Even those theologians who reject Bultmann-within Protestant theology they are a minority-carry on their work in a constant confrontation and discussion with him. Bultmann himself in his latest publications has been laboring anew over a reaffirmation of his theological aims in a positive presentation and a critical reflection. He thereby is introducing a modification in attributing a greater significance than formerly to the fact of the historical Jesus-in distinction to the proclaimed Christ-and in theologically acknowledging the justice of this question and reducing the skepticism expressed earlier.
Several pupils of Bultmann have developed the existential interpretation in such a way that theology has been transformed to an anthropology in which God and the word of God figure only as another expression for humanness and brotherhood (Mitmenschlichkeit). Bultmann has not condoned this development, but expressly rejected it. Other theologians have taken up Bultmann’s fundamental concepts or have in many individual investigations of the New and Old Testament applied the historical-critical method in conjunction with demythologization and the existential interpretation. Others have taken up the problem of hermeneutics in a thorough-going manner and have attempted to probe it more deeply and have inquired into the possibilities of the limitation of understanding. From the kerygmatic starting point of Bultmann’s theology a new theology of the word, of language and of the event of language has been attempted.
Bultmann’s thesis-”the question about the history which lies beyond and is presumed by the kerygma may not be raised”-was critically taken up by several of his pupils with the counter-question: Why may this question not be raised? The faith in Jesus Christ finds its support in the historical Jesus.
The publications about, for, and against Bultmann already compose an entire library today.
In contrast, the observation which had already been Barth was falling behind that of Bultmann-that was true made ten years ago that the theological influence of Karl primarily of Protestant theology in Germany-is still true today, perhaps to an even greater extent. Nevertheless, it should be said that the theological position that Barth took toward Bultmann and the theology inspired by him or dependent upon him has to this day remained basically the same. To this extent the stand of Barth against Bultmann presented in this book is still valid and requires no revision. In the volumes of the Church Dogmatics which have appeared in the meantime-this work remains an immortal undertaking-Karl Barth engages in a constant vital discussion with Bultmann and develops his own position by constantly keeping the questions and answers of Bultmann present and before his eyes.
Karl Barth has most recently stated that he feels like father Noah in the ark, that he calmly observes the theological rocking and rolling and now and again sends out a dove to check on the state of the flood. He finds, so he says-in contemplating present Protestant theology-that a theology which concerns itself most of all with the problem of language and concentrates on the language-happening is not centered on the Christian revelation and the faith completely dependent upon it, that it does not find that word which is proffered for the sake of the substance of faith and of man, that it does not bring forth that life which is a sign of the revivifying power and the constant youth of the word of God. Karl Barth finds that the decisive things are taking place for the moment within the Catholic Church. The Council and the vigorous efforts expended on its account go to the center of that about which the Church of Jesus Christ is concerned and also about which theology must be concerned.
About Catholic theology-this is the third component of the present investigation-it can be said that within the last ten years it has dealt intensively with the theology of Bultmann-not only within larger theological works in which the theology of Bultmann is treated directly or indirectly, and also not only in numerous articles and essays, but also in books, among which the works of Malevez, Marlé and G. Hasenhüttl should be especially noted. I, myself, have dealt with the theology of Bultmann again in the Festschift for Karl Rahner under the title: “Entmythologisierung und theologische Wahrheit.” Bultmann has expressed his joy and approval-for example in the detailed review of the book by Marlé-of the fact that Catholic theology is dealing with the goals of his work and is laboring over a genuine understanding of it. Some Protestant circles speak of this fact critically, seeing in it a growing appreciation of Bultmann which displeases them. Bultmann himself wrote a foreword to the book by Hasenhüttl on Bultmann’s concept of faith-much as Karl Barth once did for Hans Küng’s book on justification-and assured the Catholic author that he had analyzed his theological thought correctly and had done justice to it. This is of great significance, especially when one recalls that in the question of faith Hasenhüttl pointed out many commonly held traditions between the Catholic interpretation of faith and Bultmann’s conception, a thesis which in my opinion does not take the differences seriously enough and which tends to depend upon the fact that the same expressions are used in the same matters. Nor is this weakness sufficiently realized in Bultmann’s foreword, written in an understandable joy over the evaluation of his work by a Catholic theologian. From what I can see, the concern of Catholic theology with Bultmann is by no means at an end. Perhaps it really stands at the beginning. Other works are awaited, and I know that they have already been begun: in the German language area, in France, in Italy and in Spain.
