KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS"*

http://files1.wts.edu/uploads/images/files/WTJ/Machen%20-%20Theology%20of%20Crisis.pdf

WTJ53 (1991) 197-207

KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS"*

J. GRESHAM MACHEN

 

KARL Barth, the leader of the movement about which I am venturing to say a few words today, is a man of about forty-two years of age, having been born in 1886 in German Switzerland. After study at a number of the German universities, he entered into the pastorate in his native country. For a number of years he engaged in what seems to have been a kind of socialistic endeavor; but then, becoming convinced that such effort was merely an affair of this earth and did not touch the real issues of life, he launched forth into the remarkable course of teaching and writing that has so profoundly influenced the youth of Germany and that bids fair to make itself felt throughout the world.

지금 나는 도전적으로 몇 마디 말하려는 사람은 한 운동의 지도자인데 1886년 독일계 스위스에서 태어난 약 42세의 남자 칼 바르트이다. 그는 독일의 여러 대학에서 공부한 후, [제펜벨]로 들어가 목회했다. 그는 목회지에서 수 년 동안 사회주의적인 열성가로 보이는 일에 종사했다. 그러나 그런 노력이 단지 이 세상의 일일 뿐이고 삶의 실제 문제를 건드리지 못한다는 것을 확신한 후, 독일의 젊은이들에게 매우 깊은 영향을 미쳤고 전 세계에 자신을 공정하게 만들고자 하는 놀라운 교육과 글쓰기 과정에 착수했다.

 

Closely related in the character of their teaching with the leader of the movement are Iduard Thurneysen, Friedrich Gogarten, and Emil Brunner. The two first names of these, with Barth himself, are frequent contributors to the journal (Zwischen den Zeiten), which is the organ of the school. There are differences between these individual teachers; Brunner, in particular, does not, I am told, have the complete endorsement of the other leaders of the movement. But these differences will not here be taken into account. All that I can hope to do is to present a very rough composite picture, using now one and now another of the four writers that I have

named and even now and then some less prominent or less regular adherents of the same general point of view. I am fully conscious of my incompetence for such a task. The Barthian teaching is by no means altogether a simple thing; and it is quite possible that my present understanding of it might have to be radically modified if my knowledge of it were more complete; I can only give you my present impression for what it is worth.

이 운동에 함께 한 그 교사들의 가르침의 성격은 트루나이젠, 고가르텐, 에밀 브루너이 밀접하게 관련되어 있다. 이들 중 두 이름은 바르트와 함께 학교의 기관지인 Zwischen den Zeiten 저널(1923-1933)에 자주 기고하는 사람들이었다. 이 교사 사이에는 차이가 있는데, 특히 브루너는 이 운동의 다른 지도자들을 전적으로 지지하지는 않는다고 했다. 하지만 여기서는 이 차이를 고려하지 않겠다. 내가 희망하는 것은 내가 가진 네 명의 저자 중 한 명과 또 다른 한 명의 작가를 이용해서 아주 개략적인 종합적인 그림을 제시하는 것이다. 같은 일반적인 관점을 가진 몇몇 덜 중요하거나 덜 규칙적인 지지자들을 지명했다.

나는 그런 일에 대해 나의 무능함을 충분히 의식하고 있다. 바르티안의 가르침은 결코 단순한 것이 아니다. 그리고 그것에 대한 나의 지식이 좀 더 완벽하다면, 그것에 대한 내가 현재 이해하고 있는 것이 좀 더 완전한 지식 체계가 되었다면 과격하게 조정되어야 할 것이다. 나는 단지 내가 지금 가지고 있는 인상에 대한 어떤 가치를 제공할 수 있을 뿐이다.

