Crisis and Reorientation: Karl Barth’s Römerbrief in the Cultural and Intellectual Context of Post WWI Europe 3031276760, 9783031276767

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Crisis and Reorientation Karl Barth’s Römerbrief in the Cultural and Intellectual Context of Post WWI Europe Edited by Christine Svinth-Værge Põder · Sigurd Baark

Crisis and Reorientation

Christine Svinth-Værge Põder Sigurd Baark Editors

Crisis and Reorientation Karl Barth’s Römerbrief in the Cultural and Intellectual Context of Post WWI Europe

Editors Christine Svinth-Værge Põder Section of Systematic Theology Faculty of Theology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Sigurd Baark Section of Systematic Theology Faculty of Theology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-031-27676-7    ISBN 978-3-031-27677-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Maram_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface and Acknowledgements

We compiled this volume to celebrate the centenary of the influential second edition of Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans. It has been the intention of the editors also to facilitate an interdisciplinary study of a work of theology that transcends purely theological interpretation and to present a picture of the book’s cultural reception, political intervention, and intellectual impact. Our purpose was to challenge what has been termed “secularization bias” in modern intellectual history, an unfortunate turn of thought that confines theology to a specific compartment of contemporary thought. It is our hope that this volume will find its way to scholars, students, and others who are interested both in Karl Barth’s theology and in intellectual and cultural movements of the twentieth century—as well as of today: challenging compartmentalization also means challenging the confinement of past endeavours to the past and asking how they may be relevant today. The project commenced with an international and interdisciplinary workshop, which was conducted at the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen in October 2021, and in which the contributors of the book’s chapters participated. The workshop took place partly in hybrid mode as COVID-19 infection numbers were rising again in Europe; nevertheless, the workshop became an occasion for fruitful interactions and discussions that opened new perspectives, enriching the participants’ understanding of Barth’s work. We are grateful to the Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES) at the University of Copenhagen for supporting this event financially, to Tine Reeh for her feedback on the project, and to the Faculty of Theology for practical support. We are grateful as well to William v

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E. Barnett for providing his editing services for several of the contributions. Finally, we are grateful to our editor at Palgrave Macmillan, Amy Invernizzi, for her support and interest in the project. Copenhagen, Denmark



Christine Svinth-Værge Põder Sigurd Baark

Contents

1 Crisis  and Reorientation: Introduction  1 Sigurd Baark and Christine Svinth-Værge Põder Part I  The Weimar Era as Context of Barth’s Römerbrief  13 2 Karl  Barth’s Performative Theology: Context and Rhetoric in Der Römerbrief 1922 15 Ola Sigurdson 3 “As  a Tangent Touching a Circle”: Karl Barth and Dialectical Theologians Rethinking Time After 1918 35 Liisi Keedus 4 Prophecy  as a Political-Theological Category in Barth’s Römerbrief 59 Christine Svinth-Værge Põder

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Contents

Part II Der Römerbrief as Mediator of Currents and Countercurrents  81 5 From  Answers to Questions: Barth and Thurneysen on Dostoevsky 83 Sigurd Baark 6 The  Positive Role of Culture in Barth and Tillich’s Discussion of the Paradox in 1923101 Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen 7 An  Apocalyptic Tone: Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief Between Neo-Kantian and Hermeneutic Paradigms of Orientation123 Carsten Pallesen 8 Revisiting  the Crisis Theology of Karl Barth in Light of Søren Kierkegaard in a New Time of Crisis153 Anne Louise Nielsen Part III Crisis and Reorientation: Cultural and Political Impact, Displacements and New Trajectories 179 9 The  Voice of the Preacher: Literary and Rhetorical Aspects of Der Römerbrief181 Håkan Möller 10 A  Literary Reception of Karl Barth’s Römerbrief: On Barthianism in John Updike’s Roger’s Version195 Bent Flemming Nielsen

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11 “Theology  After Gulag, Bucha, and Beyond”: How Can Karl Barth’s Theology Contribute to Reorientation in the Contemporary European Crisis? A Post-Soviet Case215 Katya Tolstaya Author Index249 Subject Index255

Notes on Contributors

Sigurd Baark  is an associate research fellow in the Section of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His fields of research are the theology of Karl Barth and German idealism, particularly the philosophy of Hegel, as well as the mediaeval scholastics. Apart from his doctoral thesis, he is the author of The Affirmations of Reason: On Karl Barth’s Speculative Theology. He has taught courses in theology in Beirut, Greenland, and Copenhagen. Liisi  Keedus is Professor of Political Philosophy in the School of Humanities at the University of Tallinn, Estonia. She has worked on twentieth-century German-­Jewish political thinkers; Weimar social, legal, and humanist thought; historicism; intellectual history in Eastern and Central Europe; as well as on the making of the “new political science” in postWorld War II America. She is presently heading an ERC Starting Grant project, entitled “‘Between the Times’: Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Interwar Europe.” Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen  is a PhD student in the Section of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, with the project “Crisis as Change: An Existential Investigation of Experiences at Home During the 2020s Corona Pandemic.” Her research uses the theological vocabulary of Paul Tillich, and the concept of “kairos” in particular, to analyse and mediate empirical studies of people’s experience during the Danish “lockdown.”

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Håkan Möller  is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He holds Doctorates both in Divinity and in Philosophy. In 2004, he was appointed to the position of Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Helsinki. He has written widely in the field of comparative literature and in the interdisciplinary field of literature and religion, and had most recently published The World of Hymns: Three Studies on the Swedish Hymn Book of 1695 (2019). He is the vice president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Anne  Louise  Nielsen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Basel, Switzerland, while also serving as a pastor in the Danish Lutheran Church. She is the president of the Danish Søren Kierkegaard Society. Her areas of research include existence and subjectivity theory of the nineteenth century, especially in Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Nietzsche, as well as Karl Barth’s theological method. She defended her doctoral dissertation on “Subjectivity and Theology of Becoming in Søren Kierkegaard” in 2016. Bent Flemming Nielsen  is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He wrote his habilitation on the rationality of Karl Barth’s revelation theology in 1988 and has served as a pastor in the Danish Lutheran Church. From 1999 he was Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology and since 2012 Professor of Dogmatics. He has written several books and articles on Karl Barth’s practical theology, especially preaching and liturgy, anthropology, theatre, and ritual theory. Carsten  Pallesen  is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He conducts research and teaches in philosophy of religion and ethics, with a special focus on the phenomenology of confession, the hermeneutics of the self, the theology of reading, and the legacy of the Lutheran Reformation in historical and systematic perspective in the work of Günter Bader. He has written books and articles on Ricœur, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare. Ola Sigurdson  is Professor of Systematic Theology in the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. He has written more than twenty books and numerous

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articles, primarily on the intersection between systematic theology and phenomenology, on political philosophy and theology, and on aesthetics and theology. Currently, he is working on the existential experience of spatiality. Christine  Svinth-Værge  Põder is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research areas are the theology of the German Luther Renaissance with particular focus on figures of negativity, the theology of Luther and its recent reception, the theology of Karl Barth, contextual theology, and hermeneutics of orientation. She wrote her dissertation on the fundamental theological significance of prayer in the work of Karl Barth. Katya  Tolstaya  is Professor of Theology and Religion in Post-Trauma Societies at the Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her initial research was on the figures of Karl Barth, Dostoevsky, and Bakhtin. In recent years, her work has been dedicated to laying the foundation for the new research field of PostSoviet theology, including the project “Theology After Gulag,” as well as establishing a research network. Likewise, she has made important contribution to the research field of Eastern-European Christianity.

CHAPTER 1

Crisis and Reorientation: Introduction Sigurd Baark and Christine Svinth-Værge Põder

1   Crisis and Context Tensions and contradictory movements, shock and resignation marked the European cultural and intellectual epoch following World War I, but these phenomena were accompanied by a vigorous drive for reorientation. In such varying developments as the November Revolution, surrealism and the post-World War I phase of expressionism, soldier romanticism and Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes, these contradictions are apparent and make characterizing the time a challenge. Labelling this ambiguous situation a “crisis”, a term stemming from ancient medicine, seems to indicate that society is either an organism in need of healing or that it is in a state of struggle that must be resolved by a decision, as pointed out by Dietrich Korsch. The term “crisis” is however commonly universalised to designate a circumstance that challenges interpretation and orientation (Korsch 2013, p. 95). Applied at a societal scale, the idea of a crisis indicates a loss of orientation, affecting both a society’s general resilience and ability to navigate through social transformations and accordingly the proper interpretation of such a situation. S. Baark (*) • C. Svinth-Værge Põder Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_1

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If social and cultural crises are understood as crises of interpretation and orientation, as suggested, they call for efforts to arrive at new interpretations and orientations. Pertinent forms of interpretative thinking become intriguing for their innovation but also for how they constitute a reorientation in a crisis situation. Accounting for the intellectual history of postWorld War I Europe and in particular Germany may thus offer a productive perspective for considering how movements in theological, cultural and political thought interrelate in perceptions of a crisis. This volume explores these interrelations by focusing on a seminal theological text. Against the backdrop of new political, cultural and intellectual departures and reflecting impressions of the outbreak of the war, a pastor in rural Switzerland wrote a biblical commentary that quickly became one of the most important theological books of the twentieth century, establishing a theological discourse that integrates critique of ideology into religious thinking. Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief hit the intellectual landscape like a bombshell. It was a reaction to the contemporaneous social and cultural situation, drawing not only on the Pauline Letter to the Romans but also on a number of critically disruptive European thinkers from preceding decades such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Overbeck and the Blumhardts. The commentary thus depicted the general human situation as one of profound crisis and only in light of this overall negativity suggested hope. The impact of Barth’s Römerbrief, not only within theology but also across a wider range of disciplines in the twentieth century and indeed into the present day, is well documented. With its remarkably broad appeal, the book became a “European event” (cf. Leiner and Trowitzsch 2008). With the exception of political readings of the book from the perspective of Barth’s early engagement with religious socialism, however, less light has been shed on its interactions with cultural and social movements (Keedus 2019). This lack of focus can be explained, as Brad S. Gregory does, as a consequence of a “secularization bias” (Gregory 2006) offering theologians no role in the narrative of modern intellectual history. One could also point out that Barth’s own solution to the challenge has in the long run contributed in particular to the confinement of his theology to theological readings. Thus as Barth draws a fundamental distinction between humans and God, theological thought—on the one hand communicating this distinction while on the other hand viewing itself critically—comes to see realizations of God as in contradiction to human cultural and intellectual phenomena. While the price of this engagement was, in Barth’s

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own case, aporia regarding the communicative transparency of theology’s interaction with culture, the gain is realized in the development of a critical hermeneutic that can shed light on important cultural and intellectual movements of his time. Thus, in the case of Barth’s Der Römerbrief, World War I could be viewed as a catalyst unleashing the potential of intellectual and cultural countermovements in twentieth-century Europe at a time of radical change and turbulence. Perceived in this context, Der Römerbrief is an intriguing example of how diverse voices from specific historical and intellectual contexts can be brought together to frame the disorientation of the epoch within an original theological set of narratives and critical-­ hermeneutic structures of reorientation, whether ethically or epistemically (Sigurdson 2017; Baark 2018).

2   Changing the Coordinates The present volume places the theology of Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief 1922 in its wider conceptual and cultural context of crisis and reorientation in the wake of World War I. As such, the project potentially runs a particular risk. Der Römerbrief was itself a text which marked a break in the discipline of theology; it unleashed a form of intellectual crisis among both its adherents and its detractors; it demanded a form of radical intellectual reorientation from its readers. In other words, the text itself marked the advent of something new, a form of conceptual revolution within its field. In placing a revolutionary text in its historical and cultural context while clearly marking the horizon on which its innovation lies, one runs the risk of reduction—of explaining away the new by demonstrating how its emergence depends on a series of conditions that provide a horizon for understanding the text. Such an approach might run the risk of presenting the text as a mere symptom of its time and thus implicitly reducing it to a particular expression of a more fundamental zeitgeist. And, as the given zeitgeist recedes into history, so does the text as its symptom. Rather, we suggest that the strangeness and challenges that Der Römerbrief held and that made it stand out as an innovative event in its own right still make it stand out today and should not be confused with the strangeness and challenge of approaching a historical period, the problems of which no longer seem relevant to contemporary thinkers.

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We endeavour in this volume to avoid as much as possible the historicist’s reduction by explicitly focusing on the formal question: How does one think something new, make a radical intellectual break, in the context of historical crisis and reorientation? What does that require? Here Barth’s Der Römerbrief serves as a modern theological paradigm of such an intellectual breakthrough. Rather than running the risk of sublating the text in its historical context, our project entails studying how this text draws on the conceptual tools available to it to forge an intervention that shifts the coordinates of the intellectual situation. As several of the contributions argue more or less explicitly, one important symptom of such an intellectual breakthrough is the generation of a new set of problems or challenges that emerge from Der Römerbrief. In other words, Der Römerbrief exchanges a given set of problems with a new set of problems and questions. Reading the book as an answer to questions posed by the prior form of theology that shaped much of the nineteenth century will get the text wrong. Insofar as this is the case, one should not require Barth’s text to produce answers in a straightforward way. Any possible solution to the new set of problems and questions introduced by Der Römerbrief will be comprehensible only within the frame that the new questions and problems establish, and the more radical the re-framing, the longer the process of discovering a new set of solutions or answers will be. We can therefore measure its importance and its irreducibility to its cultural and conceptual context by its failure to provide answers to a new set of questions that it itself introduces. In this sense, its failure is a measure of its success—insofar as it fails in its own singular and thus radically new way. This anthology thus aims to understand Barth’s Römerbrief as a paradigmatic expression of conceptual and cultural crisis and reorientation in the aftermath of World War I by understanding it precisely as a revolutionary text which changed the coordinates of the intellectual situation. As such, while its authors are explicitly mindful of the broadly historical context, this volume is systematic in spirit; it asks how the theology of Barth’s Römerbrief can ultimately be considered a living intellectual resource. Asking this question reflects this anthology’s attention to the impact of Barth’s text. Der Römerbrief is a seminal text that has played a part in shaping who and what the modern theologian takes himself or herself to be and do. Acknowledging how the theological reflections and concerns of the modern theologian cannot be understood as fully detached from Der Römerbrief involves examining one’s own position and asking how this text influences its recipients and how it can be relevant today. We thus

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focus not merely on what it says, but more importantly on how it says it—on how it assembles its conceptual toolbox and gives expression to its insights and reflects (or fails to reflect) on their consequences. We add that one striking aspect of Der Römerbrief is the broad set of intellectual and cultural resources that it marshals in service of its project. For a text which has often been considered narrowly theological in scope, its conceptual and cultural toolbox is to say the least diverse and many-­ faceted. It gathers together a number of thinkers who were swimming upstream in the intellectual environment of the late nineteenth century and very earliest years of the twentieth century—authors and thinkers who criticized core aspects of the modern bourgeois project from within that project itself. As noted above, names such as Kierkegaard, Overbeck, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky easily come to mind. Thus, in its mediation of that countercurrent, the text’s influence transcends narrow disciplinary limits. It was a central part of the intellectual transformation that shaped twentieth-century thought and signalled a break with the dominant paradigms of the nineteenth century. And so, while several of the contributors to this volume were trained as theologians, some are researchers in the humanities. Nor are the questions taken up by those who do work as theologians restricted to the classical doctrinal issues and questions that are often assumed to characterize systematic theology. As is appropriate with regards to a text that explicitly challenges the understanding of theology that largely shaped its intellectual context, the contributions in this volume cast a wide net. What one is inclined to include in a definition of theology will always be open to negotiation and we see no purpose in drawing sharp boundaries—especially when our subject is Barth’s Römerbrief.

3  The Radicality of Reorientation Barth’s Römerbrief challenged core aspects of the ideology of the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, but what exactly was the shape of that challenge? That is the question that the various contributions seek to answer in their unique ways. Nonetheless, it is fitting here to provide a very provisional sketch of the form of theological thinking that we find in Der Römerbrief. The radical aspect of Barth’s Römerbrief is the extent to which the text uncompromisingly seeks to think through a particular problem: the judgement of God as a universal—and thus unsublatable—negation. The task is

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to think through the implications of such a negation, to think through what its actual conceptual consequences are, especially for the self-­ conscious thinker. Barth’s claim is that one encounters exactly this form of universal negation in Paul’s account of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. Taking his cue from the radical church historian, Franz Overbeck, Barth came to recognize death as an unsublatable limit to self-­ conscious human conceptual mediation. Death is a radical negation of all our human aspirations to transcend our finitude and, as such, it undermines all our metaphysical projects. This was, Overbeck argued, the essential insight of the early Christians. They recognized that God was revealed precisely in the suffering and death of Christ, in the moment when our humanity was revealed to be utterly powerless and incapable in relation to the absolute. And thus the aspiration of the liberal theology of the nineteenth century to exhibit humanity’s positive relation to the absolute stood in direct contradiction to the faith of the early Christians. Overbeck drew the conclusion that theology and Christianity were mutually exclusive, and he quit his job as a professor of Church History. What Barth did was to remain within the church and take up the fight against the “religious human” of Liberal Theology within the sphere of the theological praxis. For Barth, the proper conclusion to draw was that the universal and unsublatable negation encountered in the early textual witnesses to Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ provided a form of practical certainty in the sovereignty of God. If all positions from which the text’s proclamation of God’s sovereignty could be called into question were judged and critically negated in the passive obedience and death of Jesus Christ, the reader was led to an unconditional acknowledgement of a normative sovereignty of a different order. Now, as a general rule, our normative judgements depend on occupying a position that stands outside the field that we are currently critiquing. The norms and values that we bring to bear in a critical judgement are not themselves open to critique at the moment when we deploy them. Barth’s wager in Der Römerbrief was that giving expression to a form of pan-critical rationality was possible, that is, it was possible to engage in a practice that did not lay implicit claim to such a privileged normative position for itself. The practice was “the position”, and that was no position at all, so to speak. Now this recognition could be expressed only in the proclamation of the judgement of God and the ruthless critique of all aspirations to transcend time-bound human finitude and secure a stable normative position,

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whether such aspirations were political, philosophical, spiritual, ethical or cultural. Certainly, the form of critical thinking Barth professed can be sustained only within the practice of reading and reflecting on the biblical texts; abstracted from this practice it is on par with other attempts to posit theoretical constructs beyond the deconstructive reach of time and mortality. And the judgement and critique are of course first and foremost directed against the writer of Der Römerbrief himself as well as his readers. One has to think the negation ruthlessly through to the end. And for Barth “Resurrection” precisely denotes the acknowledgement of this negativity: that where our human powers and capacities are brought to an end—there is God. Obviously, this raises a number of questions. How should we think through the consequences of this form of negation and how should we articulate them without transgressing the negativity that is the singular condition of this radical reorientation?1 This issue recurs in this volume in various ways and from various angles—cultural, political, social, ethical, epistemic—because it is far from given that such a project can succeed. Nor is it given that it is the right way to understand the biblical texts. Nor is it even given that it ought to be undertaken. Yet, what is certain is that it was an enormously fruitful intellectual effort and that it provided a vocabulary for capturing the sense of crisis and reorientation that shaped the period immediately after World War I. As a radical and sustained effort to think through its moment and change the coordinates of the intellectual situation, Barth’s Römerbrief can claim a space next to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Heidegger’s Being and Time, and Joyce’s Ulysses in the intellectual and cultural landscape of the early twentieth century.

4   Perspectives on Der Römerbrief. An Outline The volume is divided into three sections, in each of which the contributors examine the form of thinking that is expressed in Barth’s Römerbrief from a particular vantage point. In the first section, Ola Sigurdson, Liisi Keedus and Christine Svinth-Værge Põder approach Barth’s text from within the broader socio-political context of the Weimar Era. Ola Sigurdson outlines the context and rhetorical form of Der Römerbrief by focusing on the apparent tension between dialectics and dualism in Barth’s thinking. He argues that we get Barth wrong if we read him as a dualistic thinker. We misunderstand the radical formulations in Der Römerbrief if we abstract from the general sense of revolution and

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urgency that characterized the intellectual life of the time and instead read them as expressions of an exclusivist theological chauvinism. Rather, the point is to signal a form of intellectual engagement that negates the safety of the position of the detached spectator and theoretician. Liisi Keedus examines how Barth and the circle of “crisis” theologians sought to reconstitute the meaning of temporality and historicity. Her chapter outlines the ambitions of this anti-historicist critique and how it broadly impacted culture, politics and society. Highlighting the significance of thinking in tandem, she aims to show how these thinkers attempted to intervene in the perceived circular structure between methodological and epistemological claims of the historical nature of all knowledge, the ontological framework based on history as continuity and causality, the political ideology of progress and the ethics of historical relativism. Christine Svinth-Værge Põder explicitly engages with the political-­ theological dimension of Der Römerbrief in terms of the book’s interaction with its readers. Drawing on Max Weber and Karl Holl, Põder examines the figure of the prophet in Barth’s text and considers how the particular form of subjectivity associated with the prophet-figure shapes both Barth’s rhetoric and his understanding of the socio-political landscape of his time. Questioning the notion of authority in the text, Põder examines the book’s rhetoric and points to how it engages its readers in its own self-negation, suggesting to them a self-critical notion of authority. In the second section, Sigurd Baark, Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen, Carsten Pallesen and Anne Louise Nielsen reflect on Der Römerbrief as cultural and intellectual reception, mediating the currents and countercurrents of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sigurd Baark takes a step back from Barth’s Römerbrief and draws on the confluence of the early works of Karl Barth and his colleague, collaborator and friend Eduard Thurneysen. In Thurneysen’s Dostoevsky and Barth’s Römerbrief, the function of Dostoevsky’s novels is to provoke a form of “frame-breaking” by giving expression to literary thought-­ experiments through which to clarify key concepts and demonstrate the conceptual and explanatory utility of an alternative set of theological questions. By focusing on this use of Dostoevsky’s writings, Baark argues that we grasp Barth’s and Thurneysen’s aim to assemble available intellectual and cultural resources to establish an alternative conceptual frame of reference for theology while explicitly leaving the end result of such a reorientation essentially open.

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Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen examines the relationship between the concepts of crisis and culture in the early theology of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. Drawing on 1923 exchanges between Barth and Tillich, Wichmann Kristensen argues that the actual difference between the two theologians does not lie in “the critical and positive paradox”, as Tillich would have it. Rather, the actual point of contention for both involves determining how best to understand the positive role of secular culture in theology. In the early 1920s, both Barth and Tillich espoused a theology of culture—the question was what doing so entailed. Carsten Pallesen employs what Paul Ricœur identifies as “an apocalyptic tone” in Paul to show how Barth develops a critical tension inherent to Kant’s philosophy: the tension between discursive and eschatological forms of thought. Invoking the various (post-)modern approaches to Paul, Pallesen shows how a particular dislocation in thought that can be traced back to Kant is inherent to contemporary philosophical uses of biblical texts. As such, Pallesen argues, Der Römerbrief inaugurates the post-modern project of disclosing modern philosophy’s inner contradictions by means of essential theological concepts like the dialectics of grace. Anne Louise Nielsen examines the role of Kierkegaard in Der Römerbrief—as both a witness to crisis and a source of foundational concepts such as “paradox”, “infinite qualitative distinction” and a critique of religion—in comparison with Barth’s later remarks on Kierkegaard. Nielsen further reflects on the affinity of both thinkers in light of their respective receptions and with a consideration of the fruitfulness of adopting a phenomenological–dialectical perspective. She lastly considers their approaches in light of the concept of crisis as, in turn, one of epistemology and one of diagnostics, using the recent crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic as a test case. In the final section, Katya Tolstoya explicitly addresses the issue of crisis and reorientation and reflects on the possibilities that emerge from Barth’s conceptual toolbox in Der Römerbrief, while Håkan Möller and Bent Flemming Nielsen address the cultural reception and impact of Der Römerbrief in various ways. In “The Voice of the Preacher: Literary and Rhetorical Aspects of Der Römerbrief”, Möller levels a detailed criticism at the claim that Barth’s rhetoric in Der Römerbrief is shaped by the contemporary expressionist movement in poetry, literature and art. Möller’s argument is that Barth’s text exhibits a hybrid form that straddles preaching and interpretation thus straining the commentary genre. Through a close literary and

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comparative reading of Paul’s Romans and Barth’s reading of that biblical text, Möller brings out the distinctive rhetorical shape of Barth’s thinking and his purpose to address contemporary theologians. Bent Flemming Nielsen approaches the issue of literary reception by focusing on a singular work, John Updike’s Roger’s Version. Nielsen shows how Updike’s book draws on a set of central theological insights from Barth’s Römerbrief. In particular, he shows how questions of morality and ethics cannot be fully aligned with questions of theology, explicating how Updike ironically illustrates this disjunction to conceive of a form of action that exhibits a kind of moral virtue and commitment to truth as a consequence while disavowing them as ends in themselves. Thus Nielsen exhibits how Barth’s early theology sublates and redirects immediate and intuitive notions of virtuous action. Finally, Katya Tolstaya draws on the critique of ideology that is omnipresent in Der Römerbrief to outline the contemporary possibilities for a theological critique with a particular and pertinent focus on the post-­ Soviet theological situation in Russia. In so doing, Tolstaya addresses a potential risk in Barth’s theology whereby the theologian may mistake the critical force of the radical transcendence of the concept of God with the possibility of assuming transcendence as a possible position, turning an epistemic tool into an ontic position. In her reading, the history of the Gulag becomes a perspective from which to critique aspects of Barth’s theology while simultaneously furthering its critical spirit.

5   Conclusion Der Römerbrief is a revolutionary text, one that changed the coordinates of its own field, theology, and had cultural and intellectual effects that transcended narrow disciplinary academic distinctions. It is also an inherently open text—a rewriting of a prior edition of which there is next to nothing left. It assembles a battery of intellectual figures and tools and deploys them in peculiar new constellations to deconstruct the various assumptions regarding what counts as self-evident that shaped its intellectual environment. In this sense, the text is both a forceful intellectual work and a provisional and somewhat fragile attempt. It is essentially a work in progress, and this is both its strength and perhaps its weakness. It is also what makes it such a fruitful text to think along with. In essence, that is the ambition of this anthology: to urge the reader to think along with the Barth that we meet in Der Römerbrief. Not to repeat

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Barth’s gesture—as if that were possible. Not to explain and lay bare the theology of Der Römerbrief such that we can safely place it on the shelf along with other historical documents which have outplayed their roles in our intellectual life. Rather, thinking along with Barth is to think through what crisis and reorientation mean in today’s world and to seek to understand and engage with the way in which crisis calls on theology to discover what it can be—again and again.

Note 1. In one sense, any negativity is a negativity and cannot be transgressed. What is other is other and remains other. That said, we seek to circumvent this limitation in plenty of ways. That project may prove unsuccessful—I will die whether I have a great metaphysical account of the immortality of the soul or not. Still, such metaphysical projects are attempts to circumvent or abolish the negativity of death. I take that to be an expression of a desire to transgress or overstep the limits that the negativity imposes on us.

References Baark, Sigurd. 2018. The Affirmations of Reason: On Karl Barth’s Speculative Theology. New York: Palgrave. Gregory, Brad S. 2006. The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion. In History and Theory, Theme Issue 45: 132–149. Keedus, Liisi. 2019. “The New World” of Karl Barth: Rethinking the Philosophical and Political Legacies of a Theologian. https://doi.org/10.1080/1084877 0.2019.1692598. Korsch, Dietrich. 2013. Theology as a Language of Crisis. In European Self-­ Reflection between Politics and Religion, ed. L. Bruun et al. New York: Palgrave. Leiner, Martin, and Michael Trowitzsch, eds. 2008. Karl Barths Theologie als europäisches Ereignis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Sigurdson, Ola. 2017. Varför skall man läsa Karl Barth? Arche 60–61: 222–230.

PART I

The Weimar Era as Context of Barth’s Römerbrief

CHAPTER 2

Karl Barth’s Performative Theology: Context and Rhetoric in Der Römerbrief 1922 Ola Sigurdson

Is Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief from 1922 dialectical or dualistic? Many scholars have suggested the latter, asserting that Barth’s theology in this early work is a negation of everything that has to do with human culture, experience, religiosity, and thought. Such an interpretation of Barth’s early theology in his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans from 1922 has been suggested, with various degrees of nuance, by several well-­ known theologians and academics. The most pronounced version of such a sentiment is to be found in the heading of a newspaper article on Barth’s theology written by the Swedish novelist and clergyman Rune Pär Olofsson in the 1960s: “God is everything, the human being is nothing, and you’re an idiot …” (Olofsson 1964). Olofsson is not, of course, alone in having such sentiments; more elaborated and, to be sure, sophisticated versions can be found in such classic critical presentations of Barth’s theology as the Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer’s Der Triumph der Gnade in der Theologie Karl Barths from 1957 as well as the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie O. Sigurdson (*) Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_2

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from 1951 (Berkouwer 1957; Balthasar 1976). Both of them seem to interpret Barth’s theology, especially his early theology, as articulating a static or even antagonistic dualism between nature and grace or humanity and divinity. More contemporary versions of the same interpretation could be mentioned, but the preceding are sufficient to refresh the reader’s memory of a fairly common interpretation of Barth’s early theology. Barth’s own language has doubtless given rise to such interpretations. Among Barth’s most memorable titles is his polemical reply from 1934 to fellow theologian Emil Brunner’s suggestion that there might be Anknüpfungspunkte or “points of contact” between the Gospel and human existence. The concise title of Barth’s pamphlet is “Nein!”—such an attempt would mean an ill-advised return to natural theology, analogia entis, and all the political and religious attempts to domesticate the Gospel (Barth 1934). Of course, Barth’s Der Römerbrief from 1922, to which I will return in more detail below, excels at greater length in all kinds of hyperbolic language regarding contrastive and antagonistic dualisms, and “nein” is a recurrent term in it as well. I do not doubt, especially after rereading Der Römerbrief with a group of literary scholars and theologians for two years, that there might well be strong reasons at the rhetorical level alone for a dualistic interpretation of Barth’s early theology. However, there is also ample evidence that this might not be all there is to say about Barth’s commentary and early theology. First, think of the fact that throughout Der Römerbrief Barth cites various novelists, philosophers, and theologians with approval. One may think of the roles of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky in the commentary, writers who share some of Barth’s sense of living in a time of Krisis. If he has a system in Der Römerbrief, Barth suggests in the preface, it is what Kierkegaard calls the “infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity; this is, according to Barth, “for me the theme of the Bible and the sum of philosophy in one” (Barth 2010, 17).1 One may also think of historical and contemporary theologians as well as philosophers and authors whom he refers to approvingly, especially, perhaps, the Protestant Reformers, such as Calvin and Luther. Indeed, many historical and contemporary thinkers are referred to in Der Römerbrief, giving the impression of someone very much in conversation, although a highly polemical one, with his own time and culture. Even though Kierkegaard’s quoted words in some sense repeat a contrastive dualism between human beings and the Gospel, one may well ask whether such a dualism or even the reference to such a system would make much sense if Barth’s only intent was the paradoxical communication of the impossibility of all communication of theological

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matters. If one wishes to say something to one’s own age or culture or intellectual discussion, however critical, that wish presupposes some hope or idea that what one has to say might actually be heard in some meaningful way. Given the abundance of historical and contemporary theologians and other thinkers within the orbit of conversation in Der Römerbrief, I do not doubt that Barth, his rhetorical dualisms notwithstanding, really intended to engage in a critical dialogue with his context, not merely to bombard it with propositions that would in principle be incommunicable. Second, consider also the fact that Barth’s Der Römerbrief from 1922 really did have an impact on Protestant theology, Catholic theology, and even intellectual culture more broadly. To be sure, there was no lack of prominent critics among established theologians, for example, Paul Althaus, Adolf Schlatter, and especially Adolf von Harnack, who accused Barth of, among other things, obscurantism (Tietz 2019, 145–147, 160–162). That did not stop his book from having a huge impact in the reorientation of German thought. In his book about the 1929 debate between Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos, Peter E. Gordon acknowledges that Barth’s commentary was one significant expression of a cultural crisis recognized more generally; in his dissertation about the jurist Carl Schmitt, Hjalmar Falk points out that Barth and dialectical theology more generally had an impact on his thinking; and Mårten Björk also illustrates how Barth was part of a broader debate among thinkers about immortality that went far beyond the Geisteswissenschaften.2 That Barth has been important within the broader intellectual discussion in the German-speaking world as well as elsewhere has perhaps long been obvious to attentive readers of Barth, but this has recently been noted outside of theology as well. Summarizing his own argument, the intellectual historian Rudy Koshar points out in his 2008 article “Where Is Karl Barth in Modern European History?” that one consequence of the secularist prejudice that religion is about to disappear from modern society has been that theology tends to recede into the background in many accounts of intellectual history (Koshar 2008, 335–338). If that prejudice is removed, the importance of Barth for intellectual history in general, and not just for theology, will be all the clearer. As I will show in more detail below, I would suggest that Barth’s commentary on Romans from 1922, as part of his theology, is a work that deserves to be called a theological classic that is and has been influential far beyond the academic discipline of theology. A simple definition of a classic is a work that continually opens up new horizons for understanding the human existential predicament because of its “surplus of meaning” (Tracy 1981, 102). If Barth’s Der Römerbrief is a theological and cultural

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classic—which it is, as shown by its constant rereadings over the last 100 years—how can this be if its message is one of a static and even antithetic dualism between humanity and the divine Gospel, a dualism that seems to prohibit all communication? What could all the cultural commentators have found in it if this were the case? If we put these supposedly opposing facts together—the often starkly contrasting dualisms in the language of Der Römerbrief, its critical dialogue with other thinkers, and its extensive reception far beyond theology—what should we make of them? Could they indicate the possibility of a more nuanced understanding of what is happening in and through Der Römerbrief than the dualistic interpretation? In this chapter, I will suggest that a contextual (cultural as well as intellectual) and rhetorical reading of Der Römerbrief will show how it makes more sense to read it as a “performative” rather than a “constative” mode of theology. Barth’s intent was to intervene in a cultural, political, and religious situation, changing the underlying coordinates of how theology was understood in his time. Instead of offering declarative propositions regarding the nature of God or human beings, the language of Der Römerbrief is meant to be existentially engaging, forcing the reader to take a stand. In that sense, not so much advocating a position but accomplishing an intervention, it is dialectical rather than dualistic. The argument I will present will simply outline both the contextual and the rhetorical analysis of the commentary; a more detailed analysis would doubtless be welcome, and perhaps in the vast library of studies of Barth’s Der Römerbrief, such a one might already exist.3 A detailed rhetorical or literary analysis of his prose in the work would be of profound significance, I think. As I am here more interested in the general theological significance of such a rereading of Barth’s commentary, in what it might teach us about doing theology, this presentation will have to suffice for the moment.

1   Barth’s Social and Intellectual Context Let me begin by briefly recapitulating who Barth was and why he earned such a prominent place in early twentieth-century theology. Born on 10 May 1886 in Basel in the family of a moderately conservative theologian, Barth lived through several major upheavals of the twentieth century.4 Like many of his contemporaries, he studied at several universities, particularly those of Bonn, Berlin, Tübingen, and finally Marburg. Marburg was probably decisive for Barth, since it was a center of the kind of neo-­ Kantian liberal theology advocated by Wilhelm Herrmann. “Liberal

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theology” here stands for the attempt to do theology from an immanent horizon as articulated by contemporary philosophy; Herrmann’s starting point was human religious experience as interpreted by neo-Kantian philosophers such as Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. A common trait of this kind of German liberal theology was its deep affinity with a synthesis between Christianity and (German) culture, so that religion was seen as an elevated effluence of the contemporary spirit. Being a Christian manifested itself in living a virtuous life. To understand Barth—or to understand when and why Barth became Barth—one must understand that it was here that he found his early theological home. From 1908 to 1909, he worked as an assistant editor at the journal Christlichen Welt, published in Marburg, finding himself well placed within the liberal theology of his age. Barth seemingly never intended to become an academic theologian. Instead, he moved to the small Swiss village of Safenwil, whose inhabitants were mainly farmers and workers, where he spent his days preaching and teaching confirmation classes. Together with his friend Eduard Thurneysen, he joined the emerging socialist movement and became known as the “red pastor from Safenwil.” Unlike many others in the religious-socialist movement, however, Barth did not see socialism as a precursor to the kingdom of God. Here we have a kind of foreshadowing of something that would come to characterize Barth’s theology, the refusal to identify or even compare the Gospel to something inner-worldly, be it a social condition or a cognitive proposition. Barth came to turn against every form of hyphenated Christianity or theology, regardless of whether the hyphen is to be found in the religious-cultural synthesis of liberal Protestantism or the religious-socialist synthesis. Both these movements presuppose continuity and gradual transformation rather than discontinuity and radical departure. Barth’s own radical departure in terms of theology came with the outbreak of war on 1 August 1914. Barth soon became aware that his theological teachers in Germany had signed “the terrible manifesto of the 93 German intellectuals,” in which they backed the war politics of Emperor Wilhelm II (Busch 1986, 93). They were indeed not alone in doing this, as large parts of supposedly internationalist European socialism also supported the war. Barth was deeply disappointed, both theologically and politically, and the outbreak of war decisively spurred him to reevaluate his own theological premises. If his teachers could bring themselves to underwrite the war politics of the Emperor, there must be something wrong not only with their political judgment but also with their theological suppositions, as these did not hinder them from such an action. Barth concluded that he needed to redo his “theological ABCs.”

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The pervading theme of the coming years of theological reflection would for Barth be God as “das ganz Andere”—“the wholly Other”—and the kingdom of God as a new creation. Through this theme, Barth turned against all forms of synthesis between culture and Christianity. Independent of whatever lofty thoughts human beings could have about God, these were nevertheless not God’s own thoughts; independent of how religious-­ conservative or religious-revolutionary a society might be, it could not be the same thing as the kingdom of God. Rather, God, and the kingdom of God, came to be understood as a hiatus in human action and thinking, not their ratification. Barth started intensively reading authors such as John Calvin, Henrik Ibsen, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Franz Overbeck, and Plato, eventually formulating his own theology in a series of lectures and, especially, in that book that brought him fame, Der Römerbrief. As the title suggests, this is a commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, but a commentary in which the relevance to Barth’s own age was the main point, not the historical or philological exposition of the apostle’s intentions. In Paul, Barth thinks he has found an ally in his criticism of all forms of hyphenated Christianity. The choice of the Letter to the Romans, out of all Paul’s letters, is hardly a coincidence. The same letter had changed the basis of the reformer Martin Luther’s theology almost precisely 400 years earlier (Roper 2017, 76). There are two editions of Der Römerbrief. The first edition was published in December 1918, even though the year of publication is printed as 1919 (Barth 1985). Almost immediately, Barth became dissatisfied with it, especially since it still contained traces of a speculative synthesis. When this edition had sold out, he found no better option than writing a completely different version, which was published in 1922. It is this second edition that has become famous, when it, in Karl Adam’s characterization, “hit the playground of the theologians like a bomb” (Adam 1936, 325). Here, the overall tone is more antithetical and contrastive than in the previous edition. We should note that both editions are books of around 500 pages—Barth was, even measured against his contemporary colleagues, an unusually productive theologian. This second edition of Der Römerbrief could be characterized as an expressivist work in the same spirit as Oswald Spengler’s Die Untergang des Abendlandes (1918–1922) and Ernst Bloch’s Der Geist der Utopie (1918), although with a different message. The root metaphor of the commentary is “crisis,” and it excels in hyperbolic and ironic language (Webb 1991, 52–53, 91–100, 124–137). Not only in content but also in its style, Der Römerbrief protested all kinds of

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anthropocentrism, immanentism, and cultural Protestantism. The formerly liberal theologian had been transformed into a theologian of crisis. The proper and primary crisis is not so much a consequence of the times themselves, according to Barth, as it is God in God’s own being who signifies crisis. God is not who human religiosity thinks God is, an image of humanity itself, but “the ‘wholly Other.’” As the “wholly Other,” God becomes known through Christ, but more as an interruption of human discourse on the divine than as part of it—as it were “senkrecht von oben” or “vertically from above” (Barth 2010, 51). Barth was far from alone in his dissatisfaction with the hyphenated theologies of his day. As Jacob Taubes puts it, “Karl Barth’s second edition of the Romans commentary is one variant in the collapse of German cultural Protestantism” (Taubes 2004, 64). Taubes compares him to Carl Schmitt and most of all Franz Kafka. At the same time as the second edition of Der Römerbrief was published, Barth’s professional and personal circumstances changed dramatically. He was called from his position as pastor in Safenwil to a chair in Reformed Theology at the university in Göttingen where he took office in 1921. From now on, Barth would be an academic theologian, facing other challenges to and demands on his theology than those he had confronted earlier. If Der Römerbrief could be characterized as an intervention or critique, his new position obliged him to render theology in a more constructive and comprehensive way. He started lecturing on the Letter to the Ephesians, on the Heidelberg Catechismus, on Zwingli, Calvin, and Schleiermacher, and eventually, in 1924, on dogmatic theology, entitling his lectures “Unterricht in der christlichen Religion,” a translation of the title of Calvin’s magnum opus Institutio christianae religionis. Although Barth still did not regard his lectures on dogmatics as a system, in the sense that it tries to organize a comprehensive understanding of a particular object, but rather as dynamic praxis in the form of the preaching of the Gospel in the church, the contrastive and expressivist style of his commentary on Romans had been significantly mitigated. As Barth himself put it in a letter to his friend Thurneysen, he was now taking leave of the “free prophecy, as we used to love it” (Barth 1974, 217). In other words, he was aware, as was his audience, that his style had changed along with his calling. We can leave the account of Barth’s life and work here, as the main object of my inquiry is Der Römerbrief, and turn to another dimension of the context of this work that might help us understand its impact. I have

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already mentioned that Barth was a contemporary of many of those thinkers who reacted to the cultural, religious, and social transformations of the early twentieth century and who came to transform not only their academic disciplines but also intellectual thought more broadly. Authors such as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Franz Kafka, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Rosenzweig, Carl Schmitt, Max Weber, and Simone Weil—just to name a few—contributed to an acute sense of crisis in a way of thinking that not only contained a critical and self-critical questioning of what had been taken for granted, but also did this in a language full of expressive energy. In a time when, speaking in terms of Marx and Engels, the feeling that “all that is solid melts into air” prevailed, there was reason enough to explore the prerequisites and conditions of thinking itself as a way of confronting this feeling on the level of reflection. Besides a general sense of cultural crisis, I suspect that other factors helped make the first decades of the twentieth century a fertile ground for explorative thinking in the German-speaking cultural world, including the academic world. One such factor was the kind of intellectual formation and close network that characterized the academic and intellectual milieu at that time. Even those who were academically active in particular disciplines such as philosophy, law, psychology, sociology, or theology could be assumed to have knowledge and interests not only confined to their own discipline and what its main representatives saw as the center of its concerns. On the contrary, the demarcations between disciplines were not as rigidly observed as in our contemporary universities, and the interests of those authors just mentioned were broad and their learning often multi-­ disciplinary. This is likely one reason why many of them are authors of what are still considered classics within their disciplines. In a quick comparison with the academic production of our own time, they lived in an age when the boundaries between disciplines were more porous and not yet institutionalized. There were still broad disciplinary academic journals and not just a plethora of journals within individual sub-disciplines. Universities were, as mentioned, smaller, which made at least a certain general overview of the faculty possible and contacts between colleagues easier, and there were not that many colleagues in any case. There was more common discussion in which one’s own authorship was confronted with and stimulated by others. My impression, from the perspective of the academic world of the early twenty-first century, is that a neurotic fixation on disciplinary boundaries and the established terms of scholarly

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production was not as common then as now, but that the academic world was more concerned with particular issues. One’s own intellectual formation within a particular academic discipline was not independent of the public discussion. If my very short sketch of the context of academic work is on the whole correct, then we should also presume that this is the context where Barth’s Der Römerbrief attained its Sitz im Leben. Even though Barth, at the time of its writing, was a pastor in Safenwil, he was a former academic student in Germany who also had some experience in editing an academic journal, he was in contact with the politically radical movement of his time, not only its religious branch, and, finally, when confronted with some incitement for transformation, he revisited his “theological ABCs.” Barth’s disappointment at learning that his former teachers had backed the Emperor’s war politics prompted him to read Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, and his new professorial position in Göttingen (less of a disappointment, I would presume) made him read Calvin anew. In this sense, he was very much in tune with his times, and in a way, his times were very much in tune with him and his writings, as shown by the interest his contemporaries took in them. In that way, Barth was very much part of the public discussion, even as a theologian, and was not confined to his own discipline nor even to his fellow believers, Protestant or Catholic. This is the actuality that the passive assumption that, as a theologian, he cannot have played any role in the public debate tends to conceal. On top of that, if we project on his time the increased academic specialization of our own time, when theologians write about other theologians and philosophers about other philosophers, and so on, the actuality of the common academic and public debate becomes doubly obscured. The not insignificant part of the vast secondary literature that critically concerns itself with how Barth’s theology can be developed in discussion with different forms of philosophy and how that philosophy can be constructively developed in relation to Barth here finds an explanation. As it happens, here we find encounters between Barth and, among others, Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Lévinas, Jacques Derrida, and G. W. F. Hegel.5 These attempts suggest the continuing relevance of his theology, even in Der Römerbrief, to areas quite different from theology itself, a relevance that stands in contrast to the contrastive dualistic and anti-humanistic bearing that sometimes is attributed to his thought.6

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To be clear, my suggestion is not that Barth’s Der Römerbrief was always at the center of whatever philosophical, political, or theological debate we might be interested in, just that he was part of a public discussion broader than theology as a discipline, and that his presence in this discussion (then and now) should make us question a generally dualistic interpretation of it. There might be reason to look elsewhere for an explanation of his often dualistic prose, perhaps in his wish to forestall an all too easy synthesis between Christianity and culture. In other words, there might be reason for a rhetorically more sensitive reading of precisely the abundant dualistic passages and concepts in Der Römerbrief. What is their purpose?

2  Rhetoric in Der Römerbrief I have already suggested that the rhetoric of Der Römerbrief is indeed dualistic. Such expressions as “vertically from above,” God as the “wholly Other,” or, for that matter, Barth’s professed system as the “infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity surely give us the impression of someone intent on portraying the relationship between God and human beings or Christianity and culture as a contrastive association. To analyze these dualistic expressions in more detail, we must look at a characteristic of Der Römerbrief that concerns not what Barth says in it but what he says about how he wants to say it. As is quite clear from early in the commentary, Barth disassociates himself from any naïve idea that his authorial position is neutral toward Paul’s message in his letter. He is not just an innocent bystander looking at a text from a safe distance. His famous discussion of historical-critical method in the preface to the second edition is, as is well known, not dismissive of this method as such but emphatic in its insistence that the wall between then and now must become “transparent” so that the “conversation between the document and the reader will be wholly intent on the matter” (Barth 2010, 13). This transparency implies that readers of the historical document cannot have just an external relationship to it, but that they to some extent must share a common horizon of meaning, in the sense that Paul’s letter will have at least something to say to contemporary readers as being addressees of it, and not just to its original audience. Hans-Georg Gadamer has proposed that Barth’s Der Römerbrief is a “kind of hermeneutical manifesto” even “despite all his disaffection for methodological reflection” (Gadamer 2006, 510). One may further suggest that Gadamer and Barth are quite alike in their suspicion of how far “method” can actually

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take us, as the “inner dialectic of the matter” cannot be guaranteed by any method (Barth 2010, 16). This does not mean that one should not be educated and responsible in one’s reading—through, for example, historical-­critical methods—but such preparation, even in Barth’s own commentary, should be regarded as mere “preliminary work” in relation to the actual, existential clash (rather than merging) of the two horizons (Barth 2010, 5). Another aspect of Barth’s methodology is the aspiration to prevent readers from taking control of the text, immunizing them from anything that the text may communicate that would question or even impugn their horizon. Barth is very emphatic in suggesting that Paul’s letter is all about the proclamation of the Gospel, which, per definition, no one other than God can address to us as human beings. This means that the heart of Paul’s letter and of Barth’s own commentary is not even in the hands of the theologian. As he puts it in the preface to the third edition, “The Spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] is not a standpoint upon which one may place oneself so as to teach Paul or whomever from here” (Barth 2010, 29).7 “Whomever”—it is not just in reading Paul’s text or any biblical text that this is true; rather, this hermeneutical rule applies more generally. As Barth says in an earlier preface, this would still be his method if his office were to explicate Lao-Tse or Goethe rather than Paul: “consider well!” (Barth 2010, 20). Interpreters are not in control of the text, nor should they immunize themselves against its matter if they are concerned about the matter of the text. So methodology is also about what we could call the existential stance of the interpreter relative to the text: it is not only about what a text says but also about the position of the interpreter vis-à-vis the message of the text. Barth circumscribes the matter of Paul’s text in several ways, but basically it is the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. This is not, Barth says, a religious message, that is, a message that has its origin in any human thoughts about or experiences of God. It has no origin but in God’s self. Barth repeatedly emphasizes the qualitative distinction between the world of human thought and action and God’s world, and how they meet (only as a “tangent touches a circle”) in Jesus Christ (Barth 2010, 51). The message that Barth tries to convey is the absolute uncontrollability of the Gospel, or the utter dependence on God’s initiative for the reception of it. This, as we have already made clear above, also goes for the interpreter, like Barth himself, of the Gospel, as he suggests in another passage from early in Der Römerbrief:

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The Gospel needs neither to seek out nor avoid the dispute between world religions or world views. It stands as the message of demarcation of the known world from another, unknown, out of competition with all attempts also to discover and make available relatively unknown higher spheres of existence within the known world. It is not one truth among others; it calls into question all truths. It is a hinge, not a door. (Barth 2010, 58; cv. 503)

Even theologians—or perhaps theologians above all, who try to speak of divine things—could be tempted to think that they could somehow master the Gospel and so have a reasonably well grounded idea of what it is, as if it were something that could be at one’s disposal. That would be a betrayal of it, however. If the Gospel is the “absolutely new,” then to claim to know it would be to reduce its newness as such (Barth 2010, 59). The theologian, like any other human being, can only be passive and receptive toward the Gospel, not active and grasping. The Gospel, then, encounters the human being as negation, as a “nein” in relation to everything human. So far, so dualistic. But this negation is not a negation, pure and simple: “The No that we encounter is the negation of God. What we lack is also that which helps us … Just because God’s negation is total, it is also his Yes!” (Barth 2010, 61). There is, according to Barth, nothing particularly pious or virtuous in lacking everything. If human beings cannot and should not take pride in their achievements, neither should they take pride in their lack of achievements: “No ‘work,’ … not even negative work can be considered,” (Barth 2010, 153) or “minus counts as little as plus” (Barth 2010, 181). There is, indeed, for Barth, the possibility of a “negative” works-righteousness that is only the inversion of that kind of works-righteousness that comes from putting one’s trust in one’s own piety or virtue. What Barth is trying to accomplish is rather to turn our attention away from human attributes as such toward God. If there is something arrogant and prideful in theology, an inverted arrogance or pride that comes from avoiding theology is no better. As much as those who receive the Gospel must listen to its “No!” they also must hear its “Yes!,” precisely in this negation. If theology cannot be a position, not “a standpoint upon which one may place oneself,” the opposite, a complete lack of standpoint, would hardly suffice as it would only amount to an inverted standpoint. This “neither this nor that,” or even, to allude to Hegel, “negation of negation,” very much bears the mark of a dialectic that tries to avoid any static position on either side of

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the dualism. So, through shock intervention, it seems that Barth wants to introduce a certain dynamism into the relationship between God and human beings, loosening our understanding of this relationship from anything that might be understood in terms of control: “This is faith: respect for the divine incognito,” as he puts it (Barth 2010, 62). Does not Barth, in this context, speak of “das bewegte Verharren in der Negation” (“the dynamic persistence in negation”) or, as in Edward C. Hoskyn’s English translation, “to move and tarry in negation”? (Barth 2010, 66; Barth 1968, 42). To persist in negation, is that not a clear expression of the dualism that Barth’s commentary is accused of? It all depends on the manner of persisting, I think. If “persistence” is a kind of “immobility,” another translation of “das bewegte Verharren” that illustrates the paradox in the utterance more clearly would be “dynamic immobility.” In fact, the common German prefix “Ver-” is already a negation of “harren,” that is, “waiting,” which in itself is a kind of “dynamic immobility.” Thus, “das bewegte Ver-harren in der Negation”—“the dynamic persistence in negation”—seems to be a kind of “double paradox,” a negation that cannot be sublated but nevertheless does not become static. This “dynamic persistence,” then, is indeed a dialectic negation and not a position, highlighting the insurmountable sovereignty of God in relation to the faith of the human being. Nevertheless, it does not reduce the human being to passivity tout court, but assigns passivity to humanity in a dynamic way. I would avoid dissolving the paradox into a synthesis by suggesting that Barth is considering an intermediate or responsive posture of the subject to be a kind of “mediopassive” subjectivity, as I think we need to appreciate the tension involved in the paradox. Whatever “dynamic persistence” means, however, it is surely not just an immobile passivity. On the next page, Barth quotes Martin Luther from the reformer’s lectures on Romans: “Only the captives will be free, only the poor will be rich, only the weak strong, only the humble exalted, only what is empty will be full, only what is nothing will be something” (Barth 2010, 67).8 This quotation conveys precisely the same kind of paradoxes as we have already encountered, and paradox is surely one of the main tropes of Der Römerbrief that contributes to its dualistic rhetoric. The paradox—and the idea of the human being it conveys—is necessary to awaken the “unbroken human being” from her or his illusion of control: “the more the unbroken person walks along on his secure road sure of himself, the more he is his own fool” (Barth 2010, 76). The “dynamic immobility” is not a

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possibility that derives from any capabilities that a human being could possess in her- or himself, even in the form of piety or virtue or its opposite, but is what becomes possible after being confronted with the Gospel, after being broken, that is, and even then not something that could be held on to.9 The gift can never be turned into a given; the possibility will remain the “impossible possibility” (Barth 2010, 114). It cannot turn into another, inverted human possibility, ascesis instead of conquest (Barth 2010, 268–269). The “old self” is crucified with Christ and the “new self” resurrected wholly on God’s initiative, without any cooperation whatsoever from the self. It is not a human but a divine possibility; the “new self” lives from “the negation of the negation” (Barth 2010, 177). To possess the Gospel, or, even better, to be someone who thinks she or he could possess it, is pure foolishness. Therefore, the paradox encapsulates the desperate need for both judgment and grace, both death and life, no and yes, and in that particular order. This sequence is “not reversible,” says Barth (Barth 2010, 259). The paradox, in other words, rhetorically effectuates the crisis; or is it more accurate to say that it emulates the crisis, as the crisis is something that no human being, only God, can address? This also means that the human being cannot regard the dialectic between sin and grace as a bystander. He or she is always existentially involved in the dialectic, and the spectatorial view of it is only a version of the unredeemed view from the perspective of the capable “old self.” In this regard, Barth reminds us of Luther in De servo arbitrio who argues against Erasmus and the idea of a “choosing” self that is not always already bound by its choices.10 As Luther, so Barth is aware that the genre of theology, the way theology is written, also matters with regard to the positions of the author and the reader; to write, as Erasmus does, a diatribe or a dissertation puts the author “outside of” the course of events, so to speak, as a purportedly neutral judge or spectator, as if he or she could choose not to participate, whereas Luther’s assertio or “insistence” is written in the mode of confession or in the mode of someone existentially involved in the events disclosed in the text. As Barth puts it, “between death and life no third possibility exists” (Barth 2010, 292). The point of it all, for Barth as well as for Luther, is to shift the focus away from what the human being can or cannot do and turn it toward God’s work.11 There is, therefore, a certain wager in speaking of grace as if it were something that the theological could have at hand when it definitely is not.

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3  Conclusion: Barth’s Performative Theology We could continue to examine the rhetoric of Barth’s Der Römerbrief more extensively, but I think this sample suffices for my purposes. Summing up the exegesis of Barth’s commentary, I would suggest that paradox is one of the main tropes of this text, and that the purpose of paradox is both to intervene in the supposedly self-contained striving of the human subject and to prevent this intervention from simply becoming pacified in a new synthesis. The tension in the paradox, as in “dynamic immobility” or “impossible possibility,” speaks a language that does not lend itself to a message that its addressee could somehow own or control. Instead, the intervention speaks of a gift that a human being must constantly receive. One could think of the manna from heaven that could not be stored overnight lest it turned bad in the narrative of Exodus 16:1–36. Or perhaps one could agree with Slavoj Žižek in suggesting that Barth’s theology in Der Römerbrief, just like psychoanalysis, is measured “not by its factual accuracy but by how it affects the subjective position of enunciation” (Žižek 2010, xiii). This does not mean that “factual accuracy” is irrelevant to the message, but that it cannot and should not be pursued in isolation from its effect. In Der Römerbrief, Barth’s interest is as much in “the position of enunciation” that follows from the Gospel as it is in what the Gospel enunciates; the latter cannot be had without the former lest there be a performative contradiction with very real cultural and political consequences. It is a kind of ideological critique in that it is intended to shatter the very coordinates of the system from within which it launches its attack. For Barth’s part, it is a matter of exposing the hypocrisy of using the Gospel to legitimate the very human politics of the First World War. To intervene in that moment of crisis, Barth concluded that it is not just a matter of the content of theology but also its form, and Der Römerbrief was the outcome of this insight. In terms of J. L. Austin’s quite basic but helpful distinction between language that describes states of affairs that might be true or false and language that accomplishes something by the very speech act itself, Barth’s language in Der Römerbrief is performative rather than constative (Austin 1962). By intervening in contemporary theology through Der Römerbrief, Barth wanted to change things, not in language only, but in the actual praxis of politics and Christian life, and for this purpose a constative language was not enough. To suggest that Barth’s aim in Der Römerbrief was to intervene in the cultural situation of his time does not mean, however, that the crisis that

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Barth confronted was a crisis of culture only, which he wanted to express in language. It was also a crisis of language as such; the preferred idiom of academic theology and philosophy of his time was dominated by a more constative language that no longer held up. Interestingly, the kind of prose written by academically marginal thinkers in German Romanticism at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, such as Johann Georg Hamann, Friedrich von Schlegel, and the young Friedrich Schleiermacher, differs in similar ways from how their more established colleagues, such as Immanuel Kant, G.  W. F.  Hegel, and the later Schleiermacher, expressed themselves (Cf. Sigurdson 2021b). We may also think of how the Barth of Der Römerbrief differs stylistically from the academically employed Barth of “Unterricht in der christlichen Religion” and later. Nevertheless, the perceived cultural crisis gave rise to a German prose not content with how established literature, philosophy, and theology put their content into words. A field of experimentation was not only possible but necessary in order to come to grips with the new situation. Barth’s Der Römerbrief, I would suggest, finally, should not be understood as proclaiming a dualist separation between time and eternity. To understand it in this manner would be to misconstrue the rhetorical genre of this particular text. It is, in David Tracy’s terminology, kerygmatic in that it “appeals to the confrontational word of address” rather than the kind of doctrinal theology that “appeals to the need for the clarification and explication of content and the mediation of the event to and in the ordinary” (Tracy 1981, 294, n. 65). Tracy compares this work’s rhetoric to that of German expressionist painting or Bertold Brecht’s alienation techniques, rather than to that of “realist” literature or painting. That Barth could quite seamlessly switch to doctrinal theology in this sense in moving to Göttingen and the professorship should perhaps warn us against interpreting Der Römerbrief as if it were Barth’s exclusive idea of what theology might be at the time. Rather, if it was a contextually conditioned need that occasioned Barth’s intervention, then we could think that Barth’s move to doctrinal theology did not amount to a break with his earlier radicality, but that other forms of rhetoric were needed in other contexts. In 1940, well into his work on Kirchliche Dogmatik, he commended his commentary from 1922 with “Well roared, lion!,” and in 1956 he wrote that its one-sided emphasis on divine judgment was necessary for critical-polemic reasons (Barth 1940, 715; Barth 1956, 3–10). Any reader of Der Römerbrief would, I suppose, be struck by its repetitiousness and almost monomaniacal insistence on crisis as a root

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metaphor. But not taken in isolation from its intellectual and social context, nor from Barth’s later work, and with due emphasis given to its performative nature, it might turn out that its dialectic is broader and more encompassing than the work regarded in and for itself.12 This contextual and rhetorical understanding of Der Römerbrief does not mean that the work is relevant only to the past, that it is interesting as a historical document only. The value of such a classic as Barth’s Der Römerbrief in all its one-sidedness is precisely as a performative incitement to a critical rethinking and reevaluation of a more standard or realist theology in all its nuances. It is not only in Barth’s time that such a theology might be prone to forget the utter strangeness of the Gospel. As the American author Flannery O’Connor put it in one of her letters: “I distrust folks who have ugly things to say about Karl Barth. I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around” (O’Connor 2008, 180–181). To throw the furniture around might not be the least service a theology can offer to contemporary thought.