Despite all this I believe I can release my book, which is also being translated into Spanish, for a translation in America-even in the form it appeared in ten years ago. Naturally it would be better to revise the book, which in the meanwhile has gone out of print in Germany, and take into consideration everything which has since been published on this theme. For the moment this is not possible. Perhaps it is not even necessary where the book is to be presented for the first time. I see no reason-not even on the basis of the literature that has appeared in the meanwhile-to change my fundamental conception. I still maintain it today with its yes and no to Bultmann’s theology.
As an introduction to a specific theological posing of a question and a theological discussion and as an attempt at a theological interpretation this book, I believe, still provides a service today, especially because the matter described, so vital ten years ago, has not been forgotten but rather has grown in breadth and depth.
Professor Leonard Swidler, who is very well acquainted with the theological situation with which this book is concerned, and who knows that this book is already ten years old, has translated and presented it in America. For this arduous and selfless task I am deeply grateful to him. May his efforts be blessed and find a good reception.
Munich, April, 1965
HEINRICH FRIES
Foreword
This book is an endeavor to take part in a discussion that has become very much alive today within Protestant theology, and has excited men even far beyond it. This discussion centers around the name of Rudolf Bultmann. His towering theological influence for some time overshadowed the work and name of Karl Barth. But now that Karl Barth has entered the discussion on Bultmann with energy and impact, the situation within Protestant theology is largely and decisively determined by those questions which have come to the fore in the work of these two theologians.
Catholic theology cannot overlook this fact, especially as the questions brought up by Bultmann and Barth lead directly to the center of the Christian revelation and the faith and understanding of faith related to it, as they contain a central theological and pastoral concern which culminates in the demand that the Gospel be proclaimed anew in every age. This is also the constant task of Catholic theology and pastoral care. Both can remain vital only if they apply themselves to this task with ever renewed efforts. In this regard the encounter with Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth-an encounter which will result in a giving and a taking-presents particularly today a unique opportunity. To bring this meeting into focus and to make it fruitful is the meaning and purpose of this investigation.
Tübingen, Easter 1955
HEINRICH FRIES
I
The Things Held in Common
For a long time it was common to link the names of Barth and Bultmann together, to view their theological work together and to list it under a generic term common to both of them, “Dialectical Theology.” This was done much as one did and still does name Heidegger and Jaspers in one breath as representatives of existence philosophy and existential philosophy respectively. To do so is not false to either the positions of Barth and Bultmann or of Heidegger and Jaspers. But this manner of speaking is too formal, too summary and too undifferentiated. It obscures under a formula, which not infrequently becomes a catch-word, the particularity of these extremely individualistic personalities and their work, a particularity which can be seen not only in the different answers they give to what are perhaps the same questions, but even in the different ways in which they phrase the question and their different starting positions. The latter is particularly true concerning Heidegger and Jaspers while the former, that is, different answers for the same question, applies especially to the relation between Barth and Bultmann. This difference existed from the beginning, but it finds particularly clear expression today.
This observation leads us to the investigation first of those things held in common and then those particular to the theological orientations and positions of Barth or Bultmann alone.
It was already remarked that Barth and Bultmann are linked with dialectical theology and are looked upon as its authoritative representatives. This designation is completely correct, especially in view of the starting points and background of these two theologians.