 

The teaching of Karl Barth and his associates is commonly called "the theology of crisis." The "crisis" or "decision" that is meant in this title is the one that is forced upon a man when he is placed before the dreadful antinomy between time and eternity, the world and God. That antinomy is at the root of the Barthian teaching. At the very foundation of everything that Barth says is the conviction of the awful transcendence of God, the awful separateness between the created world in which man lives and the boundless mystery of the Creator. Away then, say these writers, with all efforts to find God in the world itself! Away with the mysticism of Schleiermacher, discovering God in one particular area of the 'human soul, in the feeling of absolute dependence; away with the intellectualism of Hegel, setting up an antinomy that is not final, a thesis and antithesis transcended in a higher synthesis still within the world, a dialectical process that is itself thought to be God; away with the moralism of Ritschl, finding God in the human goodness of Jesus, looking upon Jesus as the highest embodiment of human goodness and regarding that human goodness as revealing in itself the nature of God! These three great movements, say Barth and his associates (especially Brunner), are just so many efforts of man to transcend the gulf that separates him from God; they are just so many efforts to drag God down into the sphere of this world. Quite different from all such imaginings of man's heart is the living and true God. From such a God, man is never so remote as when he thinks that he has found him; religion as well as civilization comes under the same great condemnation; it is finite, not the infinite, time not eternity; it is of man, not of God. God is not another name for the totality of this world; and he is not to be found in any experience of man. He is, with respect to this world, the "completely Other," der schlechthin Andere, the One who is incommensurate with anything that can possibly enter into the life of man.

칼 바르트와 그의 동료들의 가르침은 일반적으로 “위기의 신학”이라고 불린다. “위기” 혹은 “결정”은 사람이 시간과 영원, 세계와 신 사이의 엄중한 이율배반 앞에 놓일 때에 강요된다. 이율배반은 바르티안 가르침의 뿌리이다. 이율배반의 기초에서 바르트는 신의 두려운 초월성과 인간이 살고 있는 창조된 세계와 창조주의 신비의 경계선 사이의 두려운 분리에 대한 확신이 있다. 결국 작가들은 세계 안에서 신을 찾으려고 노력한다고 말할 것이다.

[위기신학은] 슐라이어마허의 신비주의, “인간 영혼”의 한 특별한 영역에서 발생한 절대의존감정에서 신을 발견하는 것에서 벗어나, 헤겔의 지성주의에서 벗어남, 최종적이지 않는 이율배반 구조를 세우고, 여전히 세계 안에서 더 높은 종합, 그 자체로 신으로 생각되는 변증법적 과정: 리츌의 도덕주의에서 벗어남, 예수의 인간적 선함에서 신을 발견하는 것, 예수를 인간 선함의 최고 높은 구현체로 보는 것, 그 인간적 선함이 그 자체로 신의 본성을 드러내는 것으로 간주하는 것에서 벗어난 것이다.

이 세 가지 거대한 운동, 바르트와 그의 동료들(특히 브루너)은 신으로부터 분리시키려는 걸프(gulf)를 초월하려는 인간적 노력일 뿐이다. 그들은 신을 이 세상 영역으로 끌어 들이기 위해 노력한 것이다. 사람이 마음으로 상상한 신과 전혀 다른 살이있고 참된 신이 있다. 그러한 신으로부터 사람이 발견했다고 생각될만큼 멀리 떨어져 있지 않다. 문명으로서 종교는 정죄를 받았다. 그것은 무한하고 영원한 것이 아니라 시간 안에 있는 인간의 것이기 때문이다. 신은 이 세상 전체성에 형성된 다른 이름이 아니다. 그리고 신은 인간의 경험에서 발견되지 않는다. 인간의 삶에 들어갈 수 있는 어떤 것과 양립될 수 없는 존재로서 완전히 다른 일자, 절대 타자("completely Other," der schlechthin Andere)이다. * “완전한 타인”으로 번역할 수 있는데, 절대타자 Absolute Other, 독 totaliter aliter로 번역했다.

 

* A paper read to a small group of ministers in Philadelphia, April 23, 1928.

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198 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

 

 

Such is the stupendous dualism between the world and God that is at the root of the thinking of Karl Barth. But this dualism seems not to be ontological; it is not based upon any denial of the creatorship of God. On the contrary, the dualism between the world and God is conceived of as being due to sin. There we have one of the most profoundly Christian elements in the thinking of these writers. The world, they hold, has been estranged from God by the awful fact of sin. God is creator; but the creature has been estranged from him by this awful gulf. Sin is no merely individual thing; it has a cosmic significance; it determines the whole situation in which the world stands with respect to God.