Notes 1. All translations are my own, except as otherwise indicated. 2. Gordon (2010, 44, 376 n. 11); Falk (2014, 31–32, 34–35); Björk (2018, 141–217). Gordon seems to confuse the second edition with the first, however. 3. Close to my own aim I find Webb (1991). Some of the thoughts in an earlier article of mine tend in the same direction: Sigurdson (2019). 4. My main source regarding Barth’s early life and context is Busch (1986) as well as Tietz (2019). 5. Adriaanse (1974); Becker (1986); Smith (1983); Goud (1992); Ward (1995); Klemm (1987, 443–469); Jones (1993, 109–141); Baark (2018). 6. Cf. Walser (2012). 7. Cf. Barth (2010, 107): “‘Gott’ ist eben Ideologie, wo Menschen den Standpunkt Gottes einnehmen ohne Gott, wo Gott selber, Gott allein nicht eins und alles ist, sondern Menschen, wenn auch im feinsten, edelsten Sinn mit Gott etwas sein und etwas machen wollen.” 8. Quoted from Martin Luther’s Latin text in Luther (1938, 18–21). 9. Cf. Barth (2010, 86): “Auch der Glaube, sofern er in irgend einem Sinn mehr als Hohlraum sein will, ist Unglaube.” 10. See my exposition of this debate in Sigurdson (2021a, 349–367). 11. Cf. Barth (2010, 298).

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12. This is why I am somewhat hesitant with regard to Webb’s otherwise interesting book (1991) on the rhetoric of Der Römerbrief. To suggest that “Barth’s rhetoric is his theology—to the extent that he has one” (p. 148) is to misconstrue how Barth saw his vocation as a theologian.

References Adam, K. 1936. Die Theologie der Krisis. In Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Dogmengeschichte und Theologie der Gegenwart. Augsburg: P. Haas. Adriaanse, H.J. 1974. Zu den Sachen selbst: Versuch einer Konfrontation der Theologie Karl Barths mit der phänomenologischen Philosophie Edmund Husserls. ‘s Gravenhage: Mouton. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baark, S. 2018. The Affirmation of Reason: On Karl Barth’s Speculative Theology, 2018. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. von Balthasar, H.U. 1976. Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie. 4th ed. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag. Barth, K. 1934. Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner. In Theologische Existenz heute, Heft 14. München: Kaiser. ———. 1940. Kirchliche Dogmatik, Bd II/1. Zollikon/Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag. ———. 1956. Die Menschlichkeit Gottes. Theologische Studien 48. Zollikon/Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag. ———. 1968. The Epistle to the Romans. Translation: Edward C.  Hoskyns. London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1974. Letter to Eduard Thurneysen from 30 January 1242. In Karl Barth–Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel, Band II: 1921–1930, ed. Eduard Thurneysen, 1974. Karl Barth Gestamtausgabe. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. ———. 1985. Der Römerbrief. Erste Fassung. Gestamtausgabe 16. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. ———. 2010. In Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) 1922, ed. Cornelis van der Kooi and Katja Tolstaja. Karl Barth Gestamtausgabe: II. Akademiske Werke. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Becker, D. 1986. Karl Barth und Martin Buber: Denker in dialogischer Nachbarschaft? Zur Bedeutung Martin Bubers für die Anthropologie Karl Barths. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Berkouwer, G.C. 1957. Der Triumph der Gnade in der Theologie Karl Barths. Neukirchen: Neukirchen Verlag. Björk, M. 2018. Life Outside Life: The Politics of Immortality, 1914–1945. PhD diss., Göteborgs universitet: Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria och religion. Busch, E. 1986. Karl Barths Lebenslauf. München: Kaiser.

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Falk, H. 2014. Det politisk-teologiska komplexet: Fyra kapitel om Carl Schmitts sekularitet. PhD diss., Göteborgs universitet: Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria och religion. Gadamer, H-G. 2006. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. London/New York: Continuum. Gordon, P.E. 2010. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Goud, J.F. 1992. Emmanuel Levinas und Karl Barth: Ein religionsphilosophischer und ethischer Vergleich. Bonn/Berlin: Bouvier. Jones, S. 1993. “This God Which Is Not One: Irigaray and Barth on the Divine.” In Transfigurations: Theology & The French Feminists, ed. C.W. Maggie Kim, S.M. St. Ville, and S.M. Simonaitis, 109–141. Minneapolis: Fortress. Klemm, D.E. 1987. “Towards a Rhetoric of Postmodern Theology: Through Barth and Heidegger.” In Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55 (3): 443–469. Koshar, R. 2008. “Where Is Karl Barth in Modern European History?” Modern Intellectual History 5 (2): 335–338. Luther, M. 1938. Der Brief an die Römer. Kritische Gestamtausgabe, Bd 56. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. O’Connor, F. 2008. The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and Brainard Cheneys. In Stephens, ed. C. Ralph Stephens. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Olofsson, R.  P. 1964. “Gud är allt, människan intet och du är en idiot …”. In Expressen, November 10. Roper, L. 2017. Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet. London: Vintage. Sigurdson, O. 2019. “Karl Barth and Humour”. In Eftertænkning og genopførelser: Festskrift til Bent Flemming Nielsen, ed. Marlene Ringgaard Loresen, Christine Svinth-Værge Põder, and Nete Helene Enggaard, 273–291. Copenhagen: Existensens forlag. ———. 2021a. Gudomliga komedier: Humor, subjektivitet, transcendens. Vol. 1: Antiken till renässansen. Göteborg: Glänta. ———. 2021b. Gudomliga komedier: Humor, subjektivitet, transcendens. Vol. 2: Tysk romantik. Göteborg: Glänta. Smith, S.G. 1983. The Argument to the Other: Reason Beyond Reason in the Thought of Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas. AAR Academy Series 42. Chico: Scholars Press. Taubes, J. 2004. The Political Theology of Paul. Translation: Dana Hollander. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tietz, C. 2019. Karl Barth: Ein Leben im Widerspruch. 2nd ed. München: C. H. Beck. Tracy, D. 1981. The Analogical Imagination. London: SCM. Walser, M. 2012. Über Rechtfertigung: Eine Versuchung. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

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Ward, G. 1995. Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webb, S.H. 1991. Re-figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. New  York: State University of New York Press. Žižek, S. 2010. Living in the End Times. London/New York: Verso.

CHAPTER 3

“As a Tangent Touching a Circle”: Karl Barth and Dialectical Theologians Rethinking Time After 1918 Liisi Keedus

On Monday, November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in order to end World War I. On Sunday of the same week, Eduard Thurneysen, a young pastor at Leutwil, Switzerland, delivered a sermon, entitled “The New Time” and guided by the words of Ecclesiastes: “God hath set eternity into the heart of man.” “Perhaps we understand this saying a little better today,” he said on that day when his congregation surely was overwhelmed with both extraordinary relief and anxiety, “(f)or we all have come out of a time in which men have tried, of their own might, to put eternity into their hearts. But today, through grievous sacrifices, we have been taught, more clearly than ever, that all these attempts of men have utterly failed” (Thurneysen 1982, p.  72). They were standing “in a cleft which divides two times”, indeed, where “the old ends, the new begins”, yet the new needed to be much more

L. Keedus (*) School of Humanities, University of Tallinn, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_3

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radical than any mere “change of direction”. It needed to be a “wholly different life and existence” (ibid., pp. 72–83). In its very title, Thurneysen’s sermon acclaimed the “new time” of the post-war era: an opportunity for a new society, a new ethics, a new man, and even—the central focus of his sermon—a renewal of Christianity, freed from its outdated nineteenth-century forms. All of this was impossible, for Thurneysen, without radically rethinking the human relationship to time and indeed remaking time itself—that is, without reconstituting the experience and meaning of temporality and historicity. This task was, or so this chapter will argue, at the centre not only of Thurneysen’s postwar thought and activities, but of those of his closest peers, including Karl Barth, Emil Brunner and Friedrich Gogarten, who formed the core of a group of young dialectical theologians, or “crisis” theologians. The “crisis” to which they referred was conceived as a decisive moment, a turning point that would divide time in two; similarly, they would also describe themselves sometimes as the Zwischen den Zeiten (“between the times”) circle, after the journal they co-founded in 1923, which sought to capture this sense of temporal schism. The chapter first outlines what this polemics against the predominant historical worldview meant for these young theologians and some of their contemporaries, especially how they conceptualised this re-shaped theology and religious thought, but also the ways they saw anti-historicism to impact culture, politics, and society in broader ways. While the key role of anti-historicist impulses in the emergence and formulation of dialectical theology has been investigated earlier (Graf 2011, Holtmann 2007, pp. 281–312), my chapter outlines what I argue were the broader ambitions of this critique, rather than just its theological dimension (cf. Wenz and Jaeger 1996; Nowak 1987; Wittkau 1992). I will also seek to demonstrate that for these young thinkers, anti-historicism as a theological or cultural critique would always remain insufficient. Instead, they felt compelled to attempt a more radical intervention with the perceived circular structure between (1) the methodological and epistemological claims of the historical nature of all knowledge, (2) the ontological framework based on history as continuity and causality, (3) political ideology of progress, and (4) the ethics of historical relativism—insofar as it is possible to separate these different layers of critique. I also want to highlight the significance of the activity of thinking in tandem as a grouping—particularly palpable, as I hope to show, in their joint tackling of the convoluted question of historicism.

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1   “Religion Begins and Ends with History?” A Theological Genealogy of Historical-Political Modernity With a sense of urgency equal to Thurneysen’s, Brunner, Barth, and Gogarten all similarly asserted the need for a complete break with the world that had disclosed its evil face in the War. “We are at the end,” Brunner wrote, “The World War showed us that despite education, science, organisation we cannot go forward… What we need is that something will come upon us that we don’t have to push out of ourselves, but what enters into our poor existence from outside. A new spirit” (Jehle 2006, p. 79). One needed to look for “not some shift within the traditional way of posing questions”, Gogarten on his part insisted, “but a change of direction. The ship was threatening to run aground …” (Busch 1994, p.  144). The uncompromising pathos of dialectical theology reflected the scale of its task—to achieve nothing less than the end of the world that had delivered, justified, and revealed itself in a World War. How had Western civilisation, which regarded itself as the peak of humanity and reason, unfolded into this unprecedented slaughter? There were no simple answers to that question—yet dialectical theologians demanded that the Christian answer begins by examining Christianity itself and its role in shaping political modernity. The bourgeois Protestant establishment had glorified the war as a “saviour, a reformer with a frightful face” (Schneider 1915, p.  140), a conflict fought “in the name of God… with God for King and Country, for Kaiser and Reich, for honour and freedom” (Rendtorff, cited in Tilgner 1970, p. 155). Such assertions were commonplace and yet shocking for the young dialectical theologians. They became convinced that it was not the erroneous political judgement of their elders that had led to a flawed theology, but the other way around—that their flawed political judgement was a consequence of their liberal-historical theology. And for its young critics, liberal-historical theology began with Friedrich Schleiermacher. As traditional Christianity faced increasing questions from new disciplines, Schleiermacher sought its modernisation by transposing its core from the objectivity of God to the subjectivity of the human self—so that faith became foremost a disposition or form of experience, an emotional relation of every experiential content to “an infinite Whole”. The Schleiermachian “infinite Whole” (Schleiermacher 2018, p. 110) is not a traditional, theistic God, prior to and independent of the world, but

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embodied in the world itself in its infinite variety and transformed into immanence and subjectivity instead, for example, into human “thought”, “acting”, “desire”, “love”, “feeling”, and “acting”. The striving for all-­ encompassing unity also stands at the centre of Schleiermachian concept of religion. Religion is “to feel that, in its highest unity, all that moves us in feeling is one; to feel that anything single and particular is possible only by means of this unity; to feel … that our being and living is a being and living in and through God” (ibid., p. 42). Firstly, Schleiermacher moved towards the concept of wholeness and unity amongst different world religions as one. Secondly, his concept of religion argued for the unity of human and divine being as parts of the same whole, embodying “the eternal unity of Reason and Nature” (ibid., p. 34). The scholarly context of Schleiermachian Romanticism was the decline of the idea of natural right and its gradual replacement by historical thought in the classical disciplines of philosophy, jurisprudence, and theology. Schleiermacher himself made notable contributions to the development of historical hermeneutical methods, as well as to the tradition of understanding faith and religion through history. But also central for his philosophy of religion was attributing to human history a sacred meaning. For Schleiermachian religion, history was “the richest source” and more than that—“the greatest and most general revelation of the deepest and holiest. In this sense, ... religion begins and ends with history” (ibid., p. 66). It is through the contemplation of human history, its patterns and recurrences, that we may find a sense of “order”; civilisational progress presents “a divine sign” in which man can experience a sense of unity and even imagine approaching the divine. Indeed, history always entails the overcoming of what is foul in man, and a clearer vision of the goodness of God, if not of divinity itself—“the rude, the barbarian, the formless are to be absorbed and recast,” Schleiermacher announced in his prophecy of “progress” (ibid., p. 67). History is the working of God, wherein “(b)lind instinct, unthinking custom, dull obedience, everything lazy and passive, all those sad symptoms of the death slumber of freedom and humanity are to be abolished. To this the work of the minutes and the centuries is directed, it is the great ever-advancing work of redemptive love” (ibid.). So, the study of religion and of the divine not only needs to be historical in its method, but the study of history is always, by its very constitution, also an inquiry into the divine order of things.

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Dialectical theologians argued that Schleiermacher had fundamentally re-conceptualised Christian temporality. Barth examined the ways in which Romantic thought turned the advent of Christ into the confirmation of the historical order of things, wherein humanity, or, to be more precise, human self-consciousness, evolves towards perfection; hence, the birth of Christ as well as the act of Redemption were now “the result of the continuous direction of this world by divine Providence, or in other words … an historical necessity” (Barth 2015a, p. 136). Gogarten, similarly, contended that if revelation is, rather than a divine event, an expression of a human spiritual condition, only then can it be incorporated into this stream of universal occurrence, according to the laws of historical causality (Gogarten 1968a, p. 318ff). Brunner dedicated an entire part of his book to Schleiermacher’s new philosophy of history and time, focusing on the ways in which Schleiermachian Christianity had rendered traditionally central eschatology superfluous and replaced it with “development optimism”. This was not a simple secular idea of progress, but a scheme of historicity wherein Christianity is at once the culmination, the fulfilment of the idea of humankind, as well as being in itself in constant flux in the normative sense. That is to say, the Christianity of today is always morally (and, following Schleiermacher’s logic, also epistemologically and dogmatically) superior to that of yesterday, and in turn inferior to the Christianity of tomorrow. This idea of the Holy Spirit working through history, Brunner noted in dismay, not only forgot about natural disasters, but simply overlooked the extreme suffering brought about by entire periods of barbarism in European history, to which it would be cruel to attribute any “sense”. Similarly, it ignored the conspicuous evils of its own time, for example, the effects of colonialism. Whatever happens, serves the cause of development; hence, it ought to have happened, happened out of necessity, and is therefore good. Normativity and ethics—both on the individual and collective level—need primarily to coincide with the historical movement, towards greater unity and universality, and for this purpose too, to avoid conflict and dissent. It must be in harmony with history, but ultimately also with nature (Brunner 1924, p. 313). In the aftermath of the World War, this younger generation of theologians saw the Schleiermachian divinization of Man as a theological justification for the later nationalisms and statism. The modern man had no patience for a distant and tempestuous God and thus he moved, Barth ironically recounted,

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more and more to a religious veneration of nature and modern culture. By the sea, in the mountains, in the desert (he became a great traveller), in the roar of machinery, in the bustle of great cities, in the iron structure of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and of the Frankfurt railway station, he now sought and found all sorts of revelations of God. Why not? God speaks everywhere. But without noticing it, everything that existed began to be surrounded with a peculiar halo of religion—the State and the Hohenzollers and the Prussian military, the German citizen with his incomparable “efficiency”, capitalism, trade, enterprise, in short, the whole Germany. (Barth 1968a, p. 37)

The political effect of the theological inability to distinguish truth from heresy was a failure to recognise and confront utter evil, particularly in its ideological forms. The church had not merely failed to demur at unprecedented violence; its exaltation of the nation and worldly hegemonic powers to a metaphysically legitimised absoluteness was the root cause of the war itself (Barth 1968b, p. 50, 2015b, pp. 132–3, Moseley 2013). It is in this context that dialectical theologians declared their quest for new horizons for normativity in an already intensely post-metaphysical age, basing these on God’s absolute otherness and the sovereignty and timelessness of the divine. Against previous theologies of immanence, they insisted that God does not reside in the human mind or the human heart but is “above him—unapproachably distant and unutterably strange”, “unknown”, “Wholly Other” (Barth 1968b, p. 27, 56, 49). We need to be reminded that “God is in heaven, you are on earth”—something that Barth argued that Romantic, historicist, and subjectivist religiosity had obscured (ibid., p. 49).

2  Exploding “the Circle of Verities”: Crisis Theologians on Historical Methods and Epistemology Barth’s two editions of Epistle to the Romans, landmark works of dialectical theology, had a monumental impact on contemporary German scholars and intellectuals across disciplines, including in philosophy, classical studies, literary theory, and Jewish studies (Löwith 1994, p. 26, Koshar 2008). When claiming “if we rightly understand ourselves, our problems are the problems of Paul” (Barth 1968b, p. 1), Barth suggested that his contemporaries too stood at the threshold of a new era and his insistence that this

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historical fracture demanded a formal fracture was received with a widely shared sense of urgency. There would be no mere picking up the pieces, announced Barth along with his peers and reminiscent of the Paul of the Epistle—as “the old world has passed away” (Barth 1996, p. 13) and the “era of old ethics is gone forever” (Barth 2013b, p. 149). One of the key tasks in this quest for “the new strange world” for the Romans was to dismantle and offer an alternative to historicism. This was crystal clear to its contemporary readers, and the book prompted many responses specifically as a treatise in anti-historicism. The very opening lines of Romans I—“Paul spoke to his contemporaries as a child of his age. But much more important than this truth is the other that he speaks as a prophet and apostle of the Kingdom of God to all men in all ages” (Barth 1968b, p. 1)—define its agenda against the decades-long predominance of historical scholarship in theology and its dictum of the uniqueness of each era. Barth further claimed that he was inquiring into “what is there”, until the “walls” between our time and Paul’s become “transparent” (ibid., p.  7). The critical-historical readings that once set out to liberate the sacred texts from some of their mythical-naïve elements, had in fact, as Barth and his peers now insisted, concealed the core of the Christian faith. Now the sacred texts needed to be liberated from historical methods. While dialectical theologians recognised the achievements of historical scholarship in enlarging biblical knowledge, they claimed that their own work would go in an entirely different, dogmatic, and theological direction, which had been omitted, if not discredited, by the historical approach. “The historical-critical method of Biblical investigation has its rightful place,” wrote Barth in the Preface to Romans I, “(b)ut, were I driven to choose between it and the venerable doctrine of Inspiration, I should without hesitation adopt the latter, which has a broader, deeper, more important justification.” In the preface to the second edition of the book, he continued to argue that recent historical biblical studies have concerned themselves mainly with philological problems and the compilation of archaeological evidence and as such were a mere “first step towards a commentary” (ibid., p. 6). By contrast, “genuine understanding and interpretation” is to gather and apply “that creative energy which Luther exercised with intuitive certainty in his exegesis; which underlies the systematic interpretation of Calvin” (ibid., p. 7). Thurneysen similarly saw his own work less as a revolution in interpretation, but more as a return to the Reformation principles, above all the maxim of sola scriptura. He contrasted his own efforts to previous

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“philosophies of religion” as well as attempts to blend theology with “psychology of religion” or history of religion, the main difference being dialectical theology’s insistence on the primacy of the Scripture and its perennial significance for Christianity. Even if it sounded untimely to his contemporaries, Thurneysen argued, all de-dogmatisation of the revelation—historicisation, modernisation of its language—would end up concealing rather than disclosing it (Thurneysen 1963, p. 269ff). Revelation must not be humanised to the end, even if it is always, inevitably, humanised to some extent. “God must remain God”—and it was the Scripture as the word of revelation, “disclosing itself” throughout different human historical periods that warranted this. Yet “naïve Biblicism” was not an option either (ibid., p. 274), since it, just like “orthodoxy” and “liberalism”, seeks to conceal the “crisis” present in every genuine encounter with the text (ibid., p.  264)—which dialectical theology sought to restore. “Theology, like philosophy, wants to problematize not only some things but everything,” wrote Brunner in turn to clarify the grouping’s methodological intent (Brunner 1981a, p. 99). While Thurneysen claimed that he gave full recognition to the findings of historical biblical scholarship, this, he argued, could not diminish the scripture’s canonical status, and furthermore, “the more the external, visible unity of the Bible becomes questioned, the more pressing becomes the question for (its) hidden, inner unity” (Thurneysen 1963, p. 269). He also argued that some of the New Testament authors themselves had been aware of the historical variance of the written sources (e.g. the introduction to the Lucas evangelium) and that this had not threatened, in their eyes, the simultaneous validity of their content as such (ibid., p. 271). This has become a problem for modern scholarship, in the context of its very particular conceptions of historical continuity and time—only relative in themselves, as far as Thurneysen evaluated them. While the Scripture is in some respects rightly researched using methods applied to any literary or historical text, such analyses can never exhaust the potential of biblical texts to suggest truths beyond scholarly validation. A sensation of “being left unsatisfied”, of incomplete knowledge and understanding, is a perpetual sign of all genuine theological research (ibid., p. 275). It was common for anti-historicist scholars to argue that there was an inherent tension between ahistorical normativity and historical interpretation, and also, that historical approaches are in no way a guarantee against imposing one’s own particular agenda on past sources (Barth 1968b, p.  6ff). Of the group’s members, Thurneysen, whose work was most

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palpably interwoven with pastoral concerns, was also keenest to insist on a gulf between the Scripture authors’ intentions, and modern interpretations. He contended that while surely every sermon seeks to induce the text of the Scripture to “speak”, this task could be understood in a myriad of different ways (Thurneysen 1963, p. 247). He claimed this was above all a task of “discovering” and “bringing to light … the essential secret of a text” (ibid., p. 248), which, however, could prove difficult considering that the Bible is a conglomeration of very different texts. To piece together to any degree a unity of essential message, drawing in part on “the experience of a pastor”, but also on the insights of scholars, is often not an achievement of one’s own, but is a truth in a sense “given to us”, Thurneysen further argued. No biblical interpretation can be entirely the merit of one’s “historical-critical” methods, or one’s own achievement in some other sense—because the “theme” itself reaches for the “beyond” of human cognition. This is also the very meaning of “revelation”—that is, that on first approach, the subject is distant and concealed, but in the moment of insight foregoes this distance and becomes approachable, disclosing and opening itself to us, the human observers. It remains a mistake, Thurneysen underlined, to transform the unfamiliar into the familiar, so that the beyond is dissolved, and so turn the Scripture into an “object”— it is, in fact, a “subject” with an ability to reveal itself. More than that, this mistake would deprive the reader (or listener) from the “crisis” that revelation has the potential to deliver, a radical turning point or a critical perspective on our conventional ways of living. Revelation brings—and the contemporary interpretation needs to receive it and imitate it—the distant closer, without, however, dissolving this distance into proximity, without disarming the “crisis” encoded into the human encounter with the divine. This can be warranted by anchoring the revelation exclusively in the Scripture, rather than in human feelings, reason, nature, history, in the vein of nineteenth-century theological currents (ibid., p. 247ff). Replacing historicist methods presupposed replacing historicist epistemology, and therefore it is hardly surprising that the latter task also kept the grouping equally preoccupied. Like other contemporary critics of positivism, empiricism, idealism and historicism, the thinkers of the Zwischen den Zeiten group did not position themselves explicitly against rationality or reason, but insisted that these forms of contemporary scientific rationalism were, contrary to their own beliefs, uncritical and irrational. Hence most of their critique of historicism, for example, was in their own eyes not an attack against reason or rationalism—even if their

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reviewers often saw it as such—but an attempt, they argued, to define a more adequate or inclusive concept of rationality, appropriate to a fragmented and complicated reality and thus contrasting with the limited, and “closed” rationality of their contemporary scholars. Brunner, for example, contended that modern scientific rationality simply believed in the “unbroken continuum of truth, a circle of verities, which are the object of both mathematical science and of theological inquiry. So man makes himself the judge of all truth; and in so doing, he shows himself to be uncritical” (Brunner 1929, p. 15). Brunner devoted an entire chapter to discussing the various epistemological aspects of evolutionism, of which the materialistic-naturalistic, even if applied to the human realm, was the more simplistic one: “the idea of continuity or monism”. Evolution, he explained further, “seemed to be the means through which it was possible to conceive the totality of existence as one coherent realm of causally ordered things” (ibid., p.  93). Evolutionary thinking, assuming the comprehensive and continuous essence of all knowledge, seeks to suppress all contradictions, antinomies, uncertainties. Yet, as Brunner notes, such all-comprehensive and mechanic theory of causality had been questioned even in natural sciences, such as physics. Recent currents in these fields demonstrated that the desire for certainty and unity of knowledge “must not become a dogma” and needed to be corrected by the “principle of uncertainty” and “openness to reality” (Brunner 1946, p. 297, 1947, p. 437ff). The second fundamental idea of evolutionism takes us to its “original sense”, as Brunner continued to argue: “the coming forth of something that was immanent but latent”, that is, a change in which a subject is “not altered by external circumstances but in which it defines itself more clearly” (Brunner 1929, p.  94). This process, even if not subject to historical necessity, is subdued to logical necessity. The idea of necessity contained within it, Brunner contended, gives the entire framework a “despotic” ambition: At first it is thinking alone, the unfolding of the idea, that is so interpreted. Then human life and history, as a whole, as explained as the unfolding of latent ideas. It was Hegel, particularly, who gave a magnificent picture of history as the self-evolving of the divine idea. Schelling, at the same time, tried to extend the reach of idealistic evolution over nature, … interpret(ing) nature as a sleeping mind… Thus the totality of existence could be seen as one, not as one thing-world, but as one mind-subject. If this idea at first

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seems fantastic, it has proved at least as successful and valuable in the field of the historical sciences as the Darwinian theory in the realm of nature. Our historical thinking is imbued with it much more than most people know. (Brunner 1929, p. 95)

While the Hegelian dictum, all that is actual, is reasonable, becomes the foundation for historical relativism, for Brunner it further failed to “take into account the irrational fact of freedom” (Brunner 1981b, p. 58). It defies all “catastrophes and revolutions”, interruptions of the chain of necessity—in fact all “radically new beginnings” and everything that brings something genuinely new into the human life. Yet it is precisely here that the “after can be explained through the before just as poorly as a piece of artwork can be explained by the paint on the palette or canvas on the easel. Like this act of creation, incalculable, the revolution is also a fact, and not a discovery of some enthusiasts” (ibid., p. 59). Was Christ’s birth a step or a leap? The Reformation? Brunner asked polemically and answered that just as there is no space for the divine interruption in historicist reasoning, or indeed for human responsibility and judgement, so historicism lacks any theoretical tools for conceptualising human freedom and novelty as such, for “everything new is incalculable, unforeseen” (ibid.; see also Brunner 1947, p.  436ff). But equally importantly for Brunner, there is something else in the human personality which cannot be explained causally or teleologically, “because it is not logical and is not natural; and that is moral evil, irrational freedom” (Brunner 1929, 97). In line with Brunner’s argument, Gogarten argued that historicism had closed off the human self from the world into a subjectivist and monistic self-containment. Instead of distinguishing and preserving the distinctness of the human self, the other, and God—a source of crisis and radical self-­ questioning—in Hegelian historicism, the three realities are contained in one consciousness, and more than that, in fact, this consciousness “need be conscious only of itself”. This theoretical-ontological amalgamation fails to take into account, for example, that the consciousness can never ask itself the most crucial, most difficult, or even, any “real” questions at all, since all its own questions to itself would contain answers already implicit in it. This is also the reason why the predominant scholarly discourses were unable to respond to the crisis they were facing—or even acknowledge it as a crisis—as the decisive prompts went past them as something external, without breaching their self-contained theoretical consciousness. Within this framework, such externalities did not in fact

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really exist, and so historicist thinkers felt no compulsion to ask radical questions (Gogarten 1968c, p. 358). Last but not least, even the name of the movement, “dialectical theology”, was an explicitly anti-Hegelian statement, and this on the methodological, epistemological, ontological, as well as on the ethical level. It sought to re-signify “dialectical”, into the very opposite of its Hegelian meaning. For example, when the young theologians examined the relationship between the “old” and “new world” characterised as dialectical, they asserted their irresolvable conflict and contrast, their distinction and separation, and understood the relation as an instance of antithesis—yet without the sequence or possibility of a synthesis. While Hegelian (as well as later, Schleiermachian) dialectics was aimed at unity, at the resolution of distinctions, tensions and contradictions, dialectical theology, on the contrary, insisted on these same separating lines, tensions and contradictions as the very core of a specifically human existence. In other words, while Hegelian dialectic results in unity and coherence, theological dialectics, though also a process of thinking together of contradictory things, has the opposite goal of demonstrating profound difference, thus revealing the core of each entity in the equation (Brunner 1981a, pp. 113–4).

3   “Breaking Out of This Last Circle”: A New Ontology of Time In his pre-August 1914 sermons and speeches, Barth spoke of human history as not only collective social and, for him importantly, economic experience, but also as the source of our knowledge of God (Wu 2011, pp. 21–48, Barth 1993, pp. 155–212). More than that, history contained and revealed “particular times of grace where God speaks with us and works on us particularly powerfully” (cited in Wu 2011, p. 50). It was only with the outbreak of the War that Barth began to re-think historicity in explicitly more negative terms—a shift soon obvious in his sermons, increasingly clear in the 1919 edition of Römerbrief, and re-stated most forcefully in the 1922 edition. He now, albeit gradually, began to understand and speak about history as a place disconnected and remote from God, and to move away from the liberal idea that God may manifest itself in humanity (Barth 1968b, p. 10). One of the leading threads of Barth’s dialectics was what he presented as the fundamental and irreconcilable opposition between “time” and

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“history” as attributes of the earthly life—(“History is the display of the supposed advantages of power and intelligence which some men possess over others”)—and the “timelessness” and “eternity” of God and the revelation (“one drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite things”) (ibid., p. 77). It explicitly challenged the hegemony of the historicist imagination at the time, inviting readers to radically re-think historicist epistemology and ontology, and so to reimagine the human condition. Yet, men for Barth are not deemed to remain imprisoned in time and it is precisely the situation of a crisis that may open a new possibility for its overcoming—“The judgement of God is the end of history, not the beginning of a new, a second epoch. By it, history is not prolonged, but done away with” (ibid., p. 76, Cf. Brunner 1981c, p. 139). In his critique of Schleiermachian “psychologism”, Brunner argued that its project of subjectivising the experience of eternity conceals telling contradictions inherent in this endeavour. Everything mental is inherently temporal, and all perception inseparable from temporality: human “existence is a constant ebb and flow, where nothing lasts, where one thing succeeds another”. To the question of whether there can be “something… beyond the changing times, something that persists in the flow of phenomena”, the materialist, individualist perspective is bound to answer in the negative: “Everything ages, and things change with age. And yet spiritual life is only possible under the condition that time stands still” (Brunner 1921, 102). Faith can never be grasped within the horizon of temporality, but “is always an act indivisible in time, indifferent to time” (ibid., p. 104). Eternity cannot be experienced as sameness within human existence, and the source of this experience cannot be the subjective self; it can only be experienced as otherness and as what stands beyond time. Either the absolute and the eternal do not exist, or, if they do, they cannot be viewed or comprehended in subjective terms. Schleiermacher’s amalgamation of Christ and history was then, in Brunner’s re-narration, an attempt to overcome the inherent contradiction between the flux of subjective time and the stillness and absoluteness of eternity. In contrast, dialectical theologians established a strictly dualistic view; in this view, there is no place for History in the equation. On the one hand, the event of resurrection is a real event that is not completely beyond the historical timeline and even has a concrete place in it. On the other hand, the events of advent and resurrection affect history without really touching it, and certainly without being immersed in it, and even remain unconditioned by human discovery or acknowledgement. Barth

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captures this idea in an often-cited passage in Romans II; here, he re-­ conceptualises history and—notably—“necessity”, as well as the relation between the sacred and secular events: The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor, and Primal History. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And, precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier—as the new world. (Barth 1968b, p. 30)

The tangent still remains outside the circle and instead offers a promise of an opening or at least of an (almost) touching point between the human and the divine world.

B

A

Later in the book, Barth developed this idea further by explaining that For it is clear that the raising of Jesus from the dead is not an event of historical extension (historischer Ausdehnung) alongside the other events of his life and death, but the “non-historical” (4:17b) relation (unhistorische Beziehung) of his whole historical life to His origin in God. Then again it is also clear that my “walking in the new life”, which presses itself into my existence as necessity and reality in the power of the resurrection, is not and will not be some event alongside other events in my past, in my present, or in my future. (Ibid., p. 175)

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Resurrection, then, while a historical event, is not an event within or encompassed by history. As an event of absolute newness and uniqueness, it defies historical continuity—and cannot be encompassed or exhausted by historical methods of study. More than that, not only is Barth’s God defined by such an event, but similarly the humanity in us is defined by moments that untie the chain of causality: by the unexpected and external revelation, by the miracle against all odds, a new beginning, an act or a stroke of lightning, the exception that defies the law, in other words, the moment when normal ways of acting are breaking down (ibid., pp. 112, 491). Let us now return to trope of tangent touching the circle, the possibility of a “new time”, and “possibility of the impossible”—was any kind of encounter with the divine possible in the human world? It is notable that the longest ontological-theological discussion of time in Romans II takes place in the passages where Barth interpreted “thou shalt love thy neighbour like thyself”. Further, it is significant that this discussion begins by establishing that there is only one point in temporality where the non-­ temporal may appear: “Between the past and the future—between the times—there is a ‘Moment’ that is no moment in time. This ‘Moment’ is the eternal Moment—the Now—when the past and the future stand still, when the former ceases its going and the latter its coming.” This is the moment when revelation becomes possible, “(w)herever a moment in the past or in the future has been qualified by the Now of revelation that lies in the midst between the two, there is the opportunity for the occurrence of love—for its ‘living regiment’ (Kierkegaard).” In agape, the selfless love of your neighbour, both revelation and eternity, is present, and it interrupts the human flow of the passing time: “in the cycle of evil unto evil, of reaction unto revolution, it plays no role”. In what appears as Barth’s counterstatement against contemporary political revolutions of violence that had left him profoundly disappointed, he wrote, “Love does what it does only in the knowledge of the eternal ‘Moment’. Love is therefore the essentially revolutionary action.” Yet again, he also seeks to create as much distance between his view and the Romantic sentiment of love, by contending, further, that this “love” is nothing short of a “miracle”; it emerges only out of the interruption of this “Moment” into time, the conventional human temporality (ibid., pp. 497–8). “What happens in this moment… is exclusively God’s act, and will remain so,” wrote Gogarten in his reflections on the fleeting encounter between human and divine temporalities (1968c, p. 284). The uttermost

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task of religion is always to constitute a “crisis” vis-à-vis the human life—in the spheres of culture, ethics, and so on—that is, to question radically its contents, and to prompt men to yearn and seek for something else, beyond. This “crisis” does not find its place in the temporal timeline of the past preceding the present, and future following it, in some temporal sequence and logic, but it means to reach beyond time in the immediate present moment, as if tearing itself out of this sequential line. This immediate moment requires nothing but to be immediately lived; it means— religiously expressed—an encounter with God in the moment. Accordingly, this moment, regardless of its immediate form, requires a content which tolerates absolutely nothing besides itself … here there exists nothing but the pure present, the moment, brought to its final perfection. (Gogarten 1968c, pp. 284–5)

Here it would be even erroneous to think of the encounter with the divine as a journey, a process, because this would be an application of historical categories to a sphere where these are alien, to “dance the insane dance of the world history and so-called evolution” (ibid., p. 291)—but literally as a moment. This moment “no longer belongs to the general relativity of events, nor can it spring from that context of events”; instead it is “something absolutely new” that enables the “breaking out of this last circle, exploding it so thoroughly that it will never again be able to restrict our thoughts” (ibid., p. 297). Brunner extended the critique of the historical and causal ontology beyond Christianity unto the plane of rethinking its meaning for human freedom—that needed, he argued, by definition to defy necessity. Not only is faith indifferent to history as such, Brunner insisted, it also stands in sharp and conscious contrast to all layers of “historical thinking”. The evolutionist idea of development is the attempt to derive all phenomena from earlier stages, from an unbroken historical continuity, effectively from “the mechanism of one closed causal series”—which leaves us trapped into “a closed universe”. “The idea of development is consistent monism in the scheme of time, and its current almost axiomatic validity corresponds exactly to the general monistic trend of our time” (Brunner 1921, pp.  106–8). The individual—the human individual or an individual event—is dissolved for the sake of the great-oneness, wholeness (Brunner 1981c, p. 129). On the one hand, the uniqueness and singularity of events in historical time clearly contrasts with the cyclic character of natural

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occurrences. On the other hand, Brunner continues, human history still “possesses something of a cyclic character”. Men are always subject to certain similar forces, through which they fight a never-ending battle, “the same from age to age”. It is only an event of absolute uniqueness, an absolute turning point that can break this cycle and constitute the interruption by the “Eternal in time” (Brunner 1946, pp. 403–4). These events assert “the absolute miracle” through which “the Eternal has entered the time series and become the Temporal” (ibid.). Its absolute “newness”, its “interruption”, constitutes a complete break with the logic of causal temporality. Just as every free act can only break with causality, so “faith is an act”, and not a “process”, “raised above all causality, the miracle of freedom and eternity” (Brunner 1921, p. 104). On the other hand, while the human decision and its source—the will—belong to the realm of the historical (in contrast to the natural), Brunner underlined, so does sin. The theory of evolutionism, and forms of liberal theology that sought to accommodate it, have no place for the essential Christian concept of sin. Not only do human decision and will as such defy, in Brunner’s argument, the theory of evolutionism, but just like in these, also sin is an absolutely “new” event—it is a “leap”, a “decision that cannot be explained” (Brunner 1947, p. 390). Sin only becomes sin when man takes a “moral decision” and uses his “self-determination” to commit it. Evolutionary knowledge or explanations may enhance our understanding of concrete forms of evil, but they fail us in the understanding “of the nature of sin itself, the fact of the sinful decision as such,” Brunner argued. “Both man’s creation in the image of God, and also his ‘contradiction’, are facts which do not lie upon the empirical plane, but through the genuinely historical they impinge upon it, and manifest themselves within it” (ibid., p. 401). It was telling that sin had no meaning in Romantic theological thought, and evil would naturally recede in what Schleiermacher called “adult humanity”.

4  The “Most Influential Idea of Modern Man”: On Progress and Relativism Unsurprisingly, the idea of the “meaning of history”—of some inherent meaningfulness or sense behind the historical unfolding of events—had after 1914 become unacceptable if not grotesque. The historicist worldview now appeared also outdated for its obvious relativist ethical

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implications, with, in Barth’s phrasing, “the failure of the relative type, consisting of experience, metaphysics, and history, … so palpably, so unmistakenly before our eyes” (Barth 2013, p.  75). At the same time, Zwischen den Zeiten thinkers were also aware of the at least partly Christian genealogy for evolutionist conceptions of history—and so they believed it was their responsibility to engage with it. In Brunner’s narrative, history transformed from circularity to linearity, with a beginning, end, and direction, already in the consciousness of Old Testament Judaism. History became a location of newness, a stage for God’s self-revelation—and this charges temporality with an immense intensity: “It has become … the time of waiting, of decision and probation” (Brunner 1948, p. 50). By contrast, the eighteenth-nineteenth century shifted emphasis onto this linearity’s momentum into the future, giving it a qualitative and normative significance, and turning it into History. This was a decisively anthropocentric turn. What Brunner called the “optimistic” idea of change as development and progress not only replaced the Christian ideas of sin and redemption, but integrated the latter’s transcendent temporality into its own secular scheme of temporality. Perfection, meaning, transcendence and eternity were now contained within History—“identified with an imaginary terminus of the movement which leads from primitive to civilised life” (Brunner 1948, p. 55)—even if present actual human experience was in utter contrast with this conviction. Within the Christian conception, Brunner argued, the idea of universal progress remains impossible because, alongside this civilisational advance, there is the concurrent growth of human evil and the various forms of influence it may have. While Brunner might have had in mind the advances that made the Great War possible, we can “translate” the thrust of his argument into our contemporary language by evoking current dilemmas of existential proportions—for example, the dangers posed to the natural environment and the future of the earth as a result of economic and technological progress. The dangers are, to use Brunner’s words, “growing at the same rate as the kingdom itself, so that the later generations are in no way better off than the earlier ones. On the contrary—it is in the last days that the conflict between good and evil forces reaches a climax.” Hence, in the genuinely Christian conception, Brunner continued to argue, the goal of history is neither growth nor progress, but it is reached “by a revolutionary change of the human situation at the end of history, brought about not by man’s action, but by divine intervention—an intervention

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similar to that of incarnation” (ibid., pp. 52–3). Again, this calls to mind recent public language, as our contemporaries voice a similar idea—that only the most radical and unlikely break, a completely new beginning, can “save” the Earth, and by implication, humankind. While Brunner saw progress in some domains of human endeavour, such as “civilisational” progress, at least in the quantitative sense, it was crucial, he argued, that the plenitude of self-regenerating problems be recognised as such, and their roots be sought within a different framework than the progressive one. The persistence of the human ability and will to commit radical evil—as became clear in the course of the War—testified to the need to revisit evolutionist narratives. The church too, “had lost its soul” to evolutionism and historicism, and therewith, despite all its moralising claims, its “ethical energy”—it was the task of dialectical theology to seek to “regain” it (Brunner 1929, p. 91). Moreover, it is the individual that stands at the centre of Christianity, while the interest of progressive thought shifts away from the individual to the collective. When one thinks in generations and centuries, Brunner contended, the individual and his fate, his future, become irrelevant. It is only the totality which counts. … Therefore this present existence has no meaning and value of its own. … The real, existing man appears to himself like a snapshot, a fraction of a large reel of film—a picture which, taken by itself, is as meaningless as a single frame cut from a movie strip and as absurd as a slow motion film. So the idea of evolution must … take the whole substance away from life. It means that life is, as it were, eaten away from the inside. (Brunner 1948, p. 57)

The individual life will not be more meaningful even if the next generation makes some degree of progress towards whichever ethical or civilisational aim. Instead, the idea and word “progress” yields to dangerous misuse, to the false bridging of the gap between “is” and “ought”, to concealing the existential tensions inherent in our moral lives—it enables individuals as well as communities all too comfortably to “retreat to mere spectatorship, to prioritise the theoretical over the practical, mere contemplative viewing over responsible acting … the impersonal over the personal” (Brunner 1981a, p. 105). In Brunner’s criticism, a further foundational idea of evolutionist thinking is that change or “development” necessarily takes place from lower stages to higher. This contradicts some of the common Protestant

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judgements, he argued, such as the perceived religious superiority of Early Christianity in contrast to the later papal age, which constitutes then an example of a decline than progress (Brunner 1981b, p. 57). Even secular humanity cannot ignore the periods of extreme barbarity following what seemed like periods of increasing civilisation, such as the recent War and atrocities in its wake. Again, there would be little comfort—but much irony, if not offence—in attempts to explain or understand such periods as “necessary” or natural stages of development for furthering the progress whose fruits next generations can perhaps enjoy. Even from the humanist secular viewpoint, but more so for Christianity, Brunner insisted, the assumption that advances in civilisation correspond to a more complete humanity and ethical goodness is highly problematic—and dangerous. To begin with, it is based on the tacit equation of a natural process of increasing differentiation (borrowed from evolutionism in the natural sciences) with the emergence of higher human and spiritual forms (Brunner 1948, p. 55). Spiritual, civilisational moralism is also dangerous because it tacitly associates the moral evil with the primitive—the not-yet-developed (ibid., p.  56ff). Firstly, it is an ideological move that provides a rationale for colonialism, giving it a deceptive and iniquitous moral tone—on this logic, the more progressed nations embark on an ethical mission not only to aid the development but also to elevate the moral experience of “primitive” peoples. It is all too easy to view one’s social or ethnic group collectively as more human than others, as the twentieth century has painfully demonstrated. Hence, “the idea of evil as the primitive must be denied in Christianity, as well as the idea that cultural enrichment means moral superiority” (ibid., p. 58). Secondly, progressivism creates another pleasant but precarious illusion—that the more man is trained to use his mental faculties, the more he gains power over the outside world, and consequently, as he gains this control, evil will disappear. “This is the basic illusion of this favourite and most influential idea of modern man” (ibid., p. 54)—Brunner contended—leading to, as had happened, “diabolical madness” and “final despair” (ibid., p. 58). Gogarten, for his part, pointed out how in the historicist theories of Ernst Troeltsch, the Hegelian Christianity that was the embodiment of a perfect religion, had in fact become an expression of (Western) Europeanism in a mixture of cultural and historical philosophy. The relative idea of Europeanism replaces the absolute norm, yet at the same time maintains, at least nominally and at least for Troeltsch, its normativity, or, in political and cultural terms, its superiority. “The great religions appear

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indeed”, Gogarten cited Troeltsch, “to be substantiators of the great racial spirits, just as the races themselves are substantiators of the biological-­ anthropological forms,” a statement which, in Gogarten’s post-war scorn, demonstrated “how far (Troeltsch) was willing to go” (Gogarten 1968c, 349). Historicism’s problem of normativity could only be solved when “the final goal of history” would be the absolute norm—yet, Gogarten contended, “this way too is no longer open”: the norm of history too had become relative, conditional, historically contingent, and thus “finished as a norm” (Gogarten 1968c, 343).

5   “A Snake Biting Its Own Tail”: Two Concluding Remarks First, I would like to underline that dialectical theologians did not, as far as I am aware, explicitly evoke the metaphor of a circle specifically in their critiques of historicism. Yet I found it a worthwhile tool of visualisation in order to emphasise the comprehensive ambition of this discourse, wherein the methodological and epistemic arguments could not be separated from the ontological, ethical, and political (and, of course, theological) grievances against post-Romantic thought and world. More than that the circle allegory nonetheless appeared frequently in their more general accounts of the late modern and contemporary human condition. While I highlighted some examples above, Barth especially continued to use it on several occasions. One of the most notable examples was his detailed genealogy of political modernity as “a snake forever biting its own tail” (Barth 1959, p. 30)—whereby he referred to the ouroboros symbolism used on the original print of Déclaration des droits de l’homme from 1789. In its attempt to overcome the absolute God, political modernity cemented the absolutism of the state, Barth argued, which in turn propelled it into the “completely closed circle” (or sometimes, the “vicious circle”) of “violence” from which “we have no means of escape” (Barth 1968b, pp. 187, 156–7). As Barth’s readers know, an escape in fact existed—not to be found within the circle, but granted to us by the “tangent”. Secondly, we need to ask, even if we can answer only tentatively here, what consequences proceed from this refusal to celebrate history—this denial of its status as the workings of God through mankind, or as a secular collective achievement, or, at least, as an adequate epistemological lens through which to understand human life, its ultimate ends and pursuits.

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Would such a denial lead inevitably to a dismissal of humanity itself and the values we associate with it? Anti-historicism, as presented by Friedrich Meinecke and Benedetto Croce, was seemingly an assault against reason, civilisation, and humanity. Indeed, we have seen the various ways in which dialectical theologians attacked these values in specific nineteenth-century forms—but these were, in their assessment, in fact travesties of what reason, civilisation and humanity should be. In these distortions, according to dialectical theology, historicism had played a notable role: for example, what was called “liberal historicism” promoted nationalist and statist raison d’état ideologies, and its critique of universal rights and values was at the same time a promotion of Germanness in itself as an ultimate and unquestionable value. “Liberal theologians” had subscribed to and promoted militarism, their belief in progress had racial and nationalist repercussions, and the translation of evolutionist ideas into talk of historical necessity made ethics superfluous. Just as the idea of history might be used to promote humanity and humanitarian causes, so it could be used to undermine these principles, as it clearly was in pre-war Germany. This is what dialectical theologians held against their elders, and by exploding the circle of historicism they not only sought to restore the divine, the Absolute Other as a tangent, but also believed that this tangent could open up radically new ways of being more reasonable, civilised, and humane.1

Notes 1. Research for this article was supported by a European Research Council Starting Grant (TAU17149) “Between the Times: Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Interwar Europe.”

References Barth, Karl. 1959 (1926–1933). Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl. New York: Harper. ———. 1968a (1919). Past and Future: Friedrich Naumann and Christoph Blumhardt. In The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, 35–44, ed. J. Robinson. Richmond: John Knox Press. ———. 1968b (1922). Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1993 (1910). Der christliche Glaube und die Geschichte. In Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten, 1909–1914, ed. Hans-Anton Drewes and Hinrich Stoevesandt, 155–212. Zürich: Theologische Verlag Zürich.

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———. 1996. Predigten, 1915. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. ———. 2013a (1920). Biblical Questions, Insights and Vistas. In The Word of God and Theology, 51–96. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2013b (1922). The Problem of Ethics Today. In The Word of God and Theology, 131–170. London. ———. 2015a (1924). Schleiermacher’s “Celebration of Christmas”. In Theology and Church. Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, 136–199. Oregon: Wipf und Stock. ———. 2015b (1925). The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Reformed Creed. In Theology and Church. Shorter Writings 1920–1928, 112–135. Oregon: Wipf and Stock. Brunner, Emil. 1921. Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube. Tübingen: Mohr. ———. 1924. Die Mystik und das Wort. Tübingen: Mohr. ———. 1929. Theology of Crisis. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1946 (1941). Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. ———. 1947 (1937). Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. ———. 1948. Christianity and Civilization. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1981a (1925). Die Offenbarung als Grund und Gegenstand der Theologie. In Ein Offenes Wort 1: Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917–1962, ed. Rudolf Wehrli, 98–122. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag. ———. 1981b (1917). Das Unbedingte und die Wirklichkeit, unser Problem. In Ein Offenes Wort 1: Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917–1934, ed. Rudolf Wehrli, 46–67. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag. ———. 1981c (1925). Reformation und Romantik. In Ein Offenes Wort 1: Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917–1934, ed. Rudolf Wehrli, 123–144. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag. Busch, Eberhard. 1994. Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Gogarten, Friedrich. 1968a (1921). An Apple from the Tree of Kierkegaard. In The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. James Robinson, 311–327. Richmond: John Knox Press. ———. 1968c (1924). Historicism. In The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, 343–360, ed. J. Robinson. Richmond: John Knox Press. Graf, Wilhelm. 2011. Die antihistorische Revolution in der protestantische Theologie der zwanziger Jahre. In Studien zur Ideengeschichte der protestantischen Theologie in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Wilhelm Graf, 111–138. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Holtmann, Stefan. 2007. Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit: Studien zur kritischen Deutung seiner Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Jehle, Frank. 2006. Emil Brunner: Theologe im 20. Jahrhundert. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag.

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Koshar, Rudy. 2008. Where Is Karl Barth in Modern European History? Modern Intellectual History 5 (2): 333–362. Löwith, Karl. 1994. My Life in Germany. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Moseley, Carys. 2013. Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nowak, Kurt. 1987. Die ‘antihistoristische Revolution’: Symptome und Folgen der Krise historischer Weltorientierung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Deutschland. In Umstrittene Moderne: die Zukunft der Neuzeit im Urteil der Epoche Ernst Troeltschs, ed. Horst Renz and F.W.  Graf, 133–171. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 2018 (1893). Second Speech. In On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. July 5. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schleiermach/ religion/cache/religion.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2022. Schneider, Johannes. 1915. Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelischen Landeskirchen Deutschlands. Gutersloh: Bertelsmann. Thurneysen, Eduard. 1963 (1924). Schrift und Offenbarung. In Anfänge der dialektische Theologie, Teil II, ed. Jürgen Moltmann, 247–275. München: Kaiser Verlag. ———. 1982 (1918). Die neue Zeit. In Die neue Zeit: Predigten, 1913–1930, ed. Wolfgang Gern, 72–83. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Tilgner, Wolfgang. 1970. Volk, Nation und Vaterland im protestantischen Denken zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus. In Volk-Nation-Vaterland: Der Deutsche Protestantismus und der Nationalismus, ed. Horst Zillessen. Gütersloher: Gerd Mohn. Wenz, Gunther, and Friedrich Jaeger. 1996. Theorietypen der Krise des Historismus. In Die Historismusdebatte in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Wolfgang Bialas and Gérard Raulet, 52–70. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Wittkau, Annette. 1992. Historismus: zur Geschichte des Begriffs und des Problems. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wu, Kuo-An. 2011. The Concept of History in the Theology of Karl Barth, 21–48. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/5457/Wu2011.pdf%20-­% 20%20accesssed%20 11/12/2014;jsessionid=3D2859CDC7A43A3A3F6A7C067C50760E?se quence=215. Accessed 21 July 2022.

CHAPTER 4

Prophecy as a Political-Theological Category in Barth’s Römerbrief Christine Svinth-Værge Põder

Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief in its second, 1922 edition, with its talk of a human crisis before God, was read in a context marked by experiences of crises and a drive for reorientation.1 I suggest that the book presupposed and shared this drive for orientation. The phrasing in the title, “political-­ theological category”, signals the intention to question whether, and to what extent, genuine theological reflections on communication (or more specifically, preaching), orientation, belief and action in a given context are at the same time open to political and social perspectives.2 In so doing, I am interested in illuminating critically how Barth tacitly applies a certain idea of authority as a component of the drive for reorientation. This is not just a question of its author’s explicit strategy of reorientation, but (very much) a question of the rhetoric of the Römerbrief, and thus a question of how the author imagines his readers and their reaction to the book.3

C. Svinth-Værge Põder (*) Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_4

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The question is thus whether the Römerbrief posits a concept of authority and whether its rhetoric implies any notion of authority. The easy answer might be to deny this and point to the idea of the levelling of all human instances over against the sovereignty of God. In that case, however, there will still be a need to explain the extent to which the text, while suggestive and persuasive to its readers, establishes an authority of its own. This could, for instance, be the case if it points to reorientation in the critically described human situation. Does this critical description include and establish a notion of authority? And does this notion of authority resonate with the intellectual preconditions of era’s mode of crisis management (cf. Pfleiderer 2000, p. 31)? My aim is to clarify the notion of authority in the context of reorientation by examining heuristically the figure of prophecy, a figure that occurs in Der Römerbrief and the use of which I suggest is connected to its imagined readers. I seek to gain insight into readings of Barth in reference to the notions of prophecy and authority by two representatives of the preceding generation of thinkers, the sociologist Max Weber and the theologian Karl Holl. In fact, Max Weber’s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society) appeared posthumously shortly before Der Römerbrief. Here he elaborated his famous typology of authority, distinguishing between rational, traditional and charismatic authority. The year before, equally posthumously, his work on ancient Judaism appeared. What makes Weber’s analysis of the Old Testament prophets interesting is that they seem in his study to stand as a special case of charismatic authority, connecting religious and political aspects and arguably even providing a kind of identificatory model for being a scientist, a Wissenschaftler. Karl Holl, a Berlin church historian and colleague of Adolf von Harnack, shared with Weber an interest in connections between society, authority and religion, and, in addition, like Barth was occupied with interpretations of the Epistle to the Romans. I proceed in four steps. First, I further elaborate the approach I take in this chapter and define the main concepts (Sect. 1). I then give an account of Weber’s charismatic authority in connection with his study of the Old Testament prophets and of Holl’s related idea of “strong Christians” as well as the social significance of their work (Sects. 2 and 3). Finally, in this light, I look at the occurrences of the notion of prophecy in Barth’s Römerbrief and consider its significance for the book (Sect. 4).

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1   The Rhetoric of Crisis and Concepts of Authority: Reading Barth in Light of Weber and Holl Labelling Barth’s theology in the second Römerbrief a theology of crisis is not an unambiguous endeavour. It has sometimes been a matter of stereotypy, signifying the limitations of its historical actuality. In Barth-reception towards the turn of the millennium, however, “crisis-theology” was seen as a mark of both the epistemology and the contextuality of Barth’s theology (Korsch 1996, p. 23; Pfleiderer 2000). Of course, the central concept of crisis in the book instigated the idea of a crisis-theology. “Crisis” in the theological sense of the Römerbrief is the crisis of humanity over against God: that is, briefly, the crisis precipitated by humans’ disregard for the difference between the human and the divine, thus confusing the two, which would mean that humans are arrogating to themselves their own existence as gods, with disastrous consequences according to Barth. Any talk of a theology of crisis, however, reflects an impulse for considering the context in which the book was written and in which it resonated so momentously. While Barth did not conceive of crisis in the way, for instance, that Tillich did, reaching across the disciplinary borders of theology to interpret the societal and political situation, in rhetorically integrating the reader of the Römerbrief, the book suggests that the crisis in context might be interpreted by reference to the theological concept of crisis. Thus a “theology of crisis” is treated in the following not just as a predicate placing the Römerbrief in a specific context, but becomes part of how the book is inherently orientated towards its own reception, which could be termed a “reflective reception aesthetic” (Pfleiderer 2000, p. 12). The concept of crisis is polyvalent as, on the one hand, it signifies the crisis of turbulent times following World War I, and indeed the outbreak of the war itself, which Karl Barth experienced as a foundational crisis of the mainstream liberal theology of his education. The Römerbrief, with its talk of a crisis of humanity over against God, invokes a question or drive for reorientation in both what Barth describes as a crisis and what readers and the author experienced as such.4 The crisis of society and the foundational crisis of theology as a science, a Wissenschaft,5 form the social-political-cultural context of the book and catalyse the drive for reorientation suggested by the concept of crisis that, to readers, would thus resonate with the crisis of the time. Korsch and Pfleiderer have interpreted Barth’s theology in the context of the

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philosophers and theologians of crisis in Barth’s generation whose thought was decisively shaped by the first years of the new century and by the outbreak and end of the First World War.6 The awareness of crisis that was brought about by the experience of war, however, had itself an intellectual historical context. A precondition is the thought of the preceding generation, in particular of Max Weber, on social agency in the broader crises of modernity (cf. Pfleiderer 2000, pp. 4, 22, 47ff). I suggest—following the approaches of Pfleiderer and Korsch—reading Barth’s Römerbrief as situated against this horizon of questioning agency and orientation in the critical awareness of modernity (in the sense also of the self-reflectivity of modern thought). Assuming that Barth’s Römerbrief is oriented towards its readers, the question to ask is how this horizon becomes visible as Barth develops his theological concept of crisis. This context invokes questions of orientation, epistemology and certainty of action, but also, regarding the integration of the reader, the question how the book performs its special persuasiveness rhetorically. Given that the book even found a religious readership and was indeed perceived as prophetic (both by followers and—in a pejorative sense—by critics; cf. van der Kooi 2005, p.  59), it is relevant to question the implicit and explicit understanding of religious authority expressed in the book and to do this in light of the concept of prophecy as it occurs both in the book and in its intellectual context. Questioning the book on its treatment of authority in light of the concept of prophecy would also help qualify the book’s antiauthoritarian thrust: Interestingly, the rhetorical impulse of Barth’s Römerbrief is in a sense anti-establishment, criticising all human endeavours and proclivities. It aims at neither sanctioning nor overturning worldly authorities. (This is a key point in Barth’s interpretation of the notorious chapter 13 of Romans.) While prophecy is not a particularly dominant concept in the Römerbrief, it appears at some startling junctures—for instance, immediately at the beginning of the preface of the first edition: “Paul, as a son of his age, spoke to his contemporaries. It is however far more important that he, as prophet and apostle of the Kingdom of God, speaks to all humans of all ages” (Barth 2010, p. 3).7 Calling Paul a prophet (and not just an apostle) helps Barth emphasise that Paul was speaking to the people of the Weimar era too. The expression at this point in 1918 places the concept of prophecy in the genesis of

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the Romans commentaries—and we may here also briefly consider an influential figure in Barth’s early life, at the time preceding the Romans commentaries, namely Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt at Bad Boll. Barth has actually regarded Blumhardt’s contribution as prophetical. But, of course, at least to some extent the reaction to Barth’s Römerbrief raises the question of the notion of prophetical authority in that book. Thus, Weber’s notions of prophecy and of charismatic authority may likely shed light on these aspects of Barth’s Römerbrief and its rhetoric. It should be noted that Weber developed his idea of charismatic authority not entirely from his study of the Old Testament prophets. In addition to taking inspiration from a work by Rudolph Sohm, Weber mentions the patristic 1898 work of Karl Holl, Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt (Enthusiasm and the Power of Penitence), as a previous work on the topic of charismatic authority (Weber 1972, p. 124). Holl held Weber in high esteem and during the 1920s followed his works on religious sociology, particularly on ascetic Protestantism and ancient Judaism, while he himself widened his field to include not only patristics but also the theology of the reformers, especially Luther (cf. Assel 2021, p. 2, and Assel 2015, p. 24f). Holl published the volume Luther, a collection of essays on Luther’s theology and the cultural and societal impact of the Lutheran reformation, more or less simultaneously with Barth’s second edition of the Römerbrief, in December 1921 (Holl 1932). In the genesis of Holl’s studies of reformation theology and social thought, one can trace the idea of special religiously gifted individuals and their possible significance for society in a way that is comparable to Weber’s idea of charismatic authority. Thus, in Luther (while Holl does not discuss Weber’s typology which was not yet finished and published by the time of the first edition of Luther), an impression is rendered of how the idea of authority in Weber resonated in the work of a contemporary theologian— even at a time when Barth was working on his Romans commentary. Although Holl and Barth proffered (both theologically and politically) divergent reflections on and answers to the crisis, it is illuminating to see, through Weber’s concept of authority as a prism, the similarity in connecting theology and the drive for reorientation. They have in common an interest in the Epistle to the Romans (in Holl’s case it was directed towards Luther’s interpretation in the Lecture on Romans from 1515/16, cf. Holl 1932, pp. 111–154).