1. Barth and Bultmann develop their positions in the sharpest contrast to every form of immanence theology, particularly in contrast to the so-called liberal theology. This theology described God as a conceivable world principle, Christ as a founder of religion and a religious genius, the Bible as a book of world literature and a document of its age, faith as a religious experience, Christian dogmatics as a rational system, the Christian ethic as a reasonable morality, the Church as a religious society. In such wise the validity and relevance of Christianity was to be presented and recommended. To these characterizations liberal theology added that within the concrete and historical religious experience which has been the subject of investigation up until now. Christianity occupies an unchallenged dominant position within the history of religion by virtue of her doctrine, ethos and cultural influence, a position which will probably not be overtaken by any newly arising religion, even if no unambiguous criterion can be given to establish this point conclusively. In this sense Ernst Troeltsch, for example, discusses the problem of “the absoluteness of Christianity” and contrasts historicalness and absoluteness as mutually exclusive contradictions. He described Christianity as “the high point and convergence point” of all religions, but he saw no possibility of attributing to it any significance transcending this.1
This front of the liberal theology was broken through by the dialectical theology. To this day Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans (1 ed. 1919; 2 ed. 1922) is looked upon as the decisive literary event of the theological turning point. Karl Barth, who as a student at the University of Marburg started out in liberal theology, overcame its position in this, his first major theological work. He did it with an elan of thought and dynamism of language that was without peer. In contrast to the “erroneous rectilinear movement” of the liberal theology which placed God in a “line with us and the things of the world” and thereby ultimately meant and sought only man himself, Barth elevated the dialectic to a real theological category and method. That means that the relationship between God and the world and man contains the greatest possible antithesis and contradiction. “If I have a system it consists in the fact that I keep before my eyes as constantly as possible what Kierkegaard called the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between time and eternity.2 God is unknown, a hidden God. Over against him the world is in a situation of pure negation, of sin and of death. Sin is always and primarily hybris and rebellion, “slave insubordination ... .. a will to be like God.” All human existence and action stands under the sign of sin. Its most sublime and worst form is religion, which is a betrayal of the real God;3 it represents the divine where there is no divine; it “makes man prisoner worse than anything can make him prisoner.”4 Therefore it is to be evaluated only negatively and it receives the harshest judgment: “Our religion,” is the “dissolution of religion.”5
The revelation of God is thus not one of the possible religious forms or world structures. Rather it takes place much more in absolute transcendence and as a complete paradox-without any historical points of contact, without preparation, guidance or disposition on the part of man.6 It tolerates no bridges, but leaps right across the chasm between good and evil, worth and worthlessness, holy and unholy.7 God’s revelation happens completely without, in fact against, us. Its occurrences can only be compared with the thrusting of a red-hot iron into hissing water, or with the flash of lightning in the human dusk.8 The abyss of the dialectic between God and the world and man finds its most shattering and convincing expression in the death of the Son of God become man. On the cross it is made clear what it is to be God and what it is to be the world and man.
It follows from this that the essence of the revelation of God in Christ can never be grasped and presented “rectilinearly” or merely “analogously.” Still less is there a “pre-understanding” of the Christian revelation or an even distant human potential for faith in this revelation. Faith is thus possible for all only because it is impossible for all.9 The Christian reality can be presented only dialectically: as antithesis and contradiction of all that belongs to the world and to man, as crisis, judgment and end. On the other side the world and history, nature and man can be correctly described only as the no to God, to his Word and his revelation in Christ. The mission of the Son of God “can be described only in the strongest terms of negation, can be proclaimed only as paradox, can be grasped only as the absurdum which as such is credibile. The scandal which it gives us is the reflex of the scandal which we are for God.10
The uniqueness and glory of dialectical theology is that fundamentally the dialectic never and nowhere strives for the dissolution of the antithesis, but rather seeks to remain in the situation of the broken bridge and of the abyss. Only in this manner does it believe it can be a theology of the cross and present and preserve the Reformation principles and aims of “Deus solus,” “fides sola,” and “gratia sola.” And in this theology differentiates itself from the idealistic understanding of Christianity, as, for example, in the thought of Hegel-although it remains indebted to this philosophy in form and method. A deeper analysis indicates, however-and Hans Urs von Balthasar has convincingly presented this in his work on Karl Barth-that at the beginning and end of the dialectic of this theology there is a dissolution of the sense of identity. For the phrasing of the protology and eschatology in Karl Barth reveals that the dialectic between God and man comes from what must be termed a somewhat hazardous original unity of God and Man and ultimately terminates itself in it.11 For our posing of the question it is not necessary to pursue these presuppositions and consequences of the dialectic further. We are here concerned only with an outline of what the dialectical theology is and means, with the recognition of its motives and origins and a recollection of its form in the early theological work of Karl Barth.