칼 바르트의 사유의 뿌리는 세계과 신 사이의 거대한 이원론 체계이다. 그런데 이원론은 존재론적으로 보이지 않는다. 즉 신의 창조주됨을 부인하는 것을 기본으로 한다. 반대로 이원론은 죄의 존재로서 형성된 세계와 신의 사이의 이원론이다. 그것은 기독교 작가들의 사유에서 기독교 가장 심오한 요소이다. 그들은 죄라는 끔찍한 사실에서 신으로부터 이탈되었다고 생각한다. 죄는 단수하게 개인적 사실이 아니라 우주적 의미를 갖고 있다. 죄는 신과 관련해서 세상의 전체 상황을 결정한다.

 

As the world is now constituted, there is no possibility for the world to bridge the gulf that separates it from God. All efforts of man to bridge that gulf are only so many manifestations of sin; the very essence of sin is found in the overweening pride that leads men to think that they can by searching find out God.

세상은 현상태로 구성되어 있기 때문에 신으로부터 분리된 걸프(gulf)를 연결한 가능성이 세상에 없다. 그 사이를 연결하려는 노력은 죄의 많은 현시들 중에 하나일 뿐이다. 죄의 본질은 사람들이 신을 찾으려고 조사해서 할 수 있다는 생각으로 사람들을 인도하는 과도한 교만이다.

 

It looks, then, as though the darkness were complete — God enveloped in impenetrable mystery, man separated from God by a chasm that can never be bridged. But then the darkness is relieved by a divine and glorious light. Man can never bridge that chasm, but God has bridged it. It is impossible and inconceivable that time can have contact with eternity; that man can have communion with God; but the impossible has actually been accomplished, the inconceivable has actually been done. Barth is never tired of ringing the changes upon this paradox. The impossible has become a fact. It has become a fact by the act of God and God alone. That act of God is not to be thought of under the mere category of cause; it is not to be thought of as merely the sowing of a new seed in humanity, which has flowered into the glories of historic Christendom. Such merely biological analogies will not do. God has not dealt with us in any such impersonal fashion; he has come to us not in the gift of a new impulse but in a true communication addressed to responsible beings; he has come to us not in a feeling or in an experience, but in his Word. That Word of God is not something that grows out of the life of man; psychology can never reveal it; it has come senkrecht von oben, directly from above. It is not an idea, but "revelation.“ * the darkness(암흑성)은 인간의 능력으로 꿰뚫을 수 없는 단계. 성경 ”흑암 중에 거하시는 하나님“(출 20장, 민 9장, 시 91편)을 철학화한 현대신학 개념이다.

그것은 마치 완전한 암흑성처럼 보인다. 즉 신은 꿰뚫을 수 없는 신비에 싸여 있고, 인간은 결코 다리로 연결할 수 없는 틈으로 신으로부터 분리되어 있다. 그런데 이 암흑성은 신적이고 영광스러운 빛에 의해서 해소된다. 인간은 결코 그 틈을 메울 수 없지만 신이 그것을 연결할 수 있다. 시간과 영원성이 접촉할 수 있는 것, 인간과 신이 교감할 수 있는 것은 불가능한데 실제로 이루어지는 불가능과 상상할 수 없는 일이 현실화가 되었다. 바르트는 이 역설을 가져오는 시도를 결코 멈추지 않는다. 불가능은 사실이 된다. 신과 신의 행동에 의해서만 사실이 된다. 신의 행동은 단순한 원인의 범주에서 생각되어서는 안 된다. 역사적인 기독교의 영광으로 흘러 들어간 인류에게 새로운 씨앗이 뿌려진 것으로 생각되어서는 안 된다. 단순한 생물학적 유사성으로 되는 것이 아니다. 신은 인간을 비인격적 방식으로 취급하지 않는다. 신은 새로운 충동의 선물이 아니라 책임있는 존재로 참 교제를 위해 왔다. 신은 감정이나 경험이으로 온 것이 아니라 말씀으로 왔다. 신의 말씀은 인간 생활을 떠나 성장하는 것이 아니다. 심리학은 말씀을 계시할 수 없다. 신의 말씀은 수직적으로 위에서 온 것이다. 그것은 개념이 아니라 계시이다.