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2   Weber on Prophecy and Charismatic Authority As Weber’s concept of charismatic authority is well-known, I will merely give a brief account of it with a focus on its connection to the notion of prophets and their social context. Weber’s book Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (originally published in 1921) and his work on ancient Judaism, which forms part of Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen (originally published in 1920), are products of several years of research. While Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft contains a later chapter on the sociology of religion (Weber 1972, p. 245), the Old Testament prophets are introduced very early in the book to exemplify charismatic authority in connection with the introduction of the typology of authority (Weber 1972, pp. 140ff.). For Weber, authority (Herrschaft) is legitimate and thus to be distinguished from sheer coercive power. Weber defines authority as the capacity to elicit obedience from a specific group of people (Weber 1972, p.  123). Charismatic authority in contrast to impersonal rationalist/ bureaucratic authority and traditionalist authority is strictly personalist. It derives from the charisma of the person with authority. Where Holl’s patristic studies play a role in Weber’s thinking (cf. the reference above) is in its pointing to the ancient Christian idea of the special pneumatic giftedness of the individual according to Greek monkish enthusiasm (Holl 1969). In question are extraordinary spiritual abilities or gifts, although such giftedness can obviously be understood in a more modern sense (Holl 1969, pp. 150ff). Weber’s examples are heroes, prophets and saviours—strong personalities whose followers recognise them as their charismatic leaders. As a charismatic authority does not depend on ordinary social structures and economy, its carrier is potentially revolutionary. Weber uses an example from the New Testament: “It is written … but I say unto you”—which makes Jesus a clear example of the charismatic type (Weber 1972, p.  141). Here, we need to mention immediately that to Weber any specific idea of normativity and validity is not a part of the concept—it is value-free. Not only Jesus but also Napoleon is to Weber an example of an individual with charisma, and, while of course Weber could not have known, we might add Hitler as another such example, not to mention more recent examples of several political leaders of the twenty-­ first century. Charisma is, however, unstable and thus tends over time to be either traditionalised or rationalised. While at the outset charisma is extraordinary, it becomes adjusted to the ordinary, which is what Weber calls the

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Veralltäglichung—the process of accommodating to everydayness (Weber 1972, p. 142). In general, Weber sees prophecy as a good example of this phenomenon. The prophet stands exactly for renewal (in contrast to priests) as a purely personal carrier of charisma in the sense of producing religious or ethical revelations (Weber 1972, pp.  268ff). Eventually, though, the Veralltäglichung begins—the prophets become priests—and the charisma becomes institutionalised (like the character indelebilis of Roman Catholic ordination), and thus we get a number of mixed structures of authority (Weber 1972, pp. 670, 674f). Notably, the Old Testament prophets are a special case. Their charisma is their personal calling, and they are interested in social politics and ethics albeit in an ambiguous way. They are not interested in reforming politics, but politics are the scene of cosmic events—of God interacting with the people (Weber 1972, pp. 271f). In his volumes on ancient Judaism, Weber further elaborates on this idea. The pre-exile prophets are neither court oracles nor political partisans. While they are actually demagogues, they are not interested in state-­ building (Weber 2005, pp. 609, 617). Their concern is purely religious and at the same time only conceivable in the political context of their time (Weber 2005, pp. 630f). In addition, the issue of charisma is complicated with these prophets. According to Weber, not until the time of the post-­ exile prophets was charisma to be understood as the possession of Jahweh’s ruach. The pre-exile prophets thus were not recognisable as such to others—only to themselves in the assurance that they were instruments of Jahweh, whose voice they heard (Weber 2005, pp. 642, 648). Consequently, in contrast to the early Christian apostles, the prophets were lonely. They were not upheld by a religious community—there was no congregation, no brethren whose recognition could support them. Thus, they were feared, unloved and misunderstood as Unheilpropheten—prophets of disaster. This was particularly true of Jeremiah, in whom Weber took a particular interest.8 Weber may have identified himself with this misunderstood prophet of disaster, as in his speech “Wissenschaft als Beruf” in 1917 he warned against the false prophesy—the “Kathederprophetie”—of the time (Weidner 2013, p. 40). This was in an ambivalent way a criticism both of the expectations of the Wissenschaftler and of the “false prophets” who disregarded the limitations of Wissenschaft.

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Weber’s works on prophecy demonstrate that, in the Weimar era, a discourse of prophecy resonated with contemporaneous interests in interfaces between religion and politics, personality and authority.9

3  Holl’s “Strong Christians”: A Cross-­Theological Parallel to Weber’s Charismatic Prophets The Berlin church historian Karl Holl was able to follow the progression of Weber’s thinking on ancient Judaism as the associated articles were published—and later compiled in Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik (Assel 2015, pp. 24f.). After Weber passed away in the summer of 1920, Holl expressed in a letter to Adolf Jülicher how deeply affected he was by Weber’s death, as he had formed a quite new impression of the great social scientist from the articles on Judaism. He observed that Weber was really “a deeply serious” person and noted that he himself had very much been looking forward to seeing the results of Weber’s research on the economic ethics of Christianity as well (Assel 2016).10 Holl in his studies of Protestantism discussed Weber’s works and was unhappy about the common perception that, according to Weber, apparently the ethics of work in the reformed tradition arise from a need to reassure oneself that one is predestined for salvation, as predestination is supposedly visible in social progress. Instead, Holl points to Calvin’s idea that action arises from certainty in one’s own predestination (Holl 1965, p. 264, cf. Weber 2003). Here I will call attention, roughly, to two strands in the development of Holl’s political theology and its connection with the idea of predestination. One strand involves his theological interpretation of Luther’s idea of the justification and assurance of salvation, while the other involves his reflections on how the Protestant confessions, in Lutheranism and Calvinism, resonate with social action. The latter reflection was certainly a source of frustration by the time the war ended. Holl interprets Germany’s defeat as God’s judgement against Germany and considers the victorious nations, particularly the United States, to be better stationed with their Calvinism because of the drive to social and political action inherent to this confession, in contrast to Lutheranism, which according to Holl has traditionally lacked such assurance in action. This assurance in action he understands—in contrast to the

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common reception of Weber—as motivated by the assurance of salvation rather than striving to be reassured (Holl 1966, pp. 67–81). In Holl’s interpretation of the justification and assurance of salvation in Luther’s early theology, he notes that the kind of assurance of salvation that is communicated through the word of the gospel may be questioned precisely by reference to the idea of predestination (Holl 1932, p. 149). As predestination is thus the great “Anfechtung” which troubles the conscience, Holl develops a notion of a paradoxical assurance of salvation: One can be assured of salvation by readily giving up salvation, or rather by giving up the reassurance of salvation and so to speak being willing to go to Hell, if this should be the will of God (ibid., p. 151). The main point here is that Holl arrives at a notion of assurance of salvation which he identifies with the certitude in conscience of being an instrument of the will of God—and not of being certain of going to Heaven. This is, however, not an assurance for everyone, but only for those whom Holl (with an allusion to Rom. 14–15) designates as “strong Christians” (ibid., p. 149f.). Holl’s breakthrough as a Luther researcher and political theologian in his 1921 Luther volume, I suggest, means to Holl not least arriving at an answer to the question of how assurance in action can be possible. That is, the awareness of being an instrument of God overcomes both concerns for one’s own eternal well-being and concerns for remaining within the boundaries of public, conventional morality. These qualities became relevant in face of the challenges that a rebuilding German society faced after the war. This is where the affinity with Weber’s charismatic prophets becomes apparent (keeping in mind that Holl’s own previous research was one of the sources of this Weberian concept). As is the case with charismatic leaders, the potential for renewing institutions and society among the so-called strong Christians was tied to them as individual persons, that is, the specific paradox of the assurance of being elected. As these strong Christians have no regard either for their own well-being or for their eternal well-­ being, they are free to create their own norms and standards and they dare to act unconventionally (Holl 1932, pp. 155–287).11 Moreover, as is the case with Weber’s prophets, with Holl the assurance—or, in Weberian terms, the charisma—is not discernible to others, and it is of no comfort to the charismatic leaders themselves. As Holl’s strong Christians draw on their paradoxical assurance and as they disregard conventions, their acting as God’s instruments is hidden from the public and thus also from a discourse on social action. In Holl’s political theology, the paradoxical assurance of predestination in “strong Christians” is thus a component of the idea that God works in hidden ways in world history.

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4   Karl Barth’s Römerbrief 4.1   Witnessing the Crisis After sketching out Weber’s concept of charismatic prophecy and Holl’s concept of strong Christians, I turn now to Barth’s Römerbrief and begin with a biographical note. Karl Barth began his career as a village pastor in Switzerland engaging in a struggle for local factory workers and, after some consideration, becoming a member of the social democratic party of Switzerland. In this way, he came into contact with the leading figures of the religious socialist movement in Switzerland, which he discusses with his colleague Thurneysen (Tietz 2019, p. 88). By the time the war broke out, however, Barth reacted to the manifesto of the German intellectuals supporting the war policy. This not only marked for him a break with the liberal theology of his teachers—and his own education—but also meant distancing himself from the religious socialist movement which he criticised for not clearly enough distinguishing the Kingdom of God from partisan goals (ibid., p. 94). The disagreement concerned not only the view and expectations of the war but also the approach to the prophets of the religious social movement, the Blumhardts, father and son, at Bad Boll, Würtemberg, with whom Barth had become acquainted through Thurneysen. Barth later explicitly acknowledged their impact on the Römerbrief. What Barth perceived as prophetical in Blumhardt was the way that eschatological hope could be proclaimed in a combination of worldliness and divinity, of “hurrying and waiting” (Busch 1975, p.  97). Yet his idea of prophecy also emerges in the notion of false prophecy that he expressed in a sermon to his congregation over against a suspicion that he might be, as their pastor, a false prophet: The false prophet is the pastor who tries to please. In the reception of the Römerbrief—a book which surely was not aimed at pleasing—it was indeed perceived as prophetical. For example, Walter von Loewenich, who would later initiate the twentieth-century cross-theology movement with his book on Luther’s Theologia Crucis, was thus disappointed over the transformation of this prophet into a professor of dogmatics. Barth was aware of this perception and distanced himself from it (Tietz 2019, pp. 123f, 174). I now address the main question of this examination: What notion of authority is implied in Der Römerbrief—in content and in its rhetoric? And how are Barth’s own situation and time reflected in this notion? As a

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lever for this reading, I use Weber’s concept of the charismatic prophets and Holl’s similar concept of paradoxically strong and assured Christians. The aim is in practical terms to examine the occurrence of the prophet-­ figure and the context—and reflect on the significance of these references to prophecy for how the book conveys its message and persuades the reader to acknowledge the crisis and to relate to it in the prophetical way. Towards the end of the inquiry the concepts of the charismatic prophet and of strong Christians will be mirrored in Barth’s interpretation of Romans 14:1–15:6. While, as mentioned above, the preface to the first edition of Römerbrief calls Paul an “apostle and prophet”, the well-known, much longer preface to the second edition engages in myriad discussions of the reception of the first edition. In this metatext to the new edition, Barth also mentions some of his sources of inspiration, among them Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, in part the Blumhardts, but also the reformers Luther and Calvin (Barth 2010, pp. 7, 12). These figures are not, however, merely sources, and they are also not merely theological role models, but they are figures in the text that exemplify and witness the decisive message of the book about the pervasive crisis of the human situation. Here they occur every now and then in varying connections, sometimes also including Old Testament figures like Job and Abraham and prophets like Jeremiah and Amos—and of course Paul himself. The crisis of the human situation, which these figures witness, is depicted in dramatic categories combining elements of the Pauline text with allusions to contemporary and historical thinkers, in either affirmative or polemical frames. The setting of the drama is thus implicitly or explicitly modern Europe but involving a cosmic vocabulary and thus asserting a universal scope. 4.2   The Ambiguity of Knowledge While invoking the crisis of humanity before God, Barth’s contextual target is multiple. The target includes critical concepts of religion and religious experience in mainstream theology, but Barth also mentions or implies a range of religious and social movements and factions as he depicts the human problem. The problem, which he also calls the misery or tragedy, is that of humans wanting to be God or mistaking themselves for God, thereby ending up in sheer isolation where they are judged by themselves—that is, by their own non-god (Barth 2010, pp. 67–82).

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This description of the first chapters of Barth’s book gives the impression of a vicious circle or a downwardly spiralling movement with no apparent beginning or end. The problem with humans is that they do not recognise the problem with humans. With that depiction Barth is hardly attuned to the classical theological distinction between creation and sin— there is no before and after—and when Barth positions “Cause” and “Effect” as headings of the subsections of the first chapter, it is not intended in a linear sense but rather signals the self-perpetuating dynamic of the problem (Barth 2010, pp. 67, 75). The countermove to this impression is what Barth calls the boundary of humanity, and the intersection between time and eternity (or, in a rather well-known phrase in the preface, citing Kierkegaard on the “infinite qualitative distinction”; ibid., p. 17). If we look a bit further in the book, a concept that appears frequently is the Todeslinie, the line of death. The crisis reflects how the case of confusing humanity with God is the paradoxical symptom of their division. The last concept in particular, that of the line of death, makes clear that this vocabulary does not aspire to recognisability. Rather, the aim is to highlight the difficulty of recognising the human confusion. As Barth talks about the boundary, the line or intersection, however, he uses the spatial connotation not just of something divided or something ending (or beginning) but also of a space in which to be. This is not a stable possibility, though: Barth pictures this “space” as the edge of an abyss (ibid., p. 346), or a Standpunkt, a standing point which is no standing point as it is not possible to stand on it. Frequently it is in connection with this negative space that one encounters the varying arrays of witnesses to the crisis, that is, the prophets in changing company with, for example, Kierkegaard, the protestant reformers and others. Barth, while drawing this line between time and eternity, is on the one hand very clear about the universality of the problem—right from the beginning: there are “no exceptions … no excuses, no happy possession” (ibid., p. 85). Over against the idea of an absolute difference between time and eternity with all humans levelled on one side of the line, all other differences that humans might establish between each other become irrelevant. This is essential to the criticism of religion and ideology and the divisions they create between those who are “in” and those who are “out”: The so-called “history of salvation” is however only the enduring Crisis of all history… . There are no holy people among the unholy… . This concerns

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also Paul, the prophet and apostle of the Kingdom of God! This concerns both Jeremy, Luther and Blumhardt… . And it is the tragedy of all men of God, that, while fighting for the right of God, they must themselves become wrong. (ibid., p. 86f.)12

What is the purpose of this distinguished array of apostles, prophets and others? They know something which the others do not know—they are aware of the crisis, they know that all human possibilities must fail and recognise the human confusion. Also within themselves. Thus, Barth sees the possibility of human solidarity in this confusion and ambiguity: Where would and could we place ourselves … other than—barely on this side of the line “from where Adam fell” (Luther), as we can no longer stand beyond—in the best and bravest case where Abraham and Job and all prophets and apostles stand together with the “historical Jesus”: On the farthest edge of human possibilities, where the human is most expressively human … most heavily burdened with the entire dubiousness of its existence as human? What else could we honestly be as simply religious humans… . (ibid., p. 345f.)13

With or without the motive of the edge the point is the same: There exists an awareness of the human situation and this awareness means to those who share it a particularly troublesome existence. One should note also that religion is somehow linked to this kind of existence, and that the array of names here is confined to the biblical, even including the “historical Jesus”, who in this conception cannot be on the other side of the division. This is a central topic in the book—not that nothing can be known concerning God or the human situation, but that there is a specific form of knowledge, and religion comes from that knowledge, but that religion in this sense remains ambiguous. Quite often Old Testament elements are included (following the Pauline epistle) to designate this knowledge and the witnesses to the crisis. So a second type of occurrence of the prophet-­ figure is found in those passages where prophets together with the “law” are the Old Testament pointers to the crisis. And although it may be assumed that the Bible counts as a special witness, nevertheless it is startling how the biblical witnesses are in some contexts mentioned together with Luther, Kierkegaard and Blumhardt. This corresponds with Barth’s frequently mentioning also history as an ambivalent witness to the crisis (as seen above in the quotation on the “history of salvation”).

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So  “history”, “religion”, law and the prophets are (with regard to the “this-­worldly” aspect) all in the same overall category of ambiguous pointers to the crisis, although the prophets as such are seeing it much more clearly than “religion” as a general overall figure. 4.3   Distinguishing the Prophet What one should note in particular in the above quotation is the “we” (wir), which we can assume means the author and the readers of the Römerbrief: “Where should we place ourselves” (wo sollen wir uns stellen)? This is the question for reorientation in the crisis. And Barth is suggesting a readership of the Römerbrief comprising people who also know about this crisis—because they have read Paul’s epistle. Here it is relevant to ask, with Holl and Weber in mind, if this question regarding reorientation implies or demonstrates structures of authority that are similar to those characterising Weber’s charismatic prophets or Holl’s strong Christians. There is a noteworthy parallel between the “knowledge” in Barth’s Römerbrief—the painful knowledge of the crisis—and the calling, which is the specific charisma of Weber’s prophets, and it should likewise be noted that Holl’s strong Christians are not strong in an undialectical sense of the word, but rather dialectical figures who suffer the ultimate distress of God’s judgement (cf. Põder 2020, p. 71). In all these cases the problem is how these figures contribute to reorientation. The question is, regarding Barth’s Römerbrief, whether the idea of specially knowing individuals will contribute to orientating ideas of social existence or if the differentiation between them and the others could even undermine the egalitarian strand that sees everyone on the same side of the abyss, that is, as equal over against the crisis. I will keep that question in mind as I now proceed to a further type of occurrence of prophecy in the Römerbrief, namely one that contrasts prophets with something that is not prophetical. This gives us on the one hand the alternative of prophets versus false prophets and, on the other, of prophets versus priests or versus Pharisees. I will more or less bracket the contrast between prophet and false prophet, which is just an affirmation of what makes the prophets special, namely the calling—not the doing. That is important in the case of prophets versus priests or Pharisees.14 While the connotation of the Pharisees in this context is even more problematic than that of the priest, both distinctions signify the same problem, namely that, while the prophets know of the crisis, the priests and Pharisees

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have confused knowledge of the crisis, and this confusion is what causes the ambiguity of religion. First, we note that this construct resonates with Weber’s differentiation between charismatic and traditional authority, where the charismatic prophet eventually undergoes Veralltäglichung— normalisation and institutionalisation—and becomes a priest. It is also the case in the Römerbrief: The “prophet” is at risk of becoming a “Pharisee”, or rather, God-righteousness risks becoming human self-righteousness, as the “prophet” tries to possess that which one cannot possess. When Barth emphasises the impossibility of standing on the standing point, this parallels Weber’s emphasis on the lability of charisma. Secondly, the differences in context between the occurrences of the Pharisee contrast and the priest contrast should also be considered. The distinction between God-righteousness and human self-righteousness is the context of the prophet–Pharisee contrast, and it is a variation of the reformation distinction between righteousness through faith alone and work-righteousness or righteousness of the law, which in the Römerbrief equals religion. Barth, however, also locates this contrast within religion, meaning that the religious person must be understood dialectically as both prophet and Pharisee (ibid., p. 318). This risk and the dialectic of the prophet becoming a Pharisee could be seen as the backdrop of a third context, which is the solidarity of the prophetical figure with the priest (and here the priest is the quintessence of all the confused religious people). Barth emphasises that there are in principle no limits to this solidarity. The Pauline context is Romans 9:3: “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people”15—that is, so that the people of Israel might be saved (Barth 2010, pp. 458–461). This Barth interprets as the attitude of the prophetical person towards the church. The prophet does not leave the church to establish a new religious group, but even if this prophetical person must criticise the church, he or she will remain in solidarity and remain self-critical: Every moment in time, as he raises his voice to remind himself and thus the church of eternity, he would therefore rather be with the church (and thus also e. g. with theology) in Hell, than with the pietists of higher or lower order, of elder or more modern orientation in a Heaven—that doesn’t exist. Let those comprehend this who can comprehend it [cf. Mt. 19:12]: Christ is where one knows oneself inconsolably to be banned away from Christ, but not where one knows oneself to be secured against this troubling knowledge. (ibid., p. 461)

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The scope of solidarity should be noticed, and, of course, the background for the solidarity is this special critical knowledge that characterises the prophetical person in contrast to wanting to secure oneself. In addition, we need to recall here Holl’s interpretation of Luther, as Romans 9:3 is the same passage which, through Luther’s Romans interpretation, led Holl to the notion of the paradoxical assurance of salvation: One can be assured of salvation only by readily giving up salvation. While in the first place (in his reading of Luther’s Romans lecture) Holl does not connect this principle to a concept of solidarity, he does so later, as he unfolds the social and ethical consequences of the principle and develops a notion of social Stellvertretung, a substitution in “the reconstruction of morality” (Holl 1979, cf. Holm 2015). Moreover, Holl, as mentioned, connects this idea of selflessness with the concept of the “strong Christians” from Romans 14: 1–15: 6, although he treats the concept independently of that context.16 Holl takes the concept of weak and strong and applies it to the context of assurance of salvation. 4.4   Freedom, Confusion and Social Action: Barth in Comparison with Holl and Weber Consequently, strong Christians in Holl’s sense are those who willingly suffer condemnation for the love of God, and in a social context, they are the ones who risk their own well-being and even their moral integrity for the sake of society. This concept is related to Weber’s charismatic prophets (not just through the affinity in content, but also through Holl’s and Weber’s reception of Holl’s early research on ancient Greek monasticism; cf. above). This is interesting with regard to Barth’s Römerbrief because he also eventually moves on from Romans 9 to Romans 14–15 and to the question regarding which life form corresponds to the knowledge of the crisis. Here he interprets “strong Christians” along the same line as prophets (and apostles, and Luther, Kierkegaard, Blumhardt) as those who know about the crisis and carry the existential burden of this knowledge— but do not burden others with it. The question of sociality (the Mitmenschen, Barth 2010, p. 674) is here the issue and clearly also—albeit in a dialectical way—the question of authority. The strong are strong by way of their knowledge of the crisis and correspondingly their attempt to live is a free attempt, realising that all efforts to live according to prescriptions and prohibitions contribute to the clouding and confusion of the knowledge of the human situation.

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This concept of the strong resembles the parallel in Holl in a startling way. As is the case in Holl, so Barth’s strong Christians promise a relativisation of all authorities and regulations (cf. Barth 2010, p. 672). As with Holl’s idea of the strong as instruments of God, Barth says their doing is the doing of the One in the individuals (“das Tun des Einen in den Einzelnen”, ibid., p. 675). And both Holl and Barth see the strongness in a dialectical way as the burden of the strong perceiving clearly their own precarious situation and not trying to secure themselves (so both are going beyond the actual context of Romans 14–15). Theologically, though, their concepts of the weak Christians, which both Holl and Barth differentiate from the strong, seemingly differ: With Holl, the weak are the ones who cannot endure the burden of predestination so they must find consolation in the gospel. With Barth, the weak are those who are not able to see the crisis and who are thus living by the law or by religion (which is the same thing). In addition, how this might resonate with Weber’s sociology of religion also differs. While Holl sees no potential for religious leadership among the weak, Barth does not preclude this possibility. Rather, he sees weak Christians in profiled attempts to regulate and renew sociality, in religious reform and revivalist movements, and even in religious socialism and pacifism. He acknowledges their seriousness and willingness to make sacrifices (which in Holl and Weber seems rather to be a characteristic of the strong and charismatic) but Barth sees the weakness of the weak in the confusion of apparent problems (e.g. in society or the church) with the real crisis. Barth’s key point is a repeated warning to the strong not to rely on their strength and not to forget that the crisis is their situation as well. He sees also in the strong the possibility of confusion—but here it pertains to freedom, mistaking the freedom of knowing with an apparent freedom from, for example, “authorities, traditions, church governments etc” (ibid., p. 677), and at this point, Barth ironizes the liberal theology. He sees in this theology the risk of becoming an anti-Pharisean Pharisee: Who wants to be strong is actually weak (ibid., p. 680). Practically, this means that the strong should differentiate between living by the law and living by freedom from the law, but if this differentiation would lead them to differentiate themselves from the others, they would thus instantaneously become a case of confusion and not of differentiation. Barth even warns that they should not attempt to lead others but reckon that all attempts at living end in the crisis (ibid., p. 676).

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5   The Self-Differentiation of the Book—and of Its Readers Barth sums up these reflections in the aphorism “Paul against Paul” and as the Romans epistle’s dialectical self-negation (its Aufhebung). One might ask whether Barth has ended up in a rhetorical blind alley and is now biting his own tongue. With his prophetical figures and the interpretation of the strong Christians over against the rest, he arrives at a concept of paradoxical authority that resembles Weber’s concept of charismatic authority and Holl’s distinction between strong and weak Christians. And Barth clearly sees the risk in this idea that the prophetical strong figure may develop a self-awareness of being strong instead of a crisis-awareness and begin to rely on this self-awareness as his or her authority. Yet Barth seems to be stuck in the dual notion of strong and weak, and in addition he has identified the strong with the implicit author and readers of his book. The strong are “we” who read Paul, “we” who are uneasy in their awareness of the crisis, but free of the “law” (ibid., p.  696ff.). And this “we” must repeatedly dismantle themselves as authority and as distinguished from the others. This could be seen as an aporia of the book: In the end, neverending self-criticism is the only practical consequence of knowing the crisis and being free from the law (or religion). On the other hand, exactly this seemingly aporetic procedure is how the book “evokes an analogue self-differentiation by the intentional recipients” (Pfleiderer 2000, p. 16). This means that if the book implies a drive for orientation, this does not consist in directing the reader to social action. The self-Aufhebung, not of Paul’s epistle, but of Barth’s book, is how through its specific reflective movements it avoids being practical, distancing itself from practical, societal consequences. To evoke this self-­ differentiating reflectiveness in its readers, it needs to suggest—in terms of the prophet-or-Pharisee figure or with the Romans 14–15 distinction between the weak and strong in faith—identification with both the “prophet” and the “Pharisee”, the strong and the weak. While the book rhetorically includes its readers in the prophetical existence as a way of communicating the distinction between living knowingly and unknowingly, it also presupposes the identification with the social agent—the “Pharisee” who lives by the law. It does so in a context where reflections over crisis management may meet the demand for consistency with theological ideas of social action. Holl identifies, in an exemplary way, the paradoxically assured with the leading social agents. In contrast, Barth inverts

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the expectations of the social agents, pointing instead to the solidarity of the knowing with the not knowing and to the lability of this knowledge. To conclude on a Weberian note, the Römerbrief itself, after long passages that come very close to positing charismatic authority, paves the way for the transition to rational authority—to everydayness, Veralltäglichung. Whether this concept could be a prism for examining Barth’s later theological development is another question. But a suggestion that might aptly wind up these final reflections gestures at the possible overcoming of the risk that the self-differentiation of the reader might evolve into an aporia regarding the strong and the weak.

Notes 1. In this contribution, I use the German title Römerbrief to more clearly distinguish Barth’s book from Paul’s epistle. 2. Here I follow the approach of Heinrich Assel in Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance—Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht (Assel 1994). 3. This approach and its attention to the imagined reader depends on the concept of the “implied reader” of the Reception Aesthetics theory (Wolfgang Iser), which has already been applied to Barth’s texts by Georg Pfleiderer (2000). 4. A similar structure of the concept of theological negativity both outbidding and integrating the experienced negativity is found, for example, in Barth’s lecture, “Not und Verheißung der christlichen Verkündigung” 1922 (eng. “The Need and Promise of Christian Proclamation”) Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1922–1925 (Gesamtausgabe III, 19), Zürich (Barth 1990). 5. The German concept of Wissenschaft is sometimes chosen in this contribution for the sake of its semantically more comprehensive scope, covering also the humanities and theology—the “Geisteswissenschaften”. 6. The examples chosen by resp. Pfleiderer and Korsch are Georg Lukács, Carl Schmitt, Emanuel Hirsch, Friedrich Gogarten, Ernst Bloch and Paul Tillich. 7. The translations of quotes from Der Römerbrief are my own unless otherwise stated. 8. According to Max Weber’s wife Marianne Weber, this prophet was most important to her husband (Adair-Toteff 2014, p. 10).

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9. This is reflected in research on the Weimar period—and it could be mentioned that Weber on this topic engaged in an ongoing discussion with his colleague Ernst Troeltsch (Otto 2005; Weidner 2013; Adair-Toteff 2014). 10. Assel points out the similarity that both are going beyond a Eurocentric approach aiming at a universal historical scope (treating Eastern confessions and religions), Assel 2015. 11. Cf. also Holl 1979 (The Reconstruction of Morality). 12. The last clause in the original goes “… dass sie sich, kämpfend für Gottes Recht, selber ins Unrecht setzen müssen”. 13. The very long sentence is here shortened. 14. For a further qualification of the role of the Pharisee in the Römerbrief, cf. Carsten Pallesen’s contribution in this book. 15. New international version. 16. Discussions about those who feel restricted by eating prescriptions (the weak) and those who do not (the strong) and about how they should be considerate to one another seem to play no role in Holl’s idea of strong Christians.

References Adair-Toteff, Christopher. 2014. Max Weber’s Charismatic Prophets. History of the Human Sciences 27 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695113518212. Assel, Heinrich. 1994. Der andere Aufbruch: Die Lutherrenaissance – Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ———. 2015. Die Lutherrenaissance in Deutschland 1900–1960. Herausforderung und Inspiration. In Lutherrenaissance Past and Present, ed. Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ———. 2016. Karl Holl als Zeitgenosse Max Webers und Ernst Troeltsch. Ethikhistorische Grundprobleme einer prominenten Reformationstheorie. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 127. ———, ed. 2021. Karl Holl. Leben – Briefe – Werke. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Barth, Karl. 1990. Not und Verheißung der christlichen Verkündigung (1922). In Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1922–1925 (Gesamtausgabe III, 19). Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. ———. 2010. Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) 1922. Ed. Cornelis van der Kooi & Katya Tolstaya, Karl Barth Gestamtausgabe: II. Akademiske Werke. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Busch, Eberhard. 1975. Karl Barths Lebenslauf nach seinen Briefen und autobiografischen Texten. München: Chr. Kaiser.

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Holl, Karl. 1932. Luther. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte vol. 1 (1921). 6th ed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 1965. Der Westen, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte Bd III (1928). Darmstandt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ———. 1966. Luther und Calvin (1919). In Kleine Schriften, ed. Robert Stupperich, 67–81. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 1969. Enthusiasmus und Bußgehalt beim griechischen Mönchtum. Eine Studie zu Symeon dem neuen Theologen (1898). Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. ———. 1979. In The Reconstruction of Morality, ed. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House. Holm, Bo Kristian. 2015. Resources and Dead Ends of the German Lutherrenaissance. Karl Holl and the Problems of Gift, Sociality, and Anti-­ Eudaimonism. In Lutherrenaissance Past and Present, ed. Christine Helmer and Bo Kristian Holm. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Korsch, Dietrich. 1996. Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Otto, Eckart. 2005. Die hebräische Prophetie bei Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch und Hermann Cohen. Ein Diskurs im Weltkrieg zur christlich-jüdischen Kultursynthese. In Asketischer Protestantismus und der “Geist” des modernen Kapitalismus, ed. W. Schluchter. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Pfleiderer, Georg. 2000. Karl Barths praktische Theologie: Zu Genese und Kontext eines paradigmatischen Entwurfs systematischer Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Põder, Christine Svinth-Værge. 2020. Luther’s Lectures on Romans in the Work of Karl Holl, Rudolf Hermann, and Karl Barth. In Luther, Barth, and Movements of Theological Renewal (1918–1933), ed. Heinrich Assel and Bruce L. McCormack. Berlin: Walter de Druyter. Tietz, Christiane. 2019. Karl Barth. Ein Leben im Widerspruch. München: C.H.Beck. Van der Kooi, Cornelis. 2005. Karl Barths zweiter Römerbrief und seine Wirkungen. In Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935). Aufbruch – Klärung – Widerstand. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. Weber, Max. 1972. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (1921), 5th ed., Tübingen: Mohr. ———. 2003. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New  York: Courier Dover. ———. 2005. Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. In Das antike Judentum. Schriften und Reden 1911–1920, 2nd Half-volume. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Weidner, Daniel. 2013. Mächtige Worte. Zur Politik der Prophetie in der Weimarer Republik. In Prophetie und Prognostik. Verfugungen über Zukunft in Wissenschaften, Religionen und Kunsten, ed. D.  Weidner et  al., 37–58. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.

PART II

Der Römerbrief as Mediator of Currents and Countercurrents

CHAPTER 5

From Answers to Questions: Barth and Thurneysen on Dostoevsky Sigurd Baark

1. When Karl Barth’s Römerbrief and Eduard Thurneysen’s Dostoevsky were published, neither Barth nor Thurneysen presented a theology, at least not in the usual sense of the word.1 Neither embraced a clearly defined set of particular dogmatic commitments; their use of classical doctrinal vocabulary was ambiguous and could not straightforwardly be taken to refer to traditional theological positions; they did not arrive at particular theological teachings that other members of their guilds could then impartially evaluate and adopt. In essence, they were not arguing for their positions in the classical sense of moving from commonly accepted premises to valid conclusions. The premises had to be established first. Within the conceptual field of reflection on the Christian proclamation, they were striving to reconfigure the coordinates indicating how that task should be carried out. They did so not by providing direct answers but by urging their readers to engage with a new set of questions and problems. To do that they had to clear

S. Baark (*) Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_5

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some ground. That was their main task. The writings of Dostoevsky provided them with a way of carrying it out. Their use of his novels enables us to draw an analogy to a particular form of reflection: the thought experiment as a narrative genre. In this chapter, I focus primarily on Thurneysen’s short, but brilliant, reading of Dostoevsky. Although I draw less explicitly on Barth’s text, I use my argument to explore the intimate kinship between Thurneysen’s book and Romans II that Barth explicitly acknowledges in his letter to Thurneysen from August 1921: “I am very, very pleased that beside my clumsy truck [Der Römerbrief] this nimble, yet extremely powerful, motorcycle [Dostojewski] is racing at full speed.” My focus in this chapter is on the motorcycle, but my footnotes will chart the course of the truck itself, racing along at full speed. To bring the basic structure of my argument into view, I borrow a concept, a distinction, and an example from the philosophers Robert Nozick and James F. Conant. I begin with the example. 2. In his lecture, “Thomas Kuhn on the Difference Between Puzzles and Problems”, the Chicago philosopher James F. Conant tells a story about his first philosophy class.2 At the time he was a young student enrolled at Harvard University. Curious about the subject of philosophy, he sat in on a class entitled “Metaphysics” taught by the political philosopher Robert Nozick. Nozick opened the class by making a categorical claim: “Frame-breaking is the key to progress in philosophy. Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what I mean by frame-breaking? Let me illustrate.” He then proceeded to write a number series on the blackboard. “As soon as you see how to continue the series, I want you to raise your hand.” The first number was 14. The second was 18. The third was 23. The fourth was 28. The fifth was 33. Then came the numbers 42, 51, 59, 68, 77, 86, 96, 103, 110, 116, 125. As the number series developed, the young Conant computed more and more elaborate functions that would produce the sequence. Yet as his candidate functions became more and more baroque, more and more of the students surrounding him raised their hands. For Conant, the apparent complexity was increasing exponentially—yet the solution increasingly came to seem obvious to more and more of his classmates. More and more hands were raised along with exclamations—“Oh, of course!” and “Now I see”. Feeling humiliated and alone, the young Jim Conant finally raised his hand as well—out of embarrassment, not because he had grasped the solution. At about that point, Nozick stopped writing and faced the class: “So, you all see what my point

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is here. That is what I mean by frame-breaking.” Defeated, our young hero snuck out the class. About a year later, Conant found himself in the company of one of the students that he had seen in Nozick’s Metaphysics class. He gathered his courage and asked about the frame-breaking example. Did his fellow student remember it, and did he remember the solution? The fellow answered: “Of course, it was easy! Those are the stops on the IRT. You know, the Lexington Avenue Subway line. Those are the Manhattan stops.” 3. Conant uses this short piece of autobiographical narrative to draw a distinction between puzzles and problems in any field. Consider a regular jigsaw puzzle. It is obvious how to solve it, even if the time needed to complete it depends on the number of pieces. The difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate method of solving it is clear: you cannot grab scissors and begin changing the shapes of the pieces. And if the acknowledged method of solving the puzzle does not yield a result, then the puzzle must in some sense be defective; a piece must be missing or something else has gone wrong. Or consider the example of a crossword puzzle. You follow the rules, do not make up words, and are assured that the solution is ultimately available. We can extend these basic stipulations to puzzles that emerge in a given intellectual field or discipline: (1) Methods for arriving at the solution must be in place. (2) The methods have to be uncontroversial. There is a background of agreement among a like-minded community. (3) Those methods are understood to have the potential to yield a solution to the specific puzzle at hand—even if no solution has yet been found. Consider here the contemporary example of vaccine development in the face of a new disease. The researchers were confronted by a puzzle, which they proceeded to solve. Conant distinguishes puzzles that conform to such stipulations with what he defines as “problems”. The problems of a given intellectual field or discipline arise when one or more of the above stipulations fails to obtain. That is, either (1) the methods for arriving at a solution are not established, (2) the suggested methods for solving the problem are controversial and there is little or no agreement in the community about how to approach it, or (3) it is not clear that the available methods have the potential to yield a solution to the problem; it is not clear how they would work if applied. Problems require frame-breaking. They require a change in aspect or perspective, a radical reconceptualization of the issue at hand. They result in something along the lines of Thomas Kuhn’s famous

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examples of paradigm shifts. It is here that I want to draw an analogy to Thurneysen’s use of Dostoevsky’s novels. 4. We can see something like this change in perspective or aspect that constitutes a form of “frame-breaking” invoked at the very beginning of Thurneysen’s book Dostoevsky. I quote the beginning of the book at some length: Whoever comes to Dostoevsky from the regions of secure humanity, of the pre-war period for instance, must feel like one who has been looking at such domesticated animals as the dog and the cat, chicken or the horse, and then suddenly sees the Wild before him, and without warning finds himself face to face with the yet untamed animal world, jaguar and puma, tiger and crocodile, the slithering of the snakes and the fluttering of the wings of the eagle and the condor. He is surrounded by awesome wildness, by strangeness, by the riddle of nature that has not been conquered, not yet contained and controlled, not yet crippled and chained by a hundred safety devices… . Far beyond him lie all inhabited, comfortable and mild regions. He has been led out past the farthermost border posts, past the limits of known humanity, with pounding heart he looks at the unknown face of a man who shares with him the common name of ‘man’, and who yet appears to live beyond all the concepts tied with this name, beyond good and evil, wisdom and folly, beauty and ugliness, beyond even state and family, school and church. And just as the one who returns from the wilderness to domesticated animals rediscovers in the four-footed creatures who share his house, and whom he had previously regarded sympathetically, the traces of original wildness, and sees himself in his own four walls confronted at a stroke with dangerous, unsuspected slumbering possibilities, so there proceeds from an encounter with the world and men of Dostoevsky something of hidden trembling and fear. (Thurneysen 1964, p. 7f)

The concept of a “frame” draws on our visual perception, and Thurneysen’s opening analogy explicitly invokes the classical philosophical use of sight as the paradigm of perception as a form of knowledge more broadly conceived. We should note that the main issue concerns our perception of a particular object or problem and the passage makes it clear that it is a conceptually mediated perception. Dostoevsky’s writings show, Thurneysen argues, that the problematic perception of human existence is expressed in what appears to be a misapplication of a host of essential concepts. These concepts are moral, conceptual or discursive, aesthetic, and socio-political; in short, they pertain to almost the entire sphere of our

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form of life as self-conscious, discursive beings. Dostoevsky’s writings reveal that we have reason to question the customary use of these essential categories when we seek to understand the beings that we ourselves are (Thurneysen 1964, p. 9). The roots of our krisis run deep, the misunderstandings are fundamental. Our concepts do not seem to fit the reality that we are confronted with. In essence, we have not posed the right questions—and therefore we find ourselves disoriented and alienated. We are brought within a form of critical reflection on our own presuppositions that allow us to question our framing. 5. Now what is the particular “frame”, structured around our moral, conceptual, discursive, aesthetic, and socio-political concepts, that Thurneysen uses Dostoevsky’s writings to break? Thurneysen writes: “Once again, What is man? Dostoevsky raised this question; more he did not do” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 12). The framing is a particular image of humanity, and Dostoevsky addresses various aspects of it in his novels. What binds all of the various aspects together is the assumption that humanity engages in a positive relationship with the absolute in some form; that humanity enjoys some form of access to the absolute meaning or purpose or unity that structures the world and holds it together. In other words, humanity’s yearning and striving for the absolute implies a possibility and a path to a satisfactory solution. And it makes sense to determine in what way this positive relationship is or can be established. Thus asking how we reach the absolute is a sensible question. Asking what the end of our yearning and striving looks like is a legitimate form of inquiry that will yield a positive answer. Within this framework, such a question merely indicates a puzzle that may find a satisfactory solution. This is essentially the framework of the liberal theology of the nineteenth century, although, as a particular concept of humanity, it had permeated the culture and could be found outside the confines of theology. For Thurneysen, it is this more or less religious frame that must be broken by means of Dostoevsky’s texts—among others. 6. We can see the problem expressed in Thurneysen’s reading of Crime and Punishment. The novel itself has an existential-conceptual experiment as a premise: Raskolnikoff seeks to test the ethical argument that, for “extraordinary men”, moral norms can be transcended and “no scruples and prejudice are valid” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 16). His planned murders will serve as a test of an idea: the absolute sovereignty of humanity with regards to life and its norms, exemplified in the extraordinary human

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being. The absolute is there to be seized; the forging of the meaning of existence is there for the taking. That is, Raskolnikoff’s grand idea is a secular version of the romantic notion of a positive relationship between humanity and the absolute, and Dostoevsky is clearly conscious of its religious overtones. As Thurneysen writes, “Man, however, is not God. Or is he? Raskolnikoff faces this audacious question. That is the core of his problem” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 18). On Thurneysen’s reading, Dostoevsky is setting up a literary scenario that serves to test this hypothesis, to let it play out in a fictional form. As such, the character of Raskolnikoff embodies the testing of an idea. Ideally the testing would be straightforward, but it is a point in the novel that actual human existence does not provide a simplified clinical setting in which to carry out such experiments. We cannot reasonably subtract the complexity of life—even if the novel as a form in itself does constrain it. Thus Dostoevsky admits into the story a series of complicating factors that exemplify how our human lives are inherently intertwined. Within this context, the experiment proceeds. As Thurneysen writes, “the boundaries of humanity are to be displaced. Here it is a matter of the purity of the concepts: God, man, and life” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 19). The result is, of course, failure. Yet the concepts are clarified; we can more easily intuit the coordinates of the problem concerning humanity’s relationship to the absolute. Raskolnikoff’s failed experiment provides the insight that the resources for transcending the confines of the sphere of humanity remain outside the scope of humanity itself. Thurneysen writes: “It is exactly here that comprehension is found. It now becomes infinitely clear that man is not God” (Thurneysen 1964, p.  19). This is a purely negative insight. Yet it leaves open the possibility of conceiving the unsublatable limits that humanity inevitably encounters in its search for the absolute as transcended from beyond those limits. The relevant concept here is “resurrection”—the possibility of the radical reorientation of the human subject in light of an acknowledgment of the unsublatable limits of the human sphere of sovereignty. In other words, when Thurneysen invokes the “resurrection” we should not rush to see this as the affirmation of a positive doctrinal position or commitment (Thurneysen 1964, p. 13). What is at stake, Thurneysen writes, is rather “a recognition”; a perception of invisible connections in visible contrasts; a moment when the focus changes from foreground to background (Thurneysen 1964, p. 13). In other words, the resurrection does not signify a material change. It does not denote an addition to the long list of

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things that make up reality, at least that is not its primary use. What changes here is the significance of the reality that we encounter: a change in aspect, as Ludwig Wittgenstein would have it. Using Conant’s term, a particular framing is recognized as an obstacle and is thus dissolved. Through this essentially negative gesture, the possibility of a new framing is implicitly affirmed. I want to stress this point. The negative insight does not point to a positive solution that is readily available within the parameters established by the story that Dostoevsky is telling. Precisely not. For Thurneysen it cannot be a matter of positing such a possibility. Rather, what is gained is a “new thought, a new theory, ‘a new outlook on life’” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 20). This is not to be confused with a positive experience or any extension of the sphere of what is knowable. Thurneysen writes: “Truly, Crime and Punishment was not written for that purpose. Precisely not for that! But certainly only in order to lead thought about life in the right paths, and to distinguish a false thought from a true” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 20f). In other words, the experiment is teaching us distinctions. Similarly, in Der Römerbrief, Barth invokes the distinction between sense and nonsense (Sinn/Unsinn) to get at this issue. We must be brought to recognize that we do not know what we are saying when we use the word “God”, that we have failed to give a determinate meaning to the term (Barth 2011, p. 19). The negative gesture of exposing nonsense thus allows for another kind of reflective practice to emerge. As Barth writes: “The exposure of nonsense [Un-Sinns] is also the revelation of meaning [Sinns]” (Barth 2011, p. 19). 7. We get a sense of what a correct form of thinking in light of such distinctions looks like in Thurneysen’s reading of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. There Dostoevsky toys in a very general way with the idea of what it would be like if Christ returned to modern Russia. Prince Myshkin is a Christ-like figure, even if, as Rowan Williams has argued, a necessarily failed one (Williams 2009, p.  47). Yet the interesting aspect of the book is, as Williams also points out, how inserting precisely this figure in this particular context shapes the plot, how it opens up certain possibilities and closes out others. As such, it gives further expression to the experimental aspect of Dostoevsky’s writings: providing an explicitly conceptual premise and seeing how it develops through the process of writing in light of the conceptual constraints that it generates. According to Thurneysen, the effect is one of a radical reversal: “What is this man doing in the world? This question accompanies him [Myshkin] inevitably from the moment of his

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first appearance. But now the remarkable thing happens that at once turns this question around so that instead of being directed by others to him, in ever increasing measure it is addressed by him to others… . His ignorance of a thousand objects of human knowledge brings the suspension and devaluation of these things” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 26). The figure of the prince becomes an expression of “death wisdom”, as Thurneysen puts it. I want to dwell on this important concept for a moment. 8. “Death wisdom” is a central concept for Thurneysen as well as for Barth in his Römerbrief. Prince Myshkin’s epilepsy provides a link between the character and Dostoevsky himself.3 And Thurneysen argues that Dostoevsky’s descriptions of his oncoming epileptic fits approach the description of his near execution for sedition. “He learned from death how to understand life.” Here we discover an analogy in Dostoevsky’s fictions to the radical notion of death as an unsublatable limit to our human self-conscious existence, which Thurneysen and Barth take to be the great lesson to be learned from the Basel theologian, Franz Overbeck, Nietzsche’s erstwhile colleague and friend.4 We can capture the “death wisdom” that Barth and Thurneysen find in Overbeck’s writings with a short, programmatic passage from Overbeck’s Christentum und Kultur: “Death is the moment of our individual life, where within the same sphere the unknown steps in; in which for us, in terms of our lives, everything is located that lies beyond the known world—an utterly indifferent moment for human beings lacking consciousness, a moment of singular and unimaginable significance for a human being, insofar as he, with the distinction between what is known and unknown, has entered into possession of consciousness” (Overbeck 1963, p. 297). In other words, with death, understood as a radical negativity, a new form of consciousness is awakened. Overbeck emphasized that this consciousness is critical; it calls the entire ethical-metaphysical edifice of our culture into question, whether explicitly or implicitly. He argues that our everyday vision and understanding of the world relies implicitly on religious or philosophical presuppositions that attribute to humans some form of an ability to transcend the limit that death imposes, whether either intellectually or spiritually. Criticizing this idea by means of the notion of death as an unsublatable negation strikes at the heart of the liberal theology of the nineteenth century. It is aimed at the argument that we have some inherent relationship, or affinity, with the absolute and

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unconditional, which, Overbeck argues, is what a genuine understanding of death as radical negation definitively excludes. Furthermore, Overbeck argues, this radical notion of memento mori was precisely the deep insight of the early Christians with their concept of eschatology.5 In short, a radical criticism of the prevalent cultural ideology of the nineteenth century can be drawn from the earliest Christian writings and the New Testament in particular. This is music to Barth’s and Thurneysen’s ears. As Barth writes in Romans II: “Enough that we must die, that we are detached from everything. Enough that we see [our humanity] always and everywhere limited, radically limited and called into question; that our actual position in the world of time, things and mankind is thrown under the shadow of this unshatterable reality, hidden from no discerning person from Job to Dostoevsky—whether we admit it or not” (Barth 2011, p. 240). And thus Thurneysen writes of Myshkin: “When one like Dostoevsky-­ Myshkin draws his final insight into life from a moment that can only be compared to death, his vision and understanding of everything will necessarily be light-years removed from that everyday vision and understanding from which we are accustomed to gain our knowledge of the world and life. By this we can measure the force of the questioning of this usual knowledge of the world and the life which arises here, but we must also measure it by the distinctiveness, meaning, and magnitude of the position heralded by the radical nature of such a negation” (Thurneysen 1964, p.  28). Having used the word “position”, Thurneysen immediately retreats. It is not so much a position as it is the constant calling into question of any and all positions: “It is no program, no visible position, no recognizable goal” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 30). It is rather the dissolution of the available positions, programs, and goals. Death as a radical negativity undermines the framing of human existence as in and of itself positively related to the absolute. It is what reduces to nonsense the inquiry into how such a positive relationship with the absolute is established. 9. What are we given in its stead? The answer has already been suggested. There is no new positive theory or position available. The result of this frame-breaking is a subtraction—a subtraction with no subsequent positive addition to reestablish the seeming equilibrium. Our attention is drawn to the fact that our initial framing simply cannot provide the answers we seek. And so the radical negativity itself takes on the aspect of an answer. It provides a trace of a radical Otherness, one that remains outside the frame yet provides it with its form (Thurneysen 1964, p. 38).6

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Once again, Thurneysen turns explicitly to a visual analogy: pictorial perspective. Within Dostoevsky’s novels the characters are shaped by their implicit indication of a point beyond the frame of their human existence “Not some fantastic addition or grotesque exaggeration, but rather just such a strict and exact relationship of all lines to a vanishing point in the beyond is what we mean by that course towards the beyond and towards infinity which we have recognized as characteristic of Dostoevsky’s men and women” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 41). The awareness of what necessarily lies outside the frame draws attention to the framing itself. The realism of Dostoevsky’s characters results from his recognition that the relationship to the ultimate point of unity and coherence necessarily lies outside the frame of human existence. If that is right then the attempt to access this point of unity from within the frame of the possibilities of human existence stands revealed as a distortion of reality, a form of fantasy or ideology. Thurneysen: “This point of all points is God. God is God. That is the one, central recognition of truth for Dostoevsky. His only concern is not to permit this God to become a man-god, no matter in what heights his throne may be, nor a piece of the reality of human soul or of the world, no matter how idealistic” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 41). On this reading, Dostoevsky’s novels strive to make us recognize that there is no path for arriving at or establishing such a relationship. Any bid to devise a method for doing so will be confronted with Dostoevsky’s writings and be obliged to explain their insights away. Insofar as we recognize the realism of Dostoevsky’s characters, the grounding assumptions of such a project will stand revealed as inherently questionable. Thus it is unclear how we should conceive of approaching the absolute by means of our immediate human resources or capacities and equally unclear where we would find the resources to discover the solution to this problem. In other words, our relationship to the absolute does not constitute a puzzle to be solved. It constitutes a problem. The crisis of the liberal theology of the nineteenth century—the most explicit example of the prevalent intellectual ideology that argues for the possibility of such a relationship— does not signal a puzzle. It signals a problem. Thus it requires frame-­ breaking—which is what Dostoevsky’s novels provide. Thurneysen writes: “Dostoevsky’s works are full of proclamation, full of suggestion of that absolutely final turning to the transformation of everything on earth, to the breaking forth of ultimate answers to truly eternal life removed from all that is problematical. But they do not go

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beyond suggestion and proclamation. To want more would be to want less” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 45). 10. The unsustainability of this core tenet of the liberal ideology of the nineteenth century is best expressed in one of the most well-known passages from Dostoevsky’s novels: Ivan Karamazov’s narrative about the grand inquisitor. Once again we are presented with a thought experiment about Christ’s return. This time it is set during the Spanish Inquisition and placed inside the overall narrative of the novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Thurneysen reads the passage as a meditation on the stakes of leaving the liberal-theological frame behind—a reflection on what a form of thought that moves from puzzles to problems may look like. A person who recognizes the human relationship to the absolute as a problem rather than a puzzle is confronted with a final and radical negation. Such a person “must”, as Thurneysen writes, “renounce God himself, that is to say, a God who is revealed to him other than in a great question, a God who appears to him elsewhere than out there on the edge of those abysses, where everything becomes problematical, a God whom he could behold elsewhere than out of the ‘purgatorial fires of doubt’ and tribulation… . Faith begins only there where in the confirmations and concepts, confirmation and concepts cease, all assurance and certainty ends” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 54). This insight forms the background for Ivan Karamazov’s argument: recognizing the depth of the problem places us in an inhuman situation; it is too great a demand and we, human beings, cannot endure it. If so, remaining within the framework of human religion and religiously shaped liberal ideology—understood purely as an expression of and concern for human needs and desires—is justified. The radical alternative cannot be justified from within the coordinates of the humanistic ideals of the liberal ideology and theology. In other words, rather than acknowledging the problem and giving up the inherent contradiction, it is preferable to remain within the de facto contradiction of practicing a religion that more or less implicitly understands itself as a purely human form of self-realization (Widmann, 1968, 16f). What kind of contradiction is this? I find it analogous to what Wittgenstein named Moore’s Paradox. In terms of logical form there is no contradiction between the two claims: “There is a fire next door” and “Sigurd Baark does not believe that there is a fire next door”. Yet I am obvious contradicting myself if I make both claims and say, “There is a fire

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next door and I do not believe that there is a fire next door” (Monk 1991, p. 544f). Similarly, practicing a religion posited and justified as an engagement with the absolute while essentially understanding it as a merely human self-relation undertaken by the individual is contradicting oneself: the commitments expressed in the two judgments do not add up. What is the alternative? Taking a cue from Overbeck and, arguably, from Dostoevsky, it is to leave the unsustainable contradiction behind and allow the seeming safety of human religion to be negated in an actual engagement with the acknowledgment of God in the radical and unsublatable negation of human normative sovereignty in death. It is to engage in a form of thinking shaped by the early Christian insight into the eschatological significance of the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ in his death on the cross (Barth 2011, p. 77f).7 Thurneysen writes: “With the uncommon wisdom of his understanding, the Grand Inquisitor perceives the total immensity of the venture which is called faith, and will not expect man to take this venture, this leap into the dark, because he knows all too well what a weak and fearful creature man is. That is the meaning of the tale of ‘The Grand Inquisitor’, which reveals once more the deep unbelief, the insolent rebellion against God, that inheres in religions and churches, but reveals it only to defend, to justify, to affirm it” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 62). The choice is between the self-contradiction and breaking the frame (Barth 2011, p. 412).8 Now Thurneysen presents the existential stakes of this project as far higher than those of paradigm shifts in the natural sciences. Yet I believe that the analogy still holds. Encountering a genuine problem in a given discipline entails running into contradictory commitments of this kind. And leaving a given paradigm behind is a radical undertaking with no a priori guarantees that one may ultimately succeed. Breaking a frame is no guarantee that the new frame will be sustainable. That is as much the case in theology as in the natural sciences. 11. Before ending I want to provide some tentative and very general reflections on the use of fictional narratives as tools for frame-breaking. I hope that this will shed some general light on the particular way Thurneysen uses a literary form to accomplish his aim. In his lectures on Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov was quite critical of Dostoevsky’s writings. Nabokov’s own writings are characterized by an almost exaggerated emphasis on aesthetics. Intricate and often mesmerizing descriptions are placed front and center. Dostoevsky’s writings exhibit nothing of the sort. There are no descriptions of the world that Dostoevsky’s characters inhabit. Nabokov draws an analogy to the theater.

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The stage of a play may consist only of a table, two chairs, a bottle with a single flower in it and a window frame hung on a background of black velvet curtains. Such are Dostoevsky’s worlds, according to Nabokov. There is something right about Nabokov’s account of Dostoevsky’s novels. All “unnecessary” aesthetic details are subtracted, and all distractions from the central conceptual problem addressed by the books are removed. The world of Dostoevsky’s writings is that of thought and discourse. And just as in Plato’s Symposium a description of Agathon’s living room would only be a distraction, so it is in the worlds that Dostoevsky creates. The psychological insights and sensitivity come in part from the deeply conceptual construction of the plot’s premise. Place personalities and worldviews A, B, and C in circumstance X and let’s see what the characters will plausibly argue and do. Let’s see what they come to express or reveal about the relevant personality types and worldviews. In this sense, Dostoevsky’s writings have some of the essential characteristics of thought experiments. 12. Now thought experiments are forms of fiction. They are miniature literary scenarios. As Catherine Elgin has pointed out in her wonderful paper, “Fiction as Thought-Experiment”, there is a continuum between experiments, thought experiments, and works of fiction (Elgin 2014, p.  266).9 Thought experiments are imaginative exercises with narrative structures, bound by self-imposed constraints, with the aim of discovering what would happen if certain conditions obtained. They are open to interpretation and reinterpretation (Elgin 2014, p. 231). Arguably then, works of literary fiction are “extended, elaborate thought experiments” (Elgin 2014, p. 232). This is not to say that we cannot make distinctions, but rather that they are provisional distinctions akin to features of family resemblance. The extent to which these two genres appear explicitly to coincide depends in large part on how much is subtracted from the unfolding of the plot or intrigue. It depends on the reduction of variables that distract from the issue at hand. As Elgin writes: “Like an experiment, a work of fiction selects and isolates, contriving situations and manipulating circumstances so that patterns and properties stand out. It may frame or isolate mundane features of experience so that their significance is evident. It may defamiliarize the commonplace, making us aware of how remarkable normal behavior can be” (Elgin 2014, p. 232). A classic example of a work of fiction that has the character of a philosophical thought experiment is Oedipus Rex. As Elgin points out, we can read Sophocles’s play as a way to flesh out Aristotle’s claim from the

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Nicomachean Ethics that “we should call no man flourishing until he is dead”, adding that “Oedipus Rex can be read as a thought experiment that vindicates Aristotle’s claim” (Elgin 2014, p. 234). Arguably, we find similar arguments concerning investigations into ethics in Greek tragedy in the works of Martha Nussbaum. The purpose of a work of fiction as a thought experiment is not necessarily to present a positive solution to a particular given problem. The purpose can be to clarify the coordinates of the problem and make it intuitive. Its purpose can be to allow us to see a given problem in a new or distilled form and grasp it in a better way.10 It can even serve to make us reject the very premises of the experiment, functioning as a kind of “impossibility proof—a thought experiment that exemplifies the inadequacy of its grounding assumptions” (Elgin 2014, p. 236). Elgin’s example is George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which shows how deep human misery and suffering may result from a world that does not permit divorce. As such, it presents a powerful argument for divorce.11 Now I have argued throughout that one formulation of an essential assumption of nineteenth-century ideology is this: humanity has or can establish a positive relationship with the absolute on its own terms and by means of its own capacities. This assumption is what Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick forcefully rejects: under the heading of a quote from Job, the pursuit of the white whale by Captain Ahab and his crew ends with Ishmael floating on the sea, buoyed up by a coffin. According to Thurneysen, Dostoevsky’s novels serve much the same purpose. 13. Dostoevsky’s novels, his conceptual experiments presented in literary form, serve this key function in the early theology of Barth and Thurneysen. On their reading, the result is a negative gesture of rejection which provides greater clarity and a stronger possibility of reorientation. This clarity and reorientation are themselves the aim of Thurneysen’s and Barth’s early theology, and the conceptual resources that Dostoevsky’s novels provide seem nicely aligned with that aim (Barth 2011, p. XIV). Thurneysen and Barth recognize that the narrative form provides a particularly useful vehicle for this kind of reorientation, as it avoids to some extent the theoretical positivism and pitfalls that come packed with classical arguments and commitments. Fiction as thought experiment leaves open precisely the space of interpretation and reinterpretation. As opposed to an abstract theoretical style, the fictional form does not readily present itself as a determinate, objective premise for a subsequent argument. It is an expression of a deeply human way of speaking and thinking, which by

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its very form problematizes the “view from nowhere” that is often the preferred mode of classical theological or philosophical treatises. It is not required to assume positions. It can invoke a polyphony of perspectives while at the same time examining one particular problem. As such, understood as a form of thought experiment, literary fiction is an excellent vehicle for breaking frames: a useful tool for drawing attention to a problem rather than solving a puzzle. 14. In this chapter, I have argued that in the early stages of their thinking Barth and Thurneysen did not engage in theology in the classical sense of positing a series of doctrinal commitments. We have seen this explicitly in Thurneysen’s reading of Dostoevsky. Borrowing a concept from Nozick and Conant, I have argued that their purpose is frame-breaking, revealing a seeming puzzle to be, in fact, a problem.12 Again, Thurneysen’s reading of Dostoevsky serves this purpose: it clears the ground and serves as an “impossibility proof” rather than as a set of determinate solutions to already established challenges. I have argued that we get a better sense of this form of thinking, if we understand Dostoevsky’s novels as thought experiments and I have shown how that can be a legitimate interpretation. I have done that implicitly in my reading of Thurneysen’s Dostoevsky and explicitly in my treatment of the issue in light of Catherine Elgin’s wonderful paper. 15. I want to end with a brief criticism of Thurneysen’s project in Dostoevsky. The criticism is simply that this form of theological thought and practice is unsustainable in the long run. Theology is in the end a form of propositional discursive mediation. It is rationally mediated and proceeds by argument. It lays bare commitments and uses the principle of non-contradiction to expose weaknesses in its opponent’s arguments. Stated in such general terms, even Luther, a supposed foe of reason in theology, is a prime example of rational discursive theological mediation. Thurneysen’s project in Dostoevsky undoubtedly merits provisional legitimacy. It serves the function of clearing the ground. Yet it cannot provide what is needed for theology to thrive as a sustainable source of knowledge and reflection to be offered to aspiring pastors, which is theology’s causa finalis, its conditio sine qua non. For that, a form of conceptual sublation is required. The negativity must be provided a conceptual form, allowing for affirmations instead of negations. Something akin to the way imaginary numbers can be sublated and provided a conceptual form in the sign “i” and thus put to work is required. Happily, the centenary of Barth’s Römerbrief and Thurneysen’s Dostoevsky is only the first in a string of centenaries of their subsequent work. The story has just begun.