2. Now we must speak of Rudolf Bultmann and his relation to the dialectical theology.
In an essay, “The Liberal Theology and the Latest Theological Movement,”12 Bultmann gives his own and others’ accounts of their theological background and orientation. These men also have their origins and roots in liberal theology. Bultmann recalls this fact first with a sentiment of great thankfulness. He thanks liberal theology especially for its vital historical interest13 which was of such great significance in casting light on the historical reality particularly of the Christian revelation and on one understanding of the Bible. Most of all, however, Bultmann thanks the liberal theology for the training “in criticism, that is in freedom and truthfulness.”14 “Those of us who have come from the liberal theology would not have been able to become or remain theologians if we had not encountered the earnestness of a radical truthfulness; we felt that the orthodox theology of the universities of all shades was essentially a compromise in which we could have only an interiorly broken existence. Everlasting thanks are due G. Krüger for seeing the mission of theology as consisting in the endangering of souls, the leading into doubt, the shattering of naive credulousness. Here was-we all felt it-the atmosphere of truthfulness, the only atmosphere in which we could breathe.”15
In view of Bultmann’s later theological work it can well be said that he has remained true to this ethos of criticism, this freedom and truthfulness, so that his whole theological program, which is presented today primarily under the name of the theology of the demythologization, is an implementation of these intentions. The developed and well-thought-out theological program of demythologization, which, as an existential interpretation, led especially to a decisive and penetrating critique of the prevailing understanding of Christian revelation and the Christian faith, to a ruthless abandonment of facts adhered to by the previous Christian tradition and to a radical criticism of the Bible, was possible only in an atmosphere of freedom and of truthfulness which allowed absolutely no reservations or limits to be imposed by anything or anyone.
To this, of course, it must be immediately added that Bultmann’s theology is not to be understood from these motives alone; in that case it would have remained within the boundaries of liberal theology. Bultmann develops his theological program much more in contradiction to the liberal theology. Nevertheless, it is obviously possible to do so while retaining the feeling for scholarship which was awakened and maintained by liberal theology. Bultmann has given the tendencies developed in liberal theology a new meaning and a new direction. “It cannot aim at eliminating the historical critique-rather its meaning must be understood as follows: it must be radically directed toward freedom and truthfulness, not only in freeing one from a certain traditional historical view but in freeing one from every point of view possible for scholarly investigation and making it conscious that the world which faith wishes to encompass is absolutely not comprehendible by means of scholarly investigation.”16
This means that the attempt of liberal theology to theologize with its own means is an experiment on an unsuitable object, that it does not deal with-the real object of theology, but rather that it is in error concerning it. In liberal theology Christianity becomes-and it is here that the energetic criticism of Bultmann drives home-a phenomenon within the world, within history, associated with and subject to the other historical, sociological and psychological phenomena. Jesus becomes one among many; he is “the traveling companion of our life”; Christian faith is one form of the religious attitude; revelation contains a fullness of human and ethical ideals. From this arise such manifestations as Christian culture and ethics, Christian politics and education, Christian socialism, etc. On the other hand within the perspective of liberal theology every professional activity, every social act, every ethical taking of a position can be a worship of God.
From the very beginning Bultmann directs all his defensive power against these tendencies in liberal theology. And he does so on the basis-which is really theological that it is exactly here that Christianity has met a stumbling-block, that it is not seen “that God’s being Other, God’s being Beyond means a negating of all of man and all of his history. An attempt is made to give faith a foundation, but the nature of faith is destroyed by the very search for any kind of foundation.”17
To the theological question about God this means that God is not a “given” (Gegebenheit). He is also not the “abandoned” (Aufgegebene) or the “ungiven” (Ungegebene) in the sense of idealistic philosophy. Rather God means “the total abrogation of the human, its negation, the calling of it in question, the judgment on the human.”18
From this it follows that everything, world and man, human existence and activity, the lowest as well as the most sublime, the most idealistic and the most miserable, is sin, that Godlessness “is in the structure of my being”; the world and my activity in it are from their beginning Godless.
Sin and Godlessness mean that man wishes to assert himself and thereby make himself God.19 Sin is therefore always in its essence a rebellion, a hybris, an autonomy, a self-dominium and self-righteousness. This fundamental sin can take many different forms and shapes, the most dangerous of which are found in religion, in religious experiences and in mysticism. At every point here the borders between God and man are blurred. Man confuses the world with God and time with eternity and usurps a divinity not rightfully his. As a result he is in error about his true existence and thus lives in unreality. At the same time he falls under judgment and there is nothing that can protect or preserve him from it. Being and doing, work and product-everything finds itself inside parentheses, before which there stands a minus sign.
However, Bultmann does not see in such a characterization of the relationships between God, world and man any skepticism, irrationalism, pessimism or despair at all.20 For this calling of man into question by God not only allows man to become aware of his true existence and his existence in truth-all attempts and illusions notwithstanding-but is also really a grace for him and his true salvation for he is made free “from himself unto himself.”