 

KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS" 199

 

By this revelation from God the helplessness, the sinfulness, the awful guilt of man are made clear; in fact a man never truly knows the guilt of sin until the message of salvation is already knocking at the door of his soul. The fate of the sinner is to be contented in his sin, to hope by his relative goodness to attain unto God. But then comes God's Word. It is a message of wrath. We are far removed here from the Ritschlian notion that God is only love, and that salvation consists in destroying in our minds the delusion of God's anger. Little difficulty have Barth and his associates in showing that the wrath of God is at the very center of the Bible and of all true Christian teaching. That wrath is concealed from the men of the world, but when God's Word comes to a man then wrath is revealed.

 

Thus the Word of God, according to Barth and his associates, brings in

a complete negation of all the achievements of man, a complete negation

of human wisdom, human feeling, human goodness, human religion. So

long as a man defends these things he is still in rebellion against God. But

when his last defenses are broken down, when he knows that he is guilty and

lost, when he utters over against all civilization, all religion, all feeling, all

willing, all thinking, an utterly despairing "No," when he acquiesces in the

terrible judgment of God, then indeed the Word of God has come nigh to him.

And that word is not only a word of condemnation: it is also a word of

grace. The wonder has been accomplished. God has bridged the impassible

chasm; we could never go to him, but he has come to us.

 

He has come to us, say these writers, in the person of Jesus Christ. It is

inconceivable, indeed, that God should come in the flesh. It would not be

inconceivable if God were what he is thought to be in the immanence

philosophy of modern times; on such a view the incarnation becomes

merely the highest illustration of a permanent truth that God and man are

one. Very different is the view of Brunner and of Karl Barth. To them the

incarnation is the wonder of wonders. How can the infinite thus condescend to

the finite; how can eternity thus enter into time? How can God become man?

These questions, according to Barth and his associates, are unanswerable; the incarnation can never be comprehended or conceived. Never can

we support by any argument this inconceivable, this stupendous Word of

God. What then can we do? We can only receive it by faith.

 

And faith itself is no work of man; it is the work of God. God alone can

speak this Word, and God alone can hear. God can hear in the Person of his Holy Spirit, who returns the answer of faith in the human heart to the

Word which has been spoken by God.

 

200 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

 

So we have, in the Dogmatik, the latest book of Karl Barth, a doctrine of

the Trinity. It is hardly the doctrine that has been held by the historic

church. But I do not think that it is merely a modal Trinity; certainly it is

not a Trinity that is found only in the operations of God within this world.

Rather, God has revealed to the eye of faith something of the eternal mystery of his Being.

 

So God's Word, according to Barth and Brunner, has come to man.

When it comes, it puts man at the place of decision. Here we have the

"crisis" that gives "the theology of crisis" its name. Time or eternity; the

world or God; rebellion or obedience? Faith is the answer to that stupendous challenge, which God brings to man.

 

But when the answer of faith is given, it is no merely static condition in

which the redeemed man stands. We live in this world by faith, not yet by

sight. We have not yet entered into eternity; we are living still "between the

aeons," zwischen den Reiten, between eternity and time. And so our theology

must be expressed in questions, in antinomies, in paradoxes. There we have

the strange "dialectic" of Karl Barth. Do not ask me to explain it. I cannot

explain it; for I should find it difficult to explain what I do not understand.

 

But that dialectic does not seem to mean, at any rate, that the church,

according to Barth, has no positive message. On the contrary she has a

message, that she derives solely from the Scriptures of the Old and New

Testaments, not (God forbid) the Scriptures as a record of human experience, but the Scriptures as containing the Word of God. By the Scriptures

all preaching must be tested—the church teaching on the basis of the

Scriptures, and the Scriptures bringing a revelation from God. There we

have the links that unite us with God. There is no immediacy here, no

mysticism, but God speaks to us through his Word, and as the substance of

his Word the Logos, Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.