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Notes 1. I would like to thank Dr. Katya Tolstoya for our conversations about Karl Barth’s and Eduard Thurneysen’s readings of Dostoevsky. While our respective readings diverge, her work on these topics (Tolstoya 2013) has been a great source of intellectual inspiration. 2. For the following two sections see James Conant’s lecture, Thomas Kuhn on the Difference between Puzzles and Problems, 23 November, 2014: https://www.wiko-­berlin.de/wikothek/multimedia/thomas-­kuhn-­on-­the­difference-­between-­puzzles-­and-­problems. 3. “Which other path to the perception of the unperceivable could we humans, who ‘perceive rationally’, who are ‘familiar with the thought of God’, travel than the narrow path of ‘Death wisdom’?” (Barth 2011, p. 255). 4. As Barth wrote on the conditions that forced him to rewrite his commentary on Paul’s Romans: “Second: Overbeck. Along with Eduard Thurneysen, I have already elsewhere pointed to his warning to all theologians” (Barth 2011, p. XIII). 5. “All conceptions of Christianity, including those that oppose it, must ultimately seek the highest wisdom that Christianity has for us, whether mystical or rationalistic, in Christian eschatology, that is, in its doctrine of the future or of death. Then Christianity is nothing other than the wisdom of death. It teaches us exactly what death teaches us, not more nor less; nor does it help us any more or less” (Overbeck 1995, p. 183). 6. “Questioning, they themselves are questioned and give the answer. Seeking, they themselves are sought for and found. Pointing beyond, hinting at something inexpressibly great and distant, they are signs and proofs of [God’s] presence” (Thurneysen 1964, p. 38). 7. The paradigmatic formulation of this key dialectical insight is, of course, Barth’s exegesis of the phrase “durch seine Treue in Jesus Christus” in Paul’s Romans 3,21-22 (Barth 2011). 8. In The Brothers Karamazov, this moment of frame-breaking is exemplified in Christ’s response to the Grand Inquisitor. As Barth writes: “Christ kissed the Grand Inquisitor ‘on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips’. ‘That was his entire answer.’ And just this singular, this entire answer is the hope of the Church: this utterly undeducible, this groundless, only grounded in God’s own eternal mercy, which surpasses all thought. That man knows God does not save him, it judges him [richtet ihn]. That man is known by God saves him, it raises him up [richtet ihn auf]” (Barth 2011, p. 412). 9. “The items experimented upon are often artifacts constructed expressly for experimentation. The circumstances in which they are placed are artificial; they are carefully contrived situations, often ones that do not naturally

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occur but are designed expressly to exemplify telling features of the phenomena. Experiments are conducted; they do not just happen. They have narrative structure. They are subject to interpretation and to reinterpretation if background assumptions change. They are repeatable. In short, they are close kin to dramatic enactments. This is not quite to say that experiments are works of fiction; but it is to suggest that the gulf between fact and fiction may be narrower than is typically supposed” (Elgin 2014, p. 266). 10. Consider a short piece of fiction that bridges the gap between philosophical thought experiment and fiction: in Plato’s Republic the story of the ring of Gyges neatly plots the coordinates of a particular moral problem. Although Glaucon argues that a particular conclusion easily follows from his short fiction, in the following discussion Socrates presents a series of arguments that undermines that conclusion: even crimes committed with impunity come at a high cost and cannot straightforwardly be considered as profiting the criminal. Yet what we gain when hearing the story of Gyges is clarity concerning the stakes, clarity about what may or may not count as a persuasive argument in favor of striving for a moral life. 11. “Both Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Lydgate are in deeply unhappy marriages. Because in the world of the novel divorce is unthinkable (and unthoughtof), they are destined to serve life sentences for their unwise choice of mates. By exemplifying the intractability of the problem they face, the novel provides reason to think that divorce, or something like it, should be an option” (Elgin 2014, p. 236). 12. “Scientific theology [Wissenschaftliche Theologie] is repentance, rethinking, ‘thought made new’ [erneuertes Denken]. It is the question- and exclamation-­ mark at the very limits [äussersten Rande] of the university …” (Barth 2011, p. 706).

References Barth, Karl. 2011. Der Römerbrief 1922. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Elgin, Catherine Z. 2014. Fiction as Thought-experiment. Perspectives on Science 2014, 22(2). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Monk, Ray. 1991. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. London: Vintage Books. Overbeck, Franz. 1963. Christentum und Kultur. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschft. ———. 1995. Werke und Nachlass 4  – Kirchenlexicon Texte. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler. Thurneysen, Eduard. 1964. Dostoevsky. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.

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Tolstoya, Katya. 2013. Kaleidoscope: F.  M. Dostoevsky and the Early Dialectical Theology. Leiden: Brill. Widmann, Peter. 1968. På vej mod en ny teologi: liberalteologi og dialektisk teologi. In Gudstanken I Nyere Protestantisk Teologi, ed. Torben Krogh and Benedikt Otzen. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads forlag. Williams, Rowan. 2009. Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction. London: Continuum.

CHAPTER 6

The Positive Role of Culture in Barth and Tillich’s Discussion of the Paradox in 1923 Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen

The relationship between theology and culture was discussed at the beginning of the twentieth century in the context of what both Tillich and Barth refer to as “The crisis of the modern culture.”1 In the wake of World War I, both Tillich and Barth felt that the historical context for theological articulation had lost its validity and understood the current situation as calling for a fundamentally new approach to theology. In 1923, a discussion between Tillich and Barth took place in the journal Theologische Blätter. As it was labeled by Barth, the “Ball Exchange” concentrates on the role of culture in theology through a discussion of paradoxes, dialectic thinking, Christology, and the word “God.” Tillich represented a cultural–theological conception and worked out the concept of meaning as a methodological basis for his theory of religion and culture. Many years later, he wrote the three-volume Systematic

A.-M. W. Kristensen (*) Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_6

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Theology, which was still marked by this crisis (Danz and Schüβler 2011, p. 2).2 Barth conceived of a theology of revelation and years later wrote Kirchliche Dogmatik, in which contact between God and humans is understood as a form of revelation. The difference between the two theologians’ views was evident early on, although both composed their theologies through the crisis of historicism as a backlash to Liberal Theology (Danz 2012, p. 133). Drawing on the 1923 discussion between Tillich and Barth in Theologische Blätter, I show that the actual conflict in the exchange between the two thinkers concerns the question whether there is a positive role for culture in theology and, if there is, how that role should be understood. The exchange between Tillich and Barth in 1923 consists of Tillich’s article, entitled “Kritisches und positives Paradox: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten,” Barth’s answer in “Von der Paradoxie des ‘positive Paradoxes’: Antworten und Fragen an Paul Tillich,” and Tillich’s reply, titled simply Antwort. Tillich discusses both Barth and Gogarten’s Theology of Crisis (Theologie der Krisis), but I focus on Tillich and Barth’s exchange and therefore omit the discussion with Gogarten. Gogarten answered Tillich’s article in 1924 with “Zur Geisteslage des Theologen, and Noch eine Antwort an Paul Tillich,” to which Tillich did not reply (MW IV p. 91). In the following, I lay out the discussion between Tillich and Barth, focusing on theology and culture, and reveal the similarities and differences in their understandings of the positive role of culture. Culture is understood as a constitutive characteristic of all human existence, which implies that there can be no such thing as a human being without culture. More specifically culture is understood in relation to modes of human action such as communication and social interactions.

1   The Discussion Between Paul Tillich and Karl Barth in 1923 In 1923, the theological journal Theologische Blätter published a vivid discussion of theology between Tillich and Barth. The theology discussed was referred to as Theology of Crisis, a dialectical position, with which both Tillich and Barth were occupied at the beginning of the twentieth century as a response to the liberal theology of the nineteenth century (MW IV pp.  91–94). The discussion was initiated by the editor of Theologische Blätter, the New Testament professor Karl Ludwig Schmidt.

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Schmidt asked his friend Tillich to write an assessment of Barth’s and Gogarten’s theologies under the title “Kritisches und positives Paradox. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten” (Danz 2011, p.  211). Tillich wrote the assessment of Barth’s and Gogarten’s theologies, but expressed his reluctance (MW IV, p. 91). Tillich’s assessment of Barth’s theology draws on Barth’s previous publications, although there is no detailed discussion and only a few explicit references to texts. One of those texts is Barth’s Der Römerbrief, which Tillich later classifies as dialectical theology’s “most essential document” with “truly prophetic power and urgency” (Tillich 1926a, p. 92) and “a milestone in the development of evangelical theology” (Tillich 1926b, p. 187). Tillich writes, “It is the greatest merit of the theology of crisis to have waged the fight against the unparadoxical claim of absoluteness of religion with the greatest energy, and the smashing of idols is in every word about this, especially in Karl Barth’s commentary on the Letters to the Romans” (MW IV, p.  95).3 In Barth’s reply, “Von der Paradoxie des ‘positive Paradoxes.’ Antworten und Fragen an Paul Tillich,” Barth is likewise reluctant to discuss the guiding thoughts and concepts of his new theological approach publicly. Both Tillich and Barth express fear that the discussion would deflect attention from what theology could say to a contemporary audience.4 Barth emphasizes that he would much prefer the new theological approach, in which they were both engaged, to constitute an “existing underground working community,” but after Tillich’s critique he felt the need to bring the discussion into the public (MW IV, pp. 98–99). Barth’s reply is characterized by irony and uncomprehending remarks, which leads Tillich to write again with a reply simply titled “Antwort.”5 From a superficial point of view, the discussion can amplify the idea that the two theologians have little in common, especially insofar as both feel misunderstood or Barth feels misread by Tillich, who calls Barth’s position “undialectical.” In short, Tillich aims at exposing the “positive root” of the critical paradox, which he claims is presupposed in the critical version of the paradox in Barth’s theology. Tillich argues that the theology of crisis in Barth’s position is at risk of being either a self-defeating positionless or covert supranaturalism and seeks to understand the premises with which the dialectical critique starts (MW IV, p. 92).6 He questions whether Barth is willing to accept the positive conception of the paradox as presupposed in its critical conceptualization. Barth feels misread and attacks Tillich’s concepts of the unconditional, the theonomous spirit of the situation (teonome Geisteslage), the prophetic attitude (Prophetische Haltung)

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and actions in consciousness of kairos (Kairosbewuβtes handeln) and thereby Tillich’s concept of God and his theology of culture (MW IV, p. 103). Essentially, their discussion of the positive and negative paradox is a discussion of culture. Tillich understands culture as the context of a theonomous time. According to Tillich, theonomy is “the substance and meaning of history,” in which the cultural forms appear in their relationship to the unconditional.7 Barth argues that culture can only be a witness to the promise given to humankind in the beginning.8 1.1   “Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten” (1923) by Paul Tillich In Tillich’s initial approach to Barth and Gogarten, “Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten” (1923), Tillich’s concern is whether Barth’s theology of crisis is in danger of becoming undialectical and a form of supranaturalism.9 Tillich’s aim is to expose the hidden basis for the critical paradox, when he asks: “whether he is willing to recognize the positive version of the paradox presupposed in the critical [paradox]” (MW IV, p. 92). This is a fundamental critique of Barth and Gogarten, as Tillich accuses them of holding an undialectical understanding of the relationship between the unconditional and the conditional, which involves the claim that they do not understand the relationship at all (MW IV, p. 91). For Tillich the unconditional is necessary for reaching God. As Mary Ann Stenger explicates: “For Tillich, it is the breaking in of the Unconditional that makes it possible to see beyond the limits of one’s usual theological circle. It is the experience of the root theological paradox which continues to animate one’s original theological circle while yet freeing one from that provincial circle” (Stenger 1994, p. 236). Tillich suggests that a positive paradox serves as a hidden basis for understanding the “No” and the critical paradox. In Der Römerbrief Barth defines the “No” as the inescapable in which way God confronts and pursues the human being as completely different in faithfulness (Barth 1922, p. 37). Neither Tillich nor Barth elaborates the term “critical paradox” in this discussion. Tillich mentions that in his analysis he will recognize critical negation in Barth’s and Gogarten’s theologies in the assessment (MW IV, p. 92).10 As suggested by Tillich, this “positive paradox” is the human word that affirms that every word is both a human word and the word of God. He states that the human word can show or reveal the word of God, unlike the critical paradox according to which no human word is the word

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of God. Tillich writes that the dialectical position represented by Barth ends up repeating itself ad infinitum and concludes that something undialectical must be presupposed in this position (MW IV, p. 91). Tillich writes that the same is true of Barth’s characteristic concept of humor in relation to all inner-worldly theoretical and practical problems.11 In spite of Tillich’s critique of Barth’s theological approach, though, Tillich agrees with Barth: “A direct, non-paradoxical relation to the unconditioned, which does not go through the constant radical No, is not a relation to the unconditioned, but to a conditioned that claims to be unconditional, i.e. to an idol” (MW IV, p. 92). Thus, Tillich accepts that a relationship to the unconditional must go through the constant radical “No.” Tillich insists that the Bible, Christ, and God express the paradox and concludes that the name “God” is in danger of maintaining an idolatrous and undialectical character by becoming objective and thereby conditioned. Tillich then considers whether the position in which the dialectic theologian nullifies himself into infinity should be ready to subordinate his position to the no and the yes: “It is the realization of the irrevocable (unaufhebbaren) position that is also contained in the proclamation of the crisis, it is the grasping (Erfassung) of the yes that is the prerequisite for the no, it is the regression from the critical to the positive paradox” (MW IV, p. 93). He argues that because everyone is subject to the unity of judgment and grace when claiming truth for their proclamation, they participate in truth, while not having truth, which would be undialectical. Thus, he criticizes Barth and argues that it is not acceptable to assign judgment to this world, grace to the hereafter, and separate the two into separate realms as a result. “Only through grace does judgment become judgment. Only where love is apparent (offenbar) does anger become apparent. Without unity with grace, judgment is a process of nature” (MW IV, p.  93). He therefore claims that Barth ultimately separates judgment and grace. Tillich develops this critique in relation to three relationships: that between God and nature, that between God and Spirit, and that between God and history. He argues that because the negative can reveal itself only in the positive, it is important to speak about the world of nature and life, in which judgment and irrationality or death are revealed, but also speak of the world as a unit of form, nature as a unit of creation, and life as reality. Tillich rejects the separation of the divine from the human and the worldly from the godly, which is the qualitative difference with Barth. In

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Tillich’s view, his conception stands in sharp contrast to Barth’s hesitancy to use the religious concept of creation: It is deifying idealism to want to see grace without judgment, to grasp the unity of the unconditional and the conditioned in nature directly and without paradox; and it is demonic realism to see the destruction of the conditioned in the process of nature without paradoxical unity with grace. The one is as impossible as the other, and demonic realism is no closer to revelation than deifying idealism. (MW IV, p. 94)

Tillich’s argument rests on the connection between the order of redemption and the order of creation (MW IV, p. 94). He argues that the problem in which the positive root of the critical paradox must show itself lies in history, emphasizing that the critical paradox makes both the dissolution of salvation history into profane history and miraculous history impossible. “Nowhere is the positive root of the negative paradox more evident than here; for the proclamation of the crisis is history, and its content is historical content” (MW IV, p.  96). According to Tillich, Barth rejects the idea of the revelation as taking place in history. Tillich argues that the theology of the critical paradox, in search of a foundation for its criticism, becomes a theology of positive absurdity, in which it has given up its own positive presupposition. According to Tillich, the prerequisite to theology is therefore not crisis but can only be evident in crisis and thus the prerequisite is creation and grace. “Only through the crisis and only paradoxically can one speak of it. But it must be spoken of everywhere, in nature and spirit, in culture and religion” (MW IV, p.  98). Tillich emphasizes three ways of speaking about the prerequisite: (1) As the eternal origin, the bottom and the abyss, revealed to faith in a non-visual and unspecified manner through everything real in yes and no; (2) as from eternal redemption the unfathomable and ungrounded, revealed only to faith, passing through history and its creations as a hidden history of salvation presented in Christ with perfect symbolic power; and (3) as an eternal perfection, as an indistinguishable promise, in which the ambiguity of the origin and the struggle of the divine and the demonic are abolished in the eternal unity in God. With these three ways in mind, Tillich concludes: “The theology of the critical paradox, which places itself under the paradox, not just dialectically but real (real), becomes the theology of the positive paradox” (MW IV, p.  98). The beginning and end of his assessment of Barth’s and

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Gogarten’s theologies is therefore a request to accept the positive paradox as presupposed in the critical paradox, thereby avoiding any risk of supranaturalism. 1.2   “Von der Paradoxie des ‘positive Paradoxes.’ Antworten und Fragen an Paul Tillich,” by Karl Barth In the succeeding volume of Theologische Blätter, Barth answered Tillich’s assessment in an article entitled “Von der Paradoxie des ‘positive Paradoxes.’ Antworten und Fragen an Paul Tillich.” The response is full of irony and with a clear emphasis on what Barth perceives as Tillich’s misreading of both himself and Gogarten.12 Barth finds himself alienated in Tillich’s interpretation and fears the risk of proving Tillich right on terms Barth does not fully understand, which could result in simply giving Tillich what he wants. Although Barth feels misunderstood, he also acknowledges that the provisions he and Gogarten had been positing thus far for their theology are insufficient, but he criticizes Tillich for attempting to “help” them to find its underlying basis. Barth was surprised that Tillich thought he had told them something they did not already know and also emphasizes that he might not have understood Tillich’s aim with the positive paradox (MW IV, p. 98). Barth emphasizes that Tillich must think something different from what Barth thought in regard to the term “dialectical” when writing “dialectical position,” and something other than “dialectic” when Tillich speaks of its “abolition.”13 In addition to Barth’s hesitance in agreeing to Tillich’s position, he acknowledges Tillich’s critique as a risk, although not a fundamental problem. Crisis does not mean negation, as Tillich suggests, but instead a warning and perhaps an admonition, according to Barth. Hence, Barth claims that the dialectic abolition of dialectics as a position is and remains dialectic, contrary to Tillich’s statement (MW IV, p. 101). In response to Tillich’s concern of the idolatrous use of the name “God,” Barth disagrees on how theology should be concerned with this: Why this game of hide-and-seek with the frosty monster “the unconditional”? […] Shouldn’t the plain old “dear God” in the mouth of a theologian who wants to be nothing more than just theologian ultimately be more secure against the dialectics, compared to which I don’t consider “the absolute” to be weatherproof either? (Tillich 1987, p. 103)

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Tillich emphasizes the necessity of acknowledging this concept, while Barth argues that it is possible to see through the fear of the idolatrous use of the name “God.” He asks Tillich how Tillich, based on the concept of the unconditional, manages to establish a philosophical consideration that is capable of expanding both science and an entire doctrine of the Trinity, asking: Should the answer to the question as to the presupposition of a crisis, which itself is not a crisis, be so simple, namely by setting up a new concept that says everything or nothing, or an old one in a new guise? How does one get there, I would like to ask my esteemed sub-speaker, with things like “theonomous spirit of the situation” (teonome Geisteslage), “prophetic attitude” (Prophetische Haltung), “actions in consciousness of kairos” (Kairosbewuβtes handeln) and the like and now here: “Abolition from the Unconditional” starting his theological presentations just like that, as if […] the overcoming of human godlessness were self-evident? (MW IV, p. 103)

This results in one of Barth’s most fundamental criticisms of Tillich. He criticizes Tillich for his unparadoxical way of reading the relationship between God and man, and the confusion of the terms “judgment,” “grace,” and “revelation.” Barth states that one of Tillich’s biggest flaws is his generalization and writes that the positive paradox “[…] is really one more paradox that bears no resemblance to the God of Luther and Kierkegaard, but bears a striking resemblance to the God of Schleiermacher and Hegel” (MW IV, pp. 104–105). Thus, Barth does not want to speak of the positive paradox, because he considers the positive paradox that Tillich speaks of as involving the divine paradox, thereby emphasizing the problems in the paradox of which Tillich writes (MW IV, p. 105). Barth therefore criticizes Tillich for advancing a Christology in which the salvation of history is everywhere and always “in perfect symbolic power” (MW IV, p. 105; italics in the original). Furthermore, he criticizes Tillich’s theological concept of truth as being uncorrelated with the concepts of church, canon, and the Holy Spirit, which he deems necessary. They both understand Christ as the positive paradox, but the difference lies in the relationship between revelation and culture. Barth states that: For ‘us’ Christ is the history of salvation, the history of salvation itself. Christ is the ‘positive Paradox.’ For Tillich he is the representation (Darstellung) of a salvation history occurring more or less always and everywhere in perfect symbolic power. (MW IV, pp. 105–106)

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Barth does not follow Tillich’s concept of the positive paradox through nature, spirit, and history. He emphasizes that anyone who talks about the “positive paradox” of judgment and grace should be aware that they are addressing matters that cannot be addressed because it is a matter about which only God can speak. Barth argues that Tillich’s proposal would imply that everything is included in the controversy and peace over the positive paradox, which makes it no longer a paradox. He claims that if Tillich is serious about the positive paradox, he cannot be serious about the directness of the relationship between God and the world as he claims to be, nor about the logical ease with which he reconciles the positive and negative sides of this relationship. Barth therefore compares Tillich’s suggestion to Gogarten and himself with the denial of revelation. 1.3  Antwort by Paul Tillich In Tillich’s response to Barth, he turns to the concept of “kairos” in relating Christology to culture and history, a term that means “that one cannot say and do everything at any time, but that each time has the task of drawing the eternal meaning of all time anew from its life and in its words” (MW IV, p. 109). Tillich agrees with Barth’s statement that the prerequisites for theology and its concept of truth are the Bible, the church, and the Holy Spirit, although he questions what this means for the intellectual situation in which they are writing. Tillich complains that the situation forces him to be a theologian not as a theologian but as a cultural philosopher (MW IV, p. 111). This leads him to fear that the way in which Barth uses the dialectic inadvertently leads the dialectical position into a positive and undialectical supranaturalism, repeating his original assessment of Barth’s and Gogarten’s theologies. This is also why he deems it important to show that the radical “No” can be carried out in unity only with the yes to the world, so that both judgment and salvation are here and now. Tillich’s notion of the unconditional is particularly important when relating Christology and God to the situation, as the unconditional becomes key to his understanding of God (MW IV, p. 110).

2   Theology and Culture Culture seems to be a central theological concern for Barth, although he is not often represented as a theologian of culture given his skepticism concerning the possible deification of human achievements in a theology of

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culture (DeCou 2019, p. 609).14 Some scholars have found a rich resource in Barth’s view of culture as secular, with Wood in 1988 describing Barth’s relationship to culture as “quintessentially positive and joyful” (DeCou 2019, p. 610; Wood 1988, p. 79). T. F. Torrance emphasizes that Barth’s thought on “the grace of God alone” helped build a constructive theology, thereby laying the foundation for a theological culture (Torrance 1962, p. 32). On the other hand, Tillich is characterized as a theologian of culture as a result of his persistent interest in the relationships between theology and culture and religion and culture. The view of culture as secular or theological understands culture as a constitutive characteristic of all human existence. With the 1923 discussion in mind, it seems clear that neither Tillich nor Barth rejects culture as a site for the communication of the Word. Tillich’s and Barth’s differences may be emphasized, but I prefer noting their mutual understanding of Christ as the “positive paradox” in concentrating on their shared but distinct theologies of culture. In Barth’s understanding of culture, the critical paradox is the divine “No” to every human word that claims to be the word of God. Culture is not positive in Barth’s theology, whereas it is in the positive paradox suggested by Tillich. 2.1   Christology, Eschatology, and Culture In the discussion from 1923, Christology, eschatology, and the issue of culture are closely linked.15 This can be seen in Barth’s consideration of Tillich’s ontological concepts, such as God as the ground of Being or the unconditioned as anathema, in Barth’s criticism of Tillich for the confusion of the “already” with the “not yet,” and in Tillich’s emphasis on theonomy (MW IV, p. 108). Jessica DeCou argues that Barth espouses an eschatological reasoned criticism of culture; hence, Barth’s critique of Tillich’s theology of culture is founded on the criticism that Tillich transforms the “not yet” into an “already” in his emphasis on theonomous culture. In the transformation from “not yet” into “already,” Barth deems Tillich as failing to recognize the limits of human theological activity and human cultural achievement, thereby criticizing Tillich for confusion between Christology and eschatology. DeCou argues that, based on Barth’s eschatological theology of culture, culture can be appreciated simply for its secular task and can be understood only as a theonomous culture from the point of view of the Kingdom itself (DeCou 2013, pp. 96–97). She notices that Barth himself mentions culture as something that must be comprehended in connection with eschatological apocalypse

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(DeCou 2019, p. 609): “Viewed from an eschatological perspective: we can appreciate culture as a constitutive element of human life, but it is only from the vantage point of the Kingdom itself that it could be perceived as a theonomous culture that communicates the infinite through its finite forms. […] Within the doctrine of reconciliation, culture is the stage on which we live out our faith and obedience, and from the point of view of the doctrine of redemption, culture is an event ‘which is not already here but is in the process of becoming’” (DeCou 2019, p.  612). DeCou emphasizes Barth’s definition of culture as limited eschatologically. Art, for example, “plays with reality” by recognizing the limits on human life and points beyond the present to the eschatological future. Therefore, the difference in their understandings of culture can be grasped in their perspective on eschatology, as Barth emphasizes that Tillich has a utopian understanding of culture when claiming theonomy is “already,” while Tillich criticizes Barth for separating judgment from grace. Three years after their discussion in Theologische Blätter, Barth published Church and Culture, in which he stresses that culture “[…] can bear witness to the promise that was originally given to man. ‘It can,’ I say. It does so in Christ” (Barth 1926, p. 35). Between “can” and “does” stands God’s free will, according to Barth (Barth 1926, p. 48). This idea of the “can” and “does” becomes evident when Tillich and Barth discuss grace and judgment. In Tillich’s critique of Barth for separating judgment and grace into two distinct realms, Barth’s later emphasis on the “can” and “does” is noteworthy. Judgment and grace are essential to the promise which was given originally, and thus culture “can” be witness to judgment and grace, but God’s free will stands between the “can” and “does” for human beings. It can therefore be said that Barth considers culture as witness to the promise, but only recognizable as such in light of God. Barth’s emphasis on a divine paradox instead of a positive paradox must be considered rooted in his idea that theology and culture rely on God’s free will. Tillich agrees but the question is how this should be conceptualized. Tillich writes on culture in Theology of Culture that, “in every cultural creation—a picture, a system, a law, a political movement (however secular it may appear)—an ultimate concern is expressed, and that it is possible to recognize the unconscious theological character of it” (Tillich 1959, p. 27). Tillich understands culture as “the totality of forms in which the basic concern of religion expresses itself” thereby purportedly ruling out a dualism of religion and culture (Tillich 1959, p. 42). In Tillich’s theology of culture, his understanding of Christ as mediator is important. Tillich

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considers Christ as medium in which the human being is able to understand being in Christ. Christ is mediator in the meaning in which he represents God toward humans and humans toward God and therefore Christ as mediator is essential in Tillich’s theology of culture.16 Barth is skeptical toward a theology of culture in part because of the deification of human achievements, a risk that he believes Tillich’s theology of culture entails (DeCou 2019, p.  609). DeCou summarizes this point from Barth’s eschatological perspective: “We can appreciate culture as a constitutive element of human life, but it is only from the vantage point of the Kingdom itself that it could be perceived as a theonomous culture that communicates the infinite through its finite forms” (DeCou 2019, p.  612). Although Barth did reject the sanctification of cultural achievements, he also warned against blindness toward culture, as “it could be auspicious” (Barth 1926, p. 37).17 Thus, Barth’s concern is that we must not confuse the one Word with the words but must be prepared to hear and obey the Word of Christ from wherever it speaks (DeCou 2019, p. 616). This does not imply seeking “true words” in culture, and therefore it does not require understanding culture as revelatory or theonomous (DeCou 2019, p. 616). When Barth emphasizes that the human being must not be blind but must be prepared to hear, it is not the same as seeking out “true words.” Barth regards Tillich’s notion of theonomy as a seeking and as a transformation to something utopian, something that is “not yet,” and therefore criticizes Tillich for confusing culture and revelation and viewing culture as an essentially revelatory, theonomous realm, at the risk of deifying human achievements. This criticism does not include Tillich’s consideration of Christ as a medium in culture nor his concept of symbols in culture. In Tillich’s theology, symbols play an important role because they can open the divine to the human and the human to the divine by symbolizing the one for the other.18 Neither does it consider Tillich’s consideration of culture as “the totality of man’s creative self-interpretation,” which depends on Christ and the idea of Christ as the expression of revelation that runs through history with reference to the unconditional, which is revealed non-objectively (Tillich 1951, p.  4). Barth concludes that Tillich must consider salvation’s history as being everywhere and always. In their discussion, both view Christ as the positive paradox, as the prerequisite of the critical paradox. For both theologians culture can become a site for the communication of the word, while they disagree as to how human beings can receive the Word through culture.

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2.2   Revelation and Culture Among Tillich’s and Barth’s controversies is the concept of revelation in relation to culture. In Barth’s post-1916 theology, and particularly in the two commentaries on the epistle to the Romans from 1919 and 1922, the concept of revelation increasingly replaced the concept of religion as the methodological basis of theology and included a criticism of religion as an object-oriented form of knowledge that exists only as an individual accomplishment (Danz 2012, p. 135). Barth’s critique of Tillich in the discussion from 1923 includes the argument that Tillich’s concept of revelation makes it an individual accomplishment. Tillich’s argument is that the problem in which the positive root of the critical paradox must show itself lies in history. Tillich’s emphasis on Barth’s rejection of the idea of revelation as taking place in history makes the two theologians seem further apart than necessary. This leads to the idea that Barth is not engaged with culture or history, although he does emphasize in 1926 that no one should be blind to culture (Barth 1926, p. 37). Tillich’s criticism of Barth for giving up the presupposition of the critical paradox and foundation of his theology can be seen as an expression of Tillich’s consideration of Barth as blind to culture. Tillich holds that the prerequisite to theology is creation and grace, while he claims that Barth’s prerequisite is crisis. The three ways that Tillich sets up for speaking about the prerequisite reveal the difference between Tillich’s and Barth’s theologies of culture. In reference to the three ways, which comprise the relationships between God and nature, between God and Spirit, and between God and history, it is emphasized that the prerequisite is revealed through everything real in yes and no through faith, and that the eternal redemption, the unfathomable and ungrounded, is passing through history and its creation as a hidden history of salvation. Tillich understands culture has the unconditioned as its basis. This is presented only in Christ with perfect symbolic power. If we were to adopt Barth’s more eschatological standpoint, we would emphasize that Tillich’s way of speaking about the prerequisite is not possible for humans as Tillich formulates it.19 Barth emphasizes that Tillich, especially in this way of speaking, confuses what “is becoming” with something which is already at hand.20 Despite this emphasis, Barth still considers culture something that “can” only be a witness; the problem is “does.” It is not possible to say that culture “is” witness or that culture holds the infinite. Therefore, Barth also emphasizes that Tillich confuses the terms judgment, grace, and revelation.

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2.3   The Word and Culture Tillich and Barth agreed regarding the possible idolatrous use of the word “God” but disagreed regarding how theology should be concerned with this use in relation to culture. Tillich’s answer was that it was necessary to address, whereas Barth answered that a theologian can see through the fear of the idolatrous use of the name “God,” because the fear amounts to nothing, even if it is well-founded. The fear does not pose a risk compared with the use of other names for “God” (MW IV, p. 103). Culture is the place for the Word according to both, so Tillich therefore emphasizes the danger in maintaining the idolatrous and undialectical character by allowing it to become objective and conditioned. The discussion of the idolatrous use of the word “God” sheds light on Barth’s consideration of the human being as incapable of coming closer to a better word than “God” or a lack of fear of the idolatrous use of the name. On the other hand, Tillich seeks to establish a way of speaking about God that can function as a key to understanding the word “God.” Tillich’s emphasis on the human word, as that which affirms, like the word of God, that every word is both a human word and the word of God, shows why the discussion of the word is important to him. Tillich asserts that the human word can show or reveal the word of God, unlike in the critical paradox in which no human word can be or reveal the word of God. It is therefore evident that the two theologians diverge in their views of what culture can be for human beings. For Tillich, culture can reveal and hold the infinite by Christ. For Barth, culture “can” be witness, but the human being cannot and should not seek revelation in culture. 2.4   The Positive Role of Culture For Barth, culture can be a site for the communication of the Word, while Tillich also accepts that culture can carry the infinite. Despite the obvious difference in their perspectives on culture, they both understand that culture can become a site for the communication of the Word. Culture seems to play a positive role in both of their theologies, although Tillich’s theology grants culture a more significant role for human beings in regard to revelation in culture. Hence, Barth’s perspective on culture is not positive as it is in the positive paradox suggested by Tillich. Consequently, the notion of the unconditional might have divided the two theologians in regard to discussing culture to a greater extent than was strictly necessary, which induced Barth to reject Tillich’s notion of culture and Tillich to criticize Barth for separating judgment and grace into distinct realms.

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Notes 1. Christian Danz and Werner Schüβler emphasize the impact of the crisis of modern culture on Tillich’s theology: “The cultural theology worked out by Paul Tillich has its historical background in the debates about the crisis of modern culture. Due to the progressive differentiation of society in the nineteenth century, above all due to the experience of the problems resulting from accelerated modernization, the cultural topic became the focus of theological debates” (Danz & Schüβler 2011, p. 2). 2. In 1919, Tillich had already published his Berlin lecture, Über die Idee einer Theologie der Kultur, in which his theology of culture is evident. In this lecture, religion is understood as a dialectical experience of the unconditional. “Tillich had not only turned to a theological analysis and reflection of culture in his programmatic lecture on the idea of ​​a theology of culture, which he had held on April 16 1919 before the Berlin section of the Kant Society” (Danz & Schüβler 2011, p. 2). In an exchange of letters between Tillich and his friend Emanuel Hirsch in the years 1917 and 1918, they discussed culture and religion. “Culture becomes the medium of religion and religion becomes the depth dimension of culture. Their difference lies, as Tillich says in connection with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, in the direction of the spirit. If the mind is directed to the absolute, then it is of religion, if it is directed to the conditioned forms and their totality, then it is of culture” (Danz & Schlüβler 2011, p. 4). 3. All translations by the author if not otherwise indicated. 4. The commonalities between Tillich and his dialectical contemporaries are discussed. As opposed to Tillich’s liberal teachers, Russell Re Manning states that it is clear how little Tillich had in common with his “dialectical” contemporaries (Manning 2005, pp. 18–19). “Tillich’s account of culture stands in marked contrast with that of Gogarten’s pronouncement of the end of Western culture and the public and heated debate with Emanuel Hirsch of 1934–1935 has its roots in far earlier disagreements” (Manning 2005, p.  21). Manning considers whether Tillich and Barth should be regarded as antipodes in the theology of the twentieth century by showing dissimilarities between Tillich and his dialectical contemporaries, while others such as Christian Danz emphasize the similarities, arguing that both Tillich and Barth relate Christology to faith as an event in history (Russel Re Manning 2005; Danz 2012). Danz argues that not only are Tillich and Barth occupied with the same problem, namely the relationship between religion and culture, but also their handling of the problem is comparable (Danz 2011, p. 226). An overly generalized version of the two theologians would position Tillich’s theology as a religious philosophy of culture or identity and Barth’s theology as leading back to God and his revelation. In

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another generalized version, Barth’s theology appears as a form of supranaturalism, which casts away any concern with modern culture. Both of the overly generalized characterizations blur the mutual concerns of these theologians and limit any consideration of their shared concerns. In 1935, in “What Is Wrong with the ‘dialectic’ Theology?” Tillich states that “there is not only something that is right in the ‘Dialectic’ Theology, but something quite definitive for theology and equally fundamental for the church” (Tillich 1935. p. 127). 5. Tillich’s first contribution is seven pages long, while Barth’s answer occupies ten pages. Tillich’s response to Barth occupies only three pages. 6. Tillich defines supranaturalism as a method which “takes the Christian message to be a sum of revealed truths which have fallen into the human situation like strange bodies from a strange world. No mediation to the human situation is possible. These truths themselves create a new situation before they can be received. Man must become something else than human in order to receive divinity” (Tillich 1951, pp. 64–65). 7. In Theology of Culture from 1959 Tillich defines the Unconditional as: “God is unconditioned, that makes him God; but the ‘unconditional’ is not God. The word ‘God’ is filled with the concrete symbols in which mankind has expressed its ultimate concern—its being grasped by something unconditional. And this ‘something’ is not just a thing, but the power of being in which every being participates” (Tillich 1959, pp. 24–25). 8. In contrast to Tillich’s definition of theonomy autonomy as “the dynamic principle of history,” in which cultural forms appear in their finite relationship (Tillich 1948, p. 45). As stated by Tillich, autonomy is therefore also a confirmation of the unconditional through cultural forms: “For even autonomous forms stand under the unconditional, the unconditional of course being valid, truth and reality, righteousness and goodness” (Tillich 2008, pp. 55–56). Although autonomy and theonomy are distinct, they do not exclude one another, because autonomy remains existent in theonomy; nonetheless, he writes: “the autonomous road must be travelled to its very end, namely, to the moment in which a new theonomy appears in a new kairos” (Tillich 1948, p.  46). Consequently, theonomy is the aim when crisis creates a rupture in history, while a kairotic moment can be understood as the possibility for a transformation to what Tillich terms a theonomous time. 9. In an essay from 1935, “What Is Wrong with the ‘Dialectic’ Theology?” Tillich argues that dialectic theology should be understood as more paradoxical than dialectical. He claims that dialectical theology does not live up to its own promise of being dialectical, as all talk of God is paradoxical and not dialectical. Tillich writes: “God is ‘impossible possibility’; that is, he is

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beyond human possibilities. From the human point of view, every statement about him is a paradox—a statement regarding that about which nothing can be said. Such statements as ‘impossible possibility’ have given rise erroneously to the name ‘Dialectical theology.’ For such statements are not dialectical but are paradoxical. They do not yield a process of thought in which ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are mutually involved, but they permit only a contrasting repetition in other words of the idea expressed in the paradox” (Tillich 1935, pp. 129–130). 10. In 1951 in Systematic Theology I Tillich writes: “The term ‘paradox’ should be defined carefully, and paradoxical language should be used with discrimination. Paradoxical means ‘against the opinion,’ namely, the opinion of finite reason. Paradox points to the fact that in God’s acting finite reason is superseded but not annihilated; it expresses this fact in terms which are not logically contradictory but which are supposed to point beyond the realm in which finite reason is applicable. This is indicated to be the ecstatic state in which all biblical and classical theological paradoxa appear. The confusion begins when these paradoxa are brought down to the level of genuine logical contradictions and people are asked to sacrifice reason in order to accept senseless combinations of words as divine wisdom” (Tillich 1951, pp. 56–57). 11. Tillich emphasizes that humor rests on seriousness, that something positive, something serious makes criticism and humor possible in the first place: “The same can be shown in the concept of humor that is so characteristic of Barth in relation to all inner-worldly theoretical and practical problems. Here, too, humor is conceded against one’s own position of humor; but it is not remembered that this endless series of humor versus humor presupposes an element of seriousness which is not subordinate to humor. And on this point rests humor. Which is only humor and not play because of this, just like dialectics. So there is something positive, something serious, that makes criticism and humor possible in the first place” (MW IV, p. 92). 12. Tillich responds to Barth’s answer, stressing: “The joy in our conversation, the aim of which for me is to be together and not apart, far outweighs the small defensive impulses against ironically or pedagogically superior formulations” (MW IV, p. 109). 13. Barth assumes that Tillich’s objection to a forbidden absoluteness of their dialectical position is ultimately based on observations, such as: “He sees us occasionally on paper, or even in life size, now to the right, now to the left, categorically, to the point of impenitence, bursting into a decided yes or no, as if we were not united with all other ‘positions’ under the unity of no and yes. At such moments he then believes he is on the trail of the cancerous damage of the ‘Theology of Crisis’” (MW IV, p. 101).

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14. In Religion and Secular Culture, published in 1946 in The Protestant Era, Tillich writes that he discerns a turn in Barth’s engagement with culture after World War II: “The first turn of Karl Barth from a theology of radical detachment from culture, religious as well as secular, to an equally radical attachment to the fight against a demonically distorted cultural system. Barth suddenly realized that culture could never be indifferent toward the ultimate. If it ceases to be theonomous, it first becomes empty, and then it falls, at least for a time, under demonic control. The demand for a merely matter-of-fact culture is dishonesty or illusion, and a catastrophic illusion at that” (Tillich 1948, p. 61). Robert Palma argues that Barth took culture too seriously in his earlier works, whereas in his later works he characterizes culture “as the place where God could raise up parables of his own acts and kingdom” (Palma 1983, p. 28; 68). 15. Paul Louis Metzger in his book The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular Through the Theology of Karl Barth shows how Barth avoids the “divinization” and “secularization” of culture. He argues that Barth’s theology of culture was rooted in his Christology (Metzger 2003, pp. 3–59). 16. In Systematic Theology Volume II, Tillich elaborates on Christ as Mediator: “Besides the term ‘Savior’ (soter), the term ‘Mediator’ is also applied to the Christ. […] He is mediator in so far as he is supposed to reconcile. […] In his face we see the face of God, and in him we experience the reconciling will of God; in both respects he is the Mediator. The term ‘Mediator” is not without theological difficulty. It can suggest that the Mediator is a third reality on which both God and men are dependent for revelation and reconciliation. However it is untenable, from both the christological and the soteriological point of view. […] If this is understood, the term ‘Mediator’ can be used; if not, it should be dropped” (Tillich 1957, pp. 169–170). 17. For Barth, Mozart’s music “constitutes a parabolic correspondence to the Gospel so original that it is not discernible in any other genius of culture” (Wood 1988, p. 72). 18. Tillich’s understanding of culture and revelation should be read in accordance with his concept of symbols in culture: “A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. […] Religious symbols are double-edged. They are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize it. They force the infinite down to finitude and the finite up to infinity. They open the divine for the human and the human for the divine” (Tillich 1951, p. 240).

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19. Tillich’s eschatology is closely linked to his idea of symbols: “The theological problem of eschatology is not constituted by the many things which will happen but by the one ‘thing’ which is not a thing but which is the symbolic expression of the relation of the temporal to the eternal. More specifically, it symbolizes the “transition’ from the temporal to the eternal, and this is a metaphor similar to that of the transition from the eternal to the temporal in the doctrine of creation, from essence to existence in the doctrine of the fall, and from existence to essence in the doctrine of salvation. The eschatological problem is given an immediate existential significance by this reduction of the eschata to the eschaton. It ceases to be an imaginative matter about an indefinitely far (or near) catastrophe in time and space and becomes an expression of our standing in every moment in face of the eternal, though in a particular mode of time. The mode of future appears in all creational symbolism. God has created the world, and he will bring the world to its end. But although in both cases the relation of the temporal to the eternal is symbolized, the existential and therefore theological meaning of the symbols is different. If the mode of past is used for the relation of the temporal to the eternal, the dependence of creaturely existence is indicated; if the mode of future is used, the fulfilment of creaturely existence in the eternal is indicated. Past and future meet in the present, and both are included in the eternal ‘now.’ But they are not swallowed by the present; they have their independent and different functions” (Tillich 1957, pp. 395–396). 20. In the New Testament, both Jesus and John the Baptist use the word kairos when announcing that the fulfilment of time in relation to the Kingdom of God is at hand. Paul uses it as a world-historical view for the moment at which God could send his son, the moment chosen to become the center of history (Tillich 1963, pp. 369–370).

References MW IV: Tillich, P. 1987. 3. Kritisches und positives Paradox. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten (1923). In MainWorks – Hauptwerke. Volume 4/Band 4 Writings in the Philosophy of Religion / Religionsphilosophische Schriften, ed. John P.  Clayton. Berlin; Boston, MA: De Gruyter, pp. 91–116. Barth, K. 1922. Der Römerbrief. 2. Aufl. in neuer Bearb. München: Chr. Kaiser. ———. 1926. Die Kirche und die Kultur. In Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1925–1930. Gesamtausgabe. Zurich, Zurich Canton: Theologischer Verlag, pp. 18–52.

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Danz, C. 2011. Die Religion in der Kultur. Karl Barth und Paul Tillich über die Grundlagen einer Theologie der Kultur. In Paul Tillichs Theologie der Kultur: Aspekte  – Probleme  – Perspektiven ed. Danz, C. and Schüßler, W.  Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 211–227. Danz, C. and Schüßler, W. 2011. Paul Tillichs Theologie der Kultur: Aspekte  – Probleme – Perspektiven. [Paul Tillich’s theology of culture: Aspects – Problems – Perspectives]. Berlin; Boston, MA: De Gruyter. Danz C. 2012. Christologie als Selbstbeschreibung des Glaubens: zur Neubestimmung der Christologie bei Karl Barth und Paul Tillich. In Kerygma und Dogma. 58(2). Vadenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG: Göttingen, pp. 132–146. DeCou, J. 2013. Playful, Glad, and Free: Karl Barth and a Theology of Popular Culture. Minneapolis: National Book Network. ———. 2019. Barth and Culture. In The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth, ed. Paul Dafydd Jones and Paul T. Nimmo. Oxford.: Oxford University Press. Manning, R.R. 2005. Theology at the End of Culture. Paul Tillich’s Theology of Culture and Art. Leuven; Paris; Dudley, MA: Peeters. Metzger, P. 2003. The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular Through the Theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Palma, R. 1983. Karl Barth’s Theology of Culture: The Freedom of Culture for the Praise of God. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Stenger, M. 1994. Tillich’s Theological Paradox: Cross-Cultural and Feminist Applications. In Hummel, G. ed. The Theological Paradox / Das theologische Paradox: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Centre of Paul Tillich’s Thought / Interdisziplinäre Reflexionen zur Mitte von Paul Tillichs Denken. Proceedings of the V. International Paul Tillich Symposium held in Frankfurt/Main, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 226–241. Tillich, P. 1926a. Die religiöse Lage der Gegenwart (1926). Berlin: Ullstein 1926; Wege zum Wissen, nr. 60. ———. 1926b. Karl Barth. In Band 12 Begegnungen: Band 12: Begegnungen ed. Renate Albrecht. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, pp. 187–193. ———. 1935. What is Wrong with the “Dialectic” Theology? In: The Journal of Religion. Apr., Vol. 15, No. 2. The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1948. Religion and Secular Culture. In The Protestant Era. Chicago, Illinois, USA: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1951. Systematic Theology, Volume I. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1957. Systematic Theology, Volume II. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1959. Theology of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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———. 1963. Systematic Theology, Volume III. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 2008. Kairos (1922). In Ausgewählte Texte. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 43–62. Torrance, T.F. 1962. Introduction. Nunavut: Nunavut Arctic College. Wood, Ralph. 1988. The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

CHAPTER 7

An Apocalyptic Tone: Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief Between Neo-Kantian and Hermeneutic Paradigms of Orientation Carsten Pallesen

Don’t you wonder sometimes About sound and vision?

—David Bowie

1   Parallaxes: 1922–2022 The centennial of Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief 1922 (RII)1 is an occasion to consider the sense in which Der Römerbrief articulates a crisis or krisis of modernity,2 and to examine how Barth’s epochal interpretation of Paul and Christianity resonates with the discussion of an “apocalyptic tone” in recent interpretations of Paul.3 What Ricœur calls the “genius” of the word Apocalypse [apokalyptetai] in Romans sets the tone for the following explorative approach to Der Römerbrief that closes up the space between

C. Pallesen (*) Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_7

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its predominantly neo-Kantian orientation and later hermeneutic and postmodern re-orientations in twentieth-century philosophy and theology. Der Römerbrief and its subject matter cannot be contained or exhausted in any preconceived schematism, including in what is presented below. The book has to be read anew to be experienced as a thorn in the flesh of the reader. Der Römerbrief leaves a wound that will not heal even in its fiercest adversaries: it stands as an academic and literary scandal and a classic. Regardless of its academic or literary virtues or vices, the important and lasting significance of the book has to do with the subject matter, the theme, which cannot be separated from the proclamation and exposition of the Gospel. In this way only, the book is indispensable and necessary for our time. Historical and intellectual contextualizations, including what follows below, are, if not directly harmful and misguiding, petty and boring compared with what and how this book proclaims its message. * * * The year when the second edition of Der Römerbrief, the most important theological book of the twentieth century, was published, 1922, was also the year of the publication of one of the most important books of modern literature, James Joyce’s Ulysses, most of which was written in Zürich during World War I. The centennial of the two masterpieces lends itself to a “parallax view”, in the sense evoked by Slavoj Zizek (Zizek 2009, pp. 3–13). “Parallax” is an astronomical term that Zizek applies to the philosophy of Kant (Zizek 2009, pp. 20–58), and the term is explored artistically in Joyce’s Ulysses: Mr Bloom moved forward raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that. After one. Timeball on the ballast office is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book that is of Sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him pikehoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks! (Joyce 2000, p. 194)

A parallax is a juxtaposition of two observations that are not internally related, like the simultaneous appearance of Ulysses and Der Römerbrief, both of which are notorious for being unreadable. In this metaphorical sense, the juxtaposition of the parts and books of the Christian Bible is a Milky Way of “parallaxes”, like the juxtaposition of

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God and man, or the name “God” and the predicate “justice” (Romans 1.17), which is the “centrum paulinum” (RII, p. 40), the lone star that enlightens the universe, but is itself withdrawn from the parallax view. On Martin Luther’s account of the sola fide, or justification by faith alone, the Pauline Gospel depends on the connexio verborum, on how “justice” relates to the name of God. This question can be juxtaposed with the question of the possibility of synthetic apriori knowledge that Immanuel Kant claimed to be the principle of subjectivity and which was the paradigm of neo-Protestantism. The parallax of Luther and Kant are primary coordinates of Der Römerbrief. The question remains how “a priest”, Karl Barth, would explain this to “Mr Bloom”. * * * The “parallax” between the occurrence of Ulysses and Der Römerbrief in 1922 has been strangely neglected, even in the research literature. On another occasion, it would be worthwhile investigating parallels and “parallaxes” between the two texts, both of which are rewritings of defining European traditions and texts. “Jewgreek is Greekjew. Woman’s reason” is a Pauline formula in Joyce’s Ulysses. According to Declan Kiberd, it refers to the new covenant in Galathians 3, 26–29 (Kiberd 2009, p. 310). The Joycean formula questions the identity of male and female and ethnic, Irish, English or Jewish identity from a universal egalitarian perspective. * * * In his account of Der Römerbrief in the context of the theology of crisis, Heinz Zahrnt points to yet another parallax between Schleiermacher’s Speeches “on Religion” of 1799 and Der Römerbrief: Barth’s Epistle to the Romans is the most important theological work yet written in the twentieth century. But like Schleiermacher’s Lectures on Religion it is not merely an important theological work, but also a powerful source of religious ideas. Sometimes its effect is that of mighty prophecy, written with unparalleled energy. Almost as though in ecstasy. Barth of course sternly rejects all ‘virtuosity’ in religion. But his own work contradicts him. Whether or not it may be ignored or even forbidden in his theology, Barth himself is a ‘religious virtuoso’, a creative religious genius. He

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plays the same instrument as Schleiermacher, but unlike him prefers the low notes, minor chords, and sometimes even dissonances. (Zahrnt 1969, p. 39)

The evocation of Schleiermacher’s Speeches is an ambiguous praise of the assumed religious “virtuosity” of the minor chords and dissonances. Around the time of Der Römerbrief Schleiermacher is left out of the theological “family tree” that Barth claims: “Jeremiah, Paul, Calvin, Luther and Kierkegaard” (Zahrnt 1969, p.  27; cf. 39). The reference to Schleiermacher is a provocation that touches on an underlying continuity that has to do with the problem that an apocalyptic tone presents for Barth’s account of Paul. * * * In the first section, “I.  Hermeneutical/Postmodern Approaches to The Letter to the Romans”, I introduce the hermeneutic approach to the question of the apocalyptic tone in the Romans. In the second section, “II. Der Römerbrief Between Immanuel Kant and Neo-Kantianism”, I offer an account of the neo-Kantian/Kantian orientation of Der Römerbrief. The question of Der Römerbrief in the context of a crisis of modernity is addressed in the concluding section, “III. Krisis and Dialectics in Der Römerbrief”.

2   Hermeneutical/Postmodern Approaches to The Letter to the Romans 2.1   A Panoramic View of Recent Philosophical Interpretations of The Letter to the Romans A virtual conversation between recent hermeneutical approaches to Paul and Der Römerbrief can take as its point of departure the genius of the word “Apocalypse”, as indicated by Paul Ricœur (Ricœur 2021, pp. 256–278). Ricœur elaborates this tone in his reading of three philosophical interpretations of Paul: Jacob Taubes (2004), The Political Theology of Paul; Alain Badiou (2003), Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; and Giorgio Agamben (2005), The Time that Remains. These authors represent the most recent signposts of the

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twentieth-­century reception of Paul and Christianity that Ricœur discusses in the wake of Der Römerbrief and beyond. Ricœur describes his engagement with Paul as an experience of reading: First of all, an old, precocious acquaintance with the Bible—“For a long time I curled up with it early.” [“Longtemps je m’y suis penché depuis de bonne heure.”] Next, the bombshell of Karl Barth’s commentary on the Letter to the Romans, followed by Rudolph Bultmann’s bomb-clearing operation, then my ongoing readings of other exegetes […]. And beyond this, my reading of texts by philosophically trained commentators. (Ricœur 2021, p. 256)

The “philosophically trained” interpretations represent a new beginning within the conversation with Paul that was inaugurated by Der Römerbrief and which transcends the division between atheistic, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish preferences of and references by the three authors and of the current exegetical literature. This polyphonic conversation is possible thanks to “the very genius of the word Apocalypse. With this word we leave behind the pairing of proclamation and argumentation” (Ricœur 2021, p.  278). The word “Apocalypse” leads to a point where the text defeats its readers, an experience of the asymmetry of reading: “It is right that we end up defeated in this unequal combat with the text” (Ricœur 2021, p. 278). In the “tormented” character of Paul’s letters, divided between three discourses, of “the Greek, the Jew, and the Christian” (Ricœur 2021, pp. 257–58), Ricœur is looking for the reasons underlying the transition between and beyond the declarative or kerygmatic and the argumentative or universalizing moments in Paul (Ricœur 2021, p. 256). This transition is what he finds in the “very genius of the word Apocalypse” (Ricœur 2021, p. 277) and identifies as “an apocalyptic tone” in the cardinal sentence of the Epistle, which is the key to the controversy between the Roman Catholic and a Lutheran/Reformed interpretation of the relationship between faith and love. In Romans 1,17, the “righteousness of God” is revealed [apokalyptetai] as the power of God for the “salvation of everyone” (Rom 1,16) from which the “main line of rupture” unfolds which—and here Ricœur follows Günther Bornkamm—is “imposed by both the abrupt and exclusive character of justification by faith alone. All talk about a break follows from this sola fide emphasis” (Ricœur 2021, p. 257).

