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Reconciled Humanity

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Chapter One

Aim

This book is an attempt to show how vital a dialogue partner Barth is for contemporary theology. The main issues I will investigate in this book are those of revelation and atonement. How do we use and refer to revelation today—and what do we mean when we say that Jesus died for the sake of the human race? I have not only chosen these two subjects because they are important in understanding the theology of Barth, but also because they are vital for understanding the scope and the challenge for theology today.

The perception of revelation relates first and foremost to the perception of Scripture: How, at one and the same time, do we claim that the Bible is the Word of God and that the Bible is composed of human words about God? This double statement is to be read as an attempt to avoid the two pitfalls of theology today: fundamentalism and relativism. Fundamentalism claims that the authority of the Bible is based on a literal understanding of the Bible, where the Bible is read as the answer to all our questions in a way that does not take its own context and historical embeddedness into account. This approach can be made in more or less sophisticated ways. One common feature is that interpretation is abandoned, or when allowed, is really used as a synonym for translation. The question of interpretation is then narrowed down to a question of translating the message of there and then, to a message that can be understood here and now. Translation regards form, not content. Thus, the message is the same, from eternity to eternity. No space is allowed for changes, either in the message or in God. Relativism states, on the other hand, that no religion can claim to be the true religion. Such a claim is looked upon as a variety of imperialism. Instead the buzzword is tolerance. The distinction between true and false is no longer looked at from the perspective of essence or reference; instead the touchstone is whether it functions or not. If it works, it is truth; if not, it is false. The inherent truth-claim of the Bible (and any other holy scripture) is thereby reduced to a question for the individual participant: Does he or she find comfort in the religion or not? Is Barth's dialectic between the perception of the Bible as the Word of God and the Bible as human words about God a practicable road between the abysses of fundamentalism and relativism? Does Barth's perception of the revelation avoid too heavy an emphasis on the literal content of the Bible?

The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is at the very center of Barth's theology—both noetically and ontologically. God is both the subject and the object of revelation. The emphasis on this double structure is well known and thoroughly described in several analyses. Less known is the fact that Barth's theology of revelation includes a positive understanding of the human being's experience of revelation. Revelation has to have an actual impact, which means that the reality of revelation cannot be fully explored with a description of the dialectic between God as both subject and object. This remains within the objective aspects of revelation. In my analysis I will therefore focus on a description of what I define as the subjective aspects of revelation. Revelation must be experienced as such to have an impact on the individual, which again implies that revelation includes involvement of the self. One cannot remain neutral toward the revealed revelation. If that is the case, nothing has been revealed. Barth's structural understanding of revelation here is very close to the structure of the encounter within the I-Thou philosophy, which inspired Barth more than he himself gives away in the Church Dogmatics. In fact, it seems as if this is mere coincidence. However, by means of an investigation of Barth's lecture manuscript on anthropology from 1943/44, I will demonstrate the extent to which he is acquainted with Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue. One can only guess why he does not want to admit this heritage in CD.

Barth's teaching of the atonement is at one and the same time in opposition to a traditional conservative understanding of the death of Jesus as the necessary sacrifice to God, and a modern liberal theology where God has nothing to do with the death of Jesus (pure coincidence). Neither of the two is able to deal with the importance and the meaning of the death of Jesus in an adequate way that gives a meaningful answer to the questions: Why did he die? Did he have to die?

These two questions entail a whole range of sub-questions that all relate to the relation between God the Father and Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man. Did Jesus have to die to satisfy God? Was Jesus' death the necessary sacrifice that enables God to live out his love for human beings? How are the will of Jesus and the will of God related? Does the death of Jesus have any impact on God himself? Is it only the situation of the human being which is changed in the atonement, or is it also the situation of God? Has God bound himself to human beings in the atonement so that God no longer can be God without humanity? Or is it only human beings who are tied to God? Asking these questions helps examine the tradition in a positive way—not just for the sake of confirming or rejecting it, but also for the sake of exploring new theological insights in discussion with the tradition.