 

This teaching of Barth and his associates, which we have just tried to

outline, sounds—much of it, at least—like a simple return to evangelical

Christianity. What is there new in most of what we have just said? The

living and Holy God, man lost in sin, God's grace in the gift of Jesus Christ

his Son, faith as itself the gift of God—it sounds like John Bunyan and John

Calvin and the Shorter Catechism and the Reformed Faith. And indeed

Barth does regard himself as a follower of Calvin and a follower of the

apostle Paul. It is no wonder that malicious tongues have uttered against

the Barthian school a charge, the most insulting that could possibly be

uttered against a modern German, the charge that their teaching is nothing

but "orthodoxy" after all.

 

That charge of orthodoxy is denied by these writers in the most indignant

way. What is the substance of their defense? How do they differ from what

we on our part have been accustomed to think of as the teaching of the

historic church?

 

KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS" 201

 

They differ, I think (if we may ignore details and come at once to the

center of things)—they differ in their epistemology, and they differ in their

attitude toward the plain historical information that the Bible contains.

 

On the former point I speak with much hesitation; for I am not at all

certain that I understand what the Barthian position is. There is certainly

a large measure of agreement, regarding the knowledge that is at the basis

of Christianity, between us who are not ashamed of being "orthodox," who

are not ashamed of trying, however unworthily, to practice that "straight

thinking" which orthodoxy, in accordance with the etymology of the word,

involves—there is a large measure of agreement between us on the one

hand and these denouncers of orthodoxy on the other.

 

Barth and Brunner, for one thing, have restored theology to something

like the place of real dignity which we think it can rightfully claim. They

have made short work of the notion that what is primary is a religious

experience that clothes itself indifferently in various thought-forms to suit

the intellectual needs of different generations. It is true, Barth regards the

function of theology as being critical merely; he regards theology as not

dealing directly with God but as protecting the human proclamation of the

Word of God from the introduction of matters extraneous or hostile to the

Word itself. Nevertheless the actual operation of Barthian teaching is to

restore theology to something more like its rightful place: the Word of God

is prior to Christian experience, not identical with it or subsequent with it,

and theology deals not with Christian experience but with the proclamation of the Word.

 

This attitude toward theology, or rather this attitude toward the divine

revelation with which ultimately theology is concerned, has as its corollary

an attitude toward differences of opinion in the doctrinal sphere which is

very different from the prevailing attitude today. There could be no more

salutary reading for the modern church than the work of Brunner on ' 'Mysticism and the Word" (Die Mystik und das Wort), in the course of which he

shows how inevitably the boundless tolerance and syncretism of the modern

religious world grows out of the mysticism of Schleiermacher which finds

God in an experience of the human soul, and how totally contrary such

tolerance and syncretism are to the very roots of the Christian faith. I wish

also that the leaders of our church would peruse the noble essay of Karl

Barth, which he submitted in an English form, I think, to the Cardiff

Conference of the Alliance of Churches Holding the Reformed System, on

the question whether the formation of a common creed for the Reformed

Churches is at present possible or desirable—an essay in which he contrasts

this modern business of forming a creed for mere purposes of convenience,

merely with the notion that it is convenient for various ecclesiastical bodies

to come together and that convention requires that a common church

should have a common creed—in which he contrasts this whole business

with the true creeds of the church which were born in agony and conflict,

when the church felt compelled to set forth God's truth in the face of the error that was rampant in the world. Certainly most persons who talk so

lightly about creedal statement today have not the slightest inkling of what

a creed really is; and it would be well for them if they would listen to Karl

Barth.

 

202 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

 

 

But despite all that, despite the fact that this new teaching in practice

involves a mighty reaction against the anti-intellectualism of the modern

church, I cannot be quite sure that the knowledge of God which it sets forth

is, in theory at least, real knowledge at all. The Word of God can be

received, Barth says, only by faith; it cannot possibly be supported by

argument; apologetics must be altogether eschewed; argue in defense of the

truth of God's Word, and you show that the Word has not really come to

you; the Word of God will brook no human advocate; faith is distinct from

all reasoning; God speaks, and that is all. A great truth certainly underlies

such an attitude. It is certainly true that argument alone never made a man

a Christian; there must be a mysterious act of the Spirit of God; God's

message must be brought home to a man by God himself; "ye must be born

again." But because argument is insufficient, it does not follow that it is

unnecessary; and as a matter of fact it is God's will that his Word should

be so presented to men that acceptance of it shall be a profoundly reasonable thing. What the Holy Spirit does is not to render unnecessary the gift

of reason; but to free reason from the effects of sin and enable a man again

to see clearly. We could never indeed reason out the truth of the things that

God has told us in his Word, but to accept it as God's Word is not contrary

to reason but on the contrary is possible only when reason, by the act of

God's Spirit, ceases to be blinded by sin.