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Following Alain Badiou’s structural model of four discourses (Badiou 2003, pp. 40–54), Paul’s discourse represents the fourth type, “that comes near to yet remains apart from them” (Ricœur 2021, p. 258). The Pauline discourse that “stands outside every norm, is that of the visionary, the mystic” runs like “a fault line across the vast face of the three discourses”; hence, to “announce is to denounce” (Ricœur 2021, p. 258). Paul announces a “negative universality” of law, sin and death that includes all Jews and Gentiles (ibid., p. 259). The way of the law is nailed to the cross, from which the positive universality of justification by faith unleashes the transvaluation of values in a “fugue of waves” (Taubes 2004, p. 26), beginning with 1:18, the wrath of God “and then 5 and 7 and it ends in the great jubilation in chapter 8” (Ricœur 2021, p.  259). The fugue metaphor evokes a hymnic tonality of counterpoints from the wrath of God to the hymn—“who will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8. 35–37)—which Ricœur extends in his interpretation of Romans 9–11. In the sequence law-work-death in opposition to faith-righteousness-­ life, the law is the “discourse of a ‘form of life’ named ‘works’”. The universal transvaluation, Ricœur notes, is not existential or psychological; it has a quasi-mythic and transethnic character (Ricœur 2021, p. 260) with the implication of dividing the subject in two: flesh and spirit. The subject is flesh (the Law) and spirit (Resurrection) as two supra personal powers at war with each other (Ricœur 2021, p. 261). The transition from proclamation and argumentation to the apocalyptic and hymnic is to be found in the “concrete universal” of the pleroma, “For God has imprisoned all men in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom 11:32; Ricœur 2021, p.  277). The pleroma accomplishes the contrapuntal dialectics of the “all” and the “neither … nor’s”: The two uses of ‘all’, one that condemns and one that reconciles, encompass all the other ‘neither … nor’s’ of Paul’s tormented discourse. The implications are great: what Paul undermines is first of all the elitist representation of an election that excludes the other, but also, I would say, the representation beyond history of a Last Judgment that will draw a line separating the condemned and the fortunate saved. (Ricœur 2021, p. 277)

On this reading, the scope of the text transforms the scenario of a Last Judgment into an all-inclusive jubilation: “The hymn takes over from judgment, in every sense of the word judge: ‘Oh the depth of richness, and

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the wisdom and the knowledge of God! His secrets are unfathomable and his ways incomprehensible’” (Rom 11:33; Ricœur 2021, p. 277). The transition is formulated in the question whether [this] chanted confession of a mystery [has] moved beyond some Christian “discourse”, antagonistic to every other discourse, whether that of the Jew or the Greek? If this is not the non-discourse of the mystic, a discourse constantly near at hand but never invoked or demanded, an impossible, “ineffable” discourse—is it that of eschatology? Perhaps. But of an eschatology that will have replaced the announcement of catastrophe by Revelation, in the fullest sense, following the very genius of the word Apocalypse. With this word, we leave behind the pairing of proclamation and argumentation […]. (Ricœur 2021, pp. 277–278)

The fourth discourse is perceived beyond the onto-theological dialectics of apophatic or kataphatic as an aphatic voice. The term aphatic/aphasia is a key term in the Pyrrhonian school of scepticism that was discovered in the Italian Renaissance and became popular in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation. It denotes a way of speaking without speaking, characterized by a “swinging movement” [Schweben] (Bader 2006, p. 156). In this panoramic exposition of The Letter to the Romans, Paul Ricœur addresses the relationship between the “apocalyptic tone” of Romans 1.16—“it is the power of God to salvation for everyone”—and the following verse—“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed” (Rom 1,17)— and how this constellation is conceived in current Protestant scholarship, in casu Günter Bornkamm’s Paul (Bornkamm 1995; Ricœur 2021, p. 257). Ricœur questions the subordination of the mystic-ontological to the doctrine of justification and the subordination of the apocalyptic “tone” or “force” of the proclamation to its propositional subject matter, the sola fide. According to Günther Bornkamm, “Paul hardly ever uses [ontological concepts] unqualified by his doctrine of justification” (Ricœur 2021, p. 274, quoted in Bornkamm, Paul 1995, p. 152), which is what Ricœur questions: “But is this really so? I do not understand his dogmatic hunger” (Ricœur 2021, p. 274). The reticence towards a mystic-ontological “being in” in Paul is an expression of a general reticence towards an apocalyptic tone. This abstinence may be attributed to a neo-Kantian orientation which prevails with different accentuations from nineteenth-century cultural Protestantism to Der Römerbrief and in dialectical theology in the

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twentieth century. The question is whether this “dogmatic hunger” also applies to Karl Barth’s interpretation of grace when he speaks about a “greedy dialectics of time and eternity” (RII, 530). The apocalyptic in Bornkamm is perceived as the force or power of the proclamation of “justifications by faith alone” (Ricœur 2021, p.  257), which means that what Martin Luther identified as an open question regarding the connexio verborum of “justice” and “God”, here, in Bornkamm, and perhaps also in Der Römerbrief, is an already established formula, a connexio or synthesis or “parallax” of vocabula. This is what theologically is at stake when the centrum paulinum is isolated from the problematic of connexio that Luther discovered in the biblical Psalms, less a doctrine than a mantra to be chanted in songs of praise. 2.2   Connexio Verborum—Martin Luther 1545 A Lutheran response to the tendency to downplay the apocalyptic tone in Lutheran scholarship informed by Der Römerbrief can be found in Martin Luther’s own account of the reformatory understanding of the “justice of God” in Romans 1,16–17. Günter Bader notes that Luther in his 1545 “Praefatio” to his Opera Latina introduces the “outcome” [“Ertrag”] in Paul, only immediately to bring it back to the Book of Psalms, the context where it belongs and where it had been faced as a problem of reading. “Only then does it not stand erratic as it does in the context of Paul, but becomes transparent as an instance of a fuller context” (Bader 2009a, pp. 47–48). As a predication of God, the predicate “iustitia”, Bader notes, belongs to the Book of Psalms, as what Ricœur calls a “fourth discourse” beyond “proclamation and argumentation”. In Romans, “iustitia dei” is translated into the soteriological proclamation which depends on the understanding of a genitive construction, a connexio verborum. According to Luther, all depends on the connexio of the two vocabula “God” and “justice”. The connexio should be understood as the event of attributing, rather than an already established connection, an outcome, to be found and identified. This act or event is performed in the process of reading in which the “face of the text” emerges as the face of grace (Bader 2009a, p. 48). On Luther’s interpretation, the understanding of the Psalms depends on the connexio verborum of “iustitia dei” in Romans 1,16–17 and vice versa: the “erratic block” that this verse

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represents in Romans hinges on the understanding of the Psalms. Only in the transition between and beyond different discourses is the formula “justice of God” disclosed or revealed as a movement in which an already established connexio verborum is suspended and in which the connexio as such emerges as an event or surprise of reading, as what Luther reports in retrospect in the “Praefatio”. The account of the connexio verborum in Bader is a theological approach to the semantic “genius” of the word revelation in Romans as the hermeneutical experience of reading. According to Bader, the question for Luther is not about a particular connexio verborum, but about the connexio as such, the conditions of possibility for connecting any predicate with the name (Bader 2009a, 48). Luther describes the “reformatory insight” as the successful accomplishment of the connexio verborum, which on Bader’s account is the much more fundamental point, rather than the accomplishment of any particular connection in a series of other possible combinations (Bader 2009a, p. 48). The philosophical “parallax” (Zizek 2009, 20–24) to the connexio verborum in Bader’s account is Kant’s understanding of the “synthetic apriori” proposition which justifies the attribution of a predicate to a subject which is not given empirically. Synthetic apriori propositions substantiate Kant’s account of the transcendental deduction of the conditions of possibility for objectivity, which is the essential criterion of scientific propositions. Even more relevant in the context of theology, the structure of Kant’s practical philosophy is construed as a synthetic apriori deduction from the categorical imperative as the condition of freedom. The synthetic movement of Luther’s account of the connexio verborum, the attribution of the predicate to the name, is revealed only in the most literal sense of the word Apocalypse when the Pauline proclamation is read—or chanted and repeated as a mantra. On this reading, the Book of Psalms is the quasitranscendental condition of the possibility of the outcome proclaimed in Romans. Without its Biblical context, “iustitia dei” loses its power of revelation, implied in the word Apocalypse, and is reduced to an empty formula, which more often than not is the case. On this account, the lyrical suspension of an already fixed connexio verborum in the Book of Psalms is an experience of reading in Luther, which supports the uneasiness with the suppression of downplaying of the apocalyptic tone in modern Protestantism that Ricœur articulates. This question is also to be explored in the case of Der Römerbrief in its intellectual neo-­ Kantian context.

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2.3   How to Do Things with the Words of God? On a preliminary formal account, the apocalyptic tone can be perceived as what in the theory of speech acts is known as the “illocutionary force” of an utterance, as, for example, in the binding force of giving one’s word to someone (Austin 1975, pp. 98–99). The power of the biblical word as an utterance of God (Rom 1,16–17) could be perceived as the archetypical illocutionary force. This account offers a preliminary approach which, however, does not exhaust the surplus of meaning in the apocalyptic language. The relationship between the declarative and the illocutionary components of propositions has been elaborated in Jürgen Habermas’s claim about a general “verbalization of the holy” (Habermas 1995, pp. 105, 118–169). In the context of Der Römerbrief, the analytical account of the apocalyptic as the illocutionary force of the Pauline proclamation is a perspective that Barth might have endorsed. Still, the question remains whether the hermeneutic surplus of meaning in “an apocalyptic tone” is drowned out in what Barth construes as the subject matter of The Romans. 2.4   The Debate over the Tone and Criteria of Philosophy The topic of “an apocalyptic tone” belongs to a broader contemporary discussion of the tone, criteria and crisis of modernity, which is a legacy of Immanuel Kant that reverberates in Barth. The quarrel over the appropriate tone of philosophy that was launched by Kant in 1796 against an esoteric neo-Platonic awakening in German philosophy, which Kant called “the death of all philosophy” (Immanuel Kant 2002, “On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy”, 429–445). A noble tone is a discourse that does not justify its claims in an argumentative discourse but simply proclaims or sings like the pre-Socratics. The point is that the norms and standards of Kantian critical philosophy are distinguished from its “Other”: all sorts of esoterism that explores intuition and feeling as alternative sources of knowing that does not need conceptual elaboration or a critical account of reasons. A noble tone indicates a way of doing philosophy based on immediate intuition that does not need the Kantian Copernican revolution or the account of transcendental conditions of possibility. In the Third Critique, the programmatic text of romanticism and post-modernism, Kant himself evokes a “noble” tone beyond transcendental ideas and concepts.

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In more recent controversies over modernity and its Other, the term “apocalyptic” has acquired a specific sense in an essay by Jacques Derrida in which he proposes replacing the terms “noble”, “prominent”, “overlordly” and a range of synonyms in Kant with a way of speaking and doing philosophy that calls forth the term “apocalyptic” (Derrida 1984, pp. 3–37). In this debate, Friedrich Nietzsche towers as the philosopher of the tone of nobility par excellence. In a section of aphorisms on “What is noble?” Nietzsche exposes the distinction of nobility as a signature of justice and the just person. Among these aphorisms, §287 refers to the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” as the paradigm of what Nietzsche perceives as noble, which is the doctrine of his adversary: Paul. Sola fide is a criterion of nobility! The distinction between the Law and the Gospel is what according to Luther distinguishes the good theologian, a distinguished person, from the bad theologian, an un-distinguished person (Bader 2013, p. 136). Accordingly, Nietzsche distinguishes between the aspiration to nobility and the noble soul—one who does not aspire to be recognized as noble by his works and excellence, but who is considered noble = justified without the works of the Law. Faith “determines the order of rank”, the order of the common and the noble values of which justice in Nietzsche and Luther is the supreme term of nobility (§287 Nietzsche, 2016). Justice, nobility and the apocalyptic tone are intertwined in the philosophical demarcation between modernity and its Other. While Kant opposes a noble or enthusiastic tone in philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche praises a noble way of doing philosophy. Nietzsche’s aphoristic style is a counter-discourse to what Kant prescribes as the universal practical and theoretical norm. The philosophical quarrel about the tone of philosophy offers clues to an understanding of the “genius of the word Apocalypse”. The question is how we are to understand the apocalyptic in Paul and how this question is addressed in Der Römerbrief. … and Der Römerbrief

Should theology follow Nietzsche, Ricœur and Derrida and investigate the genius of the apocalyptic that modernity has disqualified in philosophy, or should theology try to adapt its subject matter to a neo-Kantian paradigm of thought, that is to a dialectical, conceptual and discursive account of the subject matter of theology?

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The way Karl Barth addresses the question about an apocalyptic tone in Der Römerbrief parallels the ambiguous way the commentary includes Nietzsche and Kierkegaard as supporters and/or adversaries. The apocalyptic tone in Paul is conceived within a predominantly neo-Kantian orientation. Barth’s Der Römerbrief was conceived through this prism and reflects tensions between modernity and its Other. This is what is indicated by the term “apocalyptic” as the Leitmotif of a tentative reading of Der Römerbrief as a document that addresses the crisis of modernity. Is this book a proclamation of the bankruptcy of modernity, “the death of all philosophy” and the dawning of a time to come—when philosophy has passed away? Or is the book instead the programmatic document of an effort to contain the apocalyptic tone within a Kantian conceptual prism? When considered thusly, Der Römerbrief can be reconstructed as a reformulation of the Kantian verdict over the apocalyptic style and tone in theology, a way of adopting this stance without adopting it. Der Römerbrief, then, is presented as a prolegomena to a quasi-“transcendental deduction” of the subject matter of theology and as a preliminary account of the theological doctrine as synthetic apriori propositions, deducted from the single axiomatic proposition, the “formula ‘God Himself, God alone’” (RII, 424), the “Primal Origin” (RII 28) or similar apodictic statements. The “swinging movement” of the Pauline discourse, then, would be relegated or subordinated to a doctrinal understanding of the proclamation as the subject matter isolated from the apocalyptic discourse. Ricœur’s and a number of recent philosophically informed interpretations of the Letter to the Romans draw attention to the apocalyptic tone in Paul as an independent voice that is not subordinated to either proclamation or argumentation. The apocalyptic tone evokes a transition into the “mystic-­ontological” being in Christ, implied in the lyrical or poetical praise of the pleroma (fulfilment).

3   Der Römerbrief Between Immanuel Kant and Neo-Kantianism 3.1   The “Primal Origin”—The Neo-Kantian Paradigm of Der Römerbrief The neo-Kantian influence on Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief has been excavated and discussed by Johann Friedrich Lohmann (Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianismus in der “Römerbrief”

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und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths 1995, pp.  206–399) and Dietrich Korsch (Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth 1996). These accounts document and corroborate a general claim that the Marburger circle of Neo-Kantians, including Paul Natorp, Hermann Cohen and Heinrich Barth, represented Der Römerbrief’s primary intellectual horizon (van der Kooi and Tolstaya 2010, p. ix). According to Lohmann, the second edition of Der Römerbrief represents the apex of Barth’s creative re-interpretation of neo-Kantian concepts, generating significant distorting consequences primarily in eliminating all historical and human presuppositions from the subject matter (Lohmann 1995, p. 280). In the second edition of Der Römerbrief human subjectivity is replaced by a concept of origin (“Ursprung”) that Barth adopts from Hermann Cohen and Heinrich Barth and which he reformulates as a conceptualization of the Gospel of God: the message of the sovereignty of God as the absolute Other. The concept of origin overcomes any traces of subjectivism in nineteenth-­century Protestantism (Lohmann 1995, pp.  273–280). This approach supports Barth’s effort to establish the objectivity of the Pauline cause (Lohmann 1995, pp. 279–80). According to Dietrich Korsch, the Marburger circle of neo-Kantians was decisive for Karl Barth’s break with his previous “modern”, that is subjectivistic, understanding of religion and theology and for the promotion of a “dialectical” theology in the second edition of Der Römerbrief (Korsch 1996, pp. 66–73). From Cohen Barth adopts a formal Kantian understanding of “dialectics” as a method to account for the universal condition of the possibility of theology without reference to any empirical, historical, cultural or psychological presuppositions. In Cohen Barth finds a formal prismatic frame shaped by the notion of the “function of religion”, which does not in any way imply that he had adopted Cohen’s own philosophy of religion. According to Barth the only origin of religion is its eschatological realization articulated in the proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ and the Kingdom of God. The apocalyptic, then, is the origin, which is the presence of the absolute in the finite. The origin of religion is its realization in the finite (Korsch 1996, p.  71). On this account, the origin [“Ursprung”] in Cohen is the placeholder for transcendence, which in Barth is filled out by Christ: the absolute self-realization of the origin. According to Korsch the application of Cohen’s philosophy explains the

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stylistic oddities of the language, thinking and argumentation of Der Römerbrief. This approach allows Barth to overcome the competition between religion and ethics as well as the competition between theology and other sciences (Korsch 1996, 72). The apocalyptic language is perceived as the exclusive realization of the universal. Indeed, only this language announces “the exclusive competence of the realization of the origin” (Korsch 1996, p. 72; transl. CP). On this account, “dialectical” theology in Barth is launched as an alternative to approaches to Christian religion informed by perspectives represented in theories of modernity as well as in theories of religion (Korsch, 1996, p. 73). Barth’s interpretation of the Gospel of God as the “Word of the Primal Origin of all things” (RII, 28) is the structural equivalent of the philosophical question about the apriori, unconditional or absolute. The question about God as the “origin”, that is as creator [“Ursprung”] (RII, 226), is an indication of an effort to formalize the historical, phenomenological and empirical mediation of the subject matter. God is the origin of the krisis, not the one subjected to it (RII, 82). As the origin, God is the “absolute qualitatively different” being (RII, 113). Barth’s account of the apocalyptic cause, the claim that the origin is the krisis, allows Barth to distance himself from his own earlier “enthusiastic” interpretation of Paul in the first edition (RII, 289). In the second edition, the origin is concentrated exclusively in the figure of the end, in which time and subjectivity are dialectically destroyed. The element of human reality, then, is conceived as the medium of the divine sovereignty. In the section “Theme of the Epistle” (Romans 1.16,17) (RII, pp. 35–42), the “Primal Origin” unfolds the meaning of the claim that the Gospel of the Resurrection “is the power of God” (RII, 35). In a sequence that articulates the “power of God” as the “Krisis of all power” in which power is declared to be “both something—and nothing, and nothing— and something” (RII, 36). The “Primal Origin” is the philosophical name of the transcendent power of God, by which all other powers are at the same time dissolved and established (RII, 36). Time—like power—is a relative human sphere of appearance and experience. Such human spheres do not seem to matter for Barth’s account of the “Primal Origin”, in which eternity consumes temporality, including the temporal qualities of the tone of the revelation that is perceived by the

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senses and emotions and which is chanted in a temporal extension, for instance in biblical praise and lament. The question about tone pertains to the material, temporal and linguistic articulation of the biblical word as the medium of the divine self-­ revelation and of human language as such. Language as the medium of human experience, thinking and understanding is not included in Barth’s interpretation of Paul, which is a consequence that goes far beyond his Kantian and neo-Kantian affiliations. The neo-Kantian concept of “Origin” supersedes any phenomenological or hermeneutical approach to the “dialectics of time and eternity” as the subject matter of the apocalyptic. In Martin Heidegger’s Lectures on The Phenomenology of Religious Life 1921–22 (Heidegger 2010), Paul’s two letters to the Thessalonians are read as the “primordial Christian experience of time”. Temporality is lived in the tension between the first coming of Christ and the expectation of the second coming. The primordial Christian experience of time establishes the notion of the historical: “Factical life experience is historical. Christian religiosity lives temporality as such” (Heidegger 2010, p. 55). Giorgio Agamben in The Time that Remains offers further clues as to what a Pauline understanding of apocalyptic time implies, which Der Römerbrief seems to exclude from the dialectics of time and eternity as the pure “origin”. 3.2   “Mere matter” as the Principle of the Spirit in Kant’s Critique of Judgment On this account, the tone represents more than the illocutionary force of an utterance. The hermeneutic surplus of meaning in Romans 1.16–17 can be associated with Kant’s theory of the spirit as the enlivening principle of the mind, a point that was elaborated in his Third Critique as a question about aesthetics: “‘Spirit’ in an aesthetic sense, signifies the animating principle in the mind” (Kant 2008, p. 142). Poetic arts, rhetoric and other non-verbal forms of art such as music and painting are the language of senses and emotions. The spirit evokes “much thought” that cannot be defined in concepts (ibid. p. 142). On this account, Kant opposes an enthusiastic understanding of spirit, when spirit is separated from matter. The matter of language is language “as the mere thing of the letter” (Kant 2008, p. 145). Only when spirit is communicated in the material, external and temporal medium can it be the enlivening principle of the “cognitive faculties” (ibid.). The spirit works in

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matter in a way that cannot be conceived in a definite concept, but which allows “a concept to be supplemented in thought by much that is indefinable in words and the feeling of which enlivens the cognitive faculties” (ibid.). What, then, would this principle be in Paul, and what justifies the impression that Barth’s account of the “absolute moment”, grace, the theme of theology, as “the greedy dialectics of time and eternity” (RII, p. 530) misses the apocalyptic tone and that, accordingly, Der Römerbrief, despite its impressive rhetorical virtuosity, is “without spirit”, that is without the “matter” of the spirit in the Kantian sense? On another occasion the question about language as the “mere thing of the letter” could be extended in a conversation about the sacraments in Karl Barth. 3.3   The “swinging movement” On this reading Barth’s dialectical account of grace (RII, p. 530) discloses an effort to avoid enthusiasm in which it risks becoming a promoter of an enthusiasm or spiritualism without the enlivening principle of the “mere matter”, that is of a spirit which is not mediated in temporality, externality or materiality. The aesthetics of the tone that Kant pointed out is a blind spot. Der Römerbrief shares this blind spot with its great adversary, Friedrich Schleiermacher, with the era of neo-Protestantism and with the epoch of dialectical theology that Barth’s book invoked. The question to be examined is whether or how the apocalyptic tone in Paul is represented in Der Römerbrief. When Ricœur mentions it, an apocalyptic tone recalls Kant’s Third Critique, which Karl Barth’s Neo-­ Kantianism does not adopt but which was the programmatic text of Early German Romanticism. In the context of Kant’s Third Critique, an apocalyptic tone evokes the figure of irony that Friedrich Schlegel perceived as an ineffable “swinging movement” [Schweben] between the letter and the spirit (Bader 2013, pp. 144, 147). This movement is what German Idealism denounces and— in our time—what Jürgen Habermas excludes from the “philosophical discourse of modernity” and opposes in French post-structural philosophy (Habermas 1987). The “swinging movement” of the Letter to the Romans perceived as a musical fugue, as a movement, does not indicate a certain biblical genre or vision of the world, but rather promotes a subtle transformation of

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apostolic and prophetic discourses. This movement starts from the centre of the Pauline proclamation of “justification by faith alone” (Rom 1.17): the peripeteia of Romans as the revelation. From this it follows that justification by the works of the law is sublated ([katargein] Rom 3.31; Agamben, pp.  95–100). The verb katargein is a speculative figure of thought in which the two opposed movements are held together in an infinite reduplication, which is the speculative suspension of the connexio verborum implied in Luther’s “Praefatio”. The apocalyptic tone, then, belongs to “language as a mere thing of the letter”, that is, the rhetorical and poetical use of language that according to Kant’s Third Critique “evokes much thought” (Kant 2008, p.  142). Kant explicitly talks about the matter of spirit such as the letter, sound and vision of language as poetry and rhetorical art, which the other arts cultivate as the spiritual, or enlivening, element of language that gives rise to a different way of thinking, a way of thinking without either the concept or the idea (Bader 2013, pp. 144–45). These passages in Kant served as the locus classicus for the programme of the so-called transcendental poetry that the early German romanticists launched. Transcendental poetry is characterized by an infinite reduplication of “the saying in the said” (Bader 2013, p. 145) which was associated with the biblical word. The Apostle Paul is the primary source of transcendental poetics. The Pauline praise of the folly of the cross as the wisdom of God introduces paradox and Socratic irony as forms of speaking without saying something (Bader 2013, pp. 149, 153). 3.4   The Double Floor of the Biblical Word While this “swinging movement”, which is what German Romanticism identified as irony or “transcendental poetry”, is completely absent from Schleiermacher’s Speeches “On Religion” (Günter Bader 2013, p. 147), it permeates every syllable of Kierkegaard’s authorship. In Der Römerbrief, this contribution claims, the double floor of the Biblical word is sublated in the direct juxtaposition of dialectics and apocalyptics. On the occasion of Barth’s visit to Copenhagen in 1933, having been invited by two leading Kierkegaard scholars he noted, “I have become acquainted with the Barthians (O. Larsen etc.), but they are fanaticists of irony (just small Kierkegaards!)” (Letter to Charlotte von Kirschbaum 11.3.1933). On a later visit to Denmark to receive the Sonning Prize,

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Barth characterized the influence of Kierkegaard as more important than any other and on an equal footing with that of Plato (Heinz Zahrnt The Question of God 1969, p. 27). Nevertheless, the overall neo-Kantian orientation prevails over the irony of Plato and Kierkegaard. According to Günter Bader the complete absence of romantic irony, Pauline folly, is a blind spot in Schleiermacher’s approach to religion and theology (Bader 2013, p. 147). The question is whether the reformatory pathos of Der Römerbrief as well as its rhetorical bombast suffers from the same blindness or even systematically tries to contain the apocalyptic tone as an insubordinate movement in the dialectics of the subject matter. The terms “paradox” and “krisis” in Der Römerbrief evoke the apocalyptic topic, a state of exception, but in a way which excludes the swinging movement of folly, praise and irony as the genius of the biblical word that Bader elaborates as a romantic heritage in “postmodern” approaches to Paul (Bader 2013, pp. 152–53). As has been established above, a conversation with Barth regarding an apocalyptic tone in Paul will have to address the neo-Kantian/Kantian orientation of Der Römerbrief which Barth, according to Heinz Zahrnt, shares with German cultural Protestantism, from Schleiermacher to Adolph von Harnack. The Catholic thinker Hans Urs von Balthasar even claims that “Schleiermacher was for Barth what Plato was for the thinkers of the Renaissance” (Zahrnt 1969, p. 39). The question in Barth’s commentary about the “tone” of the pronouncement that the origin is the end is omitted in a universalizing dialectical gesture. This tendency represents a certain interpretation of the Kantian legacy that bypasses an alternative early romantic interpretation of Kant in Schlegel and Novalis. On this interpretation, irony is perceived as the spirit of “transcendental poetry”, the literary parallel to “transcendental philosophy”. Irony is defined as an infinite reduplication of the “saying in the said”, of speaking without speaking, which has one of its clues in the biblical word. Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric is a paradigmatic exposition of the “elasticity of irony” in Socrates, Abraham and the New Testament as a “spiritual world force”, not just a rhetorical play (Kierkegaard 2003, pp. 135–141). Kierkegaard regrets that this spirit of the Bible has been completely neglected. Romantic irony is not what Barth adopts from the Kantian legacy or from Kierkegaard.

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3.5   The Prophetic and Lyrical “I” in Herman Cohen as a Biblical Prism for the Apocalyptic Tone in Der Römerbrief In Barth the apocalyptic is construed dialectically—without the lyrical, the infinite double floor of irony, that is mediated in the literary structure of biblical poetry, where Luther found the key to answering the question about the connexio verborum in Romans 1.16–17. In Der Römerbrief, the lyrical/apocalyptic tone is squeezed between the universalizing prophetic and the apostolic discourses, while the lyrical voices of praise and lament are rather marginalized if represented at all. Herman Cohen’s 1914 contribution to the theology of the psalms, Lyrik der Psalmen, includes a theory of the “lyrical individuality” in distinction from the “prophetic I” which has been expanded in Günter Bader (Bader 2009b, pp. 351–354). The “lyrical I” is not a part of what Barth claims to be the Cohenian paradigm for his interpretation of the Romans. In the effort to overcome individualism and subjectivity, Barth promotes the “prophetic I”, rather than the “poetic I” of the psalms, as the paradigm of Der Römerbrief: In prophetism, “the individual […] remains an alienated subjectivity: in its sin, the individual becomes the object of itself”. The prophetic individual is not yet an I. “Only in the poetic lyrical can it become a living subjectivity, this makes it understandable that the Psalm speaks in the form of the I.” The rhetorics of prophetism mandatorily teaches that its individuality has to and must emerge: “but the psalm produces the individual […]”. It produces it lyrically: “only so the individual can become an I” […]. That a living I develops is due to the lyrical. And like no lyric without the psalms, then also no I without the I of the psalms. (Bader 2009b, p. 353, translated by C.P.)

The question about the tone remains. According to Dietrich Korsch, Barth’s commentary equalizes the apocalyptic and the dialectic as the quasi-objective universal condition of pronouncing the universal and, as a way of avoiding all non-universal particular, religious and cultural idioms of the individual, which includes the non-verbal language of the senses and the emotions in Kant’s Third Critique. The non-verbal languages of the “lyrical I” undermine or destabilize the universal ethical and dialectical proclamation and argumentation that qualify the prophetic as well as the apostolic subjectivity. The insubordinate lyrical voices include forms of infinite reduplication such as irony, wit and sublimity that the early German Romanticists praised in the symbolic structure of the biblical word, while

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Schleiermacher regretted this as “dead religion”, the religion of the “dead letter”, to be overcome by the spirit of a living religion that was yet to come (Bader 2013, pp. 134–136). The generation of the German Storm and Stress movement, Hamann and Herder in particular, had excavated the figure of the infinite as the infinite poetic reduplication of which the biblical Psalms—and William Shakespeare’s dramas—were the locus classicus. Unfortunately, this was not the impulse from the Kantian legacy that prevailed in the pietistic cultural Protestantism of the nineteenth century, and neither is it what associates Barth with Kant or the Marburg circle of Neo-Kantianism. The few references to Kant in Der Römerbrief almost all support an ethical universalism in Paul—a prophetic understanding of the law against Kierkegaard’s “dialectical-lyrical” interpretation of the faith of Abraham as a “teleological suspension of the ethical” (RII, p. 468). The underlying neo-Kantian paradigm of Barth’s approach implies a certain reticence regarding any prophetic or apostolic tone in theology, which includes the concept of nobility [vornehm] in Kant and Nietzsche. The imminence and apodictic character of the apostolic and prophetic proclamation suspends the diversity of biblical discourses, not least the poetic discourses as the mediation between the apostolic and the prophetic in the New Testament passion narratives, which are rewritings of apocalyptic psalms such as Psalm 22. In this context, the question about “an apocalyptic tone” is conceived as a fault line that traverses Der Römerbrief. What Ricœur points out as the genius of the word Apocalypse in Paul tends to be neglected in Barth, when the apocalyptic in Der Römerbrief is conceived dialectically as “the absolute moment” (RII, p. 530). Dialectic is not hermeneutics, but a more direct conceptualization of the figural and emotional representations of the end of the world and the Kingdom of God. Barth qualifies this effort as an existential conceptualization (RII, p.  424). Such an existential conceptualization is a legacy of Søren Kierkegaard in an effort to transform Kant’s philosophy from an attempt to answer an epistemological question to an attempt to answer a question about the universal, quasi-transcendental conditional possibility of existence in Heidegger, Bultmann and others. Barth evokes the general turn from an epistemological neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant to an existential analysis. Yet this existentialization of the Kantian categories in Barth is construed within the presupposition of revelation, which is not the case in Kierkegaard or Bultmann. Only the claim of the unobservable “origin”

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can justify our ethical thinking. The existential and ethical concepts can be deduced only from this presupposition, while any other understanding of ethics is unjustified (RII, p. 426). The existential conceptualization of the apocalyptic in Der Römerbrief articulates a Kantian verdict over any noble tone in philosophy and theology, even when Barth emphasizes, paradoxically, that Paul is the “prophet and apostle of the Kingdom of God” (RII, 1), which is the apocalyptic topic par excellence, but divested from the “lyrical I” of the Psalms. Barth’s ambiguous adoption of the paradox in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling offers a parallel to his dialectical foreclosing of the lyrical tone in Paul. The ethical demand of universality does not tolerate the withdrawal of anything from public communication; it does not tolerate a “teleological suspension of the ethical”, which is what the Kierkegaardian paradox implies. Barth denounces this in Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s faith as a merely private matter, exclusively concerning the singular individual. “Here Kierkegaard needs to be corrected from time to time by reference to Kant” (RII, p. 468).

4   Krisis and Dialectics in Der Römerbrief Through an examination of the author’s self-interpretation in the “Prefaces” and throughout Der Römerbrief, I set out in this section to support the claims that have been stated previously and to answer the question: how or to what extent can Der Römerbrief be seen as an intervention in or response to a general crisis of modernity and in particular to a crisis of theology? The Greek term krisis which traverses Der Römerbrief evokes an apocalyptical discourse of time and eternity. Dialectics is defined as the “‘inner dialectic’ of the matter” (RII, p. 10) that a genuine understanding extracts as a “necessary and prime requirement”, which is the recognition of the “infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity: “God is in heaven, and thou art on earth” (RII, p. 10). This distinction is the theme of the Bible, as “philosophers name the krisis of human perception—the Prime Cause: the Bible beholds at the same cross-roads—the figure of Jesus Christ” (RII, p. 10). The krisis of human perception, then, is the philosophical equivalent of the Christian figure of Jesus Christ, which is the “cardinal question” that determines Barth’s understanding of the method and aim of his commentary:

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Intelligent comment means that I am driven on till I stand with nothing before me but the enigma of the matter; till the document seems hardly to exist as a document; till I have almost forgotten that I am not its author; till I know the author so well that I allow him to speak in my name and am even able to speak in his name myself. (RII, p. 8)

The permanent krisis of the relationship between time and eternity establishes a state of exception in which the distance between Paul and Barth is suspended to the benefit of a more genuine apprehension than what Barth finds in current historical critical exegesis. A genuine understanding requires the “creative energy” of Calvin and Luther (RII, p. 7). “The matter contained in the text cannot be released save by a creative straining of the sinews, by a relentless, elastic application of the ‘dialectical’ method” (RII, p. 8). Barth’s response to his critics corroborates the impression that Der Römerbrief did not solve the methodological and systematic challenges that it evoked. Despite the immediate sensation and canonization, the centennial of Der Römerbrief should respect the declared status of the book as a “preliminary investigation” (RII, p. 2), as an occasion for a critical examination of methodological presuppositions. The programmatic statement, quoted above, in which it is said that he, Karl Barth, pretends to know the author so well that he allows himself to speak in his name, “and am even able to speak in his name myself” (RII, p.  8), reveals an impatient, proprietary approach that presents a serious obstacle to the declared purpose of speaking and thinking with Paul (RII, p. 17). An author of a commentary is not expected to replace the original author or document or to present his commentary under the title of the original document, Der Römerbrief: The Romans or Der Römerbrief I. Even as a literary gesture of exaggeration or as a joke, this boldness reveals a methodological and systematic limitation. In the quoted sequence, Barth claims to represent the Spirit of Jesus, and in no way is simply retracting the first edition of his book. Barth’s claim could be a version of Calvin’s understanding of Scripture and the role of a commentary. According to Jennifer Rust, Calvin presupposes an immaterial inner text in the chosen ones as the precondition for the reading of the printed book. The alignment of the inner text with the external written text is the task of the commentary: the “‘inward experience’ becomes a commentary on the printed gospels” (ibid.). Without this inner commentary, the letter of the Bible is “the dead and deadly letter of

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the law” (Rust 2003, p. 265). Calvin’s understanding of Scripture was an effort to stabilize the infinite dialectic of the letter and spirit, the law and gospel, in Luther’s understanding of Scripture. Luther underlines the priority of the external letter, res et verba externa, including the materiality of the sacraments (Rust 2003, p. 264). In the reformed tradition, the hermeneutical question is eliminated with reference to a privileged knowledge of the subject matter of the Gospel, that the few chosen ones have engrafted in their souls. Barth does not adopt this theory directly, yet indirectly this may be an underlying presupposition and major difference between a Barthian and a Lutheran approach. The omniscient authors, Paul, Barth and the Spirit of Christ, eliminate the distinction between the author and the text, inasmuch as the document should disappear in a genuine apprehension of the subject matter. The programmatic displacement of the author, the commentator and the document so that only the cardinal question, the subject matter, will appear is the criterion of Barth’s interpretation and what he understands as the “dialectics of the matter”. The “dialectics of the matter” in Barth’s Der Römerbrief does not succeed in eliminating the author or the commentator as would be required of a “genuine apprehension”. On the contrary, it struggles with the return of the repressed, the author that Karl Barth later recognizes as a problem in “Barthianism” (Schildmann 2006, p. 17). 4.1   The Apocalyptic Tone of Der Römerbrief Der Römerbrief conveys the apocalyptic energy of Paul’s writings, but still somehow the tone and the movement of The Romans are truncated by the greedy dialectical approach. Nevertheless, certain passages succeed in articulating the apocalyptic motif in a temporal three-dimensional sequence, including snapshots of Paul, the author. In chapters 15 and 16 Paul conveys his plans for a journey to Spain and sends personal greetings to a list of named persons, opening a window to a world of social relations. In these trivial and circumstantial passages, Barth observes a “significant strangeness” (RII, p.  533), indicating that Paul’s relation to “existing Christian practices is extremely uneasy. Even the most venerable traditions have for him no essential stability” (RII, p. 533). Paul had become alienated from the other apostles in Jerusalem, the stronghold of the Jewish-Christian community. When Paul is collecting money for the “poor” in Jerusalem, it is far from innocent. From a Jewish

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perspective, a reception of “unclean” money, Jacob Taubes explains, would imply a recognition of Paul’s legitimacy (Taubes 2004, pp. 17–21). The Letter to the Romans is all about Paul’s relationship to Jerusalem and the relationship of the Gentile communities to the faith of Abraham. Paul’s strangeness, discomfort and “terrible loneliness” (RII, p. 534) reveal a tension between the intimacy of personal fellowship and the apocalyptic as a new unfamiliar form of life on the edge of the world. Barth draws attention to this alienation in the closing paragraphs, where Paul announces his plan to visit Rome. Paul adds his greetings to a list of individuals (Rm XVI, 1–16; RII, pp.  535–536) with the expression of “longing” to see them soon and conveys a “circuitous” plan for a journey to Spain that he hopes will include visits to Rome (Rm XV 22–29). On these paragraphs, Barth comments: The second project of the man who perceives that he has no place any more this side of Italy, is a sortie into Spain, a demonstration to the end of the world. In the course of carrying out this project, which is really more apocalyptic than rational, the author hopes to meet his readers personally, both on his outward and on his return journey. (RII, p. 534)

Paul’s account of his travels conveys the overall theological, political and geographical context for the intertwinement of the apocalyptic and the mundane. Everything here revolves around the relationship to Jerusalem. The Letter to the Romans could as well be called the Letter to Jerusalem. The significance of this relationship is indicated in the motto, the Letter to the Galathians I,17, Barth chose for the Preface to the second edition (RII, p. 2), which refers to a passage in the book: “He did not consult with flesh and blood—and this is quite fundamental—he did not go up to Jerusalem: he went away to Arabia” (RII, p. 533). 4.2   Ethical Interpretation of the Apocalyptic krisis The word krisis in the Biblical and New Testament understanding is one of the most frequently appearing in Der Römerbrief. Krisis is used in a range of systematic, exegetical, theological and philosophical contexts, but almost never in the way that the book has been framed in its reception, that is in the context of a particular European, Western or global political, aesthetic, cultural, scientific or moral crisis.

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This does not mean that the subject matter of Der Römerbrief is completely withdrawn from the particular crisis/krisis of modernity. The section called “The Great Disturbance”, Romans Chapter xii–xv (RII, pp. 424–526), offers a clue to an existential and ethical understanding of krisis. The ethical exhortation “I beseech you, therefore …” (Romans XII,1–2) indicates that all concepts are “existential concepts” (RII, p. 424). The conceptual abstraction is justified theologically in the “formula ‘God Himself, God alone’” (RII, p. 424), which excludes a metaphysical or transcendental foundation. On this account, ethics presupposes an “unsearchable, divine relationship”, which paradoxically confirms the “actual tension and movement of human life” and generates the “existential concepts and formulations” in “contrast with everything human and everything of this world” (RII, p. 425). The conceptual abstraction is not a de-contextualization from the context, the concrete world, from which these concepts emerge, and with which we are familiar from reading “secular literature—and especially newspapers!” (RII, p. 425). Nothing is irrelevant when it comes to thinking about life and penetrating its hidden corners, “however trivial or disgusting” (ibid.). Thinking about life is “thinking about God”, and hence thinking must “share in the tension of human life, in its criss-cross lines, and in its kaleidoscopic movements” (RII, p. 425). The krisis of ethics is eschatological, conditioned “by the mercies of God”, which is “the wholesome disturbance and interruption which God in Christ prepares, in order that he may call men home to the peace of his Kingdom” (RII, p.  426). Ethics presupposes grace (RII, p.  428). Everything depends on the will of God: “Pure ethics requires—and here we are in complete agreement with Kant—that there should be no mixing of heaven and earth in the sphere of morals” (RII, p. 432). On this reading, the sublimity of the moral apriori in Kant is confirmed in the perspective of hope (RII, p. 468). 4.3   The Krisis of Theology Der Römerbrief reaches its apex in the commentary on Paul’s phrase “But I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort” (Romans 15,16; RII, pp. 528–531), which is expanded into a theological programme:

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Side by side with the normal bourgeois […] human possibilities of life—no, not side by side with them, but in serio-comical fashion […] there exists the abnormal, irregular, revolutionary […] possibility of venturing, half seriously, half jocularly, upon an advance upon the absolute. The Epistle to the Romans is such an advance. It is theology, a conversation about God, undertaken with penetrating understanding of the One in all. (RII, p. 530)

The “theme of theology is grace, the absolute ‘Moment’, the greedy dialectic of time and eternity” (RII, p. 530). Grace as the theme of theology touches this world without touching it (RII, p. 30). The Resurrection surpasses the show, as Hamlet says about what goes on inside of his “inky cloak”: “I have that within, that passes show” (Hamlet 1.act sc. 2, l. 85). Nevertheless this also must “pass show”: “Abnormal irregular, revolutionary, the Epistle to the Romans is the catastrophe of catastrophes, the predicament of predicaments” (RII, p.  530). Paul is a priest unto “the Gentiles”, which includes everybody: “the concrete visible historical particular man”. The Gentiles are to be sanctified and offered to God, to be redeemed from their chains in the freedom of God. Moreover, theology “owes its existence […] only to this essential final, necessary, venture and its abnormal, irregular, revolutionary attack” (RII, p. 531). The “service of the Church” is not a primary purpose of theology, but neither is it its cultural or historical role. Only an “unconditional respect for the peculiarity of its own chosen theme” can qualify theology as a science in the “universitas litterarum”. The particular reality of theology is “men in their final distress and hope, men as they stand in the presence of God” (RII, p. 531) Insofar as this standard is not found by theology or the Church, Barth recommends that they should declare themselves bankrupt, and unless they “have the courage not to go into liquidation” it should at least be required that theology and the Church avoid “too great, too self-­conscious, too triumphant triviality” (ibid.). The Epistle to the Romans encourages the Church and theology to communicate and think about God and man “in some sort more bold” (RII, p. 531). The theological krisis is not a crisis of a particular time, but the krisis of all times from the perspective of eternity. Barth assumes that Paul is speaking exclusively about “the permanent krisis of the relation between time and eternity” (RII, pp. 10–11). Everything is to be understood under the “krisis of the spirit of Christ” (RII, p. 17).

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5   Conclusion: The Subject Matter and the Mere Matter of the Letter As an intellectual event, Karl Barth’s Römerbrief took part in a general transformation of German cultural Protestantism after World War I. It is commonly acknowledged that it invoked a crisis and re-orientation of Protestant theology (Zahrnt 1969, pp. 21–23). Contrary to what could be expected from its reception at the time, the context of Der Römerbrief is not the detonations of cannons, grenades and bombs in the World War interpreted as apocalyptic signs. On the contrary, the political-historical context of 1922 is underplayed in an effort to make the Pauline letter speak directly into a “transcendental” crater, a gulf or void that the divine word itself excavates without any previous external relation to history, nature or culture: “The importance of an apostle is negative rather than positive. In him a void becomes visible” (RII, p. 33), and: “Only when grace is recognized as incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and by exposing it, bridges it” (RII, p. 31). The systematic question that has been explored in this contribution is whether Der Römerbrief is construed as a transcendental exercise undertaken to dissociate Pauline and Christian discourse from “an apocalyptic tone”, whether the dialectical extraction of the “subject matter” of the Letter to the Romans has dazzled what Kant identifies as the “mere matter” of the letter, which is what an apocalyptic tone evokes. With Immanuel Kant, Paul Ricœur and Günter Bader, we have asked whether the “mere matter” of the biblical word and the “thing of the letter” have been justified in Barth’s commentary on the Letter to the Romans, or whether this is a blind spot in neo-Protestantism that Der Römerbrief and the awakening of dialectical theology reproduce. At least Der Römerbrief became something like a prolegomena to dialectical theology in the twentieth century. Whether this includes Barth’s opus magnum Church Dogmatics is debatable. Karl Barth’s later writings are often thought to constitute a withdrawal from if not of Der Römerbrief as well as a withdrawal from the neo-Kantian and other philosophical influences. The implications of the complete authorship of Karl Barth for his understanding of the Pauline discourse are beyond the scope of this contribution.

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Notes 1. In the following, the German title Der Römerbrief and the abbreviation “RII” refer to the English translation: Karl Barth (1968) The Epistle to the Romans (translated by E.C.  Hoskyns), Oxford University Press London, (Oxford New  York). The titles Letter to the Romans and Epistle to the Romans or Romans are used widely for the New Testament document, while Barth’s commentary is denoted as Der Römerbrief to avoid confusion. 2. The German transliteration of the Greek terms krinein and krisis (RII, 8) is marked in small capitals in the English translation to indicate a technical understanding in distinction from the current term “crisis” (RII, XV). 3. For stylistic reasons, the articles an and the will be used interchangeably even if in the chapter I always refer to “an apocalyptic tone” in the indefinite sense.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. The Time that Remains. A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Austin, J.L. 1975. How To Do Things With Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bader, Günter. 2006. Die Emergenz des Namens. Amnesie. Aphasie. Theologie. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2009a. Asymmetrien des Lesens ausgehend von Luthers Katekismen. In Denkraum Katechismus. Festgabe für Oswald Bayer zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Johannes von Lüpke und Edgar Thaidigsmann, 35–53. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2009b. Psalterspiel. Skizze einer Theologie des Psalters. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2013. Spirit and Letter-Letter and Spirit in Schleiermacher’s Speeches ‘On Religion’. In The Spirit and the Letter. A Tradition and a Reversal, ed. Paul S. Fiddes and Günter Bader, 131–153. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Barth, Karl. 1968. The Epistle to the Romans (Trans. E.C. Hoskyns). Oxford University Press London, Oxford New York (referred to in text as RII). Badiou, Alain. 2003. Saint Paul. The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bornkamm, Günther. 1995. Paul. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1984. Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy. Oxford Literary Review Vol. 6, No. 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/43973661#metadata_info_tab_contents] 3-37 Habermas, Jürgen. 1995. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns II. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge Polity Press.

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Heidegger, Martin. 2010. The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Joyce, James. 2000. Ulysses. London: Penguin Books. Kant, Immanuel. 2008. Critique of Judgement. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy. Theoretical Philosophy After 1781. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 429-445. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/theoretical-­philosophy-­ after-­1781/52778296D8CEC04A5A251C940834A37C. Lohmann, Johann Friedrich. 1995. Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianismus in der “Römerbrief” und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths. Berlin New York: de Gruyter. Kiberd, Declan. 2009. Ulysses and Us. the Art of Everyday Living. London: Faber and Faber. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2003. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin classics. Korsch, Dietrich. 1996. Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2016. “Chapter IX (“What is Noble?”). Beyond Good and Evil https://freeditorial.com/en/books/beyond-­good-­and-­evil/ related-­books Ricœur, Paul. 2021. Paul the Apostle: Proclamation and Argumentation. In Paul and the Philosophers, ed. Ward Blanton and Hent de Vries, 256–278. New York, USA: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.151 5/9780823292325-­014. Rust, Jennifer. 2003. Wittenberg and Melancholic Allegory: The Reformation and Its Discontents in Hamlet. In Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, ed. D. Taylor and D. Beauregard. New York: Fordham University Press. Schildmann, Wolfgang. 2006. Karl Barths Träume. Zur verborgenen Psychodynamik seines Werkes. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Taubes, Jacob. 2004. The Political Theology of Paul. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cornelis van der Kooi, and Katya Tolstaya. 2010. “Vorwort”, Der Römerbrief (zweite Fassung. 1922. Herausgegeben von Cornelis van der Kooi und Katya Tolstaya. Theologischer Verlag Zürich Tübingen., IX-LI. Zahrnt, Heinz. 1969. The Question of God. Protestant Theology in the Twentieth Century. Trans. R. A. Wilson. London: William Collins Sons & co. Zizek, Slavoj. 2009. The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

CHAPTER 8

Revisiting the Crisis Theology of Karl Barth in Light of Søren Kierkegaard in a New Time of Crisis Anne Louise Nielsen

1   Introduction “I consider him [Kierkegaard] to be a teacher into whose school every theologian must go once. Woe to him who has missed it! So long as he does not remain in or return to it!” (Barth 1965, p. 7). This is what Barth declared in his speech upon receiving the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen in April 1963. He himself indeed “went to Kierkegaard’s school” in Der Römerbrief 1 (1922), and in the following years dismissed him, as one was supposed to do. On the other hand Barth, in his Copenhagen speech, came close in retrospect to describe Søren Kierkegaard as a haunting ghost who throughout the years had constantly reminded Barth to fight for the truth. Or perhaps Barth simply felt obliged to pay Kierkegaard some respect in his own country? Regardless of the reason, it is a fact that the Roman commentaries and Barth’s so-called crisis theology would not be the same without Kierkegaard.2 A. L. Nielsen (*) Department of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_8

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More broadly, Barth’s interpretation of Kierkegaard is a central part of the so-called Kierkegaard renaissance which began before the First World War and had an impact on philosophy, literature, and theology, thus stimulating a wide range of intellectual responses such as existentialism, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being, a Catholic neo-Thomism, and, not least, dialectical theology through Barth, Bultmann, Brunner, Gogarten, and Tillich. It was the time of the Weimar Republic—a time of crisis and reorientation which in many ways resembles our own time, a hundred years later. The contemporary crisis concerns first and foremost the modern capitalist system of economics and technological power through its influence on society and the natural environment (Joas 2020). This tendency towards expansion, as well as a parallel tendency towards acceleration (Hartmut 2015), has created the conditions that have generated a “crisis”. The 2008/2009 crisis in the financial sector, the 2015 immigration crisis, and the 2022 crisis in Ukraine together reveal that large-scale social crises, which although evolving in multiple subsystems of modern, global societies, follow each other in rapid succession and evolve through mutual influence (Mattern 2020). Furthermore, a representational crisis in postmodern art and culture finds expression, for instance, in the rise of new realist ontologies (e.g. Markus Gabriel, Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux), New Materialism, and various network theories (e.g. Bruno Latour, Karen Barad), as well as new universalist narratives (e.g. Axel Honneth, Hartmut Rosa).3 Against this similarity between two ages, the Weimar Republic and the present time, this chapter explores Barth’s use of Kierkegaard in Romans II and Barth’s and Kierkegaard’s potential as “crisis theologians” in relation to our present time of crisis. In what follows, I examine Barth’s encounter with Søren Kierkegaard’s thought and explore how Kierkegaard is presented in Romans II. In particular, I analyse Barth’s relationship with Kierkegaard by concentrating on three Kierkegaardian concepts in Barth’s text, namely “paradox”, the “infinite qualitative distinction”, and a triple understanding of faith as a miracle, beginning, and creation. The two first concepts are fundamental in Kierkegaard’s thinking, which makes it interesting to follow how they are transformed in Romans II. In relation to Barth’s understanding of faith, the traditional reception of Barth’s programmatic dialectics as lacking a phenomenological anchorage except as a dogmatic construction is challenged. According to contemporaneous readings of Barth, God is a phenomenon only insofar as he manifests in Jesus Christ, which however is evident only against the horizon of The Holy Spirit and so leaves no way of identifying

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the presence of God in faith or of faith in history (Dalferth 2010, pp.  228–29). After accounting for these Kierkegaardian traces, I discuss Barth’s overall image of Kierkegaard and draw an interim conclusion. In the following, the idea of Barth and Kierkegaard as crisis theologians is developed, for Kierkegaard’s part especially through his pseudonym AntiClimacus, who uses the notion of crisis systematically in his anthropology. I also develop a view of Barth’s and Kierkegaard’s approaches to crisis as complements, based respectively on epistemic and diagnostic perspectives. I then relate these two “crisis tools”, the epistemic and the diagnostic aspects, to a contemporary perception of crisis, and, finally, conclude the chapter.

2   Barth’s Encounter with Kierkegaard 2.1   Who Is Søren Kierkegaard in Romans II? Romans II, in contrast to Romans I, is characterized by the metaphorical language of catastrophe as well as a so-called crisis figure, which expresses the absolute distinction between God and human beings, including a strong critique of religion.4 This absolute distinction (diastasis) is expressed in a very explicit and programmatic dialectic of irreconcilable contradictions, inspired by the Pauline contradictions of spirit versus flesh, law versus faith, and so on. Although Barth actually aims at repairing the relationship between God and human beings, it is the negative description of God’s absence which stands out in his work. In this crisis theology, Barth adapts a number of characteristic Kierkegaardian expressions such as “paradox”, “moment”, “offence”, “decision”, “the single individual”, and others. Moreover, in his preface, Barth mentions the four dimensions which have helped him shape his Romans II, namely (1) the continued work with Paul; (2) Overbeck’s influence; (3) new knowledge of Plato and Kant through Barth’s brother, the philosopher Heinrich Barth, as well as exegetical inspiration from Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, brought through Barth’s best friend Eduard Thurneysen; and (4) the fruitful self-critique originating from Barth’s Romans I. In addition to the fact that Barth lists Kierkegaard third among his influences, it should be noted that Barth sees him, together with Dostoevsky, as one of the poets of the morrow, one with biblical flair.5 Romans II contains approximately 35 direct references to Kierkegaard by name, in quotations or sets of arguments inspired by Kierkegaard, yet often citing the philosopher’s work from a secondary source. In addition to the direct references, there are several indirect references to well-known

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Kierkegaardian thoughts or notions, and at several points Barth, in gratitude, places Kierkegaard among prominent theological figures such as Abraham, Jeremiah, Socrates, Grünewald, Luther, and Dostoevsky (Barth 1933, p. 117), who have all born witness to the crisis. Through German translations by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schremp, Barth had already accessed selected works of Kierkegaard in 1909, and nearly all of them by 1914 (Gouwens 2019, p. 552). While working on Romans II, Barth enthusiastically reported to Thurneysen that, being originally unimpressed by Øieblikket (The Moment) in 1909, he had by then returned to Kierkegaard enthusiastically and was reading selections from his journals in Dommerens Bog (Book of the Judge) as well as Philosophiske Smuler (Philosophical Fragments) from 1844 and Indøvelse i Christendom (Practice in Christianity) from 1850 (ibid.).6 2.2   Barth’s Use of Three Kierkegaardian Key Concepts  he Notion of “Paradox” T Barth uses the notion of paradox on multiple levels in Romans II.  He opens his exegesis with a reflection on Paul’s paradoxical identity: “His call to apostleship is not a familiar episode in his own personal history: ‘The call to be an apostle is a paradoxical occurrence, lying always beyond his personal self-identity’ (Kierkegaard)” (Barth 1933, p.  27). Thus, being entirely “himself”, Paul is equally close to every ordinary human being while at the same time surprisingly called by God to be an apostle, standing in contradiction to himself. Although Barth quotes Kierkegaard directly in this passage, from the 1872 work The Book on Adler,7 he does not mention the exact reference. The notion of paradox, in the previous example used only as a logical denominator, ultimately leads back to Christology. Barth writes: “He [Christ] can be comprehended only as Paradox (Kierkegaard), as Victor (Blumhardt), as Primeval History (Overbeck)” (Barth 1933, p. 29). The idea of Christ as a paradox leads directly to the Kierkegaardian pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, who in a playful thought experiment in “The Fragments” accounts for Christ as “the absolute paradox”. His idea is that Christ bridges the distance between God and human beings even as he breaks it open: “Thus the paradox becomes even more terrible, or the same paradox has the duplexity, by bringing into prominence the absolute difference of sin and, positively, by wanting to annul this absolute difference in the absolute equality” (Kierkegaard 1985, p. 47).