Barth's teaching of the atonement seems at first glance very close to that of Anselm, both in language and structure. Not only do they both describe God as both the subject and the object of the atonement, but they also use juridical metaphors to describe the content of Jesus' death. But does Barth really agree with Anselm on the topic of atonement? No: despite the fact that Barth maintains the structure of God as both the subject and object in the atonement, he does not describe the death of Jesus as a necessary sacrifice with the aim of overcoming an internal conflict in God between his righteousness and mercy. Further, a major difference consists in the way Barth interrelates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. None of them can be understood separately. Barth hereby overrules the well-known typology of Gustaf Aulén, who differentiates among the objective, the subjective, and the classical teaching of the doctrine of atonement. The first focuses on the death of Jesus Christ, the second on the life of Jesus Christ, and the third on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

From the perspective of the liturgical cycle, Barth's teaching of the atonement can be read as an attempt to describe the connection between Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Day. The form and content of the liturgy differs radically on each of these days. Each service must dwell with the particular issues of the specific Holy Day. Do we join the disciples celebrating the Passover with Jesus, do we stand at the back of the crowd looking at our Master hanging on the cross, judged to death for blasphemy, or do we accompany him, without knowing it, on the way to Emmaus? Nevertheless, each of the sermons must be interrelated with the other two Holy Days to be an Easter Sermon.

Barth's teaching of the atonement in CD IV is a major contribution to a theological re-reflection on the meaning and importance of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, as he develops his teaching of the atonement in a dialectical perception of what I will define as a teaching of the atonement from both above and below. Jesus' death on the cross can be read as both God's judgment of the human being and the human being's judgment of God. The judgment of God entails both wrath and punishment, but how are wrath and punishment to be interpreted? In this book I will argue that the key to understanding the wrath and punishment of God is Jesus' own cry on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The punishment and the wrath of God are understood here as the absence of God that Jesus experiences on the cross. But Jesus' own experience of God-forsakenness is not identical with God-abandonment. Jesus was resurrected on the third day. Thus, God did not forsake Jesus, but God did absorb Jesus' experience of finitude and despair on the cross. God can suffer without emptying himself out on the cross. In the words of Barth: "God gives Himself to human beings without giving Himself away." On this topic Barth is debating with the kenosis-theology of his time, which, according to Barth, pays a price too high, as they in their emphasis on kenosis are rejecting the absolute difference between God and the human being. To focus too much on the weakness of God is just another subtle way of human projection. The suffering of Christ must be interpreted in Trinitarian terms if it is not to lead to the death of God.

In this book I will favor Barth's perception of the atonement as allowing space for a dynamic understanding of God, where God himself is changed due to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not only due to his emphasis on the relation between the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but also to his reinterpretation of Chalcedonian Christology, where the relation between the Father and the Son is essential. I am well aware that on this point I am reading Barth against Barth, so to speak, as Barth himself would reject the view that God is changed by the incarnation. My attempt to read Barth against Barth includes a critique of the way Barth interrelates his reference to the eternal will of God and the absolute freedom of God. According to Barth, God should not be subjected to any kind of necessity (intrinsic or extrinsic). At times Barth stresses this point so heavily that he states that God could have acted otherwise from the very beginning. God would still have been a loving and merciful God, even if he had not created the world, or the human being in the center of the world. God is in need of neither the world nor humanity. The odd logic seems to be: the more uncertainty, the more grace. The human being is hereby left in what can at best be defined as a kind of "flashback fear." If God could have acted otherwise, can he still do so now, despite the fact that he has created the world, and human beings in its center? But this dead end is not, as I will demonstrate, a necessary consequence of Barth's emphasis on the eternal will of God.

Finally, one more question needs to be addressed. Is Barth an exponent of the idea of apokatastasis? He would himself have denied it. However, in the Humanity of God Barth asks rhetorically if his theology ends up with universalism. He does not fully answer this question, either negatively or positively. Instead he urges that the matter should be reconsidered under the rubric: Why could it not be so? I hope to demonstrate how it is possible to read Barth as a universalistic thinker. Barth is at this point in conflict with Luther and Calvin, who both teach the double outcome. Barth remains within the Reformed tradition insofar as he keeps the focus on a connection between a double predestination and a double outcome. But he nevertheless turns this doctrinal teaching upside down, as he claims that God has elected all human beings in Jesus Christ. In Christ both the election and the reprobation of all people have taken place substitutionally. Thus a twofold election has taken place in Christ. The election is no longer individualized, so that some are elected to eternal salvation, others to eternal reprobation. The double outcome is then no longer referring to a spatial and chronological separation between salvation and damnation. Resurrection is salvation. It is not a neutral event that can lead to either salvation or damnation.