 

I have an uneasy feeling, therefore, with regard to the Barthian epistemologa Does Barth mean that the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, and

the doctrine that sets forth the redeeming work of Christ, are not true until

they are accepted in faith, and that they are true only to the man who thus

accepts them? Does he do away with the objectivity of truth; does he fall

back at last into that subjectivity against which his whole teaching starts

out to be a mighty protest? I am not sure that such is his meaning. But there

is a side of his teaching that might seem to bring us near to such an

epistemological abyss. What, moreover, do the Barthians mean by "creation," for example, and by "sin"? One cannot escape the impression that

a similarity of terminology in these writers, as over against historic Christianity, makes a very profound difference of view.

 

My objection becomes acute when we come to the second point that I

mentioned, when we come to the attitude ofBarthand his associates toward

the historical information that the Bible contains.

 

We have seen that the writers of the Barthian school regard Jesus of

Nazareth as the incarnate Son of God. Brunner in particular in his notable

book "The Mediator" (Der Mittler) is concerned to set forth the sheer, the

absolute, uniqueness of Jesus. Not only, Brunner says, is there as a matter

of fact only one Mediator between God and man, but in the very nature of the case there could be only one, and that one is Jesus Christ. Surely, we

might say, holding such a view of Jesus as that the Barthian writers must

join issue sharply with the historical criticism of the present day. But that

is not at all the case. Indeed, Rudolf Bultmann, who represents the very

extreme of skepticism in the historical sphere, who holds that our sources

of historical information are so uncertain as to prevent us from any certain

knowledge of what sort of person Jesus was—Rudolf Bultmann is a contributor to the journal ^wischen den feiten and is apparently accepted by Barth

as an orthodox member of the school! Thus the Barthian writers try to

make Christian faith quite independent of the findings of scientific history

with regard to the life of Christ.

 

KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS" 203

 

 

That effort might be understood in various ways. It might be held, for

example, that although scientific history can never establish the facts about

Jesus, particularly the fact of the empty tomb, yet faith can do so. If that

understanding were correct, then the negative criticism of Bultmann, to

which he subjects the NT documents, would merely be a tour defirce to show

how, when history proceeds on naturalistic principles, and with aloofness of

the historian from this subject-matter, it can never establish the facts upon

which Christianity is based. Thus scientific history would be discredited

simply in order to leave a clear field for faith. We should then still have the

facts that are set forth in the NT, but these facts established by a more

immediate method than the historical evidence in the ordinary sense can

afford. But I fear that no such thing as that is meant. Certainly it is not

meant by Bultmann, and probably is not meant by Barth. I fear that the

real meaning is that we can hear the Word of God in the NT, as addressed

to our own soul, no matter what the facts about Jesus of Nazareth were.

Thus a consistent Barthian might even not be disturbed if scientific history

should prove that Jesus of Nazareth had committed, for example, positively

immoral acts; Jesus, on Barthian principles, might still bring to us the Word

of God, the great central message of justification by faith, no matter what

sort of person he was according to the flesh. I cannot think that all the

writers of the school would push consistency so far; Brunner, for example,

would, if I understand aright, repudiate such a view. But if so, then Christian faith cannot be indifferent to the findings of historical criticism after

all. Certainly if it is indifferent, it cannot be true to the NT. The NT does,

indeed, present a message of God to the individual soul. But that message

contains the homely testimony of men and women who saw certain things

in the external world; it contains, for example, the testimony of women who

went early to the sepulchre and repeated what they there had seen and

heard. We cannot possibly evade the question whether that testimony is

true or false.