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Barth comes very close to this position, although there is a crucial difference. Whereas Climacus connects the paradox mainly with God’s incarnation and the figure of the servant (viz. “the God-in-time”), Barth expresses the paradox as the Resurrection in which God is revealed in Christ, as the “new world”. The historical Jesus, on the other hand, is the breaking point between the two worlds, between time and eternity, yet with no contact between them (Barth 1933, 29)—an expression of the cognitive aspect of the radical finitude of man. In other words, Barth radicalizes Climacus’s “thought experiment” as, only in the Resurrection, Barth notes, is it possible “to count with the paradox” (ibid., p. 30). He stresses moreover that the person who is not mature enough to comprehend this godly paradox will be offended, whereas the person who develops a respect of the divine contradiction, the “incognito”, will believe (ibid., p.  39).8 Thus, in a direct line from Kierkegaard, Barth wants to settle accounts with his age’s firm conviction in its understanding of God, and he turns the offence of Christ into the mark of true religion. Whereas Kierkegaard is fighting against “Christendom”, Barth directs himself against liberal theology and scientific descriptions of faith. If the liberal theologian par excellence, Schleiermacher, understands religion as “a holy music, which accompanies all human action”, Barth instead confirms the religion of Job, Luther, and Kierkegaard, who all knew that the reality of religion lies in struggle and offence (ibid., p. 258). With the expression “the fruitful paradox of our existence” (ibid., p. 43), Barth hints at how it is possible to exist within a paradox. Through the Pauline description of the wrath of God, Barth underscores as a fact the judgement of the human being (expressed as sin, death, injustice, waiting, etc.). To come to see it in another light (as life, justice, liberation, hope, meaning, etc.) is however a matter of faith. This resembles especially Kierkegaard’s Johannes de Silentio, who in Fear and Trembling from 1849 refers to Abraham’s “paradox of faith” (Kierkegaard 1983, p. 55). Thus, both Kierkegaard and Barth defend, against never-ending dialectics, the paradox as a consistent condition of living for the single individual (Abraham was therefore justified in attempting to sacrifice his own son) as well as a true recognition of the radical finitude of human reality and its hope for “Resurrection”. Whereas de Silentio directs himself specifically against Hegelian dialectics, Barth turns against the common tendency to provide insufficient answers to questions inspired by the human being (rather than being open to God’s radical answer). He describes this accordingly:

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and we have concluded wrongly. Such a false conclusion would merely mean that we had been caught up in a reaction and had given expression to a ‘resentment’. We should simply have moved in some contrary direction, which itself requires to be dissolved, to be submitted to dialectical criticism, and to be brought back to a final unity. (Barth 1933, p. 116)

Thus, the question (of faith) inspired by the human being calls only for a reaction/contrast equally inspired by the human being, namely as a dissolution of the question, which enables a new question in need of a new dissolution in a non-ending suspension. This longing for a “final unity” would produce what Barth calls a false paradox, namely two ways being forced together in a unity, in likeness to Gnosticism, in which the negation remains side by side with the position it negates (ibid., 115). In this way, the question of faith elicits only a partial answer. In contrast, Barth expresses the unity of the (true) paradox as the law in faith, as Moses in Christ, as the infinite worth of the individual (with reference to Kierkegaard), dissolved and saved in God and as the last question which faith rather than the human being proposes, answering all questions. In this way, Barth’s programmatic dialectics of irreconcilable (Pauline) contradictions—such as law & faith, flesh & spirit, and judgement & grace— are spelled out as the (true) paradox of faith, approximating Kierkegaard’s use of the paradox.  he Notion of the “Infinite Qualitative Distinction” T Barth turns himself in particular against the strong connection between religion and the politics of his age, expressed as cultural Protestantism, which deflates “the infinite qualitative distinction” between eternity and time. This notion derives from Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, who accounts for this key distinction in several works, such as in Sickness unto Death from 1849: “God and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference. Humanly speaking, any teaching that disregards this difference is demented—divinely understood, it is blasphemy” (Kierkegaard 1980, p. 126). Barth turns this notion into the basis of his Romans II: If I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: ‘God is in heaven, and thou art on earth’. The relation between such a man and

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such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy. Philosophers name this KRISIS of human perception—the Prime Cause: The Bible beholds at the same cross-roads—the figure of Jesus Christ. (Barth 1933, p. 10)

This is a very rich statement which can be interpreted on multiple levels. On the one hand, Barth, in close alliance with Kierkegaard, who passionately denied all idealist systems, ironically claims that he has a “system”. On the other hand, the statement can be heard as an expression of Barth’s aim to develop a (Kierkegaardian) system. Moreover, Barth refers to the notion of “origin” (the Prime Cause). According to Dirk-Martin Grube, Barth was inspired not only by Kierkegaard but also by his own brother, the philosopher Heinrich Barth, who, in search of a pure negation and vital break with naturalistic thinking as well as in the overall situation of crisis in his age, advocated a “dialectics of origin”. The origin is thus, according to Heinrich Barth, the ground of the negation of all positions. Equivalently, expressed in theological language, the totaliter aliter God is, for Karl Barth, the negation of all religious positions (Grube 2013, p. 131). That is, none of our names for, experiences of, or feelings regarding God is identical with God himself. Of course, the true relationship which the infinite qualitative distinction represents goes through Christ. But Barth even claims that to have faith in Christ is to know the “loveless” love of God (!), since only through Christ is God called by his proper name, namely in his hiddenness.9 Barth moreover expresses the “infinite qualitative distinction” between religion and faith in God. Barth regards religion as an expression of the law running up against its own limit, as humanity seeks to fulfil the law but in the “weakness of flesh”10 ends up in self-justice. That is, in religion, the great crisis of humanity breaks out, since the religion expresses the utmost human death sentence rather than overcoming it in Christ: As a concrete human being and having and doing, religion is—flesh … and is in fact the crown and perfection of human achievement. Religion neither overcomes human worldliness nor transfigures it; not even the religion of Primitive Christianity or of Isaiah or of the Reformers can rid itself of this limitation. … There proceeds, for example, from Zwingli an insipid bourgeoisdom, from Kierkegaard the poison of a too intense pietism, from Dostoevsky an hysterical world-fatigue, from the Blumhardts, father and son, a far too easy complacency. … Flesh is flesh. … Because of the qualita-

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tive distinction between God and man, the history of religion, Church History is weak—utterly weak. (Barth 1933, p. 276)

Thus, Barth warns against the “highest religious misunderstanding”, which makes us ignore the strict acknowledgement of Christ in favour of all sorts of approximations such as self-security, piety, perceptions, and so on. This even includes the history of religion and the history of the Church, not to mention the “history of salvation”. Here, Barth is closely aligned with Kierkegaard, who writes in his journal: “Here, indeed, is a dangerous point, for of course the highest culmination of true religiosity can also come within a hair’s breadth of looking like presumptuousness” (Kierkegaard [1848] 2011, p. 108). Yet, highly interestingly, Barth at the same time anticipates his later dismissal of Kierkegaard, namely as a result of his “poisonous over-pietism”. Finally, Barth connects the infinite qualitative distinction with the Church: “But the life of the Church depends upon its recollection of the qualitative distinction between God and men, and this is preserved in the law of the Church” (Barth 1933, p. 365). Thus, the Church is properly to understand itself in light of the qualitative distinction, most notably on the human side. In contrast, the famous Kierkegaard, upon accusing the Church for being inauthentic, sentimental, and power-hungry, found himself in a regular “Church Battle” in 1855—in other words, for dismissing the infinite qualitative distinction and exercising the highest religious misunderstanding. Even though Barth is fighting the same fight for truth, he turns against Kierkegaard: But we must be aware of running to the opposite misunderstanding. If religion is nebulous and lacking in security, so also is everything which is exalted to oppose religion. Anti-religious negation has no advantage over the affirmations of religion. To destroy temples is not better than to build them. The silence of devotion is not superior to the words of the preacher. Amaziah AND Amos, Martensen AND Kierkegaard. (Barth 1933, p. 136)

Thus, Kierkegaard is one of the destroyers of the temple, in dialectical opposition to the temple builder of his time, the bishop of Copenhagen, H. L. Martensen. Yet Barth, from the higher standpoint of God’s grace, dismisses both positions in light of religious history. The Church, according to Barth, is in need, as it fails in achieving its proper self-understanding and escapes into “piety care” (ibid., p.  365). This, however, does not

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justify pure (Kierkegaardian) individualism over the Church, because only from the Church is the forgiveness of the World to be granted. Barth asserts: It must be borne in mind, however, that “Church” and “World” are to be understood, not as historical, but as dialectical, factors. As by means of an iron bracket are Church and World held together through the infinite qualitative distinction, which there means the rejection of a human being, here its election, which, however, makes a splitting of human beings in the two respective groups as such impossible. (Barth 1940, p. 425, my translation)

That is, Church (Israel) and World (pagans) are held together when relativized by the infinite qualitative distinction between God and the human being. Israel and pagans are in the World together and, moreover, the “pagan apostle” Paul was sent to both the pagan world and the “pagans” among the Jews to include (again) both in the Church, and thus to forgive the World.  arth’s Triple Understanding of the Concept of Faith B The concept of faith has already been touched upon but I now examine, more systematically in relation to Kierkegaard, Barth’s triple understanding of faith as respectively a miracle, a beginning, and a creation. These are all open metaphors, going hand in hand with Barth’s “negative” metaphors of faith as a sheer cavity or lack as well as with his dismissal of faith as a standpoint. Through these positive metaphors, however, Barth comes to qualify the phenomenon of faith and existence, especially by accentuating the law in faith and its way of bearing witness. This pushes Barth in the direction of Kierkegaard and challenges the rather one-sided reception of Barth in the literature as having no phenomenological potential as a result of his programmatic dialectics. In contrast, Kierkegaard research, especially during the last 30–40 years, has produced a richly phenomenological approach to interpretation (see Grøn 1997; Taylor 1980; Welz 2008; Nielsen 2006). First, regarding “faith as a miracle”, Barth seems to follow Kierkegaard closely. In “The Fragments”, Climacus, in search of a name for the “organ of becoming” (Kierkegaard 1985, p. 111) which can actually see the miracle, finally arrives at the concept of faith. However, Barth, directing his response implicitly against Climacus, spurns any naturalistic description or possession of an “organ” of faith and asserts:

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God encounters the soul as ‘either-or’; and this involves acceptance or rejection. … We, however, are capable only of rejecting. … We are incompetent to see what is invisible and to comprehend what is incomprehensible. We have no sensible organ wherewith to perceive the miracle. Human experience and human perception end where God begins. (Barth 1933, p. 120)

According to Barth, human beings can grasp only the rejection, and God alone determinates the “shape” of faith—thus it appears as a “miracle”. Yet, at the same time, as mentioned earlier (see Sect. 2.2.1), Barth warns against falling into a dualism of Gnosticism, in which the Resurrection is seen as an “abnormal event”, side by side with other events, thus putting the law, the creation, and the dead corpse which is to rise again out of power. Therefore, Barth, with Paul, enables the law, the Bible, and religion to speak veritably, thus permitting them to bear witness (ibid., 116): This great, positive affirmation [the manifestation of righteousness by the blood of Jesus] … must be understood as the model which points to the life of Christ [abbildende Zeugnis des Lebens des Christus] and directs attention to the pre-eminence and purity and earnestness of the ‘Moment’. … The miracle of faith is always the same miracle. (Barth 1933, p. 124)

Barth here transfigures the phenomenon of faith from a sheer cavity into a “model” which points to the life of Christ and thus as a descriptive witness or signpost. This way of “living out the contradiction” or bearing witness comes close to Kierkegaard’s descriptions of various existential stages—aesthetic, ethical, and religious—situating religious existence in the starkest contradiction.11 Second, regarding it as a new beginning, Barth accentuates faith as “the truth” of religion, free of all historical-psychological realities. Again, the Pauline image of Abraham is central, because God here makes a new beginning with the pagan Abraham rather than with the circumcised Abraham. In this light, Barth claims that faith, as God’s call to all human beings, is the timely and objective presupposition (thus, a new beginning) for the contradiction signified by circumcised/uncircumcised, religious/ non-religious, churchly/non-churchly. In other words, faith is neither purely holy nor purely profane but always both together. This intensifies the existential question how a person can orient herself in this ambiguity at all and testify, again bearing in mind that the highest religious possibility

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may also manifest in the highest religious misunderstanding (Widmann 2000, p. 145). Third, Barth defines faith as the power of creation, particularly in reference to the promise given to Abraham’s tribe as “heirs of the world”. Again, the law is confirmed, namely in its capacity to testify, rather than in any power conferred by it: “Every visible status, every temporal road, every pragmatic approach to faith, is, in the end, the negation of faith” (Barth 1933, p. 134). Barth here, in a Lutheran-Kierkegaardian line, indicates that certainty in the law finds no ground in pragmatics, but rather, as Kierkegaard puts it, can in “objective uncertainty [be at a depth of] 70.000 fathoms of water and still [have] faith” (Kierkegaard 1992, p. 204). That is, according to Barth, faith establishes certainty when it is an advance into what is invisible and eternal, when it is itself invisible. He finally comes to define grace, namely as an invisible relationship in which all things stand (Barth 1933, p.  135). This definition of course addresses his persistent attempt (with Climacus) to dismiss faith as a standpoint, as the ability to stand (in faith) comes from God alone, and every temptation to define faith in terms of experience should be rejected. Abraham is Abraham according to grace, and the children of Abraham are brought into being by faith alone, thus rejecting all sectarianism in “Abraham’s tribe”. In this way, Barth, in line with Kierkegaard, insists on the singularity of faith and qualifies it phenomenologically through the positive metaphors of miracle, beginning, and creation. 2.3   An Eclectic Use of Kierkegaard or Respecting Him as a Personality? Thus far I have demonstrated how Barth weaves Kierkegaardian figures, thoughts, and expressions into Romans II, and now it is time to discuss in brief the overall image of Kierkegaard that Barth produced. In his 1963 Copenhagen speech, as already mentioned, Barth situated Kierkegaard somewhere between an indispensable mentor who must however be dismissed and a haunting ghost that is impossible to dismiss. What led Barth, who in The Roman commentaries was in an agreement with Kierkegaard, finally to dismiss him? Barth later notes that he had overlooked problematic characteristics in Kierkegaard’s historical persona (Barth 1965, p. 5). According to Kimlyn Bender, it is even fair to say that Barth increasingly came to consider Kierkegaard as part of the problem of the nineteenth-century heritage

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against which he was himself reacting (Bender 2015, p. 296). This concerns Kierkegaard’s pietist and subjectivist traits, the idea of the “single individual” and a private Christianity, standing outside the Church and the people. Moreover, Barth regards Kierkegaard’s talk of inwardness as a form of natural theology, thus perceiving him as turning sin into the point of connection between God and human beings. If, however, Kierkegaard is brought properly into his own context, it seems clear that he wanted to act as a corrective to Hegelian “outwardness” and so felt a “need” to accentuate inwardness and individuality.12 Barth, in line with Kierkegaard,13 wanted to act as a corrective in his age, and he used Kierkegaard eclectically in the development of his own theology. Or, in other words, he entered Kierkegaard’s school and came out of it again. Yet, the discrepancy between lining Kierkegaard up with Jeremiah, Socrates, Luther, and others in the Roman commentaries and the harsh dismissal of Kierkegaard just a few years later is remarkable, and Barth overall came to downgrade Kierkegaard as a theologian of the nineteenth century.14 On the other hand, one might claim that Barth, in opposition to contemporary colleagues such as R. Bultmann and E. Brunner, who were systematically attentive/faithful to Kierkegaard’s existential thinking, took Kierkegaard’s mantra “think for yourself!” seriously. If this reading is accepted, Barth instead came to draw a living picture of the personality Kierkegaard, not least by pointing out how Kierkegaard fell victim to specific interpretations and false ways of systematizing his thoughts.15 Whereas Bultmann turned him into an existentialist (as later taken up by Sartre and Camus), E. Hirsch turned him into a Nazi (Widmann 2020). In this way, Barth’s way of using Kierkegaard became a symptom of Barth’s dynamic way of thinking. Or, in other words, Kierkegaard did become an indispensable mentor and haunting ghost in Barth’s texts, as Barth retrospectively seems to suggest in 1963. Which one of the two readings is truer is impossible to determine, as both stand in their own right. 2.4   Interim Conclusion Barth adapts the key Kierkegaardian concept of paradox to shape his overall crisis figure of diastasis between God and human beings. Barth is inspired by Climacus’s playful, no-standpoint thought experiment of “God-in-time”, yet he more radically dismisses it in favour of an “eschatological moment”, connected to the paradox of the Resurrection, by which

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Barth stresses the non-availability of faith. Therefore, in Romans II Barth also adopts Anti-Climacus’s notion of an infinite qualitative distinction and turns it into his “system”. Moreover, Barth, in line with Kierkegaard, criticizes religion as the most extreme possible misunderstanding and as a false self-understanding on the part of the Church. Yet this should not, according to Barth, encourage “destruction of the temple”, as Kierkegaard did in his so-called Church Battle in 1855. Moreover, it has been confirmed that Bart uses negative descriptions of faith, such as cavity, lack, reference, possibility, and so on, yet he also qualifies faith as a descriptive witness, as an ambivalent existence and as an invisible certainty—respectively, as a miracle, a beginning, and a creation. In this way, Barth moves closer to the new phenomenological study of Kierkegaard, underscoring questions of singularity as well as “positive” phenomena such as grace and certainty. Finally, Barth can be said to be using Kierkegaard in an eclectic way and contributing to dismissing Kierkegaard overall in German theology. On the other hand, Barth became aware of a specific way of interpreting Kierkegaard, and thus respected him as a thinking personality while rejecting mere “repetition”.

3   Perceiving Crisis in Light of Barth and Kierkegaard We have seen how Barth adopts several foundational concepts from Kierkegaard and how this casts Barth’s own theology in a new light. It is now time to consider Barth and Kierkegaard as two complementary options for apprehending crisis based in, respectively, epistemic and diagnostic perspectives, and in relation to a new time of crisis. The new societal form of the fundamental crisis of how to relate to God and to other human beings is hereby explored. Moreover, the discussion provides an alternative framing of crisis as a contrast to a harmonious, normal condition. 3.1   Two Crisis Theologians The notion of crisis converges at multiple levels in Barth’s crisis theology, as has also been pointed out by Michael Beintker. First, it taps into the immediate historical context of the end of the First World War as the greatest social, economic, and political crisis in modernity. In Romans II, “Liberalism” is thus characterized as a propensity to act only as a spectator and to dwell in infinite possibilities, contributing to the collapse of the

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various (godless) life systems. Second, the notion of crisis plays into Kant’s “critiques” of reason, in which crisis is anchored in the modern history of reason and the discovery of its self-limitations. And, third, crisis theology concerns, as shown above, a theological reflection of crisis manifested as God’s court and grace through Christ, who completes the crisis (Beintker 2013, p. 25). As such, crisis theology also constitutes a meta-critique of all dominating political and conceptual-historical formations of Barth’s own time and modernity in general. Finally, Barth questions the entire foundation of scientific theology by showing that the theologian, like the preacher, can only search critically for a language in which to speak of God. Although Barth did adopt the anti-liberal semantics of his age, as in favouring authority over individualism and community over society, he rather aimed at a critical-dialectical notion of individual freedom which has its transcendent basis in the freedom of God (Pfleiderer 2016, p. 60–61). To Kierkegaard as a nineteenth-century free thinker, crisis is “the suspension of a decision”, that is, crisis is the transition in which individual freedom is born. Kierkegaard, in contrast to Barth,16 can be said to agree with liberalism insofar as he sketches an infinite number of life possibilities through his use of various figures and pseudonyms and multiple experiments with literary genres. For both Kierkegaard and Barth, however, a crisis is rooted most deeply in the religious sphere as a theological problem. If Barth in Romans II fleshes out the entire world as in permanent crisis, Kierkegaard equivalently holds the subject to be in permanent crisis. In particular, his pseudonym Anti-Climacus diagnostically fleshes out various “shapes of despair”17 through the analogy of an ill person who meets the culmination or final judgement (krisis) of her illness. Anti-Climacus explains: This means and has its basis in the fact that the condition of man, regarded as spirit (and if there is to be any question of despair, man must be regarded as defined by spirit), is always critical. Moreover, a crisis is related to sickness but not to health. Why not? Because physical health is an immediate qualification that first becomes dialectical in the condition of sickness, in which the question of crisis arises. Spiritually, or when man is regarded as spirit, both health and sickness are critical; there is no immediate health of spirit. (Kierkegaard 1980, p. 25)

Anti-Climacus here resists any immediate determination of a crisis (such as having lost one’s car or becoming ill with a virus) in favour of a permanent

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spiritual crisis. The subject must thus “die away from immediacy”, that is, recognize herself as standing in a relationship to God. To be a Christian, as Kierkegaard formulates it, is to be in a permanent crisis in which one bears the burden of “the eternal” on her shoulders: “Xt [Christ], as the absolute, explodes all the relativity in which we humans live—in order to make us spirit. But to become spirit one must go through crisis of a kind that humanly speaking makes us as unhappy as possible” (Kierkegaard 2015, p. 51). Whereas Barth rejects theology on the basis of one’s own experience, Kierkegaard, in contrast, willingly shares his own experience of life in crises (key word: Regine Olsen). Consider instance, a private letter of comfort— dated “during the crisis of 45” (!)—to his brother, Peter Kierkegaard, who around 1845 as a pastor in Sorø (Denmark) refused to baptize children by force and risked being removed from service. Kierkegaard ends his letter thusly: “As you see, I write promptly, for however indolent I usually am, my failing does not lie in withdrawal or desertion when there is danger, for then my devotion is spurred on and will only increase with the danger” (Kierkegaard 1978, p.  179). Kierkegaard thus stresses that he disagrees with his brother on this matter, yet he—like Anti-Climacus—diagnostically leaves open the (fruitful) situation of crisis, as he asserts “my life is in the crisis”. In other words, Kierkegaard’s crisis theology is deeply rooted in his own experience of standing in an open-ended decision or judgement. 3.2   Crisis as an Epistemic Tool Most sciences adhere to a positivist view of crisis, as for instance in 1936 the economist John Keynes defined an economic crisis as a consequence of suddenly declining marginal efficiency of capital (Keynes 1936). A recent example of a universal crisis is the recent COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with criteria such as unemployment, economic contraction, social distancing, closed borders, and so on. The problem with such a criteria-­ based notion of crisis is that it conceptualizes a crisis as something which “hits us from outside”, which presupposes a harmonious, normal condition that is in fact a delusion (Hay 1999, p. 323). But a crisis is perhaps not even visible or palpable (Mattern 2020, p. 9). The historian Reinhart Koselleck noted in 1988 that a crisis is a moment of objective contradiction but subjective intervention (Koselleck 1988, p. 103–104). This view has today been reintroduced for instance by Colin Hay (Hay 1999, p. 323), although positivist views of crisis remain dominant.

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Barth, in line with Kierkegaard, makes us realize that we—as sinful, mortal human beings—are “born” in crisis, although we cover this up with all kinds of protections and excuses. Thus, Barth and Kierkegaard work hermeneutically in the sense that they discover that the crisis was always there. This is precisely our possibility of reorientation. COVID-19 provides a “secular” analogy to this concept of crisis, where the world was suddenly revealed to many people in its finitude, relativity, and negativity. At the same time, however, an interesting reorienting to community, gratitude, freedom, and appreciation of nature, among other things, has taken place. This “double-sided reality” or, as the popular mantra has it, “good always follow bad” is of course not Barth’s deeply reflected model of court and grace. He allows himself in Romans II to use theological concepts (for instance court, prophecy, and Resurrection) in all their power, thus projecting the epic drama between God and man, yet at the same time accompanying it all with a strong self-critique. On the other hand, Barth’s model of and radical theological reflection on the notion of crisis have alienated a large faction of theologians, insofar as he turns the everyday meaning of crisis into a theological “absolute” concerning the relationship between God and human beings, abstracted from the historical-concrete situation (Pfleiderer 1992, p. 4). Furthermore, if we consider that Barth later wrote that Romans II was only a phase he was going through, his radicality is brought into question. That is, Barth— through radical theological reflection on the notion of crisis—eventually downplays the analytical potential of the notion of crisis, leaving no criteria for determining what a crisis actually is. In this light, Romans II seems reduced to a piece of expressionistic literature around the time of the First World War. However, it is worth paying deeper attention to the rich store of (new) metaphors in Romans II.  According to the political scientist Ove Kaj Pedersen, who posits three phases over the course of a crisis, the “phase of metaphors” accounts for the invention of explanatory pictures and narratives (Pedersen 2020).18 Moreover, through pictures and narratives, ideological pairs of contradictions or conflicts are proposed. This can, for example, be found in Romans II, as in “authority versus individualism” and “solidarity versus spectator”, bearing in mind at the same time that Barth wanted to fight all ideology. Following Pedersen, this stance opens debate not only to political but also to theological, philosophical, and moral questions—and encourages continuous dialogue between their representatives.

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To concretize this approach, Barth’s notion of crisis could heuristically be drawn up in a model comprising “layers”, in which each layer indicates a specific reflection of the actual crisis. In the deepest layer, a theological reflection of the crisis—as the “naked” human being in God’s eyes, when all her own solutions fail, would be found—and, moving higher, we find layers of religion, economics, culture, the Church, politics, and so on. Importantly, these layers blend with each other, thus reflecting Barth’s dialectical method and indicating a specific account of how the fundamental (theological) crisis plays out in the present historical context. This model addresses deeper concerns regarding how a disputed topic in a concrete crisis can be reflected in light of the fundamental contradiction between faith and law, which Barth centres in Romans II. Consider, for example, forced vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic, a policy instituted by Austria and discussed by the World Health Organization, as a measure to prevent excess mortality (WHO 2021). What would a Barthian perspective on this case look like? Should human beings control (God’s) nature? Barth accepts that the human being has always attempted to control nature, yet it must reside within the dialectics of grace and law without assimilating grace into human nature.19 In an evolving global crisis, Barth would stress that both poles of the dialectic must be operationally present; grace can be granted only by God, instead of being appropriated by humans, and it can exist only when the law is fundamentally respected.20 These observations would drive a radical open discussion of forced vaccinations in which, however, no public institution could exceed concerns with law or pardon itself in relation to its final decision. 3.3   Crisis as a Diagnostic Tool In contrast to Barth, Kierkegaard seems to hold a more common understanding of crisis, open to a phenomenological approach, as he uses it as a diagnostic tool. Already in the preface, Anti-Climacus calls attention to his work’s odd course of strict development, straddling science and “upbuilding” literature. The Kierkegaard scholar Arne Grøn ascribes this approach to a diagnostic method of “dialectical phenomenology”. It is diagnostic in the sense that Anti-Climacus, by way of an external (and normative) measuring stick, namely the determination of spirit as faith, diagnoses various “shapes” of illness. This diagnosis is however dialectical in the sense that the shapes as subjects themselves express the measuring stick, albeit unwittingly. Set in relation to crisis, a human being does not (always) recognize

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the reorienting possibility of her own despair. Anti-Climacus formulates it this way: “Just as a balloonist ascends by throwing off weights, so the person in despair sinks by more and more determinedly throwing off all the good (for the weight of the good is elevating); he sinks, privately thinking, of course, that he is ascending” (Kierkegaard 1980, p. 110). Anti-Climacus, in this way, describes the phenomenon of crisis with superior accuracy, and his notion of crisis could be analytically developed to specify and compare various evolving crises over time. In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, the diagnostic crisis tool would serve the capacity to traverse various “illness” shapes which this pandemic creates/reveals, such as an immediate despair (confounding an insignificant crisis with the actual crisis), an acting despair (the desire to steer oneself out of the crisis), a suffering despair (the desire to be freed from the crisis in a determinate way), or a demonic despair (the desire not to be freed from the crisis). This tool could include an analysis of the actual socio-political environment in which a psychological character is moulded, and this aspect indeed lies also in Kierkegaard’s authorship.21 Moreover, the linguistic aspect of crisis again proves important. Whereas the notion of “despair” rules the first part of the book, in the second part Anti-Climacus opens by declaring: “[D]espair is sin”. Sin is an age-old theological term, while “despair” is a modern psychological term which enables Anti-Climacus to address the theological question more trenchantly. Thus, only by renewing the basic theological metaphors can the crisis and its actual shapes be discovered, or so he seems to suggest. In this way, Anti-Climacus also builds his diagnostic tool linguistically. For instance, he resorts to the language of fictive narratives and fairytales (ibid., p. 127)22 when he refers to shapes which are indifferent to the measuring stick, that is, to the usual terminology (cf. again the importance of a phase of metaphors according to Pedersen).

4  Conclusion The aim of this chapter was twofold. Firstly, it examined Roman II’s encounter with Kierkegaard—considering what Barth adopted and what he rejected, the overall picture he drew of Kierkegaard, and how both aspects worked to support a new phenomenological reading of Barth. Second, the chapter also explores the common relevance of Barth and Kierkegaard as crisis theologians, related to a contemporary perception of crisis.

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Crucial is here Barth’s adaption of at least three key Kierkegaardian concepts to express his overall crisis figure of the diastasis between God and human beings. First, Barth draws on Johannes Climacus’s view of Christ as an “absolute paradox”, yet radicalizes Climacus’s “God-in-time” into an eschatological moment as manifested by the Resurrection. Both thinkers, however, accentuate the paradox as a consistent condition of living in opposition to an idealistic theology. Thus, Paul’s irreconcilable contradictions of law and faith are in Romans II held together over and above the (Gnostic) “false paradox” of law and faith being forced together in the “true paradox”, as law in faith. In other words, judgement as a fact and indifferent towards faith is raised to salvation. To Barth, this suggests a general way of recognition which critically addresses man’s tendency to bite its own tale in search of answers and new questions rather than hearing God’s answer. Second, Barth inherits the notion of “the infinite qualitative distinction” from Anti-Climacus, by which he structures his Romans II and specifies the non-perceptual, non-dialectical, yet vital position of God (totaliter aliter). Moreover, Barth asserts the infinite qualitative distinction between faith and religion. He echoes Kierkegaard in positing that religion is the greatest possible misunderstanding while simultaneously stigmatizing him as a historical temple destroyer. In contrast to Kierkegaard, Barth thereby confirms the institution of the Church, which represents the only platform from where the World can be forgiven, as the Church refers itself back to the infinite qualitative distinction between itself and God. Third, Barth’s understanding of faith, according to the traditional non-­ phenomenological reception of Barth, emphasizes faith in negative terms such as “cavity”, “lack”, and “reference”, in contrast to the new richly phenomenological reception of Kierkegaard, emphasizing the ambivalent existence that was challenged in this chapter. Three new understandings are suggested: first, Barth refers to faith as a “descriptive witness”; second, he characterizes faith as transcending the binary contradictions of circumcised/uncircumcised, religious/non-religious, and churchly/non-­ churchly, thus presenting faith as an ambivalent form of religious existence; and third, he reveals faith as an invisible certainty in the relationship in which all things stand (grace) in sharp contrast to the non-standpoint approach to faith in the overall work (in line with Climacus)—thus, the understanding of faith as miracle, beginning, and creation. In this way, Barth reformulates Kierkegaard’s descriptions of a “religious existence”, rooted in the singularity of faith.

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Finally, I have shown how Barth in Romans II anticipates to some extent his later very harsh critique of Kierkegaard, where he condemns the subjective and pietist traits as well as the dismissal of the Church. On the other hand, Barth, precisely through his eclectic use of Kierkegaard, which went hand in hand with Barth’s growing awareness of an unfruitful tradition of systematizing Kierkegaard’s thoughts into existentialism, can be said to acknowledge Kierkegaard’s dual role as an indispensable mentor and a haunting ghost. Secondly, this chapter explored Barth’s and Kierkegaard’s theologies as two complementary approaches to crisis, namely from an epistemic and a diagnostic perspective, respectively. Whereas Barth’s so-called crisis theology of court and grace taps into multiple levels of the crisis of his era, Kierkegaard postulates no explicit “crisis theology”. To both Barth and Kierkegaard, however, the human being is in a permanent (theological) crisis, although Kierkegaard can be said to embrace, in opposition to Barth’s critique of liberal theology, the nineteenth-century liberal era of urban prosperity and new ways of living and thinking. Regarding Barth’s epistemic crisis tool, Romans II can on the one hand be said to draw a sharp picture of “the absolute crisis” and on the other hand to posit ideological pairs of contradictions through its rich new metaphors, moreover encouraging a new, cross-disciplinary dialogue. Heuristically, this is illustrated by a “layer model”, in which the fundamental crisis expresses itself in actual historical context as it blends aspects of various layers such as politics, economics, the Church, and religion. This model concentrates on an evolving crisis and its related problematic topics, for instance the case of forced vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it resides within the Barthian dialectics of grace and law where human beings do no assimilate grace. Regarding Anti-Climacus’s diagnostical crisis tool, it was shown how he reveals various “crisis shapes” (subjects) through an external, normative measuring stick (spirit), which nevertheless turns out to be shaped by the subjects themselves. This sophisticated “dialectical phenomenology”, straddling science and upbuilding literature, carries the potential for specifying and comparing various evolving crises over time, such as the shifting shapes of “illness” in a pandemic. This focuses our attention moreover on the linguistic aspect involved in finding resources in new metaphors as well as in fictive language in an effort to discover the phenomenological shapes of crisis. In contrast to Barth, Kierkegaard seems to move on the microscale

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level of the individual subject, but his analysis is also open to the actual socio-political environment. Barth’s and Kierkegaard’s approaches complement each other in a beneficial way. Barth accentuates the generic circumstance of a crisis which draws on the theological perception of the fundamental dialectics of law and faith to identify and understand the general elements of crisis manifestations. This provides hope by understanding crisis as a normal condition realized in myriad manifestations. Barth is thus indispensable by contributing a theological perspective to an encompassing account of crisis. The other element of crisis is found in Kierkegaard, who also stresses the universality of crisis, but as a human condition, and comes to emphasize the particularity of the crisis in exploring its specific shapes. This provides an understanding of how elements of crisis are unique and not subsumed by a general dialectic but are still able to be put in relation to an overall theoretical model of crisis which draws on Barth as well. Together, Barth’s and Kierkegaard’s approaches inform an encompassing theory of crisis which offers an alternative to the prevailing positivist view of crisis by opening a new theological reflection on the current societal way of perceiving crises and reorienting ourselves.

Notes 1. The original German title of Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans II (hereafter “Romans II”). 2. According to G. Pfleiderer, Barth’s (and other dialectical theologians’) radical consciousness of innovation is a radical consciousness of crisis (see 1992, p. 5). 3. Postmodern art and culture can—very roughly!—be defined as the rejection of absolute meaning or fixed identity, for instance as developed by Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard. 4. Bruce McCormack argues that in the progression from Romans I and Romans II Barth changes his model of eschatology, namely from a process eschatology in light of God’s revelation, which risks conceiving of God as an object of recognition, into a radical, futuristic, “consistent” eschatology in Romans II which confirms God’s relational subjectivity, sovereignty, and eternity (McCormack 2006, p. 190). 5. Barth thus in his speech in Copenhagen 1963 observes: “In the second phase of the revolution, in which we then were, he became and was for us

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one of the cocks whose crowing seemed to proclaim for near and far the dawn of a really new day” (Barth 1965, p. 5). 6. Hereafter “The Fragments”. 7. Cf. “The apostolic calling is a paradoxical fact that in the first and the last moment of his life stands paradoxically outside his personal identity as the specific person he is” (Kierkegaard 2009, p. 95). 8. Barth, likely inspired by Kierkegaard’s (Climacus’s) talk of a “decision of faith”, emphasizes that the subjective formations of faith are merely unimportant signs of the occurrence of faith (p. 39). 9. In the Heidelberg Theses from 1518, Martin Luther posits the view of a living God who suffered on a cross, and in On the Bondage of the Will from 1525, Luther depicts a God of hidden majesty. Thus, Barth here refers to Luther’s differentiation between deus revelatus and deus absconditus. 10. Paul effectively mobilizes the contrast between spirit and flesh, in which flesh (Greek: sarx) is the negative description of the human life in the bond of sin and thus in death (see Romans 5:12–14, 7:18–23, Gal: 5.19–21). Seen as flesh, the human being is hostile to God and thus sentenced to perdition (see Romans 5:10, 7:5.7–13). We find in Matthew 26.41 as well talk of the willing spirit and the “weak flesh”. 11. Whereas the aesthete experiences the contradiction as coming from outside herself (something prevents her immediacy), the ethicist sets up in herself a contradiction between her own ethical striving and the world. Finally, the religious individual knows the paradox (and impossibility) of wanting to express the absolute in the finite most deeply, and yet lives it out (Kierkegaard 1992). 12. Fear and Trembling (1843), for example, expresses how the singular (inwardness) is prioritized over the general (outwardness), in which the general refers to “the ethical” in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1820), which in §140 cites the individual as the highest ethical instance. 13. Barth accounted for his inspiration in his Copenhagen speech in 1965: “His [Kierkegaard’s] teaching is, as he himself once said, ‘a pinch of spice’ for the food, not the food itself, which it is the task of right theology to offer to the church and thus to men” (Barth 1965, p.7). 14. Barth for instance does not include Kierkegaard in his great account of theologians of the nineteenth century, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert from 1947. 15. In his Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/1, p. 844, Barth hints at a special way of interpreting Kierkegaard, Luther, the older and younger pietism, the theology of W. Herrmann and also with the theological existentialism of his (Barth’s) age (Bultmann). Barth in this specific passage focuses critically on Luther’s expression “pro me”, which has been (wrongly) turned into a

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systematic principle rather than manifesting Jesus Christ (p. 845). In the same way, Barth was aware of the tendency to systematize Kierkegaard. 16. According to Georg Pfleiderer, Barth’s “prime cause theology” (as reinstalling God in the centre of theology) is not a Novum but rather an Antiquum, which is signalled by the fact that Barth’s programmatic writing of his new theology is an exegesis of the classical prime cause document of Protestant theology (see Pfleiderer 1992, 3). 17. Kierkegaard notes in his papers that the shapes of despair are actually real human beings, although they are now and then abstracted so as to examine them better (cf. Papirer VIII2 B151–52). 18. Pedersen’s three phases in the course of a crisis are the “phase of metaphors”, the “phase of conflict”, and the “phase of consolidation”. 19. Cf. “Do we make the law of none effect through faith? If we thrust the Resurrection into history, if we set the pre-supposition which is in Jesus within the sequence of events, if we weave the paradox of faith into human spiritual experience, we introduce, as it were, a specter which devours every living thing.” See Barth 1933, p. 115. 20. According to Barth, “[R]esurrection ceases to be resurrection, if it be some abnormal event side by side with other events. What, in that case, did rise again?” (Barth 1933, p. 115). The idea of an “abnormal” or exceptional event leads to French event theoreticians such as Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Barth would likely argue here against setting faith side by side with the law instead of setting it within the law. That is, Barth stresses faith’s fulfilment of human existence (instead of faith’s exception) as well as the complete otherness of faith (instead of, e.g., Badiou’s preference for set theory as it is presented for the first time in 1988 in Being and Event). 21. In Two Ages: A Literary Review from 1846, Kierkegaard thus presents a well-argued socio-political analysis of the present age in light of the revolutionary age. 22. It is by the way not new in history that fictive productions as depictions of various future scenarios rise in times of crisis (Budgen 2018).

References Barth, Karl. [1922] 1933. The Epistle to the Romans. Trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns. Oxford: Oxford University Press ———. [1922] 1940. Der Römerbrief. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. ———. 1965. A Thank You and a Bow: Kierkegaard’s Reveille. Canadian Journal of Theology XI (1): 3–7. Beintker, Michael. 2013. Krisis und Gnade. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

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Bender, Kimlyn J. 2015. Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth: Reflections on a Relation and a Proposal for Future Investigation. International Journal of Systematic Theology 17 (3): 296–318. Budgen, David. 2018. Literature. https://encyclopedia.1914-­1918-­online.net/ article/literature. Accessed 31 July 2022. Dalferth, Ingolf Ulrich. 2010. Radikale Theologie. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Gouwens, David J. 2019. Chapter 45. Barth and Kierkegaard. In Volume 1: The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth: Barth in Dialogue, ed. Georg Hunsiger and Keith L. Johnson, 551–564. Grøn, Arne. 1997. Subjektivitet og negativitet. København: Gyldendal. Grube, Dirk-Martin. 2008 (2013 online version). Reconstructing the Dialectics in Karl Barth’s ‘Epistle to the Romans’. Bijdragen. International Journal for Philosophy and Theology 69 (2): 127–146. Hartmut, Rosa. 2015. Social Acceleration—A New Theory of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. Hay, Colin. 1999. Crisis and the Structural Transformation of the State: Interrogating the Process of Change. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1 (3): 317–344. Joas, Hans. 2020. Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Keynes, John. [1936] 2016. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Hinsdale: Dryden Press Kierkegaard, Søren. 1978. Kierkegaard Letters and Documents, Søren Kierkegaard’s Writings, XXV. Trans. Henrik Rosenmeier. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. [1849] 1980. The Sickness Unto Death, A Christian psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. [1843] 1983. Fear and Trembling—Repetition, Kierkegaard’s Writings, VI.  Ed. and Trans. Howard V. and Edna H.  Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. [1844] 1985. Philosophical Fragments Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard’s Writings, VII.  Ed. and Trans. Howard V. and Edna H.  Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. [1844]. 1992. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, vol. 1. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. [1847] 2009. The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle. In Without Authority, Kierkegaard’s Writings, XVIII, ed. Edna H. Hong, 91–108. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. Kierkegaaard’s Journals and notebooks, vol. 5, Journals NB6-10. Ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse,

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George Pattison, Joel. D.  S. Rasmussen, Vanessa Rumble and K.  Brian Söderquist. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2015. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Vol. 8, Journals NB21-25. General Ed. Bruce H. Kirmmse. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Koselleck, Reinhart. 1988. Critique and Crisis. Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern. Cambridge: MIT press. Mattern, Harald. 2020. Einleitung—Die Krise der Zukunft. Zum apokalyptischen Subtext moderner Krisensemantiken. In Religion—Wirtschaft—Politik, Bd. 15, ed. Harald Mattern and Georg Pfleiderer, 9–56. Zürich: Pano Verlag. McCormack, Bruce. 2006. Theologische Dialektik und kritischer Realismus. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich. Nielsen, Anne Louise. 2006. Den gående—om subjektivitet og tilblivelsen teologi i Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Pedersen, Ove K. 2020. Vi står i politikkens øjeblik. Det er nu, vi kan forme fremtiden. Information 4. maj 2020. Pfleiderer, Georg. 1992. Theologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2016. Barth und die liberale Theologie. In Barth Handbuch, ed. Michael Beintker, 59–64. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Taylor, Mark C. 1980. Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. Berkeley: University of California Press. Welz, Claudia. 2008. Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodice. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Widmann, Peter. 2000. Bestemmelser. København: Anis. ———. 2020. Emanuel Hirsch. Den Store Danske. https://denstoredanske.lex. dk/Emanuel_Hirsch. Accessed 31 July 2022. World Health Organization. 2021. Global Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19 (Modelled Estimates). https://www.who.int/data/sets/global-­excess-­deaths-­ associated-­with-­covid-­19-­modelled-­estimates. Accessed 31 July 2022.

PART III

Crisis and Reorientation: Cultural and Political Impact, Displacements and New Trajectories

CHAPTER 9

The Voice of the Preacher: Literary and Rhetorical Aspects of Der Römerbrief Håkan Möller

It has been said that Karl Barth drove Kierkegaard’s dialectics to their furthest limit in the Second Edition of his Römerbrief (which I shall call here Romans II), as if the insufficiency of language when faced with the radical Other cannot help being pushed to a limit at which it implodes into paradoxes and negations. This may be summarized in the word “Nein!” Indeed, Romans II has even been read as a single outcry of protest against the theological discourse dominant at the time: “Nein! Nein! Nein!” “Is even a single one of my words the Word that I am searching for, that in my distress and longing I would like to utter? Can I speak without having one word cancel out the other?”—is what Barth is asking himself in this text.1 It could have been a fragment of Meister Eckhart. But in fact Barth was writing a commentary to one of the most complicated and important texts in the New Testament. And paucity of words is hardly the most significant feature of his commentary, nor does he, in accordance with romantic aesthetics, using the fragment as an expression of deep

H. Möller (*) Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_9

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scepticism about language as a tool with which to grasp the Absolute. No, rather his commentary is characterized by a restlessness and comprehensiveness that seems to overflow the borders of the genre, going against what one may rightly expect from a Biblical commentary. Barth’s Romans II is undoubtedly excessive in many ways.

1   Notes on Romans II and Expressionism With its extreme literary quality, Barth’s Romans II has been characterized, rather vaguely, as expressionist; that is to say as a text written during the period in Western culture when Modernism was making a definite breakthrough, and when artists, authors, and film-makers were testing the boundaries of what it was possible to express in a work of art. Hans Urs von Balthasar made a sweeping statement to the effect that dialectics was booming in the feverish and stormy years just after the First World War; he calls this “the era of Expressionism”, seeing in it a crucial explanation of the exceptional style and method developed by Barth in Romans II. He then elegantly moves on to talk about Barth’s “theological expressionism”, claiming that this description is particularly apt when applied to Barth’s methodology (von Balthasar 1992, p. 83). During the first decade of the twentieth century, the expressionist movement had its centre in Berlin, but the avant-garde groups that incarnated this new aesthetic orientation remained rather hidden in this lively metropolis, that had so much to offer young people who favoured a hectic lifestyle. The aesthetics of expressionism were published in such journals as Der Sturm and Der Aktion, but by the time of the Machtübernahme in 1933 the movement had disappeared because condemned as an expression of decadence. The expressionists had tried to reflect how it felt to live in a large city, not only at a thematic level but also at a formal level, with the prose of realism no longer an acceptable alternative. The challenge was to find ways to express these new disruptive experiences in words, syntax, and metaphor. Speed, neon lighting, and new urban noises—the whole technological side of modernism—aimed to find expression in the literary language. But presenting a coherent subject in this stream of distorted sentences and complicated metaphors had become almost impossible. Stephen Webb has paid special attention to the style of Barth’s Romans II: “[…] it is in Romans that the question of style in theology is most fervently raised” (Webb 1991, p.  8). And it is a fact—as Webb points out—that the style Barth makes use of in Romans II had already from the

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very start been an obstacle to his readers and critics (Webb 1991, p. 8). Even if Barth insisted that the sole purpose of his commentary was to interpret Paul’s Epistle to the Romans historically (and he never actually abandoned this point of view), nonetheless for most readers this offended the conventions of the genre (see Burnett 2001, p. 240ff). The confusion provoked by the text is still there, it seems. Forty years on, Krister Stendahl was to point out what many readers of Barth’s commentary still find rather obvious when confronting the Barthian discourse: “[Barth] is admittedly incapable of enough patience and enthusiasm for keeping alive the tension between what the text meant and what it means. There are no criteria by which they can be kept apart; what was intended as a commentary turns out to be a theological tractate, expanding in contemporary terms what Paul should have said about the subject matter as understood by the commentator” (Stendahl 1962, p. 420).2 Webb also notes the uneven style with which many commentators concentrate on particular theological themes and avoid the rhetoric of Romans II. Webb himself follows Hans Urs von Balthasar, and in the wake of his rudimentary observations on expressionism in Romans II, Webb tries to develop convincingly a connection between the expressionist art of the period and Barth’s rhetorical style. Though he states, rightly in my opinion, that if one is aiming at a deep understanding of Romans II, one must pay attention not only to what Barth says but to how he says it. It is not enough—according to Webb—merely to identify such predecessors of Barth as Kantian dualism, and Kierkegaardian or Hegelian dialectics, or even Calvin, Luther, and Wilhelm Hermann. At the same time, Webb clearly adds force to his own thesis by diverging sharply from those who have discussed Romans II from a theological and philosophical point of view, and I myself also believe that to gain an appropriately comprehensive understanding of Barth’s idiosyncratic commentary, one must take into account the interaction between theme and style. The analogy with expressionism has become almost standard in the literature on Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar was by no means the first to draw attention to this. Even Adolf von Harnack is said to have made a disparaging comment on Barth as an expressionist after reading the Epistle to the Romans, while Wilhelm Pauck made a point of emphasizing this comparison in his work on Barth: Karl Barth, Prophet of a New Christianity? (1931). And more recently Eberhard Jüngel, in his Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy (1986), has claimed that Barth at the time started to speak with an expressionistic accent (Webb 1991, p. 9).

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I agree with Webb not only when he is mentioning that both Pauck and Urs von Balthasar point out interesting connections between the expressionist art movement and Barth’s style in Romans II, but also when he is criticizing them for being too shallow and for each of them stating his opinion without making any serious effort to define it more narrowly. One of the main problems here is that an analogy has been attempted between the writing of a particular theologian and an entirely unrelated movement in the arts that involved different genres and art forms and very different artists and writers moving in irreconcilably different directions within what we today label expressionism. One must also bear in mind that this strongly avant-garde, indeed revolutionary movement was already in decline after the First World War, and that by the beginning of the 1920s it was already time to begin summing it up. Stephen Webb wants to go a step further, stretching the comparison and drawing attention to two distinctive and virtually iconic artworks of the time: the artist Max Beckmann’s painting “Die Nacht” (1918) and one of the most famous films from the Weimar period “Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari” (1920), and especially the version made by the director Robert Wiene. These two examples, Webb argues strongly, serve, first and foremost, to illustrate the crisis or cultural and political atmosphere in the wake of the First World War, which according to Webb must also be seen as the single most fundamental metaphor in Romans II, with Beckmann’s painting illustrating a prominent stylistic feature of Romans II, namely its exaggeration and indeed hyperbole, and in the case of the film in Wiene’s version, its irony. In other words, Webb is not making a detailed comparison of different media. His presentation and argumentation are evocative and it is easy to be carried away by the parallels he draws, though at the same time this suggests a critical perspective that attempts to explain art and literature, and so on, in terms of the Zeitgeist. Such an approach, at least so far as literature is concerned, has been heavily criticized by Wellek and Warren in their seminal work Theory of Literature (1942). When Webb tries to draw parallels between Beckmann’s painting, Wiene’s version of the film, and Barth’s writing, even he becomes very vague and starts to use phrases like “as if”: “It is as if Barth identifies with the Francis of the film […]” (Webb 1991, p. 17). And, rather surprisingly, Webb ends by claiming that Expressionism is—after all—such a wide and imprecise aesthetic concept that it is virtually useless as an analogy to explain Barth’s Romans II. Webb seems to be on the right track, though, when he says that the rhetoric of Barth’s idiosyncratic commentary is most

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successfully analysed without attempts to draw parallels with Expressionism. It is after all surprising that Webb does not bother to take a closer look at the prose of the Expressionists instead of seeking parallels in art and film. There are in fact several well-known, indeed seminal, works that treat this highly heterogeneous phenomenon, the so-called expressionistic prose. For example Walter Sokel’s groundbreaking article “Die Prosa des Expressionismus” (1969), also illuminating, I believe, is Fritz Martinis, Prosa des Expressionismus (1970), as well as Armin Arnold Prosa des Expressionismus. Herkunft, Analyse, Inventar (1972), and later not least Wilhelm Krull Prosa des Expressionismus (1984) and Heidemarie Oehms, Sujektivität und Gattungsform im Expressionismus (1993).3 But to sum up, it seems to me rather odd that Webb should make such a fuss about the relevance of expressionism without further defining the term for a proper understanding of the style in Barth’s Bible commentary, only to abandon it, in the end, because he finds this movement in the arts too heterogeneous. Bruce McCormack, in his study Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (1997), is also rightly unconvinced by the popular analogy with expressionism, especially when used to explain the style of Romans II. And it is obvious that McCormack is not really interested in this aspect of Barth’s early work. It is Barth’s theological development that is his main focus of interest. Even though McCormack is harsh in his criticism of Webb, he does respond to what he identifies as a common element among the expressionists, “the belief that ‘real reality’ lay beneath the surface of the ‘reality’ that presents itself to the senses”, so that “it was necessary to penetrate beyond the level of appearance to the truly real”, and Barth’s ambition in Romans I is “to engage in a thoroughgoing criticism of the reality which lies ready to hand in an effort to create an open space for the emergence of the ‘real reality’ (i.e. God or the Kingdom of God)” (McCormack 1997, p. 140). But this also presents a rather vague conformity between Barth’s ambition to be accepted as the interpreter of a Pauline text, and an unrelated movement in the arts, and it is a feature hardly unique to the expressionists. When it comes to the style of Romans II McCormack is right, I believe, to claim that it is not the “expressionistic qualities of the rhetoric of the second edition [Romans II] which sets the work off from its predecessor”. He argues that what is so striking in comparison with Romans I “is the tone of anger in which Romans II is written” (McCormack 1997, p. 243). This is fair and a correct observation so far as it goes, but as a defining

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comment on style it is not precise enough; in fact it is altogether too vague. But I think McCormack is right to criticize Webb among others for letting the fact get out of focus that the reason Barth was writing with pathos was to correct tendencies typical of the period rather than to create a new theology. Even so, Barth was indeed offering a new theology, though not yet in a traditionally dogmatic form. Let McCormack summarize: “In the face of all the critical negations, we will all too easily miss the highly positive element in it” (McCormack 1997, p. 245). When we remember how much has been written about Barth’s development as a theologian, and about his changes of style, and about Romans II as a crucial part of his development, it is rather surprising how seldom Romans II has been directly seen as a Biblical commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We have already seen that as a commentary it was considered to break the rules of the genre since it did not meet the general expectations of a hermeneutical approach or take into account history and environment or situation. Even so, Barth was not merely writing a piece of doctrinal work, or a theological essay that addressed the then-prevailing state of protestant theology, he was also firmly stating his own intentions and achievements; in his interpretation of Paul’s text he presents nothing less than a Biblical commentary. Nevertheless, he very often during his lengthy and amplifying commentary seem to be, more than anything else, preaching with point of departure in Romans.

2   Romans II as Commentary and Homily But how should Barth’s Romans II be characterized? Is it a sort of theologically dense homily, or a commentary with strong homiletical strains? The new reality communicated in text and spoken words by the early Church required a special form of rhetoric. This is why Augustine, for example, transformed classical rhetoric for Christian purposes. Certain strategies and techniques were developed for efficient communication of the Word. This Christian version of the classical rhetorical tradition was still alive and relevant in discussions of style in homiletics and hymnology during the Reformation and long after. The main pastoral guideline was the overarching demand for clarity (perspicuitas), in both style and argument. The message had to be communicated with clarity (no obscurity allowed), and avoiding excessive figurative ornamentation—a clear message that must not be clouded in any way. Perspicuitas but never obscuritas

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(see Nielsen 2009, p. 59ff.). Confronted with Romans II one might well ask for who the former pastor from Safenwil, aware of the congregation’s expectations regarding the form of sermons, was writing. So even if certain elements in Romans II, such as the preacher’s pathos-driven use of exclamations and refutations, could undoubtedly be used in a sermon based on a Pauline text, this clearly diverges from the rhetorical ideal of perspicuitas. Too many paradoxes, too many obscure metaphors, too many deviations, and so forth. Rather than analyse a fragment of Romans II as a kind of homily, I shall take a closer look at a particular passage in Romans II and see how it responds to the pericope in the Pauline text on which it is based. How does Barth treat the already rhetorically sophisticated Greek text, rhetorically and thematically? As modern exegesis has convincingly shown during the last thirty years or so, there can be no doubt that Paul was fully aware of how to use classical rhetoric, and indeed was fully aware of how to do this with authority when addressing a particular audience in a particular situation (see Aletti 2011, pp. 232–247). The rhetorician Paul meets the rhetorician Barth, both pathos-ridden communicators of a message that each, in his own situation and time, found to be of the utmost urgent importance. Even more specifically, how does Barth, from his near-Kierkegaardian, individualistic, and radically sceptical position, handle the final part of the eighth chapter of Romans—a passage in which Paul bursts into speech that is affirmative, group-strengthening, promise-giving, and pathos-laden—to drive home his main message in the emotionally intense ending he gives to this part of his letter? 2.1   The Biblical Text (The Epistle to the Romans 8:28–39) Let us first look at the relevant passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (I quote from King James Version; the segmentation of the text is my own) Romans 8:28–39 v. 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. v. 29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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v. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. v. 31a What shall we then say to these things? v. 31b If God be for us, who can be against us? v. 32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? v. 33a Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? v. 33b It is God that justifieth. v. 34a Who is he that condemneth? v. 34b1 It is Christ that died, v. 34b2 yea rather, that is risen again, v. 34b3 who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. v. 35a Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? v. 35b Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? v. 36a As it is written, v. 36b For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. v. 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. v. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, v. 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. * * * Romans 8:31–39 is preceded by—and is prepared by—a climax (8:28–30). This could be called a gradatio, a rising to a plateau, to the position from which the pathos-laden speech is delivered. The ending of a speech, according to classical rhetoric, should, firstly, recap the most important points in the foregoing part of the speech to remind the audience of what has been said, and, secondly, to engage and rise the emotions of the audience to really convince them. Even if there are some recapitulations on a thematical level there are no grounds for seeing this final section of the eighth chapter as a peroratio of the letter so far. It is an ending, but it hardly repeats or summarizes the foregoing

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argumentation, but meets the demands of a peroratio when it comes to raising the emotions of the audience so that they will be engaged and convinced. The exegetical commentators do agree, in general, that this passage is very effective and that it contains elements typical of a GrecoRoman diatribe, such as rhetorical questions, anticipated objections from imagined opponents, and enumerations and citations to reinforce the authority of the speaker. This rather free educational technique is quite often used by Paul, not least in the Epistle to the Romans, as already pointed out by Rudolf Bultmann in his dissertation Der Stil der Paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (1910) (Wolter 2014, p.  539; Watson 1993, p. 213 f.). When it comes to the genre, the Pauline passage could be described as genus demonstrativum. There is no looking back to sort out what actually happened and to assess its value, no consideration of what actions should be taken in the future, but a demonstration and confirmation of the Faith that will unite present and future Christians. The Pauline Letter is analysed on a micro-level organized as follows. Verses 31–32 contain three rhetorical questions. The first of these is simply a method of addressing the audience and of making sure that they will listen to what is supposed to be a kind of summary. This links what has been said to what is yet to be said. The second question is the key question, containing the expectation of an explanation, which will come in the form of an increasing clarification of why God is among and together with the assembled. The third and most elaborated question has two parts, the first of these being an assertion while the second part is the actual question itself. The opening of this section could be summarized in this way: the One that has shown—by the most radical of actions—that He is on your side, will not and cannot abandon you, so you have nothing to fear. The rest of this passage (vv 33–39) serves to reinforce the conviction that God is on the listener’s side and to embolden them. This is done by intensifying the tempo and raising the emotions further. These verses are structured on a question and answer model which can be described as an amplification and elaboration of the opening questions. The first question repeats in a different order the problem of who, among those gathered in the name of Christ, is for or against, but it now employs a phrase with more of a legal touch. The second question (v. 34a), together with the triple answer that follows it (v. 34b 1–3), demonstrates the gradual amplification and intensification of the section. The answer can be described as a Christian creed in a very dense form: Jesus

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Christ has died, has been resurrected from the dead, and has ascended into heaven to sit on the right hand of God. The third question is the most forceful and elaborated of all. And this is in no way surprising considering how much is at stake for Christians if they are not to be divided from the Love of Christ. Here the hypotactic construction has been replaced by a paratactical construction; a fact that in terms of rhetoric can be rephrased as a section that starts as a logos-laden argumentation (vv 31–32), turning in the next verses into a pathos-laden, dramatic, and powerfully argumentative speech. The rhetorical devices used in these last verses—the paratactic construction, the enumerations, the metaphorical language with the use of hyperbole—are intended to animate a triumphant affirmation of the Faith in Christ that will drive away doubts and threats. The first answer to what could separate the Christians from Christ is a simple one: nothing. This is followed by a citation from Psalm 44, verse 23, which is a prayer for God’s protection. But the situation is now completely different: all threats are gone because of Christ. The conclusion of the whole section (vv 38–39) emphasizes this new order and is the firmest possible answer to the final question: can anything come between you and Christ? Nothing can separate Earth and Heaven! 2.2   Barth’s Comment on the Pericope (The Epistle to the Romans 8:28–39) Barth has given the title “Die Liebe” to his commentary on Chapter 8, verses 28–39. He devotes just over ten pages to the first three long verses, 28–30; then two pages to verses 31–32 (which the logos-part of the section concentrates on); and less than two pages to verses 33–39 (the final pathos-part). This rather arid preliminary observation nevertheless tells us something important about Barth’s eccentricity as a Biblical commentator. To some extent, his priorities are understandable. He has a lot to say about those “who are called according to purpose”, about “whom he foreordained”, and about “justification”—and, of course, about “love”. But less about the final part, the climax of chapter eight, the chapter that Jacob Taubes has called a “great jubilation” (Taubes 2004, p. 26). But we must now look at what Barth actually says and how he says it in his commentary on 8:31–39, and notice several distinguishing features in Barth’s text.4

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The first sentence is, as we have seen, no more than an introduction to the summing up, a bridge between what has been said and what will follow in the summary, “What shall we then say to these things?”, is commented on in a certain way by Barth. He begins by delivering a long, paratactical, interrogative sentence that once again draws attention to the inability of man to utter words which none but God can utter. And, very typical for the Barth of Romans II, he adds another question that says more or less the same thing in other words, and that is: whatever man says, must be either an addition to or a contradiction of what God has said. The third and fourth questions put man in an awkward position since neither silence nor speech will do here, since both alternatives conceal the truth about the knowledge of love. We, as humans, if acknowledged by God, “can do right both by speech and by silence”. Already this tiny section shows how Barth, amazingly enough, with his inclusive, homiletic, address—“We”—elaborates—rather extravagantly— one of his main themes, basing it on a Pauline statement that has nothing to do with our shortcomings concerning knowing and talking about God and God’s will. The second part of verse 31 (31b)—“If God be for us, who can be against us?”—gets a long-winded interpretation in Barth’s hands. And he starts with a citation from Luther. That could be the way of any preacher. And in what follows he acts more like an ordinary preacher when he tells “us” what, for example, the words “God for us” “mean” to “us” today. Barth’s concluding remark, before he cites part of a previous verse of Romans (1:18), is—once again—that God is the Wholly Other, addressed especially to “religious men”. This part of his commentary is completed with a couple of citations from the New Testament, and more precisely from First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15. In this part he is acting more as a common “Ausleger” of the Biblical text, but without losing focus on his own message to his readers: we haven’t got the words to express “That God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28), which is of course quite a paradoxical utterance, and he ends this section with a true paradox: all roads that lead in that direction are at the same time impassable. He is after all not a preacher who brings his congregation hope and glory, but once again comes forward as one talking primarily to contemporary theologians and churchmen. Barth’s comment on the following verse (i.e. 32) could be described as a seductive paraphrase, but it would not be Barth if even this pathos-laden close reading did not end with a rather a violent paradox making extensive

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use of “nicht”, one of Barth’s favourite words in Romans II, in this case with the added emphasis of Italics: “Wir können nicht reden, aber nicht nicht reden von der Morgonröte, die wir gesehen haben.” (“Concerning the dawn upon which we have gazed we are able neither to speak nor to be silent.”). When we reach his closing comments on the last seven verses of the eighth chapter, we may be a little surprised that even at this late stage our “Ausleger” has yet more to say about an expression to which he has just been giving a lot of attention: “God for us”. The first paragraph on vv. 33–39, which imitates the Pauline text on a formal level (he uses four exclamatory sentences, three of which are also questions), ends with one conjunction, something which also as often in Romans II leads us to expect that something is about to pull the rug from under our feet, so to speak. He greets Paul’s triumphant finale, with a reminder of the unbridgeable distance between us and God and, using rather militaristic metaphors, he points out—at the end of this long paragraph—that, “But—and this conditions our answer to the question—immeasurable is the distinction between the eternal ‘Moment’ when the stronghold ‘God-for-us’ is stormed, and every moment in time, whether past or future, when we stand once again outside the fortress boasting of a victory which, so far as can be observed, is always our defeat”. Barth follows Paul in raising the emotional temperature in this final section, but he clearly also has an agenda of his own. And once again he surprises us by beginning his very last paragraph with yet another conjunctive construction, “And yet”. Barth picks up the same metaphorical construction once again— “Assault on this position” (my transl.)—and completes his comments on chapter eight with a paragraph that to some extent paraphrases the Pauline text, and thus carries emotional intensity. At the beginning this is stuffed with negations (“Christ—the new man that I am not, […]”, “where I cannot stand. […] What I cannot say of myself. […]”, my emphasis). And he closes the whole section with yet another sentence beginning with the conjunction “But …”. And what follows are: “But, when this has been said, we turn ourselves about, knowing that we are in no sense competent to attain this identity or even to conceive of its attainment”. Compare the “Nichts” of Barth with the negation in the Pauline text that follows immediately on the citation from the Psalter: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us”.5 Nevertheless, Barth draws the line with his negations, whereas Paul, in

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refuting his opponents, emphasizes hope and conviction. These observations on the micro-level of the text, not at least the use of “aber” and “nicht”, are a key to understanding Barth’s purpose in Romans II, his roaring critic of certain theological and political tendencies of his time. * * * Barth is not like Jacob Taubes, to compare to another influential and idiosyncratic commentator on Paul. Taubes seeks to understand the historical position of Paul as a way of understanding what Paul is saying with attention to his context. At the same time, Taubes engages with both classic commentators on Paul and contemporary thinkers and philosophers who have produced new theological insights that have led to a flourishing of interest in Paul’s theology in our own time. Though Barth, like Taubes, places his reading of Paul in a wide cultural context—in his case Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and others—he seldom places Paul in a historical context. Just as Paul, according to Taubes, is expected to act as a prophet rather than a mere apostle (see Taubes 2004), likewise Barth is also more of a prophet in his own day than a mere Biblical interpreter; he is the Prophet of “Aber” and “Nein” in a time of societal and political crisis and protestant liberalism.

Notes 1. Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) 1922, Eds. Cornelis van der Kooi and Katja Tolstaja, Karl Barth Gestamtausgabe: II. Akademische Werke (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2010), XXX.  All translations are from Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 1933, Translated from the Sixth Edition by Edwyn C.  Hoskyns (London, Oxford, New  York: Oxford University Press, 1968) if nothing else is indicated. 2. Barth’s commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans as being a more “creative” than “critical” biblical commentary, according to her categorization, see Grenholm 1990, p. 104ff. 3. For an up-dated overview and commentary on literature treating expressionistic prose, see Hermansson 2015. 4. The following quotations from the English translation, Barth (1933), p. 326–329, and certain words from Barth (1922), 446–450. 5. Barth omits “Nein/Nay” in his translation of the Greek text, because it actually says Aber/But in the Greek text, but in the English translation of Barth’s Romans it goes, “Nay, …”, as well as in the latest Swedish translation, which says “Nej, över allt detta triumferar vi”.

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References Aletti, Jean Noël. 2011. Rhetoric in the Letters of Paul. In The Blackwell Companion to Paul, ed. Stephen Westerholm. Wiley-Blackwell: Malden and Oxford. von Balthasar, Hans Urs. 1992. The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation. Trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Burnett, Richard E. 2001. Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe, 145. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Grenholm, Cristina. 1990. Romans Interpreted: A Comparative Analysis of the Commentaries of Barth, Nygren, Cranfield and Wilckens on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Doctrinae Christianae Upsaliensia 30. Uppsala. Hermansson, Gunilla. 2015. Modernisternas prosa och expressionismen: Studier i nordisk modernism 1910–1930. Göteborg och Stockholm: Makadam. McCormack, Bruce L. 1997. Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nielsen, Erik A. 2009. Kristendomens retorik: Den kristne digtnings billedformer. Billedsprog I. Gyldendal A/S: København. Stendahl, Krister. 1962. Biblical Theology: A Program. In Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Taubes, Jacob. 2004. The Political Theology of Paul. Trans. Dana Hollander, Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Watson, D.F. 1993. Diatribe. In Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F.  Hawthorne and Ralph P.  Martin. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove and Leicester. Webb, Stephen H. 1991. Re-figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. New York: State University of New York Press. Wolter, Michael. 2014. Der Brief an die Römer, Teilband I: Röm 1–8. Evangelische-­ Katolischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Band VI/I.  Verlagsgruppe Patmos: Neukirchen-Vluyn.

CHAPTER 10

A Literary Reception of Karl Barth’s Römerbrief: On Barthianism in John Updike’s Roger’s Version Bent Flemming Nielsen

1   An American Reception The novel Roger’s Version by John Updike, published in 1986,1 is central to an extensive discussion of the literary reception of Karl Barth currently taking place in the United States. In the following, I quote Updike at some length because of his text’s characteristic style. Therefore, his text must speak for itself. At the end of the chapter, I engage with the widespread discussion of fictional literature and theology to which this remarkable novel has contributed.