Reading Strategy

Karl Barth's CD is an astonishing and huge work that can only provoke respect. To read it is to enter into a highly complex and mature way of thinking, where the reader (whether inclined to be sympathetic or antipathetic to the whole theological project as such) is astonished by the variety and the mutual coherence of the dogmatic proposals at issue. Barth's proposal is at one and the same time both highly sophisticated and quite simple. It is simple in the way the whole CD can be read as an exposition of the faith claim: "Jesus loves you" (a claim that in the hands of most others would have been turned into a far-too-sweet, possessive, and importunate statement). It is complex in the way Barth changes between an unproblematic use of and reference to the tradition (as if the question of modernity has not touched him at all), and, at places, a sweeping critique of the tradition (forced by the insights of modernity). The question of modernity often lies beneath his use, rejection, interpretation, and reinterpretation of the tradition. However, in the CD Barth very seldom states explicitly who he is in discussion with, who inspires him, or who he is rejecting on a particular matter. It seems as if he would claim that the matter in itself is what matters, and not so much who your discussion partners are. Instead, it is all turned into one big Summa, where all the themes are mutually interwoven. The same topics are taken into consideration at several places under various headings.

Reading the CD can be compared to the effort of reading a hiking map. The same mountain-massif is followed for a long time, but it nevertheless looks different every time you turn a corner, walk up a hill, or descend a slope. The map, with its signs and contours, has to be read carefully in order to establish the inner connection between all these signs and contours, and the reality to which they refer. The task is at one and the same time to establish an overall view of the landscape and to become confident about the actual part of the track you are on. The attempt to establish an overall view and the attempt to make a detailed analysis must at all times relate to each other. If not, you will surely lose your bearings, with one inevitable result: being lost!

The same kind of reading strategy will be used in my attempt to read the CD. The overall interconnection between the various dogmatic themes has to be taken into account if one is to do justice to Barth's work. Another reason why the CD will be read in big stretches and not by the help of the index (à la "What does Barth say about so and so?") is that the CD in many ways—especially Volume IV, The Doctrine of Reconciliation—can be claimed to be written as a narrative dogmatic. In CD IV the story of God's entering into the world is told. Further, Barth seems more and more to develop a narrative reading of the Bible in the way he uses and analyzes the Bible. This is especially seen in his many excursuses, where the biblical reasoning for his dogmatic statements is given. Obviously it is not enough to establish the overall view. One also has to make some detailed analysis of carefully selected text-excerpts from the CD. If not, the interpretation will inevitably end up doing nothing more than repeating Barth's own favorite phrases.

I will opt here for a non-apologetic and constructive approach to the work of Barth. This will be most evident in the second part of my study, dealing with Christology and atonement, where I will investigate whether Barth's teaching of the atonement can be opened up with the help of René Girard's social-anthropology. With this constructive way of interpreting Barth, I will aim at a reading between two typical reading strategies:

(1) A closed, internal reading that stays within Barth's own universe. The main subject here is the dogmatic content. Such a reading might be very helpful in understanding the depth of Barth's theology, but it seems very often to be either unable or perhaps just uninterested in establishing a dialogue between Barth's theology and the challenges facing theology today. Of course, this apologetic and internal approach could be defended by the conviction that the solution of today's theological challenges should be found in a return to the theology of Barth.

(2) A reading that is mainly interested in the methodology of Barth's dialectical theology. This is often combined with an approach from the outside. The dogmatic content is here more or less neglected. However, if this whole exercise is limited to a structural comparison, the result of the whole analysis is already given in establishing the precondition for the comparison.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Reconciled Humanity by Hans Vium Mikkelsen Copyright © 2010 by Hans Vium Mikkelsen. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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