This should suffice to make clear the fact that the basic aims and motives of dialectical theology-especially in its origins and beginnings-are essentially Bultmann’s and that the theological background in liberalism, which he shares with Barth, leads to the dialectic. This is just as true for Bultmann’s description of the relationships between God and the world, between Christian revelation- and religion, between faith and conscious experience as it is for the manner in which God, revelation and Christian faith can and should be grasped.
When we say that the criticism and freedom that grew out of liberal theology has remained alive to this very day in the theological work and development of Bultmann, we must add that the same is also true of the sharp criticism of liberalism which flows from his dialectical position.
The early Bultmann raised against liberalism the decisive objection that through it the scandal is taken away from the Christian faith and God is robbed of his transcendence, that Christianity is leveled and flattened within an a priori “historical-pantheism.” He also says the same today, but in a new formulation constructed along a specific theme: liberal theology has reduced the kerygma to particular religious and moral basic ideas, to a religiously motivated idealistic ethic. “But thereby in truth the kerygma is eliminated as kerygma, that is, as the message of the decisive activity of God in Christ.”21
For the sake of precision it is still necessary to point out that wherever Bultmann agrees with the principles and motives of dialectical theology he also from the very start takes a specific position.
For Bultmann, as he has stated in a fundamental study,22 dialectical theology does not mean the acceptance of a definite theological system or a particular theological method. It is much more that in it is expressed the insight that when theology speaks of God-not the concept of God-it must speak of man. That is doubtlessly a dialectical position, especially if man is viewed as Bultmann views him. And he sees him as Karl Barth sees him. To speak of man however is, according to Bultmann, only possible and permissible if human existence is understood historically. Here another dialectic comes to light. For historicity means not rigid and predictable existence, but rather a potential existence, an openness to the possibilities of human existence which always and in every situation must be won anew. Out of the historicity of human existence it follows that human speaking of God-and it is just this that theology wishes and ought to be-also stands under the sign of historicity and the sign of the concrete situation. To this there is attached the further consequence that the “truth” of theology is not cast in the truth of a timelessly valid statement, but rather in the “truth of a time-bound language.” That means, “not the individual thing that is spoken, but rather the very speaking stands under the question of truth.”23 This statement comes not from a disinterested theory about something, but from a vital acknowledgment of God’s claim of dominion. It signifies that here and now a possibility of mine will be grasped and expressed.
This is Bultmann’s interpretation and understanding of the dialectic. We will meet its basic structure again often, for it is the fundamental structure of his whole theology-and specifically in contrast and opposition to Karl Barth. We will discuss that in detail later. Now in beginning we will bring out only that which is held in common by Barth and Bultmann, which cannot be overlooked, namely, the “dialectical theology.”
The commonness between Barth and Bultmann exists therefore not only in fundamentals, in their theological opposition to liberal theology, in the very intensively expressed insight into the “infinite qualitative difference” between God, world and man, of the “unworldliness” of God and the resultant understanding of God’s revelation to man. The commonness manifests itself no less in the consequences and particulars which flow from the fundamental conception of the dialectical theology. They are briefly described as follows:
a. There is first of all the actualistic understanding of revelation. By this is meant that revelation is not a timelessly valid truth, idea or doctrine; it also does not mean a somehow definite or specifically designed “supernatural” essence or existence or a corresponding state of affairs. Revelation is always much more act, deed and activity of God. Revelation is an event, a happening moving from God to here. This actuality is its deepest essence.
Along with the actuality of revelation comes its historicity and-because it does not concern a happening which is immanent in the world or within man, but rather a deed of God-its absolute uniqueness and unrepeatability; in a word, the “once” and the “once for all times” of revelation.
From this actualistic understanding of revelation there follows the fundamental law of Christian reality, as Karl Barth formulated it: “esse sequitur agere, esse sequitur operari.”24 There is here an exact reversal of the philosophical axiom: agere sequitur esse. But it is just this reversal that shows the dialectic of the reality of revelation and Christian existence, and just this dialectic that is a sign and proof of their truth.