 

The truth is that the radicalism of Barth and Brunner errs by not being

radical enough. These men have broken with the whole development of

theology since Schleiermacher and with the entire immanence philosophy

upon which it is based. That is a notable and courageous act. It may prove to have introduced a new era in the history of the church. But they must

carry their radicalism a step further if what they have done is to be permanent; they must break not only with the immanence philosophy of the past

century, but also with the application ofthat immanence philosophy to the

historical problem that the NT presents. And why not? I do not wonder at

it, if the Barthians are impressed by the mighty edifice of modern negative

criticism in the NT field. I do not wonder, if they desire to avoid attacking

such a fortress. But attack it I think they must if they are really to proclaim

the Word of God to a lost and dying world. And why should they fear?

Modern skepticism is, indeed, imposing, as it is applied to the NT field. But

it may fall away like a house of cards if once its presuppositions are attacked.

And its presuppositions are attacked, and attacked in the very citadel, by

the assault of Barth and Brunner upon the evolutionary philosophy of

Schleiermacher and his successors. What we need is a more consistent

Barthian than Barth; we need a man who will approach the NT documents

with presuppositions that are true instead of false, with presuppositions that

will enable him to accept at its face value the testimony of salvation that

the NT contains.

 

204 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

 

 

But as it is, the attitude of Barth and his associates toward historical

criticism constitutes a deadly weakness of the school. These writers are

bringing to us the Word of God; but they are trying to enable us to accept

it on entirely too easy terms. Much more radical still must be our break

with the philosophy that would prevent us from finding in the midst of

human history, in the coming and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a

creative act of God.

 

I have also another word of criticism that is intimately connected with

the one that I have just ventured to express. It concerns the attitude of

Barthand his associates toward the detailed account of the words and deeds

of Jesus that the Gospels contain. With much in that attitude I have the

warmest sympathy. I agree fully with Barth and Brunner in holding that

what is primary in the NT account of Jesus is not his teaching or his

example but his redeeming work. I agree fully with the emphasis that they

place upon the cross and resurrection of Christ (though what they mean by

the resurrection I do not quite know) as distinguished from his words and

deeds in Galilee. I rejoice with all my heart in their rejection of the modern

notion that a mere contemplation of the character of the man Jesus will

wipe away the guilt of sin or bring a man into communion with God; I

rejoice in their final rejection of "the liberal Jesus." That Jesus never existed upon this earth, and if he did exist, he could not bring salvation to the

souls of men. It is profoundly true, as these writers hold, that a man who

merely studies the life of Christ as a record of a man who lived long ago is

without real understanding even for the simplest things which according to

the Synoptic record Jesus said and did. Such knowledge is superficial indeed; it involves knowing Jesus only according to the flesh. A man who

knows Jesus only so, knows him really not at all. Only in the light of the cross can the Sermon on the Mount be truly understood. The true Jesus

everywhere, even in his simplest acts, is the divine Logos who came into this

world for the redemption of men.

 

KARL BARTH AND 'THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS" 205

 

 

But while all that is true, it does not follow that the Christian can be

indifferent to the details of what Jesus said and did. In their effort to make

the Christian message independent of historical criticism, one has the disturbing feeling that Barthand his associates are depriving the church of one

of its most precious possessions—the concrete picture of Jesus of Nazareth

as he walked and talked upon this earth. These writers insist indeed upon

the reality of the incarnation; it is important to them that Jesus lived in this

world. But what sort of person he was when he was here—that question at

times seems, in the logic of their view, to be of no concern. They speak of

the offense of Jesus' human life; it was, they say, such as to conceal from the

unredeemed the fact that Jesus was truly the Word of God. But is that

altogether true to NT teaching? Does not the NT speak also of the glory of

the incarnate Word that was manifested here upon earth? "The Word was

made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of

the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." There have been

many efforts to cut Christianity loose from the concrete picture of Jesus of

Nazareth that is contained in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Is the

Barthian movement only another such effort? I am not quite sure that it

really is. I am not inclined hastily to apply the term "Gnosticism" to a

teaching that in some respects seems to me to be a recovery of precious

truth. But unquestionably there is a danger here. In their effort to avoid a

clash with naturalistic criticism these teachers must not be allowed to deprive us of the Jesus whom we love, the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus who

spake words such as never man spake, the Jesus who went about doing good.