B. F. Nielsen (*) Section of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_10

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2   About John H. Updike John Updike (1932–2009), known for his countless columns in the New Yorker, reviewed art and culture, and wrote short stories, poems, and roughly one novel a year. Updike depicts the existential, religious, and not insignificant erotic dilemmas of the modern world as they unfold in the life of a middle-class American. In addition, he was an avid reader of Barth’s books. Although an East Coast American, he was a Republican, a churchgoer, and professed to be a Christian. Regarding his interest in Barth, Updike once wrote an essay on Barth’s book about Anselm of Canterbury, Fides quaerens intellectum (Updike 1965).2 In the following, I explore what is likely Updike’s most “Barthian” novel, Roger’s Version. In this novel, Updike provocatively unfolds a Barthian theme by relating an episode that takes place during several months in the life of a family supposedly situated in Boston.3 The theology professor Roger Lambert is an apostate semi-Barthian who nonetheless still has not left his Barthianism entirely behind. He refers to Barth repeatedly in his self-reflecting stream of consciousness. Updike’s narrative takes readers along toward the professor’s personal and theological crisis. Thinking about Barth’s theology turns out to be decisive for the professor’s self-reflection.

3  The Novel’s Setup The book’s first sentences, which represent this theology professor’s ironic self-esteem, set in motion the novel’s storyline: I have been happy at the Divinity School. The hours are bearable, the surroundings handsome, my colleagues harmless and witty, habituated as they are to the shadows. To master a few dead languages, to parade sequential moments of the obdurately enigmatic early history of Christianity before classrooms of the hopeful, the deluded, and the docile—there are more fraudulent ways to earn a living. I consider my years spent in the active ministry, before meeting and marrying Esther fourteen years ago, if not exactly wasted, as a kind of pre-existence, the thought of which depresses me. (Updike 1986, p. 3)

An arrogant, self-conscious university teacher who does not have to exert himself vigorously to meet the job’s demands reflects on his life. He is superior, almost condescending, in his characterization of the students— and his colleagues. He has a past as a minister in a protestant church, a past

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that he does not like to recall. He divorced his first wife and, after a stormy affair of infidelity, he married Esther, with whom he now has a son, Richie. Professor Lambert is pipe-smoking, voyeuristic, self-absorbed, distant, and manipulative when the opportunity arises. He has long since stopped going to church. Such was the outcome of the scandal fourteen years earlier, when he had to leave his position in church in light of the then-new relationship with Esther. Now this marriage is also languishing. Academic research into the heretical movements of antiquity fills his day—an interest that Esther relates to with a goodly portion of sarcasm. The novel’s opening paves the way for abysmal conflicts. A crisis is brewing. The crisis manifests itself in the form of a young computer nerd, Dale, characterized by theology and piety, as it unfolds in the Midwest. Dale addresses Professor Lambert with the conviction that he can provide a proof of the existence of God using new computer programs that he is in the process of developing. Dale is highly knowledgeable about all the open questions modern science has failed to answer—cosmologically, physically, and biologically. He will take advantage of this in his computer-­ based proof of God. Theologically, however, he is not at all on par with the kind of sophisticated thinking that Professor Roger Lambert stands for. This comes to light already in the first hasty conversation. Dale uses argumentation strategies that later discussions coined “intelligent design.” This thinking posits that we cannot understand the world’s complexity against the background of the ongoing evolution of life from simple organisms to more complex forms of matter. The existing reality already presupposes discrete complex entities that cannot exist on their own as they exist only in contexts that are more comprehensive. Dale is now seeking out the theological professor hoping to win a scholarship at divinity school to finance an investigation of his project that will prove the existence of God. Professor Lambert, for his part, is extremely critical, even dismissive, of such thinking. His objections, to which we will return, are distinctly Barthian.

4  The Book’s Barthianism Roger Lambert’s Barthianism seems sometimes explicit and at other occasions ambiguous and subconscious. With deep irony, he not only hits everything and everyone, but his sarcasm broadens to include his own self-esteem and theological thinking.

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Along two dimensions, Barth, the theology of Der Römerbrief, and, in a broader sense, Barthianism, occupy the novel. Most directly, Barth’s writings constitute the decisive theological reference point for Lambert. So it has been since he, years earlier, first read Barth’s early collection of papers, The Word of God and the Word of Man (Updike 1986, p. 40). In particular, this volume plays much the same role in the novel as in Updike’s personal life (note 2). Another issue concerns the question whether the story might be read as a Barthian way of coping with life’s peculiarities. In that case the book appears to be Barthian in a more profound manner. Some interpreters read the book this way; characters in the novel are often confused and morally defective. Nevertheless, they are not condemned. Above all an atoning light shines on human controversies, defeats, acts, and unsympathetic thoughts. That might tend to reflect a Barthian point of view. Not all interpreters will agree with such an interpretation, a theme that we consider in the chapter’s final section.

5  Barthian Discussions We turn first to the explicit role that Barthian references play in the novel. When the computer nerd and the theology professor first meet, the following exchange takes place. Dale has opened to his thoughts of proving God’s existence using computers. Lambert becomes aware of the fact that Barth equips him with almost forgotten weapons from his own youth: “I suppose a fundamental question,” I [Lambert] ventured, “about any modern attempts to relate the observed cosmos to traditional religion becomes the sheer, sickening extravagance of it. If God wished, as Genesis and now you [Dale] tell us, to make the world as a theatre for Man, why make it so unusably vast, so horribly turbulent and, ah, crushing to contemplate?” (Updike 1986, p. 17)

Dale’s eager presentation reminds Lambert both of his work with the heretics of the Old Church and of his past as a Barthian minister. Furthermore, the schisms of the old church appear before Lambert’s mind. Moreover, he is tired, he sighs. He has soon had enough.

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This tangle of suppositions about the absolute and unknowable which [Dale] had agitatedly sketched reminded me of my dead, the dead who give me my living, those murky early centuries of passionate anchorites and condemnatory prelates whose storms of fine distinction swept back and forth from Athens to Spain, from Hippo to Edessa. Homoousios versus homoiousios, the logikoi versus the alogoi. Montanism and modalism and monarchianism, hypostasis and Patripassianism. Blood-soaked discriminations now dust like their bones, those grandiose and prayerful efforts to flay, cleave, and anatomize the divine substance. (Updike 1986, p. 21–22)

Gradually Lambert’s own reliance on Barth’s thinking becomes more and more conscious. His sharp mind and irony flourishes: “The Christian Church,” I began, then halted myself to ask the boy, “You do consider yourself a Christian?” “Absolutely. Christ is my Saviour.” I loathed the icy-eyed fervent way he said it. Back home such flat statements were painted on barns and needlepointed on pillows. I said to him, “The church preaches, I believe, and the Old Testament describes, a God Who acts, Who comes to us, in Revelation and Redemption, and not one Who set the universe going and then hid. The God we care about in this divinity school is the living God, Who moves toward us out of His will and love, and Who laughs at all the towers of Babel we build to Him.” I heard myself echoing Barth and the exact quotation flickered at the edge of my mind. Where? (Updike 1986, p. 22; author’s italics)

Dale, for his part, blames Lambert and the theologians in general for not daring or wanting to see God in the objective world. He answers: Because you’re afraid. You don’t want God to break through. People in general don’t want that. They just want to grub along being human, and dirty, and sly, and amusing, and having their weekends with Michelob, and God to stay put in the churches if they ever decide to drop by, and maybe to pull them out in the end, down that tunnel of light all these NDEs [near death experiences] talk about. That’s another place He’s breaking through— all these near deaths, and all these blissful people reporting back. Until they had this modern medical equipment they couldn’t keep pulling people back from the grave. (Updike 1986, p. 21)

Dullness and cowardice prevent us from seeing God, claims Dale.

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Moreover, Lambert has just a short time to discuss the project with Dale. He has to resume his preparation for his lecture. Dale is aware of that. Dale: “But I don’t want to use up my seventeen minutes.” Lambert: “Twelve. Let’s say ten. I have to glance over my notes.” They were on my desk; I pulled them toward me and glanced at them. Marcion excomm.[unicated] Rome 144, I read to myself. Tertullian wr.[ote] Adversus Marcionem c. 207. The boy was making me rude. [Dale] persisted. “Aren’t I right, though, sir? You’re horrified to think that God can be proven.” [Lambert:] “I’m horrified, if I am, to hear so much blasphemy coming out of you so serenely.” [Dale:] “Why is it blasphemy? Why is it blasphemy in this day and age always to raise the possibility that God might be a fact?” [Lambert:] “A fact in our lives, yes, a spiritual fact—” [Dale:] “That’s like a virtual particle. A piece of hot air.” I sighed, and sincerely wished the boy dead. (Updike 1986, pp. 21–22)

The first meeting ends with an increasingly irritated Lambert. They part without shaking hands (Updike 1986, p. 26). As to the content of their exchange, the first meeting recollects the theme that pits natural theology against revelation theology. At the same time, change is making its way. Lambert’s “inner Barthianism” is called to life from the depth of his memory. It arms and overtakes his theological thinking. Long-forgotten structures of arguing come up anew. An unimpressed computer nerd imagining his being able to deliver a modern proof of God functions as a trigger. Despite all the coolness and irony, Barth has become the narrator’s fate. Somehow, Lambert cannot get away from Barth. Nor does the study of ancient heresies change this—quite the contrary. He starts by reflecting on themes like theology versus science and the heretics of the old church as he considers Barth. Preparing his lecture on Marcion, he considers the accusations against Barth for being a marcionist: Main point: In opposition to Marcion, Rome armored itself ever more thickly in authority and dogma. Though not a word from his hand survives, he continues to fascinate: e.g., Harnack’s two impassioned volumes. [Harnack 1924] And Paul Tillich detects Marcionism in the revelationist

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severity of Karl Barth, my own, I must confess, rascally pet.4 (Updike 1986, p. 27)

These old controversies come to life in any new attempt to vitalize a direct relationship between science and theology: Whenever theology touches science, it gets burned. […] Barth had been right: totaliter aliter.5 Only by placing God totally on the other side of the humanly understandable can any final safety for Him be secured. (Updike 1986, p. 32)

This revitalized insight will bring Lambert in opposition to the general opinion among faculty members. Bringing Barth into the life of the faculty once more will cause laughter: The seminar would titter. Barth, in this liberal seminary dominated by gracefully lapsed Unitarians and Quakers, was like sex in junior high school: any mention titillated. (Updike 1986, p. 27)

Nevertheless, Barth has become “my own, I must confess, rascally pet.” The first meeting with Dale sets Lambert on the hunt for his old, worn Barth books to find the accurate quotation he seeks. [In Lambert’s home:] I seized the moment to look up the Barth quote. It involved, I remembered, a series of vias, each discounted as a path to God.6 It was almost certainly from The Word of God and the Word of Man; I took down my old copy, a paperbound Torchbook read almost to pieces, its binding glue dried out and its margins marked again and again by the pencil of a young man who thought that here, definitively and forever, he had found the path, the voice, the style, and the method to save within himself and to present to others the Christian faith. (Updike 1986, p. 40)

Barth will not be targeted by Tertullian’s confrontation with Gnosticism. The shelling for Marcionism does not strike Barth, as Tillich and others had argued: Tertullian, like Barth, took his stand on the only ground where he could: the flesh is man. “All of him is flesh and by nature ought to perish,” Barth roundly wrote, in his pleasant Die christliche Lehre nach dem Heidelberger Katechismus.7 (Updike 1986, p. 152)

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Notably, it is Barth’s emphasizing our human carnality and finality that Lambert finds valuable. The emphasis on our carnality turns out to be a crucial point at the end of the story.

6  The Story Dale’s insisting appearance sets the story in motion. Lambert does not reject the person Dale, although his theory appears obscure, but introduces him to the faculty’s social context. Socially, Roger Lambert does what is necessary. He invites faculty colleagues, as it should be, although he has difficulty with social celebrations in general. At the annual obligatory celebration of Thanksgiving dinner in the professor’s residence, he invites the young Dale along with academic colleagues. He describes the situation where he invites Dale: [Dale’s] uncanny eyes widened. “That would be real nice,” he said. “I was going to just eat in a cafeteria, they put on these turkey specials that are really pretty good, and I like the no-fuss atmosphere. Frankly, sir, holidays tend to freak me out. But that would be terrific, to meet your missus and your boy.” Away from the urgencies of scientific explanation, his speech lapsed into a Midwestern folksiness. And he was certainly less organized-­ religion-­oriented than I thought proper for one of his fervor. Thanksgiving in a cafeteria? Christmas in a brothel? Of course, the Church has always been recharged unorthodoxly. Augustine was a pagan, then a Manichee. Tertullian was a lawyer. Pelagius himself had no ecclesiastical status, and may have first come to Rome as a law student. If the salt lose its savor, wherewith indeed? Jesus Himself, John the Baptist: raggedy outsiders. Insiders tend to be villains. Like me, I would smilingly tell my incredulous, admiring students. (Updike 1986, p. 91)

Lambert does not know that his half-sister’s daughter, Verna, has moved to the city where Lambert now lives with his wife and son. It turns out that the young Dale, however, knows Verna, and he informs Lambert of her being in town. Lambert contacts her. Verna tempts a rather miserable life with social assistance. Furthermore, she also has a neglected daughter with an absentee father. Throughout the novel, Lambert’s relationship with this niece develops catastrophically, revealing unconscious urges, transfers, and repressions that now emerge in the professor’s consciousness. Verna has an intuitive eye for the professor’s attraction to her and takes advantage of it.

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In parallel, another mésalliance develops. Lambert’s wife, Esther, whose marriage to Lambert is somewhat languorous, hires Dale to teach mathematics to the family’s moderately heavy son, Richie. She soon begins a sexual relationship with the pious and innocent Dale. This will at least be what Lambert imagines in his somewhat lively imagination. The reality of Esther’s and Dale’s relationship seems to be an open question in the novel. Nonetheless, these are two asymmetrical relationships: Lambert and Verna on the one hand and Esther and Dale on the other. Both are full of concealment, lust, lies, and exploitation. Although Roger Lambert and his wife Esther reciprocally seem aware of their attraction to Verna and Dale, respectively, it is never stated. There is never any apparent showdown between the spouses. Altogether a great mess. In the book, Roger’s imagination regarding his wife and Dale lead to passages that some critics will see as obscene, perhaps even pornographic, from which I must spare the reader. Personal connections mixed up with academic obligations turn out decisive when the assessment committee meets to decide on Dale’s application for a stipend. In Lambert’s view, it is a hopeless project, but one that he nevertheless supports. Some critics think that Lambert cynically wishes to destroy the young student and his naive faith (Novak 2005, p.  9). In addition, he may want the entertainment by voyeuristically observing and imaging how the relationship between Dale and his wife develops. As the assessment committee convenes to consider Dale’s application, they ask Lambert to be there too. Most of the committee members tend toward rejecting the project. Finally, the chairperson, called Jesse, surprisingly enough asks Lambert about his judgment of the applicant and the project. Here Lambert delivers a seemingly perfect Judas kiss. However, only apparently. It shocked me, to be called out of my apartness, my existence as purely a shadow. “You know me, Jesse,” I said, with a false jocosity that barked in my own ears. “A Barthian all the way. Barth, I fear, would have regarded Dale’s project as the most futile and insolent sort of natural theology. I also agree with Jere: apologetics mustn’t leave ground where it’s somewhat safe for ground where religion has been made to look ridiculous time and time again. Like Rebecca, I don’t think God should be reduced purely to human subjectivity; but His objectivity must be of a totally other sort than that of these physical equations. Even if this were not so, there are additional prob-

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lems with provability. Wouldn’t a God Who let Himself be proven—more exactly, a God Who can’t help being proven—be too submissive, too passive and beholden to human ingenuity, a helpless and contingent God, in short? (Updike 1986, pp. 218–219)

Lambert pushes even harder: I also see a problem with His facticity, as it would be demonstrated to us. We all know, as teachers, what happens to facts: they get ignored, forgotten. Facts are boring. Facts are inert, impersonal. A God Who is a mere fact will just sit there on the table with all the other facts: we can take Him or leave Him. The way it is, we are always in motion toward the God Who flees, the Deus absconditus; He by His apparent absence is always with us. What is being proposed here for us to finance, I’m sorry, just strikes me as a kind of obscene cosmological prying that has little to do with religion as I understand it. As Barth himself says somewhere—I can’t give you the exact ­reference offhand—‘What manner of God is He Who has to be proved?’ (Updike 1986, p. 219)

A Judas kiss. The perfect sabotage of the project. Apparently. The entire committee falls into Lambert’s trap. The Bultmannian, the Tillichian, the ecumenist, and the feminist member of the committee suddenly gather in unity to defend this hopeful young man—against the bony Barthian: [B]y bringing Barth, the scornful enemy of religious humanists and accommodators, the old foe of Tillich and Bultmann, so thumpingly into the discussion, I had swung the committee against me: that is, toward Dale. (Updike 1986, pp. 219–20)

As an outcome, the committee grants Dale a preliminary stipendium. So they decide, in spite of Lambert’s apparent warning—in reality, though, in deep correspondence with his hidden intentions.

7  Morality and Dialectics At this point, we cease expounding the novel. There is an end of the story in sight, to which we will return. Is Roger’s Version a book that performs dialectical theology in the shape of a novel? Not just a novel about an arrogant Barthian professor, but also a story that, in its content and its plot, carries a theological point? A Barthian point matching early dialectical theology? (cf. Link 2005).

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There have been serious disputes over this issue since Updike first published his book in the United States in 1986. Quite a few theologians have intervened. The discussion is both theologically and literarily interesting. In short, the case looks like this: Regarding literary critique (Schiff 1992; Hayat et al. 2015) Updike himself has pointed out that the novel is a kind of a rewrite of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous book, The Scarlet Letter, from 1850. Hawthorne’s story takes place in puritanical New England in the middle of the seventeenth century and revolves around the fatal consequences of a case of infidelity. The evil person in the book carries the name Roger Chillingworth. Thus, Updike’s Roger Lambert seems to represent Hawthorne’s Roger Chillingworth from The Scarlet Letter. In a 1:1 interpretation, Professor Lambert would portray the updated villain in Hawthorne’s novel. A Barthian, who furthermore—as if his Barthianism was not enough (!)—is a tacky guy. Nevertheless, here one must be careful not to go too fast. Updike’s book will be another topic for another time and another context. The stylistically conscious Updike rewrites The Scarlet Letter in a world, the East Coast of the modern United States, where Puritan uniformity and a firm moral code have lost the validity they enjoyed earlier times. A world in which God and God’s presence and the nature of salvation have undergone decisive changes. Contrary to the casuistic morality of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Updike’s novel unfolds the thought of the radical transcendence of God and the dialectic of reflection on God (Jüngel 2005; Nielsen 2016). How, then, will Roger look in such a world? Who is Roger now? Will this new Roger still be the unforgivable villain?

In a world where common morality and Christian faith are no longer two sides of the same coin, we cannot decide this issue easily. In the debate on that question, theologians divide roughly into two groups. The demarcation point consists of an abysmal fall at the end of Updike’s story. Here, Lambert’s relationship with his half-sister’s daughter Verna leads to incestuous intercourse. A culmination of negativity and disgust. Lying there with Verna, gazing upward, I saw how much majesty resides in our continuing to love and honor God even as He inflicts blows upon us—as much as resides in the silence He maintains so that we may enjoy and explore our human freedom. This was my proof of His existence, I saw—the distance to the impalpable ceiling, the immense distance measuring our abasement. So great a fall proves great heights. Sweet certainty invaded me. “Bless you” was all I could say. (Updike 1986, p. 281)

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How should we read this section? A section that clearly plays a crucial role in the narrative. Does the villain simply enjoy his own evil acts? As Augustine enjoyed the forbidden fruit that he had stolen simply to do harm? Alternatively, shall we accept Lambert’s reflection on freedom and release as trustworthy, the main point of the story? How about the thoroughgoing ambivalence of this novel?

8  Interpretations The novel has been subject to lively discussions. We pick up only a few topics from the theological discussion. The American theologian, Frank G. Novak, Jr., defends a radical and critical interpretation of the novel’s character, Professor Lambert. Novak points emphatically to the fact that Updike’s Roger is a rewriting of Roger from The Scarlet Letter. Only he is even worse (Novak 2005). Novak sees the book as imbued with scenes of shame and stigma that characterize Hawthorne’s masterpiece. Novak writes page after page about this vile Professor Lambert, who is without hold on any kind of morality, tacky toward his wife (who is admittedly unfaithful herself), condescending toward his students, scornful toward minorities, exploitative, and manipulative. He highlights Lambert’s “vampire-­sadistic” attitudes and diagnoses him narcissistic. Novak seems able to graduate sins, as he tells us that Lambert’s wife Esther’s infidelity with Dale is a lesser sin than Lambert’s grave transgressions. “Roger has not allowed God to fill his inner, spiritual emptiness” (Novak 2005, p. 17). He nominates Lambert as “evil incarnate” (Novak 2005, p. 5). Such a person cannot be justified by an interpretation of Barth, Novak argues. Lambert’s approach has nothing religiously valuable; he merely destroys the instantaneous faith of innocent souls like Dale. Updike allegedly has written a subversive Barthian interpretation, which abuses and distorts points from early Barthian writings. That is what the book wants to show. Novak’s interpretation is a reaction to several previous interpretations, which rest their main point on the quoted sentences from Lambert’s abysmal fall. These are interpretations that, based on the fall, seek to interpret it dialectically, “So great a fall proves great heights” and “This was my proof of God’s existence.” Thus, the hidden God would reveal himself through the most profound fall, and human negativity should be the only way to acknowledge God. Novak, in contrast, seems to presuppose a secure connection between positive “religious values” and “morality.” It is

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beyond his perspective to see that Updike’s novel could precisely be an attack on such a connection. Updike has a point however in distinguishing strongly between common morality and faith in God by allowing Lambert to reflect on God as totaliter aliter (Updike 1986, p. 32). This will be the situation for Roger here and now. No doubt, this does not mean the acceptance of all kinds of amorality. Rather, it poses a distinction. “This is my proof of His Existence,” Lambert thinks as he lies in his own life’s mud, in the abyss, fallen into infidelity, even incest. To name this experience a “proof” of God’s existence implies, however, a reversal of negativity, a dialectic. Read in this way, the book stresses an integral part of Barth’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. It transgresses inherited frames of modern theology and reflects a provocative theological insight moving beyond the nineteenth century’s intimate connection of ethics and theology.

9   John Updike and His Convictions Finally, we arrive at the issue concerning the person John Updike and his personal convictions. What did the author think about Roger’s Version? Theologian Stephen H. Webb (1961–2016), who wrote several articles on Updike and who maintained an ongoing correspondence with him, not least about Roger’s Version, claimed that, Unlike many contemporary writers, who are pessimistic about the state of the world but optimistic about their ability to shape what their readers think about the world, Updike is often content to let things in themselves have their say. (Webb 2008, p. 584)

Updike lets things speak for themselves. In Webb’s words, this is a “strategy of omission” (Webb 2008, p. 585), which in turn is in line with Updike’s view of a dialectic Protestantism (Webb 2008, p.  589). Webb claims after Updike’s death that the problem with many interpretaters [sic] is that they misrecognize the person John Updike. […] The reason why critics […] marginalize Updike’s religious faith has to do with the content of his theological convictions, not the lack of them. For Updike, writing was a religious act. He thought the best way to be a

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Christian and a writer was to try to be a very good writer (while, at the same time, avoiding any claim to being a good Christian). He reservated [sic] his deepest faith not for America but for the world as he saw it, on the theological assumption that the ordinary and everyday—the most mundane element of human existence—are gifts from God. (Webb 2014, p. 2)

Reflecting on Updike’s so-called theological assumption,8 we can go even further than Stephen Webb by pointing to the last chapter of Roger’s Version. Here, Verna asks Roger if he regrets his infidelity. Lambert, however, denies this: “It helped me get ready for death” (Updike 1986, p. 320). What does mentioning death mean in this context? At first glance, the sentence seems to hint at a Freudian duality between Eros and Thanatos, sex and death (cf. Gerber 2019). Thus, death would be the opposite and necessary counterpart to eros. Another, more adequate, interpretation will point to the strange German phrase Todesweisheit (wisdom of death) that Barth picked up from Franz Overbeck around 1920 (Baark 2018, pp. 138–143; Koi 2016, p. 196). We see below a phrase and a line of thought which Updike no doubt knew from his intense reading of Barth’s early texts. For example, Barth in his Römerbrief asks: “Is there any other road where the unseen becomes visible […] except the narrow way of the ‘wisdom of death?’” (Barth 1933, p. 251).9 Thus, any possible knowledge of God, that is, when “the unseen becomes visible,” no matter what shape this might take, will appear mediated exclusively by negativity. In other words, the phrase acknowledges life’s finitude, carnality, sinfulness, and death. Barth pushes this line of thought overall in his early texts. In the following, I show that Updike hints at such thinking about the “wisdom of death” at the end of Roger’s Version. Having finished his Römerbrief in the fall of 1921, Barth delivered several lectures that are included in his book The Word of God and the Word of Man, published in German in 1924, translated into English for the first time in 1928, and published in several editions thereafter. The latest translation was rendered in 2011. This book captured John Updike’s attention in the 1950s and introduced him to Barth’s texts (note 2). It is the same book that Updike depicts fascinating his main character as a young vicar. This is also the book Professor Lambert years later seeks to find his way in discussion with the computer geek Dale. Furthermore, Barth’s mentioning of the three vias is part of the lecture, “The Problem of Ethics Today,” from September 1922 (Barth 2011, pp.  131–170). This lecture also includes some remarkable reflections on negativity and the wisdom of death:

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Because the immortal life of God is the true part of us, the fact that we must die reminds us so implacably of the sinful limits of our will to live. In this way, that which is above judgment appears in judgment, namely, God’s love. Forgiveness appears in death and the end of all things. In this way, God’s mercy finds the human precisely in his distance from God. (Barth 2011, p. 159)10

We may conclude that Updike (and his character Professor Lambert) did know this text very well. This insight is the obvious framework for an interpretation of Lambert’s fall. I take it to be conclusive for an interpretation of Lambert’s words: “It helped me get ready for death.” In talking about the wisdom of death, Barth exposes an unexpected existential freedom, God’s grace for the fallen human being. It is exclusively through such “wisdom,” Todesweisheit, that we as human beings may take the “most mundane element of everyday life” (Webb) as a gift of God: the world and our lives seen in the light of an “impossible” extra-­ mundane grace. All of this, without denying life’s carnality and finality. To what extent does Updike’s novel match Karl Barth’s thinking? Does Updike present the novel’s Rodger as a true “Barthian all the way”? (Updike 1986, p.  218). Alternatively, should Lambert’s Barthianism finally be evaluated as excessive? Webb was interested in these issues. He writes about his ongoing conversation with Updike: Several of his letters were in response to my rather persistent inquiry into whether Roger’s Version should be considered a Barthian novel or a novel that gradually turns into a critique of Barth’s theology. Updike resisted such a stark alternative, of course, but he did admit that it was both “a discussion of Barthianism and an arrival at its limits, so to speak.” (Webb 2014, p. 2)

Thus, Updike was aware of the wide range of possible readings of Barth’s texts. He did not simply propagate Roger as the true Barthian; rather, this Rodger will be a literary figure who tests—maybe even transgresses—the limits of Barth’s thought. Webb goes on: In another letter, he got to the heart of what drew him to Barth in the first place. “Barth has been a guide and comfort for me not only in his assertive fundamentalism but in his antinomianism [i.e., ‘the separation or even opposition of faith and common morality’ Webb 2008, p. 584],11 his lovely and tolerant acceptance of the wide world beyond the church walls. (Webb 2014, p. 2)

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Webb’s interpretation of Updike’s literary use of Barthian theology takes a turn, however, when he says that Updike [was] nearly medieval in his belief in the power of material objects to convey the sacred. Updike’s celebration of the everyday was not just rooted in a natural theology of the goodness of creation. It was entangled in what I would call the metaphysics of a Eucharistic realism. He believed that material objects could be revelatory if given the proper words. Writing was a profoundly transubstantial act. Updike himself wrote: “As to critics, it seems to be my rage to disappoint my theological friends by being not Christian enough, while I’m too Christian for Harold Bloom’s blessing. So be it.”12 (Webb 2014, p. 3)

Webb uses a medieval and Roman Catholic term in suggesting that for Updike writing was a “profoundly transubstantial act” and he compares it to “the metaphysics of Eucharistic realism.” These sentences look strange, and I cannot say whether Webb is right. Nevertheless, the thought fascinates. The thought provokes. Then, Webb’s interpretation will imply that a book like Roger’s Version is seen as theological beneath the surface, “nearly medieval.” If so, Webb reads Updike as an author in line with the Christian realistic tradition in depth. On such a reading, however, Updike moves beyond an ordinary dogmatic framework and language. Updike does not preach; he does not exercise dogmatic distinctions in his novels. Nonetheless, in his very framing of the story, through irony and metaphor, in narrating, he organizes perspectives and points that might serve other ends than just telling a catchy story. The work of the novel will be something else and something more. It is not Updike personally, but Updike’s novels, which may point dialectically to the true mystery of human existence in this world. Words do the work. In narrating, they will hint at a mystery that traditionally has been resolved by theologians as transubstantiation and the mystery of the hidden God. Which would mean the renewing of this world in and through God’s own revelation. Thus, Roger’s Version has its location betwixt and between (Turner 1964) the two poles, not enough—and too much: not enough theology— too much daring. The book points out a field of possible readings that the reader should seriously consider. It does not, however, posit a straightforward thesis. As to dogmatics this will be a challenge as well. This is not a new challenge. If anyone finds a point of comparison here with Barth’s writing in Der Römerbrief, it might be intended!

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Notes 1. Rogers Version was translated into Danish with the playful title Gud og vær mand 1987. The Danish title Gud og vær mand plays with the word “vær”: as it is written it means “be” (as an imperative): “God and be a man.” However, “vær” phonetically also comes close to “hver” which means “every”: “God and every man.” Generally, on Karl Barth and the reception of his early writings in Denmark, see Mikkelsen (2008) and Nielsen (2010, 2012). 2. In an interview with Judith Moore in 1996 Updike tells about his reading in the 1950s: “Karl Barth was my hero among theologians.” […] “The first book I read was a collection of sermons and essays called The Word of God and the Word of Man. I think I just saw it on a shelf in a bookstore and bought it.” […] “And then I wrote a rather long review of a rather short book by Barth, called Search and Faith of Understanding. It was about the medieval theologian Anselm who devised the ontological proof of God’s existence. I read that and reviewed it, and of course it was highly unusual for the New Yorker to run theology reviews.” Moore (1996). 3. Most interpreters situate the novel in Boston, although the text does not mention Boston. 4. Cf. Updike’s disputed statement: While Tillich writes with “admirable intelligence … the net effect [of his thought] is one of ambiguity, even futility—as if the theologian were trying to revivify the Christian corpse with transfusions of Greek humanism, German metaphysics, and psychoanalytical theory. Terms like ‘grace’ and ‘Will of God’ walk through these pages [i.e., the pages of Tillich’s book Morality & Beyond ] as bloodless ghosts, transparent against the milky background of ‘beyond’ and ‘being’ that Tillich, God forbid, would confuse with the Christian faith.” John Updike, Assorted Prose (London: Andre Deutsch, 1965), 183, quoted from https://jasongoroncy.com/2011/07/25/john-­updike-­on-­paul-­ tillich/ July 16, 2022. 5. Latin for “totally different.” Cf. Barth (1922, pp. 373/255). 6. The novel refers to Barth’s dictum: “There is no way from us to God—not even via negativa not even a via dialectica nor paradoxa. The god [sic] who stood at the end of some human way—even of this way—would not be God” Barth (1928, p. 177); German: “Es gibt keinen Weg zu Gott von uns aus, auch keine via negativa, auch keine via dialectica oder paradoxa. Der Gott, der am Ende eines menschlichen Weges stünde, wäre, auch wenn es sich um diesen Weg handelte, schon darum nicht Gott” (Barth 1924, pp.  372/153). Cf. Barth’s three “ways”—the dogmatic way, the critical way and the dialectical way (Barth 1924, pp. 167–172).

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7. The sentence belongs to a broader line of thought about eschatology: “Our hope for the future has to do with this life of ours. This life is not left behind or given up. It was and is and also will be lived before him [sc. God]. Man is man in his whole life span, from baby to old man, and this man is the object of the resurrection. All of him is flesh and by nature ought to perish. That is what we truly deserve. But that is not what happens. Now this whole life in its temporality is allowed rather to be ‘conformed’ to the glorious life of Christ. That which is nothing may, for the sake of Jesus Christ, now be something. God will say yes to us, and no longer is there any bargaining involved in this yes. The resurrection has nothing to do with education and pedagogics, thank God” ([author’s italics] Barth 1964, pp. 84–85). German: “Das Alles ist Fleisch und müsste eigentlich verderben” (Barth 1948, p. 82). 8. “While Updike has repeatedly expressed his views on religious and theological questions, his critics continue to interpret his work according to theories, religio-ethical systems, and ontologies he categorically rejects and his fiction does not embody. Updike’s faith is Christian, but it is one to which many of the assumptions about the Christian perspective do not apply—especially those which link Christian faith with an absolute and divinely ordered morality” (Schopen 1978, p. 523). 9. “Welchen andern Weg zur Anschaulichkeit des Unanschaulichen [i.e. God] können wir denn als Menschen […] gehen als den schmalen Weg der ‘Todesweisheit’?” (Röm 2, 397/234). 10. The original German text is worth noting: “Weil das unsterbliche Leben Gottes unser wahres Teil ist, darum erinnert uns unser Sterbenmüssen so unerbittlich an die sündige Beschränktheit unsres Lebenwollens. So erscheint im Gericht das, was über dem Gericht ist, Gottes Liebe, in der Erkenntnis der Sünde die Vergebung, im Tod und Ende aller Dinge der Anfang des neuen, des ursprünglichen Lebens. So findet den Menschen gerade in seiner Gottesferne Gottes Barmherzigkeit” (Barth 1924, p. 147). 11. Generally, Barth researchers do not see Barth being neither fundamentalist nor antinominalist. 12. Over the years a harsh critique from the literary right and left met Updike. The literary critic Harold Bloom framed a not just friendly but often quoted sentence about Updike’s being “a minor novelist with a major style.” Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times, Feb 17, 2009 (shortly after Updike’s death https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-­xpm-­2009-­feb-­17-­ et-­updike17-­story.html (seen July 13, 2022); cf. Schiff (1995, p. 546)).

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References Baark, Sigurd. 2018. The Affirmation of Reason. On Karl Barth’s Speculative Theology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Barth, Karl. 1922. Der Römerbrief. München: Christian Kaiser. New edition: Barth, Karl. 2010. Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) II. Akademische Werke. Gesamtausgabe. Zürich: TVZ. (Quoted in txt 2010 ed./1922 ed.) English edition: Barth, K. 1933. The Epistle to the Romans (trans: Hoskyns, E. C.). London: Oxford University Press. ———. 1924. Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. München: Christian Kaiser. English edition: Barth, Karl. 1928. The Word of God and the Word of Man. Translated by D.  Horton. Minnesota: Pilgrim Press. New English edition: Barth, Karl. 2011. The Word of God and Theology. Translated by A.  Marga. New York: T & T Clark International. ———. 1948. Die christliche Lehre nach dem Heidelberger Katechismus. Evangelischer Verlag. English edition: 1964. Learning Jesus Christ through the Heidelberg Cathechism. Other Writings. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Gerber, Timofei. 2019. Eros and Thanatos: Freud’s Two Fundamental Drives. Epoché. Philosophy Monthly. Issue #20 February 2019. Accessed 16 July 2022. https://epochemagazine.org/20/eros-­and-­thanatos-­freuds-­two-­fundamental­drives/. von Harnack, Adolf. 1924. Marcion, das Evangelium vom fremden Gott: Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Hayat, Mazhar, Saira Akhter, and Saima Nazir. 2015. Analysis of Intertextual Correspondence in Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and John Updike’s The Scarlet Letter Trilogy. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences 2015 (2). University of Peshawar. Accessed 16 July 2022. https://www.tehqeeqat.org/english/articleDetails/18038. Jüngel, Eberhard. 2005. Provozierende Theologie. Zur theologischen Existenz Karl Barths (1921–1935). In Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935) Aufbruch—Klärung—Widerstand, eds. M.  Beintker, C.  Link, and M. Trowitzsch. Zürich: TVZ, pp. 41–55. van der Koi, Cornelius. 2016. Zweiter Römerbrief. In Barth Handbuch, ed. Michael Beintker, 195–200. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Link, Christian. 2005. Bleibende Einsichten von Tambach. In Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935) Aufbruch—Klärung—Widerstand, ed. M. Beintker, C. Link, and M. Trowitzsch, 333–346. Zürich: TVZ. Mikkelsen, Hans Vium. 2008. Barth im Spiegel der dänischen Theologie. In Karl Barths Theologie als europäisches Ereignis, ed. Martin Leiner and Michael Trowitzsch, 54–78. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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Moore, Judith. 1996. John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies. New  Yorker’s Theological Writer Takes to Patterson, New Jersey. In San Diego reader, Pub. Date Feb 29, 1996. Accessed 15 July 2022. https://www.sandiegoreader. com/news/1996/feb/29/john-­updikes-­beauty-­lilies/. Nielsen, Bent Flemming. 2010. Beten—und Kanonen kaufen. Evangelium und Gesetz im Zusammenhang von KD II/2 (§§ 36–39). In Karl Barth im europäischen Zeitgeschehen (1935–1959). Widerstand—Bewährung— Orientierung: Beiträge zum Internationalen Symposion vom 1. bis 4. Mai 2008 in der Johannes a Lasco Bibliotek Emden, ed. Michael Beintker, Christian Link, and Michael Trowitzsch, 109–136. Zürich: TVZ. ———. 2012. Theology as Liturgy? The Practical Dimension of Karl Barth’s Thinking. In Dogmatics after Barth: Facing Challenges in Church, Society and Academy, ed. G.  Thomas, R.H.R.  Brouwer, and B.  McCormack, 67–80. Leipzig: Independent Publishing Platform. ———. 2016. Theologie als kritische Wissenschaft. In Barth Handbuch, ed. Michael Beintker, 410–416. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Novak, Frank G., Jr. 2005. The Satanic Personality in Updike’s “Roger’s Version”. Christianity and Literature 55 (1): 3–26. Schiff, James A. 1992. Updike’s Scarlet Letter Trilogy: Recasting an American Myth. Studies in American Fiction 20 (1, Spring): 17–31. ———. 1995. Updike Ignored: The Contemporary Independent Critic. American Literature 67 (3, Sep.): 531–552. Schopen, Bernhard A. 1978. Faith, Morality, and the Novels of John Updike. Twentieth century Literature 24 (4): 523–535. Turner, Victor. 1964. ‘Betwixt and Between’: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage. The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion, 4–20. Updike, John. 1965. Faith in Search of Understanding. In Assorted Prose, ed. J. Updike, 158–166. New York: Knopf. ———. 1986. Roger’s Version. New  York: Alfred A.  Knopf. Danish edition: Updike, J. 1987. Gud og vær mand (trans: Bredsdorff, J.) Viby: Centrum. Webb, Stephen H. 2008. John Updike and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism. Christianity and Literature 57 (4, Summer): 583–593. ———. 2014. John Updike the Blogger. Reading Karl Barth with John Updike. In: First Things 8.5.14. Accessed 16 July 2022. https://www.firstthings.com/ web-­exclusives/2014/08/john-­updike-­the-­blogger.

CHAPTER 11

“Theology After Gulag, Bucha, and Beyond”: How Can Karl Barth’s Theology Contribute to Reorientation in the Contemporary European Crisis? A Post-Soviet Case Katya Tolstaya

In my contribution, I will link Karl Barth’s perception of religion and ideology to the ideologization of religion as a persistent problem of post-­ Soviet contexts.1 Russia’s war against Ukraine and the accompanying ideological narratives in which religion is abused have reinforced the need to scrutinize conflations of religion and ideology.2 My case study is intended as a contribution to work toward a reliable theology in times of turmoil, paving the way for a theology after this new war in Europe. My discussion regards only Barth’s notion of ideology and its surplus value for contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology. In its stress on God’s transcendence, Karl Barth’s theology offers one of the most impressive attempts to counter conflations between religion and ideology.

K. Tolstaya (*) Department of Theology, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Svinth-Værge Põder, S. Baark (eds.), Crisis and Reorientation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27677-4_11

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I will explain my use of the notion of ideology (and indeed, religion) in Sect. 1.2. Before entering the case study, though, a general word on the Christian theological notion of transcendence is required. The basic Christian understanding of transcendence is that one can speak of God only in negative terms, transcendence being one of the most important “negative” attributes of God. Transcendence is a limit term, signifying that which, by definition, is indefinable or “wholly unknown and unknowable” (Le Poidevin 2010, p. xiii). In this way, Christian dogmatics speak of God’s negative attributes (“unknowable,” “infinite,” “incomprehensible,” “impeccable,” “non-being,” etc.). All these negative attributes try to describe that God is unknowable in essence and eludes any human experience or language. Moreover, Christian theology understands God as absolutely transcendent, transcendence being the most important umbrella term for all these negative attributes of God. It is only from the “negative” understanding that theologians attempt to formulate a “positive” common ground of an affirmative or positive (cataphatic) theology. As to positive attributes, we speak of God’s love, omnipresence, and so on. The umbrella term for the positive attributes is God’s immanence. God’s immanence is still by definition from beyond, eluding our full understanding. It is only from the interchange with negative language about God, of course, that positive or cataphatic theology has taken shape in ecclesial, dogmatic, and doctrinal language. It is on this edge between negative and positive theology where theological speaking becomes vulnerable and prone to slipping into ideology. For example, when theologians implicitly or explicitly claim to comprehend or recognize divine presence in our worldly matters and institutions and nations.3 Such a conflation of religion and ideology is exactly a sore spot in post-Soviet Russia, where church and state use each other for their own (geo-)political agendas and where the church supplies theological grounds for this conflation.4 As such, prior to the war, the Russian Orthodox Church had failed to offer a reliable theology which could help to overcome the traumas of 74 years of communist oppression and state atheism.5 Hence, it now fails to offer a reliable theology to face the Kremlin’s aggression and war crimes in Ukraine. Strikingly, such a conflation of religion and ideology was precisely a point of criticism from the very beginning of Karl Barth’s work as pastor and theologian. His theology maintains its relevance and significance in different contexts where religion and ideology become conflated due to

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his radical juxtaposition of God’s incommensurability (as the ganz Andere) and human existence, history, and culture. Barth strongly criticized liberal theology and cultural Protestantism on this point during the time of his work on the second edition of his commentary on Paul’s The Epistle to the Romans (Barth 2010, in text henceforth Romans II). His criticism is directly related to his concept of God and to his theological anthropology. In the face of the resurgence of religion and the overwhelming victory of propaganda in Russia, what can we gain from Karl Barth’s theology? But also, what are the pitfalls for theologians that we can learn to avoid? To answer these questions, I start with a few introductory remarks on the context of what I call “Theology after Gulag, Bucha and beyond”: the legacy of dehumanization and the conflation of religion and ideology in countries of the former Soviet Union, primarily in Russia. I proceed with a sketch of the background of Barth’s response to the theological ideologization of religion during World War I (WWI): the stress on God’s transcendence. Then, I aim to show that Barth’s theology itself contains inconsistencies in his treatment of God’s transcendence. Barth’s theology, while showing a strong sensitivity for ideological distortion on the one hand, tends to lead him to a loss of the actual “substance” of God’s transcendence on the other. Briefly stated, Barth seems himself to confuse his concept of God with God. Strikingly, this theological observation has a methodological (hermeneutical) backdrop: it is in the process of theologizing that Barth mistakes his concept of God (epistemology) for God Himself (ontics). Finally, I will outline further directions for disentangling religion and ideology. Eastern orthodox theology has surplus value for the disentanglement of religion and ideology. I will therefore point to Orthodox theological notions that can help in acknowledging transcendence without conceptualizing it.

1   “D’où parlez-vous?” (Ricoeur)—From Where Do I Speak? Developing a Theology After Gulag With the question “D’où parlez-vous?” I am referring to Paul Ricoeur’s standard question to his philosophy students in Paris in the 1970s.6 This question equally applies to theologians. After all, in the twenty-first century there is no doing theology from an ivory tower.

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My interest in the conflation of religion and ideology is embedded in my project of developing the new research field of interdisciplinary and interreligious “Theology after Gulag, Bucha and beyond.” This project aims to introduce academic theology, and more specifically systematic theology, in the post-atheist, post-Soviet contexts. Overall, these contexts are characterized by a mass return of religion after decennia (74 years in Russia) of state atheism and religious persecution. At the same time, being educated academically in the protestant Netherlands and affiliated full-­ time with the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, I am challenged every day by teaching academic theology in one of the most post-modern, secularized societies. In my different roles as theologian, university professor with a Chair of Theology and Religion in Post-Trauma Societies, and vice-dean at my faculty, I am guided by the question: “How to do reliable theology in the twenty-first century?” To show that this is not just a fancy rhetorical question or figure of speech, let me qualify the term “reliable.” 1.1   The Soviet Legacy: Dehumanization I will do so by referring to a phenomenon which can be summarized with the term “dehumanization.” Dehumanization is, of course, a characteristic of any situation of oppression. The dehumanization in the Soviet Union specifically consisted of a structural disdain for human life and dignity. The spectrum of dehumanization stretched from small things like the hour-long lines for food supplies in the 1970s to systematic issues like religious and ethnic persecution under Stalin. The 2015 Nobel Prize winner, Svetlana Alexievich, has described this spectrum with shocking clarity in her five books on Soviet realities (Alexievich 2016a, b, c, 2017, 2019). The extreme form of dehumanization was encountered in the Gulag.7 According to the testimony of writer and Gulag survivor, Varlam Shalamov, in the situation of extreme exhaustion in the Gulag “nothing human was left to a human being—only mistrust, rage and lies” (Shalamov 1994, p. 20). The ethical norm which applies in this situation is: “worse deeds exist than eating human flesh.”8 Perhaps the most terrifying lesson of testimonies of extreme dehumanization is that it involves anyone, regardless of background, social, educational, or any other condition. While dehumanization is unconditional, it is also universal. It occurred not only in the Gulag, but it can also be encountered in any place and at

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any time where human beings are exposed to extreme exhaustion. That means it happens at this very moment. Dehumanization automatically leads to the question that connects theology with the other humanities: “[W]hat does it mean to be human?” From this focus it may be clear why the question “How to do reliable theology in the 21st century?” is not just a rhetorical one. This notion of “reliability” has been brought in by Varlam Shalamov. He explicitly sets reliability as a standard for reflection. Shalamov is writing what he calls “the prose of the future,” the only criterion of which is “reliability”: “[P]rose of the future demands something different. Not the writers will talk, but men of profession who possess the writer’s gift. And they will tell only about what they know, what they saw. Reliability—this is the power of literature of the future.”9 If reliability is a criterion for literature, it is even more so for theology. Extreme dehumanization is a challenge for theological anthropology, but, for example, also for classical Christology, and for theology proper, especially for the notion of imago Dei, as in extreme dehumanization the image of God seems to disappear in man. After the confrontation with extreme dehumanization, it takes, therefore, much to be able to say, “See the Man (Ecce Homo),” or to repeat after Barth “God is God” and to be reliable. Striving for reliability can be found in what Catholic political theologian Jürgen Manemann, in his attempt to do theology after Auschwitz, calls the creation of an “anamnestic culture, which keeps track of the forgotten victims” (Manemann 2002). In Russia we can find the practical application of an attempt of an anamnestic culture that seeks to overcome the tension between the individual and the general in the practice of naming the Gulag victims by name during the annual action of the Memorial Society “Returned Names” which, since 1991, has taken place on the Day of Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repressions (30 October). Because corporate commemoration risks obscuring the suffering of individual human beings, the singularity of any suffering is an important aspect for developing a reliable Theology after Gulag and beyond. Another aspect of a reliable Theology after Gulag and beyond is being alert to the methodological conundrums in regard of one’s own theological position and of the interplay between theology and the socio-political context in which it is done. In the next paragraph I will sketch the legacy of the religion-ideology conflation as a specific methodological issue to focus in the following paragraphs on the issue of awareness of our methodological position on the example of Karl Barth’s theology.

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1.2   The Soviet Legacy: Conflation of Religion and Ideology The “dehumanizing” impact of Soviet ideology was devastating not only in the Gulag camps, but ideology also impacted and continues to have an impact on all strata of everyday social life.10 This also applies to the current war: a simple Google search for “война в Украине дегуманизация” (“war in Ukraine dehumanization”) currently provides hundreds of results and visual data. The main background of dehumanization in the Soviet Union is its ideological project to create the ideal “Soviet man.” Soviet ideologization began with a conflation of religion and ideology in twisting Marx’s theorem: “[I]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”11 In Soviet real life ideology determined both man’s consciousness and “being,” perception of reality and reality itself, spirit and matter. It operated with quasi-religious narratives like the Lenin cult and social rituals such as mass demonstrations and festivals. While everyday life was “desecrated” in all its dimensions, millions were made to believe they lived in the world’s best and liberated country.12 In this way, ideology substituted religion. After perestroika, the pressure of ideology waned, and people became more or less free to determine their “being” and perception of reality. But politically declared freedom does not free you from your legacy. Freeing oneself from ideology requires deep and systematic societal reflection. At least in Russia such reflection has never emerged as a societal movement. Russia has never distanced itself from its past (the USSR), and the institutional heirs of the “perpetrators”—the security forces—are still in power. In Russia in the 1990s there have been attempts to stimulate public debate about Soviet crimes and commemoration of the victims. Some attempts came from “liberal” Orthodox representatives who appealed to theological notions such as guilt, repentance, and reconciliation. Since the reinforcement of Putin’s regime from the 2000s onward, however, the past, rather than being processed, is increasingly being ideologized and “rewritten” for political purposes. Sophisticated Soviet ideological mechanisms—patriotism, propaganda, myth-creation, substitution—have been adapted to the new political demands of the Kremlin and continue to permeate society, conditioning popular responses to past and present and ascribing “sacral” status to human constructs like nation, State, and Church. Accompanied by political persecutions of any

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initiative for reflection by the free media and independent NGOs, this culminated in mass support for the war in Ukraine. Obviously, the development of the events and narratives during the Kremlin’s “special operation” in Ukraine shows a total bankruptcy of anything like a coherent Kremlin ideology. Yet there are several Kremlin war ideologies that are framed in religious narratives, the most prominent of which is the narrative of Russkii Mir (“Russian World”).13 It has led to condemnations of the Kremlin and patriarch Kirill by international secular and religious authorities and to the perception of the Russian war in Ukraine as a metaphysical war.14 The shift in patriarch Kirill’s ideology, from “Russkii Mir” to “Holy Rus,” in turn testifies to the absence of any coherent line of thought also on this side. This ideology is reinforced by the Russian Orthodox Church’s prominent socio-political role and its symphony with the Kremlin political elites that employ “Orthodoxy” as an ideological tool. The Russian Orthodox Church is contributing to the state’s sacralization of patriotic ideology, for the past decade already, framing the war in Ukraine as analogous to World War II (WWII) as a “Holy War”15 and equating Ukrainian “fascists” with German fascists.16 This ideological climate makes for misrepresenting historical facts and distorting ecclesial and theological concepts in any questions of responsibility and guilt in the current war. In this conflation of theology and ideology patriarch Kirill can promise forgiveness of sins to any Russian soldier who perishes in Ukraine.17 On another occasion the patriarch, by referring to the authority of the sanctified princes Daniel of Moscow and Alexander Nevsky, whose saintly protection “guarantees that a country with such leadership will never commit war crimes,” can implicitly deny the Russian war crimes and call his flock to pray for Putin. Immediately after that, he proceeds with a subtle conflation of the previous saints with Putin: “Because if the person at the head of the Fatherland, at the head of the Army, is holy, or, maybe, even not holy, but a believer, an Orthodox, a baptized one, who is aware of his responsibility before God, the Church, the country, in this case, the country is guaranteed from all kinds of military adventures, the country can be sure that the sword at its hip will be taken out of its scabbard only when it is ethically, morally and spiritually justified.”18 In the process of such a conflation of religion and ideology and justification of the war, the so-called memory wars contribute to the military war (see, e.g., Adler 2018); de facto, Russian Orthodoxy is instrumentalized and the ROC’s socio-political capital exploited.19 In the end,

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religion is further ideologized, generating a vicious circle. This is how the unprocessed past continues to be a cause of war. It would, perhaps, not be difficult to make political statements on the present state of affairs, nor to give endless more examples. But the question that occupies us here is more intricate: how can one distinguish religion from the current political ideologies without framing “religion” again in non-religious—which in the end means ideological—terms? In other words, how to do reliable theology, and also, how is religion not ideology? To tackle this last question, I will now turn to Barth to see how he disentangles the religion-ideology conflation. 1.3   How Is Religion Not Ideology? If we are to qualify the term religion, we can proceed by first clarifying the term ideology. With Evert van der Zweerde we can notice that “[t]he concept of ideology has a long history, in the course of which strongly different conceptions have been elaborated.”20 It even would be an understatement if one recalls 16 definitions of the concept of “ideology” in the classical work of Terry Eagleton (Eagleton 1991, pp. 1–2). As here we are interested in surplus value of Karl Barth’s distinction of theology and ideology for contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology, I will make a rough own distinction between four usages. Firstly, as a negative Marxist term. For Marx and Engels ideology consisted in “a false consciousness” formed in the interests of the ruling class: “The thoughts of the ruling class are the dominant thoughts in every epoch (…).”21 The concept of ideology as a false consciousness became commonplace in Marxist thought. According to this concept ideology is a distortion of reality, aimed at the implanting of the interests of the ruling class (Eagleton 1991, pp. 43–45; cf. 83). However, under Lenin the “ideology of revolution” has become a positive notion. Therefore, the second usage is as a positive Soviet self-­ description. Raymond Williams refers to this different understanding of ideology not “as mere illusion”: “In fact, in the last century, this sense of ideology as the set of ideas which arise from a given set of material interests or, more broadly, from a definite class or group, has been at least as widely used as the sense of ideology as illusion. Moreover, each sense has been used, at times very confusingly, within the Marxist tradition” (Williams 1985, p. 153). This positive usage is not too surprising as this ideology is perceived as the ideology of the ruling class, the proletariat. It

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is an instrument to realize the dictatorship of this ruling class, achieving the victory of socialism in one country. “Ideology means here a set of beliefs which coheres and inspires a specific group or class in the pursuit of political interests judged to be desirable. It is then often in effect synonymous with the positive sense of ‘class consciousness’” (Eagleton 1991, pp. 43–45; cf. 83). In the Soviet Union Marxism-Leninism was the state ideology, there were departments for ideology, ideology (historical materialism) was a mandatory academic discipline, and there was an Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. With the proletariat ruling, its ideology and propaganda are perceived not as distorting reality, but rather both are used for total mind control. By steering the perception of reality, a much more complex distortion results.22 Thirdly, ideology can be defined in a neutral sense, trying to escape oversimplifications, as, for example, by the authors of the volume Ideologies of Globalism: “patterned clusters of normatively-imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations, carrying claims to social truth—as, for example, expressed in liberalism, conservatism, and socialism” (James and Steger 2010, p. xii). This approach is in line with a difference between the critical perception of the role of ideology as false (mythologizing or distorted) consciousness that requires scrutinizing epistemological truth-claims in the early Marx, Georg Lukács, and Frankfurter Schule on the one hand, and the turn to a concrete sociological and empirical approach to ideology in elaborating heuristics for analyzing concrete ideological processes and sociological functions of ideas, beliefs, and so on as, for example, in Althusser on the other. This difference can be shortly described as a shift from epistemologically to sociologically and empirically informed studies and material practices. Importantly also is that, differently to mainstream Marxism that perceives ideology as “false consciousness,” the link to material practices allows Althusser and his followers for a perception of ideology as a “productive force” (see Althusser 2020 (e-book), p. 16 ff.). In this regard, Eagleton speaks of: two of the mainstream traditions we find inscribed within the term. Roughly speaking, one central lineage, from Hegel and Marx to Georg Lukacs and some later Marxist thinkers, has been much preoccupied with ideas of true and false cognition, with ideology as illusion, distortion and mystification; whereas an alternative tradition of thought has been less epistemological than sociological, concerned more with the function of ideas within social

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life than with their reality or unreality. (Eagleton 1991, pp. 2–3. See also Hanninen and Paldan 1983)

Similarly, the editors of the volume Rethinking Ideology in the Age of Global Discontent are of the opinion: “Overall, and paradoxically, ideology can be seen either ‘as the very repository of prejudice and obfuscation’ [Giddens 1991, p. 21] or else a programmatic template for the good society, however understood” (Axford et al. 2019, p. 2). Today this neutral perception of “ideologies” is, for example, relevant in the context of debates on globalization, nationalism, and multicultural and multireligious society-building. The fourth usage of the notion of ideology, which is relevant to this chapter, is as a negative theological term. Literature research on the typology of ideology has not provided me with any discussion of this sort, but it is exactly what I encounter in Karl Barth’s approach to the issue of religion and ideology. I will specify this application of ideology from an allusion to Marx, who claimed the proletariat was alienated from the means of production and therefore a revolution had to free the proletariat.23 Analogously, Soviet ideology can be perceived as an alienation of an idea of the divine or transcendence from its original object, that is, from God. As it was the case with the appropriation of the means of production in the Soviet self-description, this alienation of the idea of transcendence from God meant ascribing transcendent features to earthly phenomena, such as the party and the communist leaders Lenin and later Stalin. This is how Soviet ideology became a productive force, by mimicry. Viewing ideology as alienation from God (and, theologically speaking, as an acknowledgment of God’s transcendence) provides a straightforward answer to ongoing scholarly debates about whether Communism (like fascism and Nazism) can be considered a “political religion”: these are not religion, because they are not about the divine or transcendent.24 Assuming that “there are two principal approaches to defining religion: the substantive (what religion is) and the functional (what religion does)” (Slezkine 2017, p. 73), then, as indicated above, Barth’s theology in its prioritization of the “substantive” aspect for explaining its functional aspect is specifically suited for the criticism of this fourth kind of ideology. In what follows, I will first introduce some of the theological-historical backgrounds and then highlight Karl Barth’s main argument against ideology. I will concentrate on the conflation of religion and ideology by tackling two questions: How can Karl Barth’s theology contribute to

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overcoming this conflation? And, how can Barth help explore Eastern Orthodoxy’s own theological resources for overcoming the Soviet legacy?25

2  Karl Barth’s Break with Liberal Theology: Reasons and Remedy 2.1   Conflation of Religion and Ideology in Liberal Theology In his theology Barth was strongly spurned by the crises of WWI and of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Barth studied theology in Germany with famous theologians of that time, most notably Wilhelm Herrmann and Adolf von Harnack. Precisely the conflation of religion and ideology, or “the collusion of mainstream theology with the ideology of war” (Webster 2006, p. 3), was one of the main reasons for Barth to break with the established liberal theology of his teachers in Germany, which was of great influence also in Switzerland. The first traces of Barth’s inconvenience with this theology can be found in his correspondence and sermons from the early 1910s onward. There is a well-known anecdote, recounted by Barth himself, that the actual impetus for his break with liberal theology was the 1914 Manifesto of 93 German intellectuals in response to the outbreak of WWI. The Manifesto justified the German invasion of Belgium and denied the war crimes committed in Belgium. In his recollections of this Manifesto, Barth himself mentions the conflation of religion and ideology as the stumbling block. He wrote two similar recollections, one in the 1957 volume Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth Century, and the other in the 1968 Afterword to the Schleiermacher-Selection. I quote from the latter: And then the First World War broke out and brought (…) the horrible manifesto of the 93 German intellectuals, who before the entire world identified themselves with the war politics of Emperor William II. (…) And with horror I had to find included among those who had signed the names of almost all of my German teachers (with the honorable exception of Martin Rade!). This, in addition to what German theologians made us read elsewhere, shook the foundations of an entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics and preaching which until then I had thought to be basically reliable.26

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In fact, only three of Barth’s teachers—Adolf von Harnack, Adolf Schlatter, and Wilhelm Herrmann—signed the Manifesto. More importantly, in this quote we clearly see that, already in the early years, it was the reliability of theology and Christian faith that was at stake for Barth. On 31 August 1914 in a letter to Martin Rade, editor of the important journal Die Christliche Welt (“The Christian World”), who, as we saw, did not sign the Manifesto, Barth summed up his reaction to a number of contributions in the wake of the war declaration: Is there at this very moment, if one would not prefer to be silent and not speak, anything else to be said than ‘repentance’? Yes! you say, and you let the angels in heaven rejoice over the German mobilisation, let German women pray their war prayers with drumbeat, let Fritz Philippi [a German evangelical pastor and writer, K.T.] speak of a holy war (…), make Paul an advocate of a religion of the fatherland (…) and—this disturbs me the most—you reprint Luther’s booklet on the war, which I must admit, in this context (…), with its mixture of naivety and sophistics simply turns my stomach.27

The Manifesto and publications such as those Barth refers to reflect the spirit of sacralization of the nation, something Barth disapproved of his entire life. Such a sacralization of a nation is no other than ideological alienation from real transcendence which I briefly addressed earlier. Let me illustrate this disapproval on another anecdote, about Barth’s encounter with the then well-known German liberal politician and Protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann in 1915. When Barth heard Naumann say: “Now we can see how well religion can be used for the purpose of war”, Barth replied: “What are you saying? Use religion? May one, can one do that?” Barth’s biographer, Eberhard Busch, notes that during this meeting Barth had a “PASSIONATE argument” with Naumann when he heard the latter saying “All religion is right for us … whether it is called the Salvation Army or Islam, provided that it helps us to hold out through the war” (Busch 1976, p. 84; 96–97.) As one scholar put it: “For Barth this ‘selling out’ to German nationalism and militarism (…) was a sign of the bankruptcy of ‘liberal’ German theology, which became a strong ‘push factor’ that moved him to seek a new theological approach” (Kritzinger 2007, p. 1667).