It is unnecessary to reproduce documentation showing that and how much Barth as well as Bultmann-and with them all the representatives of the dialectical theology, Brunner, Gogarten, and Thurneysen-understand the revelation of God actualistically. This principle is at work in every utterance and every writing. Greatly as Karl Barth may have changed within his theology-from the dialectic to the analogy25-the actualistic understanding of revelation, and the consequent characterizing of his theology as a theology not of being, but of a coming to pass, is a continuum which persists in all stages of Barth’s development. But with Bultmann this actualism, which moreover through his understanding of dialectical theology was intensified from the beginning, was carried out so radically that in face of the event, in fact of the That of the “salvation-happening” and the “Christ-happening,” the person and the history of Christ as well as the content, the What, of his revealing message remain irrelevant.26
b. Something further is connected with the character of revelation as event (and Barth and Bultmann agree here)-the existential power and form of revelation, its appellative power, its decisive moment. Whatever occurs in revelation, whatever God in his activity does and brings to completion concerns man; it happens “for him.” God’s word is no mere theoretical word, no indoctrination, but rather an address, message, appeal, word, which demands an answer, a taking of a position, a decision. “Tua, mea res agitur,” “You are the man.” That is the thrust of the revelation, the speaking and the activity of God. And only he who perceives all this in and out of a wonder which extends to the ultimate, to salvation and perdition, perceives it correctly, fully and in truth.
“You are the man.” For Karl Barth this is the fanfare of the Pauline Epistle to the Romans. It is also the meaning of the Barthian “existentialism” and the meaning of existentiality as Barth believes he must understand it from the whole of the Epistle to the Romans. The distinction between “existential” and “existentiell,”27 which is so important for Bultmann, means nothing to the author of the “Epistle to the Romans.”
The fact that for Bultmann the revelation of God has an “existential” significance will have to be further outlined and discussed. But for Bultmann also, and particularly for him, the “existentiell” character of revelation is the presupposition for the perception of its “existential” significance. Only the one who is “existentiell” affected can and will question its meaning and inquire after the manner of existence of what is given and hidden therein, will inquire after the “existential.”
Just how much Bultmann finds the moment of decision in revelation is shown by the fundamental and key word of his theology-kerygma. For Bultmann the word of God and revelation are neither theoretical speculation about objective circumstances, nor a report or a history; it is essentially proclamation. And this embraces the living you of the hearer; it directs itself toward him; it wants something for him and from him. But God’s address to man through His word always involves a real calling of man into question and a decision concerning man by man himself; it concerns the real decision. Indeed, for Bultmann the form of the kerygma is so intimately bound to the revelation, to the Christ-event, that the action of God “for me,” both here and today, can be made present only when it is made so by the kerygma. We will later have occasion to point out that in Bultmann’s thought the kerygma demands an inadmissible autonomy, that the saving event as such threatens almost to disappear in it. In our context we need only to make clear how greatly, according to Bultmann, an-of course “existential” conceived-”existentielle” power, strength and force is inherent in revelation.
c. The third thing held in common by Barth and Bultmann-and this is very closely connected with what has been said so far-consists of the Christ-centeredness of their theology. This is expressed in the thesis that the revelation of God culminates in the Word become man, that the world, creation and salvation is grounded in Christ and therefore may and can only be rightly understood through him, that every understanding of the Christian can be legitimate and valid only then when all theological statements, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has put it, lead into the “Christological narrows.” Not only do all theological statements find their orientation and correct direction in and from Christ, but all statements of theologians and theological statements on all things are specified and qualified by him.
Barth himself describes this conception as an intensive universalism which “at the point of highest intensity, in the contact between God and man, embraces everything in Jesus Christ,” in order to draw out what is, in the real sense, His infinite fullness. Hans Urs von Balthasar compares this conception with the image of an hourglass whose two vessels (God and creature) can meet only through the narrow passage in the middle, through the meeting of the two in Jesus Christ: “It is just the narrowest place that is the most decisive, it is the act, the contact, the event from which everything that comes under the heading of nature flows.”28 This radical Christocentrism did not from the very beginning occupy the central position of Barth’s theology-at first the concept of the Word of God did-but in the Church Dogmatics there developed the ever clearer and more conclusive evolvement and unfolding of this principle, its application to all questions and the orientation of all questions to it.
This is not the place to expand on what changes in the theological positions of the early Karl Barth the conclusive carrying through of the Christological principle-and indeed, as von Balthasar and Hermann Volk have convincingly shown, in the meaning of Chalcedon-brought along with it. It is the turning from the dialectic to analogy, of course to an analogia fidei which is decisively different than the analogia entis, whose full form Barth sees specifically in the God-man. Thus, the radical judgment of condemnation on nature and creation is lifted, and the recognition of man and the human in all forms is given: the incarnation means the divine yes to man. In this connection we wish only to draw attention to the principle as such, to the concentration of the revelatory actions in the person and in the event of Jesus Christ, and to the resultant concentration of all theological statements in Christology.