 

Only, let us not take that Jesus merely as one who lived long ago; let us

not be deaf to the dreadful immediacy of his claim upon us; let us not hide

ourselves from him by a sentimental contemplation of events of the first

century; let us rather say here and now, as in a dread crisis from which we

cannot escape, as though this moment were our last, as being indeed between time and eternity, between God and the abyss—let us say to Jesus

here and now: "My Lord, I have heard thy voice to me." That much at

least we can learn from Karl Barth.

 

Appendixl

 

Into that cold world of scientific detachment there has come in recent

years in Germany the imperious tones of a new message—a new message

that addresses itself to the soul of every man. It is the message of Karl Barth

and Thurneysen and Gogarten and Brunner and other exponents of the

1

[Editor's note: For our readers' interest, we include here an excerpt from Machen's "Forty

Years of New Testament Research," Union Seminary Review 40 (1929) 9-11.]

206 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

so-called ''theology of crisis." Barth's famous commentary on Romans is a

commentary of a kind strange to the modern world. Not the message of

Romans to men of long ago, but its message to men of today, is the subject

of this strange exposition of the Apostle's words. Many readers hold up their

hands in horror. The long battle for grammatico-historical exegesis, they

say, seems to have been fought in vain; we are sinking back into the "pneumatic exegesis" dear to allegorizers of ages long gone by. For such criticism

we are not without sympathy. The "Epistle to the Romans" of Karl Barth

is certainly a very strange book, and the Apostle Paul would probably be

amazed if he could know that it purports to be an exposition of what he

wrote regarding the way of salvation to the Roman Church. But as over

against his critics Barth has undoubtedly a certain measure of right on his

side. A grammatico-historical exegesis so perverted as to involve aloofness

of the exegete from his subject-matter has given us at the most but an

external and mechanical comprehension of what the Bible says. Only the

man who comes to the Bible with the despairing question of his own soul,

with the question, "What shall I do to be saved?" can really understand the

Word of God. That much insight at least is conveyed by the strange commentary of Karl Barth.

 

It would indeed be a great mistake to regard the Barthian teaching as a

real return to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are, indeed, in it

profoundly evangelical elements. The awful transcendence of God, as over

against the pantheizing teaching of Schleiermacher and of great sections of

the modern church, the stupendous gulf between the world and God that

is found in sin, the necessity and the all-sufficiency of divine grace, the

rejection, as profoundly un-Christian, of the boundless modern "tolerance"

and indifference in the religious sphere, the necessity above all of hearkening not to human experience but to God's Word—these are truly Christian convictions in the teaching of Brunner and Barth. But on the other side

is to be put the strange epistemology of the Barthian school, which makes

us wonder whether these men are not in danger of falling into a skepticism

even more complete than that against which they are protesting in the

modern world, and the strange indifference to questions of literary and

historical criticism with regard to Jesus Christ, an indifference so great that

even Bultmann, with his extreme skepticism in the historical sphere, can

apparently be regarded as a real member of the Barthian school.

 

What can be said at any rate is that the Barthian movement, with the

remarkable influence that it is attaining among the youth of Germany, has

at least thrown the religious world into a state of flux. That fact is only one

indication more of what we have already observed—that after the rejection

of the New Testament account of the origin of Christianity modern naturalistic historians have not yet been able to put anything in its place. The most

imposing effort in this direction, perhaps, was the "Liberal Jesus" of twentyfive or so years ago. But confidence in that reconstruction has today been

undermined. It looks, therefore, as though modern naturalistic criticism of the New Testament were on the verge of bankruptcy. The Christian religion

is certainly an important historical phenomenon. How did it come into

being? The New Testament has a definite answer to that question. Christianity, according to the New Testament, is based upon the supernatural

person of Jesus Christ. But if that answer is to be rejected, what is to be

substituted for it? Modern naturalistic criticism has not been able to agree

upon any answer.

 

KARL BARTH AND "THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS" 207