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2.2   Ideology Then and Now: Immanent Concept of God? In many ways (to allow for a truism) our age of post-truths is hardly different from Barth’s age, and we obviously have not learned enough from the great catastrophes of both World Wars and other disasters of the last century. We find a similar mode of ideologizing religion among conservative groups all over the world in the identification of nations as carriers of “traditional values,” from the US to Eastern Europe to Afghanistan. Undoubtedly Barth would have had the same reaction as against Naumann, had he heard the speeches of many current religious leaders, for example those of Russian Orthodox hierarchs, primarily Patriarch Kirill. These speeches all appear as varieties of theological immanentism, not unakin to nineteenth-century liberal theology with its understanding of God’s presence and activity in the progress of history, in culture, and in religious experience, an understanding that led some German theologians to the identification of God with nation. Around 1900, similar voices of theological immanentism were prominent in Russia as well. Just compare a statement by Adolf von Harnack: “Every German is Germany; Germany is in every German”28 with an utterance often ascribed to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “To be Russian is to be Orthodox.”29 Does not Dostoevsky sound even more explicit? Is Barth right and does an immanent concept of God indeed allow for an easier identification of God and man or world? I will turn to the Orthodox concept of God at the end, for now stating that Russian Orthodox thought indeed has a tradition of theological immanentism that prepared the soil for the Soviet and post-Soviet conflation of religion and ideology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 2.3   How to Do Reliable Theology: The Problem of Identification In breaking with theological immanentism, the belief in cultural progress, and religious experience, Barth and other dialectical theologians showed their reluctance toward what in the Protestant churches is called the “problem of identification.” This problem presents itself when an immanent concept of God leads individual Christians or churches to view their theology as the absolute truth or pass off their cause as God’s cause. The famous Dutch theologian Oepke Noordmans, for example, in a sermon in 1921 opposed “het euvel van de vereenzelviging,” the “evil of identification,” “in which for many the Christian principle became more or less the same as a political principle” (Noordmans 1990, p. 443).

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For Barth, the God of the Bible is radically opposed to history and modernity. Barth broke with the liberal view that the history of European civilization is the blueprint of the New Testament expectation of the kingdom of God. 2.4   Barth’s Remedy: God’s Transcendence (“God is God”) In his critique of immanentism and identification, Barth regarded false religion as “projection” and “surrogate” (cf. Reeling Brouwer 1988, p. 279). Here a couple of words about the distinction between theology and religion in Barth are apt. Barth seems not to make an explicit distinction himself, and theology to him is in the first place a discipline and its ecclesial application, while religion is a broader cultural-historical phenomenon. Yet already in his 1919 Tambach lecture “The Christian in Society” (Barth 2012, pp. 581–624, cf. 574; 642) and even more expressly in Romans II, it is possible to discern such a difference. Religion has a critical function to ensure that neither a Christian believer nor a Christian theology ever loses the concentration on God. Tom Greggs notices in this regard: “Barth’s account of the category of religion is a theological (or perhaps more accurately, a Christological) appropriation of the critique of religion as applied to Christianity, and not to the other religions.”30 Once it loses its only dominant—God—a Christian theology becomes ideology. He posits this lapidary in Romans II: “Whenever men ‘adopt the point of view of God’; whenever He is not everything and they nothing; whenever they desire to be and to do something in co-operation with Him; then, however stimulating their ideas, however noble their actions, God becomes—a notion [‘Gott’ ist eben Ideologie]” (Barth 1968b, pp. 73–74; Barth 2010, p. 107, cf. 175–176). Religion draws its critical function from God, and not from culture or art or whatever human notion or occupation.31 As to the early Barth, religion has a dialectical function. As Tom Greggs observes: The purpose of Christianity qua religion (…), is to lead people to its own nonsense which directs people back to grace. (…) Barth’s negativity about religion is always checked by its capacity to function in leading people to Christ. Thus, Barth’s approach to religion is never fully negative. He writes: ‘If religion is nebulous and lacking in security, so also is everything which is exalted to oppose religion. Anti-religious negation has no advantage over the affirmations of religion. To destroy temples is not better than to build them’

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(Barth 1968b, p. 136). The critique of religion is—in Romans—firmly theologized in a Christological way, reflecting on the function of religion in leading people back to the need for grace in Christ. (Greggs 2011, p. 18)

From this critical function of religion, we can understand Barth’s repugnance toward theology of his German teachers even better. In view to Barth’s critique of Wilhelm Herrmann, Keith L. Johnson notes that the point at stake for Barth was that “Hermann has allowed his political ideology to shape his theology instead of allowing his theology to shape his ideology” (Johnson 2020, pp. 95–108, there 96). As we have seen, this situation fits the post-Soviet case neatly. Barth’s protest against the blurring of theology and ideology is also the core of two famous later statements. The first statement is from Church Dogmatics I/2, § 17: “[R]eligion is unbelief. It is a concern, indeed, we must say that it is the one great concern, of godless man” (Barth 1980a, p. 327). This is one forceful passage where Barth at least implicitly seems to imply that theology is the discipline or endeavor to unmask this kind of “religion” as ideology (or as he formulates it here, as “unbelief”). Rinse Reeling Brouwer aptly describes the dialectical “problem of ideology in theology”: First, Barth says: faith and ideology have nothing to do with each other. If the Christian faith nevertheless appears as a form of ideology (…) then it was unbelief! (…) Then, though, he also says: yes, but this completely new God does present himself among us in the form of religion (/ideology). (…) As with the doctrine of the incarnation of the Word, it had to be said that the revelation could take the predicate ‘history’ and could this way, vulnerably (…) appear as a history amidst of many other histories, it is said here, that revelation can take the predicate ‘religion’ (/ideology), and thus, vulnerably, can appear as a religion (/ideology) among many other revelations. (Reeling Brouwer 1988, p. 299)

This point is the reason for Barth’s other statement which he coined in his 1933 publication in the face of German Nazism, Theological Existence Today. As he wrote, after Hitler and Nazim’s rise to power, one should do theology als wäre nichts geschehen (“as if nothing had happened”) (Barth 2013, p. 280). Barth meant, of course, not that theology should not care about ideology, rather that God is the only mode of existence for theology to safeguard oneself against ideologies and the political instrumentalization of Christian faith as it was most fiercely done by the German Christians.

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It was also this intention that inspired the famous Barmen Declaration from 1934, in which Barth had an important share.32 So, next to his theological intuition, Barth has a strong theological response to the bankruptcy of liberal theology and the ensuing question how religion is not ideology. His response is the stress on God’s transcendence. In paraphrase from Romans II, God is God and the world is the world. Barth later worked out this response in Church Dogmatics by stressing the three forms of the One Word of God (Proclamation, Scripture, and Jesus Christ). For him this is the critical potential of theology not to become an ideology, because theology has a function in relation to the Word of God. Man and God should be kept strictly separate; God is absolutely transcendent. In Barth-studies, this turn from man to God has been called the “ontological turn”: from the human subject to the divine subject. God is not the object of man, but man is the object of God. Any appeal to concepts like “culture,” “people,” or to a calling of a nation by God betrays the wrong point of departure, that is, from the world and not “from God.” So, for Barth, the only way to do reliable theology is to have God as the only point of departure and to be critical of one’s speaking of God in this light. This is what we can learn from his theological method and thought. My next step, however, is to learn from the pitfalls of Barth’s shift of accents. Does Barth indeed succeed in keeping God and man strictly divided?

3  Pitfalls in Barth’s Remedy of God’s Transcendence: Confusing Methodology and Content As I will argue, he does not. My thesis is that while the main idea of God’s transcendence led his theological effort, in the dynamics of his living thought he imports as it were his figures of thought into his theological content, his concept of God (epistemology). This way of methodology becomes distorted and the connection to the real God (in an ontic sense) is substituted by the existentiality of the author (I will return to this below). So, while precipitating a strong sensitivity and awareness for ideological distortion on the one hand, it tends to lead him to a loss of the actual substance of this transcendence (and the implications for speaking of transcendence) on the other. The main point of criticism thus concerns

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the given that throughout his theological life, he suggests to literally be able to see “from God’s standpoint” and from there to judge over all that is human, politics, history, and culture. Let me illustrate that by briefly looking at what happens in Barth’s theological analysis. I will give two examples, one from Romans II and one from CD III. 3.1   Philosophical Categories and Barth’s Theological Analysis As heuristic instruments we can consider the delicate boundaries between and dynamics of the following categories, to which I already alluded to above: ontic, ontology, existentiality, and epistemology. These categories help to clarify how questions about the nature of reality (ontology) are different from but also related to questions about the nature and meaning of human existence (existentiality), and the question of how we can have knowledge of these things (epistemology). The following working definitions of the categories may be used: 1. Actual reality—ontic. 2. Individual historical existence—existentiality. 3. The ordering or theory of reality—ontology. 4. The ordering or theory of knowledge—epistemology. This roughly overlaps with what Barth and Barth-scholars signify as “noetic.”33 To briefly anticipate the argument, in the process of theologizing Barth seems to mistake his concept of God (which belongs to the realm of epistemology) for God himself (which, when considering transcendence, belongs to ontics). Barth’s famous tautological formula “God is God” was meant to emphasize God’s transcendence that comes “straight from above” (senkrecht von oben).34 The “wholly other” God of Barth’s early theology, by definition, eludes human experience, concepts, and history. The categories epistemology, noetic, ontic, and ontology are used in Barth-scholarship without a clear demarcation, which in itself is telling of the issue I am addressing here. Whereas in Barth’s early period the categories are used implicitly, and the terms are practically absent,35 in his later works Barth

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himself demonstrates to distinguish between the categories. For example, in Church Dogmatics II/1 he writes in opposition to Kant’s conception of God: “The absoluteness of God permits of no such systematisations. But behind this noetic absoluteness of God there stands decisively His ontic. This is decisive because in God’s revelation it is really a question of His ontic absoluteness, from which His noetic absoluteness inevitably follows.”36 Overall, scholars point to the shift in Barth’s theology during the 1920s toward a “change of subjects” of the modern paradigm, that is, from man to God, and consider his theology since the book on Anselmus (1931) as an “ontological thought form” (Te Velde 2013, p. 303).37 Yet, when scrutinizing Barth’s texts, epistemology actually seems to dominate, or better: we can observe a meshing of ontology and epistemology without a clear link to ontics (or to existentiality) in Barth’s theology, which makes the theological and methodological validity of this turn questionable. At stake is nothing less than the ontic status of God in Barth’s theology. For how does one reconcile God’s absolute transcendence with the alleged human possibility to “think theologically (…) from God towards the world”?38 3.2   Barth’s Meshing of Categories, Example 1: Rom. 14:13–15 The first example comes from the commentary on Rom. 14:13–15, where Barth writes: In fact, however, we are exhorted in the Epistle to the Romans to a particular line of conduct, not in order that we may ‘take’ God’s standpoint, but solely that we may bear it in mind, consider it from all sides, and then live within this consideration. (Barth 2010, p. 687)

In view of the development of Barth’s thought (as described, e.g., by Schwöbel and others), this statement expresses a thorough consideration. As might be expected of a theologian who has his dominant focus on God, for Barth, God really (ontically) exists: “God is absolute in both a noetic and an ontic sense” (Chestnutt 2020, pp. 95–108, there p. 98). But certainly in regard of transcendence, ontics means it evades any human “standpoint” or “viewpoint”; indeed, the term of a standpoint rather belongs to the category of epistemology. In addition, in Romans II God’s absolute otherness forms the basis of his concept of God, that is—to apply the categories—the divine/transcendent permanently evades the

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dynamics of the relationship between the ontic (reality), existentiality, ontology, and epistemology. But a careful consideration of God’s standpoint “from all sides” or “bearing it in mind” and “living within it” is just as impossible as “taking” this standpoint in general. Man cannot consider God’s viewpoint, nor bear it in mind, nor argue on that basis. There is simply no such “impossible possibility.”39 Any claim of this kind inherently contains a problem, even more so in view of the main point of Barth’s own theology—God’s radical transcendence. However, the expressions “from God” (von Gott aus), “from the standpoint of God,” and similar expressions appear many times in Romans II.40 The modus operandi (the way he does his theology) that underlies these expressions is that by having his dominant focus on God, Barth argues from a viewpoint supposedly from God, and in practice meshes the categories of epistemology and ontology. At the same time, he presents this position as an existential one, rooted in the ontics of God whose standpoint he claims to “bear in mind.” This, in effect, is an epistemological reduction; it is more than rhetoric and seems to result from some methodological unawareness of the danger of such a meshing. Strikingly, at the same time it actually reflects something which is very rare to grasp in a written text, namely the dynamics of a “living thought” of an author. 3.3   Barth’s Meshing of Categories, Example II: CD III/2, § 45 But what about the “ontological turn”? While in the previous paragraph I used an example from the “dialectical” Barth, let us now consider a much later passage from Church Dogmatics III/2, § 45: If we are to understand man as the creature of God, we must see first and supremely why God has created him. We must thus regard him from above, from God. (…) we must return to the fact that God has created him and how He has done so, regarding him (…) as this particular cosmic being. (…) In this continuation of theological anthropology we now address ourselves to all the problems which might be summed up under the title “The Humanity of Man.” (…) It is as he is not divine but cosmic, and therefore from God’s standpoint below (with the earth on which and the heaven under which he is), that he is determined by God for life with God. (Barth 1980c, p. 243)

Barth locates his discourse within theological anthropology (cf. Skaff 2020, p. 185). Obviously, anthropology should be concerned with existentiality, or at least with ontology, rooted in the ontics of reality (indeed,

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according to Barth Jesus Christ is the “ontic basis” of creation, CD III/1, p. 28). But in the above passage it still is a discourse dominated by epistemology (“from above” again suggests a “standpoint”) with no clear relation to any other category. Barth elaborates his theological anthropology here under the claim to speak about the “real man” (der wirkliche Mensch, “being”) and the real God. While doing so he suggests to be able to perceive a person from God (von Gott her/aus) and from this humanly impossible position he then claims to be able to differentiate between God and “cosmic” man. This transfer of ontics/existentiality into epistemology puts Barth’s utterances, which refer to ontics, existentiality and ontology (e.g., that human being “consists in participating in what God does” (CD III/2, p. 74); or that Jesus is “the very ground and sphere, the atmosphere of the being of every man” (CD IV/1, p. 53); and that we exist “in him” (CD III/2, pp. 148, 317)) under suspicion of epistemological reduction. It is therefore difficult to conclude with Adam J.  Johnson: “No amount of biological, psychological, sociological and other insights will plumb the depths of human nature, for the answer lies not in ourselves as an object of study, but in the God who created and holds us in existence” (Johnson 2020, p. 148). Similarly, it is difficult to agree with Jeffrey Skaff who presents Barth’s theological anthropology in CD III/2. According to Skaff to convincingly ground “anthropology in Christology” (cf. Skaff 2020, p. 186, see also 187), Barth’s theology aims at balancing between all the relevant philosophical positions—naturalism, idealism, existentialism, and theism—without losing the dominant on God. As I have argued, this is indeed the only correct direction for theology, in this case for theological anthropology. But in Barth’s procedure, both man and God seem to remain “noetic” constructs or in other words, concepts. Strikingly, Barth uses the specific expression “God’s standpoint” (Standpunkt Gottes) in Church Dogmatics in a sense that is opposite to its use in the quoted passage from Romans II 14:13–15, namely in CD IV/3, § 70. Here the phrase means that taking this position is a “human untruth” on the part of Job’s friends or, in other words, that Job’s friends are creating an ideology (Barth 1980d, p. 526). But this idea can also be found in Romans II (e.g., Barth 2010, p. 107). This last point confirms that Barth is actually aware of the impossibility of taking a position “from God.” Above I already quoted a passage from Romans II where Barth states that God turns out to be ideology when

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humans lose their dominant on God.41 Strikingly, also in a passage from his Ethics (1928–1929) Barth shows his awareness of the implications transcendence has for theological speech about God: He almost verbally acknowledges the risks of confusing one’s concept of God (“Gottesbegriff”) with a conceptual God (“Begriffsgott”). Citing Luther, he explains to be aware of the necessity for theology to use abstract language, but warns for mistaking this abstraction for the real God—a mistake dialectical theology is not exempt from. The theological dialectic: is always in forgetting this and confusing the majesty or glory of God which it has in view with the majesty and glory of a supranatural and spiritual object concerning which, for good or ill, it has to speak, but which, if it is regarded as God, can only be an ultimate and supreme idol invented and constructed by man. (…) Theology must do all it can to prevent its concept of God from being confused in this way with God himself. (…) In basing itself on faith, theology—because of its unavoidable Erasmian trait—mistrusts no one and nothing more than it does itself. Because of its unavoidable contemplation of the majesty and its unavoidable concept of God, which may at any time become an idol (…).42

That Barth sharply identifies the mechanism here would plea for my thesis that the meshing of categories happens foremost in theological and exegetical practice, as modus operandi, and is caused by his unawareness of the methodological pitfalls implicit in his movement from man to God. To repeat my thesis, in the dynamics of what we can call his living thinking he, as it were, imports his figures of thought such as “von Gott aus” into his concept of God. Although he has a very keen eye for ideological distortions, he confuses his concept of God (epistemology) with God himself (ontics). Barth’s emphasis on God’s transcendence therefore offers a remedy against the conflation of religion and ideology; the passages in Church Dogmatics where Barth argues “from God” in the above sense reveal, however, a constant epistemological dominant in his thought. Therefore, while pointing out the direction to remedy the conflation of religion and ideology, the way Barth works out his focus teaches us about sophisticated methodological pitfalls: there is always a danger that you think to take or reckon with a standpoint of God, and then you are again close to conflating theology and ideology.

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4   Resources of Orthodox Theology: God’s Transcendence and Unity of Creation 4.1   God’s Transcendence and Practical Knowledge of God So, while arguing that post-Soviet theology should learn from Barth, I also argue that it would be too easy to say, “If only the Russians read Karl Barth.” (Of course, they should and indeed several parts from the Church Dogmatics and the entire Romans II have been translated.) Here an extra word on methodology is required. The experience of dehumanization and the 74 years of Soviet regime need to be accounted for. Yet, most hierarchs and theologians in Russia want to return to the Church Fathers, the Orthodox Tradition, and the “pre-revolutionary” state—“as if nothing had happened.” But they do so precisely contrary to what Barth meant with these words. For, to recall Keith L. Johnson’s apt description, their political ideology shapes their theology instead of theology shaping their ideology. To borrow from the terminology of Charles Taylor, we as theologians have been “disenchanted” by our studies and have a different “imaginary” than our (theological) predecessors (see passim Taylor 2007). We can no longer see our heritage, our “Tradition,” or even the Bible as a bag of corn from which to pick. Of course, we have to pick, but we have to be very careful in how we do it, methodologically.43 In the discussion above, I tried to indicate this point by referring to the possibilities within Orthodox theology itself for doing reliable Theology after Gulag, in the direction suggested by Barth. Orthodox theology has various underexplored areas that constitute surplus value, such as the Orthodox specific sense of transcendence and the notion of the unity of creation. To conclude, these two notions may be hinted at. In Orthodoxy, God is wholly transcendent and unknowable in essence, eluding all human concepts and understanding, but simultaneously, as is summarized in the liturgical words, God is “everywhere present, filling all things.”44 This understanding is crucial for Orthodox experience of the living God and divine presence (ontics), and for the practice of deification (or theosis) by co-working with God (existentiality). The Orthodox concept of God is not pantheistic, but panentheistic, transcendent-immanent. This implies that, on the one hand, true knowledge of God in God’s essence cannot be acquired in an intellectual way, nor through empirical observations or experience. On the other hand, God’s presence in the world is immanent through his uncreated logoi (as

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in Maximus the Confessor, 580–662) or in energies (as in Gregory Palamas, 1296–1359), which penetrate every entity, material and immaterial. Consistently aiming to acknowledge this transcendent-immanent quality, Orthodox theology is very cautious about formulating anything positive concerning the divine energies and restricts itself to a few hints. In an epistemological sense the immanent energies are fully “transcendent,” and perceptible only as existential experience that demands the whole person. The way to know God is not philosophy, but practice. The notion of the penetration of creation with divine energies presupposes the ontic unity of creation. There is Otherness within everything and thence interconnection of everything through the Other. To bring the argument back to Barth’s interests at the time of writing Romans II, when Dostoevsky was of a major influence on him and Eduard Thurneysen (Tolstaya 2013, 2015), an expression of this holistic worldview can be found in Dostoevsky, in the teachings of Elder Zosima from the Brothers Karamazov: “[A]ll is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world” (Dostoevsky 1992, p.  271). This attitude underlies the awareness that “each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all” (Dostoevsky 1992, p. 246). Systematically, there is a deeper connection between all of creation on a most fundamental, ontic level, and this immanent connection is equally as transcendent as Barth’s totaliter aliter. So, nothing is wrong with immanence in Orthodox theology per se, but it goes wrong when, forgetting that it is God’s immanence, it becomes immanentism. This is the actual antidote to any “evil of identification” within Orthodox theology itself, and precisely the antidote lacking in most present-day theological thought in Russia and (often less crassly) in other post-Soviet countries. 4.2   Unity of Creation as Potential for a Theology After Gulag This worldview of the unity of creation can help to overcome the problem of ideology and contribute to rethinking man’s place in creation and his complicity in guilt and in suffering. For instance, obviously, this theocentric starting point brings individual responsibility for other human beings and for the whole of creation into a totally different axiology than that which we find in many contemporary theologies. Individual responsibility for evil should be explicitly perceived as an intrinsic ontological given from

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the ontic unity of creation. While in modern theology, even in Theologie nach Auschwitz and post-Apartheid theology, complicity in guilt is underarticulated ontologically and is therefore endangered to remain confined to mere ethics. This worldview of the unity of creation also lays an ontological basis for solidarity in suffering without downplaying the singularity of any suffering. With this notion, Orthodoxy has a surplus value potential that allows for a contextualization of personal and not just of collective guilt. This gives Orthodoxy great potential in the post-Soviet context, which systematically denies guilt and complicity and the continuing impact of the dehumanizing past. Allowing for a theology from the depths, de profundis (cf. Psalm 130) it is capable to confront the challenge of extreme dehumanization. But this should be a thorough discussion of a theological locus, such as the concept of God, anthropology, Christology, soteriology, and so on, which has to be articulated and justified in relation to other loci. To sum up, my argument in this chapter departed from the Soviet dehumanization, which is rooted in the conflation of religion and ideology, and I searched for critical theological possibilities to avoid this conflation. I found the answer in the imperative of theology to concentrate on God and only from there to approach and take part in political life. While Barth forcefully established this need and can give us an orientation, in this chapter I also demonstrated how Barth, in doing theology, did not escape a danger of making a concept of the real God. The direction to overcome this pitfall is methodological awareness of this danger. Moreover, in the Orthodox concept of God we can find a surplus value to overcome the danger of such a conflation. It is high time to search further for a reliable Theology after Gulag, Bucha, and beyond.

Notes 1. I am grateful to Frank Bestebreurtje, Christine Svinth-Værge Põder, Geert Verschuure, Peter Victor, and Evert van der Zweerde for their critical reading and useful suggestions. 2. The paper preceding this chapter was presented in October 2021 at the Open international workshop “European Crisis and Reorientation.” 3. This is one of the aspects, which makes the issue of human experience of divine/transcendent, think of God’s presence, miracles, prayers, and so on, so vulnerable.

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4. Due to the loss of canonical jurisdictions in Ukraine the agenda of the Church is increasingly falling together with that of the state. 5. This is not to suggest any monolithic position within the Russian Orthodox Church. There are different, sometimes contradictory voices and positions on the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. 6. As referred to by Kearney (2010, p. ix). 7. I am investigating this phenomenon at length from hermeneutical, philosophical (ethical), and theological perspectives based on the testimonies from Gulag, Auschwitz, and blockade Leningrad in my upcoming book: Tolstaya (forthcoming). 8. Shalamov (1978a): “есть, наверно, дела и похуже, чем обедать человечьим трупом”; cf. Shalamov (2018 [1978], p. 148): “[N]o doubt there are worse crimes than dining on a human corpse.” 9. Shalamov (1978b): “проза будущего требует другого. Заговорят не писатели, а люди профессии, обладающие писательским даром. И они расскажут только о том, что знают, видели. Достоверность—вот сила литературы будущего” (not translated by Glad). 10. For an overall comparison, see, for example, Geyer and Fitzpatrick (eds.) (2009). 11. Marx (1971 [1859]). If the Nazi ideology was about humans worth living versus humans not worth living, Soviet ideology was about humanity and its bright future. As Evert van der Zweerde puts it: “If 10 per cent of those who went through Gulag died there, this implies that 90 per cent survived and re-entered Soviet society. (…) The end-product of Nazi camps was ash and golden teeth, while the end product of Gulag consisted of steeled subjects (…). The Gulag as a whole was not destructive but productive of life: it was a large bio-political factory” (Van der Zweerde 2022, p. 122). 12. This is, of course, not to say that the success of this strategy was steady over the 74 years of the Soviet rule; the peak of success was undoubtedly under Stalin. 13. See for explanation “A Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ (Russkii mir) Teaching,” 13 March 2022, at: https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/ 03/13/a-­d eclaration-­o n-­t he-­r ussian-­w orld-­r usskii-­m ir-­t eaching/. Accessed 09 October 2022. 14. See, for example, Chapnin (2022a, b), Babynski (2022), Bluhm (2022), Bremer (2022), and Elsner (2022). 15. See already Scherbakowa (2010), Kangaspuro and Lassila (2012, pp. 377–400), and Cottiero et al. (2015, pp. 533–555). 16. One should not forget though that the huge gap between poor and rich and big cities and province makes people even more prone to ideological “triggers.”

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17. Patriarch of Moscow: Any Russian Soldier who Dies in the War in Ukraine is Forgiven for his Sins. https://orthodoxtimes.com/patriarch-­of-­ moscow-­any-­r ussian-­soldier-­who-­dies-­in-­the-­war-­in-­ukraine-­is-­forgiven-­ for-­his-­sins/. Accessed 29 September 2022. 18. “Слово Святейшего Патриарха Кирилла в день памяти благоверных князей Даниила Московского и Александра Невского после Литургии в Даниловом монастыре” [“A Word of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill on the Day of Remembrance of the Blessed Princes Daniel of Moscow and Alexander Nevsky After the Liturgy at the Danilov Monastery”]. 2022. “Русская Православная Церковь. Официальный сайт Московского патриархата” [“Russian Orthodox Church. The official website of the Moscow Patriarchate”]. http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5958411. html. Accessed 18 September 2022. 19. See, for example, Bacon (1997, pp.  253–265), Curanović (2012), and Verkhovsky (2014, pp. 71–84). 20. Van der Zweerde, Evert (1994, p. 70). See pp. 70–71 for a complex conception, which sets apart ideology and ideological function and truth claims: “[I]deology (1) is a not a particular kind of theory, but a possible function of any theory to organize the commitment and action of social groups in two ways, namely motivation and legitimization; (2) entails three elements—a truth-claim, an exclusion of alternatives, and a transition from ‘theory’ to practice—at least one of which must be concealed; (3) is complementary to other forms of exercise of power; (4) is not ‘false’ and not functioning ‘at the expense of truth’, but under suspension (or exclusion) of the question as to the truth of the ‘theory’ involved—ideology does serve its purpose relatively independently of the truth and adequacy of the ‘theory’; (5) is not necessarily ‘believed in’ by its producers or addressees, but functions, again, relatively independently of ‘belief’; (6) is not an ‘evil,’ but an inevitable fact of any nonutopian society; (7) can be judged both negatively and positively, according to a number of parameters, and depending on the judge’s proper position.” Importantly also (p. 54): “A ‘theory’ is ideological only in as far as it actually functions ideologically.” 21. See Marx (1968 [1844], pp. 467–588). Cf. Marx (1978 [1845], p. 46): “Die Gedanken der herrschenden Klasse sind in jeder Epoche die herrschenden Gedanken, d. h. die Klasse, welche die herrschende materielle Macht der Gesellschaft ist, ist zugleich ihre herrschende geistige Macht.” 22. Obviously, the topic of ideology in (neo-)Marxism, (neo-)Leninism, the Frankfurter Schule, and beyond up to current days is endless. The classification I provide here has no claim to be complete. From the second half of the twentieth century Marxism has developed discussions of the role of ideology from sociological and empirical perspectives. Discussions, for

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example, around the so-called dominant ideology thesis show a very complex and dynamic potential of conceptualization of ideology based on works of thinkers like Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, and Jürgen Habermas. Cf. Abercrombie et  al. (1980, 1990); see also Miliband (1978, pp. 161, 237). 23. See the notion of Entfremdung (“alienation” or “estrangement”) in Marx (1844 [1932]), passim. 24. See my discussion of the concept of millenarianism in relation to the Soviet case in: Tolstaya (2018). I repeat here this argument from this discussion. 25. I have previously treated this issue in a Dutch article: Tolstaya (2019, pp. 273–284). 26. Barth (1968a, p. 295). Cf. Barth (1957, p. 6): “Mir persönlich hat sich ein Tag am Anfang des Augusts jenes Jahres [sc. 1914] als der dies ater eingeprägt, an welchem 95 deutsche Intellektuelle mit einem Bekenntnis zur Kriegspolitik Kaiser Wilhelms II. und seiner Ratgeber an die Öffentlichkeit traten, unter denen ich zu meinem Entsetzen auch die Namen so ziemlich aller meiner bis dahin gläubig verehrten theologischen Lehrer wahrnehmen mußte. Irre geworden an ihrem Ethos, bemerkte ich, daß ich auch ihrer Ethik und Dogmatik, ihrer Bibelauslegung und Geschichtsdarstellung nicht mehr werde folgen können, daß die Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts jedenfalls für mich keine Zukunft mehr hatte.” 27. The letter was published shortly after in: Barth (1914, p. 431). 28. See Von Harnack (1916, p.  317): “Jeder Deutsche ist Deutschland, Deutschland ist in jedem Deutschen.” 29. This phrase is not to be found in Dostoevsky. Something close to this can be encountered in The Devils: “An atheist cannot be Russian. (…) A non-­ Orthodox cannot be Russian” (“не православный не может быть русским”) (Dostoevsky 1974, p.  197). This phrase gave many an idea, though, to be formative for a nationalist line originating in Dostoevsky’s Slavophilism, cf., for example, recently Slavoj Žižek: “In the context of Ukraine, we need to cast aside this naivety and stop justifying the existence of the few nationalists of collaborationists in the country. It doesn’t matter how numerous they are. It’s more important to understand why Russia would maintain the image of Ukraine as a country rife with Nazism. The answer is simple. Russia has nothing to do with Communism anymore, so it can’t appeal to the October Revolution as its foundational myth. So, what is left for it to do? To appeal to World War II and, indeed, Dostoyevsky, whom I wholeheartedly despise, by the way (laughs—Author’s Note). Dostoyevsky is the root of Russian culture’s all horrors” (Vorotniov 2022). 30. Greggs (2011, p. 29). Greggs alludes here to Church Dogmatics I/2. 31. Indeed, Barth’s Christological concentration increases in due time (from Romans II to CD).

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32. On the Barmen Declaration, see Barth (2017). 33. For example, Barth (1980b [1940], p. 538): “Gottes Allgegenwart [ist] nicht etwa nur noetisch (für unsere Erkenntnis), sondern ontisch (in ihrer Wirklichkeit) an die Besonderheit seiner Gegenwart eben in seinem offenbarenden und versöhnenden Handeln gebunden.” 34. Barth (2010 [1922]), for example, pp. 94, 115, 208, 336, 418, 424, 528, 592; Thurneysen (1921), for example, pp. 37, 62, 73. 35. At least, the search at The Digital Karl Barth Library (DKBL, at: http:// solomon.dkbl.alexanderstreet.com/) gives 0 times for “Ontik,” 14 times for Erkenntnistheorie (epistemology), and 4 times for “Ontologie” for the period up to and including 1929. 36. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, 311 (§ 28). “Der Einsatz, die Leidenschaft und der Ernst, mit dem man auch von dem in solche Klammer gesetzten Gott zu reden versuchen kann, gelten dann letztlich und entscheidend doch nicht ihm, sondern dem ihn einklammernden Höheren, repräsentiert durch den jeweils gewählten Oberbegriff. Die Absolutheit Gottes erlaubt uns keinerlei solche Einklammerungen. Aber hinter dieser noetischen Absolutheit Gottes steht entscheidend seine ontische. Entscheidend insofern, als es in Gottes Offenbarung real um Gottes ontische Absolutheit geht, der dann jene noetische notwendig folgen muß.” Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik II/1, p. 350. 37. Te Velde (2013), for example, pp.  303–304, 320, 443; see also p.  327: “Barth takes the reality of God as the foundation of theology. He advocates the priority of the ontic over the noetic, and assigns to theology a fundamentally a posteriori method.” On the “change of subjects” (Subjektwechsel) in Barth’s theology, see among others Beintker (1987, pp. 190–191), Schwöbel (2000, pp. 29–30), Grube (2008, pp. 308–324), Eberlein-Braun (2011, pp.  83–84), and Bergner (2015, e.g., pp.  69 and 76). 38. Schwöbel (2000, p. 19): “If theology wants to remain true to Jesus’ message of the Kingdom, it cannot think theologically from the human standpoint towards God, but must learn to think from God towards the world.” 39. A phrase Barth uses in different contexts in Romans II: Barth (2010 [1922]), for example, pp. 114; 299; 508–510; 686. 40. A rough count led to some 50 places. See for a textual analysis and discussions of further examples Tolstaya (2013), especially pp. 329–333. 41. See above, Sect. 2.1, quote from Barth (2010, p. 107). 42. Barth (1981), accessed online. Cf. Barth (1978 [1928–1929], pp.  114–115): “Und nun droht die Gefahr, daß sie [die theologische Dialektik, K.T.] dieses vergißt, daß sie die maiestas, die gloria Dei, die sie meint, verwechselt mit der maiestas und gloria eines doch nur übernatürlichen, geistigen Gegenstandes, von dem sie wohl oder übel reden muß, der

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ja als solcher wirklich nicht Gott, sondern gerade, wenn er für Gott gehalten wird, nur ein allerletztes, allerhöchstes vom Menschen erdachtes und angefertigtes Götzenbild sein kann. (…) Die Theologie muß alles tun, um ihren Gottesbegriff dieser Verwechslung mit Gott selbst immer wieder zu entziehen. (…) Indem die Theologie sich auf den Glauben gründet, wird sie gegen nichts und niemand so mißtrauisch sein wie—eben wegen ihres unvermeidlichen erasmischen Zuges—gegen sich selber, gegen ihre unvermeidliche speculatio maiestatis, gegen ihren unvermeidlichen Gottesbegriff, der doch auch jederzeit zu einem Götzen werden könnte.” 43. See on methodology in a conversation between theology and religious studies: Tolstaya and Bestebreurtje (2021, pp. 1–37). 44. The words belong to tone 6 verse of the 6th voice in the Doxasticon of the Great Vespers of Pentecost, this “Heavenly King”—prayer is used daily at homes and at public services (except for “the period from the Liturgy of Holy Saturday to the All-Night Vigil of the Pentecost”). “Царю Небесный” [“Heavenly King”] (n.d.) at: https://azbyka.ru/caryu-­nebesnyj. Assessed 30 October 2022. Russian: “Царь Небесный, Утешитель, Дух Истины, везде пребывающий и всё наполняющий”; Church-Slavonic: “Царю́ Небе́сный, Уте́шителю, Ду́ше и́стины, Иже везде́ сый и вся исполня́яй”; Greek: “Βασιλεῦ οὐράνιε, Παράκλητε, τὸ Πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας, ὁ πανταχοῦ παρὼν, καὶ τὰ πάντα πληρῶν”; Latin: “Rex coelestis, Paraclite, Spiritus veri, qui ubique ades et omnia imples.” See also Ware (2004, p. 160).

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Bergner, Gerhard. 2015. Um der Sache willen. Karl Barths Schriftauslegung in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Bluhm, Katharina. 2022. Die Ideologie hinter Russlands Krieg. Zentrum für Osteuropa—und internationale Studien. Accessed 9 April 2022. https://www. zois-­b erlin.de/publikationen/zois-­s potlight/die-­i deologie-­h inter-­ russlands-­krieg. Bremer, Thomas. 2022. Ukrainian Nationhood, ‘Russkii Mir,’ and the Abuse of History. Accessed 9 April 2022. www.publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/22/ ukrainian-­nationhood-­r usskii-­mir/?fbclid=IwAR3ZPcasXjkPYsw8HCO2MUv pu774UmAcuQ8h8mcBiWQapqqSPjANZtTxBaM. Busch, Eberhard. 1976. Karl Barths Lebenslauf. Nach seinen Briefen und autobiographischen Texten. München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag. Chapnin, Sergey. 2022a. ‘How the War Split the Church.’ Reforum. Accessed 27 September 2022. https://reforum.io/en/blog/2022/03/30/ how-­the-­war-­split-­the-­church/. ———. 2022b. Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin’s Two Wars. Public Orthodoxy. Accessed 9 April 2022. www.publicorthodoxy.org/2022/02/25/ patriarch-­kirill-­and-­vladimir-­putins-­two-­wars. Chestnutt, Glenn. 2020. Barth and Islam. In Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, eds. George Hunsinger and Keith L.  Johnson. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley Blackwell, 893-904. Cottiero, Christina, Katherine Kucharski, Evgenia Olimpieva, and Robert W. Orttung. 2015. War of Words: The Impact of Russian State Television on the Russian Internet. Nationalities Papers 43 (4): 533–555. Curanović, Alicja. 2012. The Religious Factor in Russia’s Foreign Policy. New York, London: Routledge. Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. 1974. Полное собрание сочинений в тридцати томах. Художественные произведения. Тома I–XVII. Том 10. Бесы. [Complete works in thirty volumes. Literary Works. Volumes I–XVII.  Vol. 10. The Devils]. Moscow: Nauka. ———. 1992 [1879–1880]. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Everyman’s Library. Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: Introduction. London: Verso. Eberlein-Braun, Katharina. 2011. Erkenntnis und Interpretation: kritisches Denken unter den Voraussetzungen der Moderne bei Theodor W. Adorno und Karl Barth. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Elsner, Regina. 2022. Leider keine Friedenskraft: Die Verstrickung der Russischen Orthodoxie in den Krieg um die Ukraine. Zeitzeichen: Evangelische Kommentare zu Religion und Gesellschaft. Accessed 27 September 2022. www.zeitzeichen.net/node/9634?fbclid=IwAR1c365tMbZnMJBUQ7P6qFc pHN1RuAEAfnAqo4Mk4vMwzx5bFWjHKPvgpuI.

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Author Index1

A Abercrombie, N., 241n22 Adair-Toteff, Christopher, 77n8, 78n9 Adam, Karl, 20 Adler, Nanci, 221 Adriaanse, Hendrik Johan, 31n5 Agamben, Giorgio, 126, 137, 139 Aletti, Jean Noël, 187 Alexievich, Svetlana, 218 Althusser, Louis, 223, 241n22 Anselm of Canterbury, 196 Assel, Heinrich, 63, 66, 77n2, 78n10 Austin, John L., 29, 132 B Baark, Sigurd, 3, 8, 93, 208 Babynski, Anatolii, 239n14 Bacon, Edwin, 240n19 Bader, Günter, 129–131, 133, 138–142, 149 Badiou, Alain, 126, 128, 175n20

1

Barth, Heinrich, 135, 155–159 Barth, Karl, v, 2–11, 15–31, 35–56, 59–77, 83–97, 101–114, 123–149, 153–173, 181–187, 190–193, 193n2, 193n4, 193n5, 195–210, 215–238 Becker, Dieter, 31n5 Beintker, Michael, 165, 166, 242n35 Bender, Kimlyn J., 163, 164 Bergner, Gerhard, 242n35 Berkouwer, Gerrit C., 15 Björk, Mårten, 17, 31n2 Bloch, Ernst, 20, 22, 77n6 Bluhm, Katharina, 239n14 Blumhardt, C. F., 2, 63, 68, 69, 71, 74, 156, 159 Blumhardt, Johann C., 2, 68, 69, 159 Bornkamm, Günther, 127, 129, 130 Bremer, Thomas, 239n14 Brunner, Emil, 16, 36, 37, 39, 42, 44–47, 50–54, 154, 164 Budgen, David, 175n22

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249

250 

AUTHOR INDEX

Bultmann, Rudolf, 22, 127, 142, 154, 164, 174n15, 189, 204 Burnett, Richard E., 183 Busch, Eberhard, 19, 31n4, 37, 68, 226 C Calvin, John, 16, 20, 21, 23, 41, 66, 69, 126, 144, 145, 183 Chapnin, Sergey, 239n14 Chestnutt, Glenn, 232 Cohen, Herman, 19, 135, 141–143 Conant, James, 84, 85, 89, 97, 98n2 Curanović, Alicja, 240n19 D Dalferth, Ingolf Ulrich, 155 DeCou, Jessica, 110–112 Derrida, Jaques, 23, 133, 173n3 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 8, 16, 20, 23, 69, 84, 86–97, 155, 156, 159, 227, 237, 241n29 E Eagleton, Terry, 222–224 Eberlein-Braun, Katharina, 242n35 Elgin, Catherine Z., 95–97, 99n9, 99n11 Elsner, Regina, 239n14 F Falk, Hjalmar, 17 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 239n10 G Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 24 Gerber, Timofei, 208

Geyer, Michael, 239n10 Giddens, Anthony, 224 Gogarten, Friedrich, 36, 37, 39, 45, 46, 49, 50, 54, 55, 77n6, 102–104, 107, 109, 115n4, 154 Gordon, Peter E., 17, 31n2 Goud, Johan F., 31n5 Gouwens, David J., 156 Graf, Wilhelm, 36 Greggs, Tom, 228, 229, 241n30 Gregory, Brad S., 2 Grenholm, Cristina, 193n2 Grøn, Arne, 161, 169 Grube, Dirk-Martin, 159 H Habermas, Jürgen, 132, 138, 241n22 Hanninen, Sakari, 224 Hartmut, Rosa, 154 Hayat, Mazhar, 205 Hegel, G. W. F., 23, 26, 30, 44, 108, 174n12, 223 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 17, 22, 137, 142, 154 Hermansson, Gunilla, 193n3 Herrmann, Wilhelm, 18, 19, 174n15, 225, 226, 229 Holl, Karl, 8, 60–64, 66–69, 72, 74–76, 78n16 Holm, Bo Kristian, 74 Holtmann, Stefan, 36 J Jaeger, Friedrich, 36 James, Paul, 223 Jehle, Frank, 37 Joas, Hans, 154 Johnson, Adam J., 234 Johnson, Keith L., 229, 236 Jones, Serene, 31n5

  AUTHOR INDEX 

Joyce, James, 7, 124, 125 Jüngel, Eberhard, 183, 205 K Kangaspuro, Markku, 239n15 Kant, Immanuel, 9, 30, 115n2, 124–126, 131–143, 147, 149, 155, 166, 232 Katja Tolstaja, 193n1 Kearney, Richard, 239n6 Keedus, Liisi, 2, 7, 8 Keynes, John, 167 Kiberd, Declan, 125 Kierkegaard, Søren, 2, 5, 9, 16, 20, 23, 49, 69–71, 74, 108, 126, 134, 139, 140, 142, 143, 153–173, 181, 193 Klemm, David E., 31n5 Kooi, Cornelis van der, 62, 135 Korsch, Dietrich, 1, 61, 62, 77n6, 135, 136, 141 Koshar, Rudy, 17, 40 Kritzinger, Friedrich Wilhelm, 226 L Lassila, Jussi, 239n15 Le Poidevin, Robin, 216 Leiner, Martin, 2 Link, Christian, 204 Lohmann, Johann Friedrich, 134, 135 Löwith, Karl, 40 Luther, Martin, 16, 20, 27, 28, 41, 63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 74, 97, 125, 126, 130–131, 133, 139, 141, 144, 145, 156, 157, 164, 174n9, 174n15, 183, 191, 226, 235 M Manemann, Jürgen, 219 Manning, Russell R., 115n4

251

Marx, Karl, 22, 220, 222–224, 241n23 McCormack, Bruce L., 173n4, 185, 186 Metzger, Paul, 118n15 Mikkelsen, Hans Vium, 211n1 Miliband, Ralph, 241n22 Monk, Ray, 94 Moore, Judith, 211n2 Moseley, Carys, 40 N Nielsen, Anne Louise, 8, 9, 161 Nielsen, Bent Flemming, 9, 10, 205 Nielsen, Erik A., 187 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2, 5, 90, 133, 134, 142, 193 Noordmans, Oepke, 227 Novak, Frank G. Jr., 203, 206 Nowak, Kurt, 36 Nozick, Robert, 84, 85, 97 O O’Connor, Flannery, 31 Olofsson, Rune P., 15 Otto, Eckart, 78n9 Overbeck, Franz, 2, 5, 6, 20, 90, 91, 94, 98n5, 155, 156, 208 P Paldan, Leena, 224 Paul, 6, 9, 10, 15, 20, 24, 25, 40, 41, 62, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77n1, 98n4, 98n7, 119n20, 123, 126–130, 133, 134, 136–140, 142–148, 155, 156, 161, 162, 171, 174n10, 183, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193, 193n2, 207, 217, 226 Pedersen, Ove K., 168, 170, 175n18

252 

AUTHOR INDEX

Pfleiderer, Georg, 60–62, 76, 77n3, 77n6, 166, 168, 173n2, 175n16 Plato, 20, 95, 99n10, 140, 155 Põder, Christine Svinth-Værge, 7, 8, 72, 238n1 R Reeling Brouwer, Rinse, 228, 229 Ricœur, Paul, 9, 123, 126–131, 133, 134, 138, 142, 149, 217–225 Roper, Lyndal, 20 Rust, Jennifer, 144, 145 S Scherbakowa, Irina, 239n15 Schiff, James A., 205, 212n12 Schildmann, Wolfgang, 145 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst, 21, 30, 37–39, 47, 51, 108, 125, 126, 138–140, 142, 157 Schneider, Johannes, 37 Schopen, Bernhard A., 212n8 Schwöbel, Christoph, 232, 242n35, 242n38 Shalamov, Varlam, 218, 219 Sigurdson, Ola, 3, 7, 30, 31n3 Skaff, Jeffrey, 233, 234 Slezkine, Yuri, 224 Smith, Steven G., 31n5 Spengler, Oswald, 1, 20 Steger, Manfred B., 223 Stendahl, Krister, 183 Stenger, Mary Ann, 104 T Taubes, Jacob, 21, 126, 128, 146, 190, 193 Taylor, Charles, 236

Taylor, Mark, C., 161 Thurneysen, Eduard, 8, 19, 21, 35–37, 41–43, 68, 83–97, 98n1, 98n4, 98n6, 155–158, 237 Tietz, Christiane, 17, 68 Tilgner, Wolfgang, 37 Tillich, Paul, 9, 61, 77n6, 101–114, 116n8, 116–117n9, 117n10, 117n11, 117n12, 117n13, 118n14, 118n16, 118n18, 119n19, 119n20, 154, 200, 201, 204, 211n4 Tracy, David, 17, 30 Troeltsch, Ernst, 54, 55, 78n9 Trowitzsch, Michael, 2 Turner, Victor, 210 U Updike, John, 10, 195–210 V Van der Zweerde, Evert, 222, 238n1, 239n11, 240n20 Velde te, Dolf, 232, 242n35 Verkhovsky, Alexander, 240n19 Von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 15, 16, 182–184 Von Harnack, Adolf, 17, 60, 140, 183, 200, 225–227 Vorotniov, Volodymyr, 241n29 W Walser, Martin, 31n6 Ward, Graham, 31n5 Ware, Kallistos, 243n44 Watson, D. F., 189 Webb, Stephen H., 20, 31n3, 32n12, 182–186, 207–210

  AUTHOR INDEX 

Weber, Max, 8, 22, 60–69, 72–76, 77n8, 78n9 Webster, John, 225 Weidner, Daniel, 65, 78n9 Welz, Claudia, 161 Wenz, Gunther, 36 Widmann, Peter, 93, 163, 164 Williams, Raymond, 222 Williams, Rowan, 89 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 7, 89, 93

Wittkau, Annette, 36 Wolter, Michael, 189 Wu, Kuo-An, 46 Z Zahrnt, Heinz, 125, 126, 140 Žižek, Slavoj, 29, 124, 131, 241n29 Zwingli, Huldrych, 21, 159

253

Subject Index1

A Aesthetics, 61, 86, 87, 94, 95, 137, 138, 146, 162, 181, 182, 184 Anthropology, 155, 217, 219, 233, 234, 238 Apocalypse/apocalyptic, 9, 110, 123–149 B Bible, 16, 42, 43, 71, 105, 109, 127, 140, 143, 144, 159, 162, 185, 228, 236 Brothers Karamazov, 93, 98n8, 237 C Charisma, 64, 65, 67, 72, 73 Charismatic authority, 60, 63–66, 76, 77 Church, 6, 21, 40, 53, 60, 66, 73, 75, 86, 94, 98n8, 108, 109, 116n4,

1

148, 160, 161, 164, 165, 171, 172, 174n13, 186, 196–200, 202, 209, 216, 220, 221, 227, 239n4 Conservatism, 223 Contradiction, 1, 2, 6, 9, 29, 44, 46, 47, 51, 93, 94, 117n10, 155–158, 162, 167–169, 171, 172, 174n11, 191 COVID-19, v, 9, 167–170, 172 Crime and Punishment, 87, 89 Crisis, 1–11, 17, 20–22, 28–30, 36, 40–47, 50, 59–63, 68–76, 92, 101–108, 113, 115n1, 116n8, 123, 125, 126, 132, 134, 143, 146–149, 150n2, 153–173, 184, 193, 196, 197, 215–238 Criticism/critique, 2, 6–10, 20, 21, 29, 36, 43, 47, 50, 53, 55, 56, 65, 70, 91, 97, 103–108, 110–113, 117n11, 155, 158, 166, 172, 185, 205, 209, 212n12, 216, 217, 224, 228–230

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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255

256 

SUBJECT INDEX

Culture, 3, 8, 9, 15–17, 19, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 50, 87, 90, 101–114, 149, 154, 169, 173n3, 182, 196, 217, 219, 227, 228, 230, 231, 241n29 D Death, 6, 11n1, 28, 38, 48, 66, 70, 90, 91, 94, 98n3, 98n5, 105, 128, 132, 134, 157, 159, 174n10, 188, 199, 207–209 Despair, 54, 166, 170, 175n17 Dialectical theology, 17, 36, 37, 40, 42, 46, 53, 56, 103, 116–117n9, 129, 135, 136, 138, 149, 154, 204, 235 Dialectics, 7, 9, 25–28, 31, 46, 73, 101, 105, 107, 109, 116n4, 116n9, 117n11, 128–130, 135, 137–148, 154, 155, 157–159, 161, 169, 172, 173, 181–183, 204–207, 235 Dualism, 7, 16–18, 27, 111, 162, 183 E Election, 128, 161 Epistemology, 9, 40–47, 61, 62, 217, 230–235 Eschatology, 39, 91, 98n5, 110–112, 119n19, 129, 173n4, 212n7 Eternity, 16, 24, 30, 35, 47, 49, 51, 52, 70, 73, 130, 136–138, 143, 144, 148, 157, 158, 173n4 Ethics, 8, 10, 36, 39, 41, 50, 56, 65, 66, 96, 136, 143, 147, 207, 225, 235, 238 Evil, 37, 39, 40, 45, 49, 51–54, 86, 205, 206, 227, 237, 240n20 Exegesis, 29, 41, 98n7, 144, 156, 175n16, 187, 225

Existentialism, 154, 172, 174n15, 234 Expressionism, 1, 182–186 F Faith, 6, 27, 37, 38, 41, 47, 50, 51, 73, 76, 93, 94, 106, 111, 113, 115n4, 125, 127, 128, 130, 133, 139, 142, 143, 146, 154, 155, 157–159, 161–163, 165, 169, 171, 173, 174n8, 175n19, 175n20, 189, 190, 201, 203, 205–209, 211n4, 212n8, 226, 229, 235 Framing, 87, 89, 91, 92, 165, 210, 221, 222 G Genre, 9, 28, 30, 84, 95, 138, 166, 182–184, 186, 189 God, 2, 15, 35, 59, 88, 101, 125, 132, 154, 168, 185, 197, 215, 236–238 Gospel, 16, 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 67, 75, 118n17, 124, 133, 135, 136, 144, 145 Grace, 9, 16, 28, 46, 105, 106, 108–111, 113, 114, 130, 138, 147–149, 158, 160, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 209, 211n4, 228, 229 Gulag, 10, 215–238 H Hermeneutics, 3, 123–149 Historicism, 36, 41, 43, 45, 53, 55, 56, 102 History, 2, 3, 8, 10, 17, 36–40, 42–44, 46–52, 55, 56, 67, 70, 71, 104–106, 108, 109, 112,

  SUBJECT INDEX 

113, 115n4, 116n8, 119n20, 128, 149, 155, 156, 160, 166, 175n22, 186, 196, 217, 222, 227–229, 231 Homiletics, 186, 191 Hope, 2, 17, 36, 68, 94, 98n8, 146–148, 157, 173, 191, 193, 212n7 Humanity, 5, 6, 16, 18, 21, 27, 37–39, 46, 49, 54, 56, 61, 69, 70, 77n5, 86–88, 91, 96, 159, 219, 239n11 I Idealism, 43, 106, 234 Ideology, 2, 5, 8, 10, 36, 56, 70, 91–93, 96, 168, 215–218, 220–230, 234–238, 239n11, 240–241n22 The Idiot, 89 Individualism, 141, 161, 166 Irony, 54, 103, 107, 138–141, 184, 197, 199, 200, 210 Israel, 73, 161 J Jesus Christ, 6, 25, 48, 64, 71, 94, 119n20, 143, 154, 157, 159, 162, 175n15, 188, 189, 212n7, 230, 234, 242n38 Job, 196, 234 Judgement, 6, 7, 37, 45, 47, 54, 66, 72, 94, 157, 158, 166, 167, 171 K Kairos, 104, 108, 109, 116n8, 119n20

257

L Law, 22, 39, 49, 71–73, 75, 76, 111, 128, 133, 139, 142, 145, 155, 158–163, 169, 171–173, 175n20, 202 Liberalism, 42, 165, 166, 193, 223 Liberal theology, 6, 18–19, 51, 61, 68, 75, 87, 90, 92, 102, 157, 172, 217, 225–230 Literature, 9, 23, 30, 94, 124, 125, 127, 147, 154, 161, 168, 169, 172, 183, 184, 193n3, 195, 219, 224 Love, 21, 38, 49, 74, 105, 127, 128, 187, 188, 190, 191, 199, 205, 209, 216 M Metaphysics, 52, 84, 85, 210 Methodology, 25, 182, 230–236 Modernity, 37–40, 55, 62, 123, 126, 132–134, 136, 143, 147, 165, 166, 228 Moment, 6, 7, 18, 29, 36, 43, 49, 50, 73, 88–91, 98n8, 116n8, 117n13, 119n19, 119n20, 127, 148, 155, 162, 167, 171, 192, 196, 201, 219, 226 N Nazism, 224, 241n29 Negation, 5–7, 15, 26, 27, 90, 91, 93, 94, 97, 104, 107, 158–160, 163, 181, 186, 192, 228 Negativity, 2, 7, 11n1, 77n4, 90, 91, 97, 168, 205–208, 228 Neo-Kantianism, 126, 134–143

258 

SUBJECT INDEX

O Ontology, 46–51, 154, 212n8, 231–234 Orthodoxy, Eastern, 225 Other, the, 132–135, 181, 237 P Paradox, 9, 27–29, 48, 67, 101–114, 139, 140, 143, 154, 155, 164, 171, 174n11, 175n19, 181, 187, 191 Phenomenology, 115n2, 169, 172 Philosophy, 9, 16, 19, 22, 23, 30, 38–40, 42, 54, 84, 115n4, 124, 131–134, 138, 140, 142, 143, 154, 159, 217, 237 Pietism, 159, 174n15 Politics, 8, 19, 23, 29, 36, 65, 66, 158, 169, 172, 225, 231 Postmodernism, 132 Practice, 6, 7, 89, 97, 145, 219, 223, 233, 235–237 Preaching, 9, 19, 21, 59, 186, 225 Predestination, 66, 67, 75 Proclamation, 6, 25, 83, 92, 93, 105, 106, 124, 127–132, 134, 135, 139, 141, 142 Prophecy, 21, 38, 59–77, 125, 168 Protestantism, 19, 21, 63, 66, 129, 131, 135, 140, 142, 149, 158, 207, 217 Psychology, 22, 42 Q Qualitative difference, 105, 158 R Realism, 92, 106, 182, 210 Redemption, 39, 52, 106, 111, 113, 199 Reformation, 41, 45, 63, 73, 186

Religion, 9, 17, 19, 26, 37–40, 42, 50, 54, 60, 64, 66, 69–73, 75, 76, 78n10, 93, 94, 101, 103, 106, 110, 111, 113, 115n2, 115n4, 125, 135, 136, 140, 142, 155, 157–160, 162, 165, 169, 171, 172, 198, 203, 204, 215–218, 220–230, 235, 238 Reorientation, 1–11, 17, 59–61, 63, 72, 88, 96, 154, 168, 215–238 Resurrection, 6, 7, 47–49, 88, 128, 148, 149, 157, 162, 164, 168, 171, 175n20, 212n7 Revelation, 38–40, 42, 43, 47, 49, 65, 89, 94, 102, 106, 108, 109, 112–114, 115n4, 118n16, 118n18, 129, 131, 136, 139, 142, 173n4, 199, 210, 229, 232 Rhetoric, 8, 9, 15–31, 59–63, 68, 137, 141, 183–188, 190, 233 Romans II/Römerbrief, 2–11, 15–31, 46, 48, 49, 59–77, 83, 84, 89–91, 97, 103, 104, 123–149, 153–163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173n4, 181–193, 195–210, 217, 228, 230–234, 236, 237, 241n31, 242n39 Romanticism, 1, 132 S Self-consciousness, 39 Sin, 28, 51, 52, 70, 128, 141, 156, 157, 164, 170, 174n10, 206 Socialism, 2, 19, 75, 223 Sociality, 74, 75 Soteriology, 238 Soviet Union, 217, 218, 220 Spirit, 4, 10, 19, 20, 55, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 113, 115n2, 128, 137–140, 142, 145, 155, 158, 166, 167, 169, 172, 174n10, 220, 226

  SUBJECT INDEX 

Subjectivity, 8, 27, 37, 38, 125, 135, 136, 141, 173n4, 203 Sublation, 97 T Theology, 2, 15–31, 36, 61, 83, 101, 109–114, 124, 147–148, 153–173, 182, 195, 215–238 Theory, 40, 44, 45, 51, 54, 77n3, 91, 101, 132, 136, 137, 141, 145, 154, 173, 175n20, 202, 212n8, 231 Thought-experiment, 8, 84, 93, 95–97, 99n10, 156, 157, 164 Time, 1, 3, 7, 8, 16, 18, 21–24, 29–31, 35–56, 59, 61, 63–66, 68, 70, 73, 84, 85, 91, 93, 97, 104, 109, 116n8, 118n14, 119n19, 119n20, 124, 126, 127, 130,

259

134, 136–138, 143, 144, 148, 149, 181–184, 187, 191–193, 200, 203, 205, 208, 215, 217–219, 222, 225, 233, 235, 237, 238, 241n31, 242n36 Transcendence, 10, 52, 135, 205, 215–217, 224, 226, 228–238 W Weimar Republic, 154 Word of God, 104–105, 110, 114, 230 WWI, 1, 3, 4, 7, 29, 35, 61, 62, 101, 124, 149, 154, 165, 168, 182, 184, 217, 225 Z Zwischen den Zeiten, 36, 43, 52