In this question too Bultmann, in principle, is the partner of Barth. This is evidenced in the phrase that constantly occurs in Bultmann: “the decisive action of God in Christ.” It is also evidenced in the refusal of Bultmann to draw out the full conclusions of the theses of liberal theology, whose scholarly ethos he wholeheartedly acknowledges and affirms, and to categorize the revelation in Christ as a case in the history of religion.
Further evidence of this is also seen today in the question of the “demythologization,” which, although it is supposed to be solely interpretation, has in fact in no small measure become elimination, and which nevertheless has held on to the “verbum caro factum est” as an articulus stantis et cadentis theologiae et ecclesiae. Regardless of all the criticisms, such as the challenge of the Berne theologian Buri, and the tendencies to carry out the consequences of demythologization and also dekerygmatization,29 Bultmann retains the New Testament paradoxes30 and, specifically in the demythologizing interpretation, is unwilling to give up as kerygma this truth of the New Testament kerygma. The danger-laden and highly controversial operation of demythologization is undertaken only to rescue the one necessary thing, the message of the decisive act of God in Christ, the event of Christ, the event of salvation: verbum caro factum est.
Thus it cannot be surprising, but rather, after what has been said, it is to be taken for granted that for Bultmann, just as for Barth, the statements of the Christian faith and the standard of the revelation which has taken place in Christ are the criteria of all other statements, and that these, about whatever and by whomever they may be made, must prove and authenticate themselves before the forum of the Christian.31
This does not imply that Barth and Bultmann in no way differ in their understanding and application of the Christocentric principle; they do so in considerable measure, as we shall yet see, but the differences in their understanding of the principle do not negate the outspoken acknowledgment of it by both of them.
d. This observation logically leads to a further common approach by Barth and Bultmann: the principle of sola fides. In the context of our discussion this means that there is no approach to God or the divine reality except that of faith. Negatively stated: there is no natural religion, no natural theology, no natural knowledge of God. For God would thereby be made into an existing being in the manner of the universe. The reduction of the Christian revelation to the level of some sort of religion or world piety would result; the “characteristically Christian” would have been forgotten or suspended.
To attempt to approach God by some other path than faith is nothing other than hybris and arbitrariness. For Barth as for Bultmann, Kant’s theory and critique of knowledge is workable and authoritative insofar as the act of knowing includes having disposal of and dominion over the object of knowledge.
Consideration of the knowledge of God exposes a double theological impossibility and a two-fold structure of original sin, of human self-determination: in wishing to know God man will degrade him to an object, the divine existence will become an object-existence. Moreover the wish to know implies a subjective disposal of that which is known; the object-existence is a category designed by the subject and which orders and directs the given object.
If it is true that Kant’s critique of knowledge has become the critique of knowledge for Protestant theology, then it is in large measure also true of the doctrine of theological knowledge of Barth and Bultmann. They make their own the demands of the critique, which determines the borders or Emits of knowledge “in order to provide a place for faith,” and they also find therein a philosophical and epistemological justification of the sola fides principle.
According to Bultmann the sola fides principle is the key to his theology. In his “Epilogue to the Question of Demythologization” he declared: “The radical demythologization is the parallel to the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of justification without works, through faith alone. Or rather it is its consequent application in the area of knowledge.”32 Karl Barth too attempts ultimately, and he believes in the best and the most just sense, to understand Bultmann by interpreting him as the heir of Luther and Lutheranism-certainly not only in the question that concerns us here, but in it nevertheless.33 Bultmann had even earlier looked upon the exposition and realization of the sola fides principle as his theological aim and task. He had rejected the Catholic conception of natural theology on philosophical and, especially, theological bases, and thereby established “that the only possible means of approach to God is faith.... Faith speaks of God as beyond the world and knows that God becomes visible only through his revelation and that in the face of this revelation everything which heretofore had been called God is not God.”34 Indeed, in a radical consequence of his thought, Bultmann can declare that the atheism of a science does not consist in the science’s denial of the reality of God: “It would be just as atheistic if as science it maintained it.”35 The basis for this atheism lies in the fact that the science speaks of God “in generalized terms” and avoids the concrete situation of the one speaking. However, when the speaker does this he places himself outside the factual reality of his existence, and therefore outside of God, and speaks of everything other than God. Such “speaking of God,” such “knowledge of God” is sin. “Through our undertaking it would again be sin, just because it would be our undertaking.... To speak of God, as to speak in God, can obviously be granted only by God himself.36
This gift from God is faith, the answer to the event of his revelation which is made possible by God himself. As such, faith is likewise always a given and self-completing event. Faith is never a standpoint “upon which we set ourselves up, but rather an ever new deed, new obedience . . . always uncertain, as soon as we reflect upon it, as soon as we speak of it; it is certain only as deed.”37 But it likewise follows from the same law that faith is a pure grace from the free, self-giving God. He gives us the freedom “to speak and to act out of God.”38
It follows from the basic structure and the basic conception of the theology of the early Karl Barth, that in this very question of the approach to God, in the question of the knowledge of God and of natural theology he emphasizes much more sharply than does Bultmann that there is only one way to God and his revelation: faith. And this faith is pure event, pure actuality. As an answer to the breakthrough of the revelation of the completely transcendent and incomparable God it nowhere bears a trace of a human ingredient. It is a pure initiative from God,39 a complete lack of obligation, a pure “vertical miracle.”40 The sola fides exists because of the sola gratia. Any form of natural preparedness or potentiality for God, as it is found in the doctrine and the principle of the analogia entis between God and world-on the basis of the creation -is according to this conception not only a seductive and dangerous line of thought, but, even more, plainly of the devil, an invention of the anti-Christ.41
Faith, as far as content is concerned, is a contradiction of the existence and the essence of the world, and especially of every form of religious experience. The possibility of faith is only to be understood as impossibility.42
Karl Barth-and to be clear we must always add, the early Karl Barth-not only denies the so-called potentia oboedientialis, the natural possibility of receiving and preparedness for submission on the part of man before God, but even strives against it in his writing against Emil Brunner (Nein!-Antwort an Emil Brunner)-Brunner’s thesis is that the sin of man, that man as negation and contradiction to God, is the human, if also purely negative, presupposition for the hearing of the message and word of God. Even in this most extreme negation he is only capable of a view that is very dangerous, because it is a cleverly disguised form of human autonomy and self-explanation, and must degrade the activity of God. The negativeness of the world and man cannot be expressed strongly or radically enough to flood the contrast in majesty, greatness, glory and absolute lack of any presuppositions of the divine activity with a brilliant light.
In this connection and for the limited purposes we have already outlined, we will set aside any discussion of how Barth’s theological orientation of faith has changed in turning from a dialectic to analogy-which we could not ignore in a more complete presentation of Barth’s thought. It is not as if the principle of sola fides, and the gratia sola which works within it, were given up, but rather that from within faith and grace the positiveness and independence of nature, the world and man are newly recognized. In particular, reason and its fundamental act, understanding, receive a significance which is co-constitutive of faith: they make possible the forming of a covenant and partnership between man and God. The theological basis for this acknowledging affirmation lies in the acknowledgment through God of the humanity of Christ. It is in this that the human existence is acknowledged before God.43 The Reformation principles effective in both Barth and Bultmann, the sola fides and the sola gratia, together with their consequences include something more, and here also the two representatives of dialectical theology are at one: it is the fact of the “impossibility of proving” God and his works and actions, the fact of the impossibility of proving the divine revelation. On the level of the phenomenal, that which manifests itself, on the level of the objective and the objectifiable there is nothing that is given and there is nothing that happens in the world and history which appears as or can be recognized as the divine existence or activity, as a manifestation of the revelation and the saving activity of the divine, or even a trace of it. God is in his nature and being the “unworldly” (Bultmann).
Everything which manifests itself is therefore pure worldliness, innerworldliness and “humanness.” The latter however is characterized by Godlessness, a removal from God and a rebellion against God; it bears in the whole and in all its parts the sign of sin. All of the activity of man stands under this sign, and thereby under the curse of the law and works. The reality and the action of God-these are facts which nowhere can be documented-are only given in the word, in the word of God alone, which asserts this reality and action of God against all appearances and against all rational credibility. And they are given in faith alone-which is the correspondence to the word alone-in striking contradiction to all “appearances,” in the paradoxical conviction about that which one does not see.
Obscurity is the beginning of all knowledge, declares Barth in his Letter to the Romans.44 “God does everything-but nothing becomes visible or verifiable.”45 “The true God can, because he is true God, only be believed. More would be less-that is the new thinking.”46 Faith in its essence, however, is a paradox, “a proceeding against appearances.” “Human clarity would make what is to be observed here obscure-human certainty